Happy Easter To My Many and Dear Christian Friends. Stay Well, Be Safe.

This from a friend and fellow memo reader.  Can't hardly disagree:

By Frank Hawkins, US Army (Ret) - Intelligence

America has undergone enormous change during the nearly eight decades of my life.

Today, America is a bitterly divided, poorly educated, and morally fragile society with so-called mainstream politicians pushing cynical identity politics, socialism, and open borders.  The president of the United States has been threatened with impeachment because the other side doesn’t like him.  The once reasonably unbiased American media has evolved into a hysterical left wing mob.

How could the stable and reasonably cohesive America of the 1950s have reached this point in just one lifetime?  Who are the main culprits?  Here’s my list of the 10 most destructive Americans of the last 80 years.

10) Mark Felt – Deputy director of the FBI, aka “Deep Throat” during the Watergate scandal.  This was the first public instance of a senior FBI official directly interfering in America’s political affairs.  He was the forerunner of James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Andrew McCabe.

9) Bill Ayers – Represents the deep and ongoing leftist ideological damage to our education system.  An unrepentant American terrorist who evaded punishment, he devoted his career to radicalizing American education and pushing leftist causes.  Ghost wrote Obama’s book, “Dreams From My Father.”

8) Teddy Kennedy – Most folks remember Teddy as the guy who left Mary Joe Kopechne to die in his car at Chappaquiddick.  The real damage came after he avoided punishment for her death and became a major Democrat force in the US Senate, pushing through transformative liberal policies in health care and education.  The real damage was the 1965 Hart-Cellar immigration bill he pushed hard for that changed the quota system to increase the flow of third world people without skills into the US and essentially ended large-scale immigration from Europe.

7) Walter Cronkite – Cronkite was a much beloved network anchor who began the politicization of America’s news media with his infamous broadcast from Vietnam that described the Tet Offensive as a major victory for the Communists and significantly turned the gullible American public against the Vietnam War.  In fact, the Tet offensive was a military disaster for the NVA and Viet Cong, later admitted by North Vietnamese military leaders.  Decades later Cronkite admitted he got the story wrong.  But it was too late  The damage was done.

6) Bill and Hillary Clinton- It’s difficult to separate Team Clinton.  Bill’s presidency was largely benign as he was a relative fiscal conservative who rode the remaining benefits of the Reagan era.  But his sexual exploits badly stained the Oval Office and negatively affected America’s perception of the presidency.  In exchange for financial support, he facilitated the transfer of sensitive military technology to the Chinese.  Hillary, a Saul Alinsky acolyte, is one of the most vicious politicians of my lifetime, covering up Bill’s sexual assaults by harassing and insulting the exploited women and peddling influence around the globe in exchange for funds for the corrupt Clinton Foundation.  She signed off on the sale of 20% of the US uranium reserve to the Russians after Bill received a $500,000 speaking fee in Moscow and the foundation (which supported the Clinton’s regal lifestyle) received hundreds of millions of dollars from those who benefited from the deal.  Between them, they killed any honor that might have existed in the dark halls of DC.

5) Valerie Jarrett - The Rasputin of the Obama administration.  A Red Diaper baby, her father, maternal grandfather and father-in-law (Vernon Jarrett who was a close friend and ally of Obama mentor Frank Marshall Davis) were hardcore Communists under investigation by the U.S. government.  She has been in Obama’s ear for his entire political career pushing a strong anti-American, Islamist, anti-Israeli, socialist/communist, cling-to-power agenda.

4) Jimmy Carter - Carter ignited modern day radical Islam by abandoning the Shah and paving the way for Ayatollah Khomeini to take power in Tehran.  Iran subsequently became the main state sponsor and promoter of international Islamic terrorism.  When Islamists took over our embassy in Tehran, Carter was too weak to effectively respond thus strengthening the rule of the radical Islamic mullahs.

3) Lyndon Johnson – Johnson turned the Vietnam conflict into a major war for America.  It could have ended early if he had listened to the generals instead of automaker Robert McNamara.  The ultimate result was:

A) 58,000 American military deaths and collaterally tens of thousands of American lives damaged; and

B) a war that badly divided America and created left wing groups that evaded the draft and eventually gained control of our education system.

Even worse, his so-called War on Poverty led to the destruction of American black families with a significant escalation of welfare and policies designed to keep poor families dependent on the government (and voting Democrat) for their well-being.  He deliberately created a racial holocaust that is still burning today.  A strong case could be made for putting him at the top of this list.

2) Barack Hussein Obama- Obama set up America for a final defeat and stealth conversion from a free market society to socialism/communism.  As we get deeper into the Trump presidency, we learn more each day about how Obama politicized and compromised key government agencies, most prominently the FBI, the CIA and the IRS, thus thoroughly shaking the public’s confidence in the federal government to be fair and unbiased in its activities.  He significantly set back race and other relations between Americans by stoking black grievances and pushing radical identity politics.  Obama’s open support for the Iranian mullahs and his apologetic “lead from behind” foreign policy seriously weakened America abroad.  His blatant attempt to interfere in Israel’s election trying to unseat Netanyahu is one of the most shameful things ever done by an American president.

The Number 1 Worst American is  John Kerry– Some readers will likely say Kerry does not deserve to be number one on this list.  I have him here because I regard him as the most despicable American who ever lived.  After his three faked Purple Hearts during his cowardly service in Vietnam, he was able to leave the US Navy early.  As a reserve naval officer and in clear violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, he traveled to Paris and met privately with the NVA and the Viet Cong.  He returned to the United States parroting the Soviet party line about the war and testified before Congress comparing American soldiers to the hordes of Genghis Khan.  It was a clear case of treason, giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war.  We got a second bite of the bitter Kerry apple when as Obama’s secretary of state, he fell into bed with the Iranian (“Death to America”) mullahs giving them the ultimate green light to develop nuclear weapons along with billions of dollars that further supported their terrorist activities.  Only the heroic Swift Vets saved us from a Manchurian Candidate Kerry presidency.  Ultimately we got Obama.

Dishonorable Mentions!     (Just missed the list)

John Brennan – Obama’s CIA director who once voted for Communist Gus Hall for president.  A key member of the Deep State who severely politicized the CIA.  Called President Trump treasonous for meeting with the president of Russia.

Jane Fonda – movie actress who made the infamous trip to Vietnam during the war in support of the Communists. She represents hard left Hollywood that has done so much damage to our culture.

Jimmy Hendrix and Janice Joplin – Both revered entertainers helped usher in the prevailing drug culture and personally suffered the consequences.  Karma’s a bitch

Robert Johnson – As head of BET helped popularize ho’s, bitches and pimps while making millions on great hits such as “Jigga my Nigga”, “Big Pimpin’”, “Niggas in Paris” and “Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.”  Many scholars within the African American community maintain that BET perpetuates and justifies racism by adopting the stereotypes held about African Americans, affecting the psyche of young viewers through the bombardment of negative images of African-Americans.  Who can disagree?

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr  – Head of the New York Times.  Once the gold standard of American journalism, the paper always had a liberal tilt and occasionally made bad mistakes.  As the years have gone along, the paper has slid further and further left and today is virtually the primary propaganda arm of the increasingly radical Democrat Party.  Still retains influence in Washington and New York.

Frank Marshall Davis - Anti-white, black Bolshevik, card-carrying Soviet agent.  Probable birth father and admitted primary mentor of young Barack Hussein Obama.

Special Reward goes to George Soros – Jewish former Nazi collaborator in his native Hungary who as a self-made billionaire has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into left wing groups and causes.  The damage he has caused is difficult to measure, but it’s certainly large.  He has funded much of the effort to kill the Trump presidency.

Addendum From John

It is gratifying to see that Mr. Hawkins, who is in a far more informed position than me, independently agrees that Jimmy Carter was a seriously destructive force against America’s best interests.

Personally, I could move Carter closer to the top of the Most Destructive Americans list, at least above Lyndon Johnson, on the premise that the former peanut farmer turned president, through his flawed decision to unleash Khoemeini and his plan for Islamic Jihad resulted in more total mayhem, death, and destruction on a world-wide basis that continues to this day  But on balance, LBJ directly caused the deaths of some 58,000 people in his utter mismanagement of the Vietnam War counting American deaths from terrorist attacks (think 9/11) and war deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan still doesn’t add up to 58,000.  So, Mr. Hawkins is entitled to his opinion, which is limited to the adverse impact solely upon Americans, not the whole world.

I hope you observed that mos 

t on this list are either prominent DEMOCRATS or allied with them.

Vote wisely in November.

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Steve Forbes  urges more capitalism: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2019/05/07/capitalism-will-save-us-if-only-we-let-it/#44da8846362d

And:

David Hanson evaluates reactions of others to Coronavirus crisis:

Corona Meltdowns - Is the bad and self-negating behavior of so many of Trump’s enemies setting him up for an even more impressive victory in the fall?
By Victor Davis Hanson
As the coronavirus outbreak begins to reach its zenith, it remains unclear whether the measures taken to stem its tide will prove sufficient, insufficient, or an overreaction. What is certain, however, is that a number of individuals and entities have behaved shamefully and demonstrated no capacity for leadership or usefulness in this moment.

Nancy Pelosi: Gone are the mythologies that Nancy Pelosi was a pragmatic liberal voice of reason among the otherwise polarizing American Left, honed after years of paying her dues to the Democratic Party, as the mother of five dutifully ascended the party’s cursus honorum.

It does not matter whether her political and ethical decline was a result of her deep pathological hatred of Donald Trump. Who cares that her paranoia arose over the so-called “Squad” that might align with socialist Bernie Sanders to mesmerize Democrats to march over the cliff into McGovern-like oblivion? All concede that very few octogenarians have the stamina and clarity to put in the 16-hour work-days and transcontinental travel required by a Speaker of the House.

Instead, all that matters is that for a nation in extremis she is now puerile, even unhinged—and increasingly dangerous.

In retrospect, the public will remember how in fear and confusion she reversed course to spearhead impeachment, outsourced the task in the House of Representatives to its most incompetent and perfidious members—Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—and wasted weeks of the country’s precious energy and time as it was on the cusp of an epidemic.

Pelosi then quickly weaponized the viral crisis in hopes that COVID-19 could do what Robert Mueller’s dream team and impeachment had not done—destroy the administration of Donald Trump before the November 2020 election. Only such an obsession explains why any sober politico would damn Trump as culpable in January for ignoring the viral dangers, while nearly a month after his necessary and controversial travel ban of January 31—that stopped perhaps 7,000 Chinese citizens entering California per day, some on direct flights from Wuhan—she was doing a photo-op tour to urge the public to get out and shop in San Francisco’s crowded Chinatown: “That’s what we’re trying to do today is to say everything is fine here“.

Such a crazy juxtaposition is not just politics or hypocrisy—it’s insanity. The night before an impeached Trump was acquitted in the Senate, and five days after Trump had controversially stopped incoming Chinese visitors, Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address before a national television audience, a level of spiteful vitriol not seen in the U.S. Congress since the years leading up to the Civil War.

When the Congress finally agreed to call a truce and pass a bipartisan “rescue bill” to stave off a depression and deliver some relief to millions of unemployed, Pelosi single-handedly delayed passage to insert irrelevant progressive treats into the authorization—until she was reprimanded by her own party to cease and desist.

She is now, in the middle of an epidemic, insanely talking about a “truth” impeachment-light commission to investigate Trump. She is absolutely clueless of the nihilistic circus that would ensue when her own previous on-the-record statements, the parasitic investment practices of U.S. senators of both parties, the bizarre behavior of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, the empty January braggadocio of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Joe Biden’s smearing of the Trump travel ban would be fully aired.

Does she have any idea that by forcing Trump to “own” the virus—predicated on the notion of trusting in bleak but widely criticized Armageddon modeling—she is greenlighting Trump to take credit for the response, especially if coronavirus proves in the end comparable to the 60 million infected, roughly 1 million hospitalized, and 15,000-60,000 dead in the prior influenza epidemics of 2009 or 2017?

It is difficult to find one thing Pelosi has said or done that has not made the country worse off since the virus officially hit our shores in late January.

The Media: Watching the media deal with the daily White House briefings reminds the country that we have never had journalism of this low character before—not in the acrimony over the Founding, not in the furor during the Civil War, not even in the age of yellow journalism at the turn of the 20th century.

Reporters do not wish to transmit knowledge to the public that might aid in confronting the virus. They do not even wish to clarify murky statements from public officials to ensure Americans know exactly what the government wants them to do.

Instead, journalists during White House briefings fixate on two agendas.

One is to goad the president into saying something sloppy, by repeatedly suggesting that in reacting to the virus, he was in error, that he is cruel and heartless, or that he is dangerous. That gotcha obsession explains why the media can call Trump a xenophobe and racist for issuing a travel ban against China—contrary to the earlier advice of WHO, the Centers for Disease Control, the media, and the entire Democratic Party hierarchy—then silently support it. It explains why they then use doctored Chinese data and propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party to convince Americans that China—a nation that lied about the origins, spread, and nature of the virus—is admirably doing a better job in containing the virus than is their own country. Even the media cannot keep straight their own anti-Trump gymnastics.

If evidence convinces Trump to let the public know that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are efficacious in treating patients infected with coronavirus, then reporters will seek to persuade Americans that such off-label uses have no utility and are dangerous—even if they have to stoop to find some nut who drank fish-tank cleaner, clearly marked unfit for human consumption, to argue that a nonpotable chloroquine derivative cleaning agent provides proof of “Dr.” Trump’s deadly ignorance.

But the White House press obsesses over a second agenda, too. It must always prove that previously respected figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, once embraced by the liberal media in their pre-Trump days, either are in revolt against their doltish boss or brain-washed into obsequious enslavement to the president. Often the media advances both antithetical scenarios near simultaneously.

The third rail for the media is that Fauci and Birx are empirical and sound mostly politically disinterested. They seek to provide Trump with scientific data about the virus to balance his incoming streams of financial, economic, military, and cultural information.

When Trump accepts their advice over objections from other advisors with competing national concerns, the two feel it was for the good of the country. When he demurs, they press their arguments as advocates of public health. And when they rarely lose an argument the two concede the president has to balance dozens of existential concerns.

In other words, it would be hard, for anyone other than the current press corps, on Monday to paint Fauci and Birx as frustrated scientists at the mercy of a moron who refuses to listen to science, while on Tuesday writing off both as Trump toadies who have joined the forces of darkness.

But that is currently the schizophrenic state of the American media. The only constant is that whatever Trump advocated, they are against, even if lives are at stake. And whatever Trump policy seems to be working for the good of the country, they either deny or ignore it.

Another irony: While the current media is the logical culmination of the liberal biases of the more polite leftwing domination of network and print media of the late twentieth century, it is now also far more vulnerable to exposure and ridicule. After all, it was progressive Silicon Valley’s creation of the Internet website and social media that have allowed truth to emerge past even media filters, truth that has largely exposed the media as incompetent, meanspirited, and increasingly irrelevant.

Joe Biden: The virus shutdown was first seen as providing a necessary respite for the 77-year-old former vice president to go home, rest up, and recuperate after an exhausting summer, fall, and winter of campaigning—an ordeal that supposedly had explained Biden’s increasing flubs and gaffes.

Indeed, when the shutdown first began, a rested Biden, coming off a well enough debate performance against Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was to broadcast daily out of his home. In informal fireside chat fashion, good ol’ Joe from Scranton would offer “here’s the deal” homilies and “point one, point two, point something or other” commentaries on the virus and Trump’s inadequate response to it.

But what followed was an ungodly disaster, as if the problem all along never was Biden’s weariness, but Biden himself. A rested Biden’s botched commentaries only convinced observers that a President Biden at this moment would be a veritable catastrophe. Biden seemed more confused from his home than he was on the campaign stump. He tried reading from a teleprompter script, and then talking ex tempore, and then both, and found he could do neither.

After blasting Trump as a xenophobe and racist for the January 31 travel ban, Biden hemmed and hawed and finally conceded he agreed with the ban. His staff claimed his xenophobic/racist allegations were in connection to Trump’s use of “Chinese virus”—a rubric first institutionalized probably by CNN. Yet Trump used that terminology only after, not before, Biden’s smear. Now Biden apparently is trying to argue that Trump should have issued the once “racist” and “xenophobic” ban even earlier—as Biden its former critic supposedly would have done. Once Biden decided he had to be against everything Trump was for, and once Trump was for most things that the so-called experts thought best, then Biden inevitably was in Pavlovian fashion against what was good for the country.

The truth is that Biden cannot find much to disagree with, given that most Democrats—Pelosi and DeBlasio, especially—were playing down the severity of the virus, as was Anthony Fauci himself in January.

Anytime Biden faulted Trump for belated responses, it was easy for Biden’s opponents to show that almost no one but Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in early January was alarmed about the impending danger (and smeared by the Left for his warnings), and even easier given that Trump’s travel ban met fierce opposition as not merely racist but unnecessary and exaggerated.

Biden earlier also had promised a diversity vice president and is now wedded to that commitment. But the only Democrat in the present crisis who is winning mainstream media acclaim is Governor Andrew Cuomo, despite the paradox that he was also once exaggerating his own readiness for the virus and bragging about the openness of New York to the world. So far, he governs a state with the greatest numbers of virus cases as well as deaths and per capita fatality rates—facts which according to the blame—game logic of the Left are political fodder.

Nonetheless, Cuomo is being touted both as the far more competitive candidate in a crisis than the fumbling Biden, and yet he will prove almost impossible to nominate given Biden’s long campaign and delegate lead. The best squaring of that circle in the eyes of Democrat politicos would be to have Cuomo as the vice-presidential nominee on the ticket. He could rectify some of Biden’s gaffing, and do most of the fall campaigning, while with a wink and nod reassuring voters that he would likely have to step in for a President Biden if the latter’s present disturbing lapses continue.

Now that option seems less likely given Biden’s earlier politically correct grandstanding of promising a diversity vice-presidential pick without a clue of who such a person might be.

For now, the media, Pelosi, and Biden, along with the Left in general, wish to perpetuate a sense of viral Armageddon to make it politically impossible for Trump to initiate a graduated plan of returning America to work. Their hope is for a summer and fall of continued lockdown, a near depression rather than a mere recession, and enough public furor to end Trump in November—while hoping that a sudden post-election end to the lockdown will allow the natural recovery of Trump’s booming economy on their watch in 2021.

Missing in all these calculations is empathy for those who are ill and the losses that such macabre expectations certainly entail. Also absent is a sense of the irony that, by unfairly scapegoating Trump in hours of darkness, they are ensuring that in the upcoming dawn, he will be credited by their same logic with owning what will likely be an impressive U.S. response to suppressing the virus and reviving the economy 

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