Behind the IRS Scandal and the attacks on Obama

In what must totally confuse the public, the left leaning, liberal media is now daily hawking a news story that the IRS has been purposely targeting applications for conservative charities and educational non profits.  What?  This is news?  The liberal media has been targeting conservative organizations and personalities for years, so why should they blame the government for doing the same?  Ah, but you see, there is a very good reason.

The media is run by big corporations that count on interest free money from the Federal Reserve and burdening regulations to keep out small business competitors and complete freedom to run their fiefdoms without interference.   In return they pay the politicians, Republican and Democrat, big money to help them get re-elected and they provide priceless air support, by promoting their candidacies of choice on national television and marginalizing anyone who dares to challenge the corrupt arrangement.

Take for example, the Associated Press, a “non-profit” owned by a cooperative of newspapers and television companies, which are owned by big corporations.  The A.P. virtually led the national media in their censorship and misreporting of the Ron Paul campaign in 2012.  (See here The Great Hudsonville Cover-up.)

Now, there is a great irony here for Ron Paul was the one candidate who was ringing the warning bells about our abandonment of the US Constitution.   (By the way, in addition to conservative groups, the IRS was also targeting any non profit that had the word “constitution” in its name.  The IRS can never be too careful in fulfilling its constitutional duty.)

What happened at the A.P. is only an example of what Dr. Paul feared and warned would happen.  The government asked that the A.P. hold back a news story about a terrorist bomb plot planned on the anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden.  The Associated Press complied.  But when White House officials then lied to the American people, saying that there had been no threats on the anniversary, well, that was too much.  It was a replay of the Benghazi attack on the anniversary of 9-11, which the government had contended was a spontaneous reaction to an American anti-Islamic movie and had nothing to do with terrorists or 9-11.

The Associated Press ran their story and the government began their spying campaign against them.

Now it may be tempting for Liberty Lovers to let the A.P. stew in its juices but with Rand Paul, now making a serious effort to save the U.S. Constitution and end the culture of corruption in Washington, DC we should stand up for our old antagonist, the Associated Press.  Maybe, just maybe, they will learn that having masses of people supporting the U.S. Constitution is not such a bad thing.  Maybe, just maybe they will make room for Rand and when there are 2,000 at his events they will not say there are 40.

It is amusing to see the A.P. wringing its hands over the issue.  Since 9-11, the millions of intercepts of ordinary citizens have not even warranted a peep from many in the national media.  The drone killing of a US citizen with no connection to terrorism was passed over in a single day.  But listening on the AP?  Well, that apparently violates the “honor among thieves” arrangement of the New World Order.

There are some in the Liberty Movement who will say that this is not our fight.  They will say that the oligarchy is now obviously piqued at Obama and are bloodying his nose a bit to show him whose boss.  And that may be the case.  But the fact that they are using a bias against conservatives in the IRS as the weapon of choice is pure comic theater at its best and should be enjoyed to the hilt.

Just to look into the faces of those serious news anchors as they solemnly tell us that the IRS is biased against conservatives, implying that all good folks, themselves included, are scandalized by this outrageous an unfair behavior, is better than watching Cersei outmaneuver the court in the Game of Thrones.  Enjoy it while you can.  The House of Rand Paul is coming.

Presidents are Mama’s boys

“Well a mother, a real mother, is the most wonderful person in the world. She’s the angel voice that bids you goodnight.”

– Wendy to the lost boys of Neverland.

 

Most presidents are mama’s boys.

Many of them are actually named after their mothers.

We all know that John Fitzgerald Kennedy is named after his mother, Rose Fitzgerald.  But Ronald Wilson Reagan is also named after his mother, Nelle Wilson.

Lyndon Baines Johnson is named after his mother, Rebecca Baines.  Richard Milhous Nixon is named after his mother Hannah Milhous.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt is named after his mother Sarah Delano.  In fact, FDR’s mother used to tell him, “You are a Delano, not a Roosevelt.”

When FDR had his famous fireside chats with the nation on national radio, his mother was right there beside him.  And on every Mother’s Day, she, herself, addressed the nation.

This phenomenon goes all the way back into our history.  Woodrow Wilson was named after his mothers, Janet Woodrow and Rutherford Birchard Hayes was named after his mother, Sophia Birchard.

Now it isn’t a perfect trend or else John Forbes Kerry would have won the 2004 presidential election.  He is named after his mother, Rosemary Forbes.   And then Marvin Pierce Bush, would have been the Bush brother to win the White House over George or Jeb.  He is named after his mother, Barbara Pierce.  But when I wrote the book, The Raising of a President, it appeared as such a stark statistical anomaly that I had to find an explanation.  I sent the data to several psychologists around the world.

Here was the identical response.  When that mother took that baby to her breast she felt a special connection to the child that bore her name.

Huh?  That’s it?  She felt something?

It reminded me of the German scientist who had studied plants in the 1880’s and insisted that if we talk nice to plants they will respond.  I’ve often thought.  If talking nice to a shefflera Tree will help it grow an extra inch each year, just imagine the damage or the good we do to each other by what we say, especially to our children?

Sigmund Freud wrote that “the man who perceives himself to be the favorite of his mother is empowered for life.”

Abraham Lincoln supposedly told William Herndon, “All I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother.”

Even as an adult President William McKinley insisted that his mother say a prayer with him before going to bed.  At great expense, he had a wire laid from Ohio to Washington, D.C. so the practice could continue even when he was in the White House.

Never underestimate the power of a mother.   Apparently, how she feels, or how you think she feels, can impact the rest of your life.

No wonder William Wallace wrote, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”

 

The Legacy of George W. Bush

Today, the George W. Bush library will be dedicated and a long list of luminaries will laud the life and legacy of our 43rd president.  I first met the future president in 1986, in Corpus Christi, Texas.  I was an independent businessman at the time, and simultaneously, working for his father as an adviser.  As the host of a business event held at the Corpus Christi Convention Center, I invited in George W. Bush to speak to the group.  He did a great job.  And afterward I took he and Laura and the twins to a Mexican restaurant where we talked politics.

Doug Wead, Mike Smith and George W. Bush in Corpus Christi, 1986.

In March, 19987, he joined his father’s campaign and co-opted my work with coalitions so I reported directly to him.  It was then that he learned the power of the evangelical vote and how to tap into it.

I may be the first person, outside of his own random fantasies, who actually thought of him as a future president.  Shortly after his father was elected I wrote a 44 page memo on presidential children.  In the study I learned how many sons pursued the presidency themselves.  Not just the first son born to a president, which was John Quincy Adams, but nine others.  A few of them came close, including John Van Buren and Robert Taft.  So I wrote about that possibility for the young Mr. Bush and talked about him to journalists, including a description in an article dated 1991.  (George Jr. exhibits clout in Bush White House. Denver Post. December 15,1991, p6a.)

George W. Bush has a dynamic personality, a cunning sense of humor and was the most decisive person I had ever met in my life.  While I never stopped praying or rooting for him, personally, I publicly parted ways with him over the war in Iraq.   It was a decision that would cost me dearly in my career.  Even before, when a 1998 CNN/Gallup poll showed George W. Bush as the leading presidential contender, I warned my wife.  ”If he wins the presidency we will go to war with Iraq and we will kill Saddam Hussein and we will kill his sons.”  After 9-11, I watched helplessly as our war against Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda shifted to a war against Saddam Hussein, the man who had tried to kill  Bush’s father.

There were many unintended consequences to the war in Iraq and to the subsequent upheaval across the Middle East.   It was called “the Arab Spring” as dictatorships toppled.  But Democracy, offered to voters in the region is routinely voted down as soon as it is won.  The people want theocratic dictatorships.  And they choose them at the ballot box.

Christianity, which existed in Iraq for 2,000 years and traced its lineage to the apostles ,  numbered one million believers before the Iraq war.  It has been cut in half, with churches destroyed and members killed or fleeing to Jordan.   Now the Coptic Christians of Egypt, one of the oldest Christian communities in history faces possible annihilation.

In 2011, when the whole West, including President Obama, were celebrating the change of governments in the Middle East, I was hotly criticized for throwing cold water on the celebration.  It was not out of any loyalty to the dictatorships they replaced.  But rather to the naive confidence with which we so easily brushed aside the tenuous house of cards that were in place.  We did so by what we said and did and what we did not say and did not do.  And we accomplished this without debate or adequate consideration, acting on instinct rather than logic.  The consequences have meant death to many and the blood bath may have only begun.

Today, supporters of President George W. Bush say that he kept America safe and never raised taxes.  Opponents say his war in Iraq had unintended consequences that are unhinging the whole Middle East and his spike in spending wrecked the economy.

Presidents spend their time in office trying to shape what happens and when its over they spend their time trying to shape what we think happened.  Both with limited success.  Today, President George W. Bush  has begun his campaign for his legacy.  What do you think?  How would you rank the president’s time in office?  Today the former president has a a 47% approval rating which is exactly the same as President Obama.

Participate in this poll and learn the results.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DVKPDR6

Rand Paul Now Leads Liberty Movement

It has only been a little more than a month since Senator Rand Paul’s filibuster on the floor of the U.S. Senate.  But it is looking more and more like a defining moment in American politics.  It may be a defining moment in American history.

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The dramatic sight of Rand Paul standing all alone, in the well of the Senate on March 6, 2013, speaking up for the U.S. Constitution, asking the questions that the media and the power establishment was too busy or too indifferent to ask, is a picture that will be forever burned into the psyche of many Americans.  And the key point here was that he was alone.  The rest of Washington, D.C., the politicians, the television producers, the White House staff, had scattered across town to posh restaurants enjoying their cocktails, regaling each other with tales of the day’s successes and making their deals for tomorrow, smugly content that they had put another day of work behind them.

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That afternoon, Senator Rand Paul had begun what would be a 13 hour filibuster, promising to hold up confirmation of the new Director of the CIA until the president answered this simple question. “Does the president’s newly assumed power to kill a U.S. citizen, without arrest or trial, apply to non combatants here in the United States?”

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It was a reasonable question.  Under president Barack Obama, the U.S. government had begun an unprecedented policy of killing U.S. citizens if they were deemed as terrorists.  Forget Miranda rights, they couldn’t even have a trial.  And this could happen anywhere in the world. The United States did not have to be at war with a country.  They could violate the air space and commit these killings in the Middle East, Asia, even Europe. In 2010, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was killed in a drone missile strike on a desert road in Yemen.  Two weeks later, his son, born in Denver, Colorado, with no ties to terrorism, searching for his father’s body in Yemen, was likewise killed by an American drone strike.  The killing of al-Awlaki was justified because of his rabble rousing sermons which had inspired terrorists.  The son’s killing, was oops, sorry, a mistake.  

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The media has been remarkably silent.

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In February, when asked about drone missiles now circling key locations here in the United States, the White House was asked if the president had the power to kill U.S. citizens  without trial, on American soil, or was this just something he could do overseas?  The White House assured the amazingly docile American media that the Justice Department had agreed that the president had this power.

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President Barack Obama can be thankful that his predecessor, George W. Bush, did not or Obama, himself, might not be around.  By such reckoning, Barack Obama’s own pastor could have been “droned out” for his tirade, when he famously chanted, “God damn America,” from his pulpit.   And Obama, had he been in the audience for those sermons might have been collateral damage, much like al-Awlaki’s son.

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The country seemed to be lulled into a trance.  This included its once fierce and uncompromising, professional, watchdog media, now held tightly by its corporate leashes, reduced to reading press releases and providing entertainment.  The trance included its corrupt politicians, too busy making money off of insider trading to take time to defend something so esoteric as a Constitutional right.  It included its courts, now as malleable to public opinion and as intimidated by American culture as the politicians.   Even the public was silent, too intellectually lazy to care.  No one could move lest they be stamped racist, liberal, conservative, unpatriotic or some other unpopular sticker.

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So Rand Paul, like the sassy kid in the proverbial story, The Emperor Has No Clothes, asked aloud the question that no one else dared ask.

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The White House sniggered.  The media ignored it. President Barack Obama would not answer.  Nor would anyone else.  Former president George W. Bush was silent on the subject, as was former president Clinton and Democrat Party leader, Al Gore.  Republican leaders, John McCain and House Speaker, John Boehner didn’t peep.  This was apparently a tough question.

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And so, as it appeared to the nation, Rand Paul, all alone, without a single ally to hold his water, took to the Senate Floor in a filibuster, demanding that this simple question be answered.  If he was out of line and the rest of the country knew what they were doing, so be it.

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At first there was not much of a reaction.  In the afternoon, when a member of the White House press corps asked about it, the president’s spokesman openly laughed. While Fox News Channel and MSNBC mentioned the event, mostly the national media ignored it, much as they had Rand Paul’s father, when he raised issues of civil liberties. After three hours, fellow Senator, and Liberty ally, Mike Lee finally made an appearance.  Everybody else, including the president, went out to dinner that night and then home for the evening.  The vast Liberty online community was remarkably calm.

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But as the night wore on and Americans finished their meals and sat at their monitors or picked up their I-Phones to answer some mail, word of the drama unfolding on the floor of the U.S. Senate began to spread.  Some called it a Twitter Blizzard, a mocking reference to the snow storm that was not happening as predicted. First it resonated among the Liberty Movement base.  Rand Paul had launched a filibuster.  He wouldn’t stop talking until the President answered his question.  And then it began to spread across political and partisan lines.  What’s a filibuster?  Why won’t the president answer such a simple question?  What happened to the watchdog media?  How could they let such a question go unanswered?  By 9 pm,normal television viewing was skewed. NBC’s popular Law and Order was losing its audience as people rushed to online streaming or YouTube captured videos of the drama.  C-SPAN viewers spiked.  Cable television began to be dominated by the spectacle.

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With the public aroused, the politicians reacted.  A parade of Senators, Republican and Democrat, rushed back to help Rand Paul.  Mike Lee made another appearance, this time with Ted Cruz and likely presidential contender, Marco Rubio.  Mitch McConnell and the GOP leadership fell into line.

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They were all a minute too late and a dollar too short.  Senator Rand Paul, all by himself, without any help, had electrified the nation.

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The next day, the politically savvy and thorough White House hauled out a canned moment that had been carefully preserved in case the filibuster went wrong.  Attorney General Holder had already answered the question to a Senator before the filibuster began, they now insisted.  But one wonders what they would have done with that canned moment if the public had not reacted.  Thursday morning, as Rand Paul began recovering from his 13 hour filibuster, the president finally answered the question.  And his CIA director was promptly confirmed.

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A lot of other things were confirmed as well.

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1.) Rand Paul is an unquestioned leader of the Liberty Movement and can inspire it whenever he chooses. Others will have to wait their turn.

2.) He is no political slouch, he is gutsy.

3.) Rand Paul is the first candidate since Ronald Reagan to actually lead a movement.

4.) The old left-right, Cold War paradigm is dead.  Rand Paul represents a new philosophy back to the constitution and it attracts support across the political spectrum from left to right.

5.) The fact that the country is moving in his direction and the packaging of his message is more palatable than that of his father’s, Rand Paul can win the presidency.

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From a purely historical perspective, one wonders how much further we will go in gutting our Constitution and sacrificing our rights to keep us “safe.”  How much bigger will government get?  How many more powers will be seized by the executive branch and how much future legislation will be accomplished by executive fiat?  At what point will it go so far down this road that we cannot find our way back?  And we learn that our form of government has changed before our eyes, without a discussion?

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Will Rand Paul’s filibuster be nothing more than an empty moment of theater on our way to a future government run by a single chief executive, serving at the pleasure of fifty television moguls?  Or will it mark the hi water mark of the new, post 9-11, tyranny and the beginning of a self examination that will take us back to a renewal of our hard won Constitutional Republic?  We can only hope and pray for the latter.

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George H.W. Bush: Tweets before Twitter, his personal notes

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The Forty First president, George H. W. Bush, has reissued his book All the Best.  And with the new publication come another trove of personal notes and observations.  These were tweets before twitter.  Here is my take.

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What do you think of the notes and personal letters of GHWB?

I think the presidents’ notes and letters constitute some of the most valuable writings of any president in all of American history.   And by the way, only a fraction of those notes are in the book.

And why do you think they are important?

Well, they are more than “stream of conscious” they are “stream of heart.”  As he conducts business, congratulating a birthday or issuing instructions to a staffer, he is also talking about what is going on around him.  It’s a twitter diary before twitter.  Communications reduced to a few words.  But they reveal more than dates and times, they reveal how the president feels about what is happening and what is being said.  And most presidents and politicians guard their feelings.

Give me some examples.

His mounting disgust over Saddam Hussein’s treatment of Kuwait.  Which led to a great miscalculation on the latter’s part.  It was the same miscalculation that Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega made.  Bush, Sr. has a tender heart but a will of iron.  You can read the notes and see that war was coming.

What notes in the book are the most revealing to you?

The president’s constant comments on his pain and deep feelings about the criticism of his son.  Both men, father and son, would rather be attacked themselves than to see the other attacked.

And there are layers of irony in that because some historians will judge one or the other president wrong on Iraq.    Either the father was right to leave well enough alone, after driving Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.  Or the son was right to have a war and get rid of the tyrant, even though Iraq became an Islamic Republic and with that unintended consequences, such as Christians being drven out for the first time in 2,000 years.  One can argue either way.

How will history judge Bush, Sr.?

In the interest of full disclosure, I served in his White House.  But I can tell you that observers in the former Soviet Union credit him as much as Reagan with the collapse of their empire which for us meant the end of The Cold War, and the end of the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Under Bush, Sr. there was a very real chance of a counter revolution.  And he had pressure on every side to act.  But he wisely invoked Napoleon’s dictum, “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”  And in the end, he finished what Reagan started.

There are many football teams that do well for three quarters and then lose the game at the end.  George H. W. Bush, won the last quarter of the Cold War and that sealed the deal.

See Doug Wead on CNN speaking to this topic.

http://startingpoint.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/05/bush-41-opens-up-about-bush-43-in-new-book-author-doug-wead-shares-the-highlights/

Rand Paul – a new foreign policy

For the past few years, we in the liberty movement have had the luxury of being able to stand on the outside and lob in grenades at America’s corrupt foreign policy.  But now, with one of our own, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky as a potential president, we have to face the reality of how to govern.  What would a Rand Paul presidency look like?  We got the answer this morning when he delivered a speech before the Heritage Foundation.

Keep in mind, Rand Paul spent seventeen years as an Ophthalmologist.   Nevertheless he preformed what can only be described as Rhinoplasty – or a nose job – at the Heritage Foundation, outlining before the stuffy G.K. Chesterton conservatives in the audience a new foreign policy for the Republican Party, one that offers a better fit for new realities.  Some Rinos will like it, some, who are growing fat as lobbyists for government subsidies, won’t.

Rinos (Republicans in name only) is the acronym applied to liberal Democrats who became Republican during the Reagan years, at the height of the Cold War.  They agreed with Reagan that communism was dangerous and America should not accept its inevitable ascendancy and should contest it.  Although less enamored by Reagan’s supply side economics and totally rejecting of Reagan’s social agenda they became an important part of Reagan’s winning political coalition.

But when the Cold War ended the Rino wars kept going.  They lobbied for a bigger budget for the CIA, a bigger budget for defense, with newer and better weapons and more interference around the world.  And all of this was before 9-11.  What had been a moral imperative, to stand down an aggressive, criminal communist gerontocracy, morphed into a role of America as moral guarantor for the world.

“We have the power,” the Rinos pointed out, “it is unconscionable for us not to use it against injustice.”  Of course, Rinos and their corporate friends made money off of this new arrangement.

Today, with the added impetus of the war on terror, American accounts for 42% of the world’s military expenditures.  We have 50,000 jets, while our nearest rival, China, has 5,000 jets.  We borrow money from China to put boots on the ground in Australia to defend Australia from China.  Feeling safe?  And, ironically, the strategy we used to bring down communism is destroying us as well.   Our arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union and now we are close to bankruptcy ourselves.

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans are locked into a fiscal death embrace, Democrats spending programs to reward their political constituencies and Republican spending money to reward their pals in the military industrial complex.  Both sides are eating at the pig trough of public money while the rest of us are taxed to death, handing over our hard earned money to government favorites.

The deadly solution? The insidious hidden tax? “Quantitative easing.” It has wiped out the wealth of a whole generation and made a tiny oligarchy of rich and powerful.

Most of us in the liberty movement have really offered no solutions to foreign threats.  Our foreign policy has been to close down all of our military bases, end all of our wars, mind out own business, and curb the power of the presidency.  This we hoped would help restore the economy and turn our enemies into friends.  Eventually.

In the meantime, what would our policy be if one of us were president?  Are these ideals only fodder for our blogs and books and newsletters?  Would we really ignore a nuclear Iran and pretend it will go away?  Would we ignore terrorist attacks on our allies and say it is none of our business? While we all abhor the loss of civil liberties, how far would we go to use government intelligence to pre-empt a terrorist strike against us?  Where do we draw the line?  And is there a safe path back to that liberty movement ideal, without us getting ambushed along the way?

The Senator began by defining the current foreign policy crisis.  The enemy, he said, was not terrorism, which is after all a tactic, but rather radical Islam, something that many politicians have been reluctant to acknowledge.  Rand pointed out that it is not the tiny percentage it is often alleged to be by politically correct, wishful thinking, American politicians.  Rather it is a “robust minority.”

Part of Rand Paul’s new foreign policy was a list of liberty movement basics, although couched in language that Rinos, who now dominate the Heritage Foundation, can swallow.  And more often than not they were posed as questions.  He called for an end to war by executive order.  He quoted Madison who warned that war is always more favored by the chief executive.

He complained about the irrelevancy of congress pointing out that the president sought permission to use force in Libya from NATO, the United Nations, from anyone but the US Congress where the power belonged.

“The debate over war is the single most important debate in this country and it should not be glossed over.”

Invoking his recent trip to Israel he pointed out that the debate about a nuclear Iran is underway in Jerusalem but not in Washington.

“Where are the calls for moderation, restraint?”

He alluded to the “unintended consequences” of war, a favorite subject of his father, Dr. Ron Paul.  “Why are we so quick to supply weapons for Syrian rebels?  Will they respect the rights of Christians in their new government?“

Rand Paul asked the room full of Rinos, many of them lobbyists for corporate arms manufacturers, “Should we keep sending weapons to countries that are hostile to Israel and the United States?”

But if the Senator called for fewer military bases, less soldiers overseas, a less trigger happy foreign policy with less power residing with the presidency, he also called for a more coordinated and ambitious strategy in the war against radical Islam.  This will be a tough pill to swallow for some diehard Libertarians.

He compared this crisis to the challenge of the Cold War. And called for a modern version of Cold War containment, a policy that is not entirely military but not all diplomatic either.  Countering radical Islam, the Senator declared, demands a worldwide strategy.   When there is war, we should go into win it and we should not go in alone.

Rand Paul said, “What the United States needs is a policy that finds that middle path.”  He called for a “foreign policy that recognizes the danger of bombing countries because of the fear of what they might do.”  But also one that legitimately acts decisively when danger is known.

He pointed out that “A foreign policy that is everywhere all of the time is an extreme [policy] on the other hand a foreign policy that is nowhere, any of the time, is also an extreme [policy].”

How will liberty movement leaders accept this call for a foreign policy more engaged than our ideal?  How will neo-conservatives and Rinos accept a future where American doesn’t bomb first and ask questions later?

Rand Paul ended his speech with these words, “I will be a voice to those who want a saner and sounder foreign policy.”

Nietzsche once said that “In individuals insanity is rare.  But in nations it is the rule.”  We can only hope that our nation will come out of its stupor and find the wisdom in Rand Paul’s clarion call.

Rand Paul for President: 2016

For Republicans, there is a silver lining to the re-election of Barack Obama.  The door is now open for real change in 2016.  The recently adopted Romney Rules at the RNC, which would have locked out any true democratic participation and guaranteed eight more years of GOP establishment, top-down, Brahman-style, domination, are now moot.  The gate is open.

The change that will be debated in the next presidential election will not be about tax percentages, or troop withdrawal timetables, or welfare for Big Bird, or who should be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.  The change that will be debated will be about fundamentals, about monetary policy, about the philosophical underpinnings of our foreign policy, about the relevancy of the American constitution and where we are headed as a people.

It will not be the red team against the blue team, espousing the same things in different degrees, rather it will be about real differences.

Should the Federal Reserved continue to operate in secret, manipulating the monetary system be creating wealth for its own board members and their corporate cronies, robbing the poor and the middle class?  Or should its work be transparent and accountable?  Remember, 80% now want the FED audited, it was not even mentioned by either candidate.

For the first time since it began, the housing collapse, which so devastated the wealth of the middle class, may actually be addressed.

Corruption on Wall Street, K Street and in the corridors of Capitol Hill will become issues.

One man can guarantee this discussion.

After three elections in which winning candidates have promised to end nation building there is a potential president who might actually do it, bring home our soldiers to guard our own borders instead of the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  For the first time, finally bring home our troops from  Germany and Japan where since World War II they have been stationed, pumping their money into local economies, while America descends into the economic toilet.

One man can stop the wars without end.

One man will champion civil liberties, reverse the fast paced trend toward ever more powerful, centralized government, that dictates what our children think, what we wear and eat and how we flush our toilets.   One man will raise the issue of how government is relentlessly trying to snuff out our conversation online.

One man , an accomplished doctor from a family of doctors, born and raised and tutored in liberty, has both the character and the political skill and fundraising base to get elected.  And that one man is Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Oh yes, I know, Liberty fans, he endorsed Mitt Romney for president.  Too early for some of us.  But then that is exactly why he is now positioned to actually win the 2016 GOP nomination and the presidency.   Because a Rand Paul campaign would be inclusive and supportive and generous in spirit.  And to win it he will need all the support he can get.

This is the lesson of this past election.  If Romney and those recalcitrant GOP bosses didn’t need us in 2008, we will need them in 2016.  And we will have to forgive them and honor them and cherish them.

A Rand Paul campaign won’t shut out the evangelical Christians and tell Sarah Palin she isn’t wanted or needed at the national convention.  It won’t hire thugs to infiltrate our opponents campaigns and wear their clothes and pass out phony ballots even after we have won.  A Rand Paul campaign will be generous in victory.

In a Rand Paul campaign, Peter Thiel will sit down with David Lane.  It will be about liberty, everybody’s liberty and the protection of each other’s God given, Constitutional guaranteed rights.  And this campaign will win.

In some respects, we are the weak link.  We in the Liberty Movement will have to decide whether we are willing to become more than theorists but also successful, winning, political activists.  Some of the debates will get scary as our candidate may decide that we need to cut our military bases from 900 to 75, instead of zero.  He will be backing us away from the abyss, on his own timetable and it may be too rapid for the general public and not enough for some of us.

But in the end, we can’t govern American if we can’t govern ourselves.

The point is this, our dream is still alive.  And in a way, it is still in our hands.  And now there is a very real chance of victory.  Now the real work begins.  If this country is to have another rebirth it is up to us.  Ron Paul will either be forgotten, a name swept away in history like Autumn leaves blowing across a lawn, or his statues will stand in public parks, as the father of a reborn nation and the father of our most popular president.

So, get a good job.  Make some money.  Lots of money.  And get ready for the next installment of the Liberty story.  In a few years, or a few months, the real work begins again.  Run Rand Run.

A Mitt Romney Win?

“The time will come when the constitution and government will hang by a brittle thread and will be ready to fall into other hands but this people,  the latter-day saints will step forth and save it.”

-  Joseph Smith, May, 1843.

If history is any indicator Mitt Romney will win tomorrow’s election.  Yes, the polls show it close and the electoral map actually tilts in President Obama’s favor but never before in history  has a president been returned to power with such a dismal economic performance.

1.) Unemployment has remained high.

2.) The housing crisis remains untouched, crushing the middle class.  Even the smallest tweaks expected by the real estate community within 90 days of the inauguration of Obama have been consistently ignored for the full four years.

3.) Real inflation is appalling and has robbed the poor and the retired on fixed incomes.  I say “real inflation,” as opposed to the new government-media revised fake figures, redesigned to help rescue the failing presidency of George W. Bush, figures that now exclude food and oil prices, the two most basic factors in our economic lives.

4.) Wall Street remains corrupt.  No one has been made accountable for the fraud.   Even when facts and details and names are laid out by the media, the Justice Department ignores it. There has been much rhetoric but not the slightest effort to prosecute a single big name.

Barack Obama named Timothy Geitner as the secretary of treasury.  If McCain had won he might have done the same thing.  The fact that Geitner and other appointees had cheated on their income taxes was hardly a subject of conversation.  “Only the little people pay taxes.”

5.) Corruption within government is rampant.  For example, Pentagon contracts have been awarded to put American boots on the ground in Australia.  Get this.  The Obama administration borrowed money from China to allegedly protect Australia from China, protection that the Aussies themselves eschew.   CBS exposed how members of congress buy stocks on the NYSE and then go into rooms to decide the policies that impact those investments.

6.) The War in Afghanistan is still on.  It is the longest war in American history.  Obama promised to end it if elected.  Now he promises to end it if re-elected.

7.) On Obama’s watch civil liberties are in the toilet.  Under the administration of George W. Bush civil libertarians were outraged because a president could tap your phone with only a judge’s signature.  Now a president can kill you without one.

8.) Under Obama we have seen the collapse of the Fourth Estate, once a powerful force of its own in the checks and balances within society.  The national media is now run by corporations and corporate advertisers, all dependent directly or indirectly on zero percent interest loans from the Federal Reserve, which is mounting a ferocious fight to keep its deliberations and monetary awards secret.

In 2008, afraid of being called racist for challenging Obama as a candidate, media giants have remained silent throughout the last four years.  Journalism is timid and virtually dead in America.  Only a handful of investigative journalists remain, their work mainly focused overseas.  Sources are now compromised by news agencies, under threat of government action.  Major stories, even crimes, are ignored based on global corporate interests.  The discerning public has moved online.

The list can go on and on.  Suffice it to say, that Joseph Smith’s prophecy of 1843 is upon us.

At times Mitt Romney has run an unnecessarily  mean-spirited and insular campaign, one that is the antithesis of the generosity and optimism of the past great winning, coalition building, campaigns of FDR and Ronald Reagan.  But the economy still makes this his election to lose.  Only America’s guilt over racism and it infatuation with Barack Obama’s personality can save the incumbent.

The grand spectacle of inaugurating a Mormon president in 2013 after inaugurating an African America in 2009 would make this another seminal moment in our history.  The long suffering and persecution of a gracious, hardworking and honorable people would finally come to an end.  The Mormon Tabernacle Choir would sing at the inauguration and there would be chills up our spines and tears in our eyes.  The Mormon journey would finally be over.  All of American would now be their home.  It would be another true healing.

But whether Mitt Romney can fulfill the prophet’s words and save us is another question altogether.   Can Romney, the wounded animal, still carrying his grudges, deserved as they may be, now heal the land?  Can the man who will change his opinion on any issue to add a few numbers to his popularity have the strength of character to lead us?

And finally, what exactly did Joseph Smith’s prophecy mean?  He didn’t say that the constitution would be restored just that it would be “saved” and in another paragraph, that it would be “born away” by its savior.  If the historic trend continues and Mitt Romney wins,  as I suspect, where will Mitt Romney decide to take it?

Amazing, Romney still battles Ron Paul in New Jersey

The battle for the soul of the Republican Party is still ongoing.  If you doubt that, take a look at the Romney henchman in New Jersey, who is even now, doing everything within his power to resist the involvement of grass roots Ron Paul people.  What you saw in Tampa, where Ron Paul delegates, mostly young and war veterans and Hispanics were unseated, continues in other ways, unabated in state after state, county after county.

Governor Mitt Romney is conducting a war on two fronts.  On the one hand he is trying to wrest control of the White House from the Democrats in a close election.  But simultaneously, as distracting and draining as it may be, he continues the brutal scrub of any challenge to the American oligarchical system by destroying the last vestiges of democracy within his own Republican Party.

Here’s a typical story, this one coming from New Jersey.

In June a number of Ron Paul activists ran for the Jersey City’s Republican Committee.  They won.  And like innocent Ron Paul winners everywhere they thought that they would be able to assume their new positions.

But the Committee Chairman, threatened by his new members, called his meeting without telling them.  It’s an old story, very familiar to Ron Paul activists.  Russell Maffei, Chairman of the Committee, and a strong Mitt Romney supporter, apparently worried that he would lose his position.

Last month, according to a story in the Hudson Reporter, Maffei was asked if “the underlying dispute really has to do with insurgent Ron Paul supporters coming onto the Committee, Maffei said, ‘Yeah, maybe. Why haven’t any of these people contacted me about working for Romney?’”

A lawsuit may force Maffei and the Committee to allow its duly elected members to participate but the story is yet another example that the brutal battle in the trenches is still ongoing.

Sometimes Romney’s involvement is direct, with people on his own payroll.  (See: Romney and Charlie the Cheater.)  But even if one gives the GOP candidate the benefit of the doubt, and concludes that this is only the spontaneous work of politically inept and threatened, power hungry people at the local level, even them, Romney has never repudiated the tactics.

When the pro Romney governor of Maine, a loyal GOP leader, pleaded with the RNC to seat the duly elected delegation from Maine, in spite of their Ron Paul allegiance, he was ignored and the Romney convention tossed them out, replacing them with unelected toadies as puppet delegates instead.  The governor was genuinely impressed by the involvement of so many young people and thought that his Party would welcome them.  And this New Jersey story sounds like a replay.  It was a Republican establishment  leader, Sean Connelly, the former Chairman of the Hudson County Republican Committee who imagined he was doing a good thing by encouraging the young Ronulans to get involved.  Doesn’t the GOP want to grow?  Don’t they want to win?

It must all look like Alice in Wonderland to the uninitiated.  Why would the GOP hurt itself by keeping out the young, the Hispanic, the Independents, even the Democrats?   But as the Liberty people know, the challenge within the GOP represents a people’s revolution against the establishment, an oligarchy that runs the country and depends on easy money created electronically by the Federal Reserve and loaned out to them through their banks and their corporations at zero percent interest while the rest of us pay through the nose.

The contest did not end in Tampa.  The war for the soul of America goes on.  And the more that the Romney GOP establishment defrauds us, behind the curtain, pulling the levers of power, then the more likely we will be to pull the lever for Gary Johnson, behind the curtain of our voting booth this November.

How Mitt Romney cheated his way to the GOP nomination

New evidence is coming out about just how tough and dirty the Mitt Romney campaign fought to block the Ron Paul takeover of the Republican Party at the State Conventions last summer.

It may offer a little sneak preview of what a Romney presidency will be like.  And make no mistake, barring war with Syria or some other dramatic October surprise, Romney will now win this election in a landslide.  At least, that is my humble opinion, as one who loves and reads history.  The economy will decide that.

It  turns out that Mitt Romney and other Republican operatives were apparently very much aware of what was going on at the precinct, county, district and state conventions.  This was not greedy state and country chairmen wanting to hang onto power so they could go to the RNC as delegates and get drunk.  The hardball tactics were apparently approved and refined from state to state from Iowa, where the state chairman got money for the GOP and promises and conveniently kept a Santorum popularity vote win and a Ron Paul delegate win, out of the news for months, all the way to Tampa, where pudgy, Romney Brownshirt  goons raced along the streets in golf cart-like vehicles, looking for demonstrators to divert into chain fence cages beyond view of the media.  Welcome to Romney’s America.

Remember Arizona?  Where there were accusations of voter fraud and physical violence against Ron Paul delegates?  Where delegates were sweated out, kept in 100 degree temperatures without air conditioning and without breaks for water or toilet, in hopes of getting them to give up?

Remember Nathan Sproul?

Remember my blog last summer, claiming fraud and miscounts and ballots taken away for the night to be recounted with numbers changed the next day?  Well,  Mr. Sproul called Ron Paul headquarters and threatened a lawsuit so I had to take down one of those blogs.  Now, what I wrote last summer, as a voice in the wilderness , is being published openly by the New York Times.  The mainstream media didn’t mind seeing Ron Paul get mauled but their precious Obama is another matter.  Now there are public reports of voter fraud at the hands of Mr. Sproul and a new revelation that he has recently been on the Republican Party payroll to the tune of millions of dollars and assigned to do his deeds in five states.

There is more.  It turns out that Nathan Sproul is now linked to Karl Rove who may have hired him as well.  Rove has a curiously malevolent streak of his own.   In Tampa, at the Romney coronation, Rove suggested – in jest we all presume – the murder of fellow Republican Senate Candidate Todd Akin, who had won the Missouri primary fair and square but now refused to resign and let Rove’s favorite candidate, who had lost, take his place.

Akin misspoke on abortion.  Rove, who misspoke on murder, is to be excused.

See: Karl Rove tied to shady GOP operative Nathan Sproul

Meanwhile, a major television network is now finally tracking the story of the Louisiana  State GOP.  Remember how Romney-Santorum people hired off duty policemen, telling them to arrest troublemakers when they pointed them out?  And then after they were voted out and new Ron Paul people were voted in to run the convention they had the hired off duty policeman arrest the new duly elected chairmen who was manhandled?  One was knocked to the ground another had his fingers broken while in police custody?  Well, that is going to court.  Yes, the Ron Paul victims will win, but the Romney people could care less, they got what they wanted and no apology has been offered.  Welcome to Romney’s America.

Remember our Ron Paul hero in Missouri, Brent Stafford, who was elected county chairman in St. Charles?  Who was arrested and hauled off to jail by off duty police hired by Romney people?  He was finally acquitted and the Romney person who ordered the arrest actually applauded the court’s decision.  Stafford, may file a lawsuit as well, but the Romney people won’t care.  They got what they wanted.

Perhaps the most damaging news of all for the Romney campaign is the emerging story of Charlie “The Cheater” Nejedly.  Charlie was caught in Maine, wearing a Ron Paul sticker, passing out fake Ron Paul slates at the Maine State Convention which the Romney people had clearly lost.  He was outed on the floor in Maine and soon afterward overheard talking to Romney’s likely nominee for Attorney General, campaign legal counsel, Ben Ginsburg.  According to the source, Ginsburg told Nejedly, “We need to get you to Boston.”

It now appears that Charlie “the Cheater” worked the Massachusetts convention too and that he was a paid staffer on the Romney payroll.  What’s worse, he is a Notre Dame graduate, which leads to all kinds of conflicts for this author.  I grew up in South Bend and I love Notre Dame.  And this week they play Brigham Young University.  And Manti Teo’s parents are in the audience.  Oh my?  What can I do?

I will still root for Notre Dame, of course, but Mitt Romney “the cheater” may have to wait for me to cool down a bit.  What was he thinking?  I know what he was thinking?  He was thinking that we would all come around and vote for him instead of Obama because of the economy.  So he could cheat and fake to his heart’s content.  But the more clearly in focus it becomes the less impressed I am of Romney’s America.  Where are we headed?

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