How do you feel going into the New Hampshire Primary?

I feel good. I feel optimistic about America and especially hopeful about the next generation. As you know we have a lot of young people in our campaign and they are well informed and aware of the financial danger in this country. That bodes well for all of us. If we know the problem and do the right thing, we can eventually get out of this. So I am very encouraged by that.

Yes, but are you going to win the nomination? What do you say to those who believe you can’t win?

We can still win. It hasn’t been decided. And if we have learned anything in this cycle it is that the whole race can change quickly. I think we are going to do very well. We had a three way tie for delegates in Iowa. The important thing is that I have challenged the status quo, the corruption in Washington, and as a doctor I know that the patient, in this case the country, is responding and now has a good chance of recovery. This is very, very pleasing to me.

The attacks on you have been pretty bitter. Does that rankle?

Well, sure I am human. But if I am attacked for something I believe it doesn’t bother me. That’s why I make sure my own advertising is based on truth, comparison advertising, pointing out the differences on positions and issues. We are very careful not to say something about someone else that isn’t true.

There is one very serious charge going unanswered. Bachman said it daily and now Gingrich is saying it every day at every stop. He says, “Ron Paul would wait until an American city is destroyed by a nuclear weapon before he would respond.”

Oh, that is totally false. And further it is an insult to people’s intelligence. Of course, we would defend ourselves. We would never let it get to that point.

The fact is that to remain strong we must stop policing the world and start defending this country. The Soviet Union collapsed not because someone pointed a nuclear missile at them but because they over extended themselves.

Thomas Jefferson said that the more you use power the less you have.

I often say that we must stop policing the boarder of Afghanistan and Pakistan and start taking care of our own border with Mexico.

And yet your opponents, both on the campaign and in the media, portray this as an extreme view. They are especially concerned that you are not tough enough on Iran.

Well, I make it clear that I don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons. Frankly, I don’t want North Korea to have them either. But neither do I want a needless war. We cannot afford to go to war without a clear reason and a clear threat or else these endless wars become, themselves, the source of our own defeat. I notice that the Israeli Chief of Mossad, Tamir Pardo, addressed a meeting of Israeli ambassadors in Jerusalem just a few days ago saying that Israel’s existence is not inevitably endangered by Iran acquiring an atomic weapon. Surely, we should consider what the Israelis themselves say.

How do you feel about being such a target? You are called a pacifist or an isolationist.

Just keep in mind, when we take the stage at the next debate I will have more donors among the active military service than all of the other candidates combined. Among my supporters is Michael Scheuer, the man who headed up the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit.

People who understand the cost of war, are much more careful about rushing into it. And while all of the candidates talk big about wanting to have another war, only two of us, Rick Perry and myself, have been in uniform. The others are quick to send young people to die but they all carefully avoided military service themselves.

And yet they say you are “dangerous.”

There is nothing dangerous about the U.S. Constitution. There is nothing dangerous about taking the issue of war or peace to the Congress and letting them debate it. If Congress has lost that power to decide war, then what are they for? What is more important than that? It means we will have replaced Congress with televisions pundits.

We should not so casually abandon the U.S. Constitution. It is a great document that has guided our country for two hundred years.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In case that Newt Gingrich decided to share.

The media was tucked away in their beds,
Convinced that Rick Perry was struggling with meds,
That Bachman and Huntsman would not matter much,
That Mitt Romney would win before they had lunch.

Suddenly outside their arose such a noise,
From Ankeny, Davenport, Ames and Des Moines.

I threw open the window to look out below,
The whole state of Iowa was buried in snow.

The yard signs were sprouting and spreading it’s true,
The color was clearly an ocean of blue.

No Bachman, no Perry, no Gingrich in sight,
Only the mouse, Ron Paul, ruled the night.

The Democrats now were alert and awake,
“Give us our Santa. Give or we’ll take.”

The business elites were running about,
Ordering the journalists to yell and to shout.

“No one can touch our Federal Reserve,
“We couldn’t print money, imagine the nerve?”

But January three came and it went,
And all of the money that Romney had spent,
And all of the words that the pundits had spun,
Could not stop the mouse, Ron Paul, who had won.

And so I remember his words on that day,
The wave of his hand, like Gandalf the Grey,
We heard him exclaim to one and to all,
“Merry Christmas, God Bless you and thanks from Ron Paul.”

Public Policy Polling – Iowa Voters

Ron Paul 23%
Mitt Romney 20%
Newt Gingrich 14%
Rick Santorum 10%
Michelle Bachman 10%
Rick Perry 10%
Jon Huntsman 4%
Gary Johnson 2%

For the moment, the media is still in full blown denial. While some lesser influential pundits are hedging their bets, saying that “Ron Paul could win this thing,” most of the big shots, taking their orders from television executives, are still pretending that he doesn’t exist.

A headline on CNN’s coverage this morning declared “Gingrich and Romney make final push.” Not only does the media ignore Ron Paul when he is in third or second, they ignore him when he is in first! Presumably, they will ignore him when he wins.

Today’s CNN segment focused on the liberal-leaning Des Moines Register’s endorsement of Mitt Romney. The Register, which seems to suffer from an Iowa inferiority complex, was impressed with the fact that Romney had graduated from an Ivy League school, finishing “in the top 5 percent in his MBA class at Harvard.” The paper was impressed that Romney had “helped create healthcare reform in Massachusetts that is strikingly similar to the much-derided ‘Obamacare’”

Romney, who boycotted the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll, a critical fundraising device for the local GOP, has made only a handful of visits to the State. His media surrogates and friends have already circulated stories that if Iowa votes for Ron Paul their whole Caucus will be discredited. While other candidates have worked the State for the last year, Romney opened his State office last week. This morning the office was practically empty.

Wolf Blitzer asked his guest from the Des Moines Register whether it helps or hurts a candidate to get their endorsement. The guest wouldn’t answer the question, dodging it several times in a style worthy of Romney himself. When Wolf persisted, wanting an answer, she still wouldn’t say but finally concluded that it couldn’t hurt and could add to a candidate’s momentum because it would get people talking. The Public Policy Poll showing Ron Paul in first place was ignored in the discussion.

Meanwhile, Tim Hagle, a University of Iowa professor of political science thinks that the Register’s endorsement could give Romney a boost. Hagle is quoted as saying, “You want to know what these editorial folks and reporters on the ground think about who is the best leader or the strongest person or who is the most consistent. There’s a certain weight to it.” Calling Mitt Romney “consistent” demands some mighty dexterous intellectual contortions.

Since CNN couldn’t get to the bottom of what an endorsement from the Des Moines Register really means, I will offer you the history in this post.

Des Moines Register Endorsements and the Iowa Caucus

1988 D Senator Paul Simon (lost)
1988 R Senator Robert Dole (won)
1996 R Senator Robert Dole (won)
2000 D Senator Bill Bradley (lost)
2000 R Governor George W. Bush (won)
2004 D Senator John Edwards (lost)
2008 D Senator Hillary Clinton (lost)
2008 R Senator John McCain (lost)

But the big news for Ron Paul was not today’s Public Policy Poll, it was his December 16, 2011 Moneybomb. It has now officially topped $4 million. That’s chicken feed compared to the $16 trillion in newly created money that the Federal Reserve can roll out in one year to its banks and insider corporations but then this money is from real people, who have lost their jobs, the value of their homes and the value of their IRA’s.

What they have not lost and what the elitists still can’t get their hands on is their vote and it will take more than the Des Moines Register to wrest it away from them.

There is now a very real possibility that Ron Paul could win the nomination and the White House.

Everyone talks about what will happen if Paul beats Romney in Iowa, which is very likely. With the Romney brand severely damaged Gingrich would have a real shot at winning New Hampshire. But there is another scenario. Ron Paul is now within one point of Gingrich in Iowa and Paul has been moving up, Gingrich down. What if Ron Paul wins in Iowa? What if he beats both Romney and Gingrich? both men will be hurt in New Hampshire, Ron Paul will get a bump and could win there too.

Well, the pundits are saying, even if that happened, where does he go after that? What can he do in South Carolina?

Keep this in mind. As the renowned Trygve Olson points out, no recent candidate of either party has ever won the nomination without winning either the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire primary. This because of the power of sequential wins. And nobody has won both, in recent years, without getting the nomination. What happens is that the candidate who wins an early contest gets a bump. If he does it a second time the bump becomes insurmountable.

If Ron Paul wins the Iowa Caucus he will become a sensation. The people of South Carolina will rush to Google him and they will learn what the people of Iowa and New Hampshire are learning right now, that the way this economy is being run is corrupt and only one person saw it coming and exposed it and can be trusted to fix it.

Now you can bet that the people who are gaming the system will be fighting against this scenario for all they are worth. The attacks are coming and they will be merciless. But the public does not like being conned. And the public has lost the value of their homes and lost their retirement funds, they just may not be willing to give up their vote as well.

Paulistas need not worry about South Carolina. They need not worry about New Hampshire and Iowa. They should only have one concern. The next money bomb on December 16th, this Friday. That’s all that matters now. Ron Paul has great television ads, the best of the campaign, and those ads are working. They are very effective. They move numbers. But it will take money to get them air time. Everything for Ron Paul now depends on Friday. The nation’s elite will be watching.

And yes, Virginia, this is all happening. Ron Paul can win it all. It is something that we have discussed here for the last four years. It is now very possible.

Ron Paul Money Bomb

The Paulistas are rather sensitive to this whole idea right now because they know that Ron Paul is on the verge of changing the country forever, with or without winning the presidency. And that last idea, winning the presidency, is now a very real possibility. In fact, it will be decided, not at the Iowa Caucus on January 3, 2012, where Paul is running neck and neck in State polling, but at the next Ron Paul Money Bomb this Friday, December 16, 2011. If Ron Paul raises enough money, and it will take a lot of it, he will be able to finish with the winners in Iowa and then anything can happen.

For some, who have labored for years on issues of money and corruption, it is almost too good to be true. They have never been this close. Ron Paul has pulled back the curtain on the massive money making machine of the Federal Reserve. Thanks to Ron Paul we now know that insiders, including the Federal Reserves’ own board members, were getting money for their banks, which in turn give those bankers huge bonuses, and all in the name of helping people and “creating jobs”. And while this has been going on for years the massive scale of this theft in recent years has reached critical mass.

Consider, our national debt is at $15 trillion. Thanks to Ron Paul’s efforts to audit the Federal Reserve we now know that in one year alone it passed out $16 trillion in new, interest free, loans to its own board members’ banks and to favored corporations. This is new money, electronically created, and deposited in those banks. And it is paid for by all of us, as our own money is devalued by these massive infusions of newly created dollars. Ron Paul calls it legal counterfeiting.

And we now understand that those banks and the loans they offer are needed by all of the major corporations, including the ones who own the television networks, and so now you understand why Ron Paul is so marginalized by television news and why his rise is so unexpected and such a political phenomenon. While students pay 8% on their college loans, the big shots get unlimited amounts of money at zero interest with the future prospects of new loans of inflated, cheaper dollars, to pay off the old loans.

Of course, where there is money and power there is always corruption. And that won’t end. As Balzac wrote, “Behind every great fortune lies a crime.” But Ron Paul represents a major shift in the paradigm, a threat to many insiders who have been successfully “gaming” the system. The Federal Reserve “gamers” will have to shift their methods at great expense and not all of them will land on their feet in the process. So Ron Paul is a major threat. Not only to Republicans, but to Democrats as well for it is under Barack Obama that this massive shift of money from the middle class to the super rich elite has taken place.

And so there are worries about Ron Paul’s safety.

Who launched the false rumor of his death? And why?

Our own positive Tweet Master, Matt Collins, tried to keep everybody at Ron Paul HQ calm. “It seems to be a gag started from some non-political prankster on the message forums,” said Collins. “In fact the whole #RIP-hashtag meme appears to be a running gag on Twitter where a bunch of people decide to Tweet a celebrity name. This week it is Ron Paul, next week it could be Brittney Spears or Brad Pitt.

If it was a political opponent, one of the first suspects would be the Barack Obama team. One would think that Barack Obama and gang would be doing everything they could to encourage a Ron Paul victory in the GOP. If Paul is so unelectable, as the networks contend, then why wouldn’t the Democrats puff him a bit? But as pointed out, the threat is in Ron Paul’s ideas which may impact more than one election. And polls show Ron Paul as the only GOP candidate who robs from Obama’s base. It must be giving them pause.

Primarily, the Obama camp is suspect because of its superb Twitter Team. Online reputation management expert, Glen Woodfin cites the work of Joe Trippi and says that “last time Obama used Twitter to amass a fortune in small political donations. During this election cycle, there are organized forces working 24/7 to malign candidates through false rumors and to promote the latest ‘Talking Points’ that support their candidate.”

Woodfin points out that the Democrats have already had practice with Twitter and revolutions and we should expect that they are ready to apply some of the lessons learned in this upcoming election cycle. According to Woodfin, “Hillary Clinton and the State Department have spent millions around the world to create an underground army to sway the direction of entire countries. Listen to this audio clip where she jokes about hooking up with Google ex-CEO Eric Schmidt, as a co-conspirator in projects.”

The good news is this. If the death rumors were spread by the political opposition it is an admission that nothing short of death will stop him. Rumors of infidelity would not work or be believed. Ron Paul is faithful. Rumors of discovered flip flops and YouTube’s of old speeches with different positions would not work or be believed. Ron Paul is consistent. Rumors of taking money from lobbies or think tanks to say what they want would not work or be believed. Ron Paul is honest.

The man who has never voted for an unbalanced budget or for an increase of taxes and who gives some of his congressional allowance back to the government each year, who has never taken a congressional junket and who has been married to his wife for 53 years, cannot be stopped by character assassination.

Ron Paul is alive. And so too is the dream of a return to the Constitution and power to the people.

Actually, Romney had been doing quite well on the elitist front. The issue had been buried so deeply that he had allowed himself a rare public appearance with the Bush family, who had long ago given him their nod.

A few months back, Romney staffers had become alarmed over the imbalance of big donors over small donors. This was a problem that could not be hidden. Financial reports were made public. But since they had plenty of money to solve problems, why not spend some of it to solve the problem of small donors? And so, with a logic that only the federal government can appreciate, they launched a money losing program to raise money from small donors, simply to make their reports look better.

The Romney mailing list was bombarded with offers. Want to win a chance for a free trip with the candidate? Dinner? Anything to lure in those precious $10 donations.

Romney has long been sensitive about his image. It is no secret that the bankers want him to win and that the television executives pass down orders to puff him even though he has been virtually inaccessible to their journalists. The giant holding companies which own most of America, including its television companies, are routinely financed by banks granted massive bailouts from the Federal Reserve.

Of course, Central Banks have been around a long time. And where there is money there has always been corruption. The difference now is the monumental scale of that corruption, the massive shift of wealth to a few. Ron Paul’s House Bill HR 4173, which called on auditing the FED and was fiercely resisted, showed that in 2008 the FED had loaned out $16 trillion dollars in interest free loans to its own board member banks and favored companies.

Romney cannot be unaware that many are gaming the system and that it is becoming increasingly transparent to the public at large. Rick Perry mentioned it on stage, thanking Ron Paul for calling his attention to the issue, saying it was something new he had learned. Four years ago, when Romney had sniggered about Ron Paul and his “audit the Fed bunch”, 74% of the country didn’t even know what the FED was but now that thousands had lost their homes and their retirement, they have caught on with a vengeance. Your nearby auto mechanic can explain it all to you. Today, 78% of the country wants the FED audited.

At one point in the debate Romney applauded Ron Paul for his young followers and wondered aloud how he got such commitment?

It’s money.

Those young followers are paying 8% interest on their student loans. While Romney’s corporate friends are getting interest free money by the billions which they will likely never repay and giving themselves millions of personal dollars as the executives who run those failing companies. You want small donations? It’s easy, start thinking about the needs of small people.

Then came that revealing moment in the debate. It just slipped out.

Texas governor Rick Perry raised the issue of Romney’s healthcare mandates in Massachusetts and an excised statement in a newly printed version of Romney’s book. The fumbling Perry had apparently quoted it wrong and Romney leaped at the opening.

“Rick, I’ll tell you what, 10,000 bucks? $10,000 bet? It isn’t in there.” Romney spoke kindly, with a growing smile spreading across his face. Gotcha on this one buddy. We saw this one coming a hundred miles away. You should have known better than to give a guy a second chance to refute the same thing.

But it was Romney who had trapped himself. His offer to bet $10,000, a friendly wager in his circles, is already being called “a defining moment.” It exposed Mitt Romney, the elitist. The man whose father was president of American Motors and then governor of Michigan and whose campaign is financed by bankers and corporate executives. Romney is their insurance if Obama has to go.

Inside the GOP they rigged the election for him, moved Nevada and Florida up and made delegates proportional so his Southern losses wouldn’t ruin his chances. The television networks steered the debates to give him exposure and gushed over his performances afterward to help all of us stupid people understand that he had won. For two years they have given him millions of dollars in infomercials that have been passed on to us as “news.”

And all of it might just be for naught, lost in one light hearted moment that revealed a little too much.

What should our relationship be with Israel?

We should be their friend and their trading partner. They are a democracy and we share many values with them. But we should not be their master. We should not dictate where their borders will be nor should we have veto power over their foreign policy.

This is not just about Israel, by the way, this is about how we should conduct ourselves with other countries around the world.

But Israel is not like other countries. We have a large Jewish population in America. What do you say to those who criticize your policy toward Israel?

I think that some not only misunderstand the American constitution and the role we should have in the world, they also misunderstand Zionism. Part of the original idea of Zionism, as I understand it, was that there should be Jewish independence and Jewish self-reliance. Today, America doesn’t want anyone to be self reliant. We want to rule the world and be the saviors of the world and we are going broke in the process.

Some object to your policy of cutting foreign aid to Israel.

I have objected to all foreign aid. I define foreign aid as taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. We just can’t keep doing this. We don’t have the money anymore.

Stop and consider America’s policy, we give $3 billion a year to Israel in loans. And we give $20 billion in assistance to Israel’s self-declared enemies. Some of these are countries that say they will drive Israel into the sea.

What do you say to evangelical Christians who want that aid to continue.

I say to them that our aid in the region is out of balance and it is wrong. Foreign aid does not help Israel. It is a net disadvantage. I say to them that “the borrower is servant to the lender” and America should never be the master of Israel and its fate. We should be her friend.

In October, 1981, most of the world and most of the congress voiced outrage over Israel’s attack on Iraq and their nuclear development. I was one of the few who defended her right to make her own decisions on foreign policy and to act in her own self interest.

Well, then if anything, what should we do for Israel?

We should share intelligence for mutually agreed goals. We should honor our pledge to refuse any arms sales that would undermine Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.

But we should stop interfering with them. We should not announce bargaining positions even before she begins her negotiations. We should not dictate what she can and cannot do. We should stop trying to buy her allegiance. And Israel should stop sacrificing their sovereignty as an independent state to us or anybody else, no matter how well intentioned.

Every day that passes with this debt unpaid, is a day of shame for Barack Obama. And it is an object lesson for any who imagine that their own future support will be honored. If he can stiff Caroline Kennedy, he can stiff anybody.

It was Caroline Kennedy who made supporting Barack Obama fashionable. Her endorsement, which came on January 27, 2008 gave his candidacy the credibility and legitimacy it was lacking. It came at a time when Hillary Clinton was poised to nail down the Democrat nomination for president. As Kennedy’s father said after the Bay of Pigs disaster, “Failure is an orphan, but victory has a thousand fathers.” There are many who claim that they elected Barack Obama but no one has a greater claim than Caroline Kennedy.

For much of her life, Caroline Kennedy lived in mystery. While others sought fame she sought anonymity and privacy. In the process she became even more popular. She was a blank slate that others could write upon. And she was never lured into public to disabuse them of their notions. She sacrificed all of that in January, 2008, when she wrote her endorsement of Barack Obama.

The candidate appeared to honor that support the following December. A deal was arranged to have Mrs. Kennedy appointed to the vacated New York Senate seat. Caroline was trotted out onto television to talk about it. Her appearances were disastrous, making Sarah Palin cerebral by comparison. In only a matter of minutes, a woman whose dignity and mystery gave her a persona that transcended her White House childhood, was reduced from legendary to ordinary.

The Obama team bristled at the suggestion that they had not prepared her. She was a Kennedy, they said, the family practically invented modern politics. She had failed her audition at the New York Times. She had offended Governor Patterson, the man who would have to appoint her. It was her fault, not theirs.

A few months later Barack Obama tried again. The White House started floating Caroline Kennedy’s name as a possible ambassador to the Vatican. It was such a glaring political misjudgment that some now question the sincerity of the effort. Kennedy friend, Ray Flynn, the former Democrat mayor of Boston and the last Ambassador to the Vatican was aghast. Mrs. Kennedy ‘s pro abortion position would not fly in Rome, he warned, what were they thinking? Predictably the Church rebuffed her nomination.

This time, it was clear that the Obama White House had let her down. It is one thing to ignore a political debt. It is another to punish someone who has done you a great service.

In March, 2011, Obama finally appointed Mrs. Kennedy’s husband, Edwin Schlossberg, to the president’s commission on fine arts. It made eyes roll. It is one of thousands of honorific positions the White House passes out to lower level supporters and their friends. A third year into a presidency these positions are the scraps that have fallen to the floor and are often turned down.

Caroline Kennedy would not be the first presidential child to go unthanked for helping elect a president. Robert Tyler, son and personal assistant to his father, President John Tyler, left the White House to become prominent in Pennsylvania politics. Eventually Tyler befriended James Buchanan and encouraged him and coached him in his long career. During Buchanan’s’ run for office, Tyler was at this side, giving him a perspective that no one else could offer. But when Buchanan became president he promptly dropped Tyler. There is only one president and any other light that shines too brightly will not be tolerated. Tyler, like Mrs. Kennedy, never complained.

The perfect position for Caroline Kennedy, the obvious position, is the Court of St. James, that is ambassador to Great Britain. It is the position held by her grandfather and her uncle. It is a position that honors tradition and royalty. But Mrs. Kennedy, who wrote in her endorsement that Obama reminded her of her father, has obviously misjudged her man.

“And when it comes to judgment,” Mrs. Kennedy wrote, “Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.”

Like much of her endorsement of Obama, it is all now only ironic. Obama has been a war president, making Republican and Democrat foreign policy virtually indistinguishable from the other. There is no New Deal, or Great Frontier. There is only old Republican style cronyism. Students must pay back their education loans at 8% interest, while members of the Federal Reserve Board can award themselves billions in interest free loans to prop up their banks.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Perhaps no other persons have had a bigger impact on American society and politics in our lifetime than Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. Murdoch is the swashbuckling, Australian turned American, billionaire who is the owner of News Corp and Roger Ailes is the president of its crown jewel, The Fox News Channel. Presidents have come and gone. Economic and foreign policies have risen and fallen but the names of those presidents and the shape of those policies have been forever colored by the Fox News Channel paint brush.

What Murdoch and Ailes did is prove to the arrogant elites, inside the Boston-New York-Washington corridor, that true socio-cultural-intellectual diversity works. And I’m not talking about the synthetic facsimile of diversity peddled by the stuffy, politically correct.

Roger Ailes, the creative mind behind FNC, proved that there is money to be made by listening, as well as talking. He showed that the public is not nearly as ignorant as some media executives imagine. He proved that the sense of outrage and insult at being “rolled” runs very deep. He touched a nerve. People long for “fair and balanced” and they know they aren’t getting it. And if it hasn’t always been manifest at FNC, well, at least the network recognizes the problem and “fair and balanced” is the goal. In the process, Roger Ailes made billions of dollars for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation and he changed America forever.

The Ailes formula is much more esoteric and complicated than at first appears. While the other networks relied on their monopoly, “you have to watch us, we are your only choice,” Ailes understood that the paradigm was changing with a vengeance, more and more, people had choices. It was now going to be a contest. It would be like electing a president, which meant coalitions pieced together, one by one. It was familiar ground for Ailes. His competitors didn’t stand a chance.

When most people think of Fox News, they think of its famous tilt to the right in the American battle between liberals and conservatives. In hindsight, the economics of such a strategy were obvious. Pew Research Surveys showed liberals out numbering conservatives in the main stream media by a ratio of 4 to 1. While most national polls of the American people consistently showed the ratios as 41% conservative to 21% liberal. Give Fox News a monopoly on the 41% and force her competitors to divide the remaining 21% among themselves and there would be a financial windfall in the making. But it was easier said than done.

The idea of bringing some political balance to the media and monetizing the process had been around for a long time. In 1977, conservative Republican billionaire, Rich DeVos, then on the Forbes list as one of the wealthiest men in the world, bought the Mutual Broadcasting System from Mrs. Benjamin Gilbert, the granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller. It represented a major shift of a prominent media property to someone new, someone outside the circle of the Eastern Elite. But DeVos was unable to use the network to influence events in any meaningful way. In 1985, Senator Jesse Helms led an attempt to buy control of CBS “and end the leftist bias.” He called the network the most “anti-Reagan” of all. The attempt failed and the networks only sought bigger owners and became even more entrenched.

The problem was in execution. And it was here that Roger Ailes succeeded where others had failed. He was a television Branch Rickey, touring the country, watching local television stations and monitoring radio talk shows to find his talent. Month by month, year by year, Ailes kept them coming through his farm club pipeline. When a personality had the looks or the brains but not the on-air experience he would use them sparingly, letting them develop, like sending Roy Campanella back to Montreal for a season to get some confidence.

Perhaps his greatest impact was not overtly political but socio-cultural. While seeking to be exclusively secular, the main stream media had long been perceived by many in the country as blatantly anti-Christian.

At one point the atmosphere at ABC, then commonly referred to as “Anybody But Catholics,” became so tense that their talented network news anchor, Peter Jennings, decided to personally step in and solve it. Jennings hired a Christian reporter, Peggy Wehmeyer to help report for the network and in 2000, Jennings embarked on an intellectual journey “In Search of the Historic Jesus.” But the network was so ignorant of the political-cultural traps of a sub culture it had so long ignored that it easily fell prey to manipulation, stirring up a hornets’ nest among its viewers.

“Poor Peter,” George Smiley’s ex-wife, Ann, would have said, “Life is such a puzzle to you.”

The problem is that the network’s anti Christian bias had been hidden in plain sight for years. 400,000 people in the flesh would watch the Indianapolis 500 Mile race, see Jim Nabors sing “Back Home Again in Indiana,” hear the Catholic Bishop pray over the courageous drivers and Mrs. Hullman announce, “Ladies and Gentlemen start your engines.” But when they got back home to watch it all replayed on ABC television the prayer was always censored out. Even today, if one Goggles the key words, “ABC TV and Christians,” one will read all about the pilot for their new series “Good Christian Bitches.”

After 9-11, CNN ran a much heralded documentary “God’s Warriors” which implied that there was little difference between Islamic terrorists in the Middle East and Christian and Jewish fundamentalists in the United States. Even today, the various networks persist in this version of “religiously-correct.” The idea is to treat the issue of faith, if it must be addressed at all, fairly and equally and to do this right in the middle of the war on terror. This sometimes results in ridiculous news footage from wars in Africa where the viewers are forced to Goggle for information since the journalists won’t reveal the sides, lest it be forced to mention that one is Islamic or Christian. The famous Who, What, When, Where and Why of news is replaced with mysterious scenes and vague reports that show nothing beyond the flashing faces of starving, dying people. The producers will not let their own journalists sputter out what is really going on. News is no longer news, if it ever had been.

Once again, the numbers were a no brainer for Roger Ailes. 76% of the nation considered themselves to be Christian. One half of one percent were Islamic. Give a media outlet an uncontested monopoly on the 76% and force its competitors to divide the remaining .5% among themselves is a winning formula every time.

Meanwhile, if the other networks treaded gently with Islam, never offending or making assumptions about the whole because of the actions of the few, they had no trouble stereotyping the whole Catholic Church when the pedophile scandals erupted. All of the networks piled on. FNC too, reported the story for what it was, but without editorializing against the whole religion. It gave the embattled, dazed, faithful a home. Kaching, another 25% of the nation for Fox. Only two modern presidents have been elected without the Catholic vote. “You don’t want the Catholics?” Ailes will take them, thank you.

Then there were the born again Christians, representing 48% of the American population. Yet many of their writers and public figures virtually banned by the television networks. Twenty-two years ago my agent was told by one of the networks that I couldn’t be used as a historian because of my born again, Christian background. Of course, the network in question couldn’t have actually known what I believe about God and life. I haven’t decided all of that myself. How could they know? Just the accident of my birth, was enough to disqualify me.

The complicated effort of the various network sports departments to scrub Christian activists from unfurling their “John 3:16” banners at football games amounted to a ten year, gargantuan, multimillion dollar – legal effort, involving teams of lawyers, mountains of paperwork, contracts with the stadiums and teams of personnel to pull it off.

Roger Ailes would laugh at such angst. “You want to stake me with a 48% advantage? Okay. You don’t want half of America? I’ll take the born againers too.” Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch bought the hot evangelical Christian publishing house Zondervan.

Nowhere did this battleground become more lopsided than with the battle over Christmas.

My own college roommate became a popular playwright for one of the television networks. He wisely kept his faith a secret. One year he was given the assignment to write a script for a Christmas movie with the strict admonition that he could not mention the name Jesus. It was a corporate taboo.

While other networks banned the words “Merry Christmas” out of respect for the 2.2% of the country who are Jewish, and simply said instead, “Happy Holidays,” Ailes fearlessly honored them both, making a special point for his network to declare a “Merry Christmas” to the 76% and afterward, for good measure, a respectful “Happy Hanukah” to the 2.2. He should probably have thrown in a hearty “Ho, ho, ho” to the executives of the other networks who seemed clueless, bound in their strait jackets, unable to budge from their lethargy, unable to believe the numbers they were reading, still pretending that they were operating a monopoly. It was their job to decide what to telecast. It was our job to watch and listen.

Finally, I suppose, this tour de force would not be complete without a comment on the wars. Roger Ailes owned the wars. Any war. All of the wars. While some of the other networks, for example, pretended to be transcendent in the war on terror, noncombatants, loyal to the higher god of journalism, Roger Ailes was shamelessly patriotic and American. Viewers who wanted to feel good about themselves found a home at FNC.

And what about those who want the wars to end? What about the Ron Paul people and the Libertarians? At first, all of the national media, Fox included, spurned them. It would have been a colossal contradiction for Fox to have it both ways, for and against the war. In the recent South Carolina GOP debate, CBS, relegated Ron Paul to 89 seconds of time in the first hour of debate. The network later justified its decision by polling, which actually showed Ron Paul as third among the GOP contenders and beating Barack Obama among independents. Even non Libertarians winced at the treatment.

Ailes has been watching all of this for months. Like a good defensive player who sees a loose ball on the field, Fox News smartly picked it up and ran with it. Don’t want the Libertarians? 14% of the country? Really? Well, okay, if I must. Kaching. Ailes took them. He put them in the Fox Business News Ghetto, where they will have to do a lot of heavy lifting. But at least it’s a home. And with Ron Paul now soaring in Iowa and New Hampshire FNC is finally giving him air time in the major leagues as well.

From the beginning Ailes artfully used sex, humor and provocative headlines to win viewers. You don’t need a remote control when you watch Fox News. Roger Ailes does that for you. It’s addictive. It’s fun. One can just sit and relax and watch him play out the long stream of promos, staying in your seat, watching the shifting Kaleidoscope of four minute segments, on the economy, on a political race in Ohio, on that Hollywood scandal, on the alligator that got lose in a Georgia neighborhood, on the earthquake in Alaska, waiting for the promised story about the mother who got fired from her job in California for changing her baby’s diaper in public.

According to Neilson the top 13 programs in cable news all air on Fox. It has 48% of the prime-time cable-news market, compared to 17% for CNN or MSNBC. If there was a race, a contest, it is over. If there was a war it has been won. Fox News is close to $1 billion in profit for the last fiscal year. It has crushed its rivals.

I take some humble pride in the fact that I saw all of this back in 1988, when I worked for Roger Ailes as one of his shill’s in the presidential practice debates for George H. W. Bush. I saw his genius. When the election was over I strongly advocated that Ailes be brought into the White House and serve in the inner circle. I argued that the presidents five minutes on the evening news should be carefully plotted and choreographed by a master and it was more important for governing and moving legislation than all the other hundreds of paper shufflers in the White House combined. I was convinced that Ailes could change how the country was governed. My argument did not succeed. But in the end Roger Ailes did indeed change how the country was governed and more profoundly than he ever could have done in a West Wing office.

Abraham Lincoln once said that the Union, the North, had the men, it had the industry, it had the supply. If he could just find a general who could understand those numbers, if he had a general who could get the math, then that general could win the Civil War. Rupert Murdoch, the colorful, inventive owner of News Corporation found his general in Roger Ailes. And yes, he gets the math. And yes, he won the war.

A president-elect puts his hand on the Bible and swears to uphold the constitution of the United States and really means it. No games. No grabs for more power. No circumventing the congress by executive orders. No personal corruption, such as the traditional deals of ambassadorships in return for donations to a presidential library and the unspoken pledge of having a corporate jet available for personal use for the rest of their lives.

Imagine a president who reduces his own salary from the Barack Obama high of $500,000 a year and millions in “expenses” to $39,336, the median wage of the average American worker.

Imagine, sixty-six years after World War Two, we finally bring home our troops from Germany and Japan and save trillions of dollars that can be used in our own economy.

Imagine power flowing back to the States and to the people.

Imagine an end to corruption in the FDA and all the other agencies where the big companies donate money to candidates and then handpick their own regulators. Imagine instead a free market, where private companies compete for the trust of the American people, putting their own stamp of approval on the good food and running airport security with efficiency. It would be like UPS and Fed Ex sprouting up to compete with the US Post Office.

Journalists openly ridicule the idea of privatization, as if it were preposterous, insisting that most things only the federal government can do. In fact, private companies not only efficiently run airport security in countries, such as Spain, they already operate in selected American cities like San Francisco and Kansas City, Missouri.

Imagine a government that stops wasting its time auditing a waitress, to make sure she pays taxes on her tips, and starts auditing the Federal Reserve which now meets in secret, creating trillions of new dollars for the business elites. These are unsecured, zero interest loans. And they are paid for by you and all the rest of us, especially the poor and the elderly on fixed incomes who see the value of their own dollars diminish when the Fed dumps trillions more into the money supply.

Ron Paul’s HR 1207 which passed in 2010 achieved a partial audit of the FED. We learned that in 2008 they created $17 trillion which they loaned out to banks, mostly the banks run by their own board members and numerous corporations, General Electric, for example and the McDonalds Corporation.

Ever wonder why Ron Paul gets passed over in the network debates? Why executives send down the orders to pan Ron Paul? Why CBS, in its last debate gave him 89 seconds in the first hour, dead last of the seven debaters, even though he was third in their own national polls? Wonder why a director’s voice was picked up by amateur radio buffs, yelling into Chris Matthews’s ear piece during the first South Carolina debate, “Don’t go to Ron Paul, don’t go to Ron Paul”?

The craven personalities on television will do whatever they are told to do. It is the price they pay to be on screen. And the producers verbalize those plans to their anchors and segment producers as dictated by the executives. And the executives get their orders from the Chairman. And the Chairman does not want to lose the Federal Reserve, the golden goose of American elites, the gift that keeps on giving, the bank that meets in secret and can, in one year, dole out more newly created money than the entire accumulated national debt.

It’s about money. It’s always about money.

But people are not dumb. I should amend that to say, people will not remain dumb forever. They can sense when something is wrong. And they become aroused and curious when their own interests are threatened. And they can get smart in a hurry. They have lost the value of their homes and savings and now they are losing their jobs and they are hearing about trillions going to banks and corporations that are moving all of their money overseas and they are reading and Googling and some of them have found Dr. Ron Paul.

Why should they vote for candidates who are part of that system, who were employed by that system? Why vote for someone who was paid money to protect that system when there is a candidate who warned of the coming crisis, on the record, in congressional testimony, ten years before it happened?

Most young people cannot remember the Ronald Reagan era, how the media mocked his intelligence and sneered at his motives. Late night comics had a field day. He was regularly portrayed as a warmonger and a racist. And yet, he won the White House in a landslide. And by the way, Reagan was not a racist and he ended the Cold War. I might add, his Justice Department declared water boarding was torture and they sentenced a sheriff to ten years in prison for doing so. And people can be discerning and they resent being led around by the nose by arrogant, insider, elite media personalities, acting as the lapdogs to modern day robber barons who counterfeit money to finance their lifestyle.

If the Iowa Caucus were held this week, Ron Paul would win. He is in a statistical dead heat with four other establishment candidates and he, alone, has a following of informed voters. The other campaigns have no ground game, not true believers, they depend on free television and the bluff of television personalities who keep repeating the mantra, “Ron Paul can’t win.”

But now we know. Ron Paul can win. He can win the Iowa Caucus where a Bloomberg News poll shows him in a tie for first. And if he can win there and come second in New Hampshire, which the recent Bloomberg Poll shows he is doing now, he will rise in the West and the South. And it can happen.

The Public Policy Poll shows he was the only Republican candidate to beat Obama among independent voters. He wins 48% to 39%.

It can happen. He can win.

Imagine.