Tag Archives: John F. Kennedy

Random Thoughts On President Trump’s Peace Deal

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John F. Kennedy once stated, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” The mainstream media’s reaction to President Trump’s peace deal and the reaction of some of the prominent Democrat politicians confirms that truth.

Senator Elizabeth posted the following on X:

For two excruciating years, I have called for the return of the hostages brutally kidnapped on October 7th and held in Gaza.

Today is a good day. Surviving Israeli hostages are finally home and reuniting with loved ones. I’m thinking of them and their families on this joyful day and praying for their full recovery. I’m also grieving for all those who can’t come home today.

Today must also be an important step toward lasting peace in the region — peace for both Israelis and Palestinians. We must end the war in Gaza, surge humanitarian aid, and negotiate a two-state solution now.

Did she really think that her words were going to get the hostages released?

This is what former President Obama posted on X:

Notice that he fails to give credit to President Trump. He is still the petty, self-centered person he was as President, only now he is searching for relevance.

On Sunday, The New York Post reported:

Hillary Clinton heaped some rare praise on her former arch-enemy Donald Trump for his handling of the Gaza peace deal in a recent interview.

“I really commend President Trump and his administration,” Clinton told CBS News 24/7 Friday.

“As well as Arab leaders in the region, for making the commitment to the 20-point plan and seeing a path forward for what’s often called the day after,” she added.

Searching for relevance?

It is interesting that President Trump is more popular in Israel than he is in America. The people who were yelling ‘stop the genocide’ have been surprising quiet (as the streets of Gaza erupt in chaos with Hamas killing anyone they believe collaborated with Israel and rival gangs vying for control). I wonder if Hamas has deliberately killed more civilians in Gaza than the Israeli Defense Forces have accidentally killed.

Working Toward Election Integrity

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Anyone who remembers the 1960 presidential election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon understands that Illinois (particularly Chicago) might have a problem with voter integrity. The question becomes what to do about it. Some other states have similar problems. Oddly enough, the answer may lie in the courts.

On Monday, PJ Media reported:

Federal courts have allowed two lawsuits to proceed against California and Illinois to force them to clean up their voter rolls.

Democrats have been engaging in election fraud for well over a century and a half, but I don’t think any of us understood the extent of the election integrity problem in our day until the last few election cycles. One aspect of potential fraud is the presence of ‘dirty names’ on voter rolls—individuals who are not legally allowed to be there, whether because they are illegal aliens, deceased, or disqualified for other reasons. Those are the names Judicial Watch and two other organizations are suing to remove in two deep blue states.

“The voter rolls in Illinois and California are a mess and these court decisions allow our Judicial Watch legal team to proceed in court to clean them up,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated in a press release. “The stakes are high—as there are potentially millions of ineligible names on the voter rolls in these two states.”

The article concludes:

Both lawsuits can now move forward thanks to the rulings from last week.

This is a good beginning.

What They Left Out

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On Monday, Just the News posted an article about what was left out of special counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials.

The article reports:

Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson on Monday asked that Attorney General Merrick Garland account for special counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials making no mention of a batch of materials the National Archives recovered from the president’s attorney’s office in Boston.

Hur’s report became public last week and stated that “[o]ur investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” It further declined to bring charges against the president, in part, on the basis of his poor memory.

Writing to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Hur, the GOP lawmakers asserted that “[t]here appears to be a significant factual omission in Special Counsel Hur’s report on his office’s investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.”

In March of 2023, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirmed that it had retrieved nine boxes from the office of Biden attorney Patrick Moore that had been taken from the Penn Biden Center in Washington. Those materials were then transferred to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. At the time, NARA had not reviewed the materials.

There are a lot of questions about the funding of the Penn Biden Center. I will just leave that there.

The article concludes:

The Republicans set a deadline of Feb. 23 for the DOJ to answer whether Hur reviewed the nine boxes in question and to document their contents.

Please follow the link to read the article. The details in this are amazing. Those boxes have done some serious traveling. One wonders if anything was subtracted from those boxes during their travels.

It’s Past Time For This!

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted the following headline:

The Time to Audit the Fed Is Here

A site called worldtraining.net explains some of the history of the Federal Reserve:

On June 4, 1963, a little known attempt was made to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Mr. Kennedy’s order gave the Treasury the power “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury.” This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in U.S. notes into circulation. The ramifications of this bill are enormous.

        With the stroke of a pen, Mr. Kennedy was on his way to putting the Federal Reserve Bank of New York out of business. If enough of these silver certificates were to come into circulation they would have eliminated the demand for Federal Reserve notes. This is because the silver certificates are backed by silver and the Federal Reserve notes are not backed by anything. Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level, because it would have given the government the ability to repay its debt without going to the Federal Reserve and being charged interest in order to create the new money. Executive Order 11110 gave the U.S. the ability to create its own money backed by silver.

        After Mr. Kennedy was assassinated just five months later, no more silver certificates were issued. The Final Call has learned that the Executive Order was never repealed by any U.S. President through an Executive Order and is still valid. Why then has no president utilized it? Virtually all of the nearly $6 trillion in debt has been created since 1963, and if a U.S. president had utilized Executive Order 11110 the debt would be nowhere near the current level. 

The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air and then loans it to the government at interest. It’s a great scheme.

The Epoch Times reports:

This week, Sen. Rand Paul is pushing an amendment to a major spending bill that would finally do what should have been done decades ago. It should have been an annual undertaking for the past 100 years. He wants a thorough and external audit of the Fed, using prevailing accounting standards to figure out where the billions and trillions are coming from and where they’re going.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. This needs to be done.

This Isn’t A New Strategy

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The deep state has been around for a while. I just finished reading The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe by Donald H. Wolfe. I was genuinely shocked by some of the behavior of J. Edgar Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, and a lot of other people. J. Edgar Hoover consistently broke laws in his surveillance of American citizens and was never held accountable. The activities of some of our leading political figures of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s were routinely kept hidden from the public with the cooperation of the media. There really isn’t anything new under the sun.

As shocking as the indictment of President Trump is, that is a political trick that has been done before in a presidential campaign.

On Monday, The Federalist reminded us:

But in evaluating whether Bragg’s charges against Trump are politically motivated, it’s worth remembering that Trump is the second major GOP presidential candidate in less than a decade that has been indicted by a local Democratic district attorney. And in that case, involving former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the prosecution was redolent of corruption and naked attempts to harm Perry’s national political ambitions.

In 2014, Perry was indicted on two felony charges. The first charge was abuse of official capacity, and the second was coercion of a public servant. Perry’s crime was using the veto power granted to him in the Texas Constitution.

What happened was this: Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat, was convicted of drunk driving and incarcerated. Working from the Travis County DA’s office, Lehmberg managed the state public integrity unit, a legal office responsible for rooting out public corruption. After she refused to resign her position following a fair bit of criticism over the fact that a person in charge of rooting out public corruption should not be known for being convicted of a crime, Perry threatened to veto the public integrity unit’s $7.5 million budget and eventually did veto the budget.

So the Travis County DA’s office, the very same office where Lehmberg worked, convened a grand jury and indicted Perry. It wasn’t difficult; aside from the old saying that prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, Travis County is where “the People’s Republic of Austin” is located. It’s a notoriously liberal enclave where it is easy to find a jury politically hostile to Perry, who was an otherwise popular three-term GOP governor.

The outcome was predictable:

As for the charges against Perry, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals eventually dismissed the charges against Perry in a 6-2 ruling. The abuse of official capacity charge was dismissed on the grounds that it violated the separation of powers in the state constitution. It was always the case that Perry had wide latitude and authority to issue a veto in this instance. “The governor’s power to exercise a veto may not be circumscribed by the Legislature, by the courts, or by district attorneys,” noted the ruling by Judge Sharon Keller of the Court of Criminal Appeals.

The second charge, coercion of a public official, was dismissed on the grounds that it was a violation of the First Amendment to say the governor could not threaten to lawfully wield power on the grounds he was intimidating other public officials.

Unless they are stopped, the Democrat party will continue with using the court system to interfere in elections.

Can The Economy Prosper When Taxes Are High?

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On Monday, The Washington Examiner posted an article with the following headline:

Debunking the myth that the US once prospered despite extremely high taxes

The article explains how the tax system in the 1960’s was very different from the tax system today:

Left-wing politicians who demand higher taxes on the rich argue that the U.S. had previously prospered when tax rates were very high, proving that high taxes do not harm the economy. And it is true: In the 1950s and early 1960s, the top federal personal income tax rate in the U.S. was a horrendous 91%, after which it was lowered to 70%. Under former President Ronald Reagan, it was then successively reduced to 28% by 1988 (before being raised several times and then lowered again under former President Donald Trump).

However, as Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early show in their book The Myth of American Inequality, “The top income tax in 1962 was 91 percent. After deductions and credits, only 447 tax filers out of 71 million paid any taxes at the top rate. The top 1 percent of income earners on average paid 16.1 percent of their income in federal and payroll taxes while the top 10 percent paid 14.4 percent and the bottom 50 percent paid 7.0 percent.”

Even when the top tax rate was lowered to 70%, not much changed. Only 3,626 out of 75 million taxpayers actually paid taxes up to 70%. Interestingly, the actual percentage paid by the top 1% of earners in the U.S. was only 16.1% in 1962, when the top marginal rate was 91%. However, in 1988, when the top rate was only 28%, the percentage paid by the top 1% of earners had risen to 21.5%! As the top tax rate fell by two-thirds, the percentage of their income that the top 1% of tax filers paid in federal income and payroll taxes rose by a third.

The article concludes:

This growth was a direct consequence of Reagan’s deregulation and tax reform policies in conjunction with falling oil prices. The growth rate in the 1980s was higher than in the 1950s and 1970s, though substantially below the growth rate of 5% following John F. Kennedy’s 1964 tax rate cuts of 30%.

This growth, along with the elimination of numerous deductions and exemptions, led to a sharp increase in tax revenues. Exactly what Reagan had predicted now came to pass: At a press conference in October 1981, Regan quoted the 14th-century Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldūn’s foreshadowing of the Laffer Curve theory, as this effect is called in economic jargon: “In the beginning of the dynasty, great tax revenues were gained from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, small tax revenues were gained from large assessments.” Reagan added: “And we’re trying to get down to the small assessments and the great revenues.”

So the myth that the U.S. experienced strong economic growth when the top marginal tax rate was high is false. In fact, the top marginal tax rate was only nominally high because there were so many exemptions, loopholes, and deductions.

Higher taxes slow economic growth. The Laffer Curve is real.

How Come We Haven’t Seen The Files?

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Everyone over the age of 10 remembers where they were on November 22, 1963. We remember the weekend that followed–all the rock ‘n roll stations on the radio played classical music as the nation mourned. It was an event that shook the conscience of America–how could anyone do that? John F. Kennedy was a President most Americans revered. No one believed it was possible that someone would try to kill him. Fifty-eight years later, our government has still not released the files on the assassination. Why?

The Dallas Morning News posted an article on October 25th of this year that stated the following:

In spring 2018, then-President Donald Trump delayed release of Kennedy assassination files for another 3 1/2 years – files the FBI and CIA had pleaded to keep under wraps.

The new deadline is Tuesday. But historians and conspiracy buffs will have to keep waiting, and some aren’t happy, including Kennedy kin.

Late Friday, the White House issued a memorandum declaring the deadline will not be met because of delays related to COVID-19.

“Unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact” on the National Archives and on assorted agencies and departments seeking to keep archivists from releasing some of their files, the memo reads. “Making these decisions is a matter that requires a professional, scholarly, and orderly process; not decisions or releases made in haste.”

Biden promised an “intensive” review over the next year, with some records released between Dec. 15 and the end of the year, and a “comprehensive release in late 2022.”

In 1992, Congress set a 25-year deadline for releasing remaining documents stemming from John F. Kennedy’s murder in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

…“It’s an outrage. It’s an outrage against American democracy. We’re not supposed to have secret governments within the government,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose own father was also assassinated. “How the hell is it 58 years later, and what in the world could justify not releasing these documents?”

His cousin, former Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy, whose father Ted Kennedy served for decades in the Senate, echoed impatience to help the public understand “something that left such a scar in this nation’s soul.”

When the deadline set by Congress in 1992 arrived on Oct. 26, 2017, Trump had been in office for nine months. He gave federal agencies a six-month extension to plead the case for keeping selected records sealed on the basis of national security.

The FBI and CIA in particular had pressed for more time.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It’s time Americans knew exactly what happened. Keeping these files secret creates a fertile field for conspiracy theories. What is the government hiding?

Who Benefited From The Tax Cuts?

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On Friday, Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the Trump Tax Cuts.

The article reports:

The numbers are now in. According to Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the rich are now paying a higher share of federal taxes after enactment of the Republican tax reform plan than before.

For 2017, before tax reform, the JCT estimates those earning $1 million or more a year paid 19.5% of all federal taxes, counting income taxes, payroll taxes, and excise taxes. But for 2018, after tax reform, the committee estimates that these same millionaire taxpayers will pay 20.4% of all federal taxes.

The biggest relative tax cuts resulting from the tax reform are for those making less than $50,000 a year. Their share of federal taxes fell from 4.4% to 3.8%, a tax cut of 14%.

Indeed, the committee estimates that the federal tax burden went up for all taxpayers now making over $200,000 a year, from 49.8% before tax reform, to 51.3% this year after tax reform. You have to go down to those making between $100,000 and $200,000 a year to find taxpayers paying a lower share of federal taxes, from 29% of the federal tax burden last year to 28.8% this year.

But how could that be? The fundamental reason is the economic growth effects of tax reform.

Higher economic growth means increased wages, jobs, employment and income. As the economy grows, the share of taxes paid, especially by those earning higher incomes who still pay much higher tax rates under our so-called “progressive” tax code, goes up as well.

This is the Democrats’ biggest nightmare. That is the reason they opposed the tax cuts and tried to use the media to turn the American people against the idea of tax cuts. I believe that in the 2018 mid-term elections, we will see the Democrats attempt to campaign on the idea that the tax cuts were ‘tax cuts for the rich,’ but if American voters choose to be informed, they will recognize the lie in that statement.

The article reports more bad news for Democrats campaigning in 2018:

Those same economic effects of the tax reform amount to economic liberation for the poor, working people and the middle class. After 8 years of economic stagnation under the neo-socialist policies of Obamanomics, the rising wages, jobs, employment and income under the long overdue Trump Republican economic recovery are making America great again for those with low and moderate incomes.

Top economists estimate wages for average middle-class families are increasing by $4,000 a year due to tax reform. That’s in addition to direct tax cuts of $2,000 a year for middle class families.

These economic effects are why we now see the lowest unemployment rates among blacks in American history. And despite the lies of the Democrat fake news media, the lowest unemployment rates among Hispanics in history as well.

And these economic effects are why Trump/Republican economics is now resonating among blacks and Hispanics culturally as well, from young black Millennials like Candace Owens to hip-hop stars like Kanye West.

As John F. Kennedy stated, “A rising tide lifts all the boats.'” We have watched the tax cuts (and the ending of some over regulation) do just that. John Kennedy would probably not be welcome in today’s Democrat party. That is a shame. In spite of his questionable activities regarding women, I believe he would have been a reasonable President had he lived.

The Latest Problem With Elections In Chicago

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Chicago is not known for the integrity of its elections. There is an urban legend that is probably true that Chicago allowed John F. Kennedy to become President through creative voting methods. Keeping that in mind, I suppose I should not be surprised at the latest wrinkle in the election process in that city.

On Friday the Illinois News Network posted an article about a new ID card that will be available primarily as a municipal identification card for illegal immigrants. I have no problem with issuing identification cards to anyone who wants them, but unfortunately these cards can be used as valid identification to register to vote.

The article reports:

The CityKey will be a government-issued photo identification card available to all Chicago residents regardless of immigration status, criminal record, housing status, or gender identity, according to the city clerk’s website.

State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich says the final call on what documents to accept rests with local officials.

“There are 109 local election authorities in Illinois,” Dietrich said. “They’re the ones who actually handle the registration, the checking of IDs, and keeping the documentation. We maintain an electronic database of voter registrations that we get from them.”

Dietrich says there is no state requirement to prove citizenship while registering to vote. He’s not expecting a surge in potential voter fraud cases because the process will remain the same.

“When you go to register to vote, you do check a box that attests to your citizenship,” Dietrich said. “You are signing a legal document that says, ‘Yes, I am a citizen.’ But no one who registers to vote is required to bring in, for example, a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship. That’s something that you check the box, and you attest to it.”

Dietrich believes the penalty for illegally registering to vote is steep enough to discourage those who might be considering it.

“The main thing that would happen is deportation,” Dietrich said. “If you’re not a citizen, and you have any thoughts of ever attaining citizenship, registering to vote is almost an instant trigger that when you apply for citizenship, you will be deported. That’s one of the first things they check.”

I don’t mean to argue with Mr. Dietrich, but I am not convinced that voter fraud (from illegal aliens or dead voters) is not a problem. Why am I not convinced? Let’s take a look at some voter registration statistics from North Carolina. In early November of 2016, North Carolina had 6,864,841 registered voters. On January 2017, North Carolina had 6,733,025 registered voters. What happened to those 100,000 plus voters? Is it possible that at least some of them were fraudulent voters removed from the voter rolls before they could be investigated?

At any rate, we have an integrity problem with our elections, and the ID card that the city of Chicago is issuing is going to exacerbate that problem. The CityKey is another really bad idea from a city that has been poorly governed for a very long time.

The Next Financial Collapse The Taxpayers Will Be Asked To Bail Out

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On January 17, 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988. This order allowed federal employees to form unions. Eventually bureaucrats at all levels of government formed unions. So what was the result of this? The eventual result is large amounts of unfunded liabilities in terms of generous retirement benefits and medical benefits for retirees. These are listed as unfunded liabilities because the actual cost of the benefits negotiated did not show up in the annual budgets of the towns and cities that were approved by the states. This is the perfect negotiating tool–unions make large donations to candidates. These unions then negotiate for retirement benefits for union members. Those doing the negotiations want to stay on the good side of the unions in order to continue to receive campaign contributions.

The Daily Signal posted an article today showing the per capita amount of these unfunded liabilities in every state.

Here is the chart and the list:

The article reports:

Contractual or constitutional obligations for government pensions could mean that paying the pensions of retired government employees may take precedent over paychecks for current employees.

Moreover, some state constitutions prevent any changes to government employees’ pension benefits. That means current government employees can’t ever be required to contribute more to their pension plan than they did on the first day they were hired. And, actually, not a single term of their initially promised pension benefits ever may be altered.

Just imagine how detrimental it would be to private employers if they never were allowed to alter the benefits they initially offered their employees.

With an average funding ratio of only 33.7 percent across state and local pensions and every single state at risk of defaulting on pension obligations (as measured by Pension Protection Act standards, assuming a risk-free rate of return), taxpayers across all states face significant tax increases to pay for their governments’ unfunded pension promises.

As the federal government attempts to cut the amount of taxes each American pays, the states may be forced to raise their taxes to cover their unfunded liabilities. States and municipalities need to fund their pension programs as the money is needed and encourage employee participation–past practices need to change.

Setting The Narrative

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Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article that beautifully illustrates how the media shapes our opinion.

The article opens with the story of the role the media played in establishing the legacy of John F. Kennedy after he was killed:

On November 29th, a week after JFK was killed and four days after he had been laid to rest in Arlington Cemetery beneath an eternal flame lit by his widow and brothers – a flame that still burns today – the newly widowed Jacqueline  Kennedy summoned the Pulitzer Prize winning author Theodore H. White to the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. White, who had won his Pulitzer for writing The Making of the President 1960, the groundbreaking book on JFK’s winning presidential campaign, dutifully responded, notebook in hand. 

White was not selected by accident. He had become an admirer and friend of the young President. He was a friendly journalist. The new widow chose him specifically because she had something she wanted to say for history – something she wanted to accomplish. And she wanted White to do it for her in the pages of arguably the most famous publication of the day — Life magazine.

…Why is this important to recall now? While the term had not yet been invented in 1963, what Mrs. Kennedy was doing —  with the ready acquiescence of Theodore White and Life magazine —  was creating the media narrative of JFK’s presidency. Today the liberal media does this all the time.

The article goes on to contrast the way that the mainstream media treated President Obama with the way the mainstream media is treating President Trump.

There were some very obvious lies told by President Obama. Five of the more obvious lies are listed by conservative author Jack Cashill in the New York Post all the way back there in 2014:

My father left my family when I was two-years old.”

…“The Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration.”

…There was “Not even a smidgen of corruption” in the Obama administration.

…“We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time.”

…“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article with the explanations of the lies.

These are obvious lies, yet the media never called President Obama on his lies. The article reminds us:

But what is the liberal media narrative Time — and other outlets — are pumping out there? The Obama presidency was fabulous.He was young, glamorous, literate, and oh so smart. The economy roared along. The world respected us. The eight years of Obama were like those three years of the Kennedy Camelot. And most importantly of all? The president told the truth. 

Fast forward to the media reporting about President Trump. The article reminds us that today at least we have the alternative media to help us find the truth:

So here we go again. Trump lies is the new media narrative. This is nothing more than the latest way to attack not only Trump but the newest Republican president. It succeeds the liberal media narrative about President Bush 43 (“Bush lied! People died!”) and the liberal media narrative of Mitt Romney. Romney, recall, was portrayed as having killed a steel workers wife by denying her health care! He beat up a gay kid! He was cruel to his dog! And on and on it goes, all the way back to 1964 GOP nominee Barry Goldwater and his alleged affection for the Nazis. (Really!)

America is a long, long way from that sad week in November of 1963 when a grieving First Lady made it her business to set the media (and history’s) narrative about her late husband. What’s changed is that creating liberal media narratives is a full time occupation  (obsession?) for today’s liberal media.

The difference between 1963 and today is that there is a conservative media around to correct the record.

 

The Response To The State of the Union Address

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For those of you who are not in shock by the fact that Marco Rubio actually took a drink of water, here is the video and some highlights from his speech Tuesday night.

The speech and video are posted at the Daily Beast. The video is also on YouTube. Here is the video:

A few highlights from the speech:

But America is exceptional because we believe that every life, at every stage, is precious, and that everyone everywhere has a God-given right to go as far as their talents and hard work will take them.

…This opportunity – to make it to the middle class or beyond no matter where you start out in life – it isn’t bestowed on us from Washington. It comes from a vibrant free economy where people can risk their own money to open a business. And when they succeed, they hire more people, who in turn invest or spend the money they make, helping others start a business and create jobs.

Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity.

…This idea – that our problems were caused by a government that was too small – it’s just not true. In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies.

And the idea that more taxes and more government spending is the best way to help hardworking middle class taxpayers – that’s an old idea that’s failed every time it’s been tried.

More government isn’t going to help you get ahead. It’s going to hold you back.

More government isn’t going to create more opportunities. It’s going to limit them.

…And tonight, he even criticized us for refusing to raise taxes to delay military cuts – cuts that were his idea in the first place.

But his favorite attack of all is that those who don’t agree with him – they only care about rich people.

Mr. President, I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren’t millionaires. They’re retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They’re workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They’re immigrants, who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy.

The tax increases and the deficit spending you propose will hurt middle class families. It will cost them their raises. It will cost them their benefits. It may even cost some of them their jobs.

And it will hurt seniors because it does nothing to save Medicare and Social Security.

So Mr. President, I don’t oppose your plans because I want to protect the rich. I oppose your plans because I want to protect my neighbors.

Senator Rubio concludes:

This dream – of a better life for their children – it’s the hope of parents everywhere. Politicians here and throughout the world have long promised that more government can make those dreams come true.

But we Americans have always known better. From our earliest days, we embraced economic liberty instead. And because we did, America remains one of the few places on earth where dreams like these even have a chance.

Each time our nation has faced great challenges, what has kept us together was our shared hope for a better life.

Now, let that hope bring us together again. To solve the challenges of our time and write the next chapter in the amazing story of the greatest nation man has ever known.

Thank you for listening. May God bless all of you. May God bless our President. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

The reason that a lot of the media has focused on Senator Rubio’s drink of water is that they don’t want you to hear the wisdom in the speech.

 

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Looking Past The Headline To The News

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John_F_Kennedy_1964_Issue-5c.jpg

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times posted a story with the headline, “Election laws tightening in GOP-run states.” Interesting headline. Why are election laws being strengthened in Republican rather than Democrat states? There are two ways to look at this–the Democrats would have you believe that the Republicans are trying to hinder minority voters, the Republicans would have you believe that they are combating voter fraud. Which is closer to the truth?

The article reports:

But Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the GOP drive was triggered by “the infamous example of ACORN,” the collection of community organizations which, he said, submitted 400,000 fraudulent registrations in 2008. He called the new laws “common-sense proposals” to “preserve the sanctity of our elections by ensuring that only eligible voters vote.”

The results of the election of 2008 would not have been changed had voter fraud not existed, but in a close election, voter fraud can change the results. It s an accepted fact that Mayor Daley stole the election in 1960 for John F. Kennedy.

Wikipedia (not my favorite source) reports:

Known for shrewd party politics, Daley was a stereotypical machine politician, and his Chicago Democratic Machine, based on control of thousands of patronage positions, was instrumental in bringing a narrow 8,000 vote victory in Illinois for John F. Kennedy in 1960. A PBS documentary entitled “Daley” explained that Mayor Daley and JFK potentially stole the 1960 election by stuffing ballot boxes and rigging the vote in Chicago. In addition, it reveals, Daley withheld many votes from certain wards when the race seemed close.

I have no problem with requiring voter identification. Identification is required to do many things in our society that are considerably less important than voting–rent a video, board an airplane, cash a check, buy cigarettes, buy alcohol, and receive any sort of federal assistance. Voting is at least as important as any of these.The election of 2012 may be close. I would prefer that whatever the result is, it represents the rule “one man, one vote.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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