The United States is Under Attack PART 2:
"Is The Republic at Risk? Threats Originating From Inside the United States"
May 5, 2018
In part one of “The United States is Under Attack” I wrote about threats originating from outside the country. Part two of this blog will deal with threats that are, or have been, posed by US citizens from inside the country.
At the end of world war 2 tens of thousands of American GI’s returned home, married their sweethearts and began raising families. These new families who would come to be known as “ The greatest generation” needed homes. To accommodate these young families the construction industry revved up and began building homes by the thousands.
In addition, the manufacturing sector was converting over from wartime production to producing goods for domestic consumption. This surge in manufacturing was led by the auto industry. The big three auto manufacturers plus all the support companies who supplied them began gearing up to meet the demand for automobiles. This meant jobs- lots of jobs.
We were in the post war era and the US had the most powerful military in the world. We also had the strongest, most dynamic economy in the world. This combination was tough to beat. We were the king of the hill. It was almost as if the country was cloaked with an armor of invincibility.
At this period in our history Americans were hardworking, patriotic people who wanted to work and provide the best for their families Most people at that time went to church every Sunday. Every morning in school we recited the Lord’s Prayer and pledged allegiance to the flag. I don’t think this is done anymore. It’s not politically correct.
In the mid 1960’s this bastion of freedom and strength began to change. The country became divided over the Vietnam War. Peaceful protests were occurring all over the country. I never thought that these protests were a threat to the country. Even people who didn’t agree with the protesters thought it was their right to voice their opinion. It was only when these protests turned violent and vulgar and the narrative became anti-American, that many people were turned off to the whole idea. At this point a division formed in the country and that division is still with us today. I consider this anti-American narrative along with the disrespect shown to our men in uniform, dodging the draft and people like Jane Fonda collaborating with the enemy to be a threat to the republic. In addition, I would also consider the disrespect shown for the rule of law to be a threat to the republic. I would call this episode in our history the first real chink in the country’s armor of invincibility.
Spiro Agnew, the vice president under Richard Nixon, was forced to resign after being accused of income tax evasion. It turned to be a harbinger of what was to come.
Shortly after the Agnew resignation the Watergate scandal became front page news. Eventually President Nixon was implicated in the scandal and rather than face impeachment, was forced to resign from office. In my opinion, one of the main reasons Richard Nixon resigned was for the good of the country. It was the honorable thing to do.
Call me a Pollyanna, but at the time, it was always my belief that anyone elected to the office of President of the United States was honest, forthright, strong willed, and decisive. I also believed that whoever was president always put the best interests of the country first. I have since had a change of heart and have reconsidered that position.
Fortunately for the country, vice president Gerald Ford immediately assumed the office with a cool, calm, steady, hand and returned a sense of normalcy to the country. Over time the country healed and the crisis was put behind us.
When the President and the Vice President of the United States are both forced to resign in disgrace I would consider that to be a threat to the union. A large part of the world has always held the US in very high esteem. The US was always thought to be the most honorable, the most courageous, the most generous and the most righteous country in the world. These events shook the confidence of the American public in their elected officials, made the country look bad in the eyes of the world and was an embarrassment to the citizens of this country. Even though this disgraceful episode was rapidly put behind us the result was another chink in the armor.
The allegations of rape and sexual abuse levied against President Bill Clinton were another crisis that the country was forced to endure. After months of controversy, President Clinton was accused of lying to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. Additional charges of perjury and abuse of power were not pursued.
President Clinton was subsequently impeached. After going through the process of an impeachment trial, the senate voted not to remove him from office. Bill Clinton was obviously guilty of the charges brought against him but the senate voted to acquit.
Why would they do that? The reason was plain old partisan politics. It takes 67 votes in the senate to remove a president from office. Only 45 senators voted to find him guilty. They were all Republicans. The other 55 senators were Democrats. Not one of them voted against Mr Clinton. This was the first real example of selective law enforcement that I can remember. This goes back to my earlier comments about putting the country first. This was a partisan vote plain and simple. The law and the country be damned
Over the last twenty years this particular chink in the armor has grown into a good sized dent. We are to this day still experiencing this crisis of selective law enforcement. Is it just a coincidence that the subject of the current case of selective law enforcement is a member of the same family? Who’s next Chelsea? The blame, as in most cases,of this nature, lies with our elected officials. In addition, unelected bureaucrats such as the leadership of the FBI and DOJ, dating back to the Obama administration, are also complicit. When the law is not administered equally we have corruption. Equal justice has always been the foundation of our legal system. Our legal system has been the gold standard in the world for decades. It is what has made us different and better than anyplace else in the world. Will partisan politics be our undoing?
President Trump and the Trump campaign have been under investigation for allegedly colluding with the Russian government. To date not one iota of evidence has been found to support these allegations. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, while she was secretary of state, mishandled tens of thousands of government documents, on numerous occasions, some of which, were highly classified. Also, evidence that was pertinent to this investigation was destroyed by members of her staff. Other classified information was also found on the computer of Huma Abedin’s ex-husband Anthony Weiner, who at this time was not even an employee of the government and therefore had absolutely no government clearance whatsoever. Huma Abedin was a long time aid to Hillary Clinton. Why these top secret emails were on Mr Weiner’s laptop is unknown. To date no charges have been filed and a serious investigation has yet to be pursued. It seems the farther along we go, the worse it gets. .
Hillary Clinton, while she was secretary of state, signed off on a deal to sell 20% of our nations uranium reserves to Russia. In return the Clinton Foundation received approximately $140B in donations from Russian businessmen. Am I taking a leap here or does this sound like collusion or maybe bribery? Here again, no investigation and no charges. That good sized dent in the armor just keeps getting bigger.
The second Iraq war, in retrospect, was a disaster. The reason given for the invasion was that we had good intelligence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s). There were several intelligence agencies, including our own, that agreed that Iraq had these weapons. Saddam made matters worse by playing chicken. He was defiant saying that he was not going to give up his weapons or allow inspectors into his country. That was a bad move. If he would have cooperated with the coalition this entire conflict might have been avoided. I always try not to second guess the president no matter what it is but this was a huge mistake. After trillions of dollars and thousands of American and coalition lives, no WMD’s were found.
Did we get rid of a vicious dictator? Absolutely. Was it worth all the blood and treasure? I don’t think so. In the wake of the second Iraq war came the rise of ISIS. After roughly ten years of having troops in Iraq, we had another mess to clean up. It has taken some time to train the Iraqi military. But with Americans acting as advisors the Iraqis have reclaimed well over 90% of caliphate that was at one time under ISIS control, including the city of Mosul with it’s vast oil reserves. This effort is in the mopping up stage and this operation will be completed soon. I’m defining this chink in the armor as trillions of American dollars and thousands of American lives.
It seems as though the further along in time that we progress, the larger and more devastating these self inflicted threats to our country become. This particular threat was, and still is, the single most serious domestic, non-military threat that our nation has faced to date. The effects of it are still being felt today. This threat was Barack Hussein Obama. He was the driving force behind it, but he did not act alone. Our elected representatives in both the house and the senate are just as guilty. This is a threat that we may never recover from. Also with rising interest rates, it is very likely that it will continue to get worse. I’m talking about the $21T in debt that the country currently finds itself in.
As I said above President Obama was the driving force behind this looming
disaster, but he had plenty of help from the house and the senate. They passed the spending bills that the president signed and they raised the debt limit almost at will. We now find ourselves $21T in debt in an atmosphere of rising interest rates. Since we are already in deficit spending, every additional dollar of interest we spend will have to be borrowed. How bad this situation becomes and how fast it happens will depend on how high and how fast interest rates rise and also on whether or not our current elected officials, including the president, are able to cut spending. The other factor that affects the size of the budget deficit is the amount of tax revenue the economy generates. In spite of the $10T that was borrowed and spent by President Obama, the best the country could do with regard to economic growth was 1.5% to 1.9%. With a low rate of growth like that government revenue suffers and deficits get larger.
One of the reasons for this low growth rate was the Affordable Care Act.- aka Obama Care. This law mandated that employers with fifty or more full time employees had to provide the benefit of health care insurance for all full time employees. Not only did those employers have to provide health care insurance, but the it was mandated by the government what specific coverage had to be included in the plan.
Employers were against this law for a couple of reasons. First among them was the cost. Some employers were already providing health care insurance for their employees. However under Obama Care the policies that they offered may not have included the plan requirements mandated under Obama Care. The additional requirements made the plan more expensive. This was a problem for some employers especially since some of the coverage like maternity coverage, would never be used by some employees. Other employers just didn’t like the government sticking its nose into their business.
This new health care law put a damper on hiring. Some employers who were planning to hire more people decided to put those plans on hold. It was cheaper to pay a few hours of overtime than to bear the cost of salary and benefits for a new full time employee. Other employers decided to hire part time employees thereby circumventing the law. Still other companies decided that between the new health care law and the mountain of new regulation being pumped out by under the Obama Administration,that it was less costly to pack up their businesses and move to another country. Another group of people who were contemplating starting a business chose not to do so because the return on the investment needed to start up a new business wasn’t sufficient to warrant the risk and decided that the time wasn’t right. These are some of the major reasons why our economy grew at the paltry 1.5% to 1.9% during eight years Barack Obama was in office.
For those of you who disagree that Obama Care and all the other various and sundry regulations (there were thousands of them) cost the country jobs, just look at the first year of the Trump administration. For every new regulation created under the Trump Administration, approximately twenty old regulations have been eliminated. This along with corporate and individual tax cuts are bringing businesses and jobs back to the US as well as hundreds of billions of dollars of investment. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Besides the economic problems caused by the policies of the Obama Administration, there are other issues that are still facing us today. For example, President Obama’s refusal to close, or at least control, our southern border. His “ catch and release” policy has resulted in hundreds of thousands of illegals being released into our country with no real mechanism to find or remove them. The American taxpayer is paying for this to this day.
Also during president Obama’s tenure the federal government became weaponized. An example of this was the IRS. The IRS began targeting conservation organizations who were applying for tax exempt status (501 c 3). When this practice became public there were a lot of people, myself included, that wondered how this kind of bias could happen in this country. It actually took me by surprise. This is the kind of thing that happens in countries like Russia, Red China, Cuba, or Nazi Germany. Little did I know that this was just the beginning. This type of threat would grow and spread like a cancer. And that’s exactly what it was.
In the last year evidence has surfaced which shows that the FBI and DOJ were also weaponized. During the Obama Administration Fisa warrants, which are top secret, were obtained using questionable and unconfirmed evidence to surveil an American citizen. The case in point was Carter Page, a former naval officer, who was for a short time, connected to the Trump Campaign. This Fisa warrant was obtained using a so called dossier provided by former British spy named Christopher Steele. The worst part of this affair was that this dossier was paid for by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign. They called this dossier opposition research. Basically they were looking for dirt on Donald Trump and anyone connected with the Trump Campaign. Those requesting this highly secret warrant neglected to inform the Fisa judge that this dossier was paid for by the Clinton Campaign. This warrant was renewed several times during 2016. One of the renewals was signed off on by the current assistant attorney general Rod Rosenstein. There appears to be evidence that at least a dozen or so FBI agents were biased against candidate Trump and the Trump campaign. Some of these same agents were involved in this investigation. This is currently under investigation.
In the aftermath of the investigation into suspected Russian collusion by the Trump campaign many of these same FBI agents, including Andrew McCabe, the assistant FBI director, were either fired, demoted, reassigned, or forced to resign from the FBI. The agents in question were disciplined for letting their personal bias against Donald Trump affect their judgement during an investigation. Andrew McCabe was fired for being,” less than candid,” during his testimony under oath in front of congress.There were instances of extreme bias on the part of other FBI agents. Some of those agents have recently resigned. To my knowledge no one has ever said that it’s improper for an FBI to have political views. But when those views cause you to be biased in the performance of your duty, that is over the line and cannot be tolerated.
As if all this wasn’t enough, I’ve recently learned that every FBI agent has a top secret security clearance. This clearance gives all agents, even those implicated in this investigation, access to classified information that could be used to further harass American citizens. That said, any agent who was involved in this abuse of authority should be terminated.
When I began writing this post I was of the opinion that the threat posed by the Obama Administration was the most serious non-military domestic threat the had ever faced the country. Recents events have forced me to reconsider that opinion.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s henchmen broke down the door of Paul Manafort’s home, guns drawn at 3:00 AM in the morning. They then proceeded to the couple’s bedroom, rousted them out of bed in their bed clothes, and handcuffed Mrs Manafort. Does this sound like America to you?
Mr Manafort is accused of a non violent crime. To my knowledge he has no history of violent behavior nor has he ever threatened violence towards anyone.Yet Mr Mueller’s henchmen used these thugish Gestapo like tactics when they invaded his home. Also, the crimes that Mr Manafort is accused of occurred about twelve years ago. They have nothing to do with the investigation into Russian collusion.
These are the type of tactics used when arresting a member of an organized crime family or during a drug bust when it is known or suspected that weapons are available to the suspects. Supposed one of the Manafort’s accidentally made a sudden move. Would they have been shot? From all the reports that I’ve heard or read about, these records could have just as easily been obtained later on that day during the daylight hours. The fact that a former head of the FBI would stoop to such base tactics shows just how much the definition of acceptable police tactics have changed. It’s also an indication that our country’s civil rights, which have been eroding for some time now, is continuing on unabated. This looks more like intimidation than the lawful service of a search warrant. It also is reminiscent of life in the old USSR or Nazi Germany than America. Is this where we’re heading?
Over the last few months information has surfaced about bias and discrimination in government agencies under the Obama Administration. It would appear that the abuse of legal authority had become quite common place; one could even say business as usual. The tendency for the FBI and the DOJ to engage in selective law enforcement seems also to have become commonplace. The IRS and its discrimination against conservatives is just one example.There are also reports of the EPA intimidating property owners, telling them what they can and can not do with their own property. This all happened during Barack Obama’s Administration. It seems as though the selective process of enforcing the law is biased, and this bias is based on one’s political leanings. Remember the civil rights movement back in the 1960’s? People were fighting for equal rights without regard to race color or creed. It now seems evident that we need to add political affiliation to that list.
Earlier I wrote that about a dozen or so FBI agents have either been fired, demoted or have resigned from the FBI. These individuals let their personal political views influence their professional judgement. These people were extremely biased as shown by the large number of emails that were made available to the public. These emails showed collusion between at least two of these agents and a reference that a third might also be involved. I might add that there was also a reference made in one of the emails that mentioned the possibility of influencing a federal judge. This is the type of plot that movies are made from. The only problem here is that in movies the bad guys always gets caught. It happened to work out that way this time. That may not always be the case.
I have discussed about a dozen items that,in my opinion, either threaten the country economically or threaten the sovereignty of the United States. These threats are real. They have made the country less safe, less prosperous, more divided and less fair. The $21T debt we currently owe is a financial threat as well as a national security threat. If we keep borrowing money at the current rate, we will eventually reach a point where the country is financially unviable. At that point we have to make choices about which departments to fund and which departments not to fund. Another option is that we partially fund all departments. The third option is that we raise taxes and risk tanking the economy which has taken off in the last eighteen months. If the economy tanks government revenue will decrease and jobs will be lost. Our elected officials have been running our government as if we have unlimited resources. As I’ve said before, there is not an entity on this planet that has unlimited resources. I sincerely hope our elected officials don’t try to prove me wrong.
Our country is as divided as I’ve ever seen it. This being the case, our elected officials can not govern the country. They are unable to legislate because both sides are unable to agree on just about anything.
Our southern border is unsecured and therefore less safe. Drugs are pouring into our country and our citizens are dying, yet little or nothing is being done. We are also less safe and less free because now our government has been weaponized. An example of this is the selective enforcement of our laws..Are we approaching the point where some will be brought to justice when one party is in power and other people will be brought to justice when the other party is in power. This obviously can’t work. This is a threat to our legal system, our constitution and the very foundation of our republic. If this continues, one day we will wake up to find anarchy in our streets.
In part one of this blog I covered threats originating from outside the country. Included in this group were threats from Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. My final comment is this: If we don’t take care of the threats which have originated right here in our own country, by our own citizens, and by our own elected officials, we may not have to worry about the threats coming from outside the country.