Saddam and the Keystone Cops

Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein – John Nixon (Blue Rider Press)

The United States, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was founded in 1947; since that time they have had a history dotted with major failures and misses. Things ranging from the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks are some of the highest profile fails.

So I guess I was wasn’t too surprised when reading former CIA analyst John Nixon’s account of his time questioning captured Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, that the CIA comes off like the Keystone Cops. Nixon details the internal squabbles, the ill-prepared nature of their questioning of Hussein and what amounts to an utter failure to gain much in the way of valuable insights from the tyrant.

Nixon spends much of his time point fingers at CIA director George Tenet, the George W. Bush administration and his take on ranging from the intel leading up to the war in Iraq, his belief the waterboarding and other stress based interrogation techniques don’t produce results and the high cost of the war. This from a so-called “Saddam expert” who was an analyst, not a field officer partaking in enhanced interrogations, who apparently didn’t have a prepared list of questions at the ready in the event of a Saddam capture.

An example of how unprepared Nixon and his cohorts where to interrogate Saddam was showcased when Nixon recounts how he was introduced by his boss (“Mr. Jack”) in Iraq as “Mr. Steve” but then during a later session Hussein spotted Nixon’s Coalition ID badge hanging around his neck and demanded “who are you?!” An amateur mistake at best.

Liberals will gravitate towards this book because in reinforces their beliefs about the wasted cost of the war and the George W Bush administration. Any clear headed examination however reveals this to be a jumbled mess of crossed timelines, ill-prepared career employees and a real indictment of how the Congress and it’s often ax grinding oversight has truly hamstrung and crippled the U.S. intelligence services since the mid-1970s when the so-called Church Committee, led by Senator Frank Church (D-ID) clamped down on the tools available to the CIA to actually do their job. 

Rigging the System

Guilty as Sin: Uncovering new Evidence of Corruption and How Hilary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation – Edward Klein – (Regnery)

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” - Joseph Goebbels – Reich Minister of Propaganda, Nazi Germany.

Hitler’s propagandist believed that statement and Hilary Clinton and her band of minions practice it on a daily basis. Longtime New York Times columnist William Safire got it right when he described Hilary Clinton as a “congenital liar.” This is a woman who chooses to lie even when she has the opportunity to tell the truth and more often than not she does it with absolute conviction.

It is that skillful ability to lie, aided and abetted by a legion of minions and enablers and a sycophantic media that is the centerpiece of bestselling author Edward Klein’s latest exploration of the corrupt world of Hilary Clinton, Guilty as Sin: Uncovering new Evidence of Corruption and How Hilary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation.

Klein, a deft journalist has always managed to pull on enough story threads to craft a compelling, detailed case loaded with an insider’s perspective of all of the comings and goings of his subject matter. In Guilty as Sin, Klein focused his attention on piecing together the details of the FBI’s multi-layered investigation into Hilary’s use of a “home brew” private email server that was CLEARLY outside the parameters of the law on a number of levels.

The Clinton and her evil minions defense is where the Goebbels-like lies come into play; bullshit like: “there was nothing illegal about it,” or “Colin Powell did the same thing,” or “Colin Powell advised me to do it,” “There was no classified email sent through the server,” and my personal favorite “I only deleted emails about my yoga classes.” Sorry, but the only thing twisting into knots was Hilary make believe stories and not her overstuffed backside!

Klein details the endless laundry list of Clinton scandals, the self-enriching, pay for play schemes that Hilary and company have cooked up. Imagine, this is when she was only the secretary of state; it boggles the mind to think what she would try to pull if she lands in the White House. This women comes with more baggage then O’Hare Airport! It’s scary to think of the gaggle of assholes, sycophants, clingers and criminals that she would bring with her to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Klein spells out a compelling story of way she must be stopped!

We’re Mad as Hell…

Angry White Male: How the Donald Trump Phenomenon is Changing America – and What We Can Do to Save the Middle Class – Wayne Allyn Root – (Skyhorse Publishing)

The same mainstream press who thought that the color of Barack Obama’s skin was the only qualification that he needed to be the leader of the free world is now mystified, confused and frustrated trying to understand how Donald J. Trump could possibly be the viewed as qualified for that job, let alone be the Republican nominee. When these folks, who self identify as waaaay smarter than the average folks in flyover country can’t quite grasp what is going on, they respond in typical fashion, by going the attack and name calling.

The equally natural response from these liberal elitists is to extend their attack onto anyone who would dare to profess their support for Trump. Any Trump supporter is automatically a racist, homophobe, bigot, intolerant buffoon and likely an angry white male. Riding in on his (naturally) white horse to save the day and try to explain the Trump phenomenon is conservative and self-describe capitalist televangelist Wayne Allyn Root with his new book, Angry White Male: How the Donald Trump Phenomenon is Changing America – and What We Can Do to Save the Middle Class.

Root cuts to the chase and lays it out chapter and verse why so many folks are, to borrow a line from the movie Network “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!” Root outlines, the time and time again process where the middle class has been used as a doormat by politicians of every stripe; promised the world on a platter during an election campaign only to be crapped on when the rubber meets the road.

So what’s behind the Trump phenomenon? FRUSTRATION! Root encapsulates all of the anger that has been building and why even if he may not be the perfect candidate or the most politically correct candidate, that is exactly when a HUGE (or if you prefer YUGE) portion of frustrated voters is looking for right here, right now. The main stream morons won’t ever get it, because they are part and parcel of the problem; they haven’t done a damn thing to hold politicians accountable, so now…the voters will!

Push Back: A Handy Guide

Upside Down: How the Left Turned Right into Wrong, Truth into Lies and Good into Bad – Mark Davis (Regnery Books)

The laundry list of patented lies from the left seems to grow on a daily basis. The topics cover a wide gamut of things, but the lines are often painfully familiar, you know things like:

• ·       “The science of climate change is settled.”
• ·       “The rich need to pay their fair share.”
• ·       “We are a country of immigrants, so we need to let everybody in.”
• ·       “It’s not a baby, it’s a lump of tissue”
• ·       “There is a separation of church and state.”

I could go on and on and on and on; like I said the laundry list never stops growing. If you are like me and you have the temerity to actually call liberal on this load of B S, the new automatic response is, “where did you hear that Fox News?!” Of course that last line is more often than not serve up with a sour look of someone who smelled something bad.

Well unless you are a radio talk show host, or like me a recovering radio talk show host, most folks don’t have the time in their busy lives to have ready prepared answers to smash liberals in their place. After all, unlike liberals, you are probably working a job! Enter Dallas based talk host and bestselling author Mark Davis with his latest endeavor, Upside Down: How the Left Turned Right into Wrong, Truth into Lies and Good into Bad.

Consider this handy little guide your answer book for disarming liberals and stopping their B S right in its tracks! Davis is not a fire breathing wing nut; he is a smart, thoughtful and clearheaded thinker who serves up nuanced responses to liberal silliness. This guy may truly be the smartest guy in the room, but he would never make that claim, nor would he come off like a smug a-hole; he’d just leave that to a liberal.

Upside Down is one of those books that has a place on any conservatives bookshelf, but should never sit there gathering dust, it should be highlighted, dog eared, sticky notated, underlined and put to work smashing liberals!

Stop Hillary…The Future of Our Country Depends On It

It seems almost impossible to believe that after all of the books that have been written about Hillary Clinton, not to mention Bill Clinton, over the years, that there could possibly be anything left to say or that we don’t already know. Yet as the Presidential campaign winds to it’s inevitable conclusion on election day, Hillary Clinton continues to be the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to the pure volume of scandals, lies, outright and unfettered greed and unlawful behaviors. The result is a raft of new books that make the case why Hillary Clinton needs to be stopped!

Armageddon: How Trump Can Beat Hillary – Dick Morris and Eileen McGann - (Humanix Books)

The line goes something like this; Dick Morris is a longtime campaign strategist and former advisor to Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary; then you inevitably will hear something to the effect of, disgraced, prostitution scandal and if you are a flaming liberal there will be some reference to toe-sucking in an effort to disparage or discredit Morris.

But the bottom line remains; Dick Morris was a very successful campaign strategist who worked inside the Clinton operation and knows intimately how both Bill and Hillary operate. The polling, the focus groups, the spin, the lies, the spin, and oh id I mention the spin. With his new book Armageddon: How Trump Can Beat Hillary, Morris has carefully crafted a strategy for how the Republican nominee, Donald Trump can defeat her this fall.

In Armageddon Morris breaks things down piece by piece; first he outlines the case for how Hillary has really eliminated and disqualified herself to be President with her serial lying, paranoia, manipulation of the system, greed, flip flopping, her bubble-like existence that makes her out of touch with reality and real people. In part two, Morris lays out a strategy to take her down; her failure to lead on terrorism and it’s growth on her watch, electing her amounting to Obama’s third failed term, the outright destruction of of the U.S. healthcare system under Obamacare. Then throw into the mix trade and the failure to protect our borders and immigration; something that Liberals and the media don’t seem to grasp is a HUGE issue with working class Americans.

I think that this book offers a thoughtful roadmap and I can already see the Trump campaign utilizing bits and pieces of this strategy.

Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel - Chuck Dixon, Brett R. Smith, and Peter Schweizer (Regnery Books)  

Bestselling author and master researcher Peter Schweizer clearly laid the GREED of Hillary and Bill Clinton in his book Clinton Cash, which is now available in paperback. Schweizer utilizes what I can only call a lead a horse to water method of investigation as he connects the dots in a step by step manner showing quite clearly how the Clintons use their position of power and influence to steadily enrich themselves and often the sycophants around them.

While Schweizer takes readers through the examples in an easy to understand fashion, there are still some folks who apparently can’t quite grasp the concepts he lays out…or could it be they choose not to? Well in a ongoing effort to help the ignorant (Liberals!) understand what is going on here; Schweizer has created a movie version of Clinton Cash, and in a true effort to help Liberals he has made the movie available for FREE, streaming online.

If that wasn’t quite simple enough to help Liberal grasp what out and out crooks the Clintons are (the infamous Bonnie and Clyde pale in comparison) now Schweizer and artists Chuck Dixon and Brett R. Smith have created a comic book (okay graphic novel for you highbrow types) in the form of Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel.

All Liberals have to do is read the simple text and look at the pretty pictures and maybe, just maybe, then they will understand what greedy, shameless, scumbags the Clinton crime family really are. Or at least we can hope.

Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party – Dinesh D”Souza (Regnery Books)

Bestselling author, blockbuster filmmaker, pundit and public intellectual, Dinesh D’Souza has spent his recent history dissecting the Democrat party in the guise of Barack Obama’s Presidency and Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State and Presidential candidate in a series of books and movies.

In his latest outing, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party delves beyond Obama and Clinton, going deeper in to the party’s history and the role that these to play not only in the continuation of long held party beliefs, but also in the never ending attempts to spin the truth about the party of the KKK, the party of slavery, and the party of socialism.

Clearly for Democrats, the truth can be an extremely painful thing and D’Souza utilizes truth, after truth, after truth to tie the Democrats up into a nice little gift wrapped package. While they claim an inordinate dominance of African American voters every election cycle and paint Republicans as the party of racism, the truth is it is the Democrat party the has created the ongoing plantation mindset that has kept blacks squarely under the thumb of government.

D’Souza smashes the myths of what Democrats claim to stand for and makes the case for a seismic shift towards black voters moving to the Republican party and away from the damage inflicted upon them by the likes of Obama and the Clintons, among many, many others. While D’Souza continues to be a perennial bestseller, I think it’s unfortunate that he is preaching to the choir and his message is being diluted at best and distorted at worst by the liberal, sycophants in the media.

And the Truth Will Set You Free

The Problem With Socialism – Thomas J. DiLorenzo (Regnery Publishing)

I get the sense that Senator Bernie Sanders, the failed Presidential candidate may be one of the most honest men in America; he makes no attempt to hide the fact the he is a socialist and his goal to convert the United States into a socialist nation. The problem is folks like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who have the exact same goal in mind without one iota of the honesty.

The problem for the people in the United States is that Sanders, Obama, and Clinton are delusional or clueless enough to believe that socialism can work and is the answer to all of our problems. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a professor of economics at Loyola University, Maryland is here to set them straight in with his new book, The Problem With Socialism. DiLorenzo points out, not only the time, after time, after time, the dismal failings of socialist states but details chapter and verse how and why socialism fails.

 

DiLorenzo points out the frightening statistics from polls like, the yougov.com poll that found that 43% of Americans between ages eighteen and twenty-nine, have a “favorable” opinion of socialism and a 2016 Pew Research poll that 69% of those polled under the age of thirty, expressed a “willingness to vote for a socialist Presidential candidate.” Those numbers should be chilling, especially for anyone who is even remotely familiar with the tyrannical socialist regimes of China, the Soviet Union and North Korea and the millions of dead they left behind.

What DiLorenzo really spells out is the drip by drip approach that Obama, Clinton, Sanders and their ilk have taken to slowly and steadily shift public opinion to being accepting of socialism. It is a classic example of the story of dropping a frog into a pot of boiling water; it is in the frogs natural instinct to jump out. If you take the same frog and place him in a pot of cool water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog will remain comfortable right up to the minute the water begins to boil; which will be much too late.

That is the stage that we find ourselves in and DiLorenzo gives us a clear and concise path to pull ourselves out of the boiling pot of socialism.

So how did we get here? The American people have been sold a bill of goods by Obama/Clinton; the bill that includes government control of health care, so-called “fairness” and “equality”, and of the imbalance of capitalism. They have used subtle tools to sell this tale; rich capitalists only succeed because you fail and because they didn’t build the roads and infrastructure to their factory, the government and the people did. And it goes on and on.

One of the multitude of problems with socialism is there is absolutely no motivation to work hard and become successful; the equality that Obama and Clinton hold dear is that we are all equally failures. Why work hard when the government Daddy will provide? The biggest problem with socialism and socialists as British prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously pointed out, “they always run out of other people’s money.” When government Daddy can no longer provide, you starve! There is no free health care, free college education, free food, etc, etc. Somebody has to foot the bill!

While DiLorenzo is a college professor, The Problem With Socialism, is not a stodgy, boring, text book; it is a concise, easy to understand tome, which is perfect for student who came out of the “free” public education system. I highly recommend that parents pick up copies to share with their millennial offspring along with a clear message of the pending disaster that is a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Clinton Conspiracy – TWA 800

TWA 800: The Crash, the Cover-Up, and the Conspiracy – Jack Cashill (Regnery Publishing)

It’s hard to believe that this week will mark the 20^th anniversary of the downing of TWA Flight 800. I remember it vividly; returning home from some family event or other and flipping on the television to catch the news and being confronted by the images of burning wreckage of a passenger jet that had crashed into the Atlantic soon after takeoff. Dialing in CNN, (Fox News had launched just a few months prior and MSNBC was literally only 2 days into its 24 hours news schedule, so CNN was the go to choice for news) I was confronted with a pretty boy anchor absurdly asking a member of one of the search and rescue agencies on the scene if darkness was hindering the search and if in the morning, daylight would make things easier?!

From that point forward I was deeply intrigued by the story; the recovery of the shattered pieces of the plane, the nascent investigation and what quickly became clear to me, the larger forces that were at play when it came to getting at the truth of what happened to TWA 800. It didn’t take long for folks with either a level of curiosity or a level of expertise to start to raise questions about the direction of the investigation and the conclusion that fumes in a center fuel tank caused the plane to explode.

Among the list of folks that included James Sanders and Lt. Col. William Donaldson, Ret., was writer, researcher and later filmmaker Jack Cashill. I had the opportunity to interview Cashill a couple of times and he seemed to be coming at this from a similar perspective to mine; the way the government was handling this and telling the story, just did not add up.

 

Cashill is one of the most reasoned voices when it comes to spelling out what some have dubbed the conspiracy theory of TWA 800 and 20 years on he has collected thousands of documents, interviewed countless eye witnesses, and compiled a thorough timeline of the events following the crash in the form of his new book, TWA 800: The Crash, the Cover-Up, and the Conspiracy.

Cashill clearly details example, after example, after example, of how countless witnesses clearly spelled out what they saw that fateful night, only to be ignored, misrepresented, wrongfully discredited and in a number of cases outright lied about by the people who were tasked to investigate the event. Instead of allowing the folks with the expertise to handle the investigation, the Clinton administration, choose to turn the investigation over to the FBI and even more oddly the CIA. Cashill cites chapter and verse where the lack of knowledge of airline operations and technology resulted in facts being missed, questions being left unasked/answered, and the overall bungling of witness interviews.

He also dismantles the ridiculous animation the CIA tried to pawn off as to what “really happened” to TWA 800. Cashill ties together so much information that points to and raises questions about so many moving parts of this story that clearly point to a desperate Clinton White House flailing to cover up a terrorist attack or military exercise gone bad in an attempt to retain the Presidency.

Cashill writes in great detail about the parade of usual suspects that a part and parcel of so many Clinton scandals. He raises questions about fingerprints of folks like Clinton Lawyer Jamie Gorelick, who erected a so-called “Chinese Wall” between security agencies that would come back to bite us on the ass in the events leading up to 9-11. Cashill properly raise the question how Gorelick later ended up on the 9-11 Commission panel rather than being questioned by it and how with NO level of experience she was handed the plum job (pay off) by Clinton, of running Fannie Mae with a multi-million dollar salary.

Cashill also raises questions about Clinton National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, who was intimately involved in the TWA 800 debacle and who later got in legal hot water for “accidently’ stuffing classified documents into his pants at the national archives, while prepping for the 9-11 Commission. Was he attempting to remove documents that referenced plots to use airplanes to commit terrorist attacks? We will never know, since Berger illegally destroyed classified materials.

While Cashill draws no conclusions in the course of TWA 800, he simply stings together mountains of evidence that paint a wildly different picture of what happened on July 17, 1996 than what the government would have you believe.

The Art of Empty

The Art of Tough –Fearlessly Facing Politics and Life – Barbara Boxer (Hachette Books)

California Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer serves up a memoir of her 40 years in government. It is a perfect slice of life from the women who delivered such memorable lines as:

“Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said ‘thank God, I’m still alive.’ But, of course those who died, their lives will never be the same again.”

Then apparently missing the fact that she is a carbon life form…Boxer stated; “Carbon could cost us the planet…the least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.”

Boxer, a tireless partisan liberal doles out a heaping helping of self-aggrandizement in The Art of Tough –Fearlessly Facing Politics and Life. Boxer paints a portrait of someone who had a tough childhood and grew to be an advocate for the little guy…interesting for someone who finds herself among the richest half of the members of Congress.

For someone who will retire from Congress after 40 years, Boxer’s list of actual accomplishments reads like something typical of most long running democrats; she has managed to start committees and task forces to look at and talk about issues, but has really managed to actually do much to actually address the issues. Which at the end of the day is really what democrats are good at; talking about things but never really fixing anything.

 

Two Thirds Hollywood…One Third Conservative

There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative – Stacey Dash – (Regnery Publishing)

By Tweeting out her support for Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 election cycle Hollywood actress Stacey Dash quickly became the darling of conservative circles. Here was an actress, famous for her role in the movie Clueless and an otherwise spotty selection of roles on the big and small screen, at least as African American as the President, boldly proclaiming she was a conservative. Naturally there was the expected backlash from liberals and race pimps bad mouthing and name calling her because there natural assumption is if you are and actor and you’re black, then you are automatically a liberal, Democrat.

Dash delivers the detail not only of her public transformation, but also the story of her difficult childhood, her dabbling with drugs and alcohol, her physical and sexual abuse, and her serial marriages/relationships and the negative impact it all had on her life. In her new book, There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative Dash talks about how she chose to persevere and overcome her challenges rather than falling prey to the entitlement mentality.

Dash clearly touches on some classical conservative thoughts along the way and it’s clear that she sought out and self-educated throughout her transition process. While that transformation is clearly the cornerstone of her story, I found myself mired down by the habitual bad choices, relationships and vices that Dash made leading up to that transition. I kept plugging through the two thirds of the book that focus on the trials and tribulations, knowing that there would be a payoff in the end.

The one major takeaway from There Goes My Social Life is that Stacey Dash is truly fearless! She willingly goes toe to toe with liberals and more often than not reduces them to the sniveling, clueless piles of mush, who have no alternative but the resort to name calling and bashing. While many other seems to wither and falter under this kind of attack, Dash seems to take it all in and come out stronger.

The Truth and Fossil Fuels Will Set You Free

Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy – Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White (Regnery Publishing)

For me, it has truly become a tossup. I don’t know which steaming pile of Liberal crap drives me more-crazy; their ridiculous claims about guns and the Second Amendment or their claims and policies regarding the environment and global warming. It could be because Liberals are equally stupid and wrong, on both topics or the fact that they constantly try to pass off lies as the locked down truth.

Always a willing participant when it comes to debating these topics, I am always on the lookout for useful and concise tools to better arm myself for battle. One outstanding new tool for your crushing Liberals tool belt is Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, the new book from economist Stephen Moore and energy expert Kathleen Hartnett White. They write with clarity and a firm grip on the reality of the wrongheaded goals of Liberal and environmental wingnuts who are hell bent to destroy our way of life and dial us back to the Middle Ages.

Moore and White make the case that the unmatched growth and power that the United States enjoys was truly driven by fossil fuels. They chart the detailed evidence of how our rapid rise can be tied directly to the steady, reliable generation of power which is directly related to fossil fuels. While so-called renewable energy sounds wonderful, Moore and White lay waste to the green weasel’s high minded talk with the simple fact that wind, solar and bio fuels provide for a miniscule amount of our actual energy use. Combine that with the seemingly endless string of Obama green energy handouts that have failed to bump up that tiny output number.

As to diminishing supply of fossil fuels, the earliest reference to so-called “peak oil” that I can find dates back to 1909 when the folks at the Titusville (PA) Herald made the claim that we would hit the oil producing peak in 25 to 30 years. Moore and White paint a much brighter picture for our oil and gas future due to horizontal drilling technology and hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking. The writers provide insight into the volume of untapped energy that will last into the hundreds of years.

Moore and White also cite a new favorite line to drop on Liberals, which comes from Christopher Horner from the Competitive Enterprise Institute who is fond of saying “you can build windmills with steel, but you can’t build steel with windmills.” While it is a very simple statement on its face, it carries a profound impact and the weight of truth; if Obama, Gore and their friends get their way, how will we produce the goods and services and the freedom we all enjoy?

Health Care Reform – David vs. Goliath

Restoring Quality Health Care – A Six-Point Plan for Comprehensive Reform at Lower Cost – Scott Atlas, M.D. (Hoover Institution Press)

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when the Democrats in Congress passed the so-called Affordable Care Act (AKA - Obamacare) they sold the American people a bill of goods. The original bill topped out at over 2700 pages and since then the Obama administration has issued in excess of 20,000 pages of regulations to implement the clearly flawed plan.

Aside from all of the baloney about keeping your doctor and your plan and saving you money; the goal of some of those pages was an effort to improve the quality of the care delivered in the United States. While I won’t engage in an argument with idiots who think that Cuba’s health care delivery surpasses that available here in the States, as someone who’s day job is in health care, I will say that there is always room for improvement in the delivery of care. The problem is that the government and regulations are probably the worst possible vehicles for driving improvement.

In the time since Obamacare passed and was signed into law, there has been an ever shifting sands of rules and regulations that health care providers have been forced to address; each coming with a higher and higher price tag. Much of it boils down to additional reporting and paperwork and the manpower needed to handle it all. One unfortunate side effect is that health care providers have tried to maintain cost and larded this mountain of additional work on existing staff, which drags down their ability to actually provide care.

 

As if to illustrate my point about the government being the worst vehicle to drive up quality, Scott Atlas, M.D., a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a member of Hoover Institution’s Working Group on Health Care Policy, has served up the new book, Restoring Quality Health Care – A Six-Point Plan for Comprehensive Reform at Lower Cost. Minus the end notes and index, Dr. Atlas managed to offer up a concise and comprehensive plan in an easily read 99 pages.

Many of Dr. Atlas’s suggested reforms involve the streamlining of processes; process improvement is one of the cornerstones and goals of any strong health care provider, so it would make sense that a physician would bring this approach to the table. Process improvement…not a government bureaucrat’s long suit.

Dr. Atlas also suggests injecting market based reforms into the health care process, including the expansion of and incentivizing of Health Saving Accounts (HSA) for all Americans. Atlas even goes so far to suggest that HSAs be issued at birth like Social Security numbers. By beginning the process early, incentivizing people to contribute to the accounts through tax breaks, making the HSA portable, and allowing these account to pass to family members without taxation upon a patient’s passing, a deeper level of understanding and control over health care spending would become ingrained in a society. This is a clear market force that would drive up quality.

Dr. Atlas also explodes the myth of Medicare excellence. He describes Medicare as being “a disjointed and antiquated system designed for decades long passed.” Again he offers a common sense reform for streamlining the bulky, bloated and confusing systems of Parts A, B, and D which only serve to increase administrative costs and baffle the seniors the plan was designed to aide. As Atlas points out in the book, the cherry on top of this mess is the plan fact that the Medicare system is in dire financial straits.

While the government tried to “fix” health care with a lumbering, bloated, Goliath of a plan, Atlas choose to go the route of David and offer up a quick, nimble plan to reform and improve the quality of health care we all receive.

Real American Heroes

Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor – Clinton Romesha (Dutton Books)

Over the years I have been blessed with the opportunity to meet and interview military leaders ranging from battle hardened warriors who earned their stripes to those who have been derisively called “perfumed princes” who came to leadership via one of the U.S. Military academies and never broke a sweat on the field of battle. I have spoken with military historians, educators and planners have developed and reviewed countless battle plans.

After reading Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor, by Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha and I came to two conclusions; one -  Romesha is one of those battle hardened warriors, men who come by leadership not in the classroom, but as a calling and two – there is a reason why the term military intelligence has become an oxymoron.

Some may believe that Red Platoon reads like an action book, but the reality is, it is the telling of the kind of story that generations of military men have avoided telling. Even when asked about their experiences, most vets remain stoic and silent, choosing to keep the memories of what they encountered and more often what they lost, to themselves. Based on the courage he displayed the made him the recipient of the Medal of Honor we have a clear picture of Romesha’s courage, valor and bravery, but it is a different kind of courage he displays in committing to paper what he and his fellow soldiers faced at Combat Outpost Keating.

It is the positioning of COP Keating, certainly not at a critical locale of high importance, that makes me question what those charged with planning and placement of these outposts could possibly have been thinking when the decided to place Keating. It was that incomprehensible plan that lead directly to Romesha and his fellow soldiers to be placed into the situation he describes; an at times chilling and harrowing tale that found them outnumbered by a force of 5 to 1.

With all of the useless political chitter chatter about the 1% I think that all Americans, both those who are supportive of our military and those less than supportive types need to read Red Platoon to get a better understanding of the truly critical 1% of our population; those who sign on to take on the daunting task of defending our nation.

This Guy Gets It…Period

Worth Dying For: A Navy SEAL’s Call to a Nation – Rorke Denver (Howard Books)

If you come to this book looking for heroic stories of Navy SEALs in action doing what Navy SEALs do, then you may end up disappointed. If that is what you seek, there are plenty of other books out there that will more than fill the need.

If however you are seeking not only leadership, but life insight from the perspective of a retired Navy SEAL commander who clearly views things through a prism created by his training and hard fought and battle tested decision making process, then this just might be the book you are looking for.

In Worth Dying For: A Navy SEAL’s Call to a Nation, Rorke Denver a Navy SEAL commander and NY Times bestselling author (Damn Few) serves up his well-honed perspective on being a leader and a better person. Denver brings more to the table than just military training and experience; he holds a BA from Syracuse and a master’s degree in Global Business Leadership from the University of San Diego.

Based on his first-hand experience, Denver clearly gets the what and the how of this equation. Where he really steps up and stands out is when he takes his opinions down to a more granular level and gives us the why. Lots of people have opinions or thoughts on a subject, but when pressed on why they believe what they believe, that’s when the wheels on the bus come flying off. Not the case with Denver; he can deliver the strong a opinion, but also make the case for why he believes what he believes.

That steadfastness is bound to drive liberals and mushy middle of the road moderates who stand for nothing over the edge, but that also makes this one required reading.

In Search of Unicorns

The Killing of Osama Bin Laden – Seymour M. Hersh (Verso Books)

Merriam-Webster define journalist as: “a writer or editor for a news medium”. I would tend toward including the fact that a journalist is a dogged pursuer of the truth

Aside from Watergate duo Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, perhaps no man alive has been lauded more for being a journalist than Seymour Hersh, Sy to his friends. While so many praise Hersh for being a dogged seeker of the truth, I hate to burst the bubble and break the news that this guy is at best a liberal opinion-ist and at worst out right delusional.

 

The Killing of Osama Bin Laden is so larded down with un-named “sources” and so chock full of convoluted conspiracy theories it will make your head spin. Hersh goes so far as to create a mythical unicorn;  “moderate Taliban” members who are apparently on the side of the United States. Show of hands…anyone buying that one?

Early in the book Hersh lays claim to quoting a former Navy SEAL commander as saying, “let’s face it, we’re going to commit murder.” Sorry, but NO, and I mean NO Navy SEAL commander would have said, that in battle they are committing murder!

The problem with this, and most conspiracy theories is they fall apart, collapse under the sheer weight of the number of people involved standing up to any level of scrutiny.

See…It’s Really Not That Hard

Government Gone Wild: How D.C. Politicians Are Taking You for a Ride – and What You Can Do About It – Kristin Tate (Center Street Books)

In a world over run with political correctness, micro-aggressions (?!), over-regulation and general government intrusions into every level of our existence, I find it both surprising and somehow heartening that there are young up and coming conservatives who really seem to get it. You know those younger folks who don’t buy into the Feel the Bern hucksterism of a politician/sugar granddaddy offering up “free” stuff.

One such person comes in the form of self-described Libertarian Chick, Kristin Tate, a conservative author, columnist and commentator who is out with her debut book, Government Gone Wild: How D.C. Politicians Are Taking You for a Ride – and What You Can Do About It. Tate busts out her take on some of the major issues facing the country and along the serves up so not so common sense in her on unique fashion.

 

Tate is about a subtle as a claw hammer when it comes to delivering her opinion. As an old school conservative I throw some people for a loop when I talk about the so-called war on drugs. I am right there with Tate’s take on things…the war is a failed effort and any true free market conservative knows that we could solve a whole boatload of money issues if moved away from incarcerating personal users and in the process started taxing the crap out of people’s habits. There’s a reason that tax stamp is wrapped over the cap of your favorite adult beverage at the liquor store.

While Tate is shy about telling you what she thinks and she at times comes off as a little too hip for me, I clearly get that her just leave me alone and let me do my thing attitude is what that country truly needs. Like her, I don’t care who you sleep with, I don’t care what you ingest, if you leave me alone, I will return the favor. Now is that too hard to understand? Oh and let’s not forget, I take care of me and mine, and I’ll expect you to do the same.

All Politics is Local

Going Red: The Two Million Voters Who Will Elect the Next President – and How Conservatives Can Win Them – Ed Morrissey (Crown Forum)

Comedian Darrel Hammond used to do a bit on Saturday Night Live playing former President Bill Clinton, usually in a bar, trying to come to grips with something and uttering the line “what the hell happened?!” It was that familiar refrain that sadly became the catch phrase of Republicans following the 2012 Presidential election as they tried to understand exactly what the hell happened!

Conservative blogger, writer and radio host Ed Morrissey reminds us of the painful details of what was clearly a White House ripe for the taking following a 2010 Republican mid-term blowout, President Barack Obama mired in the controversy of Benghazi, and the mess that is Obamacare. And yet it didn’t take long to see the Election Day handwriting on the wall for Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with his lack of testicular fortitude and inability to close the deal to send Obama packing.

 

Well now Morrissey not only dissects what went wrong, but how serves up a roadmap for how to fix the problem in 2016 and take politics down to a granular level in his new book, Going Red: The Two Million Voters Who Will Elect the Next President – and How Conservatives Can Win Them. Morrissey spent time on the ground researching and investigating not only the so-called battleground states, but those pivotal counties within those all-important states.

There are a handful of political prognosticators that have the ability to drill down into the ground game that has become part and parcel of winning national elections and in many cases even statewide races. Morrissey is one of those folks. His deep dive into politics at the micro-level really proves that all politics is local and that successful candidates will have to custom craft their messaging to target these microcosms of voters. This is truly an intriguing proposal for victory, it will interesting to see if the Republicans are will to take up the mantle.

 

Still Buying the Democrat Bullshit

Listen, Liberal: or What ever Happened to the Party of the People – Thomas Frank (Metropolitan Books)

Author and opinionist, Thomas Frank is out with a new political tome that has him turning his gun sites away from his traditional targets on the right and focusing his ire on the Democrat party in Listen, Liberal: or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People.

Sure to outrage lefties, anyone with an ounce of brains and common sense, aka Conservatives will see through Frank’s canard because he continues to delude himself by thinking that the Democrat party was ever “the party of the people.” I laughed out loud when I read that Frank was the founding editor of something called The Baffler (whatever that is/was) because he seems utterly baffled by reality.

Frank can’t quite resist the urge to play the smart ass liberal card when he comments on President Obama and the Clinton’s proclivities to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard claiming that “people in many parts of the country have never even heard of it.” Really?! Does this guy really buy into the liberal belief that the people in so-called “flyover country” are just a bunch of dumb clucks without the worldliness to know about Martha’s Vineyard? Now who’s the dumb ass?

Here’s a dose of reality for Mr. Frank; liberals/Democrats are not the party of the people, they are merely willing to play the class warfare card of rich versus poor, and the only reason why the rich guy is rich is because you are poor, not because he worked harder and achieved. Liberals are willing to give handouts, lie about taking Grandma’s Social Security, tell big government can solve all your problems and pretty much whatever else it takes to get elected or remain in office. In short, the Democrats are the party of bullshit and Frank is buying what they are selling. 

 

Losers Unite

United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists – Peter Bergen (Crown Books)

Peter Bergen is the go to guy when it comes to understanding the mindset of Jihadist terrorists. Bergen has authored or co-authored a shelf full of must read books on the subject; his latest, United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists, tries to delve into the minds and actions of terrorist actors who have signed on to the Islamic Jihad either on our shores our exported themselves to take part in terror overseas.

Bergen tries to help us understand what makes these people tick, what motivates them act out as lone wolves or to travel to far flung places to plan and or participate in mass murder or suicide attacks. Along the Bergen is careful to examine what actions law enforcement and homeland security have taken to try to identify these budding Jihadis and prevent them from taking action.

Bergen makes the case that the multi-billion dollar National Security Agency program undertaken by the Obama administration, of spying on our phone calls and e-mail in an effort to sweep up Jihadist planning has been an abject failure and despite the administrations claims that the program derailed many terrorist attacks before they started, that simply doesn’t match the reality.

Bergen lays out the threads of commonality that many of these angry, losers who sign on to the Jihad share. His chapter on the Boston Marathon bombing Tsarnaev brothers had me concluding that they were the participation trophy winners of the terrorist world; two losers who had everything handed to them when they relocated to the U.S. and yet always managed to come up short—then blame everybody but themselves for their failures.

As with Bergen’s prior books, United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists, is a thoroughly research and well crafted examination of not only the history of these homegrown Jihadis, but also the current and future state of what will be an important focus for the war on terror.

Hillary in Beast Mode to Keep Bill off Britney Spears

Pop tart Britney Spears was in full back pedal mode after sending Instagram photos of her meeting with Hillary Clinton prior to the Nevada caucus, quickly downplaying the meeting and subsequent posts as "in no way endorsing" Clinton.

The funniest thing about the whole affair was Mrs. Clinton in full beast mode, Hildebeast if you will, in one photo practically pinning Bill to one end of the couch to keep his wandering hands away from Spears.

Hey Mike, Who Wizzed in Your Corn Flakes?

The Deep State- The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government – Mike Lofgren (Viking Books)

I can’t quite manage to put my finger on it. After 28 years as an allegedly highly respected Republican Congressional staffer, including time with then Congressman John Kasich, Mike Lofgren walked away from Washington, penned a lefty friendly manifesto that popped up on liberal whack-a-mole Bill Moyers website and has since made a career out of being a darling on the left, popping up regularly in places like the Daily Kooks, HuffPo, AlterNet and entertaining the eight readers of Salon.com.

What I can’t quite grasp is, is it the fact that Lofgren barely managed to register a blip in 28 years on the Hill among the Republican political animals or did someone manage to piss him off by wizzing in his Corn Flakes? Now Lofgren earns his keep by peddling all too familiar liberal clap trap to fix the countries problems.

 

I find it laughable on its face that Lofgren embraces liberal yet bemoans the death of the Constitution! Anyone with an iota of common sense can point to liberal policy and liberal jurisprudence that has decimated the Constitution. Lofgren mines familiar tropes like George W Bush was in over his head when he became President; apparently Barack Obama was well versed enough after nearly two years in the Senate to be the leader of the free world. Like I said, laughable at best.

Lofgren has served up a litany of liberal red meat in the form of a series of reforms he feels will “put America back on the right track.” Among them are things like the elimination of private money from public elections; wonder if that would include union dues? The downsizing of the military and intelligence systems; because that worked so well in the lead up to the events of 9/11. Adopt single payer healthcare system; because that has worked so well for places like Canada and Britain…just ask the folks streaming south from our neighbors to the north in pursuit of timely healthcare. I could go on, but what would be the point of recapping these tried and failed policies?

A Unique Perspective…A Wakeup Call

The Fight: A Secret Service Agent’s Inside Account of Security Failings and the Political Machine – Dan Bongino – St. Martin’s Press

Almost certain to tie a sizable knot in the panties of liberals everywhere for not only the directness of his approach, but also for his insider’s, unique perspective; The Fight: A Secret Service Agent’s Inside Account of Security Failings and the Political Machine, by former Secret Service, Presidential protective detail agent, NYPD police officer and political candidate, Dan Bongino pulls no punches when delivering his assessment of the country’s current state.

Not your typical bomb throwing pundit, Bongino comes at things from a been there, done that reality of a guy who has been on the front lines of the War on Terror (NYPD), the internal workings of government (Secret Service) and politics (twice a political candidate.) Bongino offers up not only his wholly unvarnished take on the utter failings of the current resident of the White House, but also the sorry state of his own political party, the Republicans.

Bongino stuck to his guns, refusing to sellout to the Republican establishment as he fought not only to overcome incumbent candidates in runs for the Senate and the House of Representatives. The comparisons he draws between the don’t rock the boat bureaucracy of government and the strikingly similar world of politics should be chilling to any voter who still thinks the Constitution stands for something.

Liberal panty-boys and blind to reality supporters of Hillary Clinton will vainly try to pawn this off as the work of a bitter clinger, conservative, Neanderthal, but the reality is, Bongino has delivered a clarion call to all Americans who are concerned not only about the current state of the country but for the future that seems set on a vicious downhill slide. Truly a wakeup call for the masses.