President Reagan

[Peter McGuire]

I felt ashamed for making a vague title to my post but have been reading what you guys have been writing - great stuff.

Kennedy was not to be a " front man."

"JFK was as a casualty of an ideological, political power struggle, Dean. On one side of it are the rest of us; about 295 million Americans. On the other side of it are a ruthless

few who "market" front men like Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama. Their marketing enlists the distribution of information that only the professional media that these ruthless few own in its entirety could be capable of achieving these upside down results."

Edited April 16, 2011 by Peter McGuire

[Peter McGuire]

I have a much bigger gripe with those who continue to deify him as if he actually meant something to our country. Although I sincerely believe that he did some good (making Americans feel confident and optimistic again is a good thing, regardless of how he did it), people who think Reagan was a supremely positive force in government--economically, politically, socially, or morally--are dangerous to our future.

Great post. You really summed up my thoughts that lead to my first posting on President Reagan - that I felt back in 80 that I was sucked into his persona - and did indeed deify him for many years.

Ronnie was not a bad guy, nor was Bush 2, in my opinion, nor is it a coincidence that both are not very bright.

Edited April 16, 2011 by Peter McGuire

[Richard Hocking]

It's almost impossible to talk about Reagan without sounding (ironically) histrionic. He was a smooth talking guy that sold his soul to big business shortly after his acting career wound down. He wasn't an evil man, just someone who wanted a big paycheck and then focused the second half of his life on doing whatever it took to keep the dough rolling in for him and his friends.

I've studied Reagan quite a bit and I actually think he was pretty benign. Sure, his *friends* were pretty much criminals and those criminals were very efficient at robbing the American people, but Ronnie was, at worst, guilty of simply being ignorant. I think he actually believed most of what he said and gave up any remaining consciousness and conscience in the early- to mid-1960s.

I have a much bigger gripe with those who continue to deify him as if he actually meant something to our country. Although I sincerely believe that he did some good (making Americans feel confident and optimistic again is a good thing, regardless of how he did it), people who think Reagan was a supremely positive force in government--economically, politically, socially, or morally--are dangerous to our future.

Fair enough. My own take on Reagan is similar.

To understand the effect of Reagan on the national psyche, you have to place him in the context of those times. Look at the four men who preceded him:

The catastrophic presidencies of LBJ and Nixon (JFK Assassination, VietNam, Watergate); The buffoonery of the Ford Administration; the economic debacle of the Carter administration. America was ready for a change.

Especially after the assassination attempt, Reagan was largely a figurehead, a popular man that was used in the machinations of transparent players higher up the food chain.

[Zach Robertson]

President Carter's fate was sealed in March of 1977 when he appointed Stansfield Turner as DCI. After Turner fired 820 CIA employees, mostly in covert operations, Carter was destined to be a one term president.

Zach

[David Andrews]

Important to remember that Carter was a member of the CFR prior to his campaign, and was something of a protege of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Carter did not appear out of nowhere, but is one in a line of state government-associated intellectual-humanists anointed as the corporate face of the Democratic Party since 1913: Wilson, FDR, Carter, Clinton, Obama...John F. Kennedy, the renegade? LBJ, the giver of New Deal-influenced civil rights, the taker of Southeast Asia?

There's a conscious strategy and templating here.

[David Andrews]

David:

JFK was never in the CFR.

ANd as early as 1957 he was getting flack from the Democratic establishment like Dean Acheson.

If you read just a trifle more carefully, I didn't say JFK was in the CFR. Nor did I specify that any president other than Carter was.

I said there was a pattern in candidate selection and party agenda. In the case of Carter, the selection can be related to the CFR.

Edited April 16, 2011 by David Andrews

[Guest Tom Scully]

80 percent of American households own just 12.3 percent of the total private wealth. How much more drastic will this acute imbalance have to reach before the Reagan and Obama mannikin candidates can no longer be effectively marketed as "choices" for voters to enthusiastically support?

How much more acute must the wealth and influence imbalance become before, instead of owning both major party candidates being a major priority of the controlling elite, their priority becomes concern for their own physical safety? Will the growing imbalance be mitigated through political or violent means?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/13/obama/index.html

Wednesday, Apr 13, 2011 09:14 ET

Obama's "bad negotiating" is actually shrewd negotiating

....Obama's most loyal supporters often mock the notion that a President's greatest power is his "bully pulpit," but there's no question that this is true. Reagan was able to transform how Americans perceived numerous political issues because he relentlessly argued for his ideological and especially economic world-view: a rising tide lifts all boats, government is not the solution but is the problem, etc. -- a whole slew of platitudes and slogans that convinced Americans that conservative economic policy was optimal despite how much it undermined their own economic interests. Reagan was "transformational" because he changed conventional wisdom and those premises continue to pervade our political discourse...

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf

(bottom of page 32)

"..it is possible to provide a partial update of the wealth figures to July 1, 2009 based on two notable developments....

...Trends in inequality are also interesting.... The share of the top 1 percent advanced from 34.6 to 37.1 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 61.8 to 65 percent, and that of the top quintile from 85 to 87.7 percent, while that of the second quintile fell from 10.9 to 10 percent, that of the middle quintile from 4 to 3.1 percent, and that of the bottom two quintiles from 0.2 to -0.8 percent. ..the share of households with zero or negative net worth, from 18.6 to 24.1 percent."

Currents and Undercurrents: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth, 1989–2004 http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2006/200613/200613pap.pdf

January 30, 2006

Abstract

This paper considers changes in the distribution of the wealth of U.S. families over the 1989–2004 period using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF)...

page 27

...Ownership shares. For some assets, the distributions of the amounts held are far more disproportionate than the differences in ownership rates. MOST STRIKING is the 62.3 percent share of business assets OWNED BY THE WEALTHIEST 1 percent of the wealth distribution in 2004 (table 11a); the NEXT-WEALTHIEST 4 percent OWNED ANOTHER 22.4 percent of the total. Other key items subject to capital gains also show strong disproportions: THE WEALTHIEST 5 PERCENT OF FAMILIES OWNED 61.9 percent of residential real estate other than principal residences, 71.7 percent of nonresidential real estate, and 65.9 PERCENT OF DIRECTLY- AND INDIRECTLY HELD STOCKS. For bonds, 93.7 PERCENT OF THE TOTAL WERE HELD BY THIS GROUP...."

The political struggle, if it came down to putting in federal office those who would actually represent best the common interests of about 85 percent of American households, vs. electing those who are committed to solely representing the best interests of the wealthiest would be no contest if not for the interference money and influence can wield.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,968896,00.html

TIME - Nov 14, 1988

"Ronald Reagan kept it up with his allusions to "welfare queens" and the " strapping young buck" using food stamps to buy a T-bone steak. ... "

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=DBMRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K-ADAAAAIBAJ&pg=4138,2275149&dq=reagan+linda+taylor.

Eugene Register-Guard - Google News Archive - Feb 9, 1976

"by John Fialka of the Washington Ster

Few people realize it, but Linda Taylor, a 47-year old, Chicago welfare recipient, has become a major campaign issue in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Former California governor Ronald Reagan has referred to her at nearly every stop, using her as part of his "Citizens Press Conference" format. "There's a woman in Chicago," Reagan said last week to an audience in at Gilford. as part of his free-swinging attack on welfare abuses...."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html

In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud

By ERIC LIPTON and IAN URBINA

Published: April 12, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 11 — Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. ...

The Pillar Foundation is a right wing "christian" political organization with tax deductible donation status, founded by Donna Hearne and controlled by her son,

Marc "Thor" Hearne, national treasurer of the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign and since exposed "vote fraud" propagandist in chief. Porter Goss "donated" his mansion to

the Pillar Foundation.....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&q=porter+goss+mother+marc+hearne&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=nw#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aunofficial&source=hp&q=%22the+Pillar+Foundation%22+hearne&aq=&aqi=&aql=f&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=c3bb86640ae08969

....

...A piece of Porter Goss's palatial "held in trust", oceanfront home ends up deeded to a right wing voter fraud propagandist, after Goss deeded it to a "trust":

From the link at the last entry of this comprehensive timeline of the activities of the man rewarded in late 2004,

with a portion of Porter Goss's Sanibel Island home.....)

....The good news: The complaints about references made to GOP vote-suppressor Thor Hearne's now-defunct front group, American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), have resulted in the New York Times dropping the reference to ACVR from yesterday's (May 12, 2008) front-page article, to which we referred yesterday, with no small amount of disgust.

The bad news: The Times didn't bother to note their error (at least not in this online version of the story) as one would expect, as per transparent, journalistic ethics. More disturbingly, nor did they bother to note Hearne's continuing paid-partisan position as the GOP's top "voter fraud" scammer-in-chief, pushing for disenfranchising Photo ID laws around the country, his role in writing the very laws he's quoted discussing, his discredited and debunked ACVR group or their participation revealed at the heart of the U.S. Attorney Purge which pushed out Republican attorneys for not pursuing non-existent cases of "voter fraud" with enough fervor, or even his post as the national general counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. who mislead Congressional members during hearings on these matters in 2005.....

The Lee County, FL land records are freely available online for public inspection. That accessibility changes, one week from

today, when Lee County will begin charging more than $100 for access per three months period:

http://www.gulfreturns.com/2005/11/casa-yucca-sanibel.html

Casa Yucca Sanibel - Gulf Returns

Casa Yucca, the former Sanibel home of CIA Director Porter Goss, is listed for $18.9M. This is currently the highest asking price for a home in SW Florida. ...

http://www.leeclerk.org/OR/showdetails.asp...&ref=search

23 $0.00 AMETHYST REVOCABLE TRUST GOSS PORTER J + MARY R 7/31/1997 Deed O 2851 1380 PAR IN GL3,SEC28-46S-22E 4213979

http://www.leeclerk.org/OR/showdetails.asp...&ref=search

30 $0.00 AMETHYST TRUST HEARNE MARK F THOR II TRUSTEE 12/27/2004 Deed O 4537 3330 PAR IN GL3,28-46S-22E,SANIBEL 6578553

Description of the Goss property in Sanibel, FL

http://www.trulia.com/property/36198627-38...anibel-FL-33957

Link to deed putting the property in trust in 1997, a conveyance to a trust is not a sale:

http://www.leeclerk.org/OR/showdetails.asp...&ref=search

Goss's 1996 Congressional disclosure firm. listing his 3869 W. Gulf Dr., Sanibel, FL address for the last time:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/pfd1996/H8FL13037_96.pdf

Description of the current trustees, Ms. Andrews and Mr. Hearne:

http://www.leepa.org/Scripts/PropertyQuery...olioID=10023546

...After the July. 1997 real estate transaction deeding his Florida residence to Amethyst Revocable Trust, Porter Goss filed all subsequent required disclosure forms, as a congressman, and later as the DCI, listing a Sanible, FL PO Box No. as his address....

All it takes is to persuade an additional 36 percent to identify with and support politics and politicians counter to the best interests of that 36 percent. The most effective ways to accomplish this are to scapegoat the poorest and least powerful, always market two major party frontmen for the office of the presidency who are owned by the elite, if neither of the above work out, remove the offending president, powerful senator or congressman, or leading candidate, from the scene.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/09/17/acorn_hysteria

Thursday, Sep 17, 2009 11:18 ET

The distracting benefits of ACORN hysteria

...it will give new meaning to the term "oligarchy."

So with this massive pillaging of America's economic security and the control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America's intense economic anxiety being directed? To a non-profit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America's poverty line, and which is so powerless in Washington that virtually the entire U.S. Senate just voted to cut off its funding at the first sign of real controversy -- could anyone imagine that happening to a key player in the banking or defense industry?

Apparently, the problem for middle-class and lower-middle-class Americans is not that their taxpayer dollars are going to prop up billionaires, oligarchs and their corrupt industries. It's that America's impoverished -- a group that is growing rapidly -- is getting too much, has too much power and too little accountability. Anonymous Liberal has a superb post on the manipulative inanity of the Fox-generated ACORN "scandal" (h/t D-day):

Let's take a step back and consider just what ACORN is. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower and improve the lives of poor people....

IMO, the murders of JFK and RFK are rare exceptions, because they have so many other effective means to maintain control.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_%28voter_suppression%29#cite_note-4

...Method

Typically what will happen is a party will send out non-forwardable, first class mail to voters or particular voters they want to target (often assumed to be a demographic that belongs to the opposing party). They compile a list of voters for whom mail has been returned as undeliverable. This list is called a caging list. In some cases such mail can be returned at a rate of 1 in every 15 letters sent out; this was shown in Ohio in 2008 when the Board of Elections had 600,000 letters of voter confirmation returned as undeliverable.[3] The party uses caging lists created by themselves or by the Board of Elections to challenge the registration status of voters and potentially purge them from the voting rolls under state laws which allow voters whose registrations are suspect to be challenged....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7422-2004Oct28.html

GOP Challenging Voter Registrations

Civil Rights Groups Accuse Republicans Of Trying to Disenfranchise Minorities

By Jo Becker

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, October 29, 2004; Page A05

....The Republican challenges in Ohio, Wisconsin and other battleground states prompted civil rights and labor unions to sue in U.S. District Court in Newark, saying the GOP is violating a consent decree, issued in the 1980s by Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise and still in effect, that prevents the Republicans from starting "ballot security" programs to prevent voter fraud that target minorities....

....But Republicans denied that they were targeting black voters. Bobby Burchfield, an attorney for the Republican National Committee, told Debevoise that "troubling reports" of fictitious names such as Mary Poppins appearing on Ohio's rolls prompted the challenges.

Debevoise, who scheduled a hearing for Monday, expressed concern that widespread challenges on the fear of fraud could unnecessarily disrupt polling places.

The legal maneuvering is a testament to the legalization of presidential politics that resulted from the bitterly disputed presidential contest in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which deadlocked in Florida. Both parties have embarked on litigation over voting rules in many states and have thousands of lawyers poised for Election Day.

The move in Milwaukee, a heavily minority and Democratic stronghold, is part of a national effort by Republicans in many battleground states to challenge voter registrations. ....

They don't have the number of voters required to guarantee them complete control of the apparatus of government. They fear the have not masses and they must always divide them by demonizing the least wealthy and least powerful, and by disqualifying or discouraging as many of them as possible from voting. If all else fails, there is always the bullet. Reagan, Clinton, and Obama have all worked out in skewing the playing field the way of their monied sponsors, beyond their wildest expectations.

Edited April 16, 2011 by Tom Scully

[Guest Robert Morrow]

David:

JFK was never in the CFR.

ANd as early as 1957 he was getting flack from the Democratic establishment like Dean Acheson.

If you read just a trifle more carefully, I didn't say JFK was in the CFR. Nor did I specify that any president other than Carter was.

I said there was a pattern in candidate selection and party agenda. In the case of Carter, the selection can be related to the CFR.

I reread it. Gotcha.

John Kennedy made a speech one time (I think 1957) in which he said he was a member of the CFR. He also said he read their great magazine Foreign Affairs. JFK was trying to suck up to them. By the early 1960's he was NOT listed as a member of the CFR and was quite at odds with the leadership of the CFR: Rockefellers, the business establishment and the intelligence. CFR is a mix of business, media, academic and intelligence establishments.

The CFR is very important because some of their elite members murdered John Kennedy: Nelson Rockefeller and George Herbert Walker Bush, both CIA both high ranking CFR. When Bush ran for US Senate in Texas in 1964, the CFR flooded his campaign with money against his Republican opponent. Bush was nominated but ended up losing to Ralph Yarborough as the country, in denial and ignorance, rallied around the usurper/murderer, the psychopathic serial killer Lyndon Johnson (who was promising *peace*).

Many, many more members of the CFR/CIA have helped to COVER UP the JFK assassination for 50 years. That has been their forte. Here is one good book to read on the CFR: http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Government-Dan-Smoot/dp/B003XVZMEM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303086346&sr=1-1 It is the "Invisible Government" by Dan Smoot (1962)

Here is another by James Perloff: http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Power-Council-Relations-American/dp/0882791346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303086673&sr=1-1 .. it is "The Shadows of Power."

A VERY important passage from Arthur Schlesinger:

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in his book on the Kennedy presidency, A Thousand Days, wrote that Kennedy was not part of what he called the "New York establishment":

"In particular, he was little acquainted with the New York financial and legal community-- that arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady supply of always orthodox and often able people to Democratic as well as Republican administrations. This community was the heart of the American Establishment. Its household deities were Henry Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders, Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizations, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs."

A special word about the Council on Relations role in the 1963 Coup dEtat and cover up: no other organization has been more responsible for the murder and cover up of John Kennedy than the CFR. Elite CFR members such as Allen Dulles, Nelson Rockefeller, George Herbert Walker Bush and McGeorge Bundy were probably sponsors of the JFK assassination. Certainly leadership CFR members such as Allen Dulles, John J. McCloy, and Gerald Ford played the most critical roles in the Warren Commission farce. Add in cover up roles played by McGeorge Bundy (CFR), Nelson Rockefeller (CFR), Henry Kissinger (CFR), Richard Helms (CFR), William Colby CIA/CFR, Nicholas Katzenbach (CFR), Jack Valenti (CFR), Bill Moyers (CFR), William Coleman (CFR) James Reston NY Times (CFR), Anthony Lewis NY Times (CFR), William F. Buckley (CFR), Walter Cronkite CBS (CFR), Dan Rather CBS (CFR), Peter Jennings ABC (CFR), Daniel Schorr (CFR), Arthur Ochs Sulzberger NY Times (CFR), Kenneth Gilmore Readers Digest (CFR), Stephen Rosenfeld Washington Post (CFR), Bobbie Ray Inman (CFR), Arnold de Borchgrave (CFR), Donald Rumsfeld (CFR), Rupert Murdoch FOX (CFR), John McCain (CFR)… the list is almost endless. Note two things: 1) they are the key establishment players of BOTH major political parties spanning decades 2) their power and influence is directly proportional to the fantastic whoppers they tell about in the 1963 Coup dEtat. For the older CFR members it is a case of PARTICIPATION and COVER UP in the JFK assassination. For the younger ones such as George Will (CFR), Charles Krauthammer (CFR), Bill Kristol (CFR), David Gergen (CFR), John Segenthaler (CFR), Frank Sesno (CFR), Michael Beschloss (CFR), Stephen M. Walt (CFR), Daniel Pipes (CFR), Michael Gerson (CFR) it is a case of WILLFUL IGNORANCE as they still push the Big Lie. Note: Chris Matthews of Hardball, another willfully ignorant man, is close friends with Richard Haass, current president of CFR. I have never seen highly acclaimed political guru Michael Barone, a Bilderberger attendee, ever say anything credible on the JFK assassination.

Question: do we really expect the CFR to admit that some of its elite members slaughtered John Kennedy and many more played integral roles in the cover up? No, but it is important to highlight that the Council on Foreign Relations has stunk up the place with tremendous amounts of radioactive horse manure relating to the 1963 Coup dEtat.

Edited April 18, 2011 by Robert Morrow

[Guest Robert Morrow]

David:

JFK was never in the CFR.

ANd as early as 1957 he was getting flack from the Democratic establishment like Dean Acheson.

Somebody posted on another thread that Bobby Baker said that Averell Harriman was urging John Kennedy to put Lyndon Johnson on the Democratic ticket as Vice President. That is another pillar of not just the Democratic establishment, but the American establishment behind Lyndon Johnson. There was no bigger heavy hitter in business/intelligence/politics than Skull and Bones Averell Harriman. He is up there with John J. McCloy, who used to go dove hunting with Clint Murchison, Sr. in summer 1963.

Harriman, of course, was business partners with Prescott Bush (Skull and Bones), the father of GHW Bush (Skull and Bones) who I think was involved in the JFK assassination. GHW Bush later becomes Director of the CIA, having lied about his past CIA history. Also GHW Bush becomes a director of the Council on Foreign Relations.

GHW Bush has been a big time intelligence player for 50+ years, operating at the highest levels especially in 1963 when he was age 39, yet by then an "old hand" at intelligence.

Forgot to mention, the ultra smart CIA/CFR McGeorge Bundy - yet ANOTHER Skull and Bones, later ran the Ford Foundation, and ALSO involved in the JFK assassination in my opinion.

Remember Allen Dulles goes to LBJ's ranch in late July 1960, just after Lyndon Johnson/Sam Rayburn had made a hostile take-over of the VP spot at the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles.

[Greg Burnham]

Very astute observations, Tom. The logical fallacies that abound in some of the most popular myths are astonishing.