The Presidential Daily Brief.

Being a retired intelligence officer, one thing that was drilled into my skull as a lieutenant in the late 80s, Intelligence is for the Commander! As the intelligence officer for a commander, you must insure he gets the information he needs. The goes from the battalion command level (normally the lowest unit that has a staff intelligence officer) to the Commander in Chief.

A few years back I read an excellent book, The President's Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to America's Presidents from Kennedy to Obama. It was an interesting look at how intelligence started to be provided to the president in the post war level. If you want a good look at the pre-war level, I can suggest Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage. A Medal of Honor winner from World War I, a National Guard officer, and lawyer from New York City, he began using his contacts in Europe (his law office had business in multiple nations) and sending FDR updates on the situation on the continent.

Recently I discovered an excellent blog, Lawfare. And wouldn't you know, he has an interview on his podcast with the author of The President's Book of Secrets, Mr. David Priess. You get an explanation on how the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) started, was refined during the JFK administration, and has evolved over the years to fit the user, the president.

One point Mr. Priess makes is then President Obama decided to put on a mandatory forty year declassification on PDBs, and in 2015, there was a conference at the University of Texas on the newly released Kennedy and Johnson reports. and the Nixon/Ford PDBs have been released through the Nixon Library. No word yet on the Carter or Reagan files, but I'm going to keep an eye open!

For intel geeks, enjoy

We have a long way to go back....

I was commissioned in the Army in May 1987 and I entered an army of 16 active duty divisions. My first boss when I was in Korea entered at the end of the Vietnam era, and the Army was in shatters. He told me of some of the Army's issues with gangs and narcotics, and how the barracks were dangerous, "Mike, a staff duty officer did not go into the barracks unless he was armed or had an armed CQ (charge of quarters, basically the guard of a barracks) escort." He lived through the army that went from two million men to 850, 000. Another story was on how he (and other officers) were briefed in the morning at the officer's club that the reductions were over for the time being. "Mike, that afternoon this same man was handing out pink slips."

I wss RIF'ed (Reduction in Force) in 1992, when the Army went from from 850,000 to 550,000. In English, I was let go after the Gulf War, and I entered the reserves, where I served until 2010. But we endured the Clinton years, the time where the dingbat UN Ambassador, Ms. Madeline Halfbright, actually asked then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, "What the purpose of having this great army if we don't use it?" To answer you moron, it's so we never have to use it. If the enemy knows they will get their ass kicked, they don't screw with us.

I've often said, when needing to explain why we have our armed forces, GA Douglas MacArthur said it better than any man in his 1960 address to the United State Military Academy:

...And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars....

There was good and bad about the Bush years, but under no circumstances did I believe he hated the service or our mission. But fast forward to the Obama years and what happened there, I look at it and I want to cry. With every abomination (women on submarines, women in infantry and Ranger school, letting in open homosexuals and requiring military chaplains to perform same sex ceremonies, transsexuals, paying for sex-change surgery, etc), I would openly say "Thank God I'm out!" I've looked at disgust at the contempt the Obamaites held our service men in, the closing of the World War II Memorial for craven political points made me grateful I would not see this from inside. When I saw DoD ordering the Army and Marines to put women in infantry, I was hoping for some pushback from the Army. None that I saw, although the Marine Commandant did stand against it openly. And as I recall, was removed early.

Now in reading this article (and looking at this picture) I'm recalling walking out of a sexual harassment class that was hastily called, annoyed at being spoken to like this. One friend, a retired colonel, was also annoyed. He said, "Mike, I can reduce that wasted hour to two words. Be professional." But that hasn't been a major concern of the Department of Defense lately.

I'll make a few comments on this article at the end.

The Rise and Fall of the US Army

By Ray Starmann

Second Lieutenant Spenser Rapone is a sign of the times.

Spenser Rapone is a tenfold beacon in the night, a thousand blaring klaxons crying out and telling the nation and the world just how far our glorious army has fallen.

Spenser Rapone is a disgrace to the army, to the famous 10th Mountain Division where he is currently assigned and to the United States of America. His continued presence in the US military is a slap in the face to every grunt, tanker, zoomie, swabbie and gyrene that gave their lives for this country.

Rapone literally came out of the gulag last week, when pictures of him surfaced online, which portrayed him at West Point wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and holding his cap with a sign inside that read, ‘communism will win.’

The pictures were only the beginning. We learned Rapone is pro-Antifa, was mentored by an Islamist professor at West Point, supports Black Lives Matter, believes General Mattis is a vile, evil ‘f**K, advocates violence against the US government, was kicked out of the 75th Ranger Regiment as an enlisted man, and is currently serving as a platoon leader in the 10th Mountain Division.

In today’s army, Rapone is a shoo-in for chief of staff.

Apparently, one dinosaur at West Point, representing what used to the ethical standards of the academy and the army as a whole, made a formal complaint about Rapone to the authorities at West Point in 2015.

In a signed statement, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Heffington wrote, “From his various online rantings and posts, it appears that DCT Rapone is an avowed Marxist, which is completely out of line with the values of this nation and its Army. Moreover, CDT Rapone’s posts indicate that he hates West Point, the U.S. Army, and indeed this country. One post dated 16 November 2015 states, ‘F*ck this country and its false freedom.’ He also … even implicitly justifies the actions of ISIS and blames the United States for terrorist attacks.”

Heffington continued, “Never in 18 years has any soldier spoken to me or treated me with such extreme disrespect as CDT Rapone did…His utter contempt for my rank and position as an Army officer was blatantly obvious…”

Both the army and West Point each put out statements last week, parroting the fact that Rapone doesn’t represent the values of the US Army in 2017, yada, yada, yada. Just what are the values of the US Army today and why was nothing done about Rapone at West Point or for that matter, at Fort Drum, his current duty station, where it was apparently common knowledge that Rapone is a militant anti-American communist who wishes to sabotage the US military?

The army says Rapone is under investigation.

Whatever…

Spenser Rapone’s investigation, brought to you by the same US Army that claims a 37 year old mommy made it through Ranger School.

Uh huh…

The mommies of Pointe du Hoc…

Perhaps Major General Scott Miller and his merry men from Fort Stockholm Syndrome, Georgia, are in charge of this cluster as well?

Rapone should immediately lose his security clearance and be given a dishonorable discharge at a minimum.

But, I’m betting my former captain’s railroad tracks that nothing, nada, nichts will be done to Rapone, for the main reason the army is saturated with leftists and new age groupies who think that there’s nothing wrong with this guy’s conduct or beliefs and with feather merchants who don’t have the intestinal fortitude to do what is right.

In the Pentagon, moral courage is absent without leave.

Does anyone in the army have the intestinal fortitude to do a Ron Luciano and give Rapone the Kiwi Express right out on the street where the communist SOB belongs?

The army of 2017 is not the army of Patton, MacArthur, Ridgway, Gavin, Collins, Beckwith, Cavazos, Hackworth, Schwarzkopf, Leide, McCaffrey and Waller.

What kind of army is it in 2017; an army that walks on eggshells, that marches to the beat of the PC drummer, that is so focused on fulfilling some social engineering agenda that it has jettisoned common sense and its mission like an empty fuel pod over the Solomon’s.

Spenser Rapone, Bowe Bergdahl, Chelsea Manning – multiple indicators that the merde has hit the ventilateur, that the army has a major problem and that the lean green machine is decaying by the hour.

The army is in a free fall and the situation is even more dire than those dark days in the early and mid- 1970’s, when the army was reeling from a myriad of problems: a hostile public who never understood the sacrifices made in Southeast Asia and the heroism of its soldiers there; from drug problems, criminals gangs and race riots in the barracks.

The army was broken after Vietnam, but most of its senior leaders were stronger than those today, and they upheld the values of the institution. With the help of young officers and NCO’s who had survived Vietnam, they vowed to rebuild the army and create an all-volunteer, highly-motivated, modern force which, if called upon to fight a war, would go all the way and never look back.

General Fred Franks, who commanded VII Corps in the Gulf War and who lost a leg in Cambodia in 1970, referred to an almost religious devotion among the army’s leadership to rebuild it. Franks called it ‘the hot blue flame that burned brightly.’

After Vietnam, the problems in the army were mainly at the bottom, unlike today, where the army and the military is a fish rotting from its head.

In the 1970’s, under leadership from people like Bill DePuy, Shy Meyer, Donn Starry, Glen Otis and Dick Cavazos the army developed a new doctrine for war known as air land battle, and received new equipment most commonly known as the Big Five: the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley, the Apache, the Blackhawk and the Patriot. The army now had equipment that outclassed most of what the Soviet Army and its Warsaw Pact allies possessed.

Most importantly, the army had a new breed of soldiers; they were volunteers who wanted to serve; they were tough, smart and better paid. Some wanted to make it a career, others wanted to earn enough money to go to college. Some were there for the mere adventure. Under the leadership of Vietnam vet NCO’s; men who knew what went wrong and more importantly, how to insure the mistakes never happened again, the army was reborn.

For 20 years the new US Army trained like a gladiator for its day of reckoning. That day came in 1991, when it destroyed Saddam’s legions in a defeat not seen since Agincourt.

Could the US Army of 2017 win a war like that in 100 Hours?

Not a chance in hell. The army doesn’t have the units, nor does it have the armor and mechanized skills and training anymore, nor does it have the leadership at the top.

General Dick Cavazos used to say the army is filled with killers, fillers and fodder.

It’s safe to say the army’s senior leaders today are mainly fodder.

After Desert Storm, the air was gradually sucked out of the army. By the mid 1990’s many of the men who had helped rebuild it were long gone. Political correctness became the name of the game and good people left the service, attracted to a reduction in force financial incentive and also disgusted by big social changes that were already underway.

A leadership vacuum was created, which left a gigantic gap for leftists, communists and radical feminists to push their agenda on an army that seemed to have lost its mojo.

By the time the Iraq War rolled around, feminists had already pushed women into the air cavalry, into support units that would expose them to danger, into coed basic training at places like Relaxin’ Jackson, while social engineers ensured that sensitivity training and diversity became more important than war fighting.

Any warriors or conservatives still remaining in the army departed sometime during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The army was exhausted from endless rotations to combat zones and led by generals who didn’t hold a candle to those from the past. Even its one general who looked like a bright, shining star, David Petraeus, was found to be lacking in ethics and common sense. Soon, the army would meet its worst enemy, Barack Hussein Obama.

The fall of the US Army went into warp speed during the two Obama administrations. More leftists flooded into the military, intent on destroying the army’s conservative values and replacing them with Hollywood style, Silicon Valley start-up ethics. Aided and abetted by General Martin Dempsey, Secretaries of the Army John McHugh and Eric Fanning, and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, transgenders were initially authorized to serve, women were allowed to serve in the combat arms and special operations, male ROTC cadets paraded around campuses in red high heels, male soldiers were forced to conduct physical training in pregnancy simulators, breastfeeding and lactation memos were sent out to worldwide commands, women were put through Ranger School under false pretenses, the Bible and Constitution were taught in DoD classes as sexist documents and white privilege training was conducted.

The leftist/feminist destruction of the army continues to this day.

As the army suffers from one leftist/feminist assault after another, as the Spenser Rapone’s freely advocate sabotaging the army and nothing is done about it, one begins to wonder what it was all for; what was the purpose of rebuilding the army, creating a spectacular force, only to allow it to be destroyed by people espousing agendas that are anathema to the army and the nation itself?

The Rise and Fall of the US Army is a tragedy beyond description.

The final act in the Rise and Fall of the US Army has yet to be played out. But, it will be on a distant battlefield.

It will be.

Over the Veterans Day weekend I will be with many fellow veterans at the annual Council of Colonels. Last year we were relieve Mrs. Bill Clinton would never be Commander-in-Chief, although many of us had our reservations with Donald Trump. But all of use have family and friends still wearing the uniform, deploying, and having to deal with the destruction of the last eight years. At least last time (Post-Vietnam) the senior staff was not stocked with holdovers from the group that inflicted the damage and are still working to sabotage our mission. Hopefully we can at least start in the right direction with the Trump-Mattis years.

I generally don't have much use for The Atlantic...

And this article is no exception. A possible reasonable look at the post presidential time of Eisenhower, I had hope for this article after reading the first paragraph. I was wrong.

Ike the Winter Soldier

Today, everybody likes Ike. Liberals see Dwight Eisenhower’s foreign policy as a model of strategic restraint. Conservatives view him as a tough but shrewd warrior president. But there’s another side to Ike, one that’s often ignored: The story of his political life after leaving the White House. Ike in winter became a ferocious hawk on Vietnam who helped propel America deeper into the quagmire.

Eisenhower was the son of pacifist Mennonites who fretted about his love of military history. He became a hero of World War II and the architect of D-Day. And Ike also understood the price of war. After becoming president in 1953, he hammered out a truce in the Korean War. In 1954, Eisenhower resisted entreaties to intervene in Vietnam following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Indeed, during the last seven-and-a-half years of Eisenhower’s presidency, only a single American service member was killed by hostile fire (in Lebanon in 1958). Eisenhower famously left the White House in 1961 warning about “the military-industrial complex.”

The author's ignorance is showing. Ike didn't hammer out a truce in Korea. After going to Korea after his inauguration, Ike made it clear to the Chinese and Soviets, through the Swiss, he would use nukes to end the war. He told them he was not going to let this go on forever. And within six months of him becoming president, the war ended. Gee, peace through strength. Who would have thunk it?

Some commentators have seen Obama as a successor. Both presidents entered office in the shadow of a stalemated war; both favored foreign-policy restraint and cool-headed realism. Fareed Zakaria wrote on “Why Barack is Like Ike.” “Eisenhower understood, as Obama surely does,” Jeffrey Frank wrote, “how America’s role can change indelibly in a moment: that sending a single air strike, or soldier or, as happened with later Administrations, thousands of soldiers, binds us to the outcome.”

A straw man is evidence of a weak argument and this is no exception. Mr. Tierney, name one person who compares Ike to B Hussein Obama. Eisenhower was a distinguished man of enormous accomplishments prior to his coming to the presidency in 1953. He was despised by the Republican Establishment who wanted their chosen candidate, Thomas Dewey as the nominee. Back to the threat to use nukes in Korea, no one questioned he would do it. His word was gold. Show me how B Hussein Obama compares in any way to Ike?

These odes to Eisenhower’s foreign-policy judgment always end with his retirement in 1961 to a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. But Eisenhower lived for another eight years. He didn’t retreat from public life and paint pictures of world leaders like George W. Bush, but remained a major figure on the national stage. He enjoyed enormous respect and credibility as a war hero, the Republican Party’s elder statesman, and after 1964, one of only two ex-presidents still alive (the other being Harry Truman). Lyndon Johnson relied heavily on the counsel of a man who knew the burdens of office....

Ike was a accomplished leader, diplomat and president who's term was eight years of peace and prosperity. He was a leader in the end of "separate by equal" with the 1956 Civil Rights Act and the forced integration of Little Rock school. B Hussein years have been an economic disaster with multi-trillion dollar deficits, deliberate exploitation of racial tensions, the destruction of American influence and power around the world. Oh, Ike carried 39 states and 55 percent of the vote in 1952, 41 states and 57 percent in 1956. Sorry, we like Ike.

Oh, B Hussein Obama has no plans on leaving D.C. Will you have issues with that sir?

After all these years I still like Ike

I've often got into debates with conservatives and liberals alike over the administration of Dwight D Eisenhower. I have great admiration of him as a general and as a President, even though some on my side of the aisle say "all he did was play golf".

Let's see.

1. Led the country through a post war boom. Granted America was in a position to dominate the world economically because the destruction of Europe and Asia after WWII, but he kept up going.

2. Ended the Korean War. Unlike the current occupant of the White House no one questioned the word of Ike. After visiting Korea he let the Chinese and North Koreans know he would use nuclear weapons to end the war and no one doubted he would. The result, a cease fire months into his administration.

3. What many people drive on daily, the Interstate Highway System was his dream. It's properly called The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. A major named Eisenhower had to get a convoy across the US in 1939 and the lack of connected roadways cause this simple act to take two weeks. After seeing the Autobahns in Germany he envisioned a similar network for the US. And think how that transformed this nation's economy and society for the better.

4. Ike started the integration of the southern schools including federalizing the Arkansas National Guard in direct opposition of the Democratic governor there.

5. Kept the peace while a maniac was pounding his shoe at the UN. I would say this could be enough but damed, don't you remember fondly when America had the adults in the room.

That's off the top of my head. Oh, he did this while having two heart attacks and quitting a four pack a day smoking habit cold turkey. Hey Barrack, try that.

Now we can look at the statue being put up for the man. From this Sunday's New York Puke:

The concept monument

The Greatness of Ike

By ROSS DOUTHAT

THIS year, two decisions will be made with long-term implications for how we think about the presidency. In November, voters will decide whether to give Barack Obama a second term in office. And sometime before then, the National Capital Planning Commission will decide whether to go forward with Frank Gehry’s plan for a Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.

The Gehry design is, well, Gehry-esque: it reimagines the traditional monumental form, using huge metal screens to depict the landscape of Eisenhower’s Kansan childhood while devoting far less space to his accomplishments in World War II and the White House. (The only significant statue will portray Eisenhower as a barefoot boy, rather than a war leader or president.)

The design has been widely criticized — by the Eisenhower family, by architectural traditionalists and by right-of-center columnists like George Will and David Frum. Some of the critiques are purely aesthetic, but the most important ones are substantive: as planned, the critics argue, the memorial sells the supreme allied commander’s greatness short.

What’s interesting, though, is that by emphasizing Eisenhower’s ordinariness rather than his heroism, Gehry is arguably being conventional rather than radical. As conceived, his memorial would ratify Eisenhower’s current place in our national memory, not revise it.

Gehry’s vision, as The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott writes, implies that while “Eisenhower was a great man ... there were other Eisenhowers right behind him, other men who could have done what he did.” Far from being a bold reimagining, this is a near-perfect summary of the way many Americans already regard their 34th president.

Sorry but Adlai Stevenson could not hold a hankie to Ike. Yes, there were many capable men out there qualified to hold the office. But at the time there was no one as seasoned, trained, experienced and knowledgable as Ike to lead the nation in the post war years.

...But he is not nearly as beloved as many of his midcentury contemporaries. He’s overshadowed as a war leader both by F.D.R. and by his many colorful subordinates, and his two-term presidency has attracted little of the posthumous enthusiasm that made his “give ’em hell” predecessor a folk hero and his martyred successor an icon.

In a 2011 Gallup poll on the greatest president, Eisenhower came in a lame 12th, in a tie with Jimmy Carter. He performs solidly in scholarly surveys, but he’s frequently ranked behind his prominent 20th-century rivals.

I don’t know the details on this poll but I wonder if these were the same morons who put Obama in the top ten. Ike definitely belongs there. Obama belongs at the other

...ultimately Eisenhower is underrated because his White House leadership didn’t fit the template of “greatness” that too many Americans pine for from their presidents. He was not a man for grand projects, bold crusades or world-historical gambles. There was no “Ike revolution” in American politics, no Eisen-mania among activists and intellectuals, no Eisenhower realignment.

Instead, his greatness was manifested in the crises he defused and the mistakes he did not make. He did not create unaffordable entitlement programs, embrace implausible economic theories, or hand on unsustainable deficits to his successors. He ended a stalemated conflict in Korea, kept America out of war in Southeast Asia, and avoided the kind of nuclear brinkmanship that his feckless successor stumbled into. He did not allow a series of Middle Eastern crises to draw American into an Iraq-style intervention. He did not risk his presidency with third-rate burglaries or sexual adventurism. He was decisive when necessary, but his successes — prosperity, peace, steady progress on civil rights — were just as often the fruit of strategic caution and masterly inaction....

Again an ability to act when needed, the judgement to not go when not needed and the wisdom to know the difference.

I visited the Eisenhower Center in 1986 and the impression you get (like the Truman Library and the Reagan Center) is how a simple man from America’s heartland can being himself up to the leadership of the greatest nation on earth.

RIP Ike...when you were needed you always were there for this country. Now hopefully your country builds a worthy monument to you.

If B Hussein Obama was a Republican

Again, we're just waiting for Jay Leno or Andrea Mitchell to get to asking questions...I won't hold my breath.

John Hawkins  

6 Things The Mainstream Media Would Say About Obama If He Were A Republican

... two separate sets of rules shape how politicians behave, how they're perceived, and the issues that they spend most of their time talking about. In Barack Obama's case, the media would be focusing on an entirely different set of issues if he were a Republican.

1) This guy is way too stupid to be President of the United States! Poor Dan Quayle was forever branded as stupid for misspelling the word potato. It's not often noted, however, that the card that he was given by the school had misspelled the word. Then there's Obama, the man who stammers without a teleprompter, the guy who won't release his college records. How does Quayle's gaffe compare to Obama thinking there are 57 states? Duhr! How about Obama walking into a window at the White House? Duhr, duhr! What about signing a guest book 2008 in 2011? Duhr, duhr, duhr! Obama's stupidity would be a staple of late night talk show jokes if he were a Republican.

2) Obama's an amateurish cowboy who's wrecking our image around the world! Obama has made Jimmy Carter look like a foreign policy mastermind since he got into the White House. Sure, he gets credit for getting Osama Bin Laden. When the military walked up to Obama and said, "We know where Bin Laden is. Can we go get him?" he made the "gutsy call" to say "yes."

COMMENT:  He made the "gutsy call" after sitting on it for sixteen hours.  Yea, that was real gutsy.

3) Obama's going to bankrupt the country by giving our money to his corporate cronies! Remember when the media talked about the size of the deficit all the time? Remember when we heard about Halliburton and Blackwater on a daily basis? Oh, yes, that was when we had a Republican President. Now we've got the most wasteful spender in the history of our country in the White House, we're in danger of going bankrupt, and tens of billions in tax dollars have been transferred to corporations that have given money to the Democratic Party...

4) He's the job-killing, gas-price-raising, economy-wrecking President! Can you imagine the stories we'd see every day if a Republican were President? We'd have daily stories on the people left homeless by the “Obamaconomy,” human interest stories about single mothers who can't feed their kids anymore, and we'd hear from experts every day about how Obama is killing jobs, raising costs at the pump, and destroying the economy with his policies. Remember how the press used to slip a reference to George Bush speaking in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner into every story about Iraq?...

5) Obama's not an authentic black man. Black conservatives have their "blackness" challenged all the time, often by privileged white liberals who don't know any black people other than the ones who clean their mansions. If Barack Obama were a Republican, he'd be called an Oreo, a half-white house slave, and a white man pretending to be black. On the upside for the Clintons, Democrats would still be calling Bill Clinton the first (and only) black President.

6) He's an arrogant jerk who cares about no one but himself! Vacation, golf, shooting hoops -- the fun never stops for Barack Obama. It would be great if the rest of us could take that much time off, but our jobs keep us too busy. It's also fantastic that Obama finally went to Joplin, Missouri. If you're wondering why it took so long, well, they didn't have a golf course cleared until now...

Any other points that are not being discussed by CNN?

Patti Reagan, err Davis really makes her Old Man proud....

It’s funny that objective journalist like Joy Behar (hey, she’s no worse than Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, Helen Thomas, George Stephanopoulos, etc) want insight to Ronald Reagan they go to such great sources as...Patti Davis.

Here is the former Patti Reagan on Ms Behar’s show from a few days ago.

Reagan's Daughter: Sarah Palin Is "Nothing Like My Father"

Ronald Reagan's rebellious daughter Patti Davis, known for posing in Playboy magazine, had some choice words for Sarah Palin in her Tuesday evening interview on Headline News' "Joy Behar Show."

After insulting her father as "Saint Ronnie Reagan," Behar asked Davis what she thinks about people who are compared to her father.

"Sarah Palin is nothing like my father. And actually none -- neither is Michele Bachmann, but particularly Sarah Palin is not," Patti Davis said. "My father didn't take a gun at every four-legged creature that came near him. I think that alone would elicit his disapproval of her, her slaughter of wolves and pretty much slaughter of anything with four legs and comes by her."

Well Patti, I don’t recall Ms Palin shooting every “four legged creature” she comes in touch with. She has dogs and she hasn’t shot ever moose in Alaska so that statement is off the reservation. But in case you didn’t know your dad was a governor, a Republican, pro-life, for limited government, for tax cuts, believed the money people eared was theirs, not Washington’s, went to an unknown school. I think the former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin shares those believes and experiences.

Also, my memory was of leftists like you Patti not really caring for RR while he was in office. You may remember Tip O’Neil called your Dad “an amiable dunce”. Tell me Pati, did that offend you or that idiot brother of yours little Ron? Now I have no doubt your old man let O’Neil’s comment wash off his back, like you being “pro-choice” or being part of the nuclear freeze movement. But I’ll bet you really hurt him by your accusations of your mother (you remember her, Nancy Reagan, the love of his life) being physical abusive and you calling your dad “distant and aloof.” Or the grandist insult I can think of, changing you name from Reagan to Davis. Gee, you really make you dad proud there Patti.

Also, as I only subscribe to Playboy for the articles, I should hopefully miss seeing you...

Somewhere up there some men are puking

You can hear George Patton "...God help me I love it so...a kinetic military action!"

Doug MacArthur in front of the Congress "Kinetic military action's very purpose is...is...exit strategy...'

In Steven Ambrose's excellent bio of Eisenhower one thing he mentioned was before Ike would approve anything he would ask the briefing officer "OK, what next....then what...what happens after that..." A man who commanded three major invasions and oversaw the greatest amphibious operation in history knew by training and experience things must be thought through. The man child that now sits in the Oval Office chair...well....

White House: Libya fight is not war, it's 'kinetic military action' | Byron York | Beltway Confidential | Washington Examiner

In the last few days, Obama administration officials have frequently faced the question: Is the fighting in Libya a war? From military officers to White House spokesmen up to the president himself, the answer is no. But that leaves the question: What is it?

In a briefing on board Air Force One Wednesday, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes took a crack at an answer. "I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone," Rhodes said. "Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end."

Rhodes' words echoed a description by national security adviser Tom Donilon in a briefing with reporters two weeks ago as the administration contemplated action in Libya. "Military steps -- and they can be kinetic and non-kinetic, obviously the full range -- are not the only method by which we and the international community are pressuring Gadhafi," Donilon said.

Rhodes and Donilon are by no means alone. "Kinetic" is heard in a lot of descriptions of what's going on in Libya. "As we are successful in suppressing the [Libyan] air defenses, the level of kinetic activity should decline," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a meeting with reporters in Moscow Tuesday. In a briefing with reporters the same day from on board the USS Mount Whitney, Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn, said, "The coalition brings together a wide array of capabilities that allow us to minimize the collateral damage when we have to take kinetic operations." On Monday, General Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command, said of the coalition forces, "We possess certainly a very significant kinetic capability." And unnamed sources use it too. "In terms of the heavy kinetic portion of this military action, the president envisions it as lasting days, not weeks," an unnamed senior official told CNN Saturday.

"Kinetic" is a word that's been used around the Pentagon for many years to distinguish between actions like dropping bombs, launching cruise missiles or shooting people and newer forms of non-violent fighting like cyber-warfare. At times, it also appears to mean just taking action. In a 2002 article in Slate, Timothy Noah noted a passage from Bob Woodward's book, Bush at War:

For many days the war cabinet had been dancing around the basic question: how long could they wait after September 11 before the U.S. started going "kinetic," as they often termed it, against al Qaeda in a visible way?

Now, White House officials are referring to the war in Libya not as a war but as a "kinetic military action." As common as "kinetic" might be among those in government, it still seems likely to strike members of the public as a euphemism that allows the Obama administration to describe a war as something other than a war.

What has happened to the halls once walked by Ike, Marshall, Truman, FDR, Reagan and dare I say it Bush. Only things that worries these people is not victory (a four letter word in Obamaland) but putting women on subs, making more minorities generals and getting gays in the open. I am glad I'm no longer in...and God help the republic.

Ronald Wilson Reagan

This is the 100th anniversary of his birth and everyone else is giving their view on the man and his time, so here is mind. I don’t lie and say I’m objective like Katie and the rest of the children. I’m a conservative and that inclines me to his views. More than that I’m a free thinking man and anyone who thinks cannot be objective. Thinking gives rises to judgments which are the cornerstone of opinion.

I was 15 years old when the former governor of California has elected president in 1980 and I have to say I was a little uneasy. He had only one real job in the government (governor of our largest state) and I thought you had to be a long term government nerd to be successful at the biggest government job there was. Like the typical 15 year old, I knew everything.

But by the end of his first term I was a 19 year old and proudly cast my first vote in a presidential election for Reagan in his 49 state landslides (and he came within 8000 votes of taking Mondale’s Minnesota). And to the greatest degree since I’ve been voting that was a vote for the man and what he was…and represented.

I remember growing up during the Reagan years and America coming out of its shell from the social unrest in the 60s followed by the double disasters of Vietnam and Watergate. I really recall an idiot, err intellectual saying the presidency had become too big for one man to handle and we should have both a president and a prime minister. Like many an over educated moron I’ve seen over the years he was wrong. The job didn’t become too big…the men in the job were too small. Reagan handled it with time to spare.

I recall how many of the elite in this country smear Reagan and calling him an idiot, non thinking, uninformed. One of my favorite movies is Airplane and a scene has a woman in obvious pain from spoiled food. Her description, “I haven’t felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film.” The movie was released on July 2nd 1980…having fun at the man’s expense as he is heading to the Republican nomination as the Democrats were in a nose dive behind a failed president.



However an excellent book is Reagan in His Own Words, that hand written notes he used for his weekly speeches on radio during his eight years in office. Reading them you see an intelligent man, not necessarily educated but well rounded and experienced. To say the least an opposite of the current occupant of the White House who needs two Teleprompters to address elementary school students…and unlike B Hussein Obama, Reagan could take being shot at, figuratively and literally.

But more to the point, Reagan was well educated by a life spent mainly in the private sector and seeing America as he was travelling the country for General Electric (and damned he must be sick seeing what has become of that once great American company). He met Mr and Mrs America, saw their real issues, worries, desires and beliefs as a minor actor. Not as a politician seeking office. And in those travels in the 50s and 60s Reagan saw the beginnings of the encroaching federal government and the overbearing 4th branch of it, the bureaucracy.

One of the points made in his first inaugural speech was the federal government did not create the states but the states created the federal government to handle specific items (e.g national defense) and “outside of those legitimate functions, government does nothing better than the private sector…” Therefore he went into getting taxes cut, the bureaucracy curtailed and project American power which he knew was for good (unlike many on the left who see American expansion and power as nothing but the personification of evil in the world). And ain’t it refreshing to see a politician who says “This is what I will do” and then does it.

The results. Millions in new jobs, a rebuilt military, an economy restored, inflation tamed, interest rates down, a nation’s faith re-established, billions in revenue into the treasury, actual progress in arms control (reduction instead of limitation with authentication…”trust but verify”), the Soviet empire on its dying breath.

Billions in new debt…oh well, can’t win it all.

One thing that shows the difference between him and other occupants of the White House was the support he gave our allies (such as England in her dispute with Argentina over the Falklands) or the political support he gave the Poles after during the Solidarity uprising or the support he gave the Afghanistan resistant against the Soviet’s invaded. Compare that to recent uprisings against oppressive regimes (Iranian students, Liu Xiaobo in China, Tea Party in the US ;<) ) and the support (or lack thereof) from our current government. To borrow a phrase attributed to Peter Jennings, “Well some presidents do it well and some don’t.” I’m not calling this man perfect. His failure to secure the border first while giving amnesty to over three million illegal aliens in the Immigration bill was a blunder. Again, trusting Congress to give him three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar of tax reduction is beyond naïve. Not vetoing more spending was a disappointment. The Social Security Reform of Act of 1983 was not reform but just kicking the can down the road to actual reform, private accounts. However all in all we were light years ahead as a country in 1989 than in 1981. Sometimes I wonder about my failures…then I look at Jimmy Carter and I say “Hey, I’m ok.” I recall June 5th 2005. I was heading to work at 100pm and on the radio was a news broadcast that the health of the former president had taken a turn for the worse. Being 93 I knew the end was likely near. After going on duty at 200pm I was listening to the Cigar Dave Show and then dispatched to an auto accident. After arriving I spoke with the drivers for a few minutes then returned to my car. Instead of General Cigar Dave, it was Dan Rather talking about Reagan. I knew he was gone. And for the first of many times that week, I unashamedly wept. The following Sunday I was heading into work and as I turned onto the interstate I saw dozens of American flags at half staff. The visual that stayed with me. How to wrap it up? As anyone who’s seen this blog knows I love STRATFOR.COM. I was one of the first addicts to the site over ten years ago and in an email to its Vice President I mentioned how they were better than some of the drug pushers I know. They got all the Intel weenies like me hooked when it was free and then started to charge. He loved the email so much he comped me for six months. But back in June 04 I thought they did a great farewell to the man. So I’ll just let it stand on its own.

Geopolitical Diary: Wednesday, June 9, 2004

Ronald Reagan’s body arrived in Washington today. The “Geopolitical Diary” would not be complete if it did not note his passing. The very least that can be said is that he presided over the United States while the Soviet empire imploded. The very most that can be said is that his policies caused the Soviet Union to collapse. The truth probably rests between those two poles.

Geopolitical events, like great economic processes, are never in the control of one man, and rarely are the result of conscious policies. People argue that the Soviet Union was driven to ruin by the American arms race and that Reagan knew this would happen. The fact is the Soviet Union was moving toward ruin because of an unsustainable social system and because of serious geographical problems. Its agriculture and its rivers never matched up. Moreover, it is not clear that the arms buildup — which was begun by Jimmy Carter, not Reagan — was intended to undermine the Soviets. It was meant simply to counter the Soviets. The idea that it was intended to cripple the Soviet Union was introduced after the fact.

We can debate Reagan’s role in the fall of the Soviet Union forever. What cannot be disputed is this: He believed the Soviet Union was going to collapse, and he believed it would happen within his lifetime. He believed this at a time when almost no one else believed it. He was ridiculed for his simplistic thinking, silly generalizations and lack of sophistication by serious thinkers and policy makers all over the world. But the fact is that the cowboy was absolutely right in his reading of history — and the world-renowned scholars were wrong. We know of no major Soviet expert in or out of government who was prepared to argue in 1980 that the Soviet Union would not survive the century. Reagan did argue that. He was laughed at. He was right.

In order to study geopolitics, scholarship is useful — but imagination is essential. When we think back over the 20th century, it is extraordinary how radically the world changed every 20 years or so. Think of the difference between 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980 and 2000. Hardly any sober scholar at any of these points could have imagined the nature of the world 20 years hence. Scholars tend to think in linear terms — 2020 will be like 2000, only more so. In fact, if history holds true, 2020 will be extraordinarily different from what any of us imagine now. The modern world, on this level, is a world of discontinuities.

It is difficult to see the forest when you are counting trees, and scholars and experts are disciplined in tree counting. Reagan was not. He called himself a “big picture man” and was ridiculed for it, with people claiming he was out of touch with reality. Perhaps, but the empirical fact is this: He was right when all of the people who saw themselves as intimately in touch with reality were wrong. The scholars and specialists were arguing that the United States must reach a broad détente with the Soviet Union because, like it or not, we shared a small planet. Reagan said living with the “evil empire” was unnecessary because it was going to collapse.

In our business, there is one measure of success: being right. Reagan was right on the most important issue of the second half of the 20th century. Some might say he just got lucky, but, frankly, we don’t buy that. He was right because he reduced the problem to its essence. He looked at the Soviet Union as a poorly functioning empire and argued that the Soviet system was going to lose control of that empire. His argument was simple, but it was not simplistic. That is what his critics always missed: Geopolitical analysis must be simple; it must identify the essential force and ignore the secondary and tertiary forces. The underlying engine of a historical epoch must be identified. Specialists create models that include too many variables — and come up with the answer that the situation is too complicated to predict what will happen, and will probably never change. Reagan reduced the problem to its essence and correctly identified the trajectory.

We tend to confuse the terms “intellectual” and “intelligent.” An intellectual is a person who makes his living dealing in ideas. He is learned by profession. He could also be a moron. There is no guarantee that an intellectual is intelligent. At the same time, there are people who are enormously intelligent, but not at all intellectual. They do not make their living working with ideas. They are not learned. But their unencumbered intelligence can sometimes see the future more clearly than someone who is encumbered by complex ideas that their intelligence can’t sort through.

Reagan was no intellectual. That allowed him to see things that intellectuals could not see. He was ridiculed savagely in his time. He was called a cowboy, ready to involve the United States in dangerous, even nuclear wars. He was accused of ignoring the sophisticated advice of European allies. He was accused of using simplistic moralizing and silly analogies to analyze the Cold War. There was little he was not accused of. But in the end he was right about the course history would take — and his critics were wrong.

In the intelligence racket, the pay is low, the hours long and respect hard to find. There is one compensatory pleasure: the ability to say, on occasion, “I told you so.” As Reagan is buried, let us all pause and say on his behalf to the Council on Foreign Relations, retired European diplomats and the entire faculty of Harvard University: “He told you so.”

Rest In Peace Mr President…the world is much better for you being here.

Security Weekly- Congressional Security and the Tucson Shooting January 13, 2011

By Fred Burton and Sean Noonan

Following the Jan. 8 shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Federal District Judge John McCarthy Roll and 17 others in Tucson, Arizona, discussion has focused on the motivations and ideology of the accused shooter, Jared Loughner. While it was important to make a quick assessment of Loughner’s profile in order to evaluate the possibility of an organized threat, all the available evidence (though not conclusive) indicates that he acted alone.

For the most part, discussion of the event has not touched on a re-evaluation of security for members of Congress. STRATFOR has previously analyzed the issues surrounding presidential security, and while there are common concerns in protecting all branches of government, Congress and the judiciary involve much larger numbers of people — 535 representatives and senators and more than 3,000 federal judges. And members of Congress put a high priority on public accessibility, which makes them more vulnerable.

A common mindset of politicians and their staffers is that better security will limit their accessibility and thus hinder their ability to do their job (and win elections). In fact, there are a number of measures that members of Congress and other public officials can institute for better security without limiting accessibility. While staying in a secure facility would be the safest, it isn’t a realistic option. What is realistic — and effective — is the prudent employment of protective intelligence as well as some measure of physical protection on the move.

A Look at the Threat

While there have been approximately 20 assassination attempts against U.S. presidents, four of which were successful, attacks on members of Congress and local judges are much more rare. There have been only five recorded attempts against members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including the attack on Gabrielle Giffords. And two of those five attacks resulted from disputes between representatives (one of which was a duel in 1838). But there are also many more threats voiced against public officials, which should never be ignored. The majority are issued by what we call lone wolves — individuals acting on their own rather than with a group.

Communication and preparation among a group of people increases the chance of security services discovering and even infiltrating a terrorist plot, but the one-man wolf pack is much less penetrable. Their plans are made alone, they train themselves and they provide their own resources, all of which means they carry out the phases of the terrorist attack cycle with very minimal exposure to outsiders — including authorities trying to prevent such plots from maturing.

The other side to lone wolves is that they often have more intent than capability. Loughner did not have the proper training or experience, for example, to carry out a major bombing or to breach a well-defended perimeter (what we call a hard target). Instead, he relied on a tactic that STRATFOR believes U.S. targets are most vulnerable to: the armed assault. Guns, and the training to use them, are readily available in the United States. The last successful armed attack carried out with political motivations occurred at Fort Hood, proving the devastating effect one man armed with a pistol can have, particularly when armed first responders are not at the scene. Many VIPs will travel in armored cars, avoid or carefully control public appearances and hire security in order to minimize the risk posed by gunmen. Members of Congress, on the other hand, are readily recognizable and often publicly available. No public official can be completely guaranteed personal security, but a great deal can be done to manage and mitigate threats, whether they are posed by lone wolves or organized groups.

Protecting Public Officials

While individual attackers may be able to do much of their preparation in private, their attacks — like all attacks — are most vulnerable during pre-operational surveillance. This makes countersurveillance the first step in a protective intelligence program. Most victims of a street crime, whether it’s pick-pocketing or attempted murder, report that they notice their attackers before the attack occurs. Indeed, individual situational awareness can do a lot to identify threats before they become immediately dangerous.

In the case of the Giffords attack, Jared Loughner was already known by the congresswoman’s campaign staff. He had come to a previous “Congress on Your Corner” event in 2007 and asked an odd question about semantics. Loughner’s presence at one of Giffords’ public appearances before, and possibly others, left him vulnerable to identification by anyone practicing protective intelligence. The problem here was that Loughner, as far as we know, was not acting illegally, only suspiciously. However, trained countersurveillance personnel can recognize suspicious behavior that may become a direct and immediate threat. They can also disguise themselves within a crowd rather than appear as overt security, which can bring them much closer to potential perpetrators.

Analysis is the second part of protective intelligence, and anyone analyzing Giffords’ security would note that serious threats were present over the last two years. In August 2009, an unknown person dropped a gun that had been concealed in his pants pocket during a town hall meeting Giffords was holding with constituents. It is unclear who the man was and whether he represented a real threat or just accidentally dropped a gun he was legally carrying, but the incident raised concern about her security. Then on March 22, her congressional office in Tucson was vandalized after a heated debate over the U.S. health care bill, which Giffords voted to support. Giffords was not the only member of Congress to confront violence last year. At least nine other lawmakers faced death threats or vandalism the week after the health care bill passed, including Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia. An unknown individual cut a gas line for a propane tank, presumably to cause an explosion, at Perriello’s brother’s house believing it was the congressman’s residence. All 10 of the lawmakers were offered increased protection by U.S. Capitol Police, but it was not maintained. The multitude of these threats in the 2010 campaign warranted a re-evaluation of Congressional security, specifically for Giffords and the nine others who experienced violence or faced potential violence.

While the vandalism and dropped gun have not been attributed to Loughner, and the Jan. 8 shooting appears to have been his first violent action, further investigation of his past could have provided clues to his intentions. After the shooting, his friends said they had noticed his hatred for Giffords, his classmates said they had observed his increasingly odd behavior and police and campus security said they had been called to deal with him on numerous occasions (for reasons that are currently unclear). Prior to the shooting, disparate bits of information from different people would not likely have been analyzed as a whole, but any one of these observed activities could have warranted further investigation by law enforcement and security agencies. Indeed, some were brought to their attention. On Dec. 13, Loughner wrote on his MySpace page “I’m ready to kill a police officer!” Tucson police or the Pima County Sheriff’s office may have investigated this threat as well as others. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said there had already been law enforcement contacts with Loughner in which “he made threats to kill.”

Protection Responsibilities

The underlying story here is that threats to public officials are often apparent before an attack is made, and proactive protective intelligence can identify and address these threats. But what agency is currently responsible for protecting U.S. public officials?

A little known fact is that the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) is the agency in charge of safeguarding congressional officials not only inside the perimeter of the Capitol grounds, which includes the House and Senate office buildings and the Library of Congress, but also when those officials are traveling. The USCP has its own protection division to do just what we describe above — analyze and investigate threats against members of Congress. Based on threat assessments, this division can assign teams for countersurveillance and security whenever and wherever a representative or senator travels. The USCP is also responsible for liaison with local law enforcement in order to ensure some level of security even when there is no identifiable threat.

In the case of any scheduled public appearance, protocol should require congressional staff members to notify the USCP, whose liaison unit will then alert local law enforcement, including city, county and state police, depending on the event. At this point, we don’t know why there was no police presence at Giffords’ event on Jan. 8. It appears that the event was announced the day before, according to a press release on her website. The Pima County Sheriff’s office has said it was not given prior notification of the event.

In the case of federal judges like John McCarthy Roll, the U.S. Marshals Service has responsibilities similar to those of the USCP. In fact, federal marshals were assigned to Judge Roll for a month in 2010 after he received death threats. It appears that his presence at the Congress on Your Corner was not scheduled, and thus we assume he was not targeted by Loughner. Had both Giffords and Roll planned to be at the same event, the participation of two recently threatened public officials would also have warranted a security presence at the event.
Security and Democracy

While the U.S. president has a large, well-resourced and highly capable security service and private sector VIPs have the option of limiting contact with the public, members of Congress are somewhere in the middle. Like a presidential candidate, they want to have as much public contact as possible in order to garner support. They are also representing small, and thus very personal, districts where a local presence is seen as a cornerstone of representative democracy. Historically, in fact, the U.S. president actually received very little protection until the threat became evident in successful assassinations. Those traumatic events led the public to accept that the president should be less accessible to the public, protected by the U.S. Secret Service (which was created in 1865 originally to deal with counterfeit currency).

Still, American democratic tradition dictates that members of Congress must maintain a sincere trust in the people they represent. Thus the current reaction of many in the U.S. Congress who say they will not change their activities, not add protective details and not reassess their security precautions.

The concerns of becoming less accessible to the public are not unreasonable, but accessibility is not incompatible with security. We need not think of a security detail being a scrum of uniformed police officers surrounding a public official. Instead, plainclothes protective intelligence teams assigned to countersurveillance as well as physical protection can be interspersed within crowds and positioned at key vantage points, looking for threatening individuals. They are invisible to the untrained eye and do not hinder a politician’s contact with the public. Moreover, a minimal police presence can deter attackers or make them more identifiable as they become nervous and they can stop individual attackers after the first shots are fired.

The assumed tradeoff between accessibility and security is in some ways a false dichotomy. There will always be inherent dangers for public officials in an uncontrolled environment, but instituting a protective intelligence program, with the aid of the USCP or other law enforcement agencies, can seriously mitigate those dangers.

This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR

PolitiZoid - Money for Nothing

Thank you Tamara at View from the Porch....and you're right, this is great!

Thank You Mr Justice Kennedy

Bad news for Obama: Conservative Justice Kennedy tells pals he's in no rush to leave Supreme Court
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

...Justice Kennedy, who turns 74 this month, has told relatives and friends he plans to stay on the high court for at least three more years - through the end of Obama's first term, sources said.

That means Kennedy will be around to provide a fifth vote for the court's conservative bloc through the 2012 presidential election. If Obama loses, Kennedy could retire and expect a Republican President to choose a conservative justice.

Kennedy, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, has been on the court 22 years. He has become a bit of a political nemesis at the White House for his increasing tendency to side with the court's four rock-ribbed conservative justices.

.With the retirement of fellow Stanford graduate Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, Kennedy has inherited O'Connor's mantle as the court's swing vote.
...His voting pattern suggests he's actually become a far more reliable vote for the conservatives.

No, he has matured and become more worldly.... :) Hopefully B Hussein Obama sees no more SCOTUS appointments...

Presidential ratings

OK, another summer, another listing of the presidents.

Siena College (I don't hear much about them, do you?) surveyed over 200 college professors for their opinions of the presidents. The authors of the study looked at

...:six personal attributes(background, imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck and willingness to take risks), five forms of ability (compromising, executive, leadership, communication and overall) and eight areas of accomplishment including economic, other domestic affairs, working with Congress and their party, appointing supreme court justices and members of the executive branch, avoiding mistakes and foreign policy.

I wonder what genius selected the areas to look at in this survey. Luck, compromising ability, working with Congress, appointing Supreme Court justices and executive branch members. Tell me professors, seeing you have little real world experience how does "compromising ability" and "appointing Supreme Court justices" show leadership and judgement. That crap about compromise reminds me of a real leader, Lady Thatcher, when she said "Consensus is the absence of leadership."

Now like any "objective" listing they will have "balance". For most listings that will mean 98% leftist/socialist, 1% avowed communist and one token McCain like moderate conservative to be balanced. Who are the top five and other highlights:

2010
1, F. Roosevelt
2. T. Roosevelt
3. Lincoln
4. Washington
5. Jefferson

OK, let me get this straight. Lincoln and Washington below Teddy Roosevelt. I'll call TR a great president but sorry man, but he doesn't belong in the breath of Lincoln or Washington. Both those men kept this country in one piece when it was ready to rip apart, none so badly as during Lincoln's (IMHO he is Number One) term. Hey professors, read a book on the Civil War. You might find that Lincoln had a challenge or two.

Now here are the some of the fun facts these geniuses show us with their rankings:

The current president, Barack Obama, while highly rated on imagination (6th), communication ability (7th) and intelligence (8th) scores poorly on background (family, education and experience) and enters the survey in the 15th position.

Imagination and communication ability...excuse me. Get this man-child away from a teleprompter he sounds like he needs his mommy to walk him to school. Intelligence? He's not qualified to run a cash register at a 7-11 but he thinks he can run our major industries.

George W. Bush, had entered the survey at 23rd when the study was lastconducted one year into his first term. Today, just one year after leaving office, the former president has found himself in the bottom five at 39th rated especially poorly in handling the economy, communication,ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence.

I have more than a few issues with George W Bush as president (overspending like a drunk Democrat, No Child Left Behind, the attempt at amnesty for illegal aliens) and I voted for him twice. But he showed great leadership after 9-11, lead this country through two wars and oversaw a major expansion of the economy. Putting him below Jimmy "Malaise" Carter says enough about this survey. On the subject of Jimmy:

Jimmy Carter, despite continuing visibility and philanthropic efforts, dropped from 25th in 2002 to 32nd in 2010. Carter’s high suit is his enviable integrity rating (7th) but he draws low marks for his handling of the economy, relationship with Congress, party leadership, luck, executive and leadership abilities and his failure to avoid crucial mistakes.

OK Doc, just one question. How would "continuing visibility and philanthropic efforts" affect his ranking as president at all? What you idiots should be looking at is what the man did during his time in office. Jimmy all in all was a disaster. I used to call him a Model Former President but he had become a bitter old man knowing his time in officer is looked back upon with contempt. He joins the ranks of Ex-Presidents who were just nightmares for this country...Obama is hopefully soon to join him.

Lyndon Johnson, rated number one for his relationship with Congress, fell one place from 15th to 16th, and John Kennedy climbed three spots from 14th to 11th. Kennedy continues to be highly regarded for his communication (4th), ability to compromise (6th), executive appointments (6th), imagination (7th) and his handling of the U.S. economy (7th).

LBJ, who is IMHO the worse man to ever occupy the office, drops a slot but still number one for ability to work with Congress. Pardon me while I puke. His ability to work lead to the death of over 58000 men (their names are on a wall in Washington DC) and he raided the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for his Great Society. In case you don’t know this docs that is why there is no money there. JFK was great on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the economy but overall his foreign policy was poor. A minor question professors you may want to ask is why was JFK in Dallas that morning. Because this great president was not a shoo in for the nomination and even LBJ couldn’t guarantee Texas would not abandon the ticket.

If you want a more balanced and better look at the presidents I recommend Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House which came out in 2005. Unlike most rating schemes, it was actually balanced. It had 49 liberal professors and 49 conservative professors which gives you a more balanced view of our chief executives, not the leftist garbage that normally comes out from the fauty ivory towers.