Ronald Reagan: The rise of a great man

After four years of Jimmy Carter, the United States was embattled in the worst economic downturn since the 1930s and the Great Depression. This resulted in a landslide defeat of Carter and his liberal agenda by the greatest Conservative President of all time: Ronald Wilson Reagan.

He was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois. He attended Eureka College and studied economics and sociology. He also played football and acted in school plays. After graduation, he became a radio sports announcer, and in 1937 he became a Hollywood actor when he signed a contract with Warner Brothers. He would go on to star in 53 movies from 1937 to 1957.

Some of the movies he starred in were: Love is on the Air (1937), Dark Victory (1939), Murder in the Air (1940), Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Million Dollar Baby (1941), Bedtime for Bozo (1941),  Kings Row (1942), Desperate Journey (1942), Storm Warning (1951), Hellcats of the Navy (1957), and The Killers (1964).

During WWII he took a break from acting too join the Army Air Force. He was assigned to the film production unit. Here he acted and narrated military training films such as Recognition of the Japanese Zero Fighter (1941) and Beyond the Line of Duty (1942), the latter of which earned an academy award for short film.

With the exception of his time working for the U.S. Military, all his movies were made with Warner Brothers. When his movie roles started to dwindle, he turned to TV, where he hosted General Electric Theater (1953-1962) for eight years on CBS. He retired from acting in 1965.

The Screen Actors Guild is a labor union for actors. He joined this in 1937, became a member of the union's board in 1941, and became president in 1947. He would work to get rid of the influence of Communism on Hollywood. He would step down from this role in 1954.

He was a staunch liberal or Hollywood Democrat. He supported FDR, and actually would later claim that FDR was a great hero to him. He would later become a Kennedy Democrat. In 1962, he switched to the republican party, and would later quip:  "I did not leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me."

What he meant by this was that he was basically opposed to the democratic party's shift to progressive politics. John F. Kennedy was the last Conservative Democrat. When he was assassinated, the Progressive Lyndon Baines Johnson became President, and Democrats became the stalwarts for the Progressive Movement.

During the 1964 Presidential Campaign (on October 27), Reagan made a speech on behalf of the Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater, titled, "A Time Of Choosing. He stressed the importance of a smaller government. He said:

"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."

This speech would set him up nicely for a career in politics, and as a leader of the conservative movement.

California republicans loved his political views and his charisma, and they nominated him to become their nominee for the 1966 campaign. He was elected by a margin of over a million votes over two-term democrat Governor Pat Brown. He would be re-elected in 1970. The party wanted him to run again in 1974, although he chose not to become a three-term Governor.

As governor, he inherited a $200 million deficit. He proposed a 10% across the board tax cut, and this was met with protests by students who claimed that he should "tax the rich." He would end up raising taxes and freezing all hiring of new workers.

In 1967, only six months into his first term, he signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, which was a liberal pro-abortion bill that would make abortion legal in the State of California. The annual abortion rate in California would soar from 518 legal abortions in 1967 to 500,000 in the remaining years of his 8-year term as Governor of California. This would end up being Reagans, "Darkest hour," according to National Review.

Reagan later would claim that abortion was an issue he hadn't given much thought to, so when he was presented with the bill, he didn't think twice about signing it. However, in his defense, abortion at that time wasn't the issue that it is today. In the end, however, Reagan would more than makeup for this, and would ultimately become what many refer as the father of the pro-life movement, according to National Review.

Another thing he was noted for during his campaign for governor was to "clean up the mess at Berkely." He was referring to anti-war and anti-establishment protests at Berkely. During the spring of 1969, he sent the National Guard to Berkeley, where they stayed for 17 days. This established Reagan a peace restoring hero to conservatives, although the left saw him as a trigger-happy cowboy.

In 1970 he won re-election. In 1971, he worked with a democratically controlled California Congress to get a welfare reform program passed. This was generally regarded as a success and established his ability to work with Congress to get his agenda passed.  In 1973, he announced a budget surplus, and gave taxpayers a rebate, showing that his policies were successful at balancing the budget.

In 1975, Reagan decided to run for President of the United States against incumbent Republican Gerald R. Ford. Reagan put up a very good fight and came close to winning. However, in the end, after the establishment fought hard for the establishment candidate, Ford became the republican nominee by a delegate count of 1,187 to Reagan's 1,070. Ford, however, would go on to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Carter inherited a recession that was highlighted by high inflation and high unemployment. Carter decided it was more important to fight inflation than unemployment, so he hired Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Volcker decided to put the economy into an intentional recession by decreasing the money supply and raising interest rates to 15%.

This, coupled with Carter's refusal to cut taxes and regulations, resulted in the worse economic recession since the Great Depression. This, coupled with Carter's incompetent foreign policy that resulted in the Iran Hostage Crisis, set the state up nicely for a Ronald Reagan shot at the White House during the 1980 Presidential election cycle.

References:

1. http://www.shmoop.com/reagan-era/economy.html
2. http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-carterreagan.htm
3. https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/ronaldreagan
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_Theater
5. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/223437/reagans-darkest-hour-paul-kengor-patricia-clark-doerner

Jimmy Carter: A Great Man, terrible president

James Earl Carter Jr., known today as Jimmy Carter, was a stellar human being, but a terrible president. In fact, some marked him as being one of the worse presidents of all time until Barack Obama became President.

Even today, as liberals riot in the streets, and cry on Facebook about the victory of Donald Trump, Carter said that Trump needs our "support and prayers" as he prepares to take the office of President of the United States.

Carter is right: Trump does need our prayers. So this is another testament to how great of a human being Carter really is. What plagued Carter throughout his career in politics was his liberal view on issues.

He ran for President in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial. Gerald R. Ford was the then sitting President, a man who was the only person to become President who was neither elected president nor vice president. After Watergate, and after failure in Vietnam, Ford managed to restore faith in American government.

During the election of 1976, Carter managed to barely defeat Ford. He would then go on to wound the spirit of the nation restored by Ford. This would work to the advantage of the Conservative movement, which was waiting, salivating almost, at a chance to take over the Presidency. Carter was such a failure that Ronald Reagan would defeat him during the election of 1980 in what would become one of the biggest landslide victories in American's glorious history.

He was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, to a peanut farmer. He left Plains to serve as a naval officer for seven years. He then entered state politics in Georgia. In 1966, he ran for Georgia governor and failed. In 1970, he again ran for Georgia governor and this time he succeeded.

In 1980, he was nominated for President by the democrat party. With Water F. Mondale as his running mate, he defeated Gerald Ford by an electoral vote of 297 to 241 and a popular vote of 50.1% to 48%.

It's possible that the only reason he was chosen by the people to be the 39th President of the United States was because of Ford's failures more so than his abilities. That said, he was elected as an outsider to clean up Washington. Here is what happened during the Jimmy Carter Presidency.

1. He had dinner with the Shah of Iran. The Shah was a dictator thug, but he also ran a secular government, supported the United States, supported equality for women, and recognized the Nation of Israel. Carter's visit created animosity between Iranian rebel students and the Shah. Carter then sent a letter to the Shah reminding him of the importance of political rights and freedom. In return, the Shah released 350 fundamentalist prisoners. They were then involved in an Islamic Revolution and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Recognizing the buildup of Islamic Rebel forces, the Shah asked Carter for help, and Carter refused. The U.N. suggested that Carter help the Shah to stop the revolution. Carter's State Department should help the Revolutionaries transition to a new government. Carter took neither advice, and the result was the takeover of Iran by radical Islamist thug dictators that hate the United States, have no respect for women, and refuse to accept Israel as a viable nation. This single foreign policy failure is often cited as spearheading much of the turmoil that has occurred in the Middle East since then.

2.  The Grand Ayatollah took power in February of 1979 and murdered over 20,000 pro-Western Iranians who were held by the Sha as political prisoners. The Sha came to America to seek medical treatment for Cancer, and no sooner had this happened, the revolutionaries stormed the American Embassy and took about 20 American diplomats hostage. This lead to the Iranian Hostage Crisis. In a failed rescue attempt that failed miserably, resulting in 30 soldiers getting killed when their helicopter crashed. The hostages were not released until the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. This may have been one of the main reasons Carter lost in a landslide to Reagan.

3.  Carter's foreign policy failures gave confidence to the Russian leader. Carter signed a treaty with the Russian leader, Leonid Brezhnev, and trusted he would abide by it. Brezhnev then turned around and invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to spread Communism to the area. So, so much for the treaty. Rusian then planned for a communist takeover of Iran and Pakistan. Carter's only response was to boycott the 1980 Olympic games in Russia. Afghanistan soldiers (which included Osama Bin Laden) held their own against the Russians, and this gave them great confidence. So, Carter may also have given rise to the man who would be responsible for the greatest terrorist attack in U.S. history on 9-11-01.

4.  The new government in Iran lead to the Iran-Iraq war. Half a million people died during this war, including thousands of deaths caused by the Chemical weapons of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Saddam would continue to build his military, and this gave him the ability and confidence to attempt a takeover of Kuwait in 1990, leading to U.S. operation to liberate Kuwait from the Iranians, called Desert Storm.

5.  The nation faced an economic crisis that ended up turning into a recession that Ronald Reagan inherited when he defeated Carter in 1980. The crisis involved both a high unemployment rate and a high inflation rate, something that began during the Nixon years, and that Ford had also attempted to remedy and failed.

6.  Carter was a liberal who believed that much of the animosity toward the United States was because we were far too arrogant, and one of the ways to remedy this situation was to slash military spending. This resulted in the Carter administration gutting and weakening the military. Despite the down economy, enlistments in the military were low. People already enlisted in the military were leaving at a rapid rate once their time was up. This and the invasion of Afghanistan caused Carter to reinstated young men between the ages of 18-20 to register for a potential draft (this was known as Selective Service.) When I turned 18 in 1988, I had to go to the Post Office to sign up. It was the law.

7.  So, apparently, he was too trusting. He was also too indecisive. He was also a poor public speaker. He was, however, a very nice guy.

8.  In 1979, he signed the Department of Education Organization Act, which creates the Department of Education. This was done in an attempt to improve education, although what happened is it put eight people who sit on a board the ability to control what kids learn. This 8 member board has been traditionally liberal and made it so public schools became liberal indoctrination centers, more so than places where kids were educated. This resulted in our Education System tanking from the #1 public school system in 1992 to 18th in the world among the 36 industrialized nations. This is despite the Federal Government greatly increasing funds so the U.S. is the 4th leading spender in education by 2016. So, Carter is almost singlehandedly responsible for the decline of our public school system. In 1979, parents and teachers were responsible for what kids learned, and we were #1 in the world.

9.  He was poor at negotiating with Congress, even though both houses has strong democrat majorities. He wisely vetoed bills he believed would cause wasteful spending. Many of these bills would have resulted in pork barrel spending, of which would have resulted in wasteful spending. However, his vetoes angered many establishment democrats, and many were overridden by Congress. Perhaps also souring relations with Congress was his failure to compromise on his ideas. So even though he was a democrat with a democratically controlled Congress, he failed to get many of his campaign promises and ideas through Congress.

10.  He failed to effectively deal with the energy crisis. Oil prices were $10 a barrel during the early 1970s and skyrocketed to $100 a barrel by the late 1970s (adjusted for inflation). This was due in part to the crisis in the middle east that he caused, and also due to Nixon's getting rid of the gold standard.During a 1979 speech, he seemed to scold the American people rather than suggest any policies remedy the energy crisis. He told people that the needed to drive slow, purchase smaller cars, set thermostats lower, and do without Christmas lights. These are things that you never tell Americans because in America we can make anything possible. With oil prices so high, this caused oil companies to raise prices, resulting in gas prices paid at the pump. This worsened inflation.

11. To control oil prices and end stagflation, he hired Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board on July 27, 1979. Volcker raised interest rates to 15%, the highest in U.S. history. He also tightened the money supply, and this forced businesses to lower prices. Higher interest rates resulted in a consumer panic, especially in those who invested in housing, and this resulted in an intentional recession. To offset this, businesses were forced to lower prices. It seemingly worked, although to the disadvantage of the Carter Presidency. Volcker ultimately lowered interest rates in 1982 and flooded the economy with money, but too late for Carter, as he lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan. Some also credit this tactic for the Reagan economic boom that would follow, although I wouldn't go that far.

12. Carter cannot be blamed for stagflation (rising inflation and unemployment at the same time), which began in 1965. He also seemingly inherited a recession, seemingly the same one he handed off to Reagan rather than dealing with himself. He tried to deal with it. He actually had a campaign promise to give $50 to every taxpayer with the hopes they would spend it and stimulate the economy that way. This promise never materialized, and probably wouldn't have done anything anyway. He also wanted to both raise taxes and honed in spending, and those were rejected by the democratically controlled Congress.

13.  Some give him credit for trucking, railroads and airline deregulation, which was signed by Carter in 1978. However, this actually started under Nixon and gained steam under Ford. However, Carter did support the bill. This was supported by consumers and resulted in an improved market. Government regulations on trucking and airlines limited prices and limited what the market could do, particularly on routes. Deregulation gave airline and trucking industry more opportunities to expand, create their own routes, and this resulted in more competition and lower prices. Air Transport Association. Robert Crandall and Jerry Ellig (1997) estimated that airline prices have fallen 44.9%, saving Americans $19.4 billion per year. Due to lower prices, the air travel industry has "exploded" since then, and the number of people traveling has doubled since then. So, airline and trucking deregulation was a definite good that came out of the Carter administration, although some believe that he alone shouldn't get credit. For the sake of this article, I will give him credit.

14.  When most people think of universal healthcare, they think of Obamacare or Romneycare, although these were not the firs efforts to create a government run healthcare system. We have Hillarycare of the early 1990s, and we also have Jimmy Carter's attempt to create a universal healthcare system in 1977. His system even had support from some republicans, although it was ditched by democrat insiders, such as Ted Kennedy. However, some blame this failure on Carter's poor leadership abilities. Thankfully it didn't get anywhere, because Lord knows how badly Obamacare failed. He also had ideas for reforming welfare and lowering hospital costs, although those ideas also failed to gain steam. Of course, in all due fairness, these ideas were forced to take a backseat to his attempts to lower inflation and unemployment.

That Jimmy Carter was a failure as a president cannot go without saying. He is personally responsible for much of the turmoil that occurred in the world since his Presidency. It's amazing vowhat a failure he was, especially given that he had a democratically controlled Congress to work with.

By 1980, many people saw him as a weak leader, and they saw that foreign countries had little respect for the U.S. They were ready for a new leader. He lost in a landslide to Conservative Ronald Reagan.

And, while it's tempting to put Obama as the worse President ever, I have a hard time pulling Carter out of that spot.

References:

• Jimmy Carter, whitehouse.gov, https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/jimmycarter, accessed 11/13/16
• Jimmy Carter, conservatopia, http://www.conservapedia.com/Jimmy_Carter, accessed 11/13/16
• Miller, Paul, "Jimmy Carter Can Only Blame Himself," The American Thinker, http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2007/05/jimmy_carter_can_only_blame_hi.html, accessed 11/13/16
• Randolph, Larry, "Was the USA ever No. 1 in Education?" Historynet, http://www.historynet.com/was-the-usa-ever-no-1-in-education.htm, accessed 11/15/16
• Smith, Fred L, "Airline Deregulation," Library of Economics and Liberty, http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation.html, accessed 11/16/16
• Jimmy Carter on Healthcare, ontheissues.org, http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Jimmy_Carter_Health_Care.htm, accessed 11/16/16
• Myth: Carter ruined economy, Reagan saved it, http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-carterreagan.htm, accessed 11/16/16

Our kids are indoctrinated with propaganda

When we were kids the emphasis was to teach us about the Constitution, the founding fathers, and about American Exceptionalism. We were taught how to think for ourselves. The fear was that if this wasn't taught our children would begin to take their freedoms for granted and join movements like the liberal movement of today.

Now it is not taught, Millennials support wackos like Bernie Sanders, and these wackos think we are the ones who are whacko, brainwashed, and refuse to conform. The reason this happened is by crazy things our kids are taught at indoctrination centers (a.k.a., public schools).

From the founding all the way to 1980, parents and teachers were in charge of what was taught at school. Liberals, in an effort to advance their agenda, wanted to change this. For this reason, Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education (DOE) in 1979.

From 1980 onward, kids were taught what a panel at the DOE decided. Rather than letting parents control what kids were taught, a panel of eight experts, mainly liberal experts, now decide. This would include mainly Millennials.This has many parents and teachers frustrated because they want a say in what kids learn; they want kids to learn English and American history.

They are experts in science, so they think. They believe they are experts in global warming, and they believe that mankind is the cause of it. All told, they have been poorly educated about science. While we were told that theories were theories to be respected, but that's that: they aren't science.

Kids today are told that, since 99% of scientists believe in man-made global warming, then it is a fact. When we were kids were taught that a consensus is not science. So, even if 99% of scientists believe in global warming, that doesn't determine it is or is not true.  Science either is or is not, and it doesn't matter what individual scientists believe. Science is not up to a vote.

Millennials are the product of our public schools, which have been indoctrinating our kids with the liberal agenda since 1979. They are also the product of higher learning, which is also indoctrination centers. They are taught propaganda in terms of what they think is real and what they believe. To them, theories, feelings, beliefs, emotions are real.

They do not read about politics. To them, politics is all emotion. They see someone has a problem, they say something like, "I feel your pain!" Then they create programs that someone else has to pay for." When they don't work, they blame republicans for getting in the way of progress. When they fail, they don't get criticized due to good intentions.

When they see or read that others think differently for them, it is an eye-opening experience. They cannot understand how anyone could vote for Trump, for instance.

For instance, they believe we are destroying the planet. They believe that it might not even be here in 20 years. They believe we are destroying it fast. They believe the polar ice caps are melting. They believe polar bears are living on floating plates of ice. They believe the ozone is disappearing. They are scared to death that this is happening.

Okay, so this is how they continue to vote for people who want to make so many regulations in the name of global warming that the economy sputters. And while the U.S. has a sputtering economy because of it all, China is the beneficiary because they don't buy into the crap science.

Millennials do not have any facts to support their fears and beliefs, to them it's just a fact because it sounds good; it's fact because it's the propaganda they have been taught at public indoctrination centers.

They hate Trump, not because they don't support him on the issues, but because Trump speaks the truth. They have been protected from the truth at the indoctrination centers. They hear Trump's rhetoric, they hear Trump's jokes, and they can't handle it. They are so offended by what they hear, that they haven't even considered the issues.

You ask a Millennial one issue that Trump stands for, and they won't hear your question. They see Trump as racist, homophobe, bigot, etc. That's as far as their minds are allowed to go, as they are not trained in schools how to think for themselves. They are unable to see beyond the rhetoric.

They hate Trump. They hate republicans. And they especially hate conservatives. Anything they are told by the media about Trump, republicans, or conservatives is thought to be the gold standard view. They have a stereotypical view of whatever the media says about republicans. They take it verbatim. They do not question anything unless it's said by conservative news sources.

As Rush Limbaugh said:

"It's really a case study in Pavlov's Dog, in groupthink, in how indoctrination and propaganda actually work. And they think that we are all products of propaganda. They think they're the open-minded thinkers and enlightened ones, highly educated, super-intelligent, very perceptive, lightyears ahead. They have that in common with many young people. But I just picked one story here to give you an example. They're just beside themselves. They thought Trump was a buffoon and they thought everybody else thought Trump was a buffoon.

They thought Trump might get 20% of the vote. They thought Donald Trump was the way he was portrayed on Saturday Night Live. If they wanted to get a dose of Trump, they watched YouTube videos of Saturday Night Live and Alec Baldwin portraying Trump. Likewise, they thought Hillary Clinton was the smartest person in the world, smartest woman in the world, eminently qualified. But the thing is, 95% of Silicon Valley thinks the same way, from the executives on down on down to the employees. 

The reason they think this way is because they are indoctrinated to think a certain a way in schools, and through journalism. They think they are getting the big picture. They think they understand America. When, in reality, they are sheep herded by the indoctrination centers.