07/9/16

A Manufactured Divide Ends In, ‘I Want to Kill White People’

By: Frank Salvato

The racial divide in this country, as it exists today, is completely manufactured. It is manufactured by the political and activist class, and for reasons symbiotic to one another.

Politicians need to divide our nation so as to pit demographic against demographic; in order to create political party “battle lines.” This is how they create an “us against them” scenario. True Statesmen and public servants seek to better the nation in ways that are good for all of the population, not just a sympathetic demographic. That does not exist in our country today. True government of and for the people is dead.

Activists – mostly products of the victimhood and grievance class – need to divide to define special interest demographics, again to pit “us against them.” It is how they attain power and influence, as well as wealth for their “movements.” This is serious wealth. One need only look at the personal trappings of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton to understand this.

Are there bad cops? Yes. Are there good cops that make bad decisions? Yes. But these are anomalies, not the status quote as the fraudulent #BlackLiveMatter movement, race-baiters and the Obama Administration would have you believe.

As a former first-responder I can tell you that even in the most remote locations, each day a man or woman puts on a badge to go to work, they simply want to do their jobs and come home to their families and friends. There is no other agenda than that. It is a goal. And sometimes, as in Dallas, that goal goes unachieved.

The manufactured racial divide now instituted in our nation is starting to take lives; it is fomenting in acts of domestic terrorism. At this point, the militants taking the shots are Black militants. They are targeting law enforcement and the first-responder community. It is perverted.

The fear among the situationally aware is that other intellectually stunted or militantly activist people and/or organizations that are not Black will be moved to retaliate. Many who are of the mind that a “race war” was by design; conceived and facilitated by Progressives attempting to maintain power through the chaos of “national emergency” will assume vindication at this possibility.

But this fear can only become a reality if thinking Americans – which are the overwhelming majority of our people – abandon the color blind society that we created for ourselves through the pain and growth of the 1960s and 1970s. If we do not give into the divisiveness of fear, they cannot achieve their goal of dividing America for purposes of maintaining power and fundamental transformation.

In this specific case, the catalyst for the carnage was not that a Dallas Police Officer shot a Black man. It was not that access to a “gun” caused this crisis. It was that a group of Black men whose minds had been poisoned to a manufactured racial divide pulled the triggers – repeatedly – to assassinate five police officers; wounding many more.

It was the persons, not the weapons. It was the opportunistic politics, not the society.

It is up to We the People to work through this. The Obama Administration is not on our side where this is concerned, nor is the media hacks or the ascribing punditry.

And as we do work though this, let’s all remember one thing: Those men and women who are wearing the badges, even as falsely motivated militants target them for assassination, they just want to make it past the end of their shift, doing the jobs that others fear to do, to achieve their goal of going home.

My condolences to the families, friends and brothers and sisters of the badge who have been touched by this senseless and unnecessary event.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining internal and external threats facing our country. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

02/14/16

The US Senate Must Hold the Line

By Frank Salvato

With the passing of US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia we stand at a very sober moment for our nation, a moment that finds the US Constitution – and the idea of constitutionality in general – in a very fragile state. With the make-up of the US Supreme Court existing on a razor’s edge between the conflicting ideologies of Progressivism (which views the Constitution as malleable) and Constitutionalism (which sees the document at a limitation on government) what happens in the next months will serve to chart the course for our country. The two paths couldn’t be more different: one a pathway to national demise.

I am want to recall a passage from a speech that Ronald Reagan gave in 1964:

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

Today, with the passing of Justice Scalia, the Republican and Conservative members of the United States Senate have met up with their own “rendezvous with destiny.” They will soon be presented with a nominee to the US Supreme Court from President Obama, a Far-Left Progressive who has already seated two political activists to the Court. It will be the Senate’s duty – not their option, but their duty – to deny Mr. Obama another Progressive seat on the US Supreme Court.

Progressives by their very nature believe that the US Constitution is a flawed document; something to be improved, perfected and otherwise titrated to the needs of the times. That is anathema to what the Framers intended and history bears that out. The Framers intended for the US Constitution to be the “chains” that binds government to the service of the nation, not the service to the ideological and/or the few.

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02/8/16

And the Progressives Laughed

By: Frank Salvato

Whether you believe that there were nefarious motives behind the advancement of inaccurate information about the Carson campaign by Cruz ground operatives in Iowa or not, one thing is certain, true and undeniable. The leading candidates for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States are feeding on each other. By doing so, they have effectively created an “emotional division” between the voters of the Right. To prove this out all one has to do is spend some time on social media threads related to the topic. Phrases like “Cruz haters,” “Carson’s a whiner” and “Trump is an idiot” are myriad. So, too, is the Conservative rank-and-file’s sudden acceptance of CNN as a credible, non-biased news source.

This election cycle the best that the Democrats can offer is a throwback hippie Socialist and the most disingenuous and opportunistic politician in recent history. The prospects of one of these improbably political creatures reaching the White House relies exclusively on the Republicans finding a way to shoot themselves in the foot; damaging each other so extensively in the primaries that the bleeding continues into the General Election. On the heels of eight years of Progressive rule and their disastrous policies for our economy and national security; in light of myriad scandals and a possible indictment hounding the DNC frontrunner, Republicans should have been able to nominate a potato chip and won in November.

Enter the politics of division. Enter opportunistic political tactics ala the Chicago machine. Enter the type of politics that each and every one of the Republican candidates says they abhor; that each says they will excommunicate from the lexicon of American politics should they be elected to the presidency.

And the Progressives and Democrats, their jaws on the ground, laughed in astonishment. Republicans and Conservatives fell for it again.

There was a reason that Ronald Reagan advanced the idea of the “Eleventh Commandment.” This political edict, originally attributed to California Republican Party Chairman Gaylord Parkinson, stated: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

This is what is so incredibly frustrating for aware rank-and-file Republicans. For all the homage that Republicans – candidates, operative and voters – pay to the Reagan Legacy, one point they routinely ignore, and perhaps the most important, especially in presidential primary politics – is the Eleventh Commandment.

Today, as I write this, the top four candidates for the Republican nomination are not talking about their policies, ideologies or agendas; they are talking about personalities, intra-party political tactics and playing the victim/blame game while dividing the electorate on the Right side of the aisle. As Bernie Sanders continues to make inroads with intellectually vacuous voters, and Hillary Clinton continues to spin in an attempt to escape her self-imposed death spiral, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson are ensnared in the media web, finding themselves fodder for the “pundocracy” and the “all hail the ratings” 24/7 news cycle. It conjures up images of the tribute talk show in The Hunger Games.

And the Progressives and Democrats are looking at each other, scratching their heads, and asking, “Are they really doing this?”

Today, as I write this, supporters of Cruz, Trump, Rubio and Carson, are engaged in heated debates – some caustically overt – with their Conservative brethren. While Carson supporters seek validation in their complaint that assumptive information was issued by CNN and then super-charged and advanced by political operatives unfriendly to the Carson campaign, Cruz supporters abdicate any and all responsibility for their camp’s actions, instead citing the original CNN report as the culprit. Trump and his followers are screaming “fraud” and Rubio supporters – the flames fanned by Karl Rove – are wondering if the numbers would have been different if the episode never would have occurred. In the end, all of this has fomented discontent and created a divide among the Conservative and Republican electorate.

Additionally, and perhaps most disturbing, is that all of this is occurring over a report from CNN, not the most friendly to Conservatives and Republicans, and certainly a news outlet which has been embarrassed by inaccurate reporting in the past. From the Boston bombing to previous presidential elections, CNN isn’t the benchmark for breaking news accuracy. Yet today’s driving forces in Conservative and Republican politics run with CNN’s reporting without verifying the information as fact? Really? Any credible (read: successful) political campaign establishes backchannel communications with opposition campaigns to verify just such things. It’s “Politics 101.”

Meanwhile the Progressives and Democrats sit back in amazement at how fickle Republicans and Conservatives are; that they would dispose of Reagan’s edict to wallow in mire that is the cable news rating game; that rank-and-file Republicans and Conservatives would turn on each other like jackals to insist they their version of events it the truth and the only truth and anything else is a lie.

Here are two facts that cannot be denied; facts that will serve to reunite the Right after this embarrassing turn of events:

Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were elected to the Senate as TEA Party nominees. They are both constitutional conservatives and they both believe in limited government and the many necessary reforms.

Ben Carson, not too long ago, was courted by the entirety of the Right to run for office because he had the intestinal fortitude to standup to Pres. Obama in public and to his face.

It is time that each candidate comes clean to the public about their trip-up into status quo politics; that they rededicate themselves to the idea that “business as usual” politics is bad for the country. It is also time for each candidate’s supporters to stop demonizing those who don’t agree with them – especially on this issue – as “haters” and “whiners” (we are, after all, on the same side in the end).

It is time to start talking about the issues, policies and agendas each candidate will bring to a presidency. It is time to start running against the DNC’s prospective nominees – one a Socialist and one on the verge of indictment. It is time to verify facts before we espouse them as truths.

It is time to save our country from ruin. And we can’t do that if we are at each other’s throats.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

10/25/15

Remembering Hillary Clinton

By Frank Salvato

This article is adapted from a popular social media post afforded by Kaye Ellen Rish, with permission.

In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Committee testimony, it is prudent – especially with a generation of voters having no direct memories of Bill Clinton’s presidency – to recall Mrs. Clinton’s time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Truth be told, when her “public service” is put into context, one has to wonder how anyone could support her for the highest office in the land.

It is of importance to note; before we get into the incredible events and decisions Hillary Clinton was charged with during her husband’s administration, that she once served as a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment team that investigated Watergate. Her former boss, Jerry Zeifman, a Democrat who served as counsel and chief of staff for the House Judiciary Committee, said of Mrs. Clinton, “[She]…engaged in a variety of self-serving, unethical practices in violation of House rules.” Additionally, her office space partner at the time, John Labovitz, is quoted as saying to Zeifman that he was dismayed with, “…her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel…” Mrs. Clinton’s termination from this role has been rumored to have centered on this unethical and criminal behavior, but the fact are murky, as with everything Clinton. What we do know is that Zeifman said, “Let me put it this way: I terminated her…and advised her that I would not – could not – recommend her for any further positions.”

When Bill Clinton first became President, he charged Hillary with assuming authority over advancing a healthcare reform initiative. This initiative son became widely referred to as HillaryCare. But even after threats, arm-twisting and intimidation, she couldn’t achieve a vote for the measure, and in a Democrat controlled Congress. This fiasco resulted in a cost to the American taxpayers of approximately $13 million for studies, promotion, and other efforts.

Then President Clinton gave Hillary authority over selecting a female Attorney General. Mrs. Clinton’s first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood. Both of Mrs. Clinton’s nominations for the post were forced to withdraw their names from consideration. Baird was entangled in Nannygate, where it was discovered that she and her husband employed illegal immigrants from Peru as house workers and chauffeurs and failing to withhold Social Security taxes for their workers. Wood withdrew her name in the aftermath of Nannygate because she, too, had employed an undocumented worker, although she had withheld the required taxes in doing so.

Next Mrs. Clinton advanced the nomination of Janet Reno. President Bill Clinton would later recall that Reno was the “worst mistake” of his presidency. Some may not recall that Reno made the decision to attack the compound of David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas, resulting in dozens of deaths of women and children. So, too, she presided over the forced extraction of Elián González to Cuba.

President Clinton then tasked Hillary to make recommendations for seating a new head for the Civil Rights Commission. Her choice was Lani Guanier, a civil rights activist, Harvard law professor and racial ideologist. When Guanier’s radical racial ideology started to emerge, many of the Clinton’s supporters in the world of politick started to get cold feet about her nomination. Racial politics was not in play as it is under the Obama Administration. And when that opposition grew to include Democrat stalwarts like Edward Kennedy and Joe Biden, Guanier’s name had to be withdrawn from consideration.

Apparently a slow learner, or a husband fearful of his spouse’s reprisals, President Clinton again allowed Hillary to make more recommendations.

At the President’s direction, Hillary chose former law partners Web Hubbell for the post of US Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department, and Vince Foster for the position of Deputy White House Counsel. Her selections went well. Hubbell went to prison for his part in the Whitewater Scandal that, oddly enough, existed all around Hillary Clinton but never “touched” her. Hubbel plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of tax fraud in connection with his legal billing at the Rose Law Firm. On June 28, 1995, he was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment. Foster, also a partner at the Rose Law Firm, presumably committed suicide due to a bout with severe depression. It was widely known that he was incredibly unhappy with the politics he was required to perform for the Clintons.

Many of today’s younger votes have no knowledge of any of these goings on. They have no memory of how the news media ran interference for the Clintons at every turn and how most of the scandals laid at the feet of Bill Clinton had a genesis in Hillary Clinton. Travelgate was another of these issues but this one was laid at Hillary’s own feet.

In Travelgate:

“[T]he incoming Clinton administration had heard reports of irregularities in the Travel Office and possible kickbacks to an office employee from a charter air company. They looked at a review by KPMG Peat Marwick which discovered that Dale kept an off-book ledger, had $18,000 of unaccounted-for checks, and kept chaotic office records. White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty and the White House Counsels thus decided to fire the Travel Office staff and reorganize it.”

In actuality, Hillary was found to have wanted to award unfettered travel contracts to Clinton family friend and Hollywood producer Harry Thomason – husband of Linda Bloodworth Thomason (also a Hollywood producer) – who had established the TRM travel company. The Clintons had been TRM’s only client, utilizing their service during the presidential campaign; the principles having had ties to the Clintons all the way back to Arkansas. When White House Travel Office staff refused to comply with Hillary’s request, the President (read: Hillary) pressured President Clinton’s Chief of Staff Matt McLarty, into firing the entirety of the Travel Office staff. She then managed to have an FBI investigation launched into the record keeping of that office. Suspiciously, the records were in such disarray that no definitive conclusion arrived. The termination of the Travel Office staff ruined their reputations, cost them their jobs, and caused a thirty-six month investigation. Only one employee, Billy Dale was charged with a crime, and that of mixing personal and White House funds. A jury acquitted him of any crime in less than two hours.

Still not convinced that her actions were always based in political opportunity and the personal enrichment for her friends – or henpecked into appeasement, President Clinton enlisted Hillary to recommend another Clinton Family friend, Craig Livingstone, for the position of Director of White House Security. Livingstone was the central figure in Filegate, where he was discovered to have illegally accessed approximately 900 FBI background reports concerning White House employees from previous Republican administrations, including top presidential advisors, and what has now come to be known as the Clinton enemies list. It is said that in the aftermath of this scandal the FBI closed its White House Liaison Office.

When myriad women started coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual acts perpetrated at the hands of Bill Clinton – both during his time as Governor of Arkansas and as President of the United States, Hillary was tasked to take the leading in responding to the “#$%$ eruption,” coordinating the Clintons official defense to the scandal. Some of her more notable decisions in the matter:

She urged her husband not to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit. After the Starr investigation they settled with Ms. Jones;
She refused to release the Whitewater documents, which led to the appointment of Ken Starr as Special Prosecutor, resulting in over $80 million dollars of taxpayer being spent on the investigation;
Her resistance to Starr’s investigation led to Monica Lewinsky, which led to Bill lying about and later admitting his affairs.

Hillary’s politically-based and disingenuous game plan resulted in President Clinton losing his license to practice law for perjuring himself; for “lying under oath” to a grand jury, and to his subsequent and successful impeachment by the House of Representatives. And just as during her appearances before the House Committee tasked with investigating the assassination of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his security contingent in Benghazi – at least for the most part, Hillary avoided culpability and charges of perjury and obstruction of justice during the Starr investigation by deflecting; by repeating, “I do not recall,” “I have no recollection,” and “I don’t know” a total of 56 times while under oath.

In addition to Mrs. Clintons actions while a resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, after leaving the White House, Hillary was forced to return an estimated $200,000 in White House furniture, china, and artwork that she had stolen.

Now Mrs. Clinton’s actions advance to the level of criminality in the destruction of government property (emails destroyed while Secretary of State), the illegal mishandling of classified and top secret information (emails disseminated via unsecured and personal email accounts and servers while Secretary of State) and the “pay to play” schemes that Mrs. Clinton hatched for the Clinton Foundation that were facilitated through her position as Secretary of State. Is it any wonder the American people have placed zero trust in this woman; in this family; in this circle of political operatives? We have no idea what shoe will fall next! But, thanks to her sycophantic followers, existing indifferent to political corruption in government, we are presented with the question this election cycle: “What difference does it make?”

The walk-away from all of this is that we – we the American people: Conservative and Liberal; Republican and Democrat – know Mrs. Clinton is dishonest, self-promoting, power-hungry, politically opportune and untrustworthy. The only question that remains is this. Are Progressives that indifferent to honesty and truth; that loathsome of a government that serves the people rather than politicians, that they would continue to support such a dishonest and nefarious person? We will find out in November of 2016.

09/18/15

The Scariest Thing Obama Has Proposed to Date

By: Frank Salvato

Few people understand how President Barack Obama has succeeded in pushing through initiatives, programs and legislation that are distinctly unpopular with the total of the American population. To that end, few people understand how such a divisive incumbent president achieved re-election. Common sense would have that if a majority of people stood against a program, initiative or legislation – or a candidate for that matter – that success in achieving a positive result would be scant, if not impossible. But, as we have come to understand – almost seven years after the fact, Barack Obama and the Progressive machine do not play by a traditional set of rules. Instead, they play by a set of rules that are foreign and unintelligible to mainstream America and, especially, the tone-deaf Republican establishment.

Progressives have long understood the importance of not only the potency of “the message” but the need to control the message. They have become masters at crafting and controlling the framing of issues, and advancing talking points sympathetic to their cause. For many decades this consisted of touching Mr. and Ms. America in one of two vulnerable places, or both: the heart and/or the wallet. If a Progressive candidate, spin doctor or political operative could use a narrative to touch the voters’ hearts, making them sympathetic and/or angry to the allegory then they had succeeded – most of the time – in their call to action, in the political sense, to vote. Likewise, if they could demonstrate, via rhetorical example, how an opponent’s policy, legislation or platform would adversely affect their individual wallets the outcome was almost always in their favor. The truth seldom mattered. The end justified the means.

Today, Progressives have upped the ante to such a level that opponents – Republicans, Independents and Libertarians – stand nary a chance in the political areana if they continue to operate their campaign and political outreach structures in the manner of politics past. Progressives have combined the core strength of their “crusade culture” with cutting edge 21st Century technology, to create a campaign apparatus so potent that even today’s popular anti-politician anger might not be enough to defeat it.

On Tuesday, September 15, 2015, the President Obama signed an Executive Order that constitutes the most frightening political move since President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court. Outside of the sphere of government, Mr. Obama and his Progressive machine have authorized the government to conduct behavioral science experiments on the American people for purely political purposes.

Chuck Ross from TheDailyCaller.com reports:

“President Obama announced a new executive order on Tuesday which authorizes federal agencies to conduct behavioral experiments on US citizens in order to advance government initiatives.

“‘A growing body of evidence demonstrates that behavioral science insights – research findings from fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them – can be used to design government policies to better serve the American people,’ reads the executive order, released on Tuesday…

“The initiative draws on research from University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard law school professor Cass Sunstein, who was also dubbed Obama’s regulatory czar. The two behavioral scientists argued in their 2008 book ‘Nudge’ that government policies can be designed in a way that ‘nudges’ citizens towards certain behaviors and choices.”

As brazen and jaw-dropping as that sounds, this is simply an overt continuation of what was developed at the Analyst Institute in the run-up to the 2012 election; an organization quietly formed in 2007 by AFL-CIO officials and Progressive allies, which sought to establish a set of “best practices” for interacting with voters. Their creation: the Catalyst.

As Sasha Issenberg, author of The Victory Lab, integral in the creation of the catalyst, described in 2010:

“Before the 2006 Michigan gubernatorial primary, three political scientists isolated a group of voters and mailed them copies of their voting histories, listing the elections in which they participated and those they missed. Included were their neighbors’ voting histories, too, along with a warning: after the polls closed, everyone would get an updated set.

“After the primary, the academics examined the voter rolls and were startled by the potency of peer pressure as a motivational tool. The mailer was 10 times better at turning nonvoters into voters than the typical piece of pre-election mail whose effectiveness has ever been measured…”

The application of this technology-based strategy is a matter for the history books. The Obama campaign used it in 2012 and defied the odds in achieving Mr. Obama’s re-election despite a dedicated opposition and myriad policy failures that would have seen any other candidate defeated.

In the FOX News investigative series Prying Eyes, Peter Boyer explains:

“To nearly half of America…election night came as a shock. With a terrible economy at home and new dangers abroad, President Obama seemed so beatable. But Romney didn’t know what Obama knew. Obama’s team had used the advantages of incumbency, time and money, to create something new in politics…

“Sasha Issenberg literally wrote to book on this new science of campaigning that Obama mastered. By harnessing data – like your TV viewing habits, your social media network, your voting history – the Obama campaign made a virtual profile of every single persuadable voter in the country. Then, with experiments borrowed from behavioral psychology, they targeted people with personalized messages and coaxed them to the polls.”

And we know it worked.

Now Mr. Obama has delivered the Progressive psychological stratagem of “nudge” from the shadows, and, with the power of an Executive Order, has overtly sanctioned its application by government onto the electorate for what he describes as designing “government policies to better serve the American people.” The problem with this is this. Progressives have already demonstrated they cannot be trusted to use this technology for the purposes of serving the country. In fact, because they have already used this technology to coerce people into supporting the initiatives and candidates that they want; that they believe are good for the country, they have proven to be nefarious in their intent.

Imagine using behavioral psychology coupled with the Catalyst to individually target people; to individually pressure people into accepting Progressive policies, initiatives and programs, like amnesty for illegal immigrants, or support for Planned Parenthood, Obamacare or the Iran nuclear agreement. Imagine them using this technology to coerce people into supporting Common Core or the acceptance of another trillion-dollar “stimulus.” The examples of how this stratagem can be misused and abused are myriad. And Mr, Obama and his Progressive Machine have already proved they will use it to advance their line of thinking…exclusively.

Meanwhile, Republican leadership – still self-important in believing themselves intellectually superior to the Progressive political machine – advance their campaigns and candidates; champion their causes still worried about whether or not they have enough yard signs and generic mail-outs, tone-deaf to the fact that their campaign apparatus has been laid to waste by a technological advancement straight out of Orwell’s 1984.

In 1984, Orwell wrote of “doublespeak,” a language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words, making the truth sound more palatable. Mr. Obama’s government sanctioned unleashing of the Progressive psychological stratagem of “nudge” – the marriage of behavioral psychology and the Catalyst initiative – onto the American people will make the diabolical nature of “doublespeak” the thing of parlor games. Progressive oligarchic elites will decide what is best for the people; for the nation, and “nudge” those reluctant to automatically acquiesce into compliance.

And everyone in the New United States will comply.

09/11/15

5,113 Days After the Falling Man of September 11, 2001

By: Frank Salvato

It has been 5,113 days since the al Qaeda attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and the failed third assault that was intercepted into a farm field in Shanksville, Pennsylviania, by American patriots. To borrow a phrase from a past generation that certainly applies to this event, it is a day that will live in infamy. But few would believe where our country is today given the events of that fateful day. Today Americans stand viciously divided in our politics as a society that rationalizes Islamofascist aggression (and, in the case of Iran, facilitates it), even as we harbor ideological factions that stand in protest of our law enforcement officers. We have moved away from the cohesive and united front we embraced shoulder-to-shoulder at the smoking pile of rubble that was the remnants of the World Trade Center; the tomb that holds so many souls.

Today, as we face the fourteenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, the United States government has radically shifted from the sworn obligation to confront and exterminate violent Islamofascism wherever it exists, to a tolerant acquiescence of co-existence with a culture dedicated opposing that state. Today, 3,115 days after 2,977 people were slaughtered by Islamofascists, the Islamic State is on the march, spreading its oppressive and murderous dogma of Islamofascism across the Middle East and Africa, even as its influence reaches the shores around the world, extending into our homes right here in the United States. Al Qaeda has a state of the art “inspirational” magazine for the discerning jihadi. And the United States, under President Barack Obama and the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hilary Clinton, stands not only sympathetic to the Iranian mullahs, but have purposefully facilitated their path to a nuclear weapon.

Today, just 74,760-some hours after the first jetliner sliced through the North Tower, and on a day that would claim the lives of 71 law enforcement officers and 343 firefighters would lose their lives in the line of duty, the racists and supremacists of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement – a violent and intolerant ideological faction spurred on by those who benefit from divisive and race-based politics – march in the streets bastardizing statistics and calling for violence against police officers and first responders. The very people who were hailed as heroes for their courage and selfless acts fourteen years ago are, today the target of vile protestations, lies and vilification.

These societal maladies are but two that exists in today’s United States, maladies born of selfish, ideological politics and a population that refuses to engage in the hard work of casting aside the special interest rhetoric of opportunistic skullduggery or even supporting those who fight daily to dilute the madness.

In all the wrong that exists today, and suffering the wickedness of the dividers, the political opportunists, the Islamofascists and the ideological zealots, we – the American people – must reach deep down into our souls to find the courage and the dedication to come together; to re-attain the brotherhood we shared on that fateful day fourteen years ago; 3,115 days ago; 74,760-some hours ago, that we can not only measure up to what we should be as Americans, but so that we can become what we need to be so that our Republic can survive; so that we can confront and defeat the things that divide us; so that we can achieve e pluribus unum.

Each September 11th, I remember – purposefully – Jonathan Briley, the “falling man” of September 11, 2001. I penned a piece titled, “Feeling the Pain of the Falling Man of September 11th” on the first anniversary of the attacks. Since then it has been updated to address current circumstances. I ask you – I implore you – to remember the pain you felt on September 11, 2001; to feel the loss and the immediate kinship you felt for being American and being in the cross-hairs. I implore you (and invite you) to remember Jonathan Briley:

Feeling the Pain of the Falling Man of September 11th: Redux

Everyone remembers the horrifying images of September 11, 2001. Anyone alive and aware on that date will live with those images the rest of their life. The scenes of havoc and panic, destruction and slaughter, demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though the United States military is the best trained and well equipped in the world, our country remains vulnerable to the wicked.

When one accepts the fact — and it is a fact — that the free world, not just the United States, is at war with violent Islamists, this story is all the more chilling and disturbing.

The mainstream media in the United States has taken the images of September 11th, 2001 off the television and out of the newspapers, but for the obligatory image on the anniversary itself. They say that the images are too disturbing, that they incite a want for revenge rather than allow for closure. But they are wrong to do this.

The United States should not and cannot simply forgive and forget just because the our current president fallaciously insisted that al Qaeda was on the run and that the Islamic State is “jayvee.” Facts demonstrate that al Qaeda, the Taliban – and now the Islamic State and Boko Haram; violent Islamists, have been planning and preparing to implement their global campaign of terrorism — their declared war against the Western World — since before 1993, well before September 11th. Their central location for training may have been eliminated but they had prepared for that, splintering like roaches to the four corners of the world, preparing, planning and implementing their battle plans made decades before.

Make no mistake, they are a cunning adversary. They understood that the US would come after them. They planned for this event. Now they have metastasized and their threat is even greater than before September 11, 2001.

This war cannot be about “tolerance” or forgiving, or about understanding the “reasons why” someone would want to murder innocents whether it be with an airplane, a car bomb, a suicide vest or a saif. This battle has to be about freedom and the right of innocents to live their lives in liberty, free of fear from an unholy sect of genocidal totalitarians who offer only oppression, dominance and terror as their bounty.

The Progressive left and the complicit mainstream media would have us believe that it is America that is to blame for her audacity in the promotion of freedom and free markets, liberty and the vision of a world free of dictators who torture, murder and slaughter for power. To that extent, Progressives and the agenda-driven media are dangerous and a direct threat to the existence of our country, teetering on the brink of treason and sedition. They will attack these words by saying that I have intimated that they are not patriotic and un-American.

For the record, I hold the belief that anyone who believes the United States brought the attacks of September 11, 2001, onto itself IS unpatriotic and un-American. I believe that they have become toadies for our enemy and should be treated and opposed as such. While they manipulate the true meaning of the First Amendment’s free speech clause, they attempt to indoctrinate and transform our youth and the less than suspecting among us into believing in the doctrine of self-loathing, an oppressive ideology born of the less than great thinkers of Europe almost a century ago.

In its March 15, 2006 edition, The Mirror, a British publication (the American mainstream media too gutless to publish such truth), revealed the identity of a man who had to make the unimaginable decision of whether to burn to death in the raging fires of the World Trade Center on September 11th or escape the pain of hell on earth by leaping from the top of one of the world’s tallest buildings to his certain death.

The article was titled, Revealing the Identity of the Falling Man of 9/11. Jonathan Briley was “The Falling Man of 9/11.”

I would beg each of you to read the article but The Mirror, along with Esquire and a number of publications who once cared about such things, has taken the article down. You can search his name – Jonathan Briley – and look at the pictures and feel Jonathan Briley’s helplessness, his terror, and then try to imagine the split second of excruciating pain that he felt when his body hit the cement below with such force that he, a human being just seconds before, was left a bloodstain on a sidewalk, slaughtered like road kill by barbarian Islamists.

The people of the United States need to rekindle the flame of emotional anguish about the attacks of September 11th, 2001. We need to seethe. We need to employ the ingenuity and intelligence that is fostered in a free society dedicated to liberty, and scream our ire from the top of the world. Then we need to take definitive action.

If we are to wage war on terrorists; on violent Islamists, then let us be the ones who strike terror into the hearts of our enemies. Let us bring terror to those who blow-up innocents, saw the heads off hostages and threaten the world with words of annihilation and nuclear Armageddon. If we are to be in a war we did not choose to begin then in the memory of all who have fallen in the quest to provide freedom and liberty to the world, let us be the ones who act decisively to end it.

We need to embrace the undeniable truth that the free world is at war and cease pandering to those who would wake up one day in the future ruing the fact that we should have acted earlier.

A pre-emptive strike doctrine for the United States? Eradicating the world of the likes of al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Boko Haram and every other Islamist organization that preaches the conquest and servitude of the “dhimmi”? You’re damn right!

08/27/15

The Email Issue Goes Beyond Just Hillary Clinton

By Frank Salvato

As scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of unsecured email servers to access classified information during her time as US Secretary of State continues to unravel her presidential aspirations, a more comprehensive overview of the many email issues related to the Obama Administration presents a more sinister possibility. From the State Department to the Internal Revenue Service, the Environmental Protection Agency to the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy to the White House itself, everywhere you turn in the Obama Administration there has been an issue with high-ranking personnel using alternative email accounts and/or servers for government business and then refusing access to those communications to oversight authority.

In 2010, President Barack Obama, speaking in Elyria, Ohio, bragged,

“We have put in place the toughest ethics laws and toughest transparency rules of any administration in history…in history! And by the way, this is the first administration since the founding of the country where all of you can find out who visits the White House. First time in history! And that’s just one example.”

In fact, Mr. Obama’s claim to open visitor’s logs was first trumpeted in 2009. It sounded good, like his claim that his was the most transparent administration in history. Alas, as usual, what sounds good during his “speechifying” never quite pans out to be the truth. The Obama Administration actually vetted which visitors to include on those “transparent” visitor’s logs and in 2013 pulled the logs from public access completely during its budget battle with Congress saying, “Due to Congress’s failure to pass legislation to fund the government, the information on this web site may not be up to date,” the placeholder on the visitor’s log page reading, “This dataset is currently private.”

But the visitor’s log duplicity pales in comparison to the administration’s use of alternative email accounts and servers for official communication where the claim of being the most transparent administration in American history is concerned. In fact, if you examine the many instances of the abuse of email communications protocol a pattern is evidenced; a pattern that serves plausible deniability and political opportunity, while denying transparency, accountability and oversight.

The instance most in the public eye is the use of – and subsequently the cleansing of – Hillary Clinton’s personal email server during her time as Secretary of State. This attention is only awarded by the media because she is a candidate for the presidency. Many in media didn’t give much attention to the fact she was using a private email server when she was corresponding with aides, States Department personnel and the White House before, during and after the assassination of a sitting US ambassador and his security team in Benghazi, Libya.

I won’t even get into the disingenuous manipulation of talking points memos that circulated from White House Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes about the cause of the Benghazi attacks.

But Mrs. Clinton isn’t the only high-ranking State Department official who has used a personal email account to perform official US government business. Caroline Kennedy, US ambassador to Japan, has been cited by the State Department’s Inspector General – as has the entirety of her staff at that embassy location – for using personal email accounts to receive and transmit communications regarding official business.

CNN reported:

“Senior embassy staff, including the ambassador, used personal email accounts to send and receive messages containing official business…In addition, (investigators) identified instances where emails labeled sensitive but unclassified were sent from, or received by, personal email accounts…The watchdog report said that Kennedy’s practices were against State Department policy and put the agency at risk.”

Then there is the issue of Environmental Protection Agency senior staff – both during Lisa Jackson’s tenure and Gina McCarthy’s – using email aliases and emails from those alias accounts being destroyed in direct violation of federal records preservation policies. Breitbart.com describes the EPA’s goal thusly:

“The point of this scheme was to evade public accountability, to conduct official government business under the table, outside of the public eye. When Congress and others asked for [senior officials’] EPA correspondence and email, the [alias] e-mails would fall outside that request and, eventually, be destroyed allowing official EPA business to be conducted secretly. That falls well short of conducting business in the open and in a transparent fashion. It also falls well short of the standards required by federal law.”

Dovetailing on the EPA email malfeasance is the refusal of John Holdren to honor a FOIA request relating to policy emails he maintained on the private servers of his former employer, the high-pressure eco-zealot group Woods Hole Research Center, as he sits as the director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. Holdren, you may recall, is a man-made “global warming” believer with a penchant for smearing scientists who disagree with him. About the OSTP emails, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s senior attorney, Hans Bader, writes:

“The use of such non-official accounts for agency business frustrates federal open-government laws, and undermines government accountability, since such accounts are generally not searched in response to FOIA or congressional oversight requests seeking work-related communications or agency records. Moreover, the use of email accounts at a former employer that lobbies the federal government gives such pressure groups direct access to and control over public records, including highly sensitive information.”

But the most damning instance of unethical and criminal abuse of email correspondence lies with Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service. Not only did Ms. Lerner conspire with other IRS operatives to marginalize the First Amendment free speech rights – as well as the guaranteed right to redress of government – of TEA Party and other Conservative organization members, she attempted to conceal and destroy any and all email evidence that proved her criminal acts. More recent revelations indicate that Ms. Lerner not only had contact with White House policy adviser Jeanne Lambrew that served to collude about Conservative targets, but that she, too, like her counterparts at the EPA, used alias emails to avoid detection by oversight authorities.

So, while the country remains rightfully obsessed with the Hillary Clinton email scandal (I prefer to call her actions “crimes”), there appears, to any honest broker, to be evidence pointing to a systemic issue with alternative communications and transparency in the Obama Administration. This evidence – a chronicle of criminal and unethical acts from the State Department to the Environmental Protection Agency to the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy to the Internal Revenue Service and the White House itself – must serve as proof of a pattern establishing an early effort by the Obama Administration to circumvent the legislated communications and information sharing protocol in federal government in an effort to control the informational narrative for political and ideological reasons. The evidence is overwhelming and, by virtue of the pattern’s existence, proves a conscious mandate from the highest levels.

What we have here, if you look at the evidence before you, is proof of a concerted conspiracy to deceive entities that execute governmental oversight, from the Inspector Generals of affected agencies all the way to the hall of Congress. What we have here is a direct attack by the Executive Branch of the United States on the authorities, rights and privileges of the co-equal branches of government. What we have here is a direct attack on the sovereign rights of the American people.

Yes, the emails scandals being exposed today are bigger than Watergate. Now, what are we going to do about it?

06/27/15

The US Supreme Court Has Gone Rogue

By Frank Salvato

Many on the Right side of the aisle are outraged. Gay marriage – a social issue at its core – has been validated by the US Supreme Court. The outrage is palpable. And while there is legitimacy to this outrage – especially with regard to the Court’s transgression of the 10th Amendment – the decision on gay marriage is a “bright shiny thing” that serves to quickly file us past an earlier decision that directly threatens the constitutional structure of our government: The Court’s ruling on King v. Burwell; the Obamacare subsidies.

No matter how you feel about the issue of gay marriage, the Court’s ruling on this social issue is an attack on the 10th Amendment, the rights of States to have authority over all things not enumerated in the US Constitution. But comparatively, the Court’s decision on Obergefell v. Hodges is a “mosquito bite” to yesterday’s “beheading” of our balance of powers at the federal level. We are being led away from what is tantamount to a “genocidal slaughter” of the Separation of Powers to gawk at a “highway accident.” With yesterday’s decision we are all – Liberal and Conservative, Republican, Democrat and Libertarian – losing our government to a transformative end stage; a commingling of constitutional branches and a centralized governmental authority in the federal government; something uniquely anathema to our basic governmental structure.

The Court’s King v. Burwell decision is so much more than its Obergefell v. Hodges decision because the former strikes at the root of how our government is supposed to work. By moving on from this constitutional crisis (and this is a true constitutional crisis) to outrage over a social issue when there are still remedies to be affected for said social issue, we are acquiescing to the Court’s decision on King v. Burwell – and the mortal damage it would establish to our system of government. No, with the Court’s King v. Burwell decision we should be fundamentally and exclusively outraged to the point of immediate action, arguing our points effectively and making a singular and cohesive stand for the Constitution.

There are those who argue that the Court’s attack on the 10th Amendment in Obergefell v. Hodges is equally as important as the Court’s direct assault on the Separation of Powers. I vehemently disagree and for good reason. The immediate danger to the Constitution and the survival of our nation – as we face forces that are achieving the fundamental transformation of our governmental structure – is the failure of the government structure itself, not the prior or resulting social issue movements. To make this argument is akin to believing that the crew of the Titanic should have started examining how to better construct a ship’s hull as the vessel was sinking instead of doing everything that they could to keep the ship afloat.

A simple solution to Obergefell v. Hodges is to remove government from the authoritative realm of marriage altogether. One way to achieve this is through the utilization of contracts for legal affairs between cohabitants, leaving the sanctity of the institution of marriage to the Churches where it belongs. Regarding the issue of taxation, where marriage is concerned, radically transforming our tax system from one based on income to one based on consumption makes the issue of “marriage” and personal taxation moot.

That social issue solution understood, we can see why King v. Burwell is so much more important. We live in a time when judicial precedent trumps constitutionality, and we are, in real time, witnessing an explosion of the very structure of our government. Precedent is being set – right before our eyes – that would allow the Judicial Branch to directly rewrite legislation via the issuing of judicial edicts from this point forward.

While both these decisions are important, one cements the destruction of our governmental model, while the other is a social issue battle that the Progressives will use to keep the citizenry away from being cohesive on the latter. Should we fail to see this true constitutional crisis then we will witness, in the immediate, the end of our constitutional form of government.

One battle is so much more important than the other. If we cannot see that then we are not worthy of the freedom we pretend to enjoy. Truthfully, I am stunned this has to be explained.

03/31/15

The Progressive Transformation of Our Federal Government

By: Frank Salvato

Protesters participate in a display of civil disobedience as labor organizers escalate their campaign to unionize the industry’s workers. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

With the addition of Ecuador and the Philippines as signatories to “memorandums of understanding,” the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – effectively acting on behalf of the US federal government – has agreed to engage three foreign countries in international outreach programs designed to teach immigrants how to participate in labor organizing in the United States. Ecuador and the Philippines join Mexico as signatories to the memorandums. The agreements – which do not distinguish between those who have entered the US legally and those who have not, present several questions, including those of jurisdiction, treaty making and purpose.

The NLRB, by charter, is an independent agency of the United States government. Its members are all appointed by the President of the United States with the consent of the US Senate. It is divided into two authoritative entities: the General Counsel and the Board. The General Counsel is tasked with investigating and prosecuting unfair labor practice claims; the Board is the adjudicative body that rules on the cases brought to it.

The NLRB’s authority is legislatively limited to private sector employees (excluding governmental, railroad and airline employees covered by the Adamson Railway Labor Act, and agricultural employees) and the US Postal Service. Yet over the years, many court decisions have allowed for the board’s jurisdictional standards to become so low that almost all employers whose businesses have any appreciable impact on interstate commerce have been absorbed into the its purview, rightly or not.

What is missing from the board’s legislated organizational purview is the authority to extend its power outside the United States. Further, when it comes to agreements between the United States and foreign governments, the exclusive right to create and execute treaties in the name of the United States and/or the American people rests with the Executive Branch, pursuant to the consent of the US Senate, codified by Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution. By entering into agreements with foreign nations – agreements that possess the full legal weight of the United States government, the NLRB has essentially circumvented the constitutional process for entering into treaties and usurped the authorities of both the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch of the federal government.

Additionally, the basic functions of the NLRB are meant to be centered on non-partisan arbitration and enforcement. Nowhere in the board’s legislated authority is there a proviso to advance the causes of either employers or organized labor, let alone a provision that grants them the power to teach labor organization to any demographic or faction, nationally or internationally; legally or illegally present in the United States. By entering into an agreement to provide instruction on labor organization, the NLRB has not only abdicated its mandate to be non-partisan, it has demonstrated a decided bias supporting organized labor.

Ronald J. Pestritto, Graduate Dean and Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, writes in Woodrow Wilson: Godfather of Liberalism,

“Policymaking today, in many areas of national concern such as the environment, health care, and financial regulation, is done primarily by agencies within the bureaucracy to which Congress has delegated broad swaths of legislative authority. Recent battles ranging from rules for greenhouse gas emissions to benefits that must be covered by private health insurance plans have been fought not primarily in Congress, but in or against administrative agencies that are exercising the power given to them by Congress.”

The NLRB is certainly part of the Progressive Movement’s installed bureaucracy; a bureaucracy that functions parallel to the authority of elected government; a bureaucracy that functions even when our elected government does not. By entering into ipso facto treaties with foreign nations, the NLRB has permanently opened the Pandora’s box of transformative bureaucracy, and it is a direct threat to our original form of government.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

03/24/15

Hey, Hillary, It’s No Laughing Matter

By: Frank Salvato

During Hillary Clinton’s speech to reporters and analysts attending the Toner Prize journalism awards ceremony in Washington, DC, Mrs. Clinton employed variants of two classic Alinsky narrative manipulation tactics in targeting herself for ridicule over her use of a private email server and address during her time as Secretary of State. The use of her private server and email address allowed her to reverse the hierarchy of authority where the designation of government information is concerned. The use of the Alinsky tactics is meant to move the media on from this very damaging reality.

The UK’s Daily Mail quotes Mrs. Clinton as saying:

“I am well aware that some of you may be a little surprised to see me here tonight. You know my relationship with the press has been at times, shall we say, complicated…But I am all about new beginnings. A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account – why not a new relationship with the press? So here goes. No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy – after all, what good does that do me…”

Self-deprecating humor is a potent tool in a politician’s public relations toolbox, especially if the politician is trying to save face in an embarrassing situation. But targeting a damaging scandal with disarming ridicule is a tactic of manipulation to divert seriousness away from a point of vulnerability. Mrs. Clinton’s inclusion of the email scandal – which directly threatens her chances of becoming President of the United States – is purposeful and deliberate.

In Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, Rule Number 5 reads:

“‘Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.’ There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions…”

Rule Number 12 reads:

“‘Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.’ Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”

By including the subject of the email scandal in her “humorous” remarks, Mrs. Clinton effectively targeted those who identify the scandal as a serious matter; a matter that includes the ability for her to shield herself from damaging information on policy failures including the rise of the Islamic State, the assassination of a US Ambassador and his security team in Libya, and the failure of the “reset” with Russia, all of which took place on her watch. By diverting the spotlight away from herself, and shining it onto those who are rightly sounding the alarm on her conduct, Mrs. Clinton has – or at least she hopes she has – painted herself the victim, while branding her “accusers” as the bullies.

Now that she has deceptively intimated that the acts of “unfairness” exist with her detractors, she is free to implement Alinsky Rule Number 12, by targeting those who have called her on her misconduct (the vast Right-Wing conspirators), attempting to make their objections the story, and personalizing it by inferring that the “conservative media” is once again on a Clinton witch hunt, thus completing the political divide into pro- and anti-Clinton factions; factions which the Clinton’s manipulate with ease for both personal and professional gain.

It’s important to remember that Hillary Clinton’s thesis at Wellesley College, There Is Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model, was, for her, a declaration of her intimate knowledge of Saul Alinsky. To say that her understanding of the Alinsky model has served her well would be an understatement. To say that she is an Alinsky disciple would be spot on. And the disciple preaches on to this day.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.