LBJ – Page 2 – The Burning Platform

THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

I’m constantly amazed by the ability of those in power to create a narrative trusted by a gullible non-critical thinking populace. Appealing to emotions, when you have millions of functionally illiterate, normalcy bias ensnared, iGadget distracted, disciples of the status quo, has been the game plan of the Deep State for the last century. Americans don’t want to think, because thinking is hard. They would rather feel. For decades the government controlled public education system has performed a mass lobotomy on their hapless matriculates, removing their ability to think and replacing it with feelings, fabricated dogma, and social indoctrination. Their minds of mush have been molded to acquiesce to the narrative propagandized by their government keepers.

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” – Thomas Sowell

With a majority confused, distracted, malleable, willfully ignorant, and easily manipulated by false narratives, heart wrenching images, and fake news, the Deep State henchmen have been able to control the masses with relative ease. The unanticipated rise of Donald Trump to the most powerful role in the world gave many critical thinking, anti-big government, skeptical curmudgeons hope he could drain the swamp and begin to deconstruct the massive out of control Federal bureaucracy.

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What “White Privilege” really means

Guest Post by Donald Sensing

What does “White Privilege” really mean?

It is the Left’s attempt to divert attention from the fact that they, and no one else, have virtually raped minority Americans, in education and economics, without relent for at least 50 years.

And every time someone uses W.P. toward me that is exactly how I respond.

Example, one of many, from How The Liberal Welfare State Destroyed Black America:

The results of welfare policies discouraging marriage and family were dramatic, as out-of-wedlock birthrates skyrocketed among all demographic groups in the U.S., but most notably African Americans. In the mid-1960s, the out-of-wedlock birth rate was scarcely 3% for whites, 7.7% for Americans overall, and 24.5% among blacks. By 1976, those figures had risen to nearly 10% for whites, 24.7% for Americans as a whole, and 50.3% for blacks specifically. And today, the numbers stand at 29% for whites, 41% for the nation overall, and 73% for blacks. In other words, the entire country is moving rapidly in the wrong direction, but blacks in particular have reached a point of veritable catastrophe.

The devastating societal consequences of family breakdown cannot be overstated. Father-absent families—black and white alike—generally occupy the bottom rung of America’s economic ladder.

Given the ultra-racist history of the Democrat party, it is simply impossible for me to believe that no one in the party understood this would happen. This was done on purpose and by design. Black Americans were solidly Republican before LBJ’s administration; the 1964 civil rights act passed by a Democrat Congress had in fact first been introduced into Congress by Republicans in the 1950s, when Democrats then voted it down decisively.

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THE REAL REASON THE AMERICAN DREAM IS UNRAVELING

Marketwatch posted an article this week titled Why the American Dream is Unraveling, in 4 charts. As usual, the MSM journalist and the liberal Harvard academic can create charts that reveal a huge problem, but they completely misdiagnose the causes and offer the typical wrong solution of taking more money from producers and handing it to the poor, with no strings attached. This has been the standard operating procedure since LBJ began his War on Poverty 50 years ago. Do these control freaks ever step back and assess how that war is going?

The poverty rate had plunged from 34% in 1950 to below 20% before LBJ ever declared war. It continued down to 15% just as the welfare programs began to be implemented. The percentage of people living in poverty hasn’t budged from the 15% range since the war began. This war has been just as successful as the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Any time a politician declares war on something, expect a huge price tag and more of the “problem” they are declaring war upon.

The Federal government runs over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Over 100 million Americans received benefits from at least one of these programs. Federal and state governments spent $943 billion in 2013 on these programs at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient (not including Social Security & Medicare). That is 27% of the total Federal budget. Welfare spending as a percentage of the Federal budget was less than 2% prior to the launch of the War on Poverty.

In the 50 years since this war started, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. In terms of LBJ’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has utterly failed. In fact, a large proportion of the population is now completely dependent upon government handouts, incapable of self-sufficiency, and enslaved in a welfare mentality that has destroyed their communities.

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FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART THREE

In Part One of this article I attempted to illuminate the concept of generational theory as articulated by Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning. In Part Two I provided proof this Crisis is far from over, with ever increasing debt, civic decay and global disorder propelling the world towards war.

Seeds of Crisis & War

“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

When you accept the fact history is cyclical and continuous linear progress is not what transpires in the real world, you free yourself from the mental debilitation of normalcy bias and cognitive dissonance. Things do get worse. There are dark periods of history and they recur on a regular cycle. And we are in the midst of one of those dark periods. This Crisis will not be resolved without much pain, sacrifice, bloodshed, and ultimately war. Catastrophe is a strong possibility. The core elements of this Crisis – debt, civic decay, global disorder – are coalescing into a perfect storm which will rage for the next ten to fifteen years. The rhythms of history only provide a guidepost of timing, while the specific events and outcomes are unknowable in advance. The regeneracy of society into a cohesive, unified community, supporting the government in a collective effort to solve society’s most fundamental problems seems to have been delayed. Or has it?

Maybe the answer can be found in the resolution of the last Fourth Turning. The seeds of the next crisis are always planted during the climax of the previous crisis, when the new social order is established. The American Revolution Crisis created a new nation, but left unresolved the issue of slavery. This seed grew to become the catalyst for the Civil War Crisis. The resolution of the Civil War Crisis greatly enhanced the power of the central government, while reducing the influence of the States. The rise of central authority led to the creation of the Federal Reserve, the implementation of income taxes to fund a vastly larger Federal government and the belief among the political class that America should intervene militarily in the affairs of other countries. The Great Depression was created by the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve; the New Deal programs were a further expansion of Federal government; FDR outlawed the ownership of gold; and America’s subsequent involvement in World War II created a military and economic superpower.

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THE WAR ON POVERTY: 50 Consecutive Years of Failure

Guest Post by Doug Ross

Robert Rector, writing in The Washington Times, writes the epitaph of the catastrophic disaster — for all involved — known as “The War on Poverty.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. In January 1964, Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty in America.” Since then, the taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s war. Adjusted for inflation, that’s three times the cost of all military wars since the American Revolution.

Last year, government spent $943 billion providing cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans. (That figure doesn’t include Social Security or Medicare.) More than 100 million people, or one third of Americans, received some type of welfare aid, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. If converted into cash, this spending was five times what was needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.

By the government’s own measures, the drop in the percentage of individuals qualifying as poor ended once the “War” truly got underway.

In fact, begin “poor” ain’t what it used to be during, say, the Great Depression.

The actual living conditions of households labeled as poor by Census are surprising to most people. According to the government’s own surveys, 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning; nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television; half have a personal computer; 40 percent have a wide-screen HDTV. Three-quarters own a car or truck; nearly a third has two or more vehicles.

Ninety-six percent of poor parents state that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food. Some 82 percent of poor adults reported that they were never hungry at any time in the prior year…

…The average poor American lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair and not overcrowded. In fact, the average poor American has more living space than the typical nonpoor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany or the United Kingdom.

In order to justify the massive transfers of wealth engendered by the “War”, President Lyndon Johnson predicted that the programs would reduce the number of Americans on welfare and transform many “tax-eaters” into “taxpayers”. In fact, the opposite happened, as it does so often when the federal government exceeds its Constitutional authority.

For a decade-and-a-half before the War on Poverty began, self-sufficiency in America improved dramatically. For the past 45 years, though, there has been no improvement at all. Many groups are less capable of self-support today than when Johnson’s war started.

The culprit is, in part, the welfare system itself, which discourages work and penalizes marriage. When the War on Poverty began, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage. Today, the number is 41 percent. The collapse of marriage is the main cause of child poverty today.

The folly of Obama and the Democrats’ incessant push for more wealth redistribution — after five decades of unbroken failures — is obvious to any thinking American.

The welfare state is self-perpetuating. By undermining the social norms necessary for self-reliance, welfare creates a need for even greater assistance in the future. President Obama plans to spend $13 trillion over the next decade on welfare programs that will discourage work, penalize marriage and undermine self-sufficiency.

Which, some might say, was the plan all along.

The effects of subsidizing poverty are remarkably clear: these programs destroy two-parent families, sentence children to lives of poverty, and frequently lead to violence and imprisonment.

Any rational human being would look at the facts and reconsider the entire “War on Poverty”.

It remains to be seen whether any Democrat qualifies.

SSS, THIS BUDS’ FOR YOU

Well looky here…

The CIA Plotted to Assassinate Richard Nixon

Former President Richard Nixon was marked for death by the CIA.That’s just one of the bombshell revelations dropped by former Nixon aide Roger Stone in his explosive book – Nixon’s Secrets: The Truth About Watergate and the Pardon

– set for a Sept. 2 release.Stone says the spy agency felt threatened by the former President who died at age 81 on April 22, 1994, because he continually pushed it for the dirt on President John F. Kennedy and the failed attempt to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

“Nixon was at war with the CIA because they wouldn’t give him the dope on Kennedy,” Stone says.

But the CIA had its own shocking secrets to protect – mainly the agency’s involvement in Kennedy’s Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, Stone says.

Stone charges that vice President Lyndon B. Johnson engineered JFK’s shooting and was aided by the CIA. Johnson even used his own hitman in the plot, Stone says.

According to Stone’s book, The Man Who Killed Kennedy, CIA bigshots felt JFK had stabbed them in the back by refusing adequate support for the Bay of Pigs invasion, which the agency had masterminded.

And Johnson was also furious with Kennedy, who was planning to drop him from the ticket when he ran for re-election in 1964.

Replacing the slain Kennedy as President, Johnson spearheaded a cover-up that put the blame on Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone shooter.

In his new book, Stone writes that CIA operative Gerald Patrick Hemming said the spy agency considered Nixon a threat because of what he knew and plotted to kill him, too.

“Hemming said Frank Sturgis, a Watergate burglar and mercenary, and contract-assassin Edwin Kaiser, were given the hit,” Stone says. But when they learned the target was Nixon, Kaiser backed out.

”  Stone says CIA plotters considered plans to rub out Nixon “at a VFW convention in Miami Beach or at the Republican National Convention.

But Nixon survived and even managed to avoid prosecution for Watergate by blackmailing the CIA and his presidential successor, Gerald Ford, says Stone.

Nixon threatened to expose the CIA’s involvement in JFK’s assassination.

He also said he’d reveal Ford, a member of the Warren Commission that investigated JFK’s murder, changed the autopsy records to make it appear that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman, says Stone.

“Nixon knew the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination, says the author.

“And he knew the autopsy records had been altered. In 1996, declassified documents revealed indeed Jerry Ford changed the autopsy with a pencil.”

“Nixon said, ‘OK, fine – I’ll take everybody down – Jerry Ford, the agency.’”

“That’s why Ford gave Tricky Dick a “full, free and unconditional pardon,” says Stone.

(via Globe Magazine)