• The Worst President in American History, Part III By Richard C. Young
• A Toxic Culture with Terrible Morale By Debbie Young
• Breathing for Survival By E.J. Smith
• Django and Jimmie By Debbie Young
• Dick Young’s “Save Your Life” Books, Part I By Richard C. Young
• Survival Strength By E.J. Smith
• End the Fed, Part I By Richard C. Young
• Rand Paul #1, Part II By Richard C. Young
• The Real Tea Party By Richard C. Young

In Wilson’s War—How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder Led To Hitler, Lenin, Stalin & World War II, historian Jim Powell explains how WWI was stalemated for three years.

From the war’s outset, it appeared unlikely that one side would be able to dominate the other. —The Germans had better generals-less inclined to squander the lives of their men-and France and Russia were to far apart to coordinate operations. —The British navy dominated the seas and enforced a blockade preventing goods from coming to Germany. —Fighting began on August 3,1914, when Germany sent seventy-eight infantry divisions heading west.

The Germans attacked Verdun on February 21, 1916. … Until December 15, 1916, the armies alternated advancing and retreating. The Germans ended up with little to show for their 330,000 fatalities, compared with 350,000 French fatalities. … Then came the Battle of the Somme.

Mr. Powell describes the strategy of British general Douglas Haig, who “ordered British solders, each carrying perhaps sixty pounds of equipment, to walk upright in big lines toward the Germans, rather than more cautiously keeping themselves low and seeking cover from possible machine-gun fire. It turned out there were enough surviving German machine gunners for a massacre. More than 25,000 British soldiers were seriously wounded, and almost 20,000 were killed on the first day of fighting July 1, 1916.”

In part V of “The Worst President in American History,” I will detail historian Powell’s take on Haig’s abandoning the Somme campaign on November 18, which historian John Keegan calls “the worst military tragedy in the history of Britain.”

In yet another sign of incompetence, the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) has failed to detect smuggled mock explosives and banned weapons through U.S. airport checkpoints 96% of the time. ABC reports, “In one case, agents failed to detect a fake explosive taped to an agent’s back, even after performing a pat down that was prompted after the agent set off the magnetometer alarm.”

The solution to the inept and costly unionized TSA (65,000 employees) is to dismantle it and move responsibility for screening operations to expert aviation security firms. In other words, privatize screening, as is done in all major airports in Canada and about three quarters of major European airports. Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards explains here how this would create a more efficient security structure that would allow government to instead focus on aviation intelligence and oversight.

You gotta breath to survive. But there’s a right way and then there’s a wrong way to breath, especially if you’re under stress. I practice Power Yoga on a regular basis and I find the deep focused breathing to be just as challenging, if not more so, than the physical side. The most effective breath is the one that is deep from your stomach and diaphragm and through your nose—not shallow through your upper chest and mouth. This exercise helps illustrate the proper technique for breathing under stress courtesy of ex-Special Forces Operator and the Founder of Elite Training Programs, Wes Kennedy:

Sometimes called ‘tactical’ or ‘combat’ breathing, it’s more widely known as ‘diaphragmatic breathing’ it was popularized in the military by Ranger Lieutenant General David Grossman in his book “On Combat: The Psychology And Physiology Of Deadly Conflict In War And Peace.”

In essence, the key to diaphragmatic breathing is to breathe from your ‘belly’. To learn this technique try the exercise below:

1. Lie flat on your back with your feet up on a chair/wall
2. Place a small book (or object) on your belly and another on your chest
3. Inhale slowly and imagine filling your belly with air like a balloon, the goal is to lift the book on your belly, not your chest.
4. Exhale slowly in a controlled manner and repeat

Over time, aim to increase to 10 minute cycles of this breathing pattern. As this increases, notice what happens to your mood, stress and heart rate. Once you get familiar with this method of breathing, you can use this technique while doing almost anything – from rucking and running, to improving your accuracy on the range.

In the final part of this series, we’ll look at building and developing the anaerobic energy systems in line with the demands of the tactical athlete.

Some more tips on tactical breathing from Sig Sauer Academy:

One of the strongest, most engaging country albums of 2015, writes Barry Mazor in the WSJ, comes from two long-time friends, one of whom is 82 and the other 78.

“With Jimmie Rodgers-like audacity and sentiment, and Django Reinhardt style invention and swing, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard have been pursuing similar courses for over five decades now. It’s still thrilling to hear them working in cahoots.”

Read more about Willie and Merle here and listen courtesy of NPR’s “First Listen” to Django and Jimmie here.

Americans are under attack. Obesity, lethargy, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are ghastly epidemics. Worse, most drugs can make you even more sick! Why is this happening? Because no one tells the truth: keeping this forbidden knowledge from you allows drug companies to make millions of dollar.

A series of breakthrough books I own can help you and your family gets on a track to sustainable health. You will want to get each of the books that Debbie and I rely on to keep us off prescription medicines, at a proper weight, and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals. I am 74 years old, take zero prescription drugs, and have not been in the hospital on the advice of a doctor since I had my tonsils and adenoids out in the late forties.

Let’s get started with Over-The-Counter Natural Cures by Shane Ellison, M.S. (a former chemist for Big Pharma) “Harvard researchers writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that women could cut their risk of heart disease by half with daily consumption of 500 grams of folic acid and other B vitamins. Men can expect to have the same results.”

Regarding heart disease, Shane writes, “The evidence is now sufficient to justify action on lowering homocysteine concentrations.” He notes that doctors “simply don’t have a drug to treat it. But Whole Foods does.”

According to Ellison, the answer is to buy folic acid in the form of brewer’s yeast.

You’ll want to choose your source of folic with care.  As Shane writes not all are created equal. While one source can be lifesaving, the other might threaten it.

Folic acid is usually purchased in pill form. … But you’ll be paying for a synthetic copycat, a Franken-Chemical of sorts. In 1941, the chemical manufacturer American Cyanamid (now a division of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals) learned to make a version of folic acid in their lab to profit from the growing deficiency. Ever since, pharmaceutical slight of hand has replaced the food source folic acid with its chemical cousin, which is proving inferior. The difference is stark, as can be seen by increasing cancer rates among populations being force-fed the Franken-Chemical via fortification programs (i.e., cereals).

Shane Ellison concludes that the forgotten source of nutritive folic acid is brewer’s yeast, sometimes called nutritional yeast. … “The true benefits of the acid come from the entire spectrum of supporting nutrients (like vitamin B12, selenium, and more).”

You know you have to breath to survive. It also helps to have some strength. I’ve written to you about the shooting courses I’ve taken at Sig Sauer Academy. One take away I’ve had is the soreness of my upper body after a day shooting. Upper body strength is so important in being able to work your weapon because your grip strength is usually the first to go. Read here from Wes Kennedy at Loadoutroom.com about building the ultimate tactical athlete:

It’s worth noting that a symptom of overtraining and fatigue is loss of grip strength. Many strength and conditioning facilities as well as weightlifting gyms will use a grip dynamometer as an indicator of training readiness. The last thing we want when you are working long hours under high-stress is for your grip to fatigue or fail. Incorporating grip specific exercises will help to prevent this from happening and pay dividends in the long-term.

Ron Paul wrote the book (End the Fed), which should be read by every high school and college student. Dr. Paul dedicated his seminal book to “the young people who powered my campaign and who are the heart of the anti-Fed movement.”

I am not aware of another American who better understands the plight of our federal republic than does Ron Paul, with the single exception, of course, of his son Rand.

I wonder how many high school and college students and, for that matter, your fellow Americans understand that the Fed is a private institution and not part of our out-of-control central government?

Ron Paul starts with a detailed explanation of how the Fed was created:

By November 1910, the time was right for drafting the bill that would become the Federal Reserve Act. A secret meeting was convened at the coastal Georgia resort called Jekyll Island Club, owned by J.P. Morgan himself. The press said it was a duck hunting expedition. Those who attended took elaborate steps to preserve their secrecy, but history recorded precisely who was there: John Rockefeller’s man in the Senate, Nelson Aldrich, Morgan senior partner Henry Davison, German émigré and central banking advocate Paul Warburg, National City Bank vice president Frank Vanderlip, and NMC staffer A. Piatt Andrew, who was also Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to President Taft.

So we had two Rockefellers, two Morgans, one Kuhn, Loeb person, and one economist. In the group we find the essence of the Fed: powerful bankers with powerful government officials working together to have the nation’s money system serve their interests, justified by economists there to provide the scientific gloss. It has been pretty much the same ever since.

In Taking a Stand, Rand writes on foreign policy realism.

Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, and Reagan all occupied the space in between the extremes of foreign policy. Their foreign policies took into account the world as it was and reacted to it by making us stronger and self-reliant. Their foreign policy realism rejects the Wilsonian vision of re-creating the world in our image or the utopian vision of nation building. Our government has trouble running the post office. What makes it think it can somehow be successful building nations abroad? Foreign policy realism also rejects the idea that we are the world’s policemen.

The original Sons of Liberty was a secret society created by the American colonists to protect their rights and to fight taxation by the British government.

The Sons of Liberty are best known for the Boston Tea Party raid in 1773 in reaction to new taxes.

Notable members included Sam Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Benedict Arnold, Christopher Gadsden, Paul Revere, James Otis, Joseph Warren,  Benjamin Rush, and Isaiah Thomas.

HISTORY has created a drama out of the Sons of Liberty, here’s a preview: