• Trump Is Our Only Shot to Save America  By Richard C. Young
• Scheuer: President Trump—A Chance Worth Taking  By Richard C. Young
• Clinton Committed a “Criminal Offense”  By Debbie Young
• Mark Steyn, Donald Trump and the Three Legged Stool  By Debbie Young
• US$ Print til’ You Die  By E.J. Smith
• Minorities Vote 80% Democratic  By Richard C. Young
• Presidential Election 2012 & Woodstock 1969  By Richard C. Young
• Boston Globe Wrong About Guns  By E.J. Smith
• “Donald Trump, I Love What He’s Doing”  By Richard C. Young

Former CIA bin Laden unit chief Michael Scheuer announces, “Is there an America-First enemy of interventionism among the presidential candidates?”

I have written here previously that twenty years into this religious war, the American people have come to the point where they really only have two credible options if they are to avoid an endless war with Islam and defend their republic and themselves.

(a) The United States can break the Islamic State’s back by destroying its energy, educational, agricultural, transportation, electrical, medical, and industrial infrastructures and the other money-making assets it controls…

(b) The United States can avoid the foregoing effort and expense by stepping out of the region right now and letting the Islamist movement and its main enemies in the region move at their own pace, which will take them straight to a regional sectarian war.

Dr. Scheuer next takes a look at Republican and Democrat presidential candidates and examines what each has to offer.

On Hillary Clinton: “Long a Neoconservative, a cultural/political/military interventionist, and a war-causing democracy monger. She favors the war-causing expansion of NATO, and is willing to see U.S. Marines and soldiers killed and maimed to install her version of feminism abroad. She is an unquestioning supporter of Israel and on the payroll of the Israel-First lobby.”

On Cruz, Rubio, Carson and Jeb Bush: “Given what their statements and websites say about foreign policy, there is not an “outsider” in this bunch, they are all members — actual or aspiring — of the Republican establishment. All are Neoconservatives; all are all-out supporters of Israel and takers of  Israel-First campaign funding; all identify Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf and Middle East tyrannies as U.S. allies; all favor what is increasingly likely to be a war-causing expansion of NATO; and all are bone-deep proponents of the senior Bush’s deranged recipe for endless foreign intervention and the wars it causes, the ‘New World Order’.”

On Donald Trump:  “Overall a candidate that has deliberately and enthusiastically made enemies of the war-mongering and interventionist Republican and Democratic establishments, America’s worst domestic enemies, and a gang of decrepit and lick-spittle generals is surely worth careful, open-minded, and probably favorable consideration. –Bottom Line: President Trump = A chance worth taking.”

Related video:

Despite major damage-control mode, Hillary Clinton’s consistently fluid email story seems to be heading toward the proverbial dam. After U.S. intelligence agencies identified additional classified emails on HRC’s private server, including ones containing intelligence on covert “Special Access Programs,” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign “even accused the inspector general — an Obama appointee confirmed by a Democratic-controlled Senate — of engaging in a ‘coordinated leak’ with Republicans ‘for the purposes of hurting her campaign’,” reports Marc A. Thiessen in The Washington Post.

Having that kind of super-sensitive, codeword-protected, compartmented information on her unsecured server in her Chappaqua, N.Y., basement put U.S. national security in grave danger — because foreign powers could easily hack into her system and get it. In August, NBC News reported that “China’s cyber spies have accessed the private emails of ‘many’ top Obama administration officials . . . and have been doing so since at least April 2010. The email grab — first codenamed ‘Dancing Panda’ by U.S. officials, and then ‘Legion Amethyst’ — was detected in April 2010 . . . [and] is still going on.” We also know that Russian hackers successfully penetrated the State Department’s computer systems. Does anyone believe they did not target Clinton’s unsecured private server as well? It would be a miracle if the intelligence on her server was not currently in the hands of foreign intelligence services.

Read here why Mr. Thiessen believes that Mrs. Clinton, a government official discussing super sensitive information on a private, unsecured email server, committed a criminal offense.

FLASHBACK: Thiessen speaks about Clinton on The Kelly File in March:

“In Europe,” writes Mark Steyn, “they launch parties every week, but you can’t do that in America…”

In contrast to the ebb and flow of eternally shifting multiparty systems, America has a rigid, inflexible two-party choice:

One party is supposed to be the party of big government, the other the party of small government. When the Big Government Party is in power, the government gets bigger, and, when the Small Government Party is in power, the government gets bigger.

One party is supposed to be the party of social liberalism, the other the party of social conservatism. When the Socially Liberal Party is in power, the country gets more liberal, and, when the Socially Conservative Party is in power, the country gets more liberal.

One party is supposed to be the party of foreign-policy doves, the other the party of foreign-policy hawks. When the doves are in power, America loses wars, and, when the hawks are in power, America loses wars.

Twenty years ago, Mr. Steyn notes, a “guy named” Sam Francis wrote, “Imagine giving this advice to a Republican presidential candidate: What if you stopped calling yourself a conservative and instead just promised to make America great again?” What do you think might happen in the current climate, where the middle class in the country feels totally left out of everything going on?

“So much for American conservatism’s three-legged stool. ‘Mainstream’ Republican candidates are essentially reduced to the argument: This time it’ll be different, I promise.” Read more from Mark Steyn here.

Ann Coulter tells Americans, “It’s all Trump. Everything we’ve been begging politicians to talk about for the past decade, Donald Trump has brought up with a roar. ”

Ann continues, “This is not an election about who can check off the most boxes on a conservative policy list, or even about who is the best or nicest person. This is an election about saving the concept of America, an existential election like no other has ever been. Anyone who doesn’t grasp this is part of the problem, not part of the solution. ”

You would never believe it today, but there was a time when The New York Times‘ editorial board supported sound money. And the person writing sound money editorials against a proposed Bretton Woods agreement was Henry Hazlitt. Today the first name that comes to my mind when thinking about The New York Times and monetary policy is the “print til’ you die” economist Paul Krugman.

Contrary to the Keynesian crowd, Hazlitt believed it was irresponsible to make the dollar a reserve currency, as good as “gold”, knowing full well there would never be enough gold to satiate government spending demand. President Nixon proved that to be true by closing the gold window in 1971. Eventually Hazlitt was run out of town by the progressives at The New York Times, but as it turns out he was right on the money from the beginning.

In 1982, in his book From Bretton Woods to World Inflation: A Study of Causes & Consequences, Hazlitt wrote:

The Bretton Woods agreements, drafted in 1944, and the International Monetary Fund set up by them, were not the sole causes of the present world inflation. But they constituted a major contribution. They were built on the assumption that inflation-the continuous expansion of international paper credit, and the continuous making of loans by an international governmental institution-were the proper and necessary ways to “promote world economic growth.” This assumption was disastrously false, We will not stop the growth of world inflation and world socialism until the institutions and policies adopted to promote them have been abolished.

Pat Buchanan warns readers, “mass immigration from Asia, Africa and especially Latin America, legal and illegal, changed the ethnic composition of the country. White Americans, over 90 percent of the electorate in 1968, are down to 70 percent today, and about 60 percent of the population. And minorities vote 80 percent Democratic.”

Mr. Buchanan concludes, “Republicans will either bring an end to mass migration, or the new millions coming in will bring an end to the presidential aspirations of the Republican Party.”

FLASHBACK VIDEO:

Originally posted December 12, 2011.

Were you at Woodstock? It was a seminal event—some 500,000 strong. A little muddy and a little dopey, but what energy was delivered. People from all over the country showed up to peacefully protest Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War while they enjoyed great music from Joe Cocker, among many. Joe’s “With a Little Help From My Friends,” was the high-energy highlight. In 2009, Joe released a live album of his entire Woodstock set. This weekend I watched the two-disc Woodstock 40^th Anniversary Edition. This Academy Award winning rendition includes a new retrospective, with features on The Museum at Bethel Woods and The Story of The Sixties & Woodstock .

Woodstock—3 Days of Peace and Music was a concert produced by a young guy named Michael Lang. Sound industry innovator Bill Hanley crafted Woodstock’s massive ALTEC/JBL custom sound system. Woodstock was unprecedented in scope and influence; a coming together of people from all walks of life with a single common goal.

I am convinced that the 2012 elections will require just such mega energy from the Tea Party in order to wipe team Obama from the American landscape. The Tea ideally would have a candidate who can project its views, as would a Patrick Henry, Harry Browne, Nigel Farage or Chris Christie. But if it doesn’t, the Tea is going to have to suck it up and get behind the candidate who gets the nod. It’s that simple. Defeating the Obama crowd is the job at hand and victory must be assured.

The Tea can balance the books by seeing to it that it locks down every House seat possible and promotes hard liners for the Senate. Controlling the House and Senate while cleansing the House leadership of Mr. Boehner would go a long way in forcing a new president to adopt policies constructive to the formation of a constitutionally strong federal republic. America has largely been on the wrong track since the days of Woodrow Wilson. He gave us WWI and the Fed, among other travesties. After Wilson came the disasters of FDR, Truman, Johnson, Carter, Bush, and now Obama, each delivering a long list of catastrophic intrusions into the lives of Americans. It all has to end, and 2012 needs to be the finish line.

I have written in the past of the Swiss Confederation and its weak central government form (the presidency is a ceremonial office and rotates). This year, it is lead by Micheline Calmy-Rey. Micheline has no powers above the other seven members of the Swiss Federal Council. The entire Federal Council is considered a collective head of state. Switzerland is a neutral country with the lowest crime rate in the world and a powerful national defense system. Instead of a standing army, Switzerland requires every man to undergo military training for a few days or weeks a year throughout most of his life. Each man is required to keep his assigned automatic rifle at home at the ready. The Swiss are powerful believers in individual liberty and freedom. They believe that there is no need for a higher legal authority to check people’s initiatives. In fact, federal court in Switzerland is not allowed to rule on any constitutional matter at the national level. The Swiss are all about keeping things at the cantonal level. Keep it local is the key in Switzerland.

There is a lot to learn for Americans from “the Swiss way.” Switzerland’s model is precisely the weak form of central government intended by our Founders. The best outline of what a constitutionally strong form of federal republic looks like is Ron Paul’s Liberty Defined. The chapter on “Empire” alone will amaze you.

“Tens of thousands of new gun licenses were issued to Massachusetts residents in 2015, continuing a recent surge, according to state data,” reports The Boston Globe. Take a quick glance at the map from the Globe below, and you can see that the city of Boston has a pretty light licensing density and yet that’s where all the shootings take place. Maybe the liberal Globe could study it’s own reporting and see how gun ownership makes residents safer. You can see the same trend happening across the country as more guns are purchased every year and crime consistently declines. Barack Obama has unintentionally helped spur on this trend with his threats to gun rights, making him the greatest gun salesman of all time.

The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher writes about a conservative friend’s view of Mr. Trump. “I’m really torn. I can’t stand Trump, but I love what he’s doing.” And Rod concludes, “I bet a lot of people feel that way.”

Last night’s Trumpless Fox Republican debate, not surprisingly, appears to have done little to change the outlook for the Republican presidential nomination (Mr. Trump), but it may well have been a pretty decent launching pad for a Marco Rubio for VP movement, as Mr. Rubio seems to have impressed viewers with his ability to think on his feet.

The one-two punch for a Republican nominee is the willingness to halt third world immigration (read more here and here ) and the ability to squash Hillary Clinton this fall. So labeled conservatives are today in a rage because Mr. Trump does not appear interested in flying the small government flag. NRO recently devoted a whole issue of its fine magazine to an anti-Trump message. I support small government even more than do most so labeled “conservatives.” I in fact, a couple of days ago, had dinner with my long time friend Bob Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, Peter Goettler, Cato’s new and marvelously received CEO, along with a handful of key Cato supporters. As everyone in the Washington beltway knows, no other think tank preaches the small government mantra stronger than Cato does. In the most recent Cato Policy Report, CEO Goettler wrote, “One of our goals as libertarians—and a key objective of Cato’s work—is to substantially reduce the power of government.”

NRO, for its part, would prefer that their guy be of a robust foreign policy sort. Cato, for its part and the part of cousin-in-arms The American Conservative, would rather a more reserved foreign policy approach along the Realism track.

In order to “move the chains,” the remnants of the Obama disaster team must first be swept from the White House. And the world-class liar and Marxist-oriented retread Mrs. Clinton must not be allowed to move in.

As the cards line up today, those of us in the small government camp are most likely going to have to hold our collective nose and get behind Mr. Big, Donald J Trump. Trump is all about big—big ego, big mouth, big buildings, big hair, you know … Big. And that at the outset implies big government.

Victory for the small government crowd, by necessity, will need to arrive in stages. Stage one means electing a Republican this fall. The voters are incensed like never before. And Donald Trump has captured the mood of the people. The American people want an end to the danger posed by radical Islam. This feeling is number one on the mind of voters. And Donald Trump has heard the message and called for at least a temporary ban on Muslim immigration. This a winning hand and broadly supported by anti-radical Islam voters across the voter spectrum. Mr. Trump has seized the moment and continues to gain momentum despite childish and unsuccessful road blocks put up by the likes of the Fox network.

Trump looks all set in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Georgia. Looks like a pretty good foundation to me. Yes, indeed, small government voters like me are going to have to play the hand we are dealt for a period, recognizing that in order to win the war, some battles, painful as it may be, will be lost along the way. Mr. Trump tells the voters he wants to “Make America Great Again.” Given Trump’s track record and his ability to get along with folk from all walks of life, there is a chance he can deliver. Even though hope is not a strategy, in this case a little hope is required.