My son Brandon and his fiance, Christel  gave birth to a beautiful little girl. 

My wife Kelly and I traveled from our home in California to Washington to spend a week with them (and our other children Stephanie and Matthew). We had a wonderful time visiting with family and friends. We miss her already.

 Here is a photo of Alivia with Nonno and Nonna. 

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A front page story in Sunday April 13th, 2008 Los Angeles Times reports on the Clinton’s fund raising sources for post Presidential construction of the Clinton Library and other charities supported by the William J. Clinton Foundation. 

The Clinton foundation has raised over $500 million dollars and contributes money to well deserving causes such as research of disease, assistance to aids victims and poverty relief in third world countries.

According to the LA Times and other sources, at the invitation of Alibaba, China’s largest internet company, Bill Clinton spoke at a conference in Hangzhou and deferred his normal $100 - $400k speaking fee in exchange for an undisclosed contribution to his Foundation.

The problem with this is that the Clinton’s have refused to release a donor list of the Foundation. How are we to know what favors have been promised to foreign companies or governments in exchange for large donations to Bill’s favorite charity - himself.

It is also widely known that the Clinton Library in Little Rock has received millions of dollars from Saudi families, Middle East sheikdoms in Kuwait and Qatar as well as the governments of Taiwan and Brunei. What promises have been made? What favors are owed?

Bill Clinton has a long track record of using his considerable political influence to repay debt. Look at his record for pardons issued, particularly while packing up Whitehouse dishes and linens on their exit from Pennsylvania Ave the last time.

As further evidence of his unabashed shamelessness there is the  New York Times story published in January of this year which describes a sweet heart deal arranged by Bill Clinton in which his foundation received over $31 million dollars in exchange for publicly expressing support for the leader of former Soviet Republic Kazakhstan to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy, despite the fact that his support was in direct conflict with American foreign policy and his Senator wife’s own public comments about human rights violations by leaders of Kazakhstan. The deal also resulted in a Canadian businessman receiving a plutonium mining contract with the country of Kazakhstan worth tens of millions of dollars in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation.

 I have previously posted about the Clinton’s. They continue to behave as if what they do and say is irrelevant in their pursuit of the Whitehouse and their personal gain. With them the end always justifies the means. I can’t think of more frightening scenario then having them back in the Whitehouse.

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I have listened to Tom Brokaw’s audio book ‘Boom’ a couple of times. It is an interesting recap of major events of the 1960’s in the context of his personal perspective as a journalist, father, husband, friend and American citizen.

The book includes interviews with such famous faces as Arlo Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Michelle Phillips, James Taylor and Rafer Johnson, the 1960 Olympic decathlon champion. Johnson tells how he gave up a promising career as a sportscaster to work on the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. On June 5, 1968, Johnson helped to wrestle Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan to the ground. In the struggle, Rafer grabbed the gun and put it in his suit pocket. When he woke up the next morning, Johnson discovered that the gun was still in his suit pocket.

Guthrie, now 60 years old, performs a rendition of his signature song ‘Alice’s Restaurant’. He then tells Brokaw that during the 60’s the counter culture was about alternative life styles and how drugs were an alternative to alcohol. He says that he has changed his mind about some of those beliefs. Brokaw asks him what he has changed his mind about. Guthrie responds “I have developed a taste for good whiskey”.

In 1969 a music festival was held in Bethel, New York on a 600 acre field at the home of Max Yasgur. Which is why you may hear the reference to ‘Yasgur’s Farm’ as a coded way of talking about Woodstock. This is often thought of as the hallmark moment in the counter culture movement of the 60’s. The ‘hippies’ had officially stamped their place in history and put on display their social, political and personal view of the times.

You can’t talk about the the 60’s without discussing the Vietnam war. Walter Cronkite was reporting from the streets of Saigon immediately after the Tet Offensive. He assessed the war at that point as ‘unwinnable’. Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said ‘if I have lost Cronkite, then I have lost middle America”. Cronkite’s critical assessment had some bearing on LBJ’s consideration to end the war.  

On April 28, 1967, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted in the U.S. Army. For Ali, his opposition stemmed from more than just his belief that the war was immoral. He believed that since blacks did not experience equality at home, for them to serve in the war was a perversion of justice.

Initially, Ali was granted conscientious objector status, but later charged with draft evasion. He was fined ten thousand dollars, sentenced to five years in prison, and his heavyweight title and license to box was taken away. Four years later, his conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme court because of procedural grounds.

The civil rights movement defined the 60’s. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Emmit Til are people I recall from 40 years ago that frame those years in the context of civil rights. Brokaw discusses them and many others and how they shaped social views of race in this country.

On December 21st, 1968 Apollo 8 launched into orbit with crew members Frank Boreman, James Lovell and William Anders. This was the first space mission that actually orbited the moon. On Christmas eve 1968 the images of the earth from Apollo 8 were broadcast back to earth in what is now a famous image. Brokaw discusses the importance of this event because of how it momentarily mended the country in a time of complete turmoil.

These were formative years in my life. I was a freshman in high school in 1972. The Vietnam war was still raging, the civil rights movement had shifted from violent protests to political discourse, drugs were part of the culture, man had walked on the moon and Muhammad Ali was ‘the greatest’. There isn’t another generation in American history that lived through so many significant events in such a short amount of time. For anyone interested in a review of that time period I would highly recommend the audio book by Brokaw.

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Geraldine Ferraro stepped down as a member of one of Hillary Clintons finance committee’s yesterday after news media and the Obama campaign seized on her comments about Obama’s success so far in this election.

What she said was “I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign — to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against. If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position, and if he was a woman [of any color] he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

What Ferraro said was spot on if taken in the context it was intended. Obama is playing the race card because it benefits him to do so. Not because he believes her remarks were racist, but because he is a seasoned politician who won’t miss any opportunity to leverage his position by associating his opponent with the perceived offender. As I’ve said many times before, the end always justifies the means in American politics.

Obama should have leveraged Ferraro’s comments as an affirmation rather than a mean spirited discrimination. This election is historic. He should have celebrated the acknowledgement, rather than vilify and condemn her for speaking the truth. I think he missed a great opportunity to separate himself from the predictable attack dog campaign style we are weary of seeing. This should have been a moment in which Obama demonstrated his ability to unify rather than divide.

I am not a speech writer, but had I been asked what he should say in response it would have been something like:

“Thank you Geraldine for raising this prickly issue. It is important that we discuss this so that it does not become a campaign theme because there are way too many other things that the American people really care about for this to distract us from our mission of hope and change. I am proud of my African American ethnicity as all Americans should be of their families history. Isn’t it wonderful that so many new people have found their way into the election process as they exercise their right to vote. We are seeing people all across the nation realize one of the great promises of freedom and liberty by participating in this election. If the fact that I am a black man has contributed to this phenomenal surge of interest, then I am proud to be part of that success. The rest of the world is watching, so lets not disappoint them with boorish behavior by debating non issues. Instead join me in the celebration of a new day in America, where an African American man and a female of any race or color has a legitimate opportunity to be elected President of the United States”.

In my opinion comments like that would have earned him far more collateral then the dishonest objections promoted by his campaign.

My .02

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If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered… The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. President, Thomas Jefferson

Have you ever wondered how the Federal Reserve works, who runs it and what function it serves? Did you know that the Federal Reserve is not a government agency, but a privately held company? Do you know who owns the Federal Reserve?

Brief History

Prior to the creation of the current version of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, banks were largely unregulated and unchartered. Private bankers controlled the economy of local communities because there were no regulations or policy in regards to loan terms, usury laws or reserve requirements. Banks were a patch work of unaffiliated institutions scattered across the country with no central policy. The creation of a central banking system had failed twice before. In 1791 Congress established the First Bank of The United States. After the initial 20 year charter expired Congress failed to reinstate the central bank, reverting to the ‘free banking’ system that left banks unregulated and its lending provisions subject only to market forces (supply and demand).  In 1816 a second central reserve bank was mandated by Congress. When Andrew Jackson was elected President in 1828 he vowed to abolish the institution and succeeded in doing so in 1836.

Private Banking Cartel 

The creation of the ’Fed’ in 1913 during the Woodrow Wilson administration was very controversial. Wilson was under enormous political pressure. The banking monopolies publically pretended to be opposed to the act, while spending millions of dollars to promote the new system politically behind the scenes. Wilson signed the legislation on December 22nd, 1913 during the Christmas break period for Congress.

The act created the Federal Reserve System, a name purposely selected by the banking cartel and bank rolled politicians. Choosing a name that led people to believe that this was a government regulated agency misrepresented the facts to the American people and provided credibility to the new system. In reality the act created a private, for profit banking corporation that is controlled by an international banking cartel. Here is a list of the families that own the Federal Reserve System:

• Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin
• Lazard Brothers Bank of Paris
• Israel Moses Sieff Banks of Italy
• Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Germany and Amsterdam
• Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York
• Lehman Brothers Bank of New York
• JP Morgan
• Goldman Sachs Bank of New York
• Chase Manhattan Bank of New York (Controlled By the Rockefeller Family) 

The stated purpose of creating the Federal Reserve was to unify and supervise the entire banking system, control the expansion or contraction of currency, and regulate the flow of money to the commercial banks through the establishment of 12 Federal Reserve Banks supervised by the Federal Reserve System.  

The Federal Reserve System (corporation) or banking cartel creates money out of nothing, lends it to the Federal Government and commercial banks, then charges interest on those ‘loans’.  The US Treasury only prints money when the ‘Fed’ (bank cartel) tells it to print. Taxpayers repay the government loans (national debt) and consumers repay lenders (loans) in the form of principal and interest payments, a large portion of which goes to the members of the banking cartel that still exists today. Money created from nothing!!!

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creati0n of inextinguishable debts”.  Henry Ford

Stay tuned for part 2.

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Officer J.D. Tippit lost his life on November 22nd 1963, shortly after the JFK assassination, allegedly at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald . Tippit was a 39 year old father of three, husband, brother and veteran police officer.

The events at Dealy Plaza that day have been vetted ad nauseam by hundreds of authors, law enforcement agencies, conspiracy theorists and the Warren Commission. Omitted from many discussions on this topic is the tragedy of Officer Tippit’s murder. There have been many theories offered that differ from the official police record regarding his murder. What is not in dispute is a police officer was gunned down on Tenth Street in the Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas, about 2 miles from the Texas School Book Depository where the JFK assassination occurred.

The short version of the events are that Oswald left the depository immediately after the assassination. By most accounts he traveled by foot, taxi and bus. First to his home and then to the Oak Cliff area where the killing occurred. While patrolling the area in his marked police car Tippit came across a pedestrian walking in the same direction on the sidewalk. Upon seeing the patrol car Oswald abruptly changed directions. Tippit stopped his car and called for him to stop. According to witnesses Oswald spoke to Tippit through the open right front vent window. After a brief conversation, Tippit exited his car. As he approached the drivers front panel, Oswald pulled out the .38 caliber pistol and began shooting. Five rounds were fired. Four of which hit Tippit killing him at the scene. Half an hour later, while in possession of the .38 pistol, Oswald was arrested at a movie theatre approximately eight blocks away.

Most people are unable to bring themselves to do the things Police Officers do on a daily basis. Without their courage and commitment we would not have the quality of life we enjoy. All to often we seem to be immune or insulated from the ugly and and sometimes frightening societal conduct that they endure for us every day. People like JD Tippit are heroes whose life came to an abrupt and senseless end. Don’t forget him or others like him who have died or been maimed in the line of duty.

I have several relatives serving law enforcement agencies, including a cousin, two brothers, two sisters and a brother-in-law. They risk their lives every day to protect the communities in which they live. They have spouses, children, extended families and friends, as did Tippit. I haven’t before taken the time to express my appreciation for their thankless work and the work of their peers.

Thank you for your valuable service and may God keep you safe. 

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