Trump's Growing Cabinet of Powerful Congressmen

With the variety of Cabinet and Agency appointments, President Trump can now partially reshape the Congressional Conservative complexion.

Interior Secretary Zinke

1)  Ryan K Zinke leaves his slot as Congressman from Montana to serve as Secretary of the Interior, bringing new lifeblood and considerable experience to the office.

    a)  An outdoorsman and career US Navy SEAL, he will likely reorganize his department and depoliticize it.  For one, he gains the immediate respect of the national Park Police, who were mortified facing off with angry Veterans who found their Military monuments closed or cordoned off by Obama.

   b)  Zinke will likely reshape the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a cesspool of political appointees who have gouged the Indian tribes and violated countless US government treaties.
   

LaVoy Finicum

c)  The Bureau of Land Management will likely go through a major overhaul, with that swamp drained of faceless bureaucrats tormenting and destroying private property rights of land-owners in the West.  We expect an internal investigation of the execution of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, a rancher, foster parent, and spokesman for a property rights group in Oregon.



     b)  His replacement will be appointed by Governor Bullock [D], a Conservative Democrat who will likely appoint a Conservative to replace Zinke.

OMB Director Mulvaney

2)   Mick Mulvaney, formerly Congressman from South Carolina, has been appointed Director of the OMB [Office of Management of the Budget, a position critical to President Trump in managing funds for the Administration's operations.  

      a)  He has monitored crypto currencies [e.g., Bitcoin] and block chain technologies which will become increasingly important in financial operations of the future; notably, President Obama fought the emergence of BitCoin as he could not control this alternate currency.

      b) Mulvaney's replacement will now be appointed by SC's Governor Henry McMaster [R], who will likely appoint a staunch Pro-Trump Conservative to Congress to replace Mulvaney.

c)  Trump apparently appointed Left leaning Nikki Haley to the United Nations, perhaps to remove her from any semblance of power in the South; she had become an embarrassment in pandering to the Political Correct crowd, to include acquiescing to demands to remove the Confederate Flag.  Without the basis of the Governor's position, her political career may be over.

HHS Director Tom Price

3)  Tom Price, formerly Congressman [R]  from Georgia, a physician appointed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services [HHS], which houses 80,000 employees with a budget of over $1 Trillion.

      a), will be responsible for reforming and replacing ObamaCare, and has the full support of Speaker Ryan.

       b)  Equally important, Price will likely pull together the disparate elements of HHS which are known for their infighting and inefficiencies, not to speak of their vast oversight and mismanagement of the Welfare system.

      c)  Also important is Price's oversight of the Food & Drug Administration [FDA] which reportedly sold out long ago to the Pharmaceuticals [Big Pharma]

           (1) It has blocked research and development of countless cures for cancers and other diseases.  Oncology has become one of the most profitable ventures in the medical industry, and Big Pharma earns hundreds of billions of dollars each year by charging huge amounts for oncology medications.   

          (2)  It has also blocked identification of country of origin for food and health products entering the US.  Price will be expected to reverse this p olicy and once again demand "country of origin" labels on these products.

4)  Xavier Becerra [D], son of Mexican immigrants, resigned from the House to accept his appointment as Attorney General of California.  He had been Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

CIA Director Pompeio

5)  Mike Pompeo,  a  Tea Party Republican from Kansas and West Point graduate, served on the House Intelligence Committee [HPSCI] which is now headed by Devin Nunes [who declined to investigate Trump's ties to Russia labeling the charges "nonsense"].  Governor Brownback [R] of Kansas, with the support of Bob Dole, will replace Pompeo with a worth Conservative. 

[Brownback turned down an HHS ObamaCare grant of $31 million]

    a) Pompeo also served on the Energy and Commerce Committees where he gained considerable insight into two of the primary issues involving Intelligence gathering [in previous administrations] which have led to international confrontations.  

    b) He also served on the Benghazi Committee where he slammed Hillary during her testimony.  His close cooperation with Trey Gowdy on that Committee will likely open new levels of investigation into Benghazi and Hillary's connection to illicit activities leading to the deaths of Americans coming to the rescue of the Consulate there.

c)  He has stated that he will not resume the use of torture as a method of interrogation and we suspect he will come to terms with President Trump on this issue.  Common sense will prevail.

[NOTE: During the Vietnam War, we conducted hundreds of successful interrogations, receiving the highest recognition from CIA and DIA for the reports.  None of these interrogations involved torture]

d)  Expect the CIA hierarchy to attack Pompeo in the same ad hominem methods which forced the removal of his W-appointed predecessor, Porter Goss, who attempted to reform the CIA.  This will be an exceptionally difficult task for Pompeo and we wish him well.

[NOTE:  Given the history of CIA, particularly under Obama, we would recommend that the Covert Mission be turned over to DOD, returning CIA to solely Clandestine missions, or, perhaps, eliminating  CIA operations altogether - leaving Clandestine Operations to the Defense Clandestine Service and making the CIA an analysis organization.]

These are critical changes in the House.

The results mean that, in addition to Cabinet Members who have made their personal fortunes based on hard work and enterprise and who have considerable levels of expertise in their new positions, the Congressmen appointed all have superb backgrounds and can be expected to perform effectively and reduce the size of their Departments and Agencies, trimming them to workable organizations rather then massive, faceless bureaucracies.  Think of HHS with 80,000 employees and a budget of over a trillion dollars; there's plenty of room for reform there.

Each of these Congressmen left critical positions in Congress and each will be replaced by Conservative governors.  The replacements will likely not be neophytes, but will challenge the incumbent GOP leadership under President Trump.

It's a new dawn in Congress, and The [corrupt] Establishment is losing its grip.  

Remembering the WW2 Doolittle Raid

Doolittle's Raiders; Only Four Survive

[As we regain our national dignity following the Presidential election, we can remember, with honor, a select few of the heroes who protected our country from those who attacked us on December 7, 1941.  These men honored our flag, and put their lives at risk to allow their grandchildren, and great grandchildren, the freedom to express themselves, with some seeking out"safe spaces" offended by those intent on reforming the corrupt government which now is in place.   We also note that this was a period in which the Press reported accurately, and Hollywood was not a Communist colony. 

We salute these heroes!]

 THE FINAL TOAST!

They bombed Tokyo 74 years ago.

 

They once were among the most universally admired and revered men in the United States .. There were 80 of the Raiders in April 1942, when they carried out one of the most courageous and heart-stirring military operations in this nation's history. The mere mention of their unit's name, in those years, would bring tears to the eyes of grateful Americans.
 
  
After Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor [December 7, 1941], with the United States reeling and wounded, our Pacific Fleet devastated,something dramatic was needed to turn the war effort around.
 
 
Although there were no friendly airfields close enough to Japan for the United States to launch a retaliation, a daring plan was devised. Sixteen B-25s
were modified so that they could take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. This had never before been tried -- sending such big, heavy bombers from a carrier.
 
 

 
 

The 16 five-man crews, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, who himself flew the lead plane off the USS Hornet, knew that they would not be able to return to the carrier.
They would have to hit Japan and then hope to make it to China for a safe landing.
 
 

But on the day of the raid, the Japanese military learned of the plan. The Raiders were told that they would have to take off from much farther out in the Pacific Ocean than they had counted on, so, they would not have enough fuel to make it to safety.

Undaunted, these crews went anyway.
 
They bombed Tokyo and then flew as far as they could. Four planes crash-landed;11 more crews bailed out, and three of the Raiders died. Eight more were captured; three were executed. 

 
 

Another died of starvation in a Japanese prison camp. One crew made it to Russia

The Doolittle Raiders sent a message from the United States to its enemies, and to the rest of the world: We will fight. And, no matter what it takes, we will win!
 
 
Of the 80 Raiders, 62 survived the war. They were celebrated as national heroes, models of bravery. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced a motion picture based on the raid; "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," starring Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson, was a patriotic and emotional box-office hit, and the phrase became part of the national lexicon. In the movie-theater previews for the film, MGM proclaimed that it was presenting
the story "with supreme pride."

Beginning in 1946, the surviving Raiders have held a reunion each April, to commemorate the mission. The reunion is in a different city each year. In 1959, the city of Tucson, Arizona, as a gesture of respect and gratitude, presented the Doolittle Raiders with a set of 80 silver goblets. Each goblet was engraved with the name of a Raider.  Every year, a wooden display case bearing all 80 goblets is transported to the reunion city. Each time a Raider passes away, his goblet is turned upside down in the case at the next reunion, as his old friends bear solemn witness.
 
 

Also, in the wooden case is a bottle of 1896 Hennessy Very Special cognac. The year is not happenstance: 1896 was when Jimmy Doolittle was born.
 
 

There has always been a plan: When there are only two surviving Raiders, they would open the bottle at last, drink from it and toast their comrades who preceded them in death.
 
As 2013 began, there were five living Raiders; then, in February, Tom Griffin passed away at age 96.
 
 

He defined the term "War Hero". After bailing out of his plane over a mountainous Chinese forest after the Tokyo raid, he became ill with malaria, and almost died. When he recovered, he was sent to Europe to fly more combat missions. He was shot down, captured, and spent 22 months in a German prisoner of war camp.
 
 

The selflessness of these men, the sheer guts ... there was a passage in the Cincinnati Enquirer obituary for Mr. Griffin that, on the surface, had nothing to do with the war,but that was emblematic of the depth of his sense of duty and devotion:
 
 
"When his wife became ill and needed to go into a nursing home, he visited her every day. He walked from his house to the nursing home, fed his wife and at the end of the day brought home her clothes. At night, he washed and ironed her clothes. Then he walked them up to her room the next morning. He did that for three years until her death in 2005."
 
 

So now, out of the original 80, only four Raiders remain: Dick Cole (Doolittle's co-pilot on the Tokyo raid), Robert Hite, Edward Saylor and David Thatcher. All are in their 90s.  They have decided that there are too few of them for the public reunions to continue.
 
 
The events in Fort Walton Beach marked the end. It has come full circle; Florida's nearby Eglin Field was where the Raiders trained in secrecy for the Tokyo mission. The town planned to do all it can to honor the men: a six-day celebration of their valor, including luncheons, a dinner and a parade.

Do the Dollittle Raiders ever wonder if those of us whom they helped to save the country have tended to it in a way that is worthy of their sacrifice? They don't talk about that, at least not around other people. But if you find yourself near Fort Walton Beach this week, and if you should encounter any of the Raiders, you might want to offer them a word of thanks. I can tell you from first hand observation that they appreciate hearing that
they are remembered.
 
 
The men have decided that after this final public reunion they will wait until a later date -- sometime this year -- to get together once more, informally
and in absolute privacy. That is when they will open the bottle of brandy. The years are flowing by too swiftly now; they are not going to wait until there are only two of them.
 
 
They will fill the four remaining upturned goblets. And raise them in a toast to those who are gone. 
 
 

Their 70th Anniversary Photo 

Only one member of the Doolittle Raid remains as fellow airman ... David Thatcher, a staff sergeant during the Doolittle Raid, smiles with pride as he listens to a speaker talk about the Doolittle Raiders, April 20, 2013 in Fort ...