Ben Ginsberg published an excellent article on Politico entitled, “Why the GOP primary could be even crazier than you think.” Ben is a longtime observer of the process and his analysis is excellent. He talks about how a series of primaries may lead to and ebb and flow of momentum for the current primary candidates. He makes the point that March is usually the indicator month of who the eventual nominee will be. This year could be different. States that do not lend themselves to grassroots organization, such as New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and California, could play key roles in the nomination process. For the first time in years, theme, message, and political motivation of the electorate could be critical for later primaries. What’s the difference? In the past, by March an eventual nominee was coalescing the party around themselves as the only viable option. If there are three or more viable candidates at the end of March, the party divisions may be amplified by theme and message. This could result in an extended primary contest, or even a brokered convention, as the ultimate nominee seeks a unifying message.

Read the Politico Article Here

In the past ten years, nation states worldwide have deficit spent to meet the public’s demands for government services. It has become a way of life. But do we know of any formulas that would indicate that there are limits to the amount of debt that a government can accumulate before it impacts an economy negatively? Certainly recent turmoil in Greece would provide evidence that there are limits to how far a sovereign nation can go into debt before it hits its Debt Wall...

Today, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke to a joint session of Congress. The purpose of his speech was to alert and warn the American public of the possibility of the United States of America agreeing to, in his opinion, a bad plan with Iran to keep Iran from developing an atomic bomb, weapon, and delivery system. The President of the United States refused to meet with the Prime Minister. Thirty Democrats boycotted the speech. At least one Democrat, Senator Diane Feinstein of California, adhered to proper protocol. She attended out of respect for our relationship with Israel.

The speech and the Prime Minister’s appearance have generated a political firestorm. The point of the Nuttle Report this week is not to discuss the pros and cons of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks, but to discuss what it means to you individually as an American.

I did not start the Nuttle Report just to be another commentator on current events. I started it to engage individuals in a discussion about what they want for the future of their country in policy and leadership. It is time to start a new movement in the United States that demands response from our leaders and solutions to the problems facing our country today. Many people remark to me that they do not like the course our country is traveling. But they say, “What can I do about it? I’m just one individual.” There are two things that every American can do to counter the feeling that our country is on the wrong track. First, you can simply define, in part using this report, your own position in your own words what you believe. And then take possession of your position by stating, “This is what I believe.” Second, you can join to produce the most powerful political tool that history has ever known – a people’s movement. It’s important to remember that a majority of our leaders are not opposed to taking the country in another direction. They simply don’t know what direction to take. If we will express succinctly, clearly, and cogently, the simple truths of human dignity and liberty, they will follow us.

It is time to take action!  It is our intention to prepare you to be able to not only participate in the debate and discussion of the 2016 Presidential campaign, but to lead it. The Nuttle Report will be filled with information that you need to know to prepare you for the 2016 Presidential election.

What is at stake is the future of our country and the world as we know it today. The nation state of Israel is one of our closest allies in the world. It is by far our number one ally in the Middle East. To negotiate a political deal with an adversary that has direct and immediate impact on a very close friend, without that friend’s permission, is not only a betrayal of our friend, but it is not in the best interest of our own foreign policy. To believe that involving other European powers is sufficient to justify the process, as many Democratic members of Congress said today in their rebuttal to the Prime Minister’s speech, is the further exercise of implementing foreign policy without consistency or a central strategic plan.

The Nuttle Report is my opinion and it is based on premises of principles that bind us. Those principles are set out at the New Horizon Council (www.newhorizoncouncil.com). At that site, we lay the foundation for a very simple purpose in our foreign policy: rule of law, due process, free & independent courts, a free press, and transparency. Israel embraces all of these principles, Iran none of them. This simple fact should carry some weight in our foreign policy decisions. Iran has not even recognized the right of Israel to exist. That might be a reasonable starting point. My question is, at what end do we negotiate with Iran without a partnership with Israel? It is in violation of our own purpose as a world power.

It is critical that we as individuals and as citizens of the greatest country on earth, the United States of America, state our opinion as to what type of world order we want. Is it OK for Iran to violate the common decency dictated by the community of nations? And if your answer is that what we want is peace, I do too, but peace in a world of civil order. Stating what you want for your children to inherit as a society, I would submit to you, is one of our mandates as citizens of the human race.

In future Nuttle Reports I will discuss world economics, to include Greece, China and Russia, and what their economic situation means to you individually. We will elaborate on how actions taken in those countries impact the USA’s economy, but more importantly, on how they impact your individual state and its ability to provide services in health care, education, infrastructure, and law & order.

We will also discuss world political events and geopolitics, and what this means to cultural diversity and cultural identity. We will have conversation about how to coordinate the State Department, national defense, and the Treasury, for the advancement of a stable world order, not just militarily or religiously, but also economically. In the future, your state’s and city’s ability to provide services, and your ability to find a job and provide for your family, will partly be based on world and national events. The Internet, regardless of how it’s regulated, will drive us closer together as peoples of the world. And world events will have universal impact.

I ask you to join me in a new dialog for a new movement to pursue a rising sun in America -- an America that stands on principle and leads the world in the opportunity to pursue prosperity.

I ask you to take the steps to define your belief on principles that bind us and declare them to your children and to your sphere of influence.  You thereby will have taken the one lever of power that you have to influence your country’s leadership by adding your voice to the movement.  Your country and your children will thank you for it. They will thank you for saying, “My name is ….., and this is what I believe.”

A flood is coming. It looks destructive. In the affairs of men, it can lead on to fortune.

 
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.

 
What do you believe?

Yesterday a major event did not take place in our nation’s capital that should not go unnoticed or unaddressed. Bishop E.W. Jackson, a well-known black evangelical leader, had scheduled a meeting at the Capitol Building among black leaders to seek reconciliation for our country. At the last minute, congressional staffers rescinded the authorization for use of a meeting room. Bishop Jackson had intended to humble himself and appeal to Heaven. Certain staffers had demanded that he change his “appeal to Heaven” to a “focus on legislation.” With this demand, the meeting was cancelled.

Now, let’s think about this a minute historically. George Washington campaigned during the Revolutionary War under the flag of a pine tree and an Appeal to Heaven. It was a cause for unification among the colonies. We know that prayer is appropriate in the Capitol Building. There are prayer breakfasts, prayer group meetings, and the Senate opens its sessions with a prayer. What was the possible intent of the staffers’ action? It defies common sense.

Further, it is a restriction of free speech. Either the meeting’s purpose was appropriate, or it was not. The meeting room was legally available for the meeting, or it was not. To dictate to anyone the content and limits of their speech in the United States Capitol Building is an anathema to the first amendment to the Constitution.

Such a challenge of common sense dealing with our national government has happened before. But in one particular case, a different outcome was realized because of common sense leadership. Ronald Reagan served the United States as President from 1981-1988. He was known as a president who stood on principles. He never worried about conventional wisdom or the social acceptability of society. He believed in a commitment to eternal truths. And he was bound by his commitment to principles. In other words, he led.

There was a time in his presidency when there was a realized crisis of unwed teen pregnancy in the United States. The raging debate was whether or not abstinence should be included as a possible remedy for this crisis facing young women in America.

The establishment progressives in Washington, DC argued that abstinence had no place in the discussion because it was an outdated moral value that had no relevancy at that time. In other words, promiscuous sex was inevitable and a socially acceptable activity of the day. Therefore, the only remedies that were to be advanced were things like sex education and the distribution of contraceptive devices in the public schools.

President Reagan stated that abstinence before marriage was still an option and a directive for unwed teens. He didn’t demand abstinence as a virtue, as a priority, or even as the only option. He only wanted it included as an option. The liberal press ridiculed him, and a leading national newspaper went so far as to editorialize saying that surely we’re not going back to that “quaint old notion of fidelity.”

Lee Atwater, then a consultant to Vice President George H.W. Bush, related a story of the cabinet meeting held on the day the national editorial ran. The cabinet collected in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Everyone was in a jovial mood. In fact, a couple of cabinet members even mentioned the editorial and laughed about it.  The first thing on the agenda that day was the Surgeon General’s Public Health Report on the health of the United States, and the question before the cabinet was whether or not abstinence should be included as a practice of good health for unmarried teenage women.

President Reagan most mornings began the meetings with a smile and with optimism. This morning however, he began with a very stern look on his face. It caught the entire cabinet by surprise. He was holding in his hand a copy of the editorial. Then he said this newspaper has “called me old-fashioned” for suggesting that abstinence should be listed as a health practice to avoid teen pregnancy.

Later that morning President Reagan was to fly to Omaha, Nebraska. He would be addressing an audience of Midwesterners. President Reagan asked his cabinet for advice on what he should say to a husband or wife when they asked him whether or not fidelity was as an old fashioned idea, and further, whether or not commitments made in marriage vows were simply words of convenience. He also added that he believed that people who still believe in fidelity in marriage should be respected for their viewpoints.

At that point he turned to the cabinet secretary on his right and asked for his opinion and advice on the matter. The mood had become instantly somber. No one in the room was now laughing or thought that the editorial had any merit or weight on the issue. Each cabinet secretary answered the same, “I have nothing to add to that, Mr. President,” the next secretary, “I have nothing to add to that, Mr. President,” the next secretary, “I have nothing to add to that, Mr. President,” and so it went on around the table.

C. Everett Koop, the U.S. Surgeon General, was sitting on the side of the room waiting for the first agenda item to be addressed. The President did not call on Dr. Koop to speak, he simply stated that he assumed it would be OK to include in the report abstinence as a possible remedy for teen pregnancy in the Surgeon General’s Report.  Dr. Koop said, “Mr. President, it will be in there by 4 o’clock this afternoon.” And that national newspaper has never opined on the matter since.

President Reagan exercised common sense leadership based on truth. He did not yield to the peer pressure of the national intelligentsia. He did not care what the national press thought was old fashioned or not. By one simple act of leading, in a moment, he changed the entire environment and direction of the debate.

I waited one day to publish this Nuttle Report because I wanted to see whether or not common sense would rule out in the decision to allow Bishop Jackson to hold a meeting in our nation’s Capitol Building for the purpose of unification. It did not.

There is a reason why Thomas Paine, in his treatise on liberty and independence, entitled his work Common Sense. Regardless of what your position is on fidelity or prayer, all opinions should be heard respectfully -- even the conventional ones. Today we need, more than ever, common sense leadership, not sense of perception leadership.

My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.


What do you believe?