Posts Tagged → america
Government shutdown? Not really. Country shutdown? Not a chance.
Both political parties are standing by their own interests and or philosophies. This is what American checks-and-balances government is about. It is not the first time people have disagreed strongly enough to achieve gridlock, and it will not be the last.
Government does not equal America. America is much bigger and much more important than its national government.
Is the government shut down? Not at all. Sad to hear from US park rangers who say they have been directed to make park visitors as unhappy as possible, to punish citizens, more or less. The White House has spent tremendous resources over the past few days to actually shut down an open-air World War II memorial on the Washington Mall, using far more resources now than have ever been used to maintain it in the past. The reason is that a bunch of Veterans are trying to visit it on their annual pilgrimage, and again, this administration is trying to punish Americans as evidence that the “shutdown” really is bad.
Obama, meanwhile, is sitting for his portrait while this is happening. Kind of like a European monarch in the 19-teens, as the old ways and power structure disintegrate under the nobility’s feet.
Is the country “shut down”? Not at all. Businesses go on making their business. Some businesses that are dependent on government contracts may have challenges, but government business is not the definition of American business. My gutters got cleaned, I paid a sawmill to cut my lumber, and we bought groceries to feed our weekend company gracing us with their presence. Life is actually going on.
Compromise is the magic word, used often in these moments.
But who shall compromise, and on what terms? In my opinion, one party has “compromised” far too many times over the past 70 years. Always being brow beaten into accepting one bad government policy after another, that party has developed a reflexive need to “compromise.” Fear of being blamed by a partisan media structure that hates that political party, the party leaders have developed a culture of constantly giving in.
I am one of those Americans who says No, do not give in. Government has grown too large, too overbearing, too much our master and not our servant. It is time to stop ObamaCare and other policies and programs that turn free citizens into serfs suffering the whims of their overlords. Government “leaders” have become nobility, due all kinds of expensive vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, voting themselves waivers and subsidies for programs that everyone else must abide by and pay for. This is not government, it is a ruling class feeding off the citizenry, pushing it around, demanding that it kowtow, or be punished.
IRS mis-deeds against political enemies of this administration continue, despite public disbelief. America is at a point like it was in 1859, when abolitionists and slave-holders could not reconcile their views. Neither side would compromise, because it meant giving up everything they stood for. Thank God the Abolitionists did not compromise, right?
Big government is enslavement. It is not the American way. Too many Americans died at home and abroad fighting for a free America. This is a good time to stand firm and say No, because all of our freedoms are just a compromise away from being gone.
Syria contrasts a world upside down
The sadistically brutal civil war in Syria has highlighted key foreign policy issues, both on the right and the left.
First, oddly but on second thought, unsurprisingly, the left’s International Human Shields group has waited until now to announce its intention to field live humans to block potential American bombs in Syria. These folks never interceded to block Assad’s conventional or gas missiles falling on hundreds of thousands of women, children, and elderly, nor did they stand in Israeli schools and homes as tens of thousands of missiles rained down for years from Gaza.
Somehow, in their twisted minds, American bombs on Syrian military targets are bad, Syrian bombs on civilians are not an issue. The left hates American freedom, loves dictators. It’s been this way since the left’s embrace of the Soviet Union because it opposed the US. That wasn’t so logical either, but at least these folks are consistent. But when they say they are anti war, know that it’s untrue. Russia’s invasion of Ossetia and Chechnya didn’t warrant a peep. America invades the country that harbored Osama Bin Laden, and they raise hell.
Second, conservatives are driven by both genuine anti war concerns and also a desire to put Obama in a box. Obama is incompetent, but conservatives should not make matters worse. Rather, it stands to reason that conservatives stand against dictators gassing their own citizens. America can and should do much militarily to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, without opening the door to Islamic kooks. If there’s one thing America stands for, it’s a strong opposition to dictators gassing civilians.
Dithering and weakness as foreign policy goals, tools
The past weeks, really months, with the famous Obama Red Line, have been filled with incredible dithering and rudderless, terribly public waffling and indecision. America’s allies believe they cannot trust America, and America’s enemies are clearly unafraid of us. With a slavish mainstream media that seeks only to bolster Obama, somehow all this failure will be cast as a really slick foreign policy. What I did enjoy was how even the appearance of a threat of American bombing sent Syria’s army scurrying from its daily routine of raping, torturing, and pillaging civilians, and either deep into hiding, or deep into defection.
So in a way, we can say that even Obama’s dithering helped slow down the Assad regime’s murderous onslaught.
I’ll take what I can get, and give credit where it is due: Obama, you are the least qualified, most inexperienced person America has ever had as president, but even your incompetence can be occasionally helpful.
That’s it, Obama is like Inspector Clouseau…
Happy Memorial Day – and a big Thank You to our service members
Memorial Day is supposed to be about remembering those who served and died for our freedoms.
We all take our American freedoms for granted. I do it, you do it, it’s such a good lifestyle that it is impossible not to enjoy it casually. But we enjoy it because of the sacrifices of those who picked up a weapon to protect us.
Thank you to those who died, and those who continue to serve in harm’s way. We appreciate all you do.
Political correctness run amok
As unbelievable as it is, mainstream media are now posing the question of motive behind the Boston bombing. Really.
What’s so sick about PC is that the more obvious something is, the less you are supposed to talk about it. Well guess what….there’s no PC here.
Like millions of Americans, I love America more than any political party, more than any social nicety, more than I fear being labeled by anti-American activists living amongst us, namely the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate that operates at the highest levels of American government and which aggressively censors and cuts off debate about the role of Islam in America.
CAIR is public enemy number one, and I’m happy to say it. They will cover up the motive behind the two Muslim men responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing. That’s wrong and it must be confronted.
US Senate Filibuster Yields Unsurprising Results
US Senator Rand Paul filibustered for 13 hours until he received a written response from the White House to his request for an explanation about the Obama administration’s policy on drone strikes against American citizens on American soil.
US Attorney General Eric Holder had publicly said yes, such drone strikes would be legal, prompting an outpouring of amazement from the political left and right. Due process is, after all, a core part of an American citizen’s God-given rights. Due process would normally require a citizen to be tried by a jury and found guilty before the government could exact the death penalty against him\her, and weaponized drone bombings are not a usual method of execution, yet.
So finally the White House contradicted Eric Holder, and decided drone strikes against Americans on American soil are not allowable. The amount of time that lapsed makes you wonder what’s on their minds over there, though, because they clearly had to think it through. What seems so obvious to most Americans was not so obvious to the Obama folks.
And that’s the real story right there: What is quintessentially American is utterly alien to the Obama administration and their supporters.
Good movies hard to come by
Zero Dark Thirty takes its name from the old saw that military duty usually begins at some dark hour long before dawn, when most people are fast asleep in cozy beds.
The movie by that name contains the same message: Americans live comfortably, while brave warriors place themselves at great risk for the greater good, often without thanks or recognition.
It’s certainly a timely message, as our current president is reluctant to lead or give credit to those who do. Americans are in grave danger around the planet, and thankfully we have citizens who still believe in the greater good, even if their current political bosses do not.
Like the movie Act of Valor, Zero Dark Thirty gives a glimpse into the harsh reality of battlefields far away from daily American life, but without which our happy existence would not be possible.
A good message, a necessary movie.
Downton Abbey’s American Roots — Of Course
For the other Downton Abbey addicts and aficionados out there, here is an interesting article I enjoyed reading this morning. All about the family connection between the TV show Downton Abbey, the real Highclere Castle, and Wyoming, America. By the way, the state of Wyoming was named after Wyoming, Pennsylvania; it means “Great Grassy Plains” in the Delaware Indian language.
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/downton-abbey-close-to-wyoming-rancher-s-heart/article_11965d2e-5c28-11e2-8c45-0019bb2963f4.html
Back in 2009…
Back in 2009, after only six months of the Obama agenda, steam started involuntarily pouring out of my ears. So much was wrong that I couldn’t put my finger on any one issue, and I ended up running for US Congress later that Fall in an attempt to contribute toward the nation’s healing process. In 2010, driven by the Tea Party, the Republicans took back the US House and stemmed the tide.
Today we see the awesome power wielded by the executive branch. Almost like a dictator or a monarch, the president can engage in all sorts of decision making that fails to enforce laws, or which create rules and regulations that have the force of law. All without any input from the Congress.
Now, the military force tasked with protecting America is being told to train to the lowest physical capability of its volunteers. Women make excellent pilots and can function at the highest level in combat roles that do not involve sleeping among men or peeing next to men or bleeding next to men in close-combat situations.
Nonetheless, the Obama administration now says that all combat roles will be open to women. Women are obviously far weaker than men, and pregnancy is a force management challenge any time women and men serve closely together. Unless the administration is going to support women-only combat units, like Israel has, then this is just one more move aimed at undermining America. Because by deeply eroding America’s ability to fight wars, America is weaker.
Our military is not a social experiment or a social statement. Black men (and Asian et al) can kill American enemies just as well as Caucasian men, and when all-male combat units head out into combat together, the issues facing unit cohesion are straight forward and tough enough. Now, unit cohesion is under attack in a way that it may never recover from, once again by our very own anti-American Obama administration. Women and men are fundamentally different from one another, and millennia of social mores have developed to respect those differences. The Obama administration is now telling us that those differences do not matter, no matter what Mother Nature says.
If you are happy with this, if you are willing to sacrifice combat readiness and effectiveness, and place America at a grave disadvantage, then you really do hate the original America, and you want something else in its stead. You might be a traitor.
Entertainment with Meaning Part II
For those of us still living in the 20th Century, modern music like this may occasionally supersede Flatt & Scruggs. This song and artist certainly do: