Getting My America Back

I was watching Lawrence Welk on PBS this past Saturday and I wondered: how did America get from that to what we are today. The show was taped in 1972. The audience was nicely dressed…men in suits and women in dresses. The women wore makeup, and their hairdos, well let’s just say they were appropriate for the time and not done in 2 minutes.

I remember 1972. It was the year I got married, forty years ago this November. It was a time of turmoil. Hippie/Freaks were demonstrating in the streets. The pill was just in the process of being circulated within the country’s population resulting in “free love” and drug usage. The Vietnam War had taught America’s youth to not only not trust the government, but not trust anyone over the age of thirty. It was a disturbing time…and America was vilified by a large segment of its population. Nevermind it had given the youth of America the highest standard of living in the world…and the military machine these folks hated had saved the world from the fascist tyranny not 25 years pervious.

There were those of us who were intrigued by what we saw, and even understood it to some extent. Our friends were being shipped off to Vietnam to fight a war nobody understood or wanted. It was a butcher factory. Men were shipped back in body bags almost as soon as they were shipped out. It was a scary time.

Yet I still lived in a world where the vast majority of folks still wore nice clothes. Women even wore white gloves and hats to church. We were the Silent Majority. We still believed in American Exceptionalism. And while we questioned what the government was doing, we also believed that our system would correct the problems, and we didn’t like those folks who were ready to throw it all away. How do you reconcile their hatred of America, the very country that raised them to a standard of living that allowed them to demonstrate in the streets instead of working? There was no reconciliation then, and there is none now. With all of America’s faults, America and the American system has provided a better standard of living for the poor than any other country in the world. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Now we live in an America where young adults are still living at home because they are unable, or simply won’t, find work. A sociologist said that 29 is the new 19. Single mothers are everywhere as males are trivialized…they are unneeded. Within the African American community, the family has but been destroyed with murder being the number one cause of death among young black males, and over 90% of African American babies being born out of wedlock. Is there a better recipe for hopelessness and despair?

Our middle class is being destroyed, and the government blames the 1%. Well, maybe to a degree that is true. But it is government policy that has destroyed the middle class: bad policy relating to ideological environmentalism; bad tax policy resulting from class envy; jobs shipped overseas because of excessive regulation; a debilitating minimum wage destroying the job market for teens and entry level positions for young adults; a view of the world preventing America from exploiting the benefits of Pax Americana since WWII, think OPEC; and political correctness which decreases the efficiency of America and raises costs to do just about everything, think TSA and airport security which views racial profiling as anathema.

America has gotten lost in its post war prosperity, and that prosperity is about to run out unless this country turns around and comes back to its senses. Government needs to do its fundamental functions first: protect and serve. Our schools are crumbling. Our roads are deteriorating. Our military is stretched to the limit. Our space program is in shambles.

Is that frog crossing worth government money? Does it make sense to destroy an entire region of the country because some little fish might become extinct…like hundreds of species every year in nature? Do union rules need to be revised and brought into line with reality? Are we going to let our schools worry about educating the vast majority of Americans instead of worrying about feeding children breakfast, lunch and dinner all year while Mom and Dad, already on food stamps, are out getting high? If little Johnny is coming to school hungry, let social services investigate why and take the kid out of the home!!! Are we going to realize once again that our government and country are based on the equality of opportunity, not the equality of results? Are we going to assert out strength in the world to our benefit? If we liberated Kuwait and Iraq…where is our oil for which this country shed its blood and treasure?

I want my country back. I want the America back of hard work, discipline, responsibility, individual charity instead of government hand outs. Bring back my America where family comes first and personal pleasure and desires come second; and America where a family with a working father and a mother and children still count, where families worked at staying together rather than copping out for a cheap divorce to go and be fulfilled; where the nuclear family is the norm and something to aspire to, not be eschewed and trivialized by a media filled with people who think of no one but themselves.

Where do I get my America back?

Roger Clemens: Your Tax Dollars at Work

How much is that perjurer in the window? That’s what the American public should be asking as the Justice Department takes it on the chin again in spurious prosecutions of the scum and famous. Roger Clemens walked today in the second stunning Justice Department defeat in 8 weeks, the first being the mistrial of John Edwards. If the Justice Department has this many prosecutors to pursue cases like this…then it has too many prosecutors. And we are left paying the bill over and over and over again.

Beginning in the Bush administration, the Justice Department started pursuing “gotcha” prosecutions. The most famous of these was the Martha Stewart perjury trial. She was never charged with insider trading. She was charged with lying to investigators about insider trading…and she actually did jail time for basically doing nothing. What happened to the actual charge of insider trading? 

Then there was Barry Bonds who was charged with perjury and obstructing justice relating to the sale of controlled substances (re: steroids) to athletes. He was convicted of one count of obstructing justice while the jury deadlocked on the other three charges. His sentence was 30 days house arrest and 250 hours of community service.

My favorite was the Scooter Libby trial…also charged with perjury. The Special Prosecutor was appointed to investigate who “leaked” that Valerie Plame was a former CIA operative…out of it for 5 years and everybody in Washington knew it. Here’s the problem. The Special Prosecutor knew who leaked the information from the very beginning, but went off on a tangent in a political prosecution to get Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. It didn’t work…but Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice. And what happened to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage who did the actual leaking? Nothing! Justice served.

John Edwards is one of my favorites. The former United State Senator and almost presidential nominee cheated on his dying wife with a floosy, and got the floosy pregnant. For a period of time Edwards put her up in a style to which she was not accustomed to living, lying to his wife and the American public. Federal Prosecutors went after him when it was “discovered” he used campaign funds to pay for his indiscretion. He was acquitted on one count and the jury deadlocked on the rest…leaning towards acquittal. Turns out the money he used to pay for his "roll in the hay" was given to him by one of the senior Mellon women…who gave it as a gift. She even filed a gift tax return showing that it was a gift, not a campaign contribution. Hello!!!! The American public can sleep good tonight.

Now Roger Clemens! He testified in front of a show hearing in Congress that he had never used steroids. The Justice Department decided that Clemens lied to Congress, and dug up some rummy that claimed he injected Clemens and Clemens’ wife with steroids. The guy was an admitted liar. The judge declared a mistrial the first trial because the Federal Prosecutors entered bogus evidence the judge had previously ruled inadmissible. This time around, the Feds blew it 100%. Clemens was found not guilty on all counts.

The American public should be outraged. Each of these collective actions costs the taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars. In and of themselves, they would barely make a dent on the budget deficit. Collectively, however, the cost could reach in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And we the taxpayer pay the bills.

Maybe it’s time the Congress should look at the Justice Department budget. If it has money for these kinds of prosecutions, it has too much money.

Leaky Leaks

                   

Even the Democrats have been upset with the continual string of national security leaks from the White House. Starting with the unprecedented access to heretofore “classified” security rooms to classified documents to various governmental officials, Barack Obama’s people have done their best to portray the President as tough on foreign policy. He even has baseball cards with pictures of terrorists on them that he shuffles through looking for his next drone victim. Wow!!!

We all know President Obama got bin Laden. The problem is he just won’t let it go. Betting that an aggressive stance on terrorists would appease the independents, the Nobel Peace Prize winner has managed to piss off everybody. He has lost the left with his Afghanistan and predator drone policy. He has added leftist insult to injury by keeping Guantanamo open and actually pursuing the trials originally initiated under Bush in military tribunals.

But more damaging to the vast majority of Americans is his apparent willingness to compromise our national security in the name of political expediency. What is he doing? He said it was offensive that people would believe “my White House” would leak classified information for political purposes. Let’s see. It went to the New York Times, his most ardent of ardent press supporters. The New York Times quoted “high administration officials” over and over again as source material. Some of the information leaked would only be known by a select few of his advisers. Hello!!! Do you really believe that Obama did not know this was going on? I would almost feel better knowing that he did because at least incompetence wouldn’t be playing into the mix.

We don’t really need to know about the computer virus that was used to sabotage Iranian computers. We don’t really need to know about how he decides which terrorist he wants to kill next. We don’t really know about his secret sources that helped in killing bin Laden.

Americans shouldn’t be surprised that this type of problem would emanate from the top in this progressive White House. The people running the show are the progeny of the 1960’s radicals who despised all things military and covert. They hate the FBI. They hate the CIA. These are the institutions that are anathema to leftist causes and subversion. These are the entities these folks wanted to blow up and destroy…and now they are in charge. It’s hard to keep secrets when you don’t think much of what these organizations do in the first place.

This is scary stuff. Starting with Wiki Leaks, we have had a steady stream of government secrets disclosed to the public. Now Eric Holder has appointed two justice department lawyers to figure out who did what. Here’s a plan: ask the New York Times.

Eric Holder is the single worst and corrupt Attorney General since John Mitchell. He is going to run the investigation? Here’s the deal. When historians look at this period of history…if we are still around in fifty years…the conclusion they will draw is that Barack Obama is not the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter. He is the Democrat’s Richard Nixon, who also felt compelled to use the power of the office to enhance his political agenda.

Barack Obama is nothing if not an ideologue. That is his being and what makes him tick. Slowly, but surely, the American public is waking up to what this man stands for…and what he is doing to our national security in the name of his progressive agenda.

Once Again...It's Energy Stupid.

Putting off the inevitable, or in the vernacular kicking the can down the road, is the governmental plan of choice for handling a re-igniting world financial crisis. Here in the United States, all that debt that was floating around in 2008 is still there, only there is more of it. In Europe, the Euro Zone is entering the catastrophic phase. Greece and Spain for all intents and purposes are bankrupt. There is no way out. The very existence of the Euro itself as a currency is in danger. There are solutions, but all are politically infeasible.

But at the end of the day, the ultimate problem in the United States is energy. Here’s the 4-1-1. America cannot tolerate gasoline that costs over $3.50/gallon. Until we become energy independent, our economy is going to see-saw based on the cost of oil. Our economy improves, and the cost of oil and gasoline goes up, causing the economy to slow down in a major way, causing the cost of oil and gasoline to go down, and the cycle repeats itself…over and over and over again.

As for the American debt, there are only three ways to resolve it…grow out of it…print more money…or simply default. America has the capability to produce new wealth if only the government and the EPA would get out of the way. America’s wealth is in its ability to produce energy. We have the ability to be totally energy independent thus stopping the flow of petrodollars out of the country, providing price stabilization at the pump, and allowing America grow its economy without the politics of the Mideast.

Yes…I am for drill here and drill now. But I am also for the government R and D spending on bio-fuels, safe nuclear power plants and nuclear waste disposal, energy from trash, energy from wind, hydro-electric power, all sorts of energy resources based on economic need rather than whacko environmental policies rooted in ideological purity rather than common sense.

North Dakota is rapidly becoming the number one energy producing state. The Great Plains is an abundant source of oil shale. Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world. Ohio is the center of wet natural gas production…and clean coal is everywhere. We have an embarrassment of riches. And yet we fiddle while the economy is thrown hither and yon because of global warming, which might be global cooling, which might be sun spots, which might be part of the normal cycle of world weather….which is a religion to the left whose real goal is income redistribution and punishing the United States for its past sins…whatever they may be.

Every recession, and I mean every recession since the early 1970’s has its roots in energy sticker shock. We have lived through gas rationing, skyrocketing electric prices, rolling blackouts, moratoriums on natural gas hookups, price controls….all of which have been unnecessary if only our country encouraged rather than discouraged the production of domestic energy.

Wake up America. The stock market plunged almost 300 points today. Interest rates are the lowest they have been since the Great Depression if not longer…a sign of economic weakness.  In Europe, interest rates are actually below zero with people paying Germany and UK to buy their bonds!!! We don’t have to go through this again if we allow our country to throw off the shackles of government nut jobs and whack jobs and start to produce energy like we have never seen before. Drill here. Drill now. Dig here. Dig now. And do everything else….here and now…and our country will once again be the envy of the world.

And we can back to doing what America does best...producing wealth.