Can A Conservative Be An Isolationist? You Bet

In my lifetime, I have witnessed our United States involved in six major wars. Every one of them took place overseas. Here is the list. World War II, Korea, Vietnam (where I saw combat), Gulf I, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These wars consumed over a half million of our finest young men and women. Not once has our country been invaded by an opposing army (unless you count 9/11). Canada has remained a good friend and ally since our Revolution.  Mexico provides us with a continuing flow of workers and drugs, but so far, the ghost of Santa Anna has not re-invaded the Alamo. Nor is there faintest chance in hell that anyone, over the past 100 years, would have dared take on the Continental United States by invasion. So what the hell are we doing fighting all these wars all over the globe? The short answer is because we are the big dog on the street  and want to stay that way. An oft cited answer is that we must fight overseas to keep the enemy from our front door. A third answer often heard is that somehow, we have acquired the mantle of “The leader of the free world” and must act accordingly. All of which are pure bullshit, except for maybe the first.

We are a great, big, robust country that is the envy of the world, even to our enemies, for our wealth and freedom of our system and our citizens. Somehow, that has sunk in to our political sub-consciousness to the extent that we naturally believe that our country, our system, should be the model for the rest of the world. Somewhere along the way, from the American Revolution to the present, we lost sight of the fact that our original goal was to “Create a more perfect union” here  and not “A more perfect union” in the rest of the world.

Is there another country in the world that has been so involved in six major wars in the past half century? Not even close. I think it is time to take a hard look at what drives us to send our young men and women to die in some God-forsaken country. And, simply put, we ought to quit doing so.

This great country of ours has the ability to take care of each and every person living here. We raise enough food to feed every man, woman, and child of our population and still manage to be the leading exporter of foodstuffs. We are dependent on foreign oil but that is by choice, not necessity. If we really had to become energy independent, we have the resources and technology to do so. We have been held hostage so long to the big oil companies and cartels we have fallen for their propaganda and cheap oil.  We have the finest military services in the world--no one would dare attack us if our military was concentrated and based here, in the United States. We have become addicted to cheap products from Japan, Korea, China, and India. This country was once the leading manufacturing country in the world. We could be again, if we loose our addiction and pay a bit more for our own manufactured items. We can secure our borders, if we have the guts to do so.  Let me put it clearly, we don’t need the rest of the world to be the great country we are.

A good start would to throw that worthless tower of Babel called the U.N. out of the country for good, and let them continue their inane deliberations elsewhere. Next step would be to pull all our troops back home. All of them from every place we have them stationed. Germany, you are on your own. South Korea, your problem is North Korea--solve it. Japan, our guys have been there long enough. Iraq, you have the ball--run with it. Afghanistan, you want those crazy Taliban back, go for it.   Finally, get serious about energy independence. Open up all our areas for oil production. Fast track nuclear plants. Exploit our huge reserves of natural gas. Fund increased research on alternative technologies. Hint: We don’t have an energy problem, we have an energy storage problem. In five years we could break the backs of Big Oil and OPEC.

I have saved the best for last, so you may confirm your suspicions that I am certifiably a raving curmudgeon . Message to Muslim World. “If one of your Jihadist nuts manages to employ a weapon of mass destruction on one of our cities, Mecca will be vaporized.”

  Signed,
President of the New United States of America

(Oh well, its nice to fantasize every now and then)

JP

Obama Nominated For Academy Award

The Academy Awards is just around the corner. May I suggest another category to add to the thousands they already have. For lack of a more educated, high brow title, I would like my category to be called, “The Weak Dick Award” The sole nominee, who has already garnered the Nobel Peace Prize, is none other than Barrack  Obama, the man who is currently masquerading as the President the the United States.  For God’s sake people, we are dealing with a madman who murdered hundreds of Americans and now is murdering his own people with abandon. Would not you think that our President could at least summon the courage to actually name that worthless bastard who has terrorized his country for over 40 years? No, not Mr Cool. He is sending Hillary to Geneva to express our “Grave Outrage”, while the people of Libya are slaughtered by this psychopath. What a joke. As an Italian general officer once told me when referring to the political leadership of his country,  “Parole, parole, parole.”  Words, words, words. Obama has mastered the art of words but lacks a shred of credibility when it comes to backing up his words with meaningful action. As an American, I want to crawl off someplace and hide in shame at the gutless response of our so-called leader. I am sure the dainty liberals of the Academy will see fit to honor Obama with this new award.

Wisconsin--The Soft Revolution

What we are witnessing is nothing less than the failure of an economic system that is  essentially a government run Ponzi scheme. I am not just referring to Social Security and Medicare, I am talking about the entire system that at its core relies on borrowed money to pay for current goodies. As every credit card holder knows, the bill always comes due. Some dodge the inevitable by obtaining more cards and borrowing more, but this just pushes the day of reckoning further down the road--the bill will always come due. It has come due in Wisconsin, Ohio, New York, California and numerous other states as they struggle to balance their budgets. It is coming due as I write for the United States as a whole. The Republican party, goaded on by the Tea Party, appears willing to confront the problem. The Democratic party, Obama included, seem to be unwilling to face the problem and have opted to obtain some more credit cards The clash in opposing ideas put forward by the two major parties has divided the country. Thus, the protests and counter protests we are witnessing in Wisconsin are the opening salvo of a revolutionary war driven by the two camps. The winner will determine the shape of our country in the future.

JP

A Declaration of No Confidence

What we expect from Presidents, above all else, is leadership. With our country facing a financial crisis of monumental proportions we expect out President to lead the way out of the mess that took years of financial mismanagement to create. Plenty of blame to go around, but the time for the blame game and cynical political maneuvering is over--this is a real crisis that needs solving.  We expect our President to lead the way, to tackle the tough issues and lay out a clear blueprint to pull us away from the brink of financial collapse.

So what do we get from Obama? A carefully crafted  budget that is long on spending and increased taxes and short on meaningful fiscal restraint. A budget that dramatically increases the deficit and national debt to unthinkable levels. A budget that completely avoids tackling the government entitlement programs that are at the root cause of our enormous deficit. A budget that is politically crafted to place the opposition in the role of the bad guys who want to destroy the popular entitlement programs.  A budget, in other words, that shows not an ounce of leadership. 

Lofty ideals and misplaced priorities will not pull us out of this mess, and Obama has again demonstrated his inability to rise above Chicago-style politics and really lead this great nation. While in the military, I sometimes had to follow inept leaders because I was required to do so by law. Now a civilian, there is no law that requires me to do the same with this President, and I shall not.

JP

The Obama Administration Begins to Unravel

Obama Care begins to unravel and that is a good thing. More importantly, the entire Obama Administration is beginning to unravel. It is what happens when your govern from an ideological basis and not from the moderate center where the majority of the American public resides.  It took nearly two years for the American public to wake up to the fact that its central government had been taken over by far left ideologues .  They then sent a resounding vote of no confidence, resulting in an election landslide that tilted the country back to the center. It is now clear that the Obama Administration is not only driven by a far left ideology; it is also just plain inept. Its very ineptness is the result of policy driven by ideology. Here are some examples.

The utter failure of nearly a trillion dollar “stimulus” plan that was a thinly disguised hodge-podge of left wing idealism and programs. As the economy stubbornly refuses to recover in the manner promised, more and more citizens have come to recognize the “stimulus” for what it was--a very expensive omnibus bill of left wing programs that benefited a favored few at the expense of the rest of hard working America.

A Justice Department that is so ideologically driven that it appears to be prosecuting American values rather than ensuring American values are upheld. The list is long, but their opposition to Arizona’s immigration law; the non-prosecution of the thugs at the voting location; the attempt to try the mastermind of the 9/11 attack in NYC; and finally their futile efforts to support Obama-care has cast huge doubts as to the fairness of that Department. I call it the Department of Injustice. It appears its only function is to prop up an ideology rather than serve up true justice.

A completely inept Director of Homeland Security, who manages to imitate the totally inept Governor of Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina every time she speaks.  Her assertions concerning the threat posed by returning veterans and the safety of our southern border with Mexico not only ring false, they also reveal her ideological bias. In her typically liberal view, it is the extremist element (read conservative Americans who cling to their guns and beliefs) that pose the real danger to the security of the United States. By the way, she also oversees, and approves of, the TSA’s big brother search of the core of our personal privacy.

An ideologically driven head of the EPA who is hell bent on regulating the last of our industrial base out of existence with her un-Constitutional findings on Carbon Oxide Twice. Need I mention the Delta Smelt?

An Energy Department whose only goal seems to be prevent us from ever becoming energy independent by shutting down or restricting nuclear power construction, offshore drilling for oil, or on-shore exploitation of known energy resources. Again, ideologically driven.

Finally, the man himself.  Swept into power by his ringing call for hope and change and his promise to transform this country into something great. What we actually bought was just another left wing liberal with tired out liberal ideas and surrounded by sycophants of the same ilk. Then, as David Axelrod so recently pointed out, Obama became Prime Minister rather than President, and let the wild eyed Nancy Pelosi and that reptilian Harry Reid set and cram down their agenda on the American public. With those two actually setting the agenda, it is no wonder that Obama Care is coming apart at the seams.


From these examples and others too numerous to mention  came the Tea Party movement, a truly grass roots revolution arising from the realization that this inept Administration was hell bent on bankrupting this country, both economically and morally.  It has started a true revolution that is now beginning to undo some of the more horrific excesses and  mistakes of  the past two years. It is my fondest hope that the revolution will continue into 2012, when we can truly rid ourselves of left wing ideologues and begin rebuilding this great country with common sense governance.  




JP