Why are we interfering in a Civil War?

After all these years American Foreign Policy in the Middle East still resembles the early years of American business expansion into the world that earned us the name, "Ugly American" because of our assumption that everyone thought like us and would make decisions the same way plus have the same values and goals. How utterly stupid that was. American business learned...and prospered. American Foreign Policy is still seemingly unaware that not all the world wants to be like us.


Consider if Obama had been in power in England (or France, or Spain) during our Civil War.  How would we have felt if he come out with the command, "Lincoln must go" and set about organizing the other European Countries to bread the Northern blockade of Southern ports?  Sounds decidedly inappropriate when looked at from that point of view, doesn't it?  And where was this purposeful resolve when people took to the streets in Iran? Bahrain? Syria?

The inconsistencies are bad enough...and this article discusses them well. But there is more to be concerned about...and that is the nature of the Middle East itself. Up until now the countries have been run by heads of state with their own interests, and often at odds with one another. The President's actions are opening that up to a change that most certainly harbor more danger for the United States.

Not one American pundit, in or out of Government (much less the President) has considered that multiple secular leaders with self-interest at heart is much less a threat to the United States interests than a Middle East unified in a religious/political sect that sees Western Values (read, "American") as evil and to be overcome and destroyed. Many of the rebels in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain are Shi'ites and operate with the same attitudes and goals of those in Iran. And we are now the tools of their attempt to gain unified power.

It is bad enough to be wrong...but to be stupidly wrong is both an embarrassment and a horror.

Japan...would WE be prepared?

No.  Not a hard answer, is it?  But most people I speak to talk about the government being broke,...or stretched too thin.  This all may be true, but the primary reason we are not, and never again will be, prepared is that we have lost the sense of self-reliance and self-preparedness that our parents (well, at least MY parents) had. They never stopped drilling into me the idea that no one else's lifestyle mattered...you needed to afford your own. Keep up with the Jones'? They didn't understand the term and when I explained it, they just laughed and labeled it insanity. You lived within your own budget; you put aside money for "rainy" days; you make decisions and then lived with the consequences...no "blame someone else" mentality was allowed. I remember once I got into trouble...not for doing anything wrong, but because I was hanging around with some "friends" who, indeed, had done something wrong. I got a suspension out of it and complained. My father said it was my fault..."you are known by the company you keep and if you want to be highly thought of, don't hang around with them...there are consequences for bad choices, so don't complain to me" 

Today, Americans are wrapped up in "blaming someone else" and expecting the government (or "someone") to bail them out of trouble. They don't even TRY to prepare for "rainy" days...they are too busy keeping up with the Jones'. Smoke and mirrors and the illusion that there are no consequences. Stupidity is the norm for the day throughout America.

Still another comment on America's Educational system...

While I have known plenty of teachers in my life who were dedicated to their students and their futures, the majority of teachers chose that line of work because when in college the idea of a 9 or 10 month work year with summers off plus a guaranteed job after 3 years (tenure) seemed like a safe and desirable alternative to working for a full year with two weeks off and the prospect of having to prove yourself every day or get fired.

All of these people found that it was harder than it appeared: you had to use your summers to get advanced training and degrees; the hours were often 12 in length because of the need to grade papers and prepare lesson plans. It didn't turn out to be the utopia that it seemed in the callow days of their youth. And many did not have that drive to be educators...but now they were locked into the job. But...how to improve pay? Unionize. To a professional, that was the wrong way to go; better to start a professional society and mandate performance that would lead to competition for better pay. But remember that most teachers were disillusioned with no concept of "professionalism"; they just wanted more money to pay for the unexpected working conditions. Logical, really. But this failure to see teaching as a profession has led our educational system into the morass which exists today.


 Get rid of tenure and cut the power of unions and demand that there be some evaluation of dedication to TEACHING for someone to get into and REMAIN in the PROFESSION.

A "tax" to promote real Christmas Trees?

I just finished reading an article where the promotional arm of the Christmas Tree providers of America think they need a 15 cent tax on each Christmas Tree sold to raise money to promote the purchase of REAL Christmas trees. Seems like the sale of real trees is way down and the only way they think they can offset or reverse this trend is to get the government to set up this tax, which would fund the promotional effort. Really!

Want more Christmas Tree sales? Put "Christmas" back into what has become the "holiday" season. As the Secularists succeed in their agenda to do away with "Christ" and "Christmas" as celebrated (well, as USED to be celebrated) in the United States, fewer and fewer people are "into" the holiday except as a way of getting free stuff. Years ago, the week before Christmas was a time of family activity: going out and looking for just the right tree, setting it up, taking a full evening together to decorate it with all those reminders of people and years gone by...a time for reverence and remembrance. It was "magic." And for the majority of Americans, it is gone. Now many don't even bother with trees, much less lights. No more "family" time, no more reverence, nothing...just give me the gift...or gifts, ...or money...and then back to the ipod, internet, or ... to work. A tax to promote Christmas Trees???? Don't make me laugh.

Why allow the deficit?

Words, words, words...that is all you hear from politicians.  I guess I should be pleased that at least they are mouthing ones that say what I consider to be the right thing...but is there, or will there be, actions that back those words up?  These are politicians, after all...


As I child I was taught, and my life has confirmed, that there is a big difference between desirable expenses and essential expenses; that when money is short, desireable expenses go first and then, when things get really tight you have to prioritize the essentials, because some of those are going to have to be cut or eliminated too. Our government apparently never learned that lesson. And what is worse is that the American people have forgotten it.

There is not one family or one thinking individual that believes that you can ignore spending more than you take in and not have consequences...bad, very bad consequences to both you as an individual and to your family. Yet, we allow our government to perpetrate the myth that somehow the federal government can do it and there is no problem. Hello? Anyone waking up? Anyone in GOVERNMENT waking up? Words won't solve the overspending, we need to see our representatives ACT by NOT SPENDING.

For those under 50, set 70 as the age for maximum SS payments. For Medicare and Medicaid make citizenship a requirement for benefits. Go after the fraud in the medical industry. Eliminate the useless Department of Education: for every tax dollar only 32 cents comes back as a benefit, so without the taxes the local communities would have three times the money to use AS THEY SEE FIT. Cut defense spending...pull our troops back from Pakistan (they don't want us) and Afghanistan (they don't want us, and we can't smash Al Queda anyway) and promise if they act to effect the US we will vaporize them...let them decide if they want a future or not. Put our troops on our border with orders to kill drug smugglers...and let them do their job of protecting the U.S., not foreign countries...stop funding troops in Germany, South Korea and other places.

We aren't the world's Santa Claus and we AREN'T making friends around the world with our money...stop giving it to them.

Our Government and our President seems to have a God complex. They're wrong. Just take care of America and the American people and let the world be...they aren't stupid and they can take care of themselves.

Wisconsin

Beware the laws of unintended consequences. When 
a minority results to mob rule, the leave open the 
possibility of angering the majority. If that happens, 
and the MAJORITY riots, the minority will find itself 
overwhelmed by its own unleashed lawlessness as a 
result.

These greedy people, enjoying a much better lifestyle 
because of their higher level of benefits and pay, 
achieved not by work but by group extortion, think 
they are entitled to keep that higher status at the 
expense of the taxpayer. Even as they complain 
about failure to tax the "rich", they ignore the fact 
that to the rest of the taxpaying public THEY are 
the rich.

As for Wisconsin, the changes that they are asked 
to ENDURE (yeah...some hardship) is to pay HALF 
of the contribution private sector folks have to pay 
for retirement and healthcare. Some hardship. And 
their rights are protected BY LAW, NOT the UNIONS. 
So that union contract adds little to their protections 
as workers.

Keep the National Democratic Party's out-of-state 
infiltrators there...it helps confirm the nature of the 
Leftists in this country and reveals them for just what 
they are...opportunists.

It really was the Government's fault...

Our current recession could not have begun without the bad policies, blindly and foolishly implemented, of the Federal Government.  President Clinton and Democrat Leaders pushed, beginning in 1993, for more low income and minority home ownership.  They passed the Community Reinvestment Act and gave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the mission to facilitate low income and minority home ownership by requiring them to purchase what we refer to now as sub-prime loans.

Under Clinton Administration pressure, regulators had to come up with new lending rules, under which banks had to show that they had made a required number of loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers, and that they had come up with innovative or flexible ways to accomplish this.  HUD pressed for new mortgage lending policies under the 1994 National Homeownership Strategy developed at Clinton's request.  Among other things, it called for financing strategies, fueled by the creativity and resources of the private and public sectors, to help homeowners that lack cash to buy a home and to make the payments.

First result:  Homeownership during the Clinton Administration went up 5%( as a comparison, home ownership during the Bush Presidency went up 1%);
Second result:  Sub-prime loans made to borrowers with bad credit records rose from 7.2% to nearly 19%.
Standards for other loans fell as well.  Freddie and Fannie eagerly, as instructed by the Federal Government, bought all these loans.

Yes, of course the investment banks and wall street come up with a way of making these obviously bad investments look good by creating the device know as derivatives.  Yes, they were both foolish and greedy.  Yes, they acted like gamblers instead of bankers...but that is merely a matter of degree of risk, not really much more than admitting what has been true all along.

But here is the key...absent Barney Frank's committee and resulting House action coupled by action in the Senate honcho'd by Dodd, the opportunity for bad credit risks, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Investment Banks and Wall Street to act badly would NOT have occurred.  End of story.

 Dodd is gone...Frank remains.