What in the world is happening to the United States of America?

 

Who among us that has been alive for more than five decades would believe what is happening today? Long-standing traditions — the things upon which the nation was created and that allowed it to thrive — are crumbling around us.

 

Once highly regarded qualities like righteousness, integrity and professionalism, have taken a beating over the last number of years. Career fields like education and journalism are now home to many who are willing to abandon their personal integrity, honesty, and professional ethics to indulge in indoctrination of students and the public at large for destabilizing political purposes.

 

Recent news reports told us that our gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by 32.9 percent in the second quarter. Whether this “news” was a deliberate attempt to misinform in order to cast further negativity on President Donald Trump, or the result of ignorance on the part of these so-called journalists, is difficult to determine.

 

But what actually occurred was that the GDP actually shrank by much less, only 9.5 percent, in the second quarter, and 4.8 percent in the first quarter. If this trend continues through the rest of the year, the “annualized decline” will reach 32.9 percent.

 

We see the effects of miseducation as people who never learned about their country reject their access to the broadest set of opportunities to achieve success on the planet, favoring instead the fairytale of equality of outcomes.

 

Colleges, where people are supposed to learn much more about general studies and their chosen area of interest, have produced the “woke” movement which, in addition to being ineptly named, is a destructive force to which its practitioners are totally blind.

 

“Wokeness” was aptly described as “pervasive trends under the guise of equality [that] makes diversity training in government, and corporate America, and schools, destructive, divisive, and harmful,” by Angela Sailor, vice president of The Feulner Institute at The Heritage Foundation.

 

Professional sports and similar activities —where people with high skills in a very narrow and unimportant area of life, like throwing, catching, hitting or “shooting” some sort of ball or other object — make millions of dollars, are now decaying organizations where many or most members proudly dishonor the flag and National Anthem of the country that allowed them to be the wealthy and celebrated individuals that they have become. And they do so with the blessing of their team and league.

 

Politics and such off-shoots as political correctness, and the new fad of hypersensitivity over small or years-old irritants now are the focus of many education and news folk.

 

The selfish desires of a relative few now are expected to be accepted by everyone else, whether or not they see any value in those desires. If you do not automatically cow-tow to them, you may be the target of physical and other violence.

 

And the relatively recent advent of social media adds to the problem. Social media to an increasing degree control what political information we can see on their platforms, and what cannot be seen. That is called “censorship,” which is not among the valued characteristics of our free country.

 

One example: Twitter removed the Star of David from several tweets, calling it a hateful image.

 

Another is that certain discussions about fighting the coronavirus are deemed inappropriate for you to see. Twitter has been identified as having taken down some tweets about a drug, hydroxychloroquine, that is favored by many physicians who have used the drug, and say it is effective against the virus.

 

In addition to Twitter, social media platforms Facebook and Google, and website hosting service Squarespace banned video from a group of physicians known as America's Frontline Doctors about hydroxychloroquine.

 

A doctor in Tampa, Florida, who is lead physician at a medical office that has 8,000 patients, created a video about how she and other physicians were precluded from prescribing hydroxychloroquine for their patients, despite their previous experience with that medicine.

 

The brilliant constitutional attorney and author Mark Levin said that the Frontline Doctors’ video was “not about the overthrow of America, not about anti-Semitism, not promoting terrorism — but talking about experience, science, medical knowledge about hydroxychloroquine."

 

Apparently, Twitter, Facebook and Google know more about medicine than doctors. And furthermore, they think you shouldn’t be able to get information on certain subjects without their guidance, which means providing only what they want you to know.

 

When someone is triggered by something — virtually anything, these days — suddenly there arises a movement to remove or replace that “something” without even a superficial attempt to understand that something's complete nature. If one out a hundred things is bad, to the dump with it.

 

Through the decades, we learned to generally trust our teachers and news organizations. We expect school subjects to be presented wholly and without bias. Likewise, news is supposed to tell us the what, where, when, why and who of events, without opinion or bias.

 

When those rules are deliberately broken in order to control what the public knows, or how the public should think about things, then the result is what we see happening so often today: the sabotage of our country; the freest and most wonderful nation in history.

Let’s not change what makes us uncomfortable. Let’s learn from it!

Change this! Get rid of that! America has a new mania where people try to remove statues and monuments they don’t like, that make them uncomfortable, or that they believe are bad. If a statue or a monument upsets people, it must be erased from the American landscape where it has existed for years or decades. 

In the process of soothing these feelings of discomfort, features of American history, some of them very important, will forever be removed to the trash pile, painted over, or stored in a warehouse somewhere, and lost to the generations that follow. 

These things can help future Americans learn about their country so that they will be able to understand its full history and evolution, both the best and the worst.

Instead of the full story of what built America, what will be left to future generations to learn from is whatever the existing culture deems important at the time. 

Some important elements in the history of the United States of America will be removed through this politically correct cleansing of America’s history, for no better reason than to soothe the discontented.

Included in the list of things from America’s past that have been targeted for removal from public view are: The Jefferson Memorial; Mount Rushmore; Stone Mountain; two Chicago Parks; and monuments and statues across the nation.

While the subject of some monuments may be a person or persons who may now be unpopular, the monument or statue itself may be a special achievement. 

Likewise, the people who are remembered and honored by prominent statues were not universally bad. The recent dislike of Thomas Jefferson, for example, is because he owned slaves. In fact, slavery is the reason for so much of today’s efforts to remove many statues and monuments.

Slavery is now universally condemned in the U.S., as it should be. And it is a dark period in the nation’s history. But for decades during slavery in the south, no one living at that time was alive when slavery did not exist in the southern states. Slavery wasn’t right, but it was the way things were; it was a regular part of life in the southern U.S.

The Jefferson Memorial honors America’s third president, and a Founder of our republic. Although Jefferson inherited slaves from his father and kept them throughout his lifetime, he also publicly denounced slavery. The totality of his life and work was not just being a slave owner. His work was critical to the formation of the country in which so many now are able to condemn him for owning slaves.

Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, which began the struggle for freedom from the binds of British dominance, he was a critical part of America’s formation, and he had served as the nation’s second vice president before being elected president.

Surely this man’s great contributions to the formation of the United States of America are enough to warrant his remaining a part of the story, and not being removed from our history.

It took some 400 workers from 1927 to 1941 to produce the majestic figures on the rock face in the Black Hills of South Dakota known as Mount Rushmore. Those four were Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. 

Rushmore is an amazing tribute to workmanship as well as a unique work of art. It depicts four of our most notable presidents, all of whom had their faults, as do we all. But they are forever a part of our history. 

The carving on Stone Mountain in Georgia has similar assets. It is the largest high relief sculpture in the world. The Confederate Memorial Carving depicts three figures of the Civil War, President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The carving is 400 feet above the ground, measures 90 by 190 feet, and is recessed 42 feet into the mountain.

Like Mount Rushmore it is a tribute to workmanship, is a work of art, and features people prominent in our history who are now being condemned. 

Chicago has parks named for George Washington and Andrew Jackson that are also targeted for change. Someone has suggested changing Jackson Park to honor either modern civil rights figure Jesse Jackson or singer Michael Jackson, and also renaming Washington Park. However, both Washington and Jackson contributed much to our Country, and deserve their rightful place in history.

And there are numerous monuments and statues in North Carolina, Virginia and in towns and cities all across the nation that also are targeted. Each of them represents some contribution to the rich history of what was and still is the greatest nation yet conceived.

People mostly aren’t looking at the big picture. Our country has made mistakes, as all countries do. Each of us can think of things we would prefer weren’t part of our history. But erasing history is foolish.

Future generations can only learn from our successes and our failures if they know what they are. The good and the bad together form our history, and nothing less than the whole story is acceptable to tell America’s story.

The Left’s rejection of American values is a very real threat

A recent poll reflects that 53 percent of Democrats now view socialism favorably, while 47 percent view capitalism favorably, almost an exact flip from a 2012 poll.

This should be no surprise to those who pay attention to things political, given the relative success of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary campaign in the 2016 election, and the unexpected arrival on the scene of the unknown Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a Democrat incumbent in a New York congressional primary. Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are openly socialist.

Democrats prominently display their dissatisfaction with America’s capitalist success, sometimes embarrassing themselves in the process. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo drew broad but deserved criticism when he stated, “We’re never going to make America great again. It was never that great.”

"We have not reached greatness," he said. "We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone, and every woman's full potential is realized and unleashed, and every woman is making her full contribution."

Cuomo is confused on this issue, as he is on many others. Greatness to him is perfection, as he said, an impossible goal to achieve. Heaven knows he has missed that mark by miles.

Next up is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The 2017 tax cuts helped tens of millions of Americans, and as Cato’s Chris Edwards explains, those making between $40,000 and $50,000 a year saw a 46 percent reduction in taxes paid. The tax cuts also allowed companies to raise wages and give bonuses.

Pelosi, however, calls these benefits “crumbs,” and pledged to take them away if Democrats regain control of the House. You see, millionaire Pelosi, one of its wealthiest members, knows better how to spend people’s money than they do.

And then there is former CIA Director John Brennan, complaining that his free speech has been infringed because President Donald Trump rescinded his security clearance.

This seems much ado about nothing: He no longer works for the government, and Trump does not value his input and will not ask him to consult on matters requiring a security clearance, so he does not need one. 

In case you are wondering, the president has the authority to remove a security clearance from any administration employee who has one.

Furthermore, a security clearance has nothing to do with one’s right to free speech. In fact, having a security clearance may actually cause a sensible person, which Brennan plainly is not, to be more careful about what they say than someone without a clearance.

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, let the cat out of the bag regarding security clearances held by former government employees, and this makes it clear why so many former and present government employees rushed to Brennan’s defense.

“One of the reasons you’re going to see a lot of pushback and a lot of screaming on this issue of security clearances is that it goes to the heart of their ability to cash in,” Schweizer said on Fox News’ “Hannity” program. “If they don’t have a security clearance, they cannot cash in with [government] contractors in this way,” he said, referring to the revolving door between government workers who move to employment by government contractors.

A former government employee with a security clearance can work with private sector contractors on classified government projects; a former employee without one cannot. Both Brennan’s feelings and pocketbook have been hurt.

And Brennan’s shadowy and possibly criminal behavior while a government employee, and since, justifies taking away his clearance.

The brilliant columnist Wesley Pruden puts the increasingly socialist mindset of Democrats into perspective: “The latest polls show that Democrats now prefer the socialism that wrecked the economies of Europe to the capitalism that built America. Capitalism is an imperfect economic system, too, as Winston Churchill famously said, but its lasting virtue is that it is better than all the others.”

From the very beginning of the American idea, our Founders expressed concerns about how it all would end. Both our first and second presidents, George Washington and John Adams, had concerns.

Washington used his farewell address to warn that partisan "factions" could tear the country apart. "Democracy never lasts long," said Adams. "There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide."

And James Madison, president number four, was afraid that liberty could be lost by "gradual and silent encroachments of those in power."

Everyone who thinks socialism is better than capitalism should be required to spend a month in Venezuela, once the crown jewel of South America, now a place with bare store shelves, a starving population, and the highest rate of inflation in the world at 27,364 percent on May 31.

Here at home, the fascist Antifa protestors chant “NO borders NO wall NO USA AT ALL” at their demonstrations.

Is all of this a signal of deliberate abdication of founding principles and ideals, or merely illustrate gross ignorance of them?

If you really want to complete America’s suicide and turn it into Venezuela, vote for radical socialist Democrats.

Our country’s traditions and core values are on the decline

In recent years many of our cultural values have been eroding, and in some cases are being consciously abandoned.

Standing and holding your hand over your heart during the performance of the National Anthem is a part of many activities. It is a simple but sincere way of honoring our nation and paying tribute to the opportunities it provides and its protection of personal freedom that is unparalleled in the world. Rather than honor the country that has been so good to them, some now balk at this simple act, and instead remain sitting, or “take a knee” in protest.

In fact, protest is becoming the new national pastime. Most anything that upsets somebody may well become a protest movement. A large segment of the population seemingly feels led to either start a protest, or take part in them. And some things that now upset folks are things that once were hardly noticed.

For example, some women are offended when a male in a standing position talks to a female who is sitting down. “Mansplaining,” it is called, and is considered offensive because the man is deemed to consider himself superior to the woman.

And then when a male sits and spreads his legs wide apart, that, too, is offensive to some females. They term this “manspreading,” because the male is thought to hold himself in such high regard that he can take up more space than he is due.

We also see the long-established idea of working for a living and supporting yourself and your family being abandoned in favor of welfare, food stamps and Medicaid replacing earned income. Government encourages this by making it too easy to get by without working. The ethic of getting a basic education and either going to work or continuing your education to prepare for a career no longer seems important to many people.

Sometimes economic conditions and a shortage of available jobs force people onto government support. Government imposes policies that instead of encouraging job creation often stifle it through overly strict, crippling regulations and daunting taxation, and then government spends tax revenue to support the people its policies have put on the unemployment line.

Two-parent families have given way to single-parent families, and the harm to children in that situation is often substantial. These families most often lack a father figure, whose presence can and should be a positive influence on children. And, it is becoming common for single mothers to have more children, not because they want more children so much as because they get more money from the government by doing so.

Educating children about our country’s history and values no longer takes place in many homes, and that responsibility gets transferred to schools. But then many schools no longer adequately fill that role, either. Consequently, lots of our younger citizens have no idea why America is a great place to have been born and to live, and without that understanding, proper attitudes of citizenship do not form.

Is it any wonder, then, that so many college kids cannot cope with normal events in life, and react with fear when they encounter unfamiliar or different ideas? With safe spaces and trigger warnings, even if schools still present subject matter without an ideological bias, many campuses shield students from lessons that teach about life and being an adult in the 21^st century. College life should expose young people to new and different ideas and teach them to seek truth, but too often, it does not.

Further complicating the educational experience is the widely promoted idea that everyone needs a college education, and there are ample scholarships, grants and loans available to help pay for it. Colleges are embroiled in an arms race to attract students and the money they bring with them through lavish dormitories and other facilities.

Of course, not everyone needs a college education, and not everyone can complete the requirements for a diploma. And many students pursue degrees in fields that do not allow them to support themselves. Meanwhile, thousands of good paying jobs go unfilled that less expensive vocational training would have prepared people to perform.

As the college experience continues to devolve on many campuses, a group of professors from Princeton, Harvard and Yale have introduced a program that runs counter to the developing new college environment. They encourage students to avoid crippling campus groupthink and to instead think for themselves.

Sixteen professors from the three schools signed a letter warning the Class of 2021 at their school about the danger of “falling into the vice of conformism” on campus.

Princeton Professor Robert P. George told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, “We’re telling our students not to fall into that groupthink,” he said. “You should be pursuing the truth. That’s what being in college is all about. It’s learning to pursue the truth and it’s learning to become a life-long truth seeker.”

To the extent this productive attitude spreads and influences more young people, the positive college environment of old will be restored, and will produce more well-grounded young people who are prepared for adulthood. That will help a lot.

A Trump mandate: We have to restore America’s military strength

Everyone knows that the U.S. military is critical to the nation’s security, and that it is also important how foreign countries perceive America’s strength. That perception of our military and its civilian leadership can encourage careful, thoughtful and peaceful behavior by other countries, or a cavalier, carefree “we’ll do as we please” approach.

Now that the Barack Obama presidency is over, we must begin restoring the military and the world’s perception of America’s strength, both of which have been severely damaged over the last eight years. The security of not just our nation, but also of the world to a large degree, depend upon a strong America.

Back in 2015 Obama stated that the U.S. is now “the most respected country on Earth” thanks to his administration. That comment drew ire and fire on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” Host Bill O’Reilly and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer both reacted strongly to the comment, with O’Reilly countering, “No, we’re not respected by Putin, we’re not respected by ISIS and other terrorists, so I don’t know what he is referring to.” Krauthammer wondered, “what planet he's living on,” and pointed out that “allies who’ve depended on us for so long are finding themselves left hanging in the wind.”

The rest of the segment detailed the many foreign policy failures of the Obama administration that contradict Obama’s delusional statement.

Two years ago The Heritage Foundation said this about funding for the military: “Consecutive years of across-the-board budget cuts have significantly weakened the U.S. military. The military will likely need several years of reinvestment to return to a sound footing.”

It is instructive to look at just how Obama’s eight years have affected the armed forces from the perspective of active members of the military.

A poll conducted by the Military Times and Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families was a voluntary, confidential online survey taken by 1,664 active members of the U.S. armed forces. 

The poll reflects that 51.5 percent of those responding had a generally unfavorable view of Barack Obama’s presidency, and that 29.1 percent had a very unfavorable view, the largest response of the five possible answers. Only 36.4 percent had a generally favorable view, and only 18.0 percent had a very favorable view.

The Marine Corps had the strongest level of disapproval at 60.3 percent, followed by the Army at 53.0, the Air Force at 49.6, and the Navy was the least disapproving at 45.9. Enlisted service members had a 52.1 percent disapproval rate, while 48.8 percent of commissioned officers disapproved.

Seventy-one percent think overall force levels are too low, and 43 percent think more deployed forces are needed, compared to 32 percent who think fewer deployed forces are needed.

Asked how the following “social” measures affected readiness, participants responded: Repealing “don’t ask don’t tell” helped, by 24 to 18 percent; gender integration within combat units hurt, by 30 to 15 percent; and transgenders in service hurt, by 41 to 12 percent.

Participants believe the U.S. is less safe because of drawdowns from Iraq (59 percent) and Afghanistan (54 percent), and less emphasis on large-scale overseas missions (42 percent), but more safe from greater reliance on special forces (58 percent) and training missions (51 percent). And they believe the top four significant threats to the U.S. come from the Islamic State and al-Qaida (70 percent), domestic Islamic terrorists (67 percent), China (64 percent), and Iran (49 percent).

They say the military is smaller and weaker, and the threats against the nation have increased.

In a campaign speech last September, candidate Trump outlined his view of the U.S. military, and said he planned to ask military brass to present a plan soon after he takes office to defeat and destroy ISIS, and that he will ask Congress to eliminate the defense sequester.

Among the goals he seeks are: Building an active Army of about 540,000; a Marine Corps based on 36 battalions; a Navy nearing 350 surface ships and submarines; an Air Force of at least 1,200 fighter aircraft; and developing a new state-of-the-art missile defense system. And he intends to offset the spending for these goals by cutting waste and streamlining the bureaucracy, rather than increases in the $600 billion or so spent each year on the military.

"I'm going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody – absolutely nobody – is gonna (sic) mess with us," he said in a video posted on his campaign website.

Along those lines, his choice to run the Defense Department is retired Marine General James Mattis, a man well respected for his service and expertise, and who is expected to operationally strengthen all armed forces.

A strong military is just smart: Better to have one and not need it, than to need one and not have it. Blessedly, we now have a president who understands that a strong military presence can solve a host of problems before they ever materialize.

And, a president who strongly and unwaveringly supports what is good for America is a great improvement over the weak and tragic performance of the last eight years.

Moving forward, with the election of 2016 in the rearview mirror

Tuesday, November 8 was a stunning repudiation of the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. It was a revolution. The media and the left are in a daze; they don’t understand what happened. They didn’t notice that the people were unhappy with the direction of the country, and the people showed them that they are in charge.

With a Republican president and Republican majorities in each House of the Congress, the stage is set for needed change, and the by-word for Republicans is: Restoration.

That is a tall order; given the deep slide the country has been in for so many years. Among items badly needing attention:

* Gain control of the borders and restore immigration laws and policies so that they benefit and protect the people of the United States. There is no obligation to accept immigrants or refugees, and if we choose to accept some, they must be carefully vetted to select those that will help America the most. Do away with sanctuary jurisdictions in the U.S.

* Reverse many/all of Obama’s Executive Orders that are either unconstitutional, attempts to circumvent Congressional treaty authority, or just bad ideas.

* Revitalize and build up the American military to its former strength and effectiveness.

* The IRS, EPA, DOE and other executive departments are staffed by many who, instead of serving the people, are serving political/ideological masters. Replace these people with true public servants.

* Repeal or heavily modify the Affordable Care Act to increase private sector insurance coverage and encourage more choices and more competition among providers of insurance and health care, and to lower prices. Get the government out of healthcare as much as possible.

* Simplify the tax code and adjust rates, and reduce regulations. These things impair business development, stifle job creation, and that make moving jobs and companies overseas more appealing.

*Restore the constitutional balance of power and reverse Congress’ unconstitutional transfer of law making through regulations by executive agencies and departments.

* Vacancies on the Supreme Court and other federal courts must be filled by people who not only understand the original language and intent of the Constitution, but will honor it. Changes to the Constitution must occur through the process outlined in the Constitution itself, not through unelected activist judges.

* The election process has many weaknesses that allow the dead to vote and other problems that can be utilized for illegal purposes. Furthermore, there is simply no legitimate reason to not implement a photo ID requirement to vote in federal elections. A photo ID is required to buy alcohol or cigarettes; open a bank account; apply for food stamps, welfare, Medicaid/Social Security, unemployment, a mortgage or a job; drive/buy/rent a car; get on an airplane; purchase a gun; adopt a pet; rent a hotel room, and many other things. But not to vote. Clean up voter rolls, be more vigilant and punish cheaters.

* A balanced budget is not immediately possible, but begin to decrease the size and cost of government and start reducing the gargantuan National Debt.

* Congress was not intended to be, and should not be, a career, and lengthy Congressional service has produced an unhealthy culture. The Framers envisioned citizen legislators, people who did their elected job for part of the year and worked their jobs at home the rest of the year, and after a term or two returned to civilian life. We need to move toward that environment.

* And last, but certainly not least: Uphold the Rule of Law; eliminate the double standard: Government workers at all levels must be held to the same legal standards as the people who pay their salaries. This includes such folks as the IRS’s Lois Learner and, yes, Hillary Clinton. It is true that the defeat in the election was a true blow to her, and yes, that can be taken into account. However, as Secretary of State, Clinton breached security and put at risk sensitive national security information, destroyed evidence, and lied to Congress about it.

Others who have done similar things have suffered criminal penalties for their wrongdoing; retired Army General David Petraeus and active-duty Petty Officer First Class Kristian Saucier, and many others were punished through the legal system for security breaches. So, too, must Clinton be.

FBI Director James Comey introduced a new element into criminal law when he decided Clinton should not be indicted for her wrong doing because he was unable to establish the intent to breach security. She thus escaped justice where others did not. However, when lawyers for Saucier told the court their client did not intend to breach security, as Comey asserted about Clinton, the judge rebuked them for using that defense.

She should not be pardoned; the legal system exists to find and punish criminal behavior. If appropriate for her deeds, she should be charged, and absent a guilty plea, tried. If guilty by plea or by trial, a large fine and/or probation would be appropriate. It’s only fair: equal justice under the law. Otherwise, it will be a huge statement that some are above the law.

There is much to be done. Let’s get started.

The U.S. armed forces have been weakened by budget cuts and ideology

In recent years America’s military has experienced operational readiness issues. A good bit of this is due to budget cuts resulting from the 2013 sequestration, but some sources also blame philosophical ideas about the military within the Obama administration.

Sequestration, as explained by CNN at the time, is “a series of automatic, across-the-board cuts to government agencies, totaling $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The cuts would be split 50-50 between defense and domestic discretionary spending. More than $500 billion will be cut from the Defense Department and other national security agencies, with the rest cut on the domestic side…”

The Pentagon, under then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, planned to reach its mandated cuts through furloughs of hundreds of thousands of civilian workers in combat readiness training and weapons maintenance. He said at the time that the $46 billion in cuts the first year would significantly affect military readiness, and the longer the sequestration lasts, the deeper cuts that will be required to achieve the mandated savings.

Just how badly this has affected military readiness is demonstrated in a Fox News story earlier this month. The U.S. Air Force, the smallest of the four major armed services, has cut staff to the degree that many military personnel now work extra shifts performing administrative jobs previously performed by civilians.

These cuts have put the Air Force in the position of being short 4,000 service personnel to maintain its aircraft and 700 pilots to fly them. Personnel are now cannibalizing parts from planes no longer in service and stored at a desert site called "The Boneyard" and from planes on display in museums to repair active aircraft.

Master Sgt. Bruce Pfrommer, who has worked on B-1 bombers for more than 20 years, told Fox that at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, where the 28th Bomber Wing is located, only nine of the 20 bombers there can fly. Those aircraft are closing in on 10,000 flight hours each, compared to about 1,000 when Pfrommer started working on them 20 years ago.

"Our retention rates are pretty low. Airmen are tired and burnt out,” Staff Sgt. Tyler Miller, of the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Ellsworth, told Fox. "When I first came in seven years ago, we had six people per aircraft — and the lowest man had six or seven years of experience," Miller said. "Today, you have three-man teams and each averages only three years of experience."

The Navy also has operational issues. A Government Accountability Office report issued earlier this month, titled “Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan” (OFRP) discusses problems facing our sea-going service. While the report does not specifically mention sequestration budget cuts, the symptoms support this as a least part of the problem.

An excerpt from the OFRP tells us that:
• Over the past decade, high operational tempo has reduced the predictability of ship deployments for sailors and for the industrial base that supports ship repair and maintenance. For example, carrier strike group deployment lengths have increased from an average of 6.4 months between 2008 – 2011 and 8.2 months between 2012 – 2014, to 9 months for three carrier strike groups in 2015.
• Increased deployment lengths have resulted in declining ship conditions and materiel readiness, and in a maintenance backlog that has not been fully identified or resourced, according to Navy officials.
• The declining condition of ships has increased the duration of time that ships spend undergoing maintenance in the shipyards, which in turn compresses the time available in the schedule for training and operations.

In its 2016 assessment of the four major military branches, the Heritage Foundation shows how true Panetta’s prediction was. The assessment rated the Army as “weak,” and the Navy, Marines and Air Force as “marginal,” rating the U.S. military overall as “marginal.”

In addition to budget cuts, reports of military brass being displeased with President Obama’s policies also pose questions.

Writing in Politico in 2013 Rosa Brooks noted, “In my interviews, however, many senior military leaders complained of feeling baffled and shut out by a White House National Security Staff.”

“The NSS wants to run the show, day to day and minute to minute,” laments a former military official, “so they have no time—they’re almost incapable of strategic thinking.” Another recently retired senior general said, “I don’t understand the process by which the White House is making strategic or foreign-policy decisions. … There’s an appearance of consultation, but you know you won’t be listened to.”

The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution provides that the federal government “provide for the common defense.” But in Article Four, Section Four, it states specifically that the “United States shall guarantee to every State a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion.” No other power of the federal government shares that strong a requirement for performance.

No reasonable observer would contend that the federal government is obeying its Constitutional mandate to “provide for the common defense.”

How does the Commander in Chief plan to fix this?

Americans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction

    A year ago a poll by The Wall Street Journal and NBC found that 71 percent of Americans are pessimistic about the nation’s long-term prospects; we are on the wrong track, they believe, and they direct their blame at the elected leaders in Washington. Sixty percent think the country is in a state of decline.
    A couple of months later a Politico poll showed that half believe we are on the wrong track, while only about 20 percent thought we are on the right track. And 64 percent believe the country is “out of control.”
    This discontent runs so deep that 57 percent of those in the Journal/NBC poll said something upset them enough to carry a protest sign for one day, including 61 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans.
    Their national government has grown in size and cost. The 2010 Census lists federal civilian employment at 2.8 million, 2 percent of total employment, and one federal employee for every 117 people. In 2014, Cost of Government Day fell on July 6.  Working people had to work 186 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government. In FY2014 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion, $484 billion more than it took in.
    The degree of power the federal government exercises over its citizens has grown to ridiculous levels. So extensive has government intrusiveness become that it now decides the kinds of light bulbs we can use and regulates the toilets we can buy, and is about to exert control over outdoor cooking grills and people who heat their homes by burning wood. It attempted to gain the power to come onto your property and take control of part or all of it if areas there collect a sufficient amount of rainwater.
    Government incompetence, long a subject of ridicule, is at an all-time high. Among recent failures:
** The bright idea to allow guns to flow to Mexican drug cartels, resulting in the death of Border Patrol Agent Bryan Terry.
** Failure to respond to requests for additional security led to the murder of our Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three more Americans in Benghazi.
** The IRS went to war against politically conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status.
** The Veterans Administration’s disgraceful treatment of American military veterans is so awful that Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson suggested doing away with the agency and putting the Department of Defense in charge of veterans’ healthcare.
** President Barack Obama thinks that climate change is a greater threat and more important than crime-ridden inner cities, terrorism, or a nuclear Iran, and supports measures that will cost millions of dollars and thousands of jobs, all for a fraction of a percent improvement in the environment, if that.
    The business environment in the U.S. has become such that American companies find it more beneficial to move operations out of the country than to keep them here; all the while some in government condemn those businesses as “greedy” and “unpatriotic.”
    With the campaign season for the 2016 presidential election well underway, the Republican field of 17 candidates is led not by existing office holders in Congress or statehouses, but by three non-politicians who have never held elective office before: Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. As of last Wednesday, the combined approval percentages for those three totaled 56 percent of all 17 candidates. This unusual circumstance has occurred despite the fact that several of the other candidates have achieved significant success as governors, which is a good indicator that they could effectively run the federal government. Others have been strong conservatives in Congress. This underscores the idea that people are disgusted with government and those who are involved in it at both the federal and state levels.
    Government grows in size, cost and power because those in government want it to, and those who put people in power have not elected people who want to constrain government growth. Yes, it is true that people who are elected because they advocated smaller, less expensive, more efficient government, and conservative values frequently fail to follow their campaign promises, as we see from observing the actions of the current Republican-controlled Congress.
    We should not count on the rising generation for much help to correct this situation. Pew Research in March of last year reported that this group votes heavily Democrat and supports an activist government.
    “As a general and logical matter, younger people’s dearth of life experiences and their quixotic idealism make them especially vulnerable to simplistic appeals and emotional manipulation for utopia’s grandiosity and social causes, which are proclaimed achievable only through top-down governmental designs and social engineering,” so writes author and legal scholar Mark Levin in his great new book Plunder and Deceit.
    He notes, “the relentless indoctrination and radicalization of younger people … from kindergarten through twelfth grade to higher education in colleges and universities” as why the rising generation does not have an appreciation for American traditions and values.
    Therefore, the challenging job of restoring America falls to their parents’ generation, who must elect people who truly value America’s traditions.

This year’s election can help change the direction of our country

Next week’s election provides an opportunity to take a big step toward correcting the numerous wrongs afflicting America.

The federal government is too big, too expensive, too oppressive, and too intrusive. Some of those who work for us in Washington and elsewhere misbehave: they lie, cheat and steal, put politics ahead of service and pay no penalty for it. Sometimes, they are rewarded for their treachery.

They believe it is their job to decide what we should eat, what kind of toilet to buy, what kind of light bulbs to use, what we can and cannot say, what health insurance we must buy, which industries should be shut down, how our electricity should be produced, how we may utilize our own private property, the minimum amount employers must pay the least experienced and least knowledgeable workers, who we can do business with. They want to know who we talk to and what we think, and think they can tell religious organizations they must violate their principles or face penalties, and they waste our money on frivolous projects that often fund their friends.

What ever happened to being able to like or dislike anything at any time for any reason, or for no reason? What happened to “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone?” People invest their money, mortgage their home to fund a business, only to find they are not actually in charge of it; they must follow sometimes-foolish government rules, or suffer the consequences.

The excesses, corruption and wrongdoings of the federal government are much worse than those of state governments, which in turn are much worse than those of county and municipal governments. Why? Because the smaller and closer government is to the people it serves, the more responsive to and respectful of those people it is.

It has not helped that our federal government is staffed by career bureaucrats who often take on a sense of power and privilege beyond their limited authority, and it is run by career politicians, many, perhaps most, of whom at some point shift their focus from good and faithful service to being re-elected.

Flipping channels the other night I came upon a replay of the Communist Party USA convention in Chicago last June on C-SPAN3.

Party Chairman Sam Webb was speaking: “Here are my two cents. What is needed is nothing less than the restructuring of the economy and the consistently and deeply anti-corporate and eventually socialist direction.”

Among the things Mr. Webb favors are “a guaranteed livable income for all and the reduction of the workweek with no cut in pay” … “and major expansion of every aspect of the public sector to education, housing, retirement security, health care, elder care, and so forth.” He supports raising the minimum wage, and the idea that everyone who isn’t doing well – the underpaid, underemployed, unemployed, the discriminated against, struggling families, students, the underwater homeowner, the bankrupt city” – are victims of capitalism.

He favors moving “government priorities away from military spending.” And he wants the wealth amassed by the evil 1 percent to be transferred into “public hands, our hands.”

He sounded just like big government American liberals, who prefer to call themselves “progressives,” presumably to describe their drive toward socialism/communism.

Mr. Webb might have listed the countries that have thrived after implementing these ideas, but he didn’t, because there aren’t any. Though heaven knows many have tried: Cuba, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos, et al. They exist as repressive nations forcing their ideology on their citizens and killing or imprisoning those who disagree, and usually have to adopt some capitalist market characteristics to survive.

Under our Constitution, which designed the government that led the United States to levels of greatness and a degree of individual freedom never before imagined, the federal government was never supposed to be what it has become: an obese and controlling machine that is blind to or unconcerned with its harmful effects on the people it is designed to serve.

Much authority was deliberately left to the states and to the people, as so stated in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

From 1955 until 1980 Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, also from 1987 to 1995, and again from 2007 to 2011. Since 1955 Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for only 10 years, during the period 1995 to 2007, while Democrats were in control for 50 years. During this period of Democrat dominance, government has grown into a gargantuan monstrosity that threatens our freedom, and indeed our very survival today.

Capitalism and limited government got us where we were when the United States was on top. Liberal Democrats took us from there to the low point where we are now. The devolution will continue unless we put a stop to it. The Republican Party is the only viable mechanism to slow or stop the headlong slide toward socialism/communism we have witnessed over the last few decades.

Vote Republican in this election.