Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts

Thursday, July 27, 2023

July, 2023, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Chicago Murder Carnage Continues, Biden's Ukraine Military Shipments Make Criminals Rich, Washington State Gets Murderous and More

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country. 


Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.


1)Far too many times we have reviewed cases of government incompetence and inefficiency when taxpayer money that was supposed to be used for government programs ends up in the hands of national enemies, international criminals , and domestic criminals. And the war in Ukraine is just another sad chapter in that history of waste:


  • Apparently, millions and millions of dollars worth of U.S. weapons that Biden is supposedly sending to Ukraine to fight the Russians are ending up in the hands of criminal gangs.

  • The inspector general at the Pentagon issued a report finding that a lack of accountability on this arms program is the cause for criminal gangs getting these weapons.

  • The inspector general found that a criminal group of Ukrainian criminals parading as humanitarian aid workers was able to get a load of bulletproof vests.

  • The value of the vests was $17,000.

  • The inspector general also found that a group of arms traffickers were caught selling stolen weapons and ammunition that was intended to fight the Russians.

  • Various other criminal groups managed to steal rifles, helmets, and other weapons.


Biden has sent well over $100 billion of taxpayer funded weapons to Ukraine. One has to imagine how many billions of those dollars are making criminals halfway around the world richer and richer everyday. From covid to Medicare to Ukraine arms shipments, the Washington political class always manages to botch the intent of these programs, resulting in hundreds of billions of wasted taxpayer dollars.


2)On any day, there are usually between 500,000 and 600,000 homeless Americans living on the streets of our cities. In the richest country in the history of the world, it is a shame and disgrace that so many folks do not have shelter, an indictment to the ineptness of the American political class.


In addition, the safety of others is a constant problem due to the homeless problem. Drug usage, spent drug needles lying around on the streets and sidewalks, crime, violence, and public defecation and urination are just some of the problems that huge homeless populations cause.


And now there is another nasty result of extremely high homelessness:

  • According to an article from the Epoch Times, over 100,000 gallons from homeless encampments around the Los Angeles area are collected and often end up in the country’s waterways every month.

  • The article quotes Barry Coe, a former owner of an RV business in southern California, who explained that raw sewage from homeless people living in local California homeless RV encampments is simply dumped in the local storm sewers which leads “straight to Santa Monica Bay.”

  • This massive amount of dumped sewage ends up fouling fish populations, beaches, and local waterways and shores.


Thus, the dangers to life and limb due to the inability of American politicians to resolve the homelessness problem is not just a local problem, the sewage pollution ranges far and wide, affecting those that are far from and unassociated with the homeless problem.


3)The state of Washington has become a bastion for bad liberal policies for a number of years now. The state and its large cities, e.g. Seattle, have been big advocates for the stupid and failed concept known as “defund the police.” This has resulted in smaller and demoralized police forces, skyrocketing crime due to defanged police forces and prosecutors, and increased murder rates.


And since the whole defund the police insanity started, it has not been a good concept relative to murders in the state of Washington:


  • According to the Washington ASsociation of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) there were 394 murders in the state last year.

  • This was an almost 17% increase over the previous year.

  • It was the highest number of state wide murders since the collecting of murder data started in 1980.

  • But the  most amazing number is that since 2019, since  just before the defund the police mania, the state murder rate has increased a whopping 96%.

  • In one year, robberies went up 18%, vehicle thefts went up 34%, and attacks on police officers went up almost 21% in  one year.

  • Out of the 50 states and the District Of Columbia, Washington state ranks 51st relative to the number of police officers per thousand residents.

  • The increase in crime is correlated with state legislation passed in 2021 that implemented many of the inane defund the police concepts.


As we have  asserted many times, a very, very basic function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the citizens they are responsible for. Regardless of success in any other area, failure to protect lives and property means that the politicians responsible for its citizens are a failure. Obviously, the state politicians in Washington, given the skyrocketing crime and murder rates, are a failure.


4)Following up on the previous thought that a very, very basic function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of its citizens, nowhere has this premise failed so horribly and for so long as in the city of Chicago. Far too many times we have discussed the daily carnage that goes on in a city, county and state with both inept politicians and some of the strongest gun laws in the country, laws that have done nothing to prevent the annual wounding and homicides of thousands of city residents.


And a recent weekend earlier in July was no exception in this violent city:


  • During that weekend, 27 Chicago residents were shot and five died.

  • Three weekends prior  to that weekend 35 people were shot and five died.

  • It appears that most of the recent shootings and deaths were gang and drug related.

  • ABC News in Chicago interviewed a local  resident who begged for more police presence in her neighborhood: "They need to clean it up. Even the police, even our area. The kids can't even come to play. This is not safe." 


The city has a new mayor after the horrific only term of former mayor Lori Lightfoot ended. But just like that old Who song, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” the murders, crime, and violence in Chicago continues unabated. 


Enough political class insanity for today: Chicago continues to be a violence  and murder capital, Washington state is turning into Chicago West, homelessness in  California results in massive water pollution, and Biden’s arm shipments to Ukraine make criminals rich.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


Saturday, May 6, 2017

May, 2017, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: NYC Education Insanity, Dangerous VA Insanity, And Elizabeth Warren Insanity

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Today and for all of the insanity posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy."

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:


With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) We have often discussed the reality that when politicians dabble in economics and economic theory and strategies they almost always screw it up. Another area the are real good at failing is education. Since the Federal Department of Education was founded several decades ago, the Federal government has likely spent trillions of dollars on education with little success. Our kids constantly lag behind the kids of other countries when it comes to educational attainment when measured on international tests.

And those trillions of dollars don’t include the trillions of dollars state and local governments have spent on education. Consider the sad state of education in New York City today, as documented in a recent National Review article:
  • The High School for Law and Community Service in the Bronx has a college-readiness rate of students leaving high school last year of 6.5%.
  • Brooklyn’s Academy for Young Writers has a college-readiness score of only 12.3%.
  • Brooklyn’s Victory Collegiate High School somehow has gotten its college readiness rating down to 2.7%.
  • The graduation rate of these special schools range from only 76% to 86%.
  • Only 36% of kids in NYC public schools can attain a passing grade in math and only 38% can do the same in English.
  • And for black kids, the math numbers are a pitiful 20% and the English numbers are only 27%.
  • And this pitiful situation is reached even though the city spends a whopping $23,516 a year on education expenses in the city per student.
Given this disgusting and pitiful situation, one would assume that the city politician would be doing everything possible to fix what is already in place and what is so dysfunctional. But that would be Mayor Bill de Blasio’s latest “reform”? He wants to create a Pre-Pre Kindergarten program in public schools. Rather than focus on fixing the existing grades and using limited resources to fix all of the above mentioned failures in the NYC public schools, he wants to take those limited resources and create a new grade for three year olds.

But the insanity get worse. According to the article, he needs $1.1 billion to start and run the operation city wide but has only found $36 million in the budget for the effort. Which raises an interesting question: if you have an extra $36 million laying around without a home, maybe using that money to fix the broken grades and educational processes that you already have in place might be a better use of those funds. 

Plus, we have written many times on how the Federal Head Start program has been a gigantic failure in giving kids a head start in getting educated. Study after study show that Head Start kids are no smarter and no better off when they get to real kindergarten than kids that do not attend Head Start programs. Given that actual history of failure, what makes anyone think that going even younger than Head Start is going to be anything but an expensive baby sitting service? You cannot make up stupidity of this quality.

2) We have often pointed out how useless and dysfunctional the Veterans Administration has been providing quality healthcare for our veterans. Many, many veterans have died while waiting to get to have their health care needs met while VA executives have fudged, changed, and manipulated data to protect their annual bonuses and high salaries. While Obama claimed for eight years that the VA performance was a disgrace and often pledged to fix it, his efforts fell pitifully short.

Another example of his failures was recently documented by an article by John Cooper and Jarrett Stepman writing for the Heritage Foundation on April 19, 2017:
  • According to their reporting, the VA inspector general announced on April 12,2017 that the Washington DC VA Medical Center was putting the 98,000 veterans it serves at “unnecessary risk.”
  • And this was the interim report, meaning that things are probably worse than this first cut at the dysfunction.
  • In just over the past two years the facility had 194 patient safety reports regarding “the unavailability of equipment or supplies."
  • Last June, surgical staff used expired equipment during a procedure because of “the lack of an inventory management program.”
  • Eighteen out of 25 sterile storage areas were found to be dirty, leading the inspector general to conclude the center “lacks assurance that sterile supplies maintained their integrity.”
  • More than 27,000 items purchased by the facility, with a value of more than $150 million, have gone unaccounted for. 
  • In a bit of good news, the facility's director, Brian Hawkins, has been relieved of his duties at the medical center.
Unsterile equipment, expired equipment, likely stolen equipment and supplies, unavailable supplies, etc. Even when the political class recognizes a problem, like Obama did many years ago, they still cannot resolve the problem either out of inability or apathy. 

3) Let’s finish today’s insanity with just a plain ridiculous politician's quote. Senator Elizabeth Warren has been a rant lately about a lot of things, most of which are either non-constructive or just plain stupid. Let’s go the stupid route today. Consider a recent tweet from her:

Our military force's diversity is its greatest strength. The Army Secretary must show genuine support for ALL of our men & women in uniform

Yes, having a diverse military force is our greatest strength. It is not the bravery of those that serve. It is not having the latest and best military equipment. It is not having the best training. It is not having the best strategists. It is not about having military satellites to help defend the country. It is because we have men AND women in the armed forces, simple as that. And simple she is, unbelievable. Does she really believe this nonsense?

That will do it for today’s insanity: stupidity and lack of common sense in the NYC mayor’s office, lack of accountability and improvements in the VA, and a Senator who continues to be clueless about reality. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w





Sunday, April 17, 2016

April, 2016, Part 2, By The Numbers: More Weapons To The MIddle East, More Hassles To Filing Taxes, and More Bad Priorities From the Obama Administration

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 

1) Pew Research recently completely an interesting and involved study to determine what issues are most important to Americans today, providing a priority list of things that they would want the Washington political class to address most heavily. As you will see, as usual, Washington in general and Obama specifically, are very much out of step with what are most important and worrisome issues to Americans today.

Pew gave the poll participants a list of 18 issues facing the country today and asked them to choose which ones they felt should be a top priority of Obama and his administration. The results show a major disconnect:

  • Gun policy was 16th out of 18 as far as being a priority even though Obama has been obsessing about shredding the Second Amendment rights of Americans.
  • Climate change was only 17th out of 18 even though climate change is another obsession of Obama.
  • Global trade ranked dead last, 18th, even though Obama has been pushing hard for his new Pacific trade pact to be approved.
  • The economy was the number one issue with a whopping 75% of poll participants saying Obama should focus on that.
  • Unfortunately, Obama has provided no new economic plans, thoughts, or focus on the economy for years and even when he did have economic thoughts and strategies earlier in his term, e.g. his economic stimulus program, they were failures, resulting in persistent high real unemployment, anemic economic growth, stagnant wages and incomes, and over 45 million Americans on food stamps for years.
  • Dealing with immigration has increased as a priority by 11% since Obama took office, the highest increase of any priority, but despite this growing concern, illegal immigration continues unabated along with the drug running, human trafficking, and criminal elements that go with it.
  • The priority to strengthen the military has gone up 8% since Obama took office but our overall military fighting capability has deteriorated during Obama’s Presidency.
  • Protecting the environment, another Obama favorite, has dropped 5% as a priority with Americans since Obama came into office.
  • 51% of the poll’s participants think that Obama’s failures will outweigh his accomplishments and only 39% think his accomplishments will outweigh his failures.
  • Independent voters are even more pessimistic about his failures and accomplishments with a 16 point difference between the two. 
Very telling numbers. A Presidency and political class that work on things that are irrelevant or much less of a priority to the majority of Americans and ignore issues that are of the highest priority to Americans. Maybe that is why nothing ever gets resolved by Washington these days and over the past couple of decades. Today’s American politicians do not know how to resolve the highest priority problems facing Americans so they work on stuff that has no answer just to look like they are working on something, e.g. rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Pathetic leadership and know how. The numbers do not lie.

2) Since most of us just got done paying our taxes to the Federal government, consider some facts and numbers that show how perverted our current tax code is, as explained in an article in Reason magazine by Veronique de Rugy:

  • On average, each American family had to expend 8 hours and $120 to file their tax personal returns.
  • This translates into 1.35 billion wasted hours just filing tax returns. 
  • The compliance cost to the country, Americans, and our economy to file those non-business tax returns is over $20 billion a year.
  • 45.3% of Americans do not pay anything in Federal income taxes. Were you in that 45.3% or were you the one of the 54.7% of Americans who actually paid real money to the Federal government while many of your neighbors paid nothing?
  • The top 1% of earners in this country paid a whopping 37% of all Federal income tax while the top 10% paid 70% of all Federal income taxes.
A few observations relative to this idiocy:

  • How many needy Americans could be helped if some of those 1.35 billion hours could be funneled into volunteer work to help the needy, hungry and homeless in this country rather than wasting time doing tax returns?
  • How many needy Americans would be helped if that $20 billion could be funneled into the needs of the needy, hungry, and homeless in this country rather than wasting time paying for tax returns to be done?
  • Given that almost half of all Americans do not pay anything in Federal income taxes, it is not a surprise that they do not get excited when the American political class wastes Federal tax money on stupid and inane projects and programs, they have no stake in making sure that Congress and the President are spending tax money efficiently and effectively, none of that wasted money is theirs.
  • Given that record numbers of Americans are leaving the country every year and renouncing their citizenship and the likelihood that those leaving are part of the top 1% or top 10% of earners, how long will it take for the Federal government raises taxes on EVERYONE to compensate for the high earners leaving the country forever?
Scary questions and results from a scary, cumbersome, and stupid tax code, as proven by the numbers.

3) One last set of numbers for today. When Obama came into office, there was significant hope across the MIddle East and the World that he would help to finally bring peace to the region. But consider some numbers from the March 4, 2016 issue of The Week magazine:

  • A huge weapons buildup is current underway in the Middle East.
  • Saudi Arabia is now the second largest arms and weapons importer inthe world behind only India.
  • Annual Saudi and Qatar arms purchases are up an amazing 275% since 2011.
  • Weapons imports by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are up 35% since 2011.
  • Iran is ramping up its weapons purchases, mostly from Russia.
  • But despite that hope of peace from Obama early in his term, the United States is still by far the world’s largest weapons and arms exporter in the world, accounting for one third of all weapons sales.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Obama is not better than all previous Presidents, the numbers showing that this country is still the nation most responsible for arming the rest of the world, a very dangerous world.

That will do it for the numbers today. America making the world a more dangerous place, the IRS and the U.S. tax code making life more miserable for Americans, and Obama more out of touch with what is important to Americans, the numbers do no lie. More depressing numbers tomorrow.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w








Sunday, September 6, 2015

September, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 2: The Failing Grades Of Pell Grants, Lying About The Failing ISIS Strategy, and Oreos Go To Mexico

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

  • NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
  • The stock market is in free fall.
  • Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
  • Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
  • The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
  • Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
  • 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
  • Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets
  • A record number of police officers have been assassinated in the past week.
  • Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
  • Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
  • The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
  • Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
  • Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year, meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.
Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing.

1) The Federal government has run a college student aid program for a long time called Pell grants. These grants, not loans, are aimed at students who theoretically cannot afford to attend college on their own. In theory, a decent idea. In practice, not so much. 

Apparently, the Feds do not keep track of the graduation rates of those students who receive free Pell grants. Thus, the government has no way of determining if the program is actually effective in helping students become college graduates. You would think that any entity, public or private, which dispenses over $31 BILLION a year in a single effort would like to you what it is getting for the billions of dollars spent.

Well, the results of Pell grants are not good, according to a recent analysis by the Hechinger Report:

  • The research polled 50 of the country’s largest public and 50 of its largest private universities to provide Pell grant recipients’ six year graduation rates.
  • Of the 82 schools that responded to the survey, “more than a third of Pell recipients at those schools hadn’t earned degrees even after six years. Of those schools that did respond, the average six-year graduation rate for all students was 70 percent, higher than the national average of 59 percent. For Pell grant recipients, the graduation rate was 66 percent. The more Pell students an institution enrolls, these statistics show, the lower their likelihood of graduating,” Sarah Butrymowicz, the author of the study, noted.
  • Thus, a rough estimate would say that over $10 billion of the annual Pell grant budget is a failure relative fulfilling its objective to get students to graduate college.
  • Richard Vedder, the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity stated: “There's two scandals here. We have spent over the last decade one quarter of a trillion dollars on Pell grants, and if you ask the federal government what percentage of those kids graduate from college, they can't tell you. The second scandal is as far as we can estimate, that graduation rate is embarrassingly low.”
Embarassingly, well said, but not surprising when discussing today’s politicians and the dysfunctional government agencies it operates.

2) Although this President promised to operate the most transparent administration ever, it has turned out that it is one of the most secretive, opaque one of all time. It has stonewalled Freedom Of Information Act requests, it has spied on journalists, and it has lied and deceived America on a whole slate of issues and problems

And now we can add another scandal to the whole transparency charade. According to the New York Times, the Defense Department’s inspector general is investigating whether or not intelligence reports concerning our airstrike campaign against ISIS in the Middle East have been changed to make it seem like the Obama administration’s strategy is working better than the reality of the war effort.

The investigation centers around reports from a civilian working at the Defense Intelligence agency which accuses Defense Department personnel of rewriting progress assessment reports before they are forwarded to Congressional members. If true, this is a blatant violation of government rules which state that assessments like these “must not be distorted” by a political agendas of any type. The inspector general is looking into what changes were made to the reports and why.

Given that ISIS continues to grow in strength, numbers, and geographic impacts despite the Obama strategy of spending billions of dollars to bomb their positions, many defense and strategy experts both inside and outside of the government doubted that the strategy is working. This conclusion was strengthened when government intelligence sources released their report last month which also concluded that ISIS is no weaker than they were at the beginning of the air campaign.

And now we are seeing this administration possibly stonewalling another assessment of failure. No transparency, no truth, no integrity.

3) A big problem with letting politicians and government bureaucrats do anything is that they usually have no clue of what unintended consequences will occur as a result of their actions. The latest example of their ineptness involves the favorite cookie of all time, Oreos. 

The Federal government has long given favorable treatment to the sugar industry in this country, resulting in Americans paying about twice the amount for sugar than the rest of the world because of Federal sugar tariffs placed on sugar. Obviously, this results in outsized and undeserved profits for the sugar industry players.

Since the largest component of ingredients in Oreos is sugar, this results in a higher than necessary costs for the makers of Oreos cookies. In order to stay competitive and profitable, the makers of Oreos are required by their shareholders to reduce costs as much as possible. 

In this case, they found that they could pay for and build a new factory in Mexico to make Oreos, pay the additional transportation costs to ship Mexican produced Oreos into this country, and be much more profitable. All because the Federal government and the politicians that operate it raised the cost of sugar so much that 600 good paying American manufacturing jobs have now been shipped to Mexico.

But 600 jobs is not the only damage from the government making sugar so expensive for Americans to the benefit of their financial backers and donors. According to a 2006 analysis from the Federal government’s International Trade Administration: “Chicago, one of the largest U.S. cities for confectionery manufacturing, has lost nearly one-third of its SCP manufacturing jobs over the last 13 years. These losses are attributed, in part, to high U.S. sugar prices.”

Unintended consequences from people that have no clue about simple business concepts and economic principles, all for their own selfish political objectives. 

Enough insanity for today. Politicians shipping jobs out of the country, lying about a failed Obama military strategy, and an expensive government program with a one third failure rate. Different areas, different failures and all insanity from today’s politicians. More insanity tomorrow and beyond.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w



Monday, April 27, 2015

"Meet the New Boss, Same As The Old Boss"... or The Failed Foreign Affairs and MIlitary Strategy Of The Obama Adminstration

Back in 2013, President Obama made the following quote and claim: “A decade of war is now over.” Which is good since given the following warlike actions the U.S. is involved in, I would hate to see what it would be like if the “decade of war” was NOT over:
  • The Obama administration recently sent 300 troops into the Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops.
  • The Obama administration is debating whether to give the Ukrainians actual weapons as opposed to only the non-lethal aid it has been providing.
  • The Obama administration recently sent 3,000 troops back into Iraq to support the fight against the ISIS forces.
  • The Obama administration is flying air attacks against ISIS forces throughout the Middle East.
  • The Obama administration sent many, many tanks and jet planes to Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge.
  • The Obama administration spent well over a billion dollars in inserting U.S.military resources into the Libyan civil war.
  • The Obama administration is still launching drone attacks into Pakistan to combat the Taliban with a recent attack killing two civilian hostages including an American.
  • The Obama administration is still launching drone attacks into Yemen to fight any number of different enemies after having abandoned the country and leaving about half a billion dollars worth of military equipment behind for those enemies to put to their own use.
  • The Obama administration has a fleet of warships assembled in the Middle East to prevent Iran from shipping weapons to its allies in Yemen with a potential armed and physical confrontation narrowly avoided in the past week when an Iranian convoy of ships headed for Yemen turned back.
  • The Obama administration has doubled the number of U.S. troops it is keeping in Afghanistan this year, to 10,000 troops, and is now allowing the Pentagon to directly support Afghanistan forces in battles against the Taliban, a significant change in strategy from previously saying that U.S. military forces would only conduct counter terrorism operations, whatever that is. 
  • The Obama administration still has tens of thousands of troops stationed in Japan.
  • The Obama administration still has tens of thousands of troops stationed in South Korea.
  • The Obama administration tens still has tens of thousands of troops stationed around the world in dozens of countries.
Obviously, we were being sarcastic. Like most of Obama’s other campaign and Presidential promises (e.g. most transparent administration ever, will reduce the annual Federal spending deficit in half, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor under Obama Care, etc.), the “decade of war is over” is either an outright lie or incompetence on the administration. You cannot claim the decade of war is over when you are involved in at least a dozen different war situations around the world.

The Obama administration thus has degenerated into nothing more than an old Who song, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Despite his promises, we are still sticking our noses, and our military, into other countries’ affairs at great expense to the American taxpayer, just like just about every other President has done. Step 30 and its military strategy from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” would have prevented us from getting involved in these dozen war zones and others: "Bring back all nonessential deployed military personnel to the United States.This will save money and help our reputation as a freedom loving, non-imperialistic nation.”

But now we have no strategy, no exit plan, this administration has got us so entangled into so many war situations that it is difficult now to tell who our allies are and who are friends are. We are heading off Iranian arms shipments to Yemen with our Navy but allowing Iran to help in the fight against ISIS. We are working with the Saudis in the Yemen mess but the Saudis do have sympathies and relationships with ISIS since both are Sunni based religious entities. We said we were limiting our military exposure in Afghanistan but then turned right around and expanded it. The list of conflicts and confusion goes on and on which is not unexpected when you do not have a strategy and seem incapable of formulating a coherent one.

But it should come as no surprise. This administration, and those that came before it, are generally operated by people that have no strategic planning ability or smarts:

  • Obama Care is an ill conceived and expensive insurance plan failure when it should have been a strategic, well coordinated public health campaign.
  • Giving tens of billions of dollars to failing and bankrupt alternative energy companies is not an energy strategy, it is crony capitalism. 
  • Trying to have single, centrally controlled education curriculum that serves millions of kids like Common Core is not a strategic answer to our failing public schools it but rather just another bloated Washington bureaucracy.

That is why term limits is so important. The current set of Washington politicians have failed miserably at everything they try to do, with the dozen failures of Obama’s foreign policy listed above just the latest example. That is why we urge all of our readers to go to our term limit website to learn why term limits are so very important and critical to our future:


We leave today with two depressing quotes that naturally arise as the failures of this administration mount:

- In May, 2013, President Obama stated these words at the National Defense University: “America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.” Given the foreign affairs and military mess and conflicts stated above, it is obvious that his administration has not defined the nature and scope of the problem since there is no apparent and effective strategy in place to define our place in the world. 

- Which leads us to the recent insights from historian Robert Kagan: “We’re sort of seeing the world order cracking around the edges. The only thing Obama can hope is that it doesn’t completely collapse while he’s still President.”

My, the “hope and change” theme has fallen far from its lofty perch in 2008. The only thing left for this hope and change President now is to hope current foreign affair and military crisis situation does not change for the worst until he gets out from under the mess he has created after his second term ends.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w