And all you see on the TV today are ads about how great Bank of America is.  They are investing in us, in small business, in large business.  He’ll if they could spoon with us at night they probably would just to give us that warm fuzzy feeling before Bank of America slips one up our tail pipes.  No mint on the pillow, no turned down bed, no foreplay just bend over here it comes, that’ll be 5 dollars, we’ll be back next month for another.

Before I pay it I’d like to see their payroll and profit.  I’d bet payroll is down 30-40% and profits are up.  Seems to me like a fee hike is totally justified, NOT!

If you read this please pass it on.  If you bank at BOA (Buttheads of America) go talk to the bankers and tell them if they are going to screw you then screw them!

First BOA was giving credit cards to illegals, now they are raping and plundering their customers too.  It’s Bullshit, this is America, We Ain’t Gunna Take It No More!

Did the Republicans do such a great job at supporting their positions that they took the house handily?  Did the Democrats just not do enough?  Were Americans tired of Obama and his leftist policies?  Did Pelosi get hit with an ugly stick more than once?  What really happened?

I am by no means a political expert.   I don’t have a degree in Political Science, I don’t even follow politics all that much.  But what I do know is people.  I have a innate ability to determine peoples motivations well beyond what they will do in the short term.

I saw the overturn of the Obama Nation shortly after elections.   Obama and his staff of merry friggin cohorts thought they had the ear of the nation.  They thought we wanted liberal policies, health care, more regulation, more taxes and services we didn’t need.

In part he was correct but he and his staff of misfits really never figured it out.  We didn’t want the sham he put forth as Universal Health Care.  We wanted a health care system that made health care affordable and that could sustain itself instead of on the backs of working class America.

I don’t know if you the reader have figured this out but UHC was basically Obama giving favors to the insurance industry.   Almost all insurance provided by businesses to employees or self purchased has seen an escalation in premiums since Obama took office? 

Why is that?

It’s simple.   Economic and Political blow jobs.  Obama owes the insurance company some favors and UHC basically pays them well.   So here’s what happened.  Obama and his misfits ramrodded a shoddy UHC to his desk for his signature.  The date it is supposed to take effect is 2014.

Everyone knew it would pass as the Democrats could totally ignore the Republicans and push it through with little effort.  Of course they pretended that they wanted to work with the Republicans but Obama knew that wasn’t going to happen because it’s a flawed plan.

So why pass it?

It’s simple it’s a way for insurance companies to raise rates on the middle class so their profit margins will skyrocket.  For the next 4 years the middle class will see a huge burden placed on them to give profits only seen in the oil industry.  Watch and see.   Then when UHC takes place they will be able to lower those premiums a bit and say “See UHC is a good thing”

But even then the profits will continue to soar.  Why?  Because they will have 40 million more paying members and they will pay at the rate that has ballooned for the past 4 years setting a much higher bar for insurance premiums.

In the end it will be shown that the whole thing was all a plan to get the democrats what they want and need.  UHC will be the democratic equivalent of Big Oil.  It’s what they need to get mass infusions of cash to keep the machine going.

We as Americans should not only say no, but HELL no.  We want better insurance, affordable rates, quality health cares, not to line the pockets of Democrats.  

We need to speak out.  Tell our elected leaders we want UHC repealed and corrected so that it might actually benefit our country instead of bankrupting our grandchildren so the rich and powerful can get more so.

It’s time we say NO.  The tea party is a start.  It’s not a republican mouthpiece, it’s not a democratic hinderance, it’s both and it’s neither.  It’s about people like you and me saying we have had enough.

This election is a product of those people and others saying “we are not going to take it any more”.  Democrats are scared, republicans are scared, we are scared and damnit we want to do something about it.

We should all want to take back our government.  No more “Governing for Me, the politician, it’s about them governing based on OUR WILL!”

Call or write your senator or congressman today and tell them to either Frig Off or start listening to “We the people”

If you agree you want your government to represent you again tell them so.

This morning like so many morning started out at my favorite place, work (AS IF).   One of my co-workers says good morning followed by “Did you hear Obama got a nobel prize”.  It was still a bit early and I just sort of nodded and went off to my office.

Then it dawns on me what she said, Obama got a nobel peace prize.  WHAT THE HELL! 

So I go to trusty fox news and sure enough the bozos in Norway gave Obama a prize.  I wouldn’t give him my left nut to scratch even if I had poison oak, no hands and he were the only person available, let alone an award like this.

Then I find out he was nominated just 12 days into his presidency because thats when nominations were closed.

Is it just me or does this smack of ballot stacking or out and out bribery?

What exactly had he done in 12 days, oh that’s right, not much.  But of course he’s preaching “Change” so I guess that is good.  He’s had a great number of worthy people around him that we should applaud, he’s involved with great organizations that committed voter fraud, promoting prostitution and tax fraud, and a whole list of other things.

So with all of this in 12 days presto, another Democrat liberal gets a nobel prize.   They are so cheap and demeaned it’s like opening up a box of cracker jacks and finding one.  (Wait can I say cracker without being racist, oh that’s right, the new racist says ‘you lie’)

Anyway when are we Americans going to wake up and smell the roses.  The world is toppling us as a super power, Obama is their puppet and we’re all going to be left holding the bag (of coins, as that’s all that will be left)

If you don’t agree with this, go to someone else blog, you’re probably a lefty.  If you agree, it’s time to do something about it.

The conservative middle just isn’t getting it done, as a whole we seem to be waiting for the cliff to come to us so we can jump off like lemmings.   Call you elected representatives and tell them you aren’t happy about what’s going on.

Tell them you think these new left wing initiatives are wrong for you and for the country, and you are ready to back up your opinion with votes.

And for God’s sake stand up for God and Country before neither is anything but an afterthought!

For the past 40 years our country has, from time to time, been influenced by a man most notable for fleeing the scene of a negligent homicide and attempting to have someone else take the blame for him. Even with the entrenched power of the Kennedys in Massachusetts, they couldn’t keep all the facts surrounding the drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne from being publicized. God only knows what that poor woman went through as she waited in a watery grave, perhaps believing that the man who saved himself would come back to save her.  If she expected a profile in courage from Ted Kennedy, she died disappointed. 

When Kennedy drove off the Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, his car landed upside down in 7 feet of water. Some ten hours later, when he had contrived a statement of the occurrence, the senator, who had been partying with the young woman and volunteered to drive her home, said he had been able to swim free of the vehicle, but wasn’t able to save his passenger. Evidently, he also wasn’t able to summon help from those who might have been able to save her life. In fact, he didn’t even report the accident until conferring with friends and aides who assisted him with his statement.

During that time, which records indicate took about ten hours, Ms. Kopechne remained in the water. Two amateur fishermen, who came across the overturned car about 8 am, the following morning, called authorities, who immediately sent a diver to investigate. During testimony at the subsequent inquest, the diver said the woman’s body was huddled into a spot where an air bubble must have formed. His interpretation was that she had survived in that bubble “for at least two hours down there.” Furthermore, he concluded that, had he received a call soon after the accident, “there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car.”   

Whenever I recall this tragic incident, what truly eats at me is the image of that woman huddled into a small space and struggling for each breath of life, while the coward who put her there was struggling to come up with an alibi to save his political future. How low on the evolutionary scale do you have to be to leave someone to drown in the dark, murky water, as you figure out an angle to free yourself of culpability?

The actions of Ted Kennedy that fateful night spoke volumes about the lack of courage and character in the man. The fact that he was continually reelected to his senate seat speaks volumes about the lack of character in the Massachusetts electorate. Rather than risk the loss of political power from a Kennedy, who could exert enough muscle to steer huge federal funds to the state, the voters evidently decided they could be bought, so they overlooked his pusillanimity as well as his misanthropy. Even the impact of that tragedy didn’t stop this womanizing sot from continuing his life of debauchery.

There are those who say his senate career was fruitful for the country. I disagree on the grounds that a person who has demonstrated a complete absence of integrity is not capable of being productive in any commendable area of human endeavor. The fact remains that Ted Kennedy left a woman for dead as he ran away from the scene and didn’t report it until he had no other option. Did he spend a minute thinking about the water rising to her mouth and choking off her oxygen?

If that had been your daughter, or my daughter, that he left to drown, how much torment and pain would we have suffered through the years as we watched this guy giving noble speeches for decades, and even having the temerity to run for president? All the contrived rhetoric since then about him having compassion for the little guy is nothing more than the liberal left in constant pursuit of a decent legacy for an unprincipled and pathetic excuse for a human being. Perhaps now, Mary Jo can rest in peace.

Bob Weir is a former detective sergeant in the New York City Police Department. He is the executive editor of The News Connection in Highland Village, Texas.

Central Illinois is like this: God made a giant mud-pie and it dried flat like the surface of a still pond and with soil black as midnight. Driving south from Chicago on I-57 the farmhouses resemble schooners sailing on a calm sea of corn and soybeans. A few hours south and the land begins to roll and just when you are reminded of the Ozarks because of the fjord-like lakes that begin to appear and the onset of actual hills, comes Illinois Route 13.

We came to the area to attend a wedding, see relatives and get out into the countryside. In one area near a fish hatchery, we saw both a Bald Eagle (the national bird) and a wild Turkey. Ben Franklin had preferred the Turkey to the Eagle as our national symbol, considering the Eagle to be a “Bird of bad moral Character” as excerpted from a letter to his daughter.

My wife’s Aunt F and Uncle W were the last visit for us before leaving. Both in their 80’s, she is bent and wrinkly as a prune and he has become little more than skin and bones. He was a sailor in WWII, a naturalist who for years tromped the woods and was near-kin to all that flies and swims and runs and slithers. She was a gifted artist and a whiz with numbers, an accountant and Scrabble wiz. He regaled us with tales, stories of body-surfing in the Mississippi by the wake of Riverboats and hitching rides on the railroads and encountering bears out in the wild. He barely touched on the issues of the day, but it was obvious that the widespread acceptance of things like homosexuality and abortion are beyond distasteful to him. They are, in fact, a mystery, for how could the country have fallen so far during his lifetime? When he was a boy, you pumped your water and carried it in buckets. Your bathroom was a shed out back, or sometimes it was just out back. You cut wood and maybe shoveled coal if you wanted warmth in the winter. You grew a large part of your food and hunted for much of the rest of it. You worked a long and hard day and your word was your contract with the local merchants. Most of us take our conveniences for granted and sadly have taken the moral decline of America for granted as well. I wondered what or if the country would be when I (hopefully) make it into my 80’s?

OFFICIAL CONCERN

There were more flags flying in the Tampa Bay-Carolina NFL game Sunday than over the UN! Then came the Monday Night game; you would think “pass interference” was the New York Giant’s bread-and-butter play. It is always frustrating for fans when the momentum of the game is slowed or changed by a rash of penalties. But why are so many borderline penalties being called this year? The NFL never has moved at the breakneck pace of the NBA but I don’t think slowing the games down to a baseball pace is going to be popular and any game with excessive penalties gets SLOW.

How ‘bout them Cowboys, though? You had to love that Monday Night game despite the penalties. The subplots (Bill Parcells comes back to New York, Jeremy Shockey faces the guy he referred to as a “homo” during the off-season) added spice to a game usually hotly disputed under normal circumstances. Bill Parcells made a huge mistake at the end of the first half and it almost cost the ‘Boys the game. With only 14 seconds left on the clock and third down, he could have had Billy Cundiff try a 43 yard field goal. He had no timeouts left. Instead, they throw a five yard pass, the receiver does not get out of bounds and the clock would have run out if there had not been a holding penalty on the Cowboys. That penalty took the ball back 10 yards and Cundiff missed from 53. It would turn out to be his only miss in 8 tries as he tied the NFL record for field goals kicked in a game!

The Giants’ Jim Fassell, ahead by 3 with 11 seconds left at the end of the game, instructed Matt Bryant to dribble-drive the kickoff after the kicker had made an apparent game-winning field goal. This despite the fact that Bryant had kicked one out of bounds earlier in the game. The ball snuck out of bounds at about the one yard line, the subsequent penalty gave the Cowboys new life at the 40 yard line and Quincy Carter took just 7 seconds to deliver a 26 yard pass to Antonio Bryant who went out of bounds in range of Cundiff’s leg. Billy the kid delivered, the ‘Boys got another from him in overtime and the Giants lose a game they had in their grasp. Jim, don’t blame the kicker, you should have had him kick away!

THE STATESMAN

Indiana lost a good man Saturday. Other than an old-fashioned Democratic machine culling votes from the dead and the imaginary in the East Chicago area, the typical Indiana pol is a conservative liberal or a moderate conservative. One remarkable politician was the late governor, Frank O’Bannon. He was a Democrat that Republicans and Dems alike often called “Grandfatherly” or “Impossible not to like” or “Someone who does not put on airs.” A description of him from The Times newspaper out of Hammond: “He is smart without being brilliant, clever without being cunning, pragmatic without being ruthless.”

Frank O’Bannon, 73, died Saturday following a stroke he suffered the previous Monday morning while attending a conference in Chicago. When politicians throughout the state learned of his illness, they uniformly praised the man and mourned his passing. Can you imagine that happening in California? We Hoosiers, whatever that means, are going to miss having such a man in public office. Frank O’Bannon was a statesman and they don’t make many of them any longer.

BASEBALL MILESTONES

Bobby Bonds hit his 655th homerun Monday, putting him exactly 100 behind Hank Aaron and 5 behind his godfather, Willie Mays.

Rafael Palmeiro hit his 500th American League homer on the same evening.

The Cubs announced that they were retiring the uniform number (10) worn by Ron Santo, despite the fact that he has not been elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Are the voters prejudiced against diabetics? How can the best NL third baseman of his era be kept out of the Hall?

AMNESTY REMEMBERED

It was 29 years ago that President Ford announced a conditional amnesty for Vietnam-era draft evaders. I remember it well, for I was stationed at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana attending the Radio/TV/Print journalism school there when the draft-dodgers began to arrive. Yes, there was a section of the fort set aside to house the erstwhile amnestiacs. I was one of many military personnel that had been drafted and chosen to serve. Did we resent the Dodgers? Do cats hate being shot with aerosol cans of hair spray? (My brother and I tested this as kids; the answer is a resounding YES)! But I must admit from today’s vantage point that the amnesty process helped the country heal from the open wound that was Vietnam.

People today do not flee to Canada to avoid fighting against communism, they flee to experience communism in the form of nationalized medicine and increasingly censored news media. But more often, it is the Canadians that flee. Canada, the land of legal pot and political correctness, gains one US citizen for every five that leave Canada to come here. Therefore, the Canadians let pretty much anyone that wants to immigrate to their fine shores. No identification? Fine, Canada will provide some for you. Is it possible for terrorists to enter Canada and then slip across to the USA? Do police officers resent having their cruisers pelted with snowballs hurled by small boys? (My brother and I tried this one out, too, and the answer is also YES)!

ACLUN AMERICAN

The Alliance of Communists, Liberals and the Ungodly is now sponsoring ads in publications like Rolling Stone and on the airwaves in which celebrities like Richard Dreyfussbudget criticize the Bush Administration. The ads all begin with the line; “I am not an American…” Makes you wonder why Johnny Depp hasn’t signed up!

One example is the Dreyfuss television ad, in which he states “I am not an American who believes in selective due process.” Concerning detaining suspects in the wake of 9/11, Dreyfuss claims that the definition of crisis had been changed in order to allow for the denial of constitutional rights for certain individuals. Of course, many of these individuals took part in 9/11 or are suspected of plotting other vile actions. Also, there has not been another 9/11 in large part because the Bush administration has taken the responsibility of security seriously.

One theme that runs through the ads concerns the typical liberal whining about being criticized for being critical to the Bush administration. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. A Democrat by the name of Harry Truman used to say that, in case you didn’t know.

TWO MINUTE WARNING

Someone in the Chicago Bear’s organization thinks a play-action fake to a running back, followed by a throw to that same running back, is a good play. That doesn’t even fly in playground football! Here’s another one: Fake a run into the line, and then run the Quarterback on a draw into that same line. Maybe it fooled the Bear’s defense, sad to say, but it won’t work against the rest of the world.

Hey, New York Stock Exchange? You think Richard Grasso is worth $140 million? Who do you think he is, Alex Rodriguez?

Jamal Lewis makes Baltimore a tough team to play in the NFL this year, even with a rookie QB at the helm. After Jamal went all JimBrownBoJacksonWalterPayton on the Browns on Sunday, you best believe defensive coordinators are going to make him the main focus of their schemes against the Ravens.

Wes Clark is running for President as a Democrat! Oh boy, another Arkansas Liberal! We sure had great results with the last one, huh? This guy is a four-star general, but critical of the war in Iraq. Why does Jimmy Carter come to mind?

Martin Gramatica. Buccaneer fans may wander by aimlessly chanting this phrase. Pay no attention, they will recover.

The clock says 00:00

I nervously toe the rubber and look for the catcher’s signal. I am about to propel the first pitch of this column towards home. All the anticipation and excitement of another beginning are mixed with trepidation. Will the reader appreciate such a column?

The column is called “The Right-Hander” because it describes not only the means by which I hurl the ball but also my political leanings. I hope to make comments on both sports and current events through this medium and hopefully connect with readers in that way. If you do not love sports, a great deal of this column might leave you yawning. If you do not love America, it may often just plain burn your butt! Some columns may be primarily sports and some might be strictly political. We shall see how it goes, because some days I may not have my fastball and will have to get by with changing speeds and getting my curve over the plate.

Just to make things clear, I am a white, middle aged male who is a patriot and a Christian, a Republican and an Army veteran who doesn’t give a hoot about Political Correctness. There are few days in which I have not spent some time connecting with both ESPN and FOXNews. However, I am not particularly angry and/or bitter about the state of the world. I am constantly amazed by the apparent stupidity of some of the policies espoused by left-leaning Democrats and disgusted by much of what goes on in this country, not to mention in the world at large. But I am an optimist and I believe we can make changes for the better.

So, if Rush Limbaugh can comment on NFL football for ESPN and Dennis Miller can do a stint in the booth for Monday Night Football, I guess I can mix sports and political commentary, too. Hey, those guys are a lot better known, but I bet I can beat both of ‘em in a tennis match!

DRIVING ME CRAZY

Maybe Dr Timothy Leary found a way to insert large quantities of time-released LSD into the water table on the Left Coast. Maybe a constant occurrence of small ground tremors unbalances the brain. Is there no explanation at all for California? Here’s the latest: Illegal Alien Drivers Licenses!

Gray Davis is one duck with a bad limp, so he is willing to try anything to save his butt up to and including signing a bill that would allow illegal aliens (illegal!) to sign up for and obtain a drivers license in the State of California. Check out the KTXL news site.

One Democrat explained that there were up to 2 million illegal immigrants driving without proper licenses already and that someone who wants to obtain a fake drivers’ license can get one now on big-city street corners. Or, this quote from the KTXL news site:

“I want to have everybody behind the wheel to have been tested and I want them to be carrying insurance,” said Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles. “And I don’t want any more of this foolishness that this is about homeland security.

“What this is about is there are certain people you just don’t want to have on the road, to have any rights,” she told Republicans. “That is just wrong.”

Well, Jackie, it is not that we don’t want them behind the wheel. We don’t even want them at all. Because they are ILLEGAL! And the next DEMWIT* that accuses me of being a racist, I’ll hit him over the head with an Estrada! It’s not about race; it’s about law and wrong versus right.

*Demwit. (noun). A Democrat that is a kind of dim bulb, or dimwit. Hence, DEMWIT!

RAM ON!

You may not remember the rather obscure song from Paul McCartney’s “Ram” album, but it is rather appropriate for football season. “Give your heart to somebody, soon, right away!” For better or worse, this longtime Bear fan is also going to root very hard for the St. Louis Rams. I am a sucker for the whole Kurt Warner story and I am very fond of Marshall Faulk and Isaac Bruce. Plus, I have Warner and Faulk on two different fantasy teams, so they need to RAM ON! The first game against the NY Giants will tell us something. The ‘Jints’ have a terrific defense and so we will see how the new Ram offensive line performs. If the line holds up and Kurt and Marshall are their old selves, the Rams win at least 27-20 and are on their way to a division crown.

By the way, who in the heck made up the Redskins schedule? They could lose their next six games and still not be a bad team! Good thing they were able to suck it up and take out the Pennington-less Jets. Note to Herman Edwards: Vinny can’t run, but he can throw long, you better air it out more ‘cause 6 yard passes on 3rd and 7 ain’t gonna cut it!

BASEBALL KEEPS ME HANGIN’ ON

Okay, where are all these vacation replacement umpires going for their contact lenses, Astigmatics-R-Us? He shall remain mercifully unnamed ( his initials are Justin Klemm), but the fill-in ump who completely blew the call on the Cub’s Felipe Alou’s shot down the line last week had to be nearly blind. The ball hit right on the line so hard it kicked up obvious chalk, and yet Mr. Gone Tomorrow called it foul. With Chicago trailing 2-0 and the bases loaded, that would have made it 3-2 Cubs and potentially enabled them to sweep the Cardinals in a 5 game set.

Manny Ramirez of Boston, who should be geeked to the max, is jaking it right when his team needs him most? The guy should be nicknamed “The Perfect Crime” because he doesn’t have a clue!

Is ‘Bud’ Selig the worst commissioner in all of sports? Can you imagine Selig for President? Hmm, well some of you can imagine Carol Moseley Braun, so why not?

Speaking of Presidential candidates, does even Dick Gephardt know what Dick Gephardt stands for? I know that most of the candidates are without actual hope, but somehow labor unions keep endorsing DG when he doesn’t have a chance in Haight-Asbury of winning. I wonder if there is one candidate for the Left side of the political spectrum other than Joe Liebermann who probably actually tells people what he actually believes. Well, maybe Howard Dean does, but then he gets all Sybil on us and changes direction. John “F” Kerry, well, hey, didn’t he USED to be Irish and now he’s not? Begorrah!

TRIBUTE TO THE OLE LEFTHANDER

Well, there was a 15 year old once who actually pitched in a major league game for the Reds in 1944, the youngest major league player ever. He kicked around the minors for awhile and 8 years later made it to the bigs again. He spent most of his career in Cincinnati, ironically being traded before their World Series year of 1961 and then being traded back the very next year, to finally hang ‘em up after the 1966 season. But baseball, especially Cincinnati Reds baseball, was in his blood and he became a radio announcer for WLW 700, the flagship station for Red’s baseball on the radio. This is his last full year; in 2004 he will retire from baseball after 60 years in the game, almost 59 with the Reds in some capacity and 38 of them behind the microphone.

Nuxhall was a better than average pitcher and a decent hitter as pitchers go, who won more than he lost for teams that tended to lose more than they won for much of his career. At 6 feet 3 inches, he was relatively imposing in his prime but his broadcast style is warm and comfortable. His signature ending to the broadcast has been; “This is the ole lefthander rounding third and heading for home.” Reds fans are going to miss him. He announced with Al Michaels for a time, and Jim McIntyre before that, but for the last 29 years he has teamed with Marty Brennaman on the broadcasts. That is a longevity record for a broadcast team.

Alas, in the era of salary caps and free agency the rosters of major league sports teams are shuffled like a deck of cards. All the best to you, Joe Nuxhall! The Pete Roses and John Benchs have come and gone. You are truly Mr. Cincinnati Red!

2 MINUTE WARNING

Dennis Miller put it just right. Immigrants, come on in, we just want you to sign the guest book!

Would you believe one of the ESPN guys picked Denver for the Super Bowl and it wasn’t Tom Jackson?

Emmitt Smith in a Cardinals uniform. Kind of like buying a vintage Jaguar and then parking it in the back yard.

The clock says 00:00.

We have groups pushing for the removal of God in any form from our schools, from our government offices even from our Pledge of Allegiance. What is it about the mention of God that has them so worried? Are they afraid that Gods might will grow if all mention of His very name is not banned? Do you really want to live in an America where God is no more?

We also have another growing group of individuals who are striving to remove icons of America from our views. We have schools removing flags because they may offend some foreign students. Think about this, if you were going to school in say Canada, would you expect them to remove the symbol of their country to please you? I think not. We also are starting to see other areas. Just this last week in Fort Worth Texas a homeowners association passed a ordinance that would ban the hanging of the American Flag on homeowners homes except on certain days. The reason, it might offend some of the people living there. Why should we as Americans NOT show our pride in our country? After all if this country wasn’t as great as it is, why then do all these people flock here? But at the same time they want to do away with our Pride.

Where will it stop? Will you step up and let your voice be heard for both God and Country? We at American-United.US will be there doing all we can to insure that the values this country was founded on are not erased for the comfort of foreigners on our soil.

History as a whole seems to be full of repeating events, slightly altered and changed based on the time period and the part of the world, but more or less pretty similar. There are wars, some based on religion, some on freedom, some on power. There are people enslaving other people and exploring new lands. There are increases in technology, society and culture that take place in different places at different times. Looking back on what I have learned of the world, it seems incredible both how far we have come, and how little we have changed. There are the lessons we have learned, and the ones that have been too easily forgotten.

We thought we learned from the Civil Rights Movement. From Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and from Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat on the bus. The lessons were that white kids and black kids should both be able to go to the same schools, and that there should not be any separate drinking fountains. The ultimate lesson was that despite our differences, we are all people and should be treated equally. Where did those ideas go? Today we don’t have separate drinking fountains; we have separate public schools, which exclude kids based on whether or not they are gay. Racial discrimination still exists in the form of letting certain students into college over others based on the color of their skin. We remembered that discrimination is bad, as anyone will tell you, but we forgot the definition of the word, which is a showing of difference or favoritism in treatment. That still has a big place in this country when we really should have learned the first time.

If we look back on the way this country began we will find a group of religious men with a vision of freedom. They wrote the constitution saying that in the country there would be freedom of religion, and they based the other early laws on the Ten Commandments and other parts of the Bible. Now that part of our history has been conveniently forgotten in order to remove the statue of the Ten Commandments. Not only are the Ten Commandments a beautiful monument, but they illustrate an important and irreversible part of American history, the religion that has shaped our country. I think our founding fathers would be surprised by it’s removal, because this country was not founded by those weak-minded enough to consider a block of carved stone offensive to their own religion. Perhaps they would also be surprised that people have forgotten that, no matter what your religion, the Ten Commandments are part of United States history.

Something that has been continually proved both in the United States and overseas throughout the years is that an increase in gun ownership leads to a reduction in crime rates. The states in this country that have the highest violent crime rates all have the strictest regulations on gun ownership and concealed carry weapons permits. Outside of our borders, both Great Britain and Australia have seen crime rates skyrocket following the outlaw of firearms. All of the countries with the highest violent crime rate in the world have full gun registration. It has been shown that when guns are taken away, the people are at the mercy of a tyrannical government.

During the twentieth century people were exterminated soon after guns were taken away in the countries of Turkey, the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala and Uganda. This resulted in the extermination of 56 million innocent people who were made defenseless victims by gun control. Hopefully the United States will always remember those facts, and learn that gun control takes lives.

If there is one thing this country should have learned from it was the Holocaust. That war taught us lessons that were hard to learn. It taught us how devastating an attack on US soil was. It taught us the frightening destruction that can be caused by a single evil dictator. Above all, we learned what is worth fighting for. We forgot those lessons rather quickly.

World War Two wasn’t that long ago, there are many still alive who remember the war. They probably remember the vow of the United States to never again allow genocide and the extermination of any people. Thirty years after WWII ended, when the Kurds became the first group of people to be exterminated by their own government based on their ethnic group since Hitler’s reign, the US didn’t remember their vow. We forgot how fast a dictator could rise to power, and how many innocent people he could kill. We forgot that it was worth it to save those lives. It took thirty more years before we were willing to go to war for those people against Saddam Hussein, and even then there were plenty who were against it. I can only hope, as we continue to uncover more mass graves in Iraq, that this war will not be forgotten so easily. I also hope it will be remembered a just war that freed many people.

From the Revolutionary War we learned what freedom is worth. I would hope that people today would remember that and still be willing to fight for it.

This country was started based on freedom, and it’s laws based on religion of Christianity. We shouldn’t try to make that fact disappear and we should not destroy a beautiful monument that celebrates part of our history. From the Civil Rights Movement we learned to begin to break down the lines between the races. Today affirmative action should be abolished so that they can disappear once and for all. Worldwide history taught us the necessity of the Second Amendment. From WWII we learned what horrors people are capable of and what is really worth fighting for. From the war in Iraq we learned that same lesson again, after realizing that inaction saves no lives. World War Two and Iraq also taught us our power and how much good can be accomplished by those that try. The trick is not to let those lessons be forgotten, or history will continue to repeat itself.

There are hundreds of stories of employees being forced to train their successors when they are being laid off and yet our elected officials still do it. They say we Americans are not trained well enough to do the jobs needed; yet they expect us to train our replacements. It seems to me if we can train our replacements, we probably know what we are doing.

In order for this to stop we all have to make absolutely sure that our elected (or bought) officials know that we won’t stand for this. Slowly the American way of life is being eroded away. At some point it is going to be too late to take a stand against it.

Now I know there are a lot of people that can say this doesn’t affect me, but does it really affect them? You bet. These days so many of our kids are brought up on high tech from game boys to PC’s and the reality is that as time goes on more and more jobs are going to be a mix of High Tech and some other specialty. Your kids could be forced to go through what I personally have gone through, and that hundreds of thousands of Americans are going through right now.

So what can you do? It is simple, if everyone that reads this would take but 5 minutes of their time to contact their state government and let them know how you feel on the subject you can Make a Difference. Just simply send them and email or written letter saying “Stop supporting the outsourcing of American Jobs”. That is all it takes. If we all do that, you can bet things will change. But that sad truth is that by saying nothing we are almost condoning it being done.

As an American you have the right to speak up, and you have to use it or you will lose it. So take the time and let them know this isn’t right.