Merry Christmas and a Happy New America

  In December of 1914 in the first bitter winter of a long bitter war the solders of the German Empire and the soldiers of the British Empire defied the orders of their officers.  They abandoned their hastily dug entrenchments that would soon grow into an elaborate maze of trenches stretching from Switzerland to the English Channel to meet each other in no man’s land. They sang hymns and exchanged gifts in a spontaneous outpouring of the feelings of peace, fellowship, and forgiveness which were then the staples of a Christ centered Christmas season.

If you drench yourself in the torrent of Christmas movies that bombard us from Thanksgiving till December 25^th you see that the spirit of Christmas in emotional America isn’t about the Christ child who came into a lost world to die as a payment for sin and to rise again to bring new life in harmony with God.  It is instead about the sentimental ideal of love and the boy gets the girl or is it the girl gets the boy?  Who knows sometimes they throw in a curve that really builds the suspense.  There are movies about Santa Clause, his sons, his daughters; his elves and wingless angels all of whom help people learn the true meaning of Christmas which is never about Christ and always about family and friends and being nice people.

In commercial America Christmas is about Black Friday and discounts so deep they remind me of the street vendor in Mexico who follows you shouting “I’ll give you 110% off if you buy two!”  The Chia Pets come out along with snuggies, pet rocks, and every other doodad imaginable to buy for people who already have too much.

The mountains of presents which obscenely bury Christmas trees in so many American homes are ripped apart by sugar-high children. Children who get into a frenzy of getting so intense they never have time to appreciate what they get. All they want is to get something else.  The beautiful wrapping paper, the miles of ribbon, and the forests of bows are stuffed unceremoniously into big green garbage bags on their way to landfills. 

So this is Christmas, and what have we done?  Another year over, and a new one just begun.

In the still sweet morning of December 26 people start preparing for the next blast of holiday cheer, Happy New Year!!!

What will 2013 bring?

Whether we plunge over the so-called fiscal cliff or not it will bring us a New America.  An America cast in the image of our newly re-elected Community-Organizer-in-Chief.  This representative of the Saul Alinsky wing of the Progressive movement, this made man from the Chicago political Outfit has won a second term.  Whether it was through the voter fraud no one seems willing to mention or through the actual votes of those who bought into the Uncle Sugar myth and vote for Santa Clause, the man from Hawaii who says he’s from Chicago and who won’t tell us much of anything else, is poised to create the Age of Obama, or America in his own image.

In the New America more people qualify for disability than get jobs, more people get food stamps than start businesses, and more people forget that America was founded to provide individual liberty, personal freedom and economic opportunity and embrace America as a cradle-to-grave welfare state.  People forget that when you limit failure you also limit success.  They don’t understand that when you create a safety net so complete it becomes a hammock many people figure why work when you can play.

Incentive is stifled by entitlements, and innovation is strangled by regulation. 

In our New America:

·         Taxes will go up and up as spending goes up even faster. 

·         Regulations will pour out of the bureaucracy to fill in all the blanks in thousand page laws no one ever reads. 

·         Our President will continue to bow before despots and our foreign policy will continue to support radical Islam in the Mideast. 

·         No one will ever be held accountable for Fast and Furious, Benghazi, or any of the other scandals which will erupt from the pustule of corruption that is Inside the Beltway.

·         The burgeoning energy industry that has the potential to lift America out of its economic tailspin will be throttled as the coal industry, the fracking boom, and oil shale are all regulated to death.  

·         We will pour billions down the green energy rat hole building industries that cannot produce enough energy to exist without government support.

·         Obamacare will destroy the insurance industry and eventually a single payer system will consign the rest of us to standing in lines in converted gymnasiums for impersonal care while our leaders take limousines and private jets to the Mayo Clinic all on our dime.

·         Industry will continue to flow out as foreign made goods flow in as more imbalanced trade agreements are called free.

·         We will be monitored by drones, wire taps, and computers as Big Brother extends his grasp till freedom becomes just another name for nothing left to lose.

This may be the New America that awaits us in 2013.  Our families, friends, and neighbors have voted for it, and we all get to live in it: oh happy days are here again.  The second coming of FDR has put food stamps in every pot and a Volt in every garage. 

In our New America Christ has been purged from Christmas and sappy sentimentality has replaced the joy of being born again in a relationship with God our loving Father.  So as you prepare to celebrate the New Year be sure and thank any of the millions of Obamazombies who get their opinions from the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media, and who actually believe the economy is recovering and glory in America being knocked off its high horse for the New America we are all unwrapping under the Xmas Tree this year.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

 

 

Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven

Everybody wants an “A” but nobody wants to study.  Everybody wants to be rich but nobody wants to save.  Everybody wants to lose weight but nobody wants to exercise.  Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.  No matter how you say it, the desire for something without the willingness to do the hard things required to achieve it, will always lead to disappointment.  This is the cadence of the conundrum, the drumbeat of the do-nothing dreamer, the national anthem of the nihilist; the perennial I want but I will not work formula for failure. 

The signature phrase for the conservatives of this generation of Americans should be, “We all want a sound economy but we aren’t willing to endure the life-style changes it would take to get there.”

Case in point: the coming Fiscal Cliff, the looming disaster of sequestration that every talking head on every network blathers about endlessly, “It will happen” “It won’t happen.”  Pick a side and it will be argued back and forth hour after hour, “The President won’t let it happen, “The President wants it to happen.” Over and over we are barraged by the same few people who constitute the pundocracy of America debate what will happen.  There is only one thing they are all agreed upon.  If we go over this cliff, created by a vote of Congress and a signature by the President it will be terrible for our country.  Why stop there? It will be terrible for the entire world.

Just think, if we Americans raise our taxes and reign in our drunken sailor spending binge it will be a disaster for us and for everyone who draws breath on this planet. Not to worry we, the poor unwashed in fly-over country, don’t have to scratch our pumpkin heads and wonder why it would be a disaster if our country took the steps necessary to save our economy the network appointed chatter chiefs are quick to tell us. 

One side says raising taxes on anyone in a weak economy may push us over into a recession.  This of course comes from the people who evidently don’t buy their own bread, pump their own gas, or know any of the millions who are now permanently out of work, in other words personally prosperous people who believe the Great Recession actually ended.  The other side says raising taxes on anyone they don’t consider rich would be a disaster. 

Both sides agree that at least half of the spending cuts would be a disaster.  One side points at defense spending as a surrender of national security.  While the other side points at cuts in entitlements as throwing grandma off the cliff. 

The answers they propose are as predictable as a Hallmark Christmas movie.  The Progressive Democrats say raise the taxes on the evil rich and cut spending to the defense department.  The Progressive Republicans say raise revenues by closing loop holes and cut spending on entitlements.  The problem with this is that just like Representative Paul Ryan’s draconian budget it still never gets us to a balanced budget let alone paying down the principle on the National Debt.  Both sides favor plans that keep on borrowing even if it might be at lower levels than at present.  Maybe we will only borrow thirty six cents of every dollar instead of forty six.  Wow!  That should really make our arrival at the ash heap of History a few moments later.

And that is the heart of the problem.  Or as another old saying tells us nobody wants their own ox gored.  It is the “Not in my backyard syndrome” applied by everyone to something.  We all want cuts in spending but not in our spending.  We all agree that wasteful programs should die but every program has its supporters.  This is where reality takes a bite out of dreams.  Unless we balance our budget and reverse the slide into bankruptcy our days as a great power, let alone our days as the world’s only super power, are numbered, and everyone knows China is counting off the numbers.

Looking around in the cloistered world of self-appointed opinion writers I hate to have to be the one to tell my fellow Americans this but we have to do the work to get the “A,” save the money to get rich, do the exercises to lose the weight, and we most assuredly will have to die to go to heaven.

We, through our elected representatives, have spent like there was no tomorrow until tomorrow is mortgaged to pay for today without asking the question, “How are we going to pay for tomorrow?”  I guess we have always figured we could use the day after tomorrow for collateral.  That may work for a while or at least until our children and grandchildren have been sold into slavery to the highest bidder.

Unfortunately my generation, the Boomers who proudly offered Bill Clinton and George Bush the Younger as our contribution to the pantheon of American Presidents, has kicked the can down the road while paraphrasing Louis XV on the eve of the French Revolution, “After me the flood.”  Or as many fellow boomers have phrased it to me, “It won’t crash in my lifetime.”

Now the handwriting is on the wall, the torches and pitchforks are seen on the horizon, and it is becoming obvious though the end may not come on December 21, 2012 it isn’t too far off.  Anyone who isn’t comatose in the cultural soma of social media and the game can see you can’t continue to spend more than you bring in forever.  The interest on the National Debt is going to eat us alive. Our creditors won’t keep lending us more and more once they realize our only answer is to print our way out of debt.  Ask any scam artist trying to live by charging their Visa to the MasterCard when the shop keepers start cutting up the cards the happy days aren’t here anymore.

What we need to do is go over the fiscal cliff, and instead of using the ensuing economic contraction as an opportunity to re-launch the United States in a fundamentally new direction tighten our belts.  We have got to go through a period of austerity to return to reality. 

Endlessly printing money always leads to money that isn’t worth anything.  Even if our current leaders think they have figured out a soft landing for this lead balloon they haven’t, and when that bubble pops the economy stops. 

Our fiscal conservatives who want to return to a gold standard should tell everyone that doing that will cause a contraction in the value of money that will resemble a train going 100 miles an hour hitting a brick wall.  There just isn’t enough gold in the world to value every American dollar at one dollar.  A return to gold would give us an economy based on real money, and that would be a good thing.  However the proponents of this course need to be honest about the transition from funny money to real money: there will be a great deal of pain on the way back to reality.

There are plans to do something from the right. There is the plan to cut off Social Security at 55. Everyone younger having paid into the world’s greatest Ponzi scheme all their lives get another deal.  Even if it is a better deal they will still feel like they are getting ripped off because they are.  There is also the plan to cut all the wasteful spending out of Medicare but leave it all over at the Pentagon.   These plans won’t fly because they only have one wing.

The left has a plan too.  Raise taxes on the rich, and keep on spending.  This may eventually pass due to the President’s perceived strength and the Republican leadership’s Progressive inclinations and acceptance of defeat but it will only continue our progress towards national suicide.

The fact is we can either choose to cut the spending, raise revenues, and save the future or we can continue to stagger like drunken sailors spending our children’s as yet unearned money until our creditors pull in the leash.  I know calling for higher tax revenues is heresy to most conservatives, and I am not in favor of the government taking one more cent than necessary for Constitutional purposes.  Saving the country from ruin is the ultimate Constitutional purpose. 

Like any household that is buried in debt we need more money and less spending; the trick is getting both.  The slight-of-hand artists in Washington are great at striking Grand Bargains for taxes now and spending cuts that never materialize.  That never has worked and it certainly won’t work now.  We could do it without tax increases.  Without taxes the spending cuts would have to be much deeper and more painful, and we can’t get anyone to sign on for the pain of cuts with taxes.

Here’s the secret of raising revenues with taxes.  We can’t raise rates which merely increases tax avoidance.  A flat tax would bring in increased revenues by growing the economy and would indeed be fair.  In contrast raising rates in a progressive tax system is merely punitive and is a populist trick to buy the votes of those who earn less.

If we don’t endure the pain now, if we don’t endure the necessary radical fiscal surgery despite years on life support, decades of refusing to take our medicine will finally cause our economy, and with it our dreams of a brighter future, to die.  However, we won’t get to go to heaven.  Instead we will go into debtor’s prison as our beloved nation sinks beneath mountains of debt into the second or third rank.  We will watch as a tomorrow which could have been ours becomes someone else’s.

When our children and grandchildren ask us, “Where’s my inheritance?” we will have to say, “We spent it yesterday.”  When they ask, “Where’s our future?” we will have to say, “We spent that too.”

Instead of being pushed over the cliff, let’s dive over and then resist any attempt to restore the spending.  Let’s take the pain so our children can gain.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

 

Happy Days Are Here Again

Things are not as bad as they could be; however, they certainly aren’t as good as they should be.

Recession?  What Recession?  According to the government and their media arm in the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media the Great Recession ended in June of 2009.  Ask anyone in line at a Wal-Mart or any other store and you will probably get a different answer.

As one of my relatives, representative of most people who get their opinions from David Letterman and the social osmosis of personal prosperity, everything is turning around, everything is doing great, everything’s coming up roses, and happy days are here again! 

Or as Mr. Obama phrases it, “I think America is poised to take off.”  He also filled in the blanks about what he will need to make that happen, “So what I'm going to need, what the country needs, what the business community needs, in order to get to where we need to be, is an acknowledgment that folks like me can afford to pay a little bit higher rate.”  That’s right, more taxes today combined with a promise of cuts in the future.  How could that ever go wrong, like it did in 1986 or 1991. 

Come on Charlie Brown you can kick the football this year. 

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declared that the Obama administration is ready to take us over the fiscal cliff they themselves devised if Republicans aren’t willing to raise rates, close loop holes, generate revenue, or whatever else they want to call income redistribution.  Some like my relative who quotes ABCNBCCBS as a personal opinion say confidently this will be worked out. The President won’t allow it.  He even said during the debates it wouldn’t happen.  Yet, his chief financial officer is threatening it.  But not to worry, besides giving speeches and applying political pressure our glorious leader is seeking the best advice he can get from experts far and wide.

Always looking to the best and brightest President Obama is consulting with those completely objective news anchors at MSNBC or as it is also known, the Propaganda Ministry, about tax rates.  At least he’s seeking outside advice from a wide array of average American citizens like Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow.  We can be sure that they will bravely speak truth to power as in Tax the rich!  Make them pay their fair share!!  Power to the people!!! And From each according to their ability to each according to their need!!!!

As America morphs around us into something we cannot recognize it isn’t just the prospect of a shabby economic future from here to eternity as Mr. Obama continues to organize our beloved nation into his vision of a Progressive America.  On the personal liberty front we are being regimented into the only type of society that is compatible with totalitarianism: a nation of sheep.

According to an NSA whistleblower who resigned because he did not want to be party to extra-constitutional activity reports that nearly every American citizen is under virtual observation by their government.  This whistleblower is no anonymous deep throat hiding in a parking garage.  He is William Binney, known as one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in the history of the National Security Agency, and this year’s recipient of the Callaway award: an annual prize that recognizes those who champion constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.

When asked by a reporter if the Petraeus/Allen scandal proves the notion that there is no privacy in a surveillance state Mr. Binney answered, “Yes, that’s what I’ve been basically saying for quite some time, is that the FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country. And the FBI has access to it. All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded.”

Then there are Mr. Obama’s fellow travelers such as the Union bosses, the big city political bosses, and the many democrat support groups some of which aren’t even straw men for George Soros.

One democrat support group also known as the Communist Party USA has been publishing articles celebrating the victory of their preferred candidate.  Now they are organizing teleconferences and promoting rallies in support of Obama’s plans to raise taxes and demanding full funding for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid according to the party, “Save the nation! Tax corporations! Tax the rich!”  Sound familiar?

There is also the continuing assault on our rights, especially our second amendment rights.  Never mind that restrictions on gun ownership obviously only impact lawful gun owners, and never mind that restricting law abiding citizens from owning guns merely disarms the victims every time a wacko anywhere shoots a gun it is time to vilify all gun owners.

As reported on Fox, CNN contributor Roland Martin’s podcast posted to his website Monday, Jason Whitlock, the columnist who inspired Bob Costas’ commentary on gun control during halftime of Sunday’s Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game on NBC said that the NRA is the new KKK.  One of the biggest differences might be that while the NRA is primarily made up of Republicans and Independents the KKK was founded and in its glory days, the days of Jim Crow, Bull Connor, and segregation populated by Democrats.  

Yes, Mr. Obama won the election as Chicago politicians always win elections however we the people have not thrown in the towel.  We have not advocated our responsibility to preserve freedom and pass on this heritage of liberty to our posterity. 

No matter how many times our power-drunk professional politicians and their media megaphone tell us that happy days are here again patriots won’t be happy until constitutionally-limited government has been restored.

Our Progressive political leadership may drive us over a cliff.  They may try to herd us and pen us under their regulations and politically correct group-think.  They may harangue us with their trained media and insult us through their Hollywood culture machine, but they will never defeat the American spirit.  We the people will keep alive the light of freedom and hold high the hope of one nation under God.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens