CROSSVILLE —
Oh yeah, says who? Who in their right mind thinks that today’s economy is rosier than four years ago when the national debt under Obama jumped from $10T to a staggering $17T? Who thinks that an unemployment rate that climbed from 5.8 percent four years ago to double-digits and has hung above 8 percent ever since Obama became president represents a healthy economic picture? Consumer goods from eggs to milk to gasoline have gone up while incomes have continuously dropped the last four years. Under Obama millions have more slipped into poverty while millions more went on food stamps. The economy is key to everything, to national defense and in fact to domestic tranquility.
As bad as the economic picture is, foreign policy today is even scarier. The war in Afghanistan has grown more dangerous ever since Obama announced a withdrawal date. You don’t write a timetable for war until you either win or lose it. The Middle East is on fire and Obama lit the fuse by naively cheer leading the “Arab Spring” without the slightest idea who would fill the vacuum. If only, he says, we got rid of those awful dictators democracy would automatically flower in the region. Sure Egypt’s Mubarak was brutal and had no respect for civil rights but with his leadership reasonable stability and peace was maintained in the region for over fifty years. Deposing of despotism must be a careful process lest you get something worst, i.e., the USSR and Iran. In America, it took 13 years, the “Decade of Controversy” to go from the Declaration of Independence, to convince the folks that self governance was a good idea to electing our first president. Now Mohamed Morsi of the Muslin Brotherhood rules Egypt and on his first day declared Jihad against Israel and the United States. And guess what. Obama can’t decide whether Egypt is our ally or enemy.
Obama said the other day in another of his “divide and conquer” speeches, “We must quit these wars so we can cut defense spending and apply that to the deficit and building a strong middle-class.” He refuses to lead on abolishing that silly “Sequestration” law congress passed because it is too lazy to pass a budget as required by law. While brush-wars spread the globe, this law automatically cuts our military preparedness to a new low, which Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said would be a disaster. No Mr. President, your idea would be a prescription for another 9/11.
Actually, all the talk about comparing today with four years ago is not completely accurate. We would have to go back eleven years to a time when we enjoyed economic sanity and had the strongest military in the world. The world looked up the America as the beacon of liberty. Today, the world perceives an ineffective Obama and is exploiting our weakness. Our friends trust us less and our enemies fear us less than four years ago. On C-SPAN this Sunday, former comptroller David Walker and Ross Perot discussed this very subject. Walker stated we very much need to bring back those times eleven years ago; that we desperately need policy reform, tax reform, Immigration reform, campaign reform, regulation reform and a host of others, but stressed that none of this would happen until the first three words of the Constitution, “We the People,” came alive. Perot says that on our current course of gutting the military, he worries that we are approaching a time when another developing country could overtake a weak America and become our ruler.
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Stumptalk is published weekly in the Crossville Chronicle. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the Chronicle publisher, editor or staff. To contact Stumptalk, email coordinator Phil Billington at stumptalk@charter.net.
Opinion
STUMPTALK: We’re all better off now
- Opinion
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LION AND THE LAMB: Ten years in captivity
Traditionally male violence against women has been delivered by fist or gun. On May 6, however, another delivery system was brought to light: chains and rope.
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WE THE PEOPLE: Crashing those Pearly Gates
Too often when one of our “public servants” dies, even if he is a blot on the human race, he is elevated to sainthood before they can get a tag on his toe. Then the press eulogizes him right into heaven before St. Peter can check his credentials. Even those who are a bit skeptical of this revision of history tend to adopt a “forgive and forget” attitude. Margaret Thatcher’s recent death seems to indicate that the British are less forgiving and have a better memory.
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TIDBITS: Practical advice for new grads
Another graduation season is upon us, and soon a new crop of young adults will head out into the world, full of hopes and dreams for the future.
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STUMPTALK: The right to bear arms
The anti-gun activists are wacky as a June bug for their solutions to eliminate gun-violence. They have it backwards. Instead of going after those that perpetrate these despicable acts, they are mounting attacks on law-abiding citizens, restriction of access to firearms, limiting magazine size and universal background checks.
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Small Town Girl: Britain's missing royalty
Last week, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, after a 33-year-reign, abdicated in favor of her son, the now-King Willem-Alexander. He is now the youngest monarch in Europe and is the first Dutch king in more than 120 years. One has to wonder how Prince Charles of England felt while attending the coronation ceremonies. After all, he has been waiting to inherit the English throne from his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, for over 60 years.
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We the People: Minimum wage is not enough to live on
For folks too young or too unaware what has happened to our economy the past 30 years, here is an answer. Ronald Reagan, G.H.W. Bush and the Republican Party are responsible for what we know as "Reaganomics," an economy that continues today resulting in few "labor unions” and the resulting low wages and lack of worker benefits.
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Lion and the Lamb: In the eye of the beholder
The May 5 issue of People magazine appeared with an astonishing cover. It proclaimed in big letters "World's Most Beautiful Woman!" and featured 40-year-old actress Gwyneth Paltrow. The issue also included the facial pictures of over a hundred other American beauties from age 15 to 70.
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Tidbits: The value of a community newspaper
I'll be the first to agree the life of a reporter isn't glamorous, especially when you work at a small town newspaper.
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Stumptalk: Blowback — for every action...
Blowback (1) — the escape to the rear of a gun of gases formed by the discharge of a projectile (Funk & Wagnalls, 1963). In 1967 I knew a Marine sergeant at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, who had lost his arm in Vietnam when a 105 mm Howitzer “blew back” on him.
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GARY'S WORLD: Sexual preferences are not breaking news
Sometimes when I think about how much the world and society and the media have changed over the past 20 years, it makes me cringe.
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