The Star Spangled Banner

I saw a video about The Star Spangled Banner that should bring tears to the eyes of any patriotic American who has been disillusioned by what seems to be the undermining and manipulation of the hope, faith, and dreams of ordinary Americans, especially those who fought in the military. This video is simple, gut wrenching, and straight forward. It looks at the plight of early Americans as they fought a vast British empire in 1812, refusing to bow to its demands of surrender under what seemed to be impossible odds. This is the stuff of which universal legends and heroes are made. Of course, the fight did not end with the War of 1812. The British royalty and banksters continued to have their way with us, drawing America into war after war after war using covert means to do so as they slowly usurped our institutions as we slept. Their empire has not yet set as many would have you believe. They and Europe helped create the slave trade around the world on which plantation crops were built. This empire, fortified by importation of human diseases, helped decimate and emasculate an entire population of native peoples in the Americas. No one denies any of this. However, America has always paid lip service to the idea that all men should have a shot at the brass ring. The definition of “men” has evolved over the years to include groups other than white male property owners. The fact that this can even happen provides credence and succor to the idea that there is something very special about the idea of America. It provides hope for the future. It is the reason so many immigrants, legal or otherwise, want to swarm over our borders to enjoy the opportunities they believe abound here. Opportunities do abound here, but they are being steadily undermined by a rapacious government/banking/corporation consortium that devalues our money while appropriating as much of it as possible from us by means of all kinds of taxes and hidden fees. 

I guess America is best summed up as an ideal of what can take root in fertile soil, provided it gets stirred up from time to time. In a democratic society, it is the responsibility of the voters to do their job. At a minimum, this requires taking the time to vote. There is no excuse for not doing this, because if you don’t like either major candidate you can vote for somebody else as a protest vote. Who knows, maybe such a vote can get somebody else elected for a change. Now wouldn’t that stir up the soil!

In the meantime, here is a link to the video:

Over-priced jet plane

Everybody talks about entitlement costs being out of control and I couldn’t agree more. Let’s take military defense contracts as an example. What? Military contracts are entitlements? You bet they are. Affirmative action is rampant here too, but it has nothing to do with race or sex. It has everything to do with lobbyists and revolving door consultants who leave Congress and go to work for these companies to bring home the bacon.

Imagine for a moment, one stinking airplane that is going to cost 0ne trillion dollars to develop and have about 200-300 of them made. One trillion dollars! Why, because of the usual way these companies do business. Bid low (probably with inside information) then make it up and them some with delays, cost overruns, you name it. The solution to this particular problem is incredibly simple. Don’t massage it, don’t tweak it, no pouring new wine into old bottles, JUST KILL IT, plain and simple!

The United States government is out of control, no doubt about it and we need to gut the thing. If someone can’t explain to me in plain english in five minutes or less what they are doing on the government payroll, then, they should be terminated and their job eliminated, permanently! In this economy that sounds pretty cruel, I know. So the government should help them out in this transition period by finding them a real job, helping them dump their over-priced house and fancy car, etc and moving into something more affordable, like what most other people have to do.

Big Oil

I read about how we need to become energy “independent” by allowing big oil to do whatever they want when it comes to oil shale, fracking or whatever else they can dream up to make a buck at the expense of the environment.  Well, whenever they do open up a new oil field, is it used to fill up American gas pumps or is it simply sold to the highest bidder? You tell me, folks.

It seems like speculators are the mostly likely culprits. This is Wall Street at its finest. Driving up the price for everybody else and pocketing the difference between what they bought it for and the profit they made, all without ever doing anything more than pushing a few computer buttons. This should be illegal, plain and simple. So why isn’t it?

The present day situation is really perverse. Americans are using so little gasoline these days that oil companies now export it to other countries! Whatever happened to supply and demand? It went out the door with the oil/government merger and subsequent monopoly.

Jobs

We all know how we got here. Our chief export has been jobs and our chief import has been immigrants competing for whatever jobs are left over. Our educational system in not in sync with reality, people hire outside writers to complete term papers or write books for them, they pad their resumes and lie about job qualifications, hardly anyone pays taxes anymore, people get money they didn’t earn either from the government, by milking Wall Street, through government sanctioned virtual monopolies, and by being on each others corporate boards so they can vote each other obscene pay raises and other benefits. The government just prints out more money to take up the slack. Sooner or later, this house of cards is going to collapse. In fact, it’s already happening. So what to do?

First of all, we need to get back to the basics. A day’s pay for a day worked. If you want to take the day off, don’t expect to get paid for it. No vacation days, no disability, no nothing. You need to save up your money if you need to take a day off. Take too many days off without due cause, don’t expect to keep your job. Very very simple. If you get bad reviews at work, expect to receive a pay decrease. This may be temporary or permanent, depending upon the offense. If you show up late, expect to be docked for the time you were late. See how easy this is?  Should workers have rights? Absolutely!  If they believe they have been treated unfairly or dismissed without due cause, the government should intervene, but only in an impartial manner–no agenda. Should bad managers be fired? You bet.

So far, this doesn’t sound like a good formula for putting people back to work does it? Fair enough. Let’s take another direction: Most of what I have posted in this blog will create jobs in one form or another. Green energy is jobs, fixing our decaying infrastructure is jobs, resurrecting  the rail system and mass transit is jobs, nurturing small businesses is jobs. However, merging companies into giant monoliths that are too big too fail is not good for jobs, nor is it good for the consumer or the country.

USA and bankruptcy

Seeing a man land on the moon was nothing short of incredible. Trouble is, what do you do for an encore? You have sequel after sequel after sequel…cha ching, cha ching, cha ching.  Last time I checked, the law of diminishing returns has yet to be repealed.

Then we have Nixon who sells us out to the Chinese along with just about every other President after him. Buy one President and get another one absolutely free! Call now, operators are standing by.  But wait! Order now and we’ll throw in a few Congressmen, absolutely free! So we have all kinds of people out of work and they wonder why nobody is buying all this Chinese crap laced with whatever industrial waste they are trying to dispose of at any given moment.

The military industrial complex? Going after that is like beating a blind man with his cane, so I won’t even bother.  You want change? Then change it! Vote them all out and continue to vote them out until they finally get the picture! Meanwhile, work on impeaching some of the folks on The Supreme Court. New wine into new bottles, folks.

What to do?

I’ve been around for 63 years now and I’m getting pretty used to seeing the same old movies played over and over and over. So here we go again, getting ready to elect a President well over a year before it will actually happen. I’m already sick of it and it’s just getting started. All of the candidates are millionaires, of course, so they relate really well to the common person.  I have to be careful not to go out on any number of tangents here so what I am going to do is simply draw up a little list for starters about what I would do if I were President.  I understand the President is not a dictator, but this is more about ideas, not just who’s in charge. Maybe you should make up a list yourself. These will be linked to other pages and filled out over time. Just realize this is a work in progress.

Best Regards,

Frank Abernathy

——————————————–

• Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

• Jobs (see infrastructure, energy, water and waste management, prisons, and energy)

• Healthcare

• Infrastructure

• Energy

• Water management

• Waste management

• Prisons

• Illegal immigration

• Illegal drugs