Tuesday, February 11, 2014

What Has Happened To America?

These days, when I listen to the news, I find myself wondering where we are headed as a nation and a people.

As of January the government says there are 10.2 million people unemployed in this country today. That number doesn't make much sense because it doesn't take into account people that have simply given up and are no longer looking for work, which makes the unemployment numbers look lower than they really are. In reality, the number of people not working is probably closer to 20 million. 

OK - 20 million not working out of 300 million people in the country? That's about 15% of Americans who are old enough and physically capable of working who aren't. About half of those are now receiving welfare and the others are receiving unemployment benefits - both from the government. And that's in addition to those who already receive their income from government entitlements.

For the last five years, since his campaign began in 2008, President Obama has been talking about creating jobs and putting Americans back to work. His stimulus plan was supposed to put people back to work building roads and bridges in our infrastructure. (How many years is he going to say he wants to build roads and bridges before he actually does anything about it?) These were "shovel ready jobs" which would employ hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans. The only problem was, as President Obama said later, those "shovel ready jobs weren't quite shovel ready." Unemployment grew.

Of course, he spent the first four years blaming all of the unemployment on George W. Bush. In all my 56 years I've never seen a U.S. President pass the buck like Barack Obama.

During his 2012 campaign President Obama continuously talked about creating new jobs in American and putting Americans back to work. Democrats in general ran on the same idea. Obama, and many of his fellow Democrats, were re-elected, at least partially, on that promise.

Last week the Congressional Budget Office published a report that said the "Affordable Care Act" will cause the loss of at least 2.3 million full-time jobs in this country by the year 2020. Immediately, the Obama administration began their campaign to head off the damage; they began saying this was a good thing. "Working less hours will give people more time to spend with their families," one Democrat said.

"It will give people the opportunity to pursue other things," said another.

Have Americans become so blatantly stupid that they are buying these lines? Will they really allow the Obama administration and the Democrats to tell them that more unemployment and having work hours cut to part-time is a good thing for the country?

It's convenient how they leave out the part about these less-employed Americans not being able to pay their bills because their hours have been cut back. But many liberal/Democrat voters clap their hands and nod their heads and say "Obamacare is wonderful!"

I'm afraid for our country and yes - I want my country back.

I don't care if the President is black, white, Hispanic, Asian or Native American... nor female for that matter... I want him/her to love this nation and what she stands for. I don't want apologies for America. I don't want excuses. I don't want socialism, Marxism or any other liberal, big government, large entitlement programs. I don't want a President who tells Congress "You do what I want or I'll make you irrelevant with my pen." I don't want a President who wants more gun control in our lives. And I don't want a President who will grant amnesty to, and still do nothing about illegal immigrants coming into the country.

Sadly, there are millions of Americans who will vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 if she runs. I personally believe she will be worse that President Obama and that her failure as Secretary of State (Benghazi being one of those failures) is a huge indication she should never be President.

I guess the biggest problem is that the Republicans, conservatives and independents haven't, as of yet, offered much of an alternative. Whoever they select needs to be aggressive in his/her campaign and not be afraid to attack, like the last two Republican candidates. If anyone believes Hillary won't attack to get what she wants they are sorely mistaken.


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