Posted on 10/24/2014 2:32:41 PM PDT by Kaslin
When this writer was 3 years old, the Empire of Japan devastated Battleship Row of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Before I was 7, Gen. MacArthur was in an office in Tokyo overlooking the Imperial Palace, dictating to a shattered Japan.
In 1956, President Eisenhower, impressed by the autobahn he had seen in Hitler's Reich, ordered a U.S. Interstate Highway System constructed, tying America together, one of the great public works projects in all history.
Within a decade, the system was on its way to completion.
In 1961, John F. Kennedy said the United States, beaten into space by Nikita Khrushchev's Soviet Union, would put a man on the moon and return him to earth within the decade.
In July 1969, President Nixon, on the deck of the carrier Hornet, welcomed home Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins of Apollo 11.
What ever became of that America? What ever became of that can-do nation? What has happened to us?
This October saw the vaunted Center for Disease Control and Prevention fumbling over basic questions on how to protect Americans from an Ebola epidemic in three small countries of West Africa.
In September, an intruder with a knife climbed the White House fence, trotted across the North lawn, walked through the unlocked front door of the president's house, barreled over a female officer, and ran around the East Room before being tackled by a Secret Service agent going off duty. The president had just departed.
Days earlier, an armed security guard in Atlanta with a violent criminal past was allowed by Secret Service to ride an elevator with Barack Obama.
Last summer came reports that 60,000 children and young people from Central America had walked across the border into the United States, overwhelming our Border Patrol.
Last spring, we learned that sick and suffering vets were deliberately made to wait months for appointments to see VA doctors, and dozens may have died during the wait.
Earlier, the rollout of Obamacare, years in preparation, became a national joke and a metaphor for government incompetence.
Under President Bush came Katrina, where 30,000 residents of New Orleans were stranded for days behind a pool of stagnant water after a hurricane. The city and state couldn't handle it.
Yet, during five days in 1940, 350,000 British troops, besieged at Dunkirk, were rescued from across the Channel by their countrymen in boats and yachts under the guns of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe.
Such events have contributed to a collapse of confidence among Americans in the competency of their leaders and their government.
Large majorities now believe America is heading downhill, that the future will not be as good as the past, that we are going in the wrong direction. Malaise pervades the republic.
And there are larger reasons for these sentiments.
Our recent wars, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, all seem to have left them and us worse off. In fighting our new war in Iraq and Syria we have neither a credible strategy nor sufficient troops to prevail against the Islamic State.
Already, Americans are asking: Why is this our war?
Since the mid-1970s, the real wages of working Americans have stagnated as we have run uninterrupted trade deficits totaling more than $10 trillion. Under Obama the national debt has surpassed the Gross Domestic Product.
Our manufacturing base has been hollowed out with Detroit as Exhibit A. We outsource our future by borrowing from China to buy from China.
We borrow from Japan and Europe to defend Japan and Europe, though World War II has been over for 70 years.
FedEx tracks with precision millions of packages a day. But the U.S. government cannot locate and send back 12 million illegal aliens.
Thirty years after a Reagan amnesty that carried a commitment to secure our borders, Obama is preparing an executive amnesty for untold millions of illegals, as soon as the election is over. And still the borders are not secure.
If government is conceded a role in anything, it is in building roads, bridges, highways and airports, and in running public schools.
Yet our infrastructure is crumbling, U.S. children fall lower and lower in international competition, and the racial divide in academic performances has never closed, despite an investment of trillions in education over half a century. Even Joe Biden calls LaGuardia a "Third World" airport.
Many private institutions are succeeding splendidly. But our public institutions, save the military, seem to be broadly failing.
Congress is gridlocked. The president is seen as a dithering incompetent. The Supreme Court is polarized irreparably.
Our political, racial and cultural clashes, traceable to conflicts created by the revolutions of the 1960s, are daily magnified and exacerbated by cable TV, the Internet and social media.
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," wrote the poet Yeats.
Clare Luce put is another way. In this world, she said, there are two kinds of people -- optimists and pessimists. "The pessimists are better informed."
The Interstate Highway system was an idea first birthed in the mind in Eisenhower when he, as a young officer, was on a supply convoy coast to coast.
Back in a minute with references.
“
In the summer of 1919, a young Lieutenant Colonel named Dwight D. Eisenhower participated in the first Army transcontinental motor convoy. The expedition consisted of eighty-one motorized Army vehicles that crossed the United States from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, a venture covering a distance of 3,251 miles in 62 days. The expedition was manned by 24 officers and 258 enlisted men. The convoy was to test the mobility of the military during wartime conditions. As an observer for the War Department, Lt. Col. Eisenhower learned first-hand of the difficulties faced in travelling great distances on roads that were impassable, and that resulted in frequent breakdowns of the military vehicles. These early experiences influenced his later decisions concerning the building of the interstate highway system during his presidential administration.”
http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/1919_convoy.html
Other major factors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Planning
“The United States government’s efforts at constructing a national network of highways began on an ad hoc basis with the passage of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, which provided for $75 million over a five-year period for matching funds to the states for the construction and improvement of highways.[5] The nation’s revenue needs associated with World War I prevented any significant implementation of this policy, which expired in 1921.
As the landmark 1916 law expired, new legislation was passedthe Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921 (Phipps Act). This new road construction initiative once again provided for federal matching funds for road construction and improvement, $75 million allocated annually.[5] Moreover, this new legislation for the first time sought to target these funds to the construction of a national road grid of interconnected “primary highways” setting up cooperation among the various state highway planning boards.[5]
The Bureau of Public Roads asked the Army to provide a list of roads it considered necessary for national defense.[6] In 1922 General John J. Pershing, former head of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during the war, complied by submitting a detailed network of 200,000 miles of interconnected primary highwaysthe so-called Pershing Map.[5]
“The Interstate Highway system was an idea first birthed in the mind in Eisenhower when he, as a young officer, was on a supply convoy coast to coast.
Back in a minute with references.”
No need for references.
And what I said contradicted what? ;-)
I am one of these in-testates.
Hence “the defense highway system”
Yes. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Bet it can locate them to provide food stamps, unemployment compensation, disability pay, and a myriad of other freebies.
You make a great point!
Maybe they could get a contract with FEDEX to make the returns?
An ever expanding dependency class that votes for more of the same and politicians who give it to them for more power.
So now that consumes everything and we are in decline.
Anyone who wants to can stroll across the porous US/Mexican border---the global gathering place for undesirables.
THIS WE KNOW---At the recent Congressional hearing WRT terrorists jumping the Mexican border into the US, Cong Jason Chaffetz questioned Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson whether he is aware of any apprehensions of suspected or known terrorists.
Johnson dodged the question.
Chaffetz later told Megyn Kelly: There were actually four individuals trying to cross through the Texas border Sept 10, who were apprehended at two different stations, that do have ties to known terrorist organizations in the Middle East.
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JEH JOHNSON SIGNS OFF ON Obama admin's law
to let in immigrants with 'limited' terror contact
The Daily Caller | 2/5/14 / FR Posted by Nachum
The Obama administration has issued new exemptions to a law that bars certain asylum-seekers and refugees who provided limited material support to terrorists who are believed to pose no threat from the U.S.
The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department published the new exemptions Wednesday in the Federal Register to narrow a ban in the Immigration and Nationality Act excluding refugees and asylum seekers who had provided limited material support, no matter how minor, to terrorists.
These exemptions cover five kinds of limited material support that have adversely and unfairly affected refugees and asylum seekers with no tangible connection to terrorism: material support that was insignificant in amount or provided incidentally in the course of everyday social, commercial, family or humanitarian interactions, or under significant pressure, a DHS official explained to The Daily Caller.
Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry signed the exemptions. DHS contends that the law change is commonsense and that immigration procedures will remain the same in other respects. (Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
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TALKING POINTS---Back in October 2011 one of the most astute lawmen in Washington ---- Congressman Louis Gohmert (Repub-TX), a former judge -----questioned then-DHS Secy Janet Napolitano about Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with a high level security clearance who allegedly accessed, illegally from his home computer, a Texas State and Local Intelligence Community database.....(Elibiary is now out--ousted for shady activities).
Napolitano managed to unglue her lips from Obama's behind---and told Cong Gohmert she knew nothing about it, and that she would "personally" do the investigation. (waiting for hysterical laughter to die down)
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THIS WE KNOW---Angst over Obama's post-election plans on immigration is growing amid revelations that the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service (USCIS) has issued a procurement request for as many as 34 million work permits and green cards.
Obama appointee to USCIS (a DHS agency)---Leon Rodrigues---- is rubber-stamping undesirables from 144 countries into the US....including those from contagion-ridden Central America and Ebola-stricken countries ....AND Third World agents advocating the overthrow of the US govt.
During FY 2013, the DHS website showed US Border Patrol agents apprehended 112 immigrants from Guinea, 231 from Liberia and 145 immigrants from Sierra Leone,----three countries currently experiencing the most cases of Ebola.
SIGNIFICANTLY USCIS Rodrigues also oversees EB-5 visas. Under Rodrigues' purview---EB-5's are said to involve major threats to US national security:
IS USCIS MARKETING US CITIZENSHIP TO:
(a) MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS-(b) ISIS TERRORISTS--- BR>(c) CONTAGIOUS ALIENS---(d) PAID AGENTS OF FOREIGN GOVTS?--
In an earlier statement, Sen Charles Grassley (REPUB--IOWA) said ICE identified key vulnerabilities in EB-5 visas
1) Export of sensitive technology/economic espionage.
2) Use by foreign government agents/espionage.
3) Use by terrorists.
4) Investment fraud by regional center.
5) Investment fraud by investors.
6) Fraud conspiracies by investors and regional center.
7) Illicit finance/money laundering.
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Rodriguez's confirmation hearings revealed he was a board member of Casa Maryland---a latino-centric advocacy group---pushing for unlimited immigration, and has connections to nationwide immigrant groups.
<><> KEEP IN MIND---Healthcare.gov is also a voter registration site.
<><> We also know "Obamacare" is a huge voter fraud machine---registering unsuspecting enrollees who get plugged into Democrat voter rolls just by enrolling.
<><>NEWS STORY--Local couple received pre-marked voter registration card from "Covered California" (Cali O/Care); an envelope from the state's Obamacare website contained a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with an "x" in the box next to Democratic Party.
<><> Another Obamacare web site reported it "accidentally" registered 4000 latinos.
<><> Colorado Republican State Senator Ted Harvey told the Washington Times, "theyre getting seven absentee ballots to a household. Children who registered at 18, now 30 years old and living somewhere else, but their voting status is now active, the clerk and recorders are required to send them ballots.....If Mom and Dad wanted to commit felonies, they could vote them.
<><> In another potential nightmare, "ballot harvesting ranges from perfectly legal campaigning to pressure tactics to undue influence to intimidation to forgery of ballots and everything in between.
<><>James OKeefe of Project Veritas videoed Greenpeaces Christen Topping explains where to glean discarded ballots. A lower class building at Sixth and Belmar Circle in ghetto Aurora is promising, Topping says. North Aurora is a lot of people who I hate to, like, put in clichés but people dont care. Meredith Hicks is a director for Work for Progress, a nonprofit laboring to re-elect Senator Mark Udall, D-Colo. Hicks urges OKeefe to harness these abandoned ballots. Thats not even, like, lying and stealing, she says. If someone throws out a ballot, like, if you want to fill it out, you should do it.(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Even before WWII, in fact. The Big Roads by Earl Swift helps explain it.
I remember reading somewhere that the autobahnen were conceived by the Weimar Republic and furthered by Hitler when he became Fuehrer. The Avus in southwest Berlin was built in 1921 per Wiki.
ff
“Is it just me, or does he look like he just smoked a Tommy Chong-sized doobie?”
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That picture makes me want to knock on his forehead and ask if anyone is at home in there.
I don’t think we need a competent emperor. We need someone who understands the concept of a constitutional republic.
“Clare Luce put is another way. In this world, she said, there are two kinds of people — optimists and pessimists. “The pessimists are better informed.””
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I like that quote. That’s my take on the world. Expect (and prepare for) the worst, but hope for the best. It could be my eastern European background (I’ve got Czech, Swedish and German blood).
When my husband and I were first married, we stopped at a Bohemian restaurant in Nebraska (Being from Chicago, I was surprised to find there’s a lot of Czech food and culture out there!).
On the wall, there was a plaque: “Eat well today! Tomorrow, you might be dead.” Or something like that. LOL.
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