Sixpence None the Richer – Breathe Your Name
Someone please help this man…
This photo just cracked me up….
Where is our Apollo program for energy independence?
In the early 1960’s America was in crises.
The Soviets was beating us in the space race having put up Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, and the government worried they would win the so-called space race.
President John Kennedy proposed a massive undertaking so that the US could put be first to put a man on the Moon, which was seen as a national security issue.
In an address to Congress he said:
First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations–explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon–if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.
And in a speech at Rice Stadium in 1962 he said:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
The goal of being first to the Moon led to a massive national project involving thousands of people and billions of dollars and on July 20th 1969, Neil Armstrong officially made the US the winner of the Space Race.
The Apollo project wasn’t the first national project to develop something new in the interests of national security.
During World War II, the federal government hired thousands of people and spent billions of dollars and came up with the Atom bomb within 3 years. While the use of the bomb is debatable, the point is a massive effort led by the government help address an immediate problem.
Starting in the 1950’s, massive federal spending created the Interstate Highway System that was not only for economic development but also seen as having national security implications.
Why can’t we do the same for the dependence on foreign oil?
I’m not talking about welfare for oil companies or more drilling, but a massive research and development program to come up with a host of alternative energy systems for transportation, home, and business use.
The US uses 26% of the world’s oil production and it is much higher than it was during the gas crises of the 1970’s.
It has to stop and it can be stopped if we want to protect our country from our enemies.
4th of July Diminished
The 4th of July use to be one of my favorite holidays when I was younger. Back in Findlay, the holiday was a community event. Some years there would be kid games and BBQ at Riverside Park. Along with the cascade of flags and a parade it was a fun time. Other years my Uncle Bob would have a shindig at his place which ended with shooting off the illegal fireworks he had bought during the year. Other years we would drive over to the Fort Findlay Mall parking lot and watch the firework show sponsored by the old Hill’s Department Store.
Much like the discount retailer, the show was low brow. It seemed they could only afford one fire tube so we would have to wait minutes for a shell to go up. Then more often than not it was dud – with the loud *BOOM* but no works. Later when I moved to Columbus, their Red White and Boom show blew me away and I knew I could never watch a show like the one at Hill’s again.
In recent years, my fondness for the 4th of July has diminished.
I think it has all to do with our principles and the lack of acting on those principles and in some cases doing the complete opposite.
My disillusionment started when learning that even though the founding fathers said at the start of the United States Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That it wasn’t until the mid 1960’s that a majority of people were finally treated as equal humans. But even today there are still segments of citizens, such as homosexual and atheists, who are still treated unequally.
While the United States Constitution had a Bill of Rights, those rights didn’t start being applied equally until after the Civil War and again there are segments of society who don’t enjoy all of those rights today.
Then there was the government supporting dictators in other countries as long as they were anti-communists. This was done with money or training death squads at US bases like the School of the Americas. In some cases the CIA would encourage and finance dissent groups who would overthrow an unfriendly leader like Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953.
Then there was using the FBI to infiltrate and disrupt so-called dissent groups in the US under the COINTELPRO project from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. As stated in the article linked to here:
In the Final Report of the Select Committee COINTELPRO was castigated in no uncertain terms:
“Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that…the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”
The Church Committee documented a history of FBI directors’ using the agency for purposes of political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when they were charged with rounding up “anarchists and revolutionaries” for deportation, and then building from 1936 through 1976.
And today we have a President who doesn’t think twice to using warrantless wiretaps and inhumane interrogation techniques along with a a compliant Congress to further gut our basic principles of democracy and freedoms.
To me, the 4th of July is mere symbolism and until we return to the principles that led to the Declaration of Independence we are just a large body of hypocrisy.
In an illustration of the difference is this quote I heard during the recent HBO series John Adams. Adams is arguing for the passage of the resolution that would lead to our Declaration of Independence. He says to the Congress:
I believe sirs the hour has come… My judgement approves this measure and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life I am now ready to stake upon it. While I now live, let me have a country. A free country.
Adams and the other men gathered in Philadelphia during that hot summer were ready to die for the principles spelled out in the Declaration. King George III had already proclaimed that if the colonists insisted on their course of action they would be tried for treason and hanged.
Today I don’t see men or women with that kind of principle. Too many politicians are worried about being re-elected and too many people take their rights for granted or don’t think giving them up will harm them in the long run. It seems there are few if any people willing to stand up for what our country is suppose to stand for.
Until I see a return to our founding principles, the 4th of July means nothing other than a day off of work.
Findlay write up in the Washington Post
This morning was an article titled In Flag City USA, False Obama Rumors Are Flying in the Washington Post newspaper.
It profiled Jim Peterman, from Findlay, a retired worker at Cooper Tire, a father of two, an Air Force veteran and a self-described patriot, who as the paper states is “a swing voter who entered this election leaning Democratic” and the difficulties the Obama campaign has to dispel the false rumors percolating about the candidate. The article talked about Findlay itself and how most citizens hate change. Unfortunately the paper failed to mention that Peterman is a minority in Hancock county. The county is so GOP that a Democrat hasn’t won the presidential election in the county since the time of Woodrow Wilson.
I guess they were trying to show that Findlay is a battle ground when the battle there is over and has been for sometime. The false rumors will never be refuted in the minds of most Findlay people because the local radio station airs all the GOP flacks who reinforced them and Obama is left to place adverts in the paper which doesn’t convince anyone with their mind made up.
“I’ll admit that I probably don’t follow all of the election news like maybe I should,” Peterman said. “I haven’t read his books or studied up more than a little bit. But it’s hard to ignore what you hear when everybody you know is saying it. These are good people, smart people, so can they really all be wrong?”
People rarely change their mind in Findlay – just check the The Courier news archive on the topic of sidewalks…. That argument has been going on for more than 20 years now.
The article is yet another way the mainstream media is sweet on the GOP and McCain. If they wanted to do a balanced piece they would have gone to a more balanced district or found real swing voters.