Saturday, September 27, 2014

They're heeeere!

A little blonde girl standing in front of a television set showing static (we used to call it snow) says, “They’re heeeere.” I believe it is from the movie “Poltergeist” in the late 70’s or early 80’s.

Unfortunately, that line now fits in today’s current climate. This week a 54 year old woman was killed by a man that was fired. She was beheaded. This was not in the desert of the middle east. This was in Moore, Oklahoma! Apparently, by a man that converted to Islam while in prison.

In another story, two men in Texas were tortured and one died by a drug cartel at the border.

In yet another story there have been over 100 people with terrorist ties caught crossing the southern border illegally into the United States.

You have a bees nest hanging from a tree near where your family has their picnic table in the backyard and close to the swing set your children use every day. You grab a rake or a shovel and knock the bees nest down and tell your family, “stay away for a couple of hours until the bees go away.”

Where do the bees go? They go off nearby and start building a new nest. Maybe they go to your neighbors yard or maybe just a different tree in your own yard. Had you placed a large bucket of water on the ground for the bees to fall into, you’d have killed many of them. Or sprayed the ground then sprayed them with bee killer when they fell, you’d have killed them. No fear of them coming back.

Obama has decided to attack ISIS in the Middle East. He’s bombing them but refuses to put boots on the ground. Not only that but he announced what he was going to do before he did it. At least when you knock the bees nest down you didn’t send them a certified letter telling them to duck. Obama is hitting ISIS with a rake.

Terrorists are pouring across our border. Obama is going to announce unilateral amnesty after the election. Apparently, he thinks you and I are too stupid to realize he’s going to hang a big welcome sign across the southern border and still vote for those that agree with him. He’s not even hitting border security with a rake, but rather is raking the grounds so the illegal aliens won’t stub their toes as they cross the borders.

Three Americans have been beheaded in the past month. Two of them by ISIS in the Middle East and one American woman in Oklahoma. Terrorists have been caught at our border, but have all of them? The Obama administration has done nothing but lob some bombs with advanced notice to ISIS and nothing to protect our borders.

Since when did attacks on Americans here and abroad, become such a tough decision on how to handle it?

By contrast, here’s another way it was handled in the past. September 11, 2001 four planes were crashed. Two into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and one in a field in Pennsylvania due to heroes on board the plane. Nearly 3,000 people dead in less than an hour on our shores. On October 7, 2001 President Bush began bombing and sending troops to Afghanistan. It took him less than a month to decide and set in motion going after the terrorists that attacked us.

He didn’t worry about how it would play out in the polls. He didn’t wring his hands or sit in the corner sucking his thumb worrying about what to do next. He didn’t worry about whether or not his fellow Republicans would get re-elected. He moved the most massive military in the world to the other end of the world and started enacting the plan his military advisors had drawn up and he did it in less than a month!

What is so hard about making a decision when you’re being hit? It’s simple really. Either you sit back and wait for more or you fight back. If someone doesn’t like you, you get away from them. These terrorists don’t like us. So we should get away from them. But we’re opening our doors and saying “Come on in, make yourself at home.” They are killing our people, but we’re not making them pay for their actions any longer.

I know longer think we need an adult in the White House. I’m now convinced we need a man with a set of values, set of principles, and even some common sense in the White House. Obama clearly is not that man, and Joe Biden is not the man and even Hillary Clinton is not that man.

You’re welcome to comment.


Brett

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Where were you.....



We all have times in our lives where someone can ask, “do you remember where you were and what you were doing on…” this date or that date or when this happened or that happened?

Some of us have several of those dates and events. My own that stand out are a small handful. I was in the second grade when President Kennedy was assassinated and I remember someone coming down to our class from the office to make the announcement. We didn’t have intercom speakers making announcements in those days.

I remember being at home during the Detroit riots and looking to see if I could see the red glow from the flames. I remember being in the sixth grade when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, and then just a few short weeks later when Bobby Kennedy was killed in California. A year later, playing baseball out back and then coming in to watch Neil Armstrong step on the moon. I was working in a gas station that August day when President Nixon resigned.

Presidents fall from one thing or another and others stumble but get right back up, like when Reagan was shot. Civil rights was front and center for several years and they had violence, but it was localized each time. Those leaders too fell. Political wannabe leaders, and then amazing events.

September 11, 2001 was the first attack on this country in my lifetime. I was in a hotel in Virginia and came down for the Continental breakfast. Standing there drinking coffee when the first tower was hit and I turned to the guy next to me and said “how can a pilot be flying over New York and not see he was headed for huge building?” Then a few minutes later as we were watching another flew in to the other building and I said “we’re under attack”. Then there was speculation the Pentagon had been hit. A couple of women sitting in the lobby were crying. I called home.

When it’s all said and done, nearly 3,000 dead. Four planes, four targets and three direct hits. Because of the first three hitting their targets and passengers on the fourth knowing about it, they did what the government and the military couldn’t do. They took the plane back from the terrorists.

A surprise attack that wasn’t expected and in the span of minutes citizens, not part of the government, not part of the military, took their plane back from the attackers and saved countless lives on the ground at either the Capitol or the White House.

This country had not seen this sort of attack on its shores since the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

When this happened, my son was 11. My daughter was 5 and my other daughter was 3. It makes me wonder, if these things are what I remember in my lifetime, how horrific will the things be that they will remember when they reach my age and say “do you remember where you were and what you were doing the day that…….”

You’re welcome to comment and encouraged to share you own stories.

Brett