Americans Have Had Enough

It's no surprise that 60% of Americans think we should throw out the entire Congress. I would actually expect that number to rise in the coming weeks. Our so called political leaders, if you can call them that, have worked extremely hard to earn this type of sentiment. It's been decades in the making and likely not to change anytime soon.

In good conscience it would be very difficult for me to associate myself today with either one of the two major parties. If I had to choose it would come down to the one that is the lesser of two evils. One thing I know for sure is that we've got a group of individuals in Congress, many of which forgot long ago why they were elected. I do not know of one member that truly has the will much less the charisma to be a bipartisan consensus builder. Democrats and Republicans have become experts at spouting their own party dictated political talking points, and are unwilling to do anything but blame each other for the dire problems we have.

John F. Kennedy said in his 1961 Inaugural Address, "So Let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.  Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us." There's not on single member of Congress that's exempt from what amounts to a blatant failure to live up to the expectations we justly placed in them when we made the decision to send them to Washington. Those words President Kennedy spoke in 1961 hold even more truth today.

The time for blame must come to an end. Whether they realize it or not, our Congressman have pushed this country and its Constitution to the brink of doing irreparable damage to the very foundation of what once made this nation the most unique in all the world. We no longer have the time for the never ending hypocrisy and political rhetoric that somehow seems to causally manifest into false hope that somehow tomorrow is going to be miraculously different. It took decades for Congress to become the dysfunctional, hyper partisan institution it is today. It's an institution that has been corrupted by anger, self serving emotional power and greed, made up of an overwhelming majority of individuals too weak to do the job we elected them to do.

In this new media/social media era, we've got a group of individuals representing us, many of which haven't had an original thought in years, trying to convince us that they know what's best. They function like a group of robots that receive their daily marching orders and then have their helpless staff members send out the same old material to their weary, disheartened constituents. We're tired of sending people to Washington that say they'll be different, that we hope will be different, yet ultimately end up being just another part of the problem, incapable of offering real solutions.

There are many of us that may not like certain parts of Obamacare, but it is the law of the land. It's one thing for the Republican Party to prove a point, it's an entirely different thing to perpetuate an ongoing government shutdown in an economy that has in reality never moved completely out of recession. If the Affordable Care Act does in fact pull the hinges completely off of our economy as many have said, the Republicans would have one heck of a platform to run on in 2014. Instead they'd rather show Americans that in spite of what they'd like us to think, when it's all said and done, their motivations are no different than the Democrats. They would foolishly rather keep posturing politically over doing what's best for the country. If Speaker Boehner had any control over the fractured party he's presiding over, he'd of held a press conference a week ago on the heals of Senator Cruz's filibuster, and told the American people that while he and his Republican colleagues believe funding Obamacare will have tragic consequences, the party is not willing to put the country through a prolonged shutdown that could further harm our economy, and further dissuade confidence. We did the best we could, he should have said, but now it's time to move on for the good of the country. Had he of done that, it would have been a win for the Republican Party. That potential win in my opinion has turned into a major loss.

Today, it's more than clear that the American people have had enough. We don't trust Washington and all it stands for. That goes for both Democrats and Republicans. This country has an overwhelming amount of very real, very serious problems that should unite our elected officials and encourage them to put aside the divisiveness that for decades they have been unable to get beyond. We are not too big to fail. No entity or government is too big too fail. We've seen mega financial institutions fail in the last few years and we've seen countries on the verge of failing. We are rapidly approaching $17 trillion dollars in debt. Our individual share of that debt is nearly $53,000.00 per American, yet the chuckleheads in Washington want to argue about Obamacare. No matter how you cut it, we've been cooking the books in this country for far too long. I know it, you know it, and we have no choice but to make sure Washington knows it. It's time for Congress to get back to conducting the people's business, or go home and stay home.

When Do We Stop Taking the High Road?

As I rushed home to watch the tragic events unfold in Boston, my inner being was filled with emotions that that felt familiar. It wasn't till I turned on the television, and goose bumps filled my body that I realized I hadn't felt those same feelings since September 11, 2001.

Yesterday, we were blatantly reminded of the fact that no matter whether internal or external, there are those who wish to do what they can to shatter what America stands for. The majority of them are sick individuals that do not share the values we possess or remotely identify with the freedoms we hold sacred, yet we as a nation have done a poor job of reminding anyone, much less ourselves of this. Those who seek to destroy us are becoming more and more aware that our moments of genuine unity are fewer and farther between, and our politicians spend most of their time ripping our nation apart at the seams.

Friends, we have seen this before, all to recent in our Nation's brief history. The scars of 911 should be be forever etched in the forefront of our minds, and the minds of those too young to remember. While our politicians briefly unified for the good of the country on that day, they quickly fell back into their oh so familiar ways of partisan bickering and divisiveness. To those who seek to destroy us, they are once again able to mock the unbecoming value we place on the threats they have yet to purvey, knowing that our vigilance will be short lived, and soon we will resume the internal turmoil that continues to destroy the very fabric of our founding.

Many have said today that the goodness that exists among us us will always conquer the few that seek to destroy us. While this may be true, the more we continue to divide ourselves, the more we allow our politicians to let politics to divide us, the sooner we again will face those fearless monsters that that will do what they can to use our own hypocrisy to divide us once again.

We must find a way to bypass our own chaos within that those who attacked us are so fervently ready to exploit. They see it, we all as Americans should see it, yet we continue to believe we can fool the world while we briefly join together to mourn the loss of our own. When terrorists do what they did yesterday, and attempt to destroy our existence, we must never hesitate, we must never waiver,  and we must always be consistent in our response when it comes to their demise.

While the good in this country far outweighs the bad, we cannot pretend that pure unadulterated evil does not exists in this world. It does exist and it will not be satisfied till we are destroyed. It's up to us all  as Americans to do what we can to make sure that never happens and to realize that there are times when we don't have to take the high road.