Washington DC 2038
2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President
Today Rick Campbell, one of our senior VFW members at age 92, is here to reminisce a bit and give us a history lesson. He says he is so old that he learned to drive an internal combustion engine car (remember those) with a manual transmission. He once owned a typewriter. He remembers when bicycles had one speed, phones had two-party lines, and cameras had something called film. As incredible as this may seem, he says that when he was young, it was common for people to smoke in restaurants and public places. He is from a different time; almost a different world.
He is one of the last surviving Marine Medal of Honor Winners from the Vietnam War.
I'm sure all of us are far too familiar with the tragic events of
2010, so Rick is not going to plow that fertile field again. Instead,
he is going to give us a personal look back at the conditions which led
up to that fateful year, in a speech titled '2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President.'
'2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President'
Yes, 2010 was long ago and far away.
As we look back on history, it appears that some Presidents had an
easy ride - times of growth and stability. Teddy Roosevelt, Warren G.
Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Bill Clinton come to mind. Those were good years to be President.
Others were elected just when the Republic was facing terrible
crises: Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt ,Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. They rose to the occasion, even though they were controversial and widely hated while in office. Not such good years to be President.
Just a few years prior, in 2008, the country began foundering. We
were in the sixth year of the Iraqi Occupation, and the economy was
flat. The mainstream press clearly wanted a Democrat elected.
Although we didn't know it until some years later, oil producing
nations had colluded to secretly buy their own oil on the open market,
driving oil prices to shocking levels above the true demand price-
reaching a high of $162 a barrel in October, 2008, just before the
general elections.
Their purpose was simple: to effect regime change in the United
States. And of course, the U.S. economy was already in a real estate slump and also suffering the curse of stagflation; slow growth and high inflation.
There were a million’s of home foreclosures.
Independent truckers went under by the thousands.
Airlines failed. Airlines with names now long-forgotten: United,
Delta, Northwestern, American. All now merged, of course, into the one lone U.S. carrier we love so much: Southwest.
Against this backdrop of weariness of the war on terror, and economic
distress, the American people were ripe for a demagogue, and they
certainly got one in Barack Hussein Obama.
He and his running mate Joe
Biden inspired them with vague
notions of hope and change; of a world in which diplomacy settled all
international problems, of free universal health care, of abundant
alternative energy, of peace and love.
It was a vision too good to resist.
The Republican nominee, a name you probably haven't heard in years
anyone? Yes, it was John McCain, an obscure Senator from Arizona had no clue how to run a national campaign, and a platform nearly as liberal as
Obama's.
The selection of Sarah
Palin as his running mate looked brilliant
at first. Unfortunately, the liberal media attacked her without merit and
Katie
Couic and Charles Gibson ambushed her at every turn.
Even so, the McCain/
Palin ticket might have won the election if it
weren't for the fact that 16 percent of conservative Republicans did
not turn out to vote for anyone, remember?
After
Obama's decisive win, the country was positively giddy. A Democrat House, Senate, and President. At last an end to gridlock in Washington. Camelot!
When Congress convened in January, 2009, the 44
th President of the
United States did something unique in history: he made good on his
campaign promises.
Certainly most Americans never really thought he was serious during
the campaign. But whether because of inexperience, idealism, or simply incompetence, he followed through.
In
Obama's first One Hundred Days, the Congress passed his
initiatives, and he signed them into law as he said he would.
He repealed the Bush tax cuts, and increased capital gains taxes.
He enacted a windfall profits tax, and instituted price controls on
gasoline and diesel fuel.
He passed universal health care, which added an additional 10 percent tax increase on all working Americans.
He tried to offset this with a huge tax increase on tobacco products which put thousands of farmers and more people out of work.
He signed the Immigrant Amnesty bill which created 12 million new
citizens instantly, each with entitlements.
He closed the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, and summarily
released all the detainees.
He repealed the Patriot Act, and cut funding for espionage, and
eliminated all terrorist listening and wiretaps.
Most important, he began the complete and immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq.
He ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted to
retain bases in Kuwait and Qatar. Instead, he went with the recommendation of Secretary of Defense John
Murtha (He had fired Gates by this time) and ordered all troops back to U.S. soil.
Viola! In One Hundred Days, by May of 2009, it was all done, and the
vision was complete. He did exactly what he said he would do.
And so it was in the summer of 2009 that things began to unravel for
Obama.
Of course, the economy needed a tax cut, not an increase, and
unemployment quickly rose to 18 percent. Even attorneys and economists were put in the bread lines. Hard times.
Price controls on gasoline immediately led to shortages and gas lines.
The global cooling trend we have seen for the past 25 years first
became obvious in 2009, exposing the CO2 global warming fraud. People were justifiably angry.
Federal deficits increased massively because thousands of baby
boomers, facing job loss and much higher taxes, simply gave up and
took social security.
Although the superb U.S. health care system was thrown into disarray,
the bright spot was the creation of the Federal Department of Health
Care, and the immediate hiring of 250,000 administrators, inspectors
and auditors, the only job growth in any economic sector in 2009.
By February 2010, the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq was
complete. It was a very expensive undertaking.
And then in March, the gradual Shiite insurgencies from Iran turned
into a true Iraqi civil war. In May, Iranian tanks crossed the border
and quickly took Baghdad. Although the exact number is not known, at least 230,000 Sunni Iraqis died as we stood by.
Iran also quickly moved into undefended Kuwait.
President Obama did exactly what he said he would. He sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Tehran to meet with Iranian President
Ahmadinejad. He refused to allow her plane to land and she was forced to finally land in her previously described "Hail of Bullets" in
Kosovo as the Muslims and Christians there had returned to conflict and ethnic cleansing.
After two weeks of high level talks, Obama and
Ahmadinejad agreed to allow Iran to retain Iraq and Kuwait to create stability in the middle
east, with the understanding that Israel would not be disturbed.
Clinton was allowed to fly to Tehran so that she could personally 'broker' the deal.
Clinton returned to Washington, and explained the agreement in her
famous speech, in which she proudly noted that the Obama
administration had finally achieved 'peace in our time' in the Middle East.
So there was some surprise at the rocket attacks on Tel
Aviv on August 14
th. President Obama said, 'This is not the Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad I knew.'
The Obama administration decided it would be
de-stabilizing to take
sides in the conflict, and approximately 29,000 Israeli civilians died
during the summer and fall.
American Jews were appalled at the inaction. Yes, in 2010 most
American Jews were Democrats, but because of 2010, they are solid
Republicans today
।
Now, I am not even going to go into the statements that there would be no lobbyist in the
Obama Administration. We all know how that turned out after the Patrick Fitzgerald
indictments of Bill Clinton, The Secretary of the Treasury, Tom Daschele and the other players
in "The Liberal Attempt to Socilize the Economy". Much has been said about this already.
As awkward as it was, everything might have turned out all right for
the Obama administration going into the fall mid-term elections of
2010, if it hadn't been for the dirty bomb in the Port of Long Beach.
The administration had cut funding for the inspection of containers,
because they felt it showed a 'lack of trust' in the international
trading community.
It wasn't really a very big bomb, and thank goodness, not a real
nuclear device, but nonetheless it contaminated some expensive real
estate - Newport Beach,
Palos Verdes Estates - and ultimately caused the death of 14,000 Americans. People were especially annoyed that
Disneyland had to be closed for decontamination.
And so, in the midterm elections, Republicans regained control of
both the House and Senate, and the rest is history.
The impeachment proceedings against President Obama for 'failure to
protect and defend' were swift and nearly unanimous. Vice President
Biden resigned. Newly-elected Speaker of the House, J.C. Watts,
became the 45
th President of the United States.
But you know the rest of the story well.
Republicans finished the war on Islamic fundamentalists, largely by
aiming
ICBM's at Mecca and Medina.
No Democrat has been elected President since.
Republicans have held both Houses of Congress.
History of Western Civilization and Economics are now taught in all
public schools, and in English only.
Marriage is defined as one man and one woman.
And there are border fences, north and south.
We old codgers remember the ancient Confucian curse: 'May you live in interesting times.'
"Well, 2010 was an interesting year, but it was not a good year to be
President."
.................
'Men may argue forever what wins wars.
But the man with the rifle knows'.
Major Jerry Van
Waggner USA
retInfantry
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