All-American IncompetenceBy Daniel L. GardnerWhat is an All-American? You know, the All-American boy or girl? Who do you think of when you think of the All-American boy or girl? Barack Obama? Nancy Pelosi? Barney Frank? What are our highest ideals and values for an All-American boy or girl? While we weren't paying attention, someone snuck in and changed our expectations of what makes one an All-American. We used to think of an All-American as patriotic to a fault, a leader and a person of faith, clean-cut, athletic or gifted in some other way, good looking, honest, humble, and self-sacrificing, someone who is always there to save the day. Political correctness has changed all of that and now we have a host of "leaders" in government who are only out for themselves and their careers. Politics is now a career path, not an opportunity to serve fellow Americans. The highest offices in Washington are riddled with scandal and incompetence. Ideological campaign rhetoric reigns, and government entitlements are deemed "rights" while common sense gets taken for a ride. While the Gulf continues to gush oil, Washington incompetence has turned the accident into a catastrophe by refusing international expertise, by refusing sand and rock berms to protect delicate wildlife marshes, and by shutting down whole industries and thousands of jobs while actually enhancing chances of more gushers. While illegal aliens, criminals, and lowlifes surge across our southern borders, Washington incompetence threatens to sue Arizona for passing a law virtually mimicking federal law verbatim. Washington incompetence refuses to secure the border because doing so might hurt chances of wholesale ideological immigration reform. While the economy continues to teeter on a precipice of collapse, private sector employment stagnates creating a mere 18,000 jobs in a month, the unemployed give up on finding work, and states like California reduce government salaries to minimum wages, Washington incompetence advocates spending (what common sense calls borrowing) more and more money insanely expecting different results. While the national deficit soars well above $1 Trillion each year and the national debt races to pass our national GDP, Washington incompetence (4 years of Democratic rule in Congress) refuses to pass a budget, fearing such passage might adversely affect Democrats in November elections. While patriotic Americans were prepping for a long 4th of July weekend, Washington incompetence (Democrats) "deemed as passed" a non-existent $1.12 Trillion budget as an attachment to a procedural vote on the emergency war supplemental bill, thus authorizing the overwhelming majority of Democrats to spend (borrow) money for Fiscal Year 2011 without actually passing a budget. Meanwhile, the panty-waisted mainstream media shake their pompoms and cheer on Democrats to score against the archrival Bush-Cheney team…who long ago left the field! America is starving for All-American leadership, a return to basic moral values like honesty, humility, and accountability. We long for leaders who hold up their heads rather than their noses. Because elections have consequences, Americans must search for real All-American candidates of the old-fashioned kind. We've suffered too much already from professional ideological campaigners.
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