Effective Leadership! (Sarcasm intended)

The voters spoke for Congress to get something done! I'm sure that going forward we are going to see a tremendous amount getting down and dirty to get things accomplished! I'm sure that those that were re-elected will start during the lame duck session to really show voters that we elected the right people for the Senate and House of Representatives!

I'm sure that the big things that are on the peoples' minds will be the first priority. I'm sure that tax cuts will be addressed immediately. Job's and unemployment benefits will be addressed immediately. After all, there is only 2 weeks left in this session of Congress and we need to get right to work. I'm sure the leadership will want to start on day one with an agenda and an inspirational speech to pump up our Senators to get things done quickly!! GO TEAM!!

All the attention is on Harry Reid to set the tone for this, perhaps, the most important lame-duck session of Congress in decades. Will it be agenda setting? Will it be a message of bipartisanship and Senatorial work ethic? I know it will! After all, this race for Harry was a little too close for comfort, and he won only because his opponent was less than formidable. Surely Harry got the message!

Sorry, Nevada voters. The big opportunity to change things up has gone to hell and your native son has screwed you (and the rest of us) over yet again. Harry's six minute snoozer to start arguably one of the most important lame-duck Senatorial sessions in decades was to waste the peoples' time talking about a football rivalry between Boise State and Nevada. I guess once you've secured another 6 year term in the Senate, your sense of urgency on behalf of the people is minimized. Sharon Angle, at least wouldn't be setting the agenda for Upper House of Congress.

This is just an example of the fundamental problem with the leadership in Congress. A problem that is too abstract for the voters to actually be able to address. Only our elected officials can really fix it, yet they refuse to go against the power structure. Why is it that just because a member has been in Congress has been in office the longest (and perhaps has been corrupted the most) that he or she should have the most power. Cases in point - Speaker Pelosi, Leader Reid, Leader McConnell, Speaker-Elect Boehner, Hoyer, etc.

None of these people are hearing our voices. Pelosi is governing our country and setting the agenda as if the entire country has the demographics and ideology of San Francisco. As long as the House continues to elect her Speaker or Leader, there is no chance that this will ever change. It is nothing more or less than cowardice in the ranks of the Democratic House Members. The lone standout was the bravery of Congressman Schuler.

Another example is Steny Hoyer. Congressman Hoyer is completely out of touch and is now advocating to reduce the pay for our fighting men and women in the armed forces. He obviously can't tell the difference between overpaid federal bureaucrats and the brave men and women putting themselves in harms way. Dear Mr. Congressman - you can freeze federal employee pay raises without freezing the men and women's raises that are dying for us overseas. WAKE UP!

Mitch McConnell, Republican Minority Leader in the Senate, who is not able to articulate any argument and continues to give fodder to the far left by stating his only goal is to make sure that President Obama is defeated in 2012. Sounds like a partisan hack who is unable to work across the aisle for the American Peoples' goals. WAKE UP! Your number one goal is the economy and jobs! Did the election mean nothing to you, either?

What could have been a great start to a historic Congress is what we hoped it would not become - a quagmire led by incompetence on both sides of the aisle.

mR

Here's a 2 min clip of the 6 minute speech. At least with Sharon Angle, this could have been entertaining. Wake me up when this is over. On second thought, wake me up in 2012.

Photos courtesy of AP, Alex Brandon and Manuel Balce Ceneta

YouTube Video courtesy of Harry Reid, US Senator for Nevada

Democrats: "The War Is Lost"

It is indeed a sad day when a leader of the US government conceeds defeat to an enemy of our country. According to Reuters and Fox News, Harry Reid (NV), the top Democrat in the United States Senate informed the media Thursday that he had told the president that "this war is lost" referring to the Iraq conflict. Only just into the beginning of the ramp-up of U.S. forces into the country, he is ready to give up. Is that anything new? Of course not. The majority of the democratic party joined the extremist left and the media's white flag years ago.

I still don't know if I agree or not with Senator Reid. While I have a firm belief that it is imperative that we win this war, I don't know if we can win in Iraq but i'm hardly ready to concede.

There are too many things against us. And shame on the president that he didn't fix this years ago. This is a Almost Average American's take on why this war may never be won.

1. No one did their homework before this conflict began. Incompetent, god-complexed Rumsfeld put together the war plan. Don't be confused--our top generals didn't come up with that rediculous plan. Rumsfeld did, and rammed it down everyones' throat. The president trusted him and was too weak to fire him when things started moving from bad to worse. He may have waited to long to turn this around.

The president didn't know any better and followed Rumsfeld blindly into the desert. He sold a war to the public under points that turned out not to be true. Don't be fooled, the democrats believed those points too. They were just able to back off of them, deserting the president when our nation needed all of them to stand together. But no, they saw a way to win the next election.

There were 10 good reasons to take action in Iraq. It just so happens that the 3 the president used in his State of the Union and on his "Iraq War Bus Tour" were wrong. Our democratic friends seem to have forgotten this too. They want us to go it alone in Darfur, but when 1.5 million people were slaughtered in Iraq, we should have used diplomatic efforts and followed the good judgment of the UN. Yeah, good strategy.

I will try to address some of the reasons why the Iraq incurrsion was a good thing to do in an upcoming post. Things like putting an American base right in the middle of Syria and Iran. There's no Korea, Japan, or Germany in the Middle East. Things like ending the tyranical reign of a murderous dictator. Things like showing the Middle East up close that we are a benevolent society and aren't as bad as we are made out to be. Things like keeping a religious fanatical government from controlling the entire balance of power in a very dangerous part of the world.

2. Never admit your mistakes. The poor decision making at the beginning of the war continued to the middle of the war because our commander in chief was too afraid to admit that his administration might have been wrong. At what point are we so afraid to admit mistakes that our country and our armed forces must suffer for it? At the point where the looney nutso's of the fringe of any ideology are the people who hold the power.

3. Minority Rule. Just to complete a thought... We are at a point in our history where it's no longer "We the People." It's "We the Extremists." At what point did we allow Michael Moore and George Soros (not originally from the U.S.) on the left and Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the right to hijack our political process? Apparently at this point. When lawyers from Pat Robertson's school of law are working in powerful positions in the Justice Department. When eccentric billionaires born in other countries can effect U.S. elections, then is all hope lost? I hope not, but I wouldn't bet my measley net worth against it.

To Be Continued....