The Disaster of Our Time

I always find it interesting to watch news media and pundits trying to outdo each other in predicting what political trends will happen next and how the world will be affected. A few years ago one author wrote a book to prove that the 2008 presidential election would be Hilary vs. Condoleeza Rice. Boy, did he get it wrong. It never seems to bother these people, they keep making their predictions and they usually keep missing the target. I'm not a prophet and I won't pretend to be as smart as these prophetic pundits, but it is pretty obvious that if some changes aren't made fast our country will be in big trouble.

We are beginning to see what could be a crisis of world-wide proportions across the Middle East. Tunisia, Algeria, and Bahrain are being crippled by strikes and rioters. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarrack has already been forced to resign, and in Libya, the longest ruling despot in the region, Moammar Khadaffi, is facing the test of his life to see whether he'll survive as ruler of that country. Libya's oil output has already declined by 20% since this uprising started, and as more foreign companies shut down operations in Libya it will only grow worse, driving up oil prices around the world.

A bigger problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization, appears to be behind some of these uprisings, and positioning themselves to take over. If this anti-American group gets control of the oil rich Arab nations and shuts off oil exports to the United States, our economy could be crippled over night. That's probably not likely to happen because these oil rich Arab nations depend almost solely on oil for their wealth. But they could tighten production like OPEC did three years ago and drive prices higher, possibly as high as the seven dollars a gallon candidate Obama told us we should get ready for.

This would plunge America into an unprecedented economic crisis. The country needs gasoline and diesel fuels to keep trucks on the road and freight trains on the rails. Not to mention the every day driver like you and me. When the price of fuel sky-rockets, the price of consumer goods follows, and when the prices get too high, people won't be buying, the economy will be falling, and unemployment will be rising again.

It has never been more clear why we need an energy policy that will make us independent of foreign oil. Forget the Department of Energy. That ugly monstrosity in 34 years has consumed hundreds of billions of dollars and to date hasn't produced one gallon of a feasible alternative fuel, neither has it made us independent of foreign oil, which is its whole purpose for existence. We use more foreign oil now than when the department was created.

Forget the environment. We've already taken better care of ours than all the rest of the world combined. We're not going to destroy anything by drilling for our own oil in our own territory, be it off shore or in Alaska.

The problem is we have a government filled with a bunch of cowards unwilling to stand up to the lunacy of special interest groups and tell them to go home. In 2003, President Bush tried to have the Alaskan wilderness opened for drilling. Republicans controlled the Congress and for the first time in decades had a chance to do something right for the country. Instead, a group of RINO's voted with the Democrats to block Bush's legislation.

Environmentalists argue that it would take at least ten years for newly found oil to be drilled, refined and finally put into production anyway, so why bother. Why bother? If drilling had begun in 2003, it would be available at local gas stations within another two years, and the current crisis would be curtailed. Oh wait, if gas prices were about to drop below a dollar a gallon by the 2012 election, Obama would take the credit for it and probably get re-elected. Maybe the environmentalists have done us a favor after all.

Now as we face an economic disaster, the president can't make up his mind what to do in the Middle East. He failed to support the recent popular uprising in Iran which could have removed an insane, tyrannical regime, but now supports the uprising in Egypt that overthrew our best ally in the Arab world. Worse than that, he is apparently supporting the union uprisings in Wisconsin and Indiana, ultimately promoting the same kind of chaos going on in the Middle East here in America. At a time when he should be using his bully pulpit to try and bring calm and unity to an increasingly divided nation, he is helping drive the wedge of division deeper into the heart of the country.

What we are seeing more and more is a president with no clue on foreign affairs, no clue on domestic policy, no clue on economics, and apparently only a plan to ignore the Constitution, to rule like a dictator, and to drive America into the poor house.

What a pathetic contrast to our first and greatest president, George Washington. How far the character of the most important office in the world has fallen. Washington was a man of such integrity that there was nothing anyone could point to that would have made him ashamed. Obama is a man whose best quality is duplicity for which he is unashamed.

We are sitting on the brink of an economic disaster of monumental proportions, yet the disaster of our time is more than just economic. It is a disaster of week-kneed leadership that will destroy this country if we do not vote out the current administration in the next election. More than that, the disaster of our time is a moral and spiritual disaster of a people that have forgotten the Christian principles and the God of their Founding Fathers, and that is illustrated no better than by the man sitting in the White House.