Tested Leadership

You may remember the prophet Joe Biden, on October 20, 2008, predicting that if Obama were elected he "would be tested in the first six months by a foreign power." Considering that Obama had less executive experience than Sarah Palin, who by then had been the governor of Alaska for two years but was being trashed in the media for not having the necessary experience, Biden's gaffe prediction was a major argument against Obama's election. Many of us made that argument, but to no avail.

After his election Obama apparently tried to preempt any such testing by making an apology tour across Europe and the Middle East to placate Muslims world-wide. By bowing to foreign leaders and showing his good faith he was going to bring Iran to the negotiating table and end their nuclear ambitions. Two years ago when a popular uprising had a chance to bring Democratic reforms to Iran, Obama sat silent while the government brutally put down the protests.

In March of last year when the Arab Spring erupted across North Africa, Obama dumped a long time ally in Egypt, Hosni Mubarrak, for an unruly mob led by the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. Then when the mobs rose up against Moammar Khaddafi, Obama stood by while several NATO nations began helping the rebels with a bombing campaign. Only when it became obvious that Khaddafi was losing did Obama enter the fray. Leading from behind, he praised the Arab Spring for bringing democracy to the Muslim nations.

Obama's foreign policy has been an abject failure. The Muslim world has not responded positively to his open armed apologies. Just the opposite. His apologies and rewriting of American history to suggest that Muslims helped build the United States, project an image of weakness, and has emboldened our terrorist enemies. America is still hated by Islamic governments, who take billions of foreign aid from the United States and curse us at the same time. Nicholas Sarkozi, France's former Prime Minister, publicly stated that Obama was not very influential, an observation that is becoming increasingly obvious.

Now Obama's leadership ability is being tested at a level he has not yet seen, and doesn't seem to yet understand. US embassies in Cairo, Egypt, in Sana'a, Yemen, and the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, have been overrun by mobs, and four Americans in Libya, including the US ambassador, have been killed. These are acts of war. These are acts that require a strong response if America is to be taken seriously anywhere in the world.

How did Obama react? He sat in silence saying nothing for hours. Then somebody in the US diplomatic mission in Egypt put out a statement apologizing for the Youtube video criticizing Mohammed, which supposedly sparked this uprising, even though hardly anybody has seen it. The statement stood for nine hours until criticism became so harsh that the administration had to "walk it back."

This is not administration policy, we are told. Some low level employee at the embassy in Cairo made the unauthorized statement, but just like the removal of God and Jerusalem from the Democrat platform, who made the statement or where it originated is unknown. The president himself, not realizing the urgency of the situation, finally made a comment at a Las Vegas, Nevada campaign stop. Taking a page from Clinton before him, he promised that those who had killed the Americans would be held accountable. Then after about ninety seconds of toothless threats, he went back to campaigning.

If there was ever an example of ineptitude and incompetence, this is it. American sovereignty is invaded, Americans are killed, and Obama apologizes and continues campaigning. Does anybody see what's wrong with this picture?

This is weakness ala Jimmy Carter and the Iranian takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. Could it be that this will translate into another Reaganesque defeat of liberal incompetence in November? Let us hope so.

An Exceptional Mother

I am proud to post on American Flyer the following from my cousin's daughter, Marisha. Simple and concise, in a nutshell this is one of the finest things I've ever read on parenting. It should be a mandatory lesson for every child starting the first grade. Consider also that Marisha suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and you'll understand why her accomplishment is not only admirable, it is exceptional. My hat's off. Thank you, Marisha.


"I always had many chores growing up. One of my summer chores was to help my mother grow vegetables. She would wake me up early and we'd put in many hours preparing the soil, making rows, planting seeds, weeding the beds and then harvesting of course. It never really bothered me until I became a teenager. I can still hear myself mouthing off to my mother, "why do I have to waste my time with this, it's not like I'm going to grow up and be a farmer!" I was partially right, I didn't become a "farmer". However this spring Justin and I set out to grow our own veggies. As we prepared the soil I dug my hands deep into the earth and with great confidence made rows and showed my son how to plant the seeds. Our crops were impressive, especially since we were limited in space. We didn't have to buy produce all summer and we had salad every night. I realize now that my mother had not just taught me how to grow vegetables, she had shown me the value of self-sufficiency which has endless possibilities. It was one of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned."

Go Ahead ...

At the beginning of the Republican convention last week Glenn Beck had taken some days off from his radio program at about the same time it was announced there would be a mystery guest speaker on Thursday night. The guest hosts were speculating about whether or not the mystery speaker would be Glenn Beck, and were taking calls to hear what their listeners thought. One woman guessed Clint Eastwood. I thought that would be an interesting twist, but didn't really think it would happen.

Lo, and behold!

I was never a real big fan of Clint Eastwood. We watched Rawhide when I was growing up, but for me, the name Clint meant the big guy on another western, Cheyenne. Clint Walker was my first TV cowboy hero, and today he is still my favorite.

My brother, Randall, met Clint Walker in Branson, Missouri a few years ago, and got me an autographed poster and a set of the first year of Cheyenne on dvd. Randall works in the entertainment business and had a chance to talk with Walker for awhile. He encouraged Randall to keep his performances clean and family oriented, which certainly struck a chord with me. Walker is very conservative with deep religious beliefs, and it shows in his work. He often encouraged people to read the Bible in his Cheyenne series, and there are no better family oriented films than Night of the Grizzly and Baker's Hawk.

Unfortunately, by the end of the 1960's Clint Walker's star was already fading, but the other Clint in Hollywood was on the rise. Rawhide had brought Eastwood to the viewing public's attention, but he had second billing on the program, and when the show's lead actor, Eric Fleming, drowned, Eastwood was unable to carry the program on his own and it went off the air. Then he went to Europe.

Spaghetti westerns made Eastwood a star. The no-name-silent-tough-guy image resonated with audiences and by the time he took on the Dirty Harry roles he was a superstar and one of the top Hollywood draws. He's made some great western movies, Pale Rider, a mysterious remake of Shane, immediately comes to mind. The Dirty Harry movies gave us some terrific one-liners like, "Well do ya, punk?" and of course, "Go ahead, make my day." But his films are so full of bad language, and "gratuitous sex" in the later movies, that I can't let my children watch them (I don't either, by the way), which is really a sad commentary on what the movie industry deems is needed to make a hit film.

Eastwood himself is a good, believable actor. The bold, confident resolve in his roles exudes a type of character most men would probably like to emulate. But the last night of the Republican convention may have been Eastwood's finest performance. The enthusiasm of the crowd was electrifying when he stepped out on the stage. Then his stuttering delivery and mocking of Obama with the empty chair brought the house down.

Commentators kept referring to his ad lib performance, but at first I didn't think it was. It was too well done to have not been thought through ahead of time. But in an interview with his home town newspaper, The Carmel Pine Cone, he said he had roughed out an outline of what to say, but the chair came to him as he was backstage just 15 minutes before he was to go on. My guess would have been that he had practiced that performance to perfection, but his improvisation was still the perfect performance and proves that he is a very talented star and a consummate actor.

And yes, he made my day. Now if he would just clean up his movies a little bit.

The DNC: Same ol' same ol

Anybody who is paying attention could have scripted the first night of the Democratic National Convention. We heard nothing new, just the same old broken record about women's health rights, gay rights, the brilliance of obamacare, and how much Barack cares for everybody, with the added twist of Michelle Obama's speech about what a great American her husband is.

It started with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Deborah Wasserman-Shultz opening the convention talking about bringing change to America. Change was the promise, along with hope, four years ago, but all the change we've seen has been bad. Gasoline prices are two dollars higher than when Obama took over, the unemployment rate has been as high as 10.2%, and has hung at 8.1% or higher for 42 months, and the deficit just topped 16 trillion dollars. And Shultz is still talking about change. What we need is to change what Obama is doing!

There were some very interesting speakers on the agenda. One Democrat Representative from Colorado, Polis, boasted that Obama had taken no money from special interest groups. Let's see; Obama promised not to have any former lobbyists in his administration, but since many of those lobbies had actually contributed to his campaign, he filled his administration with former lobbyists. So what we got from Polis was a distortion, if not a flat out lie.

Kathleen Sibelius, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and former failed governor of Kansas, got up to talk of her father's efforts to pass Medicare for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and boasted that she was following his lead in standing up for women's health rights, a theme we would continue to hear the whole night. Evil Republicans are against contraception, but Democrats believe a woman has the right to make her own health care choices. In other words, abortion on demand paid for by all taxpayers no matter what their religious beliefs are.

By the way, Republicans are not at war with women, and we are not against contraception, we just don't think we need to pay for everybody else's condoms. We are against abortion on demand, and against anyone that forces us to pay for it.

She accused Republicans and Ryan's budget plan of destroying Medicare while Obama saved it. She forgot to mention that obamacare took 716 billion dollars out of Medicare to pay for itself, leaving those on Medicare with three-quarters of a billion dollars less funds available for their needs. Obamacare is already a success, she said, because millions of people received $500 back from insurance companies that weren't complying with some regulation. Put that in perspective. Those $500 were not savings generated by obamacare. They were fines issued by an administration bordering on dictatorship.

They paraded a woman army captain across the stage who had lost both legs when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq. She has my respect for her service and bravery and the sacrifice she has made. But she got my ire up when she claimed to have proven that women can do anything as well as any man. Male-female class warfare? This is supposed to be unifying?

I don't know about the army, but when I was in Naval Aviation, about 50% of all who started flight school washed out. Of those who got into the jet pipeline about 20% would wash out. Of the women who got into the jet pipeline, none ever washed out. I was in a squadron in the Philippines that was non-combat arms, so we had a lot of women pilots. I can tell you from personal experience as a NATOPS check flight pilot, that most of those women wouldn't have been there if they were men. There were some good female pilots, but their 100% success rate in flight school was a politically correct creation, not an example of their ability.

Having said that, I'll honor this woman for her patriotism, but not for her politics. She praised Obama for listening to military leaders who have long said homosexuals ought to be allowed to serve openly. They weren't saying that when I was in, they were mostly opposed to Clinton enacting "Don't ask don't tell" because the system of not allowing gays had always worked well before that. Military leadership was not in favor of this change either, and reports four years ago showed most of them against it. Unfortunately we have a Joint Chiefs of Staff filled with political yes men who don't have the guts to stand up to the foolish destructive policies of the president.

The left is quick to compare conservatives with Nazis. I'll give you a real Nazi comparison. In the 1930's Wilhelm Keitel, the head of the Wehrmacht, as well as most of the German military leadership, didn't have the courage to stand up to Hitler's megalomania and they followed him to their own destruction. That's where our military leadership in Washington is today.

The woman captain finished her speech saying Obama "will never ignore our soldiers." The speech drew throngs of cheers and applause from people who mostly have never served and have no idea what's going on with the military. Obama is gutting the military in personnel and funding, and has publicly stated he thinks the military should pay for its own medical care! And now his Justice Department has sued Ohio to prevent military personnel from that State from having extra time to vote when they are overseas.

Yeah, he really cares about the military. Fortunately the soldiers at Ft. Bliss weren't fooled Monday when Obama spoke to them. They sat in cold silence as Obama spoke once again taking credit for killing bin Laden.

They watched two videos at the convention last night. One, supposedly a tribute to Ted Kennedy, spent more time attacking Romney than praising Kennedy. The other was a greeting from the biggest losing incumbent president in history, Jimmy Carter.

Carter spoke of integrity and trust. He said after watching Obama that he believes he has integrity, that he knows why and who he serves. He talked about America's reputation being restored and dialogue with trust possible around the world. He said Obama had accomplished all of this in spite of unprecedented opposition, and that he stood for the right policies for the right reasons.

I could go on all night on this one, but briefly: Obama is a more consummate liar than Bill Clinton. Example? He told us obamacare would not cover abortion. It does. If that were the only lie he has told it would be enough, but it's so bad you can't trust a single word out of his mouth. So much for integrity.

Obama obviously does not know why he serves since he's played 104 rounds of golf in three and a half years, nor does he know he's there to serve us. He has issued scores of executive orders cramming his agenda down our throats, unconstitutionally by-passing Congress. He has sued several states to prevent them from arresting illegal aliens. It seems he's more concerned with illegals than American citizens. Our reputation around the world is a paper tiger. We can't even get Iran to talk, much less join a dialogue and they're about to get a nuclear weapon. Unprecedented opposition? Ronald Reagan and both Bushes had more opposition than Obama ever had, including the left wing press which is in Obama's pocket. No, Carter's speech when examined was not a rousing endorsement, it was an indictment.

Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, shouting at the top of his lungs, said if a person is healthy and willing to work and to play by the rules, he should be able to get a job. Exactly! That's the whole point. There are 23 million Americans who can't find a job. That's Obama's fault and that's why he needs to go!

The Democrats' token hispanic speaker, Julian Castro, got up to demonize what he called "trickle down, supply side, Romney-Ryan, or Ryan-Romney" economics. They have never worked, he said. His speech was nothing more than Obama blather warmed over. We've been hearing this ad nauseum for the last four years.

This is a common Democrat strategy. Don't examine the facts, just lie about them loud enough and long enough until every non-thinking person believes you. Say, that was Hitler's strategy too!

The fact is, tax and spend bigger government is what Jimmy Carter gave us. It didn't work. Trickle down, supply-side, smaller government is what Ronald Reagan gave us. It led to the longest peacetime expansion of the US economy in history. It ended when George H.W. Bush broke his promise and raised taxes. Clinton was already headed for defeat in 1996 for his tax raising and big government spending ideas, when the Republican Revolution of 1994 turned the economy around with tax cuts and reduced spending. Clinton changed his ways, became a supply-sider, claimed credit for the economic turnaround, and coasted into reelection.

After four years of surpluses, Clinton left office with the economy falling into a recession. I'm not an economic expert, but I think the reason was that Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, refused to restrict the money flow by raising interest rates and created an economic bubble that burst just as Bush was elected.

W. Bush then was faced with 9/11 and the War on Terror, but his tax cuts in 2002 led to a recovery of the economy. Bush, however, using the war as an excuse, really betrayed conservative Republican fiscal principles and failed to cut spending. When the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006 he refused to do anything to control the spending and the two largest deficits of his administration took place in his last two years. Then, as the country headed into another recession, he implemented the TARP bailout, a socialist government takeover of the economy, not much different than Obama's stimulus package less than a year later.

The economic truth is, every time the government has cut taxes across the board and reduced spending, which is trickle-down, supply-side, the economy has soared. Every time taxes have been raised and spending unchecked and government expanded, the economy has tanked. The record is there for anybody to see, but Democrats turn the Reagan years around by calling them the Decade of Greed, and greedy people who want a bigger slice of the government pie (which always leads to less freedom!) fall for the lie every time.

If the Republicans were smart, they wouldn't run from the accusations that it's Bush's fault. They'd acknowledge his betrayal and say, Yes, Bush betrayed the Republican ideal of fiscal responsibility and joined the Democrats in control of Congress in overspending and causing the recession. To that extent it's Bush's fault, but Bush isn't here anymore and continuing those Democrat policies that Bush joined has only made our economic situation worse.

It will be interesting to see what Bill Clinton has to say tonight. His administration had an unemployment rate of under five percent and four straight years of budget surpluses, all thanks to trickle-down Reaganomics. He's got a tricky task ahead to convince the country to continue the policies that have led to the economic disaster we are in, policies that he rejected when he was president.

The night ended with Michelle Obama praising her husband. It was a great delivery, much better than her husband has ever done. She said, "Barack knows about the American dream because he's lived it."

If that's true, why is he trying to take away from everybody else the opportunity to live the same dream? Or is it that he hasn't really lived the dream? He grew up in Indonesia dirt poor and somehow went to Harvard Law School. He didn't work for anything, somebody else gave it to him, just like they gave him his Nobel Prize for doing nothing. He never worked for anything in his life. Radical socialists, including Saul Alinksy, got him where he is today, and now he wants to force their socialism on the rest of us. Why? So we can all be dirt poor like he was. I got news for you, Michelle. Ronald Reagan, the one your husband likes to compare himself with, had a different idea about the American dream.

"The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become." - Ronald Reagan

Is it significant that the Democrats have removed all mention of God from their platform? What we've seen so far is not much different than what the Democrats gave us under Walter Mondale in 1984. The difference is that in 1984 the country wasn't ungodly enough to accept it. The question now is, have we become ungodly enough?

I hope not.