We're Coming For Your Jobs Congress

We Americans are a funny breed. Washington and the coasts seem to have little understanding for the rest of us. That’s why the press was thinking of sending ‘foreign correspondents’ out to see us to try to understand us.
Here’s the problem. We don’t like being lied to and we don’t like being manipulated. It may be the ‘in’ thing to do in New York, Washington or L.A., but to the rest of us we like taking on life straight up. It’s what makes us American. Cut the bull and talk to us straight.
Right now we’re not getting that from Washington. These guys think they’re smarter than we are and can play us. Last week Congress slipped an Omnibus Bill through that included the cancellation of oil exploration on two million acres of American controlled land. That is an area larger than Montana and Wyoming combined. By taking that area off line Washington is going to start the cadence of oil prices going up again toward astronomical prices at the pump. Maybe worse this time than the last time. All in the name of getting us into the cars the Obama Administration wants to force us into driving.
Maybe it’s the Chicago/Big City approach of the Obama Administration that they’re missing what makes Americans tick. Let me try to simplify it a little for them. First, Americans don’t like being manipulated. I said that before, but it’s worth repeating. I know they think they’re going to ultimately help us all by getting us out of our SUVs, but in the process they’re hurting us. For those of us with very little extra cash laying around – the very people Washington says they’re out to help – they’re going to end up costing us a lot of money. Money we don’t have. So in attacking the ‘rich’ they are going to hurt the poor more. Not that they REALLY care, that’s all lip-service. They want what they want and they don’t care who they step on to get it.
Here’s another hint for Congress… just a whisper in your ear. In 2010 we’re coming for you. The American groundswell is starting. We’ve had enough of your bull and we’re coming for your jobs. Those of you who have given us this massive spending bill need to go. Lying to us and manipulating us are not cool with us. In the words of Donald Trump, “You’re fired!” We want your jobs. Get your resumes up to date because you’re going to need them. We The People are coming for you and we’re going to get your jobs.

What I Learned From John Wayne

We can’t all be John Wayne – or the film star image of John Wayne – but where has our daring and dash gone? Our boldness? Our ‘I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend with my life your right to say it’ attitude? Where is that attitude that we are the best and can do anything? And then go do it? You know the one – it took us to the Moon and back several times. It saw us through two World Wars. It spread Americans from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific coast. It’s the attitude the country was built on. It’s the one Hollywood makes movies about – at least they did when they wanted to sell tickets. What happened to that attitude?
That attitude is still here. We’re still a country of risk-taking ‘cowboys’ determined to make the world a safe place for freedom loving people everywhere. That’s who we are. It’s our legacy. John Wayne is admittedly still the persona of our attitude becoming on the silver screen who we really are in our hearts. It’s his ‘can do’ attitude that lives on in all of us.
The reason most people think that ‘cowboy’ legacy is gone is because they’ve lost track of who they are and where they fit in the picture of our country’s history. They think that because we no longer ride horses we no longer have that attitude about us. The country has changed from a hundred fifty years ago when real ‘cowboys’ were driving herds or railroads across the Old West. Yet the ‘trailblazing’ is still going on. Americans are still hard-working, determined people who are leading the world in developing medicines, computers, technology, aeronautics, space research and a long list of developments setting the bar high for the rest of the world to follow. Our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and on back through our history set the stage for us to take the reins and run to new heights. They built the cities, laid the rails, put in the roads and took us to the Moon and back while making the United States the cutting edge of cultural evolution – then they handed it to us. We then went to work on faster computers, better drugs, bigger TVs, cleaner and more fuel efficient cars, airplanes that could travel half way around the world without a stop and the many more developments that have brought us to today. It’s mind-boggling to think – and impossible to imagine – where the next generation of ‘cowboys and cowgirls’ will take us.
Admittedly, there are many Americans who despise the ‘cowboy’ image of Americans – that rugged individualist who ‘takes the bull by the horns’ and gets the job done – particularly when Europeans want to hold us in disdain for whatever cause they are touting that day. Many Americans get apologetic for that image and do all they can to distance themselves from it. And maybe that’s best – for them. It will not change how Europeans or whomever the apologists are trying to appease see us, but it shows the rest of us who the apologists are. They need to ask themselves why they need to make apologies to people who are clearly trying to find ways to make themselves feel better at our expense – and in so doing are recognizing the superiority of the American ideal of who we are.
The biggest lesson we learned from John Wayne’s persona was that we are the protector of freedom. No matter what the cost to us personally, we will fight to the bloody end for our rights and those who value the same virtues and freedoms we do. We are the only ones left who will go out to stand on the front lines of freedom to protect and preserve our way of life. We’re the only ones who will risk our own lives to rush to the aid of those in distress from disasters – and we’re the only ones left to stand up against tyrannies, draw a line in the sand, look the enemy in the eye and make it clear we are making a stand right here and right now.The American ‘cowboy’ mentality is not dead, it’s not even sick. It’s in us all and it’s in the generations coming up. And it will always be here as long as we continue to value freedom and liberty and are willing to fight to keep it alive.

Why Americans Love Sports

Americans understand the simple concepts of winning and losing better than anyone else in the world. Let's face it, it's not just winning and losing; it's winning that Americans understand. We know and crave the feeling of winning in every aspect of our lives. From the office to the gridiron to the battlefields in far off deserts. We know a lot about winning and will do everything in our power to make it happen.
Another truism of ours is no American likes to lose. None. Some learn to fake it because it happens, but inside we want to win!!
Pick a professional American sport and there’s not a kid in the country that hasn’t imagined himself or herself in the game-winning scenario with all the marbles on the table, our backs to the wall and it’s on our shoulders to save the day. We see ourselves stepping up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, down by three and pounding the three-and-two fastball over the centerfield wall… Or, with time running our on the clock, down by four, a field goal won’t get it done, it has to be a touchdown and on the last play scoring the winning touchdown as time runs out... Or, the end-to-end basket as the clock sounds to win the game. It’s always all on the line and we always win in front of a screaming crowd. We not only want to win, we want to win BIG!! We want to fight for it and we want to do it with honor. We are winners. It’s bred into us. It’s who we are.
Professional sports have taken a beating because they are no longer pure. They are businesses and are treated as such by their owners. Americans love to watch and, at time, we even get caught up in them.
College sports are a different story - they are much purer and the NCAA does what it can to keep them that way. Those who follow colleges love the feel of the unadulterated sport as it was intended. It’s hard to tell on TV, but the stadiums used by college football teams are almost twice the size of their pro team counterparts. They’re massive structures seating over one hundred thousand screaming fans. Anyone who has ever been to one of those monsters knows the impact that number of people can have with the shear sound of their voices.
Are college sports pure? Please. I’m not stupid. I am, however, a purist. I love sports in their purest form. You can take it all the way down to the kids passing a ball in the yard, but it’s in our hearts and souls from the time we are young at our parent’s knee the concept of winning and losing.
And Americans love winning.

At Our Finest - The Kids

Let’s start at the beginning with the foundation of what makes this country great. Our spirit. We’re a conglomeration of peoples, living together in one country, working for the ‘greater good’ and we’re the greatest success story the world has ever know.

And the reason we do it all – our kids. Not just our own kids, but for all the kids of this great country who will one day grow up and take over the reins from those of us trying to make it all work today.

This country has been through a tough history in our short existence. We’ve seen wars and trials of our souls that have wrenched us down to the very fiber of our existence. Yet, through it all, we’ve survived and come out stronger on the other side. It’s who we are. There's a reason we are ‘the ones the rest of the world looks to’ - it’s our indomitable spirit and ‘can do’ attitude. We get dragged through the mud from time to time, but in the end we emerge as ‘the hero’ at the end of the day.

At the core of our country driving us all are our kids. We want them to learn what we were taught about our country, we want them to have a better life than we had and we want them to take over from us and go forward in the world with the same vision we have of the greatness of America. Though they learn the basics of reading and writing in our schools (we’ll leave that debate for another day), the essence of ‘being American’ is learned with their families and neighbors. We start young taking them to parades and events that etch the American feeling into their heads. Ball games in the summer, Fourth of July fireworks that are always larger than life, Thanksgiving featuring pilgrims and native American Indians and holidays that are all about families and traditions. As the years go by we take them to Little League or ballet classes, recitals, plays, karate, soccer or any one of a laundry list of activities that gets them interacting with each other outside of a structured classroom. In those activities are the foundations that form their impressions for a lifetime of joining the American community.

From us the kids learn the important lessons that are never put down in a book. As a father, an uncle and now (I shudder to think where the years have gone) a grandfather I've watched some extrememly wonderful kids grow up and now they are teaching those same lessons to their kids. It came home to me the hardest the other day when I heard my son say something I remember my grandfather saying. It made me smile with an overwhelming happiness and sad at the same time. My son was held in the arms of my grandfather once before my grandfather died. The most my son heard Grandpa say was, “That’s some boy.” Yet, the very things Grandpa spent years teaching me – and there was considerable doubt I was learning – were the very things I heard coming out of my son’s mouth. Grandpa would have been proud.

As I look at the kids in this country today I see the best of what we were and what we will be. Our kids strive to be the best they can be at what they do and we encourage them. For some it comes easy. They’re the naturals. For others they have to work harder to get there. All the time, though, they’re striving to be the best. We want to be the one stepping to the plate in the bottom of the nine with the bases loaded, two out and trailing by three. We are a country of heroes in waiting.

It’s on the fields, in the dance studios and dojos all across the land our kids learn the spirit they are going to take forward into the future to carry on when all of us alive today have passed on. Watching the hustle-bustle of youngsters learning their sport or developing their talents I am amazed and impressed by how much of life our kids learn in such a short time. They, like all who had gone before them, had no idea they were learning the lessons, of course, but it was evident in their demeanor the lessons were being learned.

The lessons? What are they really learning? They are learning the basic skills to be the heart and soul of America. And they were being taught in teaching’s oldest forum – under the wing of their parents and families who learned it from their parents.

I have to admit that when I was a youngster many years ago – going through the same anguishes our kids are suffering now, facing the same anxieties over whether or not I was going to be good enough to make the starting line-up or if I had practiced my trumpet enough to be ready for the concert, struggling with stage fright to go in front of the crowd and competing against my friends and family to win – I had no idea what I was learning either. It’s only as I look back that I realize I was learning everything I was going to need to know to succeed in the highly competitive business world and to understand what is important in America today. I have been to all corners of our country working in management for a major corporation that if I put its name here you would recognize immediately and could even give me their advertising line. Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Atlanta are on that list now – and being able to be successful in all those cities comes back to the fundamental skills I learned right out there on those fields of my youth. All the basic elements our kids will need in life are there, and these kids exemplify what this country has always been all about - the freedom and will to be the best you can be.

As I look around me I feel none of the fear over our future that some are attempting to beat into Americans day in and day out. Instead, I feel a lump grow in my throat as the pride wells inside me. This is America at its finest. These are the faces that will take us forward to a bright future and I have every confidence that they will use their experience - as those who have gone before them - to continue keeping America the "shining light on the hill - the beacon of freedom to the world."