The U.S. Department of Labor reports that unemployment for October stand at 10.2% while what has been called real unemployment stands at 17.5%.  The deficit hit a historical, dare I say infamous 1.4 trillion and continuous to escalate.  After ten months, the president has yet to make a decision on a strategy for Afghanistan.  The Democrat Senate is merely haggling over the details as to the extent of the death grip the Federal government will have over Americans and their health care.  Buying and selling votes is the order of the day, which I will call the Landrieu Effect.

I suggest that Americans need to fallback and put the blame where it belongs, and vote the Republicans out.  That’s always been the answer, right?  Vote them out.  I’ve hear it said, “We have to punish them.”  Well, we did in 2004, 2006, and … I don’t even want to think about 2008. 

But, boy, did the Republicans get punished!

We are watching it all.  What is going on in the nation and in the world is inescapable.  No one who cares can avoid it.  Watch TV, it’s there, or listen to the radio or read some online item, the view of the United States teetering at the edge of the abyss is excruciating, and in an agonizing slow motion.  Every quivering pillar which supports the foundation of the country is being assaulted. 

The nation is now over two-hundred years old, fought wars in two different hemispheres, place man on the moon, freedom hundreds of millions from bondage on its soil and around the world, and will continue to do so, if the current occupant of the White House can made a decision.   Once, long ago, the United States was a very young country, trying to survive in a world “against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed.” *   Now in spite of the furious efforts of many external and internal enemies to bring her down, the nation is mature, and still is a world power.

Politics may seem like a game, but it is not.  It’s not a backyard brawl or a schoolyard fight where the bully might be reprimanded by a passing teacher or even suspended—for a whole day.

Tea parties, Democrat losses in governors’ races, protests in Washington D.C. and many other ‘uprisings’ have come to pass, but have we as a nation learned our lesson?  Decisions, no matter how adolescent, have consequences. 

I don’t know if what is going on in the Congress, in the White House, in this country can be put right again.  What I do know is that this is a unique country, in all of history, where a single person can say, this is mine because I built it, be it a home, a business, a family.  In these days, Americans must understand that this nation is not some plaything for the amusement of children. 

If there is hope, it is in the nature of an inexpiable land, a country which by all odds never should have come into being. The America I know is more than a nation of ‘hope and change,’ but land of mystery.