4th of July.

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This will be my only post today.

We're learning the cost of freedom every day now.  We know someone who is serving, or who has served... we see the cost of our folly of falling for a slickster... we see the damage government at all levels can cause when not held accountable.

We know the nightmare at the federal level we've brought on ourselves; an utterly clueless panderer of a president who would sell his own mother to get re-elected, but who, contrary to his lie of an election campaign, has no more idea how to fix our economy, domestic policies or foreign policies then he does how to rebuild a carburetor.

We know the nightmare of the utter, fringe-left incompetence that has wrecked our state government as our governor and leftist legislature has completely sold out to the tribes and the unions, slamming us into multi-billion dollar debt in the face of obvious unsustainability.

We know the nightmare of a democrat-controlled county commission, where decisions violating the state open-meetings laws are made all the time between Boldt and Stuart, the 2 democrats kow-towing to unions and the downtown mafia/identity vancouver/special interests by failing to protect us from these interests and burying us in generational debt while slamming us with permanent, ever-increasing tolls that neither we as individuals nor the small-businesses dependent on that disposable income can afford.  There lack of courage and integrity will bring fiscal anguish to us for decades.

We know the nightmare of electing a complete, incompetent liar as mayor of our largest city, who ran on a campaign of lies, fraudulently fooling voters into believing he was opposed to tolls when that was a lie before the election, a lie DURING the election, and a lie now.  He was selling us out in concert with Stuart, and he's made it his mission to keep us from having any say on any of this crap.  In addition, in concert with Stuart, this clown wants to tax the entire county to pay for the Yakima Millionaires baseball team to move here.

We know the nightmare of electing a sell-out city council who is joining with Leavitt to screw the people of  the entire region through their deliberate ignorance over the breadth of the C-Tran loot rail scam.

But the very nature of freedom is to allow us to be stupid.  Clearly, with this election of political degenerates, we've lived up to that low bar of expectations.

I wish I had good news to talk about.  I wish we had political leadership that cared less about re-election and more about putting this country first.

I wish I could say there was a light at the end of the tunnel... but there isn't even a tunnel, let alone a light.

I wish I could say that the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform was worth it; that the loss of blood, limbs, minds and money had made a difference... but with the cowardly buffoon in the White House, we've become an undependable sell out joke to the rest of the world, which is why I'm doing all I can to keep my kids out of the military.

I wish we were not being buried under a mountain range of debt for several future generations.  I wish we were not moving to bankruptcy at Warp Factor 12.  I wish our public schools were remotely competent.  I wish that this country's "reform" of immigration laws actual had the goal of making it harder to break our laws then it does to reward those who disrespect this country so much that we've become a world destination for illegal aliens... and that the democrats were more concerned about enforcing our laws then they were currying the supposed-to-be-non-existent illegal alien vote.

I wish we would just stop moving around the world and blowing dictator A's (Qadaffi in Libya) people up willy-nilly while giving dictator B (al-Assad in Syria) a pass for doing the same thing... killing his own people by the hundreds... all because their people hunger for, and are dying for, freedom.... and after all, Libya has oil, and Syria does not.

I wish, if we're going to engage in this sort of thing that we would turn Iran into a parking lot because the Iranians are trying to get nukes and they would have no difficulty using them on US, since the whackjob running the show is so eager to become a martyr... and because his weapons and supplies have resulted in the deaths and wounds of thousands of Americans... and all for free.

But addressing these issues takes courage.  It takes vision.  It takes integrity.

And we can't even avoid selling out the locals to give a few millionaires a ballpark on the backs of the taxpayers.

Where's anything positive about that?

God Bless the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States.  And God curse those who would throw them away.

Maybe on some future 4th of July, I'll have better news.  But not this 4th of July.  Not today.
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