Summit is a misused word and it is wearing a bit thin with me. It is akin to hero, a label we apply to people who have never performed an act of bravery or shown great courage or character. A summit is supposed to be a meeting to confer about a matter of great importance. It is also the highest point or top of something, like a mountain. Reaching the summit is a significant achievement. It is not where you seek the answer. The summit is the answer.

Have you have ever had a mountain top experience? I have been fortunate to have a few in my lifetime. Some of them were physical like making a difficult climb or running a marathon. Others were reaching goals like important promotions or having a book published. No matter the summit reached, there are steps you cannot pass by along the way and still have a true mountain top experience. If you bypass the challenges and still manage to get there somehow, the experience falls a little flat. It holds little true meaning for you and even less than that for those who depend on you.

The important steps may include many grueling hours of sacrifice, physical training and mental preparation before you can even contemplate participation in the actual event. The reward for reaching the summit following such preparation manifests as an inner confidence whose depth is clearly visible on the exterior. It is also the personal knowledge gained that you can achieve what you set out to achieve if you take the small, often painful, but necessary steps along the way. When you finally reach the mountain top, you can sit for a while in quiet solitude, enjoy the clear air that does not exist down there in the valley, and take in the grand view of God’s creation. That momentary elation happens just before the reality sets in that you cannot stay on the mountain top forever. You must come down from it eventually and walk with those who have never had a similar experience.

When you have had a true mountain top experience, you are equipped for life’s toughest challenge. That challenge is to bring those who depend on you back to the mountain top with you. Not just bring them along, but have them race forward enthusiastically to follow you up the mountain.

Some people arrive in this world already having a secure perch on the mountain top. Others find themselves placed up there by means and for reasons other than overcoming the challenges of the climb. They have never had a true mountain top experience. Because of that, they end up with once enthusiastic followers becoming reluctant ones leaving drag marks on the trail as they are pulled along with them on a barreling trip over the mountain side.

There was a climate change summit. Climate change is the name the global warmers hope will convince you to climb with them to their mythical summit and turn over to them control of all aspects of your life. Along with chatter about the green economy and the green utopia, the summit peaked well below the mountain top. The reason is that most simply resist the premise that a gas which is essential to life and exhaled by all of us about 12 times a minute is destroying our planet. The global warmers got to the mountain top on a false premise bolstered by phony science. No one is racing forward to leap off the cliff with them.

I almost forgot about the beer summit. You would think that someone with a modest collection of beer paraphernalia from many years living in Germany would have tuned in like a laser beam on this one. But it was not about beer. I was disappointed. I am not sure what it was about unless it was a feeble attempt at making irregular guys look like regular ones. There is only one guy there who looks like he may have sipped a cool one with his buds after a long day. He is also the one who looks uncomfortable in his suit. He has likely had a mountain top experience.

How is that jobs summit working out for us? The problem with the jobs summit is that its intent and purpose was to create the illusion that people who have never created a job (never climbed that mountain) and can never create one actually have plans to create them.

President Obama’s jobs summit was aimed at producing ideas to battle a surging unemployment problem exacting ever greater economic and political toll, but the event only highlighted the tough dilemma he confronts…. Labor unions and liberal think tanks …have released ambitious proposals to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on job-creation programs focused on public works and infrastructure.

This was not a summit. This was whistling past the grave yard.

Then there was the summit of all summits – the health care summit. We can sum up what this high point of political discourse produced rather quickly. One politician lays out logical and cogent points for discussion and another responds with the heart wrenching story of the woman who wears her dead sister’s teeth.

Together now, let us all hold hands and leap off the mountain.

© 2010

In all of the wrong places.

I am about as middle as Middle America gets. I love God, my family and my country. I like baseball caps, pickup trucks and jeans. I like football, baseball, chili dogs and barbeque. I mow my own lawn, spread my own mulch, trim my own hedges and enjoy every minute of doing those jobs that Americans just won’t do in the gated communities. I think Jack Bauer has the right approach to problem solving. Maybe we can cut him loose on Congress. I have been working and supporting myself since I was 16 years old. I have clawed my way up from dirt poor to a reasonably comfortable middle class existence. In many countries of the world, I would be considered wealthy. I suppose that is why all of the people in those countries seem to want to move here. We do quite well out here in the middle and we would probably be content with our lives if politicians would go to Washington, make their nonsensical speeches and leave us the heck alone. Here’s an idea Washington. Getting government out of our lives and out of our way is a solution to many of our problems.

Every time a politician decides that my Middle America needs fixing, I lose my job. I lose my savings and maybe my house. The people who want to fix us typically have Ivy League degrees that, down here where we still get dirt beneath our fingernails, means an education that transcends common sense and practicality. It was an education afforded them because they were wealthy not smart, something they continually prove. When I am working, I end up footing the bill for their grand schemes that are supposed to transport my wretched hind end into their idea of Shangri-La. They learned about Shangri-la at Harvard from a guy named Karl. In case you are curious, Karl does not appear on any of our founding documents. He did however write another. Washington, here’s another idea for you. Try reading this manifesto for solutions.

It is Middle American children who are constantly beat back from breaching the wall around the middle class that grows a little taller each time we are helped by politicians. It is my money that provides seemingly endless unemployment benefits and welfare for deadbeats rather than allowing me to give more of it to the truly needy that I do help with legitimate charitable donations. It is my money that buys the bridges to nowhere. Here in Wild Wonderful, we name them the Robert C. Byrd Bridge. I don’t know why. He didn’t pay for them. I think I will find me one and name it JD’s Damn Bridge. Washington, after you get out of our way, another solution for you is to stop taxing us to death, stop taxing businesses to death and quit buying those blasted bridges.

It is my wallet not the Washington politician’s wallet that feels my pain when I put gasoline in my vehicle refined from expensive crude purchased from communists and terrorists all because knot heads, believing in the false religion of Global Warming, are bent on worshiping mother earth instead of using her abundant resources for the betterment of mankind as God intended. It is the pedigreed elitists who drive around in cars more expensive than my house while they keep a hybrid snob mobile nearby for photo ops and travel the globe in their private jets. Ground them and close their mouths if you are really concerned with carbon emissions. I can barely contain myself waiting to see how much I will be taxed for the gas that naturally leaks from both ends of my body. That could be an expensive proposition for Michael Moore or Al Gore, couldn’t it? Maybe they’ll hang one of those new fangled digital gas meters on us. Maybe to counter I will invest in Beano. It is like generating your own electricity, maybe they will pay me for the gas I don’t make. Isn’t that the idea? It is the same logic as jobs created or saved. Here’s some wild and reckless ideas Washington. Drill for the doggoned oil we have. Drill for the natural gas we have. Dig the coal we have. Use the oil shale we have. Export the solar panels and windmills and the Green Jobs Czar to the Arabs. They have lots of sun and like Washington, lots of wind too.

Geeze, I have a headache. Think I will spend some time reinforcing the Bunker and maybe watch Jack Bauer torture a terrorist.

© 2010

The argument could be made that the entire West Virginia delegation, including Republican Capito, endorsed their party rather than a person. Who really knows their thinking? We, however, exist on perceptions more so than truth. It is usually much later that we realize that seeking the truth was wiser than believing the perception. In our Presidential primaries, the Republican Convention gave two-thirds of our delegates to Governor Mike Huckabee before a single West Virginian cast a primary vote. It was not West Virginians, but the party establishment and their backroom shenanigans that decided to take one candidate in favor of another. Barack Obama lost the West Virginia primary, but was still endorsed by the Governor and his Democrat Congressional delegation. In neither case did the voice of the people matter. The desires of the party establishments on both sides of the political divide most often take precedence over the desires and needs of the people and the state.

Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, who calls himself Big Daddy when boasting about bringing home the pork, has been representing West Virginia in Washington since 1959. Besides bringing in the bacon, Senator Byrd should be known for other things a sycophantic and liberal media will never mention. His 14 hour filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Exalted Cyclops rank he held in the Klu Klux Klan would not fit well with the liberal media spin for the Democratic party.

Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller is a New York transplant. He was our governor for 8 years before being elected to the Senate in 1985. He is a millionaire of inherited wealth and a lifelong party politician.

Keeping it in the family, in 1983, Democrat Representative Alan Mollohan replaced his Congressman father as the representative from West Virginia’s 1st Congressional District. Mollohan is also a millionaire politician who was under investigation by the Department of Justice on some significant issues like steering earmark money to non-profits, from which it is alleged he then profited. Interestingly, the investigation stopped with his party back in charge.

Democrat Nick Joe Rahall went to Congress in 1977 to represent West Virginia’s 3rd District. Rahall represents our southern district commonly referred to as the coal fields. The only change I noticed in southern West Virginia since I left there in 1966 is that there are now fewer people. Rahall leans pro-Palestinian and anti Israel. His sister Tanya owns a public relations and consulting company and lobbies for Middle Eastern clients.

Republican Shelley Moore-Capito went to Congress in 2001 to represent West Virginia’s 2nd District. She also comes from a political family. Her father, Arch Moore, served in Congress from 1957 to 1969 and was Governor of the state for 3 terms from 1969 to 1977 and from 1985 to 1989.

Our serving Congressional delegation has a nearly a century and a half combined time in Washington, allegedly representing the people and interests of West Virginia. You might think that these wealthy, career politicians could have accomplished something for the state that would have moved it above number 50 on the per capita income scale. In fairness, I think we did climb up to 49 a time or two and we do have a lot of structures named for Robert C. Byrd.

The most pressing national security issue for us, after Islamic terrorists, is energy independence. In West Virginia, we have more energy reserves than Kuwait. Kuwait, you recall, is the country whose oil we saved from Sadaam Hussein.

Our state leadership endorsed an administration that wants to end not advance the coal industry that provides more than 50 percent of our nation’s electrical power. West Virginia could provide much more energy from our natural gas resources and by converting coal to liquid fuel that burns cleaner than diesel. Environmental Protection Administration impediments are already costing coal miners their jobs and as the President said before he was elected, his cap and trade plan will bankrupt coal fired electrical plants and necessarily quadruple the cost of electricity. It looks like Wal-Mart might not just be our largest employer; it may be our only one.

Forward thinking political leaders with so much time spent in Washington would have worked to transform our state into a major player in energy production. Instead, ours chose the party.

I suggest you do the most basic research on your state and those representing you in Washington. Do not be surprised when the picture you develop is quite similar to the one I just shared.

The answer to the question is that hope, like freedom, ends when it is tied to men or to their political parties. It lives as long as it is tied to our founding ideals.

© 2010

A weakness of my generation of Americans is our ingrained gullibility. Those of us who were educated before the hippie generation took control of our public education system, were taught about the greatness of our country and the honesty and good character of our historic leaders. George Washington could not tell a lie and Abraham Lincoln was Honest Abe.

Our first inclination is to trust that people in general are honest and good. The gullibility that encouraged us to believe that today’s political leaders are generally honest as well has put us in jeopardy of losing all that is good about America. We want to believe that these politicians want what is best for us and our country. We want to believe what they tell us – especially if we happen to like their public personas. We tend to trust them without them first having to prove their trustworthiness. Either that is the case or we believe in them for a more dangerous and suicidal reason – because they affiliate themselves with one political party or another.

The most repeated mistake made by the citizenry of the world’s most blessed nation is that we tie our hope to men or to some wrongheaded ideology that points directly away from the principles of God given freedom and liberty on which we were founded. What we need to tie our hope to are the founding ideals, values, principles and freedoms that built and sustained us. We must then only support would be leaders who have proven in their lives by work not words that they live by and endorse our enduring national character.

Here in Wild and Wonderful West Virginia we still have many Yellow Dog Democrats. If there was a yellow dog on the Democrat ticket, they would vote for it before they would even consider voting for a Republican. Their votes have little to do with the person or an ideology. My Daddy was a Democrat, his Daddy was and his Daddy… is typically their reasoning. Today’s Democrat would likely call Daddy (theirs and mine) a far right wing fanatic. Daddy broke his back in a coal mine every day and was paid with company script and a charge account at the company’s store and he lived in a rickety, rented coal company house. Daddy earned his way, raised his family and never looked toward the government or anyone else to help with his personal responsibilities. Daddy, in fact, was to the political right of most of today’s Republicans. Yellow Dog reasoning and logic has kept Democrats in charge of our state legislature for decades and kept our state rated last in every important vital statistic while the politicians themselves are doing quite well. We vote for the party and cling to the hope promised by the party’s figure head. Hope that keeps everything just beyond our reach – perpetually.

Our Congressional delegation except for Republican Representative Shelley Moore-Capito and our Democrat Governor endorsed the candidacy of now President Obama. An endorsement, especially for the Presidency, means that you endorse everything about the person – their associations, their policies and what they might mean for the people of your state, their beliefs and the character of the man or woman themselves. Later, you cannot say I did not know that. The alternative is that instead of endorsing a person, you are endorsing your political party. Like communists, you place party affiliation before the people. Continued in part 2.

©2010

“There is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.” – Mark Twain

To be fair, not all politicians in Congress are criminals, however, I cannot find it within myself to defend the innocence of a single one of them that is there now. I will, however, stand to defend the first one who finds the courage to poke his fingers in the eyes of his charlatan contemporaries, especially the members of his party, who are systematically destroying our country. If that person stands up, he or she will be the unique one who has managed to keep hold of his soul.

Do you know how to identify these Politician-Americans – Mr. Twain’s distinctively American criminal class? That man or woman who is more dedicated to the prosperity of the Politician than they are to serving the American? Their focus is status and political power and doing whatever it takes to hold on to both. To that end, they will plant their lips on any posterior, grease any palm, craft tall tales of their accomplishments, claim credit for all that is good and lay blame for all that is wrong. In their noses, imagine large brass rings connected to leather straps. Straps held on to by the special interests that provide them their campaign cash and the special favors that add to their personal comfort and wealth. Out of their mouths come words crafted by focus groups and political pollsters. To the extent that they own even a fraction of their souls, these poor devils must suffer constant internal conflict. Conflicted because they promise what the pollsters tell them they must, all the while knowing that they have to deliver the goods to those who exert Faustian control with sharp tugs on the strap that is attached to their nose rings. It does not matter if the goods delivered to their political masters are opposite of the promises made to hapless and gullible American voters. To them, the means justify the end and the end is retaining their status and political power. American voters buy the promises. The special interests buy the politicians. This is the pitiful and corrupt state of politics in America.

The Politician-American begins every conversation telling you that most Americans agree with or most Americans want the snake oil he is trying to sell. He promises to deliver his badly needed snake oil only if he gets cooperation from his reluctant colleagues across the aisle. This is what the pollsters have told him he should say. He has no more mind of his own. That went along with the soul he sold to the people who control the tension on his nose ring strap. He cannot tell you the truth because his truth is whatever he must say or do to keep his political office. He will decry the politics of old and the failed policies of the past offering hope that he will change both. What he hopes for, however, is that Americans will not awaken to the reality that the politics he practices are the politics of old that produced the failed policies of the past. Both are ageless attributes of the world’s true oldest profession. He will always promise good paying jobs for all Americans as long as we go along with his snake oil formula. The alternative formula for America, he will tell you, is just too bad to even contemplate therefore; we must act now before it is too late for us to come back from the edge of the precipice on which we are precariously perched. Only his way can stave off the next great catastrophe and there is always a looming catastrophe.

The problem for them is that Americans, to use one of the snappy political buzz phrases of the time, are finally connecting the dots, between special interest groups, corrupt politicians and failures in our economy, energy security and national defense. They have, however, delivered on one promise. There is bipartisanship in Washington. Political corruption has no difficulty traversing the aisle.

Now, as the lights are switched on for Americans, the flurry of Congress people who suddenly need to spend more time with their families is like a herd of cockroaches heading for the exits. Ironic as it may be, these Corrupticans and Corrupticrats have done a great favor for our country. They have opened the eyes and hearts of Americans and energized the citizenry into what is shaping up as a ballot box revolution so overwhelming that even the organized voter fraud will not be able to counter it.

Every American owes it to every other American to take a wire brush to the Congressional candidates in their own home districts, hopefuls and incumbents alike. We must send to Washington, Americans who are able to put service before self. We must replace the Politician-Americans with American-Americans.

©2010