What have we lost - what are we losing??

It seems to me that we have lost an amazing amount of our personal independence and our confidence in our self-reliance in just my lifetime. It seems to me that we have lost much of the personal, individual drive to succeed that made this country great. When I was growing up, there seemed to be a stronger personal drive to become better. For example, a few years ago I was having dinner with a good friend who I have known since we were kids and who is now very successful and he made the following comment to me - he said, "We were very fortunate to have the friends we had growing up. The peer pressure to keep up with everyone else made me a much better person than I would have been without that peer pressure." I don't see as much of that in people today - today I see many, many, many people just doing what they need to do to get by. Where has the drive to succeed gone that made us great? And please, don't assume that when I talk about the drive to succeed that I am just talking about making more money....I'm talking about the drive to succeed in whatever we do.

Consider the following quote from Abraham Lincoln and the quotes from our founding fathers in my previous posts and compare them with quotes from today's "leaders" and politicians.
We are electing mediocre leaders and we are becoming a mediocre country.

Abraham Lincoln said the following:
"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift up the wage earner by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away peoples' initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."

Words of our Fathers

April 15, 2009 - Tax Day - Tea Party Day..........Can't think of a more appropriate day than today to share these thoughts from some of our Founding Fathers.....

"Honor, justice, and humanity forbid us to tamely surrender that freedom which we received from our ancestors, and which our innocent prosperity have a right to receive from us."
Thomas Jefferson

"A constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."
John Adams

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

Are we living in the America envisioned by our forefathers, or are we becoming what they sacrificed so much for to escape?

More from TJ

" My reading of history convinces me that most bad government comes from too much government"
Thomas Jefferson

Another thought from the past

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson

Thoughts from the Past

"Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not"

Thomas Jefferson

Thank goodness for global warming

As we suffer through the coldest spell of weather that we've had in a few years, we can take solace in the fact that it is ONLY cold that we have had to put up with for the last week or so.

The poor folks in upstate New York are covered way up past their collective a**es, ears, eyeballs and top hats with snow.......... over 100 inches in the past week - 100 INCHES - almost 8 1/2 FEET of snow !! HOLY SNOW, Batman !! That's A LOT of f*cking snow! That averages out to over 14 " per day - every day - for a week. Remember the "storm" we had at the beginning of December? - that was a mere 12" or so. Can you imagine dgging out from more than that every day ??

The closest Milwaukee has ever come to anything like this during my lifetime was the winter of 1977-78. We had a storm on Christmas that dumped about a foot of snow; one on New Years that added another 14"; and then, about a week later another 10". People were shoveling snow off their roofs so they wouldn't collapse; snow plows had created such high piles of snow that you couldn't see cross traffic at any intersection - the city ended up hauling these large piles of snow away in dump trucks and dumping into the harbor. These storms had a huge impact on the area - and they were spread out over a 3-week period. Parish, NY has recieved 3 times as much snow in 1/3 the time! I sure am glad that we're living on the "right" side of the Lake.

Upstate NY isn't the only place having fun with snow this year. I have friends in Denver who have 40" - 50" of snow in their front yards. One of those friends told me that 40-50" of snow melts down to about 12" of water. That's about the total annual precipitation for the Denver area and they received all that snow in December - a year's worth of precipitation in just one month.

It even snowed in Malibu, CA and Scottsdale, AZ this season.

Well, all I have to say is "Thank goodness for global warming!"

If it weren't for that, who knows, maybe we'd be building ice sculptures at McKinley next June instead of sand castles and putting walls around our cities to keep the Mammoths out.

Where to begin ??

OK, so now I've got this blog. I'll have things I want to say and photos to show. But where to begin??

My profile says that I see the world as an amazing place (don't we all?).......but here is something to think about ....

Right now, less than 1% of the total landmass area of the United States is urban ........ but 80% of the US population is living in that urban environment - imagine that - 80% of us living in just 1% of the space available to us........and, many of you are totally unaware of the world outside that urban environment - unaware of 99% of your country.

Here's a peek at what some of you are missing...