RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/06/george-h-w-bush-and-the

Amidst the lavish praise for the late president, George H.W. Bush, allow me to offer a contrarian view.

As we learned from the funeral of the non-president, John McCain, the leftist media has rarely met an ineffective Republican politician they didn’t want to celebrate when he passed, no matter what they’d said about him during his time here on Earth. In the interests of “bipartisanship,” “comity,” and “civility,” the years the dearly departed moved among us are seen retrospectively as a kind of Golden Age, when Republicans lost graciously to the designated Democrat, whether as a first-time candidate or (even better) a defeated one-termer sent packing so the Democrat Restoration could be implemented, and the natural order of American politics restored.

In the case of Bush the Elder, however, Poppy’s defeat at the hands (sorry) of Bill Clinton was not only fully deserved—the man was a natural non-politician up against the best campaigner of his generation—but actually welcome. Not only did he—read my lips—betray the legacy of Ronald Reagan in his electorally fatal decision to welsh on his “no new taxes” pledge, not only did he cut the legs out from under the Reagan Revolution by calling for a “kinder, gentler America,” but he also egregiously mishandled the Gipper’s most important legacy: the defeat of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Don’t argue with me: I was there. I was in Dresden in February of 1985 when Erich Honecker denounced the “Star Wars” missile defense program at the behest of his Soviet masters; I was in the USSR (Leningrad) when Chernobyl blew up in April 1986; I was in Berlin, sledgehammer in hand, when the Wall toppled in November 1989; and I wrapped up my sojourn in the East Bloc during the summer of 1991 in Moscow, just a week or so before the attempted coup against Gorbachev.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/77_years_ago_a_date_that_still_lives_in_infamy.html

On this day 77 years ago, Japan launched a surprise attack against a U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor in the then-American territory of Hawaii. Over 2,400 Americans were killed, over 1,000 wounded on that day. The countries were not at war at the time. The next day, the U.S. Congress declared war against Japan. Speaking to a joint session of Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) called the day of the attack “a date which will live in infamy.” Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the U.S.; the U.S. then declared war against Germany and Italy. Thus did the U.S. enter into what was later called World War ll, which had been raging in Europe and elsewhere for over two years.

The shock of the attack, with not even a trigger warning, to use a modern term, did not send young people then to scurry to safe spaces, as many do today at the first sign of distress, such as, oh, say, their preferred candidate not winning the presidency or hearing ideas that upset them. Enduring hard times during the Depression years preceding that attack, people of all ages rushed to sign up for the military.

One of them was George H.W. Bush. Six months after Pearl Harbor, in June 1942, he celebrated graduating high school and his 18th birthday by enlisting in the U.S. Navy. A year later, three days before his 19th birthday, he became an ensign and one of the youngest Naval aviators. Surviving the horrors of years of war – no safe spaces for him – he married, completed college, and went on to live a life of service to his country, love for his family.

It is hauntingly symbolic that Bush passed away just a few days before another Pearl Harbor anniversary was buried the day prior. Another veteran of that terrible war, former senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole (R), now 95, who was severely injured during that same brutal war but also later led a productive life, struggled to stand in respect at Bush’s casket.

They, and millions like them, rushed to danger to protect us all. Most are gone now; their valor endures.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-becomes-net-exporter-of-oil-fuels-for-first-time-in-decades-1544128404?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=pop&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

The U.S. became a net exporter of oil and refined fuels last week for the first time in decades, a symbolic milestone that would have seemed unthinkable just 10 years ago.

The shift to net exporter from importer, detailed in weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, may be short lived. Still, it demonstrates that America is moving closer to achieving “energy independence” as the shale revolution makes the country one of the world’s top oil producers and reshapes global markets.

Reducing American dependency on oil imports has been an intense focus of executives and presidents from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, none of whom anticipated a renaissance in U.S. drilling.

Since the Arab oil embargo 45 years ago, which sent crude prices up and created painful supply shortages, the problem of scarcity had defined U.S. thinking and strategy around oil, the world’s economic lifeblood. But the fracking boom, which has spurred massive increases in drilling from Texas to Appalachia, has sharply lessened reliance on foreign energy sources.

America is now the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas. This week in Vienna, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is once again weighing whether to curtail production, a decision driven in part by surging American oil output, which has topped 11 million barrels a day.