Have you see the National Debt lately? Over $16 trillion (16,000,000,000,000). By the way the problem is far worse for us tax payers because this $16 trillion does not include the State and Local government debt. Local governments have already started filing bankruptcy.

“We are rapidly approaching the tipping point. Our greatest threat to our future is our own fiscal irresponsibility. We are not exempt from the laws of prudent finance. If we don’t put our finances in order, then the opportunities for our children and grandchildren will be less and their standard of living we be less.” - David Walker United States Comptroller General 1998-2008

The Comptroller Generals is the Auditor General for the United States. Walker says we are two years from being at the point that Greece was when it collapsed. He says because the US dollar is still the favored reserve currency, we will last a bit longer but not indefinitely. He says that the national debt has been increasing at an increasing rate since William Jefferson Clinton was in the White House.

Seriously, if the chief auditor of the United States tells you that we are going fail and it is going to be big and felt around the world, and that there will be nowhere to hide, you should probably listen. Why is it that no one listens to auditors when the sound the alarm?

Another question is why voters don’t do their due diligence. Our government is a participatory form of government that each citizen has the right to decide the direction of the nation. Seems like people should be better informed and look at what the media is telling you with a critical eye. Just because you have the right for something does not mean that you should exercise your right irresponsibly.

Hope and Change? Seriously? We are in for a big change and we are about to get a lesson in failed expectations.

President’s day is a day where we honor our Presidents. However, some people don’t like certain Presidents. Here is one of the greatest speeches given by what some say was the greatest president while other say he was the worst president.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

 

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

 

"But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free... It will become all one thing, or all the other." Lincoln in his acceptance speech as 1858 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Illinois

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan."

—Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

As I sit an watch the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama I can't help but wonder about people and how much they over react. Some call him a savior and others call him the anti-Christ. I think both views are a bit extreme. I seem to recall the same feelings when George Bush was elected. Some people wept because they literally thought that it was the end of abortions and that a gun was going to be held to their heads if they did not pray in schools. Others though he was chosen by God to lead us. Personally, I think he is just a man, fallible and imperfect. Neither the best nor the worst. Having difficult decisions to make that we as armchair quarterbacks can second guess but could do no better ourselves.