WAR!

WAR!

WHOSE CALL IS IT?

 

President Obama and his administration have been adamant that he is not taking America back to another war in the Middle East.  Earlier this month, Secretary of State John Kerry stated, in a CNN interview, that our planned attack on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is not a war but is a “…very significant counter-terrorism operation…”

We have begun air strikes on ISIS in Iraq and now in Syria.  We are training and arming those who we hope will fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.  Some of our military generals are openly speaking out that air strikes cannot defeat ISIS and we will need to put troops on the ground if we are serious about defeating this threat against, not only our country, but many other countries around the world.

So, the question is, are we at war?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary has as the leading definition for “war” as:  “a state or period of fighting between countries or groups”.

Does a country have to agree to be at war in order to actually be at war?  The answer is, no!  If your enemy has declared war on you, you are at war whether or not you acknowledge the fact, whether or not you have formerly declared war in Congress, or whether or not you even know that the enemy has declared war on you.  It does not take both sides to agree to have a war.  If one side decides that they are going to declare war, formerly or just by their actions, their attack puts you at war with them.  You may not be fighting or opposing them.  You may not formerly agree to be at war with them.  You may, as in our case, openly state that we are not at war with the declared enemy.  But, nonetheless, you are at war!

The Federal Wall of Debt

At the end of this month (September 2014), the "wall of debt" will be 24.5 feet tall. 

I have written about the ever increasing height of the wall of debt.  (You can get the basis for the calculations on my blog entry in June 2011 "The 20' Wall of Debt".)  Link:  http://thehousetop.blogspot.com/2011/06/20-tall-wall-of-debt.html


If you lay dollar bills end-to-end and flat on the ground, around the world at the equator; our national debt would create a wall of dollar bills 24.5 feet tall.

Think about that!  24.5 feet tall is about the height of a telephone pole in a residential neighborhood.  Now picture in your mind a stack of dollar bills that tall surrounding your neighborhood.  That would be a lot of money.  Now stretch your imagination to picture that wall ALL THE WAY AROUND THE WORLD!  Now we are talking serious money!

This amount of money is not what the Federal Government is spending, it reflects what they are spending above and beyond what they are collecting in taxes.  They are currently setting records in the amount of taxes being collected. 


To paint a different word picture of the amount of debt our nation owes, it would take 562,163 years to pay it off, one dollar per second with no additional borrowing and paying no interest. 


This does not even consider the massive, unfunded liabilities of our government.


Even with this being such an enormous problem, no one in Washington seems to be that concerned about the out-of-control spending and 100's of billions of dollars in additional deficits being added each year.