"America's Deadly Habit!"

I have written many words about my father and how much he meant to me. Few days go by when I don’t think of him with great fondness. Dad would be 87 had he lived this long, and I certainly wish he were here to give me advice when things seem confusing. He had a way of making everyone around him feel at ease, with an easy smile and sense of humor, Dad could charm the spots off a leopard. For a man who didn’t finish high school, he was one of the wisest people I’ve ever known, and he seemed to have a great recall of family history and would hold my attention for hours with his stories. He was 74 when he passed away from the effects of lung cancer. My Dad started smoking when he was about ten years old, and continued until he had his lung removed at age 72. By the time he died, the disease had made too much progress to be stopped completely, and I saw this once powerful man fight to breath with the aid of an oxygen concentrator. I don’t know how much longer my Dad would have lived had he quit smoking years earlier. He watched my uncle Sammy die from lung cancer years earlier, and that didn’t prevent him from continuing to smoke another twenty years. Could it be possible that I might still have my Dad if he had turned away from cigarettes twenty years earlier? I think about this quite often. Sometimes we are given sign posts from God, and sometimes we fail to follow them because we choose to ignore them.

America has been given sign posts for her future. Greece is in near financial collapse because of runaway public entitlements. Germany and France have experienced riots over socialist policies that have crippled their governments. England has had students rioting over a lack of further funding for their tuitions. Britain’s government health care has been under fire for poor care and lack of funds; people are dying because of bad medical care! Communist China is now the “Big Gun” in world economy, and America is trying to play “catch up”. The once great independent country of the United States is in “free-fall” because of policies installed over the last 36 months and mistakes of past administrations. America spends more than she makes, and our government is encouraging even further government spending. We are now in a hole so deep it will take generations to fill it up, if that is possible.

Our nation has a cancer from within, and it is feeding on our “free ride” mentality. What we continue to do is depend on the government to supply our every need, while our government is tearing down our national house for “firewood”. We have a Chief Executive who advocates this policy of taxation and self destruction. His plan is to tax until there is no money left to tax on; no money to invest and an economy that is in its last gasps until the national lungs collapse!

My Dad is gone; my country is still hanging on, but needs to break its bad habits! Obama is that “one more cigarette” before I quit; the one that may put America in her grave!!