As everyone is talking about this latest debate, I can’t even keep track of all of them anymore, let me go back to the last debate that was actually on broadcast TV Monday, though I couldn’t find it because it was not clearly listed in the TV schedule.
Yes, healthcare is important and I hope Santorum gets a boost from his powerful statements at the most recent debate. He begins to express something that is sorely lacking in our political world, a correct vision that expands beyond the immediate.
When Ronald Reagan called the communist world an evil empire he inspired the hearts and minds of this nation. He said, yes we are good and the cold war, the investment not only for our own defense but in defense of the free world is a good and noble cause. And how can a nation blessed such as ours claim we have no responsibility to share and expand those same blessings to our fellow man?
Sugar? Cain sugar versus beet sugar? A crucial debate. When I think sugar I think big corn; corn syrup and ethanol. Corn syrup is in everything. Even honey from KFC is no longer real but made of corn syrup. And much of the world’s cane sugar is used to produce ethanol in Brazil even though ethanol is harmful to our environment if you believe in global warming and/or the dangers of greenhouse gases.
Corn syrup is not the same as sugar as the corn lobby advertises. Talk to a beekeeper. I kept bees myself when I was financially better off than now. And in the corn lobbies fervor to sell their product,an effort that cannot be criticized, they pushed beekeepers to use corn syrup to help their bees survive through the Winter.
Often more honey is removed from a hive than the bees need to survive the Winter. In that case they are fed sugar water; cane or beet didn’t seem to make a difference. But corn syrup was quickly rejected as a sugar alternative by the vast majority of beekeepers because there was a significant difference as far as the bees were concerned. It was detrimental to the hive. The bees know.
But the debate moderator decided that the issue for Florida, a sugar producer, was not sugar versus corn syrup, but cane sugar versus beet sugar. And we all have to take the moderators perceptions of what’s important as Gospel. Perhaps if the government promoted cane sugar over corn syrup in our food, if the truth be told of corn syrup, the government would not need to provide a subsidy. It wouldn’t surprise me if we drink enough soda to take up all the excess sugar from Brazil, if they should stop destroying our environment by producing ethanol from cane sugar; an inferior weaker fuel.
But our politicians let the media define the issues. Our republican politicians, like puppets on a string, hand sound bites over to their adversaries, not just the democrats but the media, and pander to that enemy’s constructs as the world burns. Do you know a Syrian free military is taking a stand against the Assad government in Syria? Torture is wide spread among the militias in Libya. Will Islamic radicals gain control of the Arab Spring nations? Do you know China is on the precipice of their own housing crisis that could collapse their economy. Aren’t they supposed to bail us out when our debt becomes insurmountable?
So everyone dropped the ball sugar. Not the most important of issues in light of the fore mentioned developments around the world, though the future may uncover unending health problems attributed to corn syrup in our diet.
And just like sugar the candidates were drawn into useless hypothetical arguments on Cuba and Fidel Castro.
Cuba is turning little by little towards a free market capitalist system. And Cuba and Fidel Castro have been historically important issues in Florida. So why such a vapid debate over Cuba and Castro based on useless hypotheticals? Has the world, at least according to the media, decided communism is the superior system?
Cuba is all too ripe to be reclaimed by the free world. Have we lost sight of the value of freedom and what the United States has to offer the world?
Some months ago I listened to a BBC World Service report on the Cuban government. The gist of the story was, the communist leaders are all over seventy years old, dying or unable to continue in their posts, and they prepared no one to take the reigns after them.
So …our candidates didn’t know this, think about it or do their homework on Cuba before the debates in …Florida? As Cubans, still suffering serious human rights abuses, gain more freedoms to own land and control their own businesses you would think some one like Mitt Romney with his experience with Bain Capital would be chomping at the bit with ideas on how to reform Cuba. You would think someone would take a stand with strong statements to bring freedom to Cuba as the entire communist leadership is dying or losing the capabilities to rule. This would not be endorsing the Castro regime as some Cuban Americans might accuse, the Castro regime is soon to be no more through the most natural of processes; the circle of life.
And as China develops ties with Central and South America a policy to advance capitalism and prosperity to our most important neighbors might be in order. Cuba is letting the Chinese take our oil from the gulf right under our noses while we are restricted from drilling offshore. Drilling off the Florida coast isn’t an issue for Florida? What if Cuba were China?!! If we don’t act Cuba could become part of China.
Our own hemisphere can be worked to defeat China in the struggle for economic superiority. Lets not let the Chinese imperialists rape our neighbors of their natural resources in destructive fashion, shipping everything off to promote their own industry as they are beginning to do in Afghanistan, but let us spread clean mining, something we exceed in, and give our neighbors their own ability to produce, while growing our own manufacturing economy.
Yes, imperialism is capitalism run a muck; when industrialized nations feed off undeveloped nations. A truly equitable economic system comes not from redistributing wealth but from evenly distributing opportunity for all mankind; the ability to produce.
All this is the kind of vision Americans are looking for, that Americans understand because they are not polluted by the beltway culture so concerned over what the media perceives to be true. Not polluted by the self indulgent political class that has fallen completely out of touch with the people. We need leaders that are not led but can lead with a correct understanding of right. That was the strength of Ronald Reagan, not any set of specific policies.
This is the kind of vision we want our candidates to project. Not simply that we can succeed if left to our own devices, free of government restrictions, but that we are a good people that are making positive contributions to the rest of the world; that we are the good guys.
