"Ask not what your country can do for you....."

Imagine this quote from JFK's inauguration speech if he were to give it today. Before he'd get to the White House, the headlines would scream.....

"Kennedy hates SCHIP, hates children"

"Kennedy expects poor people to pay for groceries"

"Rich at an advantage... can do more for their country, Poor left out"

At one time, it was considered shameful to be poor and to ask for a hand out. To offer to pay for another child's health insurance, would have been consider an insult to the parent.

When my father broke his neck, I remember the shame in my family when we received food stamps and free lunches. I refused to tell the clerk I was a free lunch because I didn't want anyone to know we were poor. I got a job to pay for lunches I could have received for free just so people wouldn't know.

Yet today, it's just gimme, gimme, gimme, more, more, more.

We even have advertisements on the radio to solicit people to take government hand outs.

The trends in this are increasing at ever increasing speeds. I want to blame George H.W. Bush for his part in this.

Remember the debate with Clinton and Perot? When the young woman started her question with "You are our father, we are your children......."

That question was all teed up for Bush to make the role of government clear for the population. Instead he blathered on and on about compassion, programs, blah blah blah.

What he should have said was...

"I am running for President of the United States, I am not your father, nor am I an uncle, cousin brother, sister, mother or aunt.

There are 300 million people in the United States, 300 million people with different wants, needs, & desires. There will never be a government big enough to address every thing for every person in this country.

In addition, the government cannot do anything for one of the 300 million without creating an issue for another."

Instead of politicians stepping up and really laying out the hard cold facts of life, we get these every thing for every body BS sound bites and a government that finds itself as hating children because it won't pay the insurance for children in households making $80,000/year.

The next politician who lays it out like that will get my vote forever. Unfortunately, he couldn't get elected as a dog catcher.

And I wonder how a dumbass like Laketa Cole gets elected.