The Shanks Dimension

This past month, I decided to re-read all 27 Matt Helm novels before the end of this year.  Being a long time Matt Helm fan, I had discovered news articles about a possible relaunch of the character in movies.  Production is expected to begin in 2010.  As the article described, this (new)Matt Helm film would be more along the lines of the recent Jason Bourne series of movies.  Which does make it closer to the true Matt Helm than what the Dean Martin films of the 1960s were.

For those readers out there who do not know who or what Matt Helm is, or for that matter, when told the name Matt Helm; thinks about the four movies that Dean Martin played as that character – he is to put it simply – a assassin.  Matt Helm was  America’s answer to Ian Fleming’s 007 James Bond.  He had an “American” license to kill so to speak.  And just to let the reader know, this author loves those four movies.  They were even sited, along with the “In Like Flint” movies as being the inspiration for the Austin Powers series of films.

Sadly, author Donald Hamilton had finished the 28th and final novel, but could not get any publisher interested before he passed away at age 80 in Visby, Sweden, on November 20, 2006.  Just so that no one thinks that Donald Hamilton wrote ONLY Matt Helm novels, Mr. Hamilton wrote his first novel; Date with Darkness in 1947.  His next novel was Night Walker (1954).  Both of these novels dealt with counter-espionage.  But Mr. Hamilton also wrote Westerns like Mad River(1957) and The Big Country(1957).  Both of these novels were made into movies “The Violent Men”(1955).  And also Texas Fever(1960).  In fact, Matt Helm the character, was also a author of westerns; but being called back to duty, no other mention of Helm’s writing career was ever expanded upon.  As it was in the movies, so it was in the novels, Matt Helm was also a photographer as well.  After that novel, with a few exceptions, Donald Hamilton stuck mainly with writing his Matt Helm novels.  As with all Matt Helm novels, it was done in the first person point of view.

But the character of Matt Helm is this.  He was and is a well trained assassin who was recruited by his boss known only as Mac, as they fought the Nazis with the OSS in the closing years of World War Two.  And as it is discovered in this particular novel, The Terminators, Mac and Henry Priest served together in Norway before Mac formed his own outfit.

After world war two, Matt Helm tried to leave the war behind and thus started a family.  Then, his past came back and it broke up his marriage.  Mac was there again and thus, Helm returned to what he did in WW2 – a government assassin fighting in the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s.  His novels in the 1960s are shorter than the ones that came out in the 1970s/1980s, growing from 150 pages to 200 or more pages in length.

Things started going downhill in the 1990s for Matt Helm/Donald Hamilton. The Cold War was over with.  The Berlin Wall came down.  Overseas, authors such as John Le Carre and Len Deighton survived by focusing on the psychological side of the spy genre. And of course there is Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne.  These authors were still in the business with their psychological thrillers dealing with their secret agent/agencies that they wrote about.

The Terminators was published in 1975 by Fawcett Gold Medal Books.  Lets review what was happening in the world back then.  US was getting out of the Vietnam War.  We also were dealing with the fallout of the Watergate mess.  And there was also the Gas shortage.  Lets not forget that the nanny state really began to flex some muscle.  You cannot smoke on airplanes while they were flying.  That was the nose of the camel getting in under the tent flap.  Now fast forward to the 21st century.  As far as smoking goes – there are efforts underway that one cannot even smoke outdoors!  I use that example as the most visible – and the one that most people can relate too; as to how far things have gone wrong in the United States of America.  It makes sense to ban smoking inside a closed cylinder with recycled air going through it at 30,000 feet up in the air.  One cannot smoke in open air stadiums now?  Out in the wide open spaces of the wildernesses?  Thats insane.

What about the mandates on the automobiles for safety and fuel economy?  Example, child seats.  Do I really have to go into more detail?  Well, yes I do.  Thats the whole purpose of this essay.

While reading The Terminators, there were many passages in that book that really just slapped me in the face as warnings for the future(or for our times).  What did Jeremiah Wright, Barrack H. Obama’s friend said in that famous quote of his, “Americas chickens have come home to roost!”  This phrase can be applied to what liberalism has done to the United States of America for the past 30 plus years.

This thought came to me when I finished reading chapter 6 of this book as the character Diana Lawrence is explaining to agent Matt Helm how she ended up in the business.  What lead up to this mission for Matt Helm is this – his rep in the secret services for being a tough SOB was needed for a “simple” bodyguard mission.  Problem was, the person he was suppose to protect — Madeleine Barth, was killed right under his nose, and the body dumped overboard while the ship was still docked in Norway.  Going back to his contact, he had to get “another” girl for the cover in order for the mission to go on.  Diana Lawrence is the new girl.  Now shes in the cabin of the dead girl, wearing her clothes.  And she is talking with Matt Helm about how she got involved in the business (other than being on the scene and drafted on the spot).

There will be references to another character that appeared in a earlier book in the Matt Helm series by the name of Captain Henry Priest, USN (ret.), who is also a retired congressman who lost his wife between his first appearance in the Matt Helm saga (book # ,14 The Intriguers), and this book.  Diana Lawrence refers to Henry Priest as “Skipper.”  But how did Henry Priest lose his wife? That actually is the key question to this entire novel.  Due to the fuel shortage in the early 1970s, Priest wasn’t able to get a full fuel load of diesel oil for his yacht – named Frances II after his wife (Francis I).  And his wife fell overboard after they ran out of that fuel before they could be back to shelter.  She was swept away by the current and turned up dead a few days later.  All because the new government agency EPA mandated that X-number of gallons can only be sold to water craft.

Now, several months later, Priest is in his old WW2 stomping grounds since he and Mac (remember – Matt Helm’s boss) both worked in the resistance back in World War Two in Norway.  This was a set up to lure a Mr. Lincoln Alexander Kotko-the CEO of a oil company (Petrolene Incorporated)out of his hideaway into Hank Priest’s chosen killing ground in Norway, with the lure of a new type of oil drilling equipment to use in the North Sea – nicknamed the Sigmund Siphon.  Sigmund was Priest’s codename back then.

Throw in yet a third party — Dr. Adolf Elfenbein and daughter Greta; and they think that the Sigmund Siphon is real, trying to get the secret documents instead of Helm’s party. And on top of that – a traitor to the agency that Matt belongs too, turns up as Kotko’s bodyguard.

OK, enough background material.  We pick up the action in Chapter 6.  Quote sections of the novel will be bracketed [ ].  Page numbers will be listed as thus (page ##).

(page 59)

[...  It disturbed me to note that this morning she looked very good, slim and willowy in her own nice fitting gray slacks and neat little short-sleeved gray sweater she'd been wearing when I'd first seen her in Tracteurstedt—I'd smuggled the garments aboard under my jacket.  Her long coat and been too bulky and had been left with Henry Priest.  She had a kerchief over her hair to hide the fact that it wasn't as dark as Mrs. Madeleine Barth's hair was suppose to be.  She looked quite bright and attractive, and I didn't like it, remembering how drab and colorless I'd thought her the evening before.  While I'd have liked to think that a night in my company could cause a perfectly].

Remember — he is talking about his new, draftee partner of the night before – Diana Lawrence, who is filling in for one Madeleine Barth; who is now deceased.

(page 60)

[plain female to blossom into quiet beauty, honesty forced me to admit it wasn't likely.  The change must therefore be in the way I was looking at her.  Changes like that you've got to watch.

There was, of course, also the fact that she looked as serene and untouched as if she'd spent the night chastely alone in her narrow Nordic berth.  Professional caution made me wonder uneasily, for a moment, if maybe she wasn't a truly clever little actress putting me on for some sinister purpose.  Well, if she was, I had to hand it to her:  it was a great act.

“No,” she said, sitting down at a table by a window.

“No what?” I asked, seating myself to face her.

“No, it's not an act darling.  That's what you were just thinking, isn't it, looking at me so suspiciously.  You were wondering if maybe . . .  maybe I hadn't lured you into bed for wicked conspiratorial reasons of some kind.”

I sighed.  “Kooks I can stand, but clairvoyants give me the creeps.”

“Then you're in fine shape,” she said, “because that's all I am, just a simple country kook.  And the funny thing is, I never realized it until a few months ago.  I thought.  . . .  I thought everybody had those crazy, uncivilized impulses from time to time.  And I never dreamed I'd really have the nerve to. . . .” She stopped, and laughed abruptly.  “You were wrong, Matt.”

“How wrong?”

“Those beds.  You said they weren't big enough, remember?” She blushed, and busied herself with some pickled fish on her plate.  “Matt.”

“Yes?”

“I feel all funny inside.  Reckless-funny.  Does it show?”

“Not one little bit,” I said.  “You look very genteel and proper, as a matter of fact.”  After a moment, I went on, “You did say the Elfenbeins probably don't know you by sight?  I hope you're right, because if I've got the right people spotted, here they come.”

“Don't hoard the salt, darling,” she said.  “Other people eat eggs, too, you know. . . .  It's really magnificent ]

(page 61)

[scenery, isn't it?  I understand it gets even more spectacular up north.”]

OK, so this is the lead to what is coming up next.  Are we discovering that Diana Lawrence is insane?  A new found adrenaline junky?  Rebelling against her current society norms (of the 1960s-70s) to discover that when one is on the edge, the closer to enjoying life one can discover.

(page 61)

[ “Yes, that's Adolf Elfenbein all right,” Diane said softly.  “At least he fits our description; and so does she.”

“How the hell did you get involved in all this, anyway, Diana?”

“It's a long story.  Don't ask if you don't want to know.”

I said, “Somewhere up the line, my life may very well depend on your reactions.  Naturally I want to know what kind of a female nut I've got for a partner on this screwball operation.”

She laughed again.  “Well,” she said, “it was the gas shortage that did it, believe it or not.”

“Since you give me the option, I don't believe it,” I said.  “I mean, it was a damned inconvenience and still is form time to time; but I can't see you getting so upset about it that you volunteer for a crazy, crooked, international mission to swipe fuel for all the thirsty Cadillacs of America.  Hank Priest, sure.  Those old Navy boys come all over patriotic from time to time:  my country right or wrong, and all that jazz --”

“Actually, the Skipper is avenging, or atoning for, his wife's death, didn't you know?”]

(page 62)

[ I frowned.  “I thought Mrs. Priest drowned in a boating accident.  That's the way I read it in the Florida papers.”

“Frances Priest drowned because their thirty-foot sport fishing boat – the Skipper's pride and joy, called the Frances II—had just run out of fuel when she fell overboard, so he couldn't go after her.  The current carried her away, or something.  You'll have to get the nautical details from the nautical expert, but it was a traumatic experience for him, as you can imagine:  a man who'd spent his life at sea losing his wife like that!  I guess he decided that no more nice U.S. Ladies were going to die for lack of diesel oil, if he had to go and steal it.  Anyway, he worked out this scheme and sold it in Washington.  He used to be a congressman, you know, so he knew his way around and they ere all in a panic at the time.  This was back when things were really tight and they were scared to death of an honest-to-God revolution at the gas pumps.  They were ready to grab at any idea, no matter how far out.  As for the illegality of it, well, that city isn't noted for it's respect for the law these days, or hadn't you noticed?  So here we all are.  The Great Petroleum Caper.”]

In 2007 to 2009, what happened to the price of oil in the United States of America?  It rose to alarming levels.  Four dollar a gallon prices leading up to the 2008 elections.  Statements such as the one from Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin like “Drill baby drill.” was looked down upon by the elites of our society.  Even by the elites within the Republican Party.  And the people who did vote for the McCain/Palin ticket were voting for the good looking young lady governor and not for the top of the ticket.  The “so-called” maverick of the Republican Party.  The maverick that always found time to go to the Democratic side of the aisle, but we never saw any Dems act like McCain and come over to the Republican side of the aisle – never.  Seems to have been a one-way road I think.

Also, the elites of this country looked down their noses at the angry masses forming their ‘Tea Parties.”  They would try to insult them by using a gay, sexual term called “Tea Bagging” to try and describe and insult these citizens who see their country going down the wrong path.

(page63)

[ “You forget that man called Denison.”

I said, I hoped casually:  “Oh, sure, Mr, Kotko's dangerous Mr. Denison.  Add him to the list.  You didn't tell me how the gas shortage got you here.”

“She said, “Actually, I don't know that I'd call myself a victim of the crisis, darling.  I may actually be a better girl for it, or at least a less hypocritical one.  It made me think for the first time in my life, really think.  I mean, there I was pedaling my ecological ten-speed bicycle on my way to save the world and make it beautiful, and shaking my fist dutifully at all those obscene, polluting Chrysler Imperials whizzing past—and suddenly, no more gas.  You know, darning, bicycling when you feel like bicycling or want to prove something is one thing.  Looking forward to a lifetime of sitting on that hard little seat and pushing those crazy pedals and getting your hairdo ruined and your pants or stockings greasy is something totally different.”  She shook her head ruefully.  “It was . . . a real shock, Matt.  Suddenly I realized that all my life I'd been taking my opinions from other people.  I'd been thinking just what all my concerned, idealistic friends had been telling me to think.  At least I'd been thinking I was thinking it, if you know what I mean.”

“Give me time,” I said.  “I'm a few thinks behind, but I'll catch up eventually.”

“Suddenly,” she said, “I realized that I – me, Diana Lawrence—didn't feel like that at all. I made the dreadful discovery that I really liked big, comfortable, air-conditioned cars, and I was going to miss them terribly if they disappeared.  And once I started looking, I kept finding more disillusioning things about myself, for instance that I really liked warm, soft, lovely fur coats and I wasn't (my underlines).  ]

(page 64)

[really all that disturbed about the poor little animals who'd lost their lives to make them.  Well, leopards and such, okay.  They're endangered; and I don't want to be the one to push them over the edge to extinction but I never heard that the mink situation was even mildly critical.  I even discovered—this is a terrible confession, and I probably shouldn't tell you—that I was pretty tired of hearing about those darling little seals brutally clubbed to death by those dreadful men on the goddamned Pribilof Islands, wherever they are.  Hell, maybe the poor guys were just trying to earn a living, and that was the safe and efficient way to do it, and maybe the herd could spare a few seals now and then.  Aren't you shocked?”

“I'm tough,” I said.  “I'll recover.”

It's part of the required duties of a secret agent.  He's supposed to sit there showing wide-eyed interest, hoping for some useful nuggets of information, but it isn't always easy.  I mean, ten-speed bikes and fur seals for God's sake!]    (my underlines).

What does this passage in Donald Hamilton’s novel, The Terminators, present us with?  We are seeing a liberal come to grips with the real world and is slowing turning into a conservative?

(page 64)

[ “But the thing that really got to me,” Diana was saying, “when I started thinking, was the busybodies who, not satisfied with saving the environment and the animals, kept trying to save me.  Without even asking my permission! Here I'd been applauding uncritically every time somebody hung a new safety gadget on my car and now I realized suddenly that I was sick of it.  I was sick of people who were forever saving everything from everybody, and everybody from everything.  I was fed to the teeth with all the screaming seatbelts and wailing ignition locks—now you can't even start the stupid machine without getting yourself all safetied up!  What's that junk doing in a car?  A car's for driving, isn't it?  If you want to be so damned safe you can stay home, can't you?  And anyway,]  (my underlines again).

Lets fast forward to the year 2009.  Our society that has grown up in the past 25 years has been conditioned to look for those safety features.  Better fuel mileage, airbags, electronic interlock that you have to blow into so the on board computer knows if you are sober enough to drive home or not.  If we load our children up into the back seat of the car without using one of those damn child safety seats, the parents would be arrested.  The children taken away by the local CPS agency(Children Protective Services – second only to the IRS when it comes to the US government stepping in and really messing up you life).  The CPS that children who are devious enough to realize it can blackmail their own parents into doing stuff for fear of losing their children to a foster home.

We use to be able to protect our homes and families with our own firearms, or maybe the family pet did double duty as a walking four-legged razor blade patrolling the backyard (OK, I took that line from the movie “True Lies” – it just fits, OK?).  Are we getting a picture here now?  All the bad guys gets the breaks and the good guys, the dirty end of the shaft.  Thanks to congress, our court systems, and the trial lawyers to pay for all that so that they can keep their jobs and to hell with the rest of the country.

Lets get back to Diana telling Matt Helm how she came to be with him on this mission…

(page 65)

[if I want to go through a windshield headfirst, that's my own goddamn' business.  Isn't it?”

“So you decided to go through a windshield headfirst just to show them, and here you are?”

Diana laughed.  “Something like that.  What I really decided was that I was fed up with being so damned concerned, so damned idealistic, yes, and so damned safe.  I didn't really know what I was going to do about it; but then one afternoon at a Washington cocktail party I go into an argument with a well-heeled society female with whom I'd served on some worthy committees.  She tried to tell me how we should look at the bright side of the crisis.  What she considered bright was that all the people who'd loved fast cars, or snowmobiles, or dune buggies, or speed boats, or travel trailers, would all be grounded, and wasn't it wonderful, my dear?  I mean, think of all those broken-hearted folks with their beautiful, expensive, useless toys—well, like the Skipper and his fancy fishing boat—and this bitch was gloating about it, damn her!  If that was high-minded idealism, I thought, to hell with it!” ]  (my underlines).

Now, lets return to 2009.

That high-society elite that our girl Diana was speaking too at that cocktail party back in the early 1970s. She never went away. She just got more powerful with the Washington in crowd.  The Environmental Protection Agency lead the government out of the polluted lands to our better environment that we live in now.  Things are better now than they were in the 1970s.  But for socialists and liberals, the American public can NEVER get things corrected to the point that they would be satisfied.  That would take the banning of motor vehicles, power plants, etc. to do that.

I think it was in the 1990s but, does anybody remember when Congress passed that tax on yachts and then had to take it back due to the damage it was doing to the poor and middle class citizens who earned their living by BUILDING THOSE YACHTS!  Same thing with airplanes, the Fixed Base Operators (FBOs) that provide shelter for the planes, refuel them, collect the landing fees, etc.,  were hurting before tort reform was done.  When that took place, Cessna got back into building small airplanes again – not just business jets.

Liberal is becoming too small a word to describe the outright sabotage to this society that has taken place for the majority of my life.  Socialist Liberalism seems right, but why bother.  Liberalism squared?  Same thing.

December 2009 will see my 50th year on this, the third rock around the sun.  I grew into adulthood in the 1970s.  I saw what President Jimmy Carter was doing to this country.  My first presidential elections that I was able to vote in was in 1980.  My pick back then, and when he came up for re-election again in 1984; was Ronald W. Reagan.

But even so, there was only so much a president can do.  It requires a House or Senate working with a president to move things along in a positive direction.  If congress does everything it can to block progress just because they were from the opposite political party – we have stalemate.  And thus the ship of state is zig-zagging towards a uncertain future.

(page 65)

[ Diana paused to look out at the mountainous coastline sliding by.  I asked, “What happened?”

She grinned.  “Well, I practically shocked that buxom biddy out of her expensive foundation garment by saying that I thought the internal combustion engine had been a good and faithful servant to mankind and if we did have to bury it, the least we could do was show some grief and appreciation, instead of spitting on the grave.  She isn't a lady with a great sense of humor, so the argument got pretty hot.  I mean, she actually accused me of being a Traitor to the Cause.  I noticed this rather striking, weathered, gray-haired character standing by, looking kind of amused.  The next morning he called me up and said he was Captain Henry Priest, USN, Retired, and would I care to have lunch with him?  His intentions were strictly honorable, he said; he was forming a certain organization with government blessing, and he had employment he thought might suit me, judging by the way I'd talked the night before. ...”  She paused and shrugged.  “Well, that's about it, Matt.  It was just the kind of crazy, crummy, dangerous, anti-]

(page 66)

[social thing I'd been looking for to get the taste of all those goddamned crusades out of my mouth.  The blackfooted ferret was going to have to do without me for a while.  I was going out and steal a lot of smelly oil and I wasn't going to buckle a single seatbelt while I was doing it!”

I said, “The Liberation of Diana Lawrence, we'll call it when we put it on the screen.”

She looked at me for a moment; then she reached out and put a hand on top of mine, small gesture of protest.  “Don't,” she said quietly.  “Don't make fun of me, darling.  Don't make fun of us.  Don't spoil it.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It's really a terrible thing,” she said. “None of those people were real; and the world they lived in wasn't real.  They'll never find, or make, that dreamland of theirs where the streams run nothing but distilled water, and the breezes blow nothing but pure oxygen and nitrogen mixed one to five, and no animals or people ever die. This is real.  You're real.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.  “If that's a compliment.”

“Death is real,” she said.  “I learned that last night, waiting in that cabin for somebody to come in and murder me like they'd murdered Evelyn—if I didn't shoot them first.  It was wonderful.  Why didn't anybody ever tell me that the only way to be alive, is to risk being dead?  It had never happened to me before.  I'd always been protected before.  It was horrible and marvelous and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.”

“You're a screwball,” I said.

She gave me a sudden, boyish grin and squeezed my hand lightly before taking hers away.  “Well, as they say, it takes one to know one,” she said.

Of course, she was perfectly right.] (my underlines).

What is our United States government trying to do to its citizens?  The folks who think that government is the be all, end all of everything won the 2008 elections.  Health care (aka Obamacare). Cap and Trade(which would reduced the USA to “just another nation among many.” would actually emptied our pockets to other nations of the planets who can’t wait to steal some of our treasure, etc).  And we have a president in office that bows down at the drop of any apology he can come up with to make the nation he is president of – look bad.  2009 was his apology tour of the planet.  Plus, President Obama can’t wait to fly to Copenhagen in December, to sign the climate treaty there, which is a false document that would end up nullifying this nation’s constitution to hear some say.  In fact, the president of the European Union, President Herman van Rompuy, said this would be a first step in that direction.

In fact, I shall quote from The Examiner the following two paragraphs….  “The climate treaty, it is theorized, would mandate that wealthier nations redistribute up to 2% of their annual gross domestic product to third-world countries in reparation for so-called “climate debt.” In other words, it mandates a handout from richer nations to poorer nations, based on the spurious scientific evidence of global warming. Evidence which has recently proven to be falsified, according to the leak of information from Hadley CRU.”

“The foundation for these fears that U.S. Sovereignty will be usurped result from a section on governance in the treaty, beginning on page 22 of the proposal. Some believe it would create an unelected world government with direct control over all financial and trading markets, plus the direct power to intervene over the heads of elected governments in the economic and environmental affairs of the nations which sign the Treaty. It is on this basis that some fear the U.S. may lose its sovereignty if  President Obama signs this treaty, and Congress ratifies it into law. Among those who warn against the treaty is British Lord Monckton,  the former science advisor to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “

How about Gun Control?   After the attempt on Ronald Regan’s life and Jim Brady’s near death from that assassination attempt, liberals and their new found friends – the Bradys, have been trying to disarm the American public.

Why?  The Second Amendment, as I see it, is an insurance policy against the central government ignoring the people and oppressing them.  The government is suppose to work for us – the US citizen.  Not the other way around as it now appears to be.  Getting back to that Obama care program.  If one doesn’t have personal health insurance coverage, the IRS can pay you a visit.  You also get the dream vacation of a lifetime by spending five years behind bars.  And a few other odds and ends to make life unhappy for you.

Eight years of war against terrorists who hide out in the mountains.  A former President who signed a blank check for anything the military wanted.  Boots on the ground was what was needed in this war.  Equipment for fighting World War Four can be put on the back burner.  No it can’t!  Only 250+ F-22s when it was originally envisioned that we needed a bare minimum of 400 or more 5th generation fighters!

The military still couldn’t come up with the needed weapon systems that were really needed. (Hello!  The USAF tanker Crisis!  Boeing or Airbus, Airbus or Boeing.  Buying or leasing – oh wait, politics gets involved now.  Now its one big huge Charlie Foxtrot!  Before, it was just a little charlie foxtrot.  But no longer).  How about the Littoral Combat Ships program.  Lochkeed/Martin and General Dynamics going head to head.  Small ships that can get in close to shore for several types of missions.  But has problems with staffing needs.  They operate with bare minimum crew.  What about if they are hit in combat and there are no people for backup.  Damage control, etc?

The citizens of this country was feed up with the war.  They wanted a change.  Any change will do.  Well, the old Chinese proverb applies here:  Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.  The USA is out of the frying pan and down there into the flames now.  With a military that is worn out and needs a rest.  But there is no time for rest.  Not in this generational war we find ourselves in.  Yes – Generational War.  No one appears to remember President Bush saying that this war against terrorism will last long after he is president.  And it will still be around when President Obama leaves office as well.  A ENTIRE culture is geared for dying in order to promote the religion of Islam – to make it the single religion of the world.

2010 is going to be banner year.

Will the United States of America pull its chestnuts out of the fire or let them be burned off since they were useless to begin with?  Should the United States go out with a whimper and then come back with a bang? Or maybe just break apart like that Russian political scientist, Professor Igor Panarin said in 2008.  He seems to think that the country will break apart into 5-6 smaller countries.  I say nyet.  My prediction is this.  East coast will become the Empire of New York north of the Mason Dixon line and as far west as Chicago.  The left coast is gone.  What used to be known as Fly Over Country will become the United States of Texas!  From this phoenix rebirth, a new type of America (or American) will arise.  One who has to take responsibility for themselves.  Charity once again will be voluntarily instead of wealth redistribution programs like what we have in the USA now.

Quote:  “I’d always been protected before.”  Diana Lawrence, The Terminators (1975).

I say, when the protectors become oppressors, things have to change.  When good ideas and common sense fall by the wayside to become mandates to redistribute wealth, things have to change.  President Obama has so far not broken any of his promises for change you can believe in.  They were changes to be sure  – but more like nightmares than something you can really believe in.

References:

1.  The Terminators by Donald Hamilton. Published 1975. Fawcett Gold Metal Books.  ISBN:  0-449-14035-0.

Online Ref.

1.  Copenhagen Treaty (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aHZ4UFjPVrr4 ).

2.Lord Monckton on Copenhagen Treaty (http://thepostnemail.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/lord-monckton-copenhagen-treaty-will-establish-marxist-world-government/ ) & (http://www.theshanksdimension.com/2009/11/bye-bye-us-constitution-hello-world-goverment/ ).

3.President of the European Union, President Herman van Rompuy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_European_Union ).

4.Aerospace Dreams blog “The Hack Heard Around the World-Global Warming is all Fake!

(http://aerospacedreams.blogspot.com/2009/11/hack-heard-around-world-global-warming.html ).

5.Gun Control and how it (couldn’t stop) Major Hasan’s rampage (http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=15819 ).

6.Aerospace Dreams blog “USS Independence – Tri-hull monster of the Gulf” (http://aerospacedreams.blogspot.com/2009/10/uss-independence-tri-hull-monster-of.html ).

7.Flash255Bunker blog “Breakup of United States in 2010“  (http://flash255bunker.blogspot.com/2008/12/breakup-of-united-states-in-2010.html ).