Yesterday was August 1st. A year ago yesterday at 6:05 PM Central Standard Time, 13 Americans were killed and about a hundred were injured. Their only crime: being at the wrong place at the wrong time, specifically the I-35W bridge at rush hour over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Our fellow countrymen died or were injured as they attempted to come home from an honest day's toil to nobly support their families. It was later reported that the bridge was unsafe and in need of repair. Several weeks later, Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN), Head Hack of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee was vehemently screaming for more federal funding, via a five-cent gas tax hike, and that was still a year before gas prices hit 4 bucks and more per gallon!

Yesterday, August 1st, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stuck to her guns in her previous threat of not allowing debate and a vote on the House floor to drill for more domestic oil. In a moment of drama that Cecil B. DeMille would be proud of, Pelosi closed the House for its summer recess, ordered the lights turned off and the CSPAN cameras shut off ("Your papers, please..."), with no action taken on the much needed matter of oil drilling. Hey, the lady had a book to peddle! Republicans took to the floor with a raucous movement to continue proceedings in the closed House to little avail other than to have their fifteen minutes (or more) of fame and protest. (I still would have loved to have been a fly on the wall there then!) It was a good fight, nonetheless. I have to give Pelosi credit though. For quite some time now, I have cynically and repeatedly requested that the last "useful idiot" exiting our now Democrat-controlled, Socialist-leaning Congress please turn out the lights. At least somebody finally heard me.

Yesterday, August 1st, the ongoing feud between Iran, Israel and the US, with a side order of Russia, continues to roil. With Russia's help in enriching its uranium, Iran's nuclear program is rocking and rolling. I'm not quite sure how this story may end, but so far, I am ruling out, "... and they all lived happily ever after." The first question is will somebody militarily strike Iran, followed by the next logical question of when, and then by whom, Israel or the US, and if Israel, will the US jump in? Currently, we have more troops in more places than Baskin & Robbins has flavors under the counter. Before his recent passing, author, pundit and retired Army Col. David Hackworth commented that right now, we have about 10 understaffed divisions doing the work of 14 fully staffed divisions. In Iraq and Afghanistan, our troops, active and reserve, are serving numerous combat tours. We'd be hard pressed to take on Rhode Island in a skirmish right about now, let alone Iran or any other country, and while all eyes are fixed on the Middle East, a stealth, hostile and ever increasingly powerful China continues to build up its already massive military, carry out its espionage, diminish our economy, and all under the supposedly innocuous cover of the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

Yesterday (yes, still August 1st), on EWTN's "The World Over," program host and EWTN News Director, Raymond Arroyo reported that US aid to Africa to supposedly combat AIDS now contains 1/3 less funding for abstinence programs. An August 30, 2005 piece in the UK's Guardian quoted Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Lewis chastised the US for pushing the abstinence programs because supposedly infection rates increased in Uganda, allegedly because of a shortage of US funded condoms. Fast forward to now. A June 30 piece by Sue Ellin Browder of the Zenit News Agency quoted Rev. Sam Ruteikara, an Anglican priest and Uganda's co-chairman of the national AIDS Prevention Committee. Rev Ruteikara claims that AIDS "profiteers" are now subverting funding from fidelity and abstinence programs and using that money to trade commodities for profit. Meanwhile, Uganda wants more condoms, and less abstinence, as US aid to Africa for AIDS is slated to increase from $15 billion to $50 billion over the next five years. As John McCain would say, "My friends, that's 'billion,' with a 'b!'"

If I were one of those poor fellow Americans who were tragically and needlessly killed on the I-35W Bridge last August 1st, on August 1st of this year, I would be rolling inconsolably in my grave and reaching out from it to grab the first Beltway bureaucrat I could hope to find passing through the cemetery.

Article 1, Section 8 of that dusty, tattered and all-too forgotten document still revered by some of us, and affectionately referred to as the US Constitution, specifically articulates the 20 or so federal functions to be funded by the Congress. While "transportation" is not mentioned, "post roads" are, and given that loose translation, I am sure that US mail, at least before the collapse, on more than one occasion was transported and delivered over the I-35W Bridge. Congress, and for that matter, the President, also have the duty to protect and defend the United States of America. Under the Eisenhower system, our interstate highways were intended not for transportation, but for evacuation in time of national crisis, so transportation funds for I-35 in general, including the bridge, are clearly warranted.

I find nowhere in the Constitution anything that tells me that our forefathers wished the USA to become a global ATM. We should not be paying the medical bills of Africans, nor protecting countries like Israel and South Korea (and hopefully, soon not Iraq) that have the sufficient military capabilities (or should) of adequately protecting themselves. World War II ended over 60 years ago, and we still have troops stationed on the soil of our now amiable and docile allies of Germany and Japan. And what do we get for our trouble? South Korea and Taiwan bad mouth us, Iraq already wants us out in 16 months, as per the ludicrous plan that Barack Obama thought of in a dream and planned on a matchbook cover. Israel spies on us frequently. Germany betrayed us at the UN with Iraq's oil for food program, and Japan has been adversarial to our economy by flooding our market with cheap goods, and while enjoying substantially lower tariffs from us than what they apply to our exports to them. George Washington warned us back then about entangling in foreign alliances. Nobody listened. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) tried to show us during the Republican Presidential primaries where all this money for foreign military aid was going and what it was costing us, but to the extent that anyone even allowed him to speak, he was laughed at, primarily because the same Council of Foreign relations (CFR) that is trying to usurp our sovereignty and security and regionalize the entire globe has as many members in the media as it does our government. Anyone naïve enough to think that censorship does not exist in the US today is still waiting for a jolly old fat man with a long white beard and wearing a red suit to come down their chimneys to deliver their presents at Christmas this year. Much of what we see in government and politics is a mirage connected by long strings to a dark room, and controlled by soiled hands and backed by big, and often, international money that cares about as much about you, me, our and our sovereign United States as we do about an ant at a picnic.

And yes, when Uganda isn't bad-mouthing us for abstinence programs, it's embezzling our tax dollars for condoms and commodities. What I haven't heard Uganda, or for that matter, any other country we have helped say, is "thank you." Even if such foreign aid was constitutional, it is being wasted if it is not going toward abstinence programs. Aspirin may relieve the pain of a toothache, but sooner or later, and like it or not, you still need to see the dentist. Same scenario in Uganda. Condoms only slow the spread of AIDS, and they're not even completely successful with that. Only abstinence, fidelity and monogamy, and instilling the long since overturned morals of sex only within marriage will end AIDS. Everything else is just an expensive and temporary fix, and now, with the corruption in Uganda, it's no longer even a temporary fix, just a costly sham. We never learn. All we need to know is wherever we see the "UN," just tack on a letter "R," and "R-UN" in the opposite direction!

I don't recall voting in any African elections. We have a President and a Congress duped, as well as influenced by the big money globalists like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergs, and so on. As a result, US dollars (for whatever little their still worth so far) go overseas for every military and humanitarian whim that comes down the pike, while our own infrastructure collapses literally before our very eyes and our own people are dying from it. Yet still, we wish to reward countries like Mexico that not only tolerates its citizens to illegally enter the US, but also aids them in doing so, with $200 billion for its infrastructure. The problems of other countries belong to other countries. I agree with P.J. O'Rourke, who once opined that while every person has a moral duty to give to charities, no individual has a sovereign right to expect such charities. Charitable giving is the duty of individuals, not governments. In the real world, if you use somebody else's money for a purpose other than that for which it was intended, it's called embezzlement, and that is a serious crime. In government, it's called foreign aid and it's just the cost of doing business. Robin Hood was truly a humanitarian, but he was also still a thief. The problem with giving foreign aid away like candy is that not only are such programs costly and unconstitutional, but typically the money, like in Uganda, winds up in the hands of crooks, yet still, the spigot flows, primarily so that the despots of the world will like the US, as if that matters, and ironically, they never do anyway, no matter how many more of our tax dollars we continually dole out to them on a silver platter. We don't have foreign policy. We just have a global popularity contest, and the more we bribe the judges, the more we lose. Supposedly, Einstein once said words to the effect that "To repeat the same task while anticipating a different result is the definition of insanity." That said, our State Department is clearly an asylum.

The US has plenty of oil to not only propel our vehicles (including tanks, naval ships and fighter planes) but to heat our homes, businesses and military installations. Our dependence on foreign oil, often from hostile or unstable countries, which has dramatically increased to a majority of the oil we consume, is a matter of national defense in the potential event that the spigot is shut off, either for a ransom or for a more dire agenda by one of these supplying nations. The very same Democrats who claim to be compassionate for the struggling poor during this alleged energy shortage, are in fact controlled by the radical environmental lobby. Let the poor eat cake and with whatever spare change they have left over, maybe buy Nancy's book while Congress enjoys an unearned summer off from its daunting duties of wasting our money and renaming post offices. Real Clear Politics (www.realclearpolitics.com) currently shows Congress's job approval rating at whopping 19.3% at this writing. No great shock there. (Even President G.W. ("Global World") Bush pulled off a miraculous 29.2%!)

Economist and commentator Dr. Walter Williams, once when filling in for Rush Limbaugh on his radio show, said that he once sat on a committee for the Congress that studied federal spending. Dr. Williams concluded, and correctly so, that if the federal government was to strictly adhere to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, not only would roughly at least 2/3 of federal bureaucracies and programs cease, but so would about the same percentage of federal spending, in turn, leaving more money to the states and the incessantly beleaguered taxpayers, and without the spending, waste, and deficits we now face. Congress gets plenty of our money. The problem is that it is wasted on feel-good, unconstitutional pork and entitlement programs that, if are even government functions at all, fall within the purview of the states, as per the 10th Amendment, and provide job security and power for the pork purveyors themselves (the members of Congress), and therein lies the rub. The problem is not that Congress doesn't get enough money. The problem is that Congress, despite all its hot air, refuses to cut spending, uphold the Constitution as each member is sworn to do, and then has no money left over for what it is mandated to do by the Constitution, such as protecting the American people. And yes, Republicans, I mean you, too, which is why the American voters have rightly handed you your arrogant, incompetent heads since 2006, and will probably continue to do so until you remember that you are Republicans, and not Democrats. Right now, all we have is either "Republicrats" or "Demublicans." And Congressman Oberstar, go take a flying leap into the Mississippi River yourself, and take your proposed tax hikes with you! As your constituents drowned, the best you could do was throw them yet another cinder block on the pretense that it was a life preserver!

Then I watch McCain and Obama dance around the head of a pin and blather on about sheer vacuous silliness, and to the extent that they discuss the issues, they either skim over them or seem utterly clueless. Same ol,' same ol' from the globalist, one-world-order CFR member, that like our current President, cares more about the UN, NATO, the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank, etc., than his own nation (hence his zeal for illegal immigrant amnesty and global warming fantasies), and the Marxist, double-talking, shallow, platitude-pushing globalist-wannabe who much of our naïve electorate seems enamored with but is unable to cite any solid reason why. In their defense in that regard, there isn't much water to draw from that trough of a resume anyway.

The sage philosopher and writer, George Santayana, once adeptly noted, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George was tragically, but prophetically correct, as this past August 1st has proven. Just one year later, and we still haven't remembered a damned thing.

Doug Wrenn

PS: I haven't forgotten. To all the victims of the I-35W Bridge collapse and all their families and friends, you are in my prayers. May God grant you His peace.