Publisher note:
The below column represents my own personal feelings it is not necessarily the opinion of the paper, if you wish to rebut my thoughts and defend the president’s policies, we will be glad to provide you the same space, run with no comments from the paper.

In my lifetime we have had presidents that I have thought were at best mediocre, but I still trusted them and respected them as my president. I had no fear that through their leadership everything I had been taught and had learned about this country would drastically change.

Even Jimmy Carter in his term as president, who at his best was bad, was an honorable man.

Then came Barack Obama. Although I didn’t vote for him, and for sure I didn’t agree with his philosophy, I was ready to at least accept and respect him as our president. But his arrogance and determination to change drastically the values that I have respected over all my years changed that hope almost immediately.

This distrust started with his first world tour where he apologized for American exceptionalism; his habit of not telling the truth; his own interpretation of the Constitution; his selection of advisors, especially the czars; and unfortunately the list just goes on.

His actions over the last six years has made it impossible for me to show any respect whatsoever for his leadership. The latest mess at the border and his habit of blaming everyone else except himself and his failure to be decisive on world affairs have convinced me there is not going to be a change for the better over the next two years; in fact for all practical purposes, our great ship of state is going to be rudderless.

I have had a hard time figuring out for myself why he has taken the country in the direction that he has and why he has no respect for enforcing the Constitution, which he swore to uphold until I heard a recent interview with Bill Ayers. Ayers was and is the ultimate terrorist. His group the “Weathermen” put the fear of God in most of us during the 60’s. That group bombed, maimed and killed people; the fact that a bomb blew up and killed three of that group saved us from the horrors of having hundreds of military personnel killed at a military ball on a base in New Jersey.

Ayers in his interview on Fox News, still to this day, denies his group did any harm to civilians nor does he show any remorse or change of heart on what they did and for that matter, neither does his wife Bernadette Dorn, who is a terrorist in her own right, probably worse than Ayers.

He claims he barely knew Barack Obama back in the president’s early Chicago days. This statement is just not true. Nor does he talk with him now, he claims; that’s hard to believe.

Listening over the years to the president’s speeches, almost every philosophy that Bill Ayres still espouses has been echoed by the president at one time or another and in one form or another.

In fact Bill Ayers would be in prison right now if his case was not overturned by a technicality.

It’s alarming; if you haven’t heard or read his comments, please do so. If in fact the president believes in many of Ayers ideals, I feel you might come to same conclusion that I have: that we have a leader who seems hell-bent on changing the very ideals our country has been established on.

I think the most concerned we should be about Bill Ayers and his ilk is that most of them are now college professors and high school teachers. That should concern you more than anything else.

I also saw in the last few weeks, “America,” a movie produced and written by Dinesh D’Souza. I would recommend you see it; at the end of the movie, people stood and cheered.

Many who did this were baby boomers. I suspect they did this because they do still believe in the concept that we live in the best country the world has ever produced and that we can insure as baby boomers that it will still be here for our grandchildren and great grandchildren, but only if we rise out of our easy chairs and get involved again like we used to in our communities. You remember when we were involved in church and civic groups and even politics?

As baby boomers we did change our country for the good. The problem is that we have allowed that good that we have done to be hijacked by idealists who feel that they’re owed everything we have earned for nothing.

What we need is a Congress that has courage and determination and does not go along just to be able to go along.
What we need is a revival of good common sense and patriotism and that’s up to you to do.

We don’t need to turn back the clock and just hope things will go back to the way they were in the good old days and for sure there are things that need to be adjusted and changed to insure our Republic’s future.

One way to insure this at every future election is do your homework and get out of your comfort zone and vote. If you do that then and only then will change begin to happen.

I firmly believe that change can happen with some extra effort on our part; do you?

T. Pat Cavanaugh is the publisher of The News. He can be reached at pcavanaugh@rockdalenews.com