*NOTE*

Charlie will be back with his first soapbox of 2020 on Friday, but in the meantime, here's a New Year's Soapbox Rewind from 2014.  Happy New Year from everyone at the CDB and Twin Pines Ranch. - TeamCDB/BW

2015

Well, for somebody born in 1936, the very numerals themselves sound like the title to some B-grade black and white science fiction movie, some cheesy tale about how in 2015 the two-headed minotaurs from Uranus came to earth and ate everybody's brain and turned the human race into mindless robots.

When I was a little boy, it seemed that Christmas would never get here, now it seems to come about every six months.

No matter, I love Christmas time, and at our house we celebrate heartily. Hazel decorates five Christmas trees, keeps us all well fed and every Christmas Eve we go to church and when we come home we are joined by a bunch of family and friends and we spend the evening enjoying each other’s company.

As we approach the end of another year I oftentimes turn my attention to the chorus of voices that are so plentiful this time of year, that proclaim, “Where did the year go?”

I have been on this earth for 83 years and I remember elections and political climates from the days of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration through the present day.

It is my firm belief that the United States of America entered a Danger Zone several years ago that it is still in and that the American Dream, our individual rights, our Sovereignty, and any real chance of pursuing life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without interference from an all-consuming central government would become a thing of the past.

The gold standard of a democracy or republic is wrapped up in a simple phrase that most people attribute to Abraham Lincoln, although it goes much farther back in history.

“Of the people, by the people, for the people”

Congressman Adam Schiff has done something most unique, he has become judge, jury, prosecuting attorney, defense attorney, appellate court, and even an unwitting witness in his headlong, tunnel vision rush to remove a duly elected president.

Every time you go to a concert, whether it’s in a football stadium or a fifteen hundred seat performance hall, there is, has and will be heavy-duty work that started happening long before you took your seat and long after you vacate it.

“He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”

1936 was not the most prestigious year in American history, although a few noteworthy things did happen.

It was a leap year, Franklin Roosevelt was President, the New York Yankees beat the then New York Giants in six games of the World Series and the Statue of Liberty celebrated 50 years of standing in the New York Harbor.

The advent of the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the amount of on-air time they devote to politics are - in my opinion - responsible for the American public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for all things political and the strong opinions that are encouraged and influenced by the obviously biased outlets.

This column may appear to be somewhat petty in some aspects, but as I believe that many times big problems begin as miniscule problems and, like microscopic worms, casually weave their way into the fabric of our lifestyles and in the conglomerate can have an overall effect on the quality of our lives.

On November 3, 1936 - Six days after I was born on October 28 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his second term as President of the United States of America and went on to be elected an unprecedented four times, dying in office just a few months into his fourth term.

The sight of Adam Schiff, a man with the sense of humor of a hookworm, trying to “parody” the words of a presidential transcript is downright sickening.

September 20, 1964 was a bright, crisp day in Tulsa, Oklahoma when a small group of people went to the upstairs office of a Justice of the Peace to witness Hazel Juanita Alexander and Charles Edward Daniels take their vows and enter into the bonds of holy matrimony.

We have just observed the 18th anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day almost three thousand people left home going to work, to catch planes, or whatever else the morning required of them, never to return, many of them reduced to a cup full of ashes or just part of a limb by the kind of evil that can only originate in the depths of hell.

I will be 83 years old in October and will be the first to admit that, for the most part, the world has totally outpaced me, technologically, style wise, musically, and certainly insofar as what is and is not socially acceptable.

We are just finishing up a month-long run across America, East Coast to West Coast and back and, contrary to the dire warnings of Democratic politicians and their lap puppy sycophants in the media, who claim we are on the brink of a recession, conversely, what I saw was America at work, busy retail outlets, highways full of eighteen-wheelers and railroads with frequent, long, loaded freight trains moving raw materials and transporting finished goods to markets where demand is high.

Okay, you’re in a dark alley in a high crime section of a big city answering a call about shots being fired and looking for a 5’ 10” male wearing dark clothes who an eyewitness says has run down the alley after pumping two bullets into a teenager who is lying on the sidewalk bleeding profusely and unresponsive.

When I went to grammar school there were kids in my classes who, when election time rolled around, would be for different candidates than I was, or rather their parents were, as we were all way too young to grasp the implications or ramifications of whichever candidates were on the ballot.

Some of the Democrat presidential candidates wasted no time in blaming the mass shooting at the Walmart in El Paso on President Trump.

Politics in the nation’s capital these days is like a dirty prize fight.

In this corner, the Democrats, in this corner, the Republicans, hitting below the belt, eye-gouging, rabbit punches, biting, scratching and hitting after the bell will all be allowed, there is no round limit and the result- nobody wins.

I will say at the outset that I have never believed the accusations of Russian collusion the Democrats have been trying to prove on President Trump for the last three years and had no expectations that Robert Mueller’s testimony before congressional committees would do anything to change my mind in the least.

When the progeny of a free nation, a prosperous thriving nation that sets at the very pinnacle of the international pyramid of privilege, security and opportunity, become convinced that the nation that gives them this place of prominence, simply by virtue of being born there, is corrupt and has gained its high standing by using deprivation and repression to hold down the unfavored classes and has used its military might unfairly, to nation-build and occupy, there is danger in the wind and the future of that nation is in dire jeopardy in the coming years.

If you’re ever traveling the highways of America in the wee small hours of the morning you’re apt to see a touring coach, pedal to the metal, interior lights dimmed, heading out for who knows where, hauling a band of tired musicians bound to their next show.

As America celebrates her 243rd birthday, it's hard not to become fixated on the numerous and critical challenges we face.

But just for today, lets concentrate on the challenges we have faced, the social and fiscal mountains we've conquered, the wars we've won, the diseases we've eradicated, the technological wonders we've created, the people we've freed, space exploration, wonder drugs, subsonic flight and the list goes on and on.

It took a lot of muscle, blood, courage and tenacity to tame a continent. It took a people who refused to give up on the dream of freedom and prosperity that had uprooted them and motivated them to leave ancestral homes, and sail thousands of miles of treacherous ocean to make landfall in a new world they knew nothing about and face hostile indigents, raging rivers and endless, uncharted wilderness inundated with aggressive animals, poisonous snakes and only Heaven knew what else.

When I hear people say that Obama is responsible for the good economy we are experiencing, it reminds me of a statement he made about manufacturing jobs in America.

I can’t bring myself to believe that there aren’t enough Americans alive who still remember the reality and abject failure of socialism and the wide path of human deprivation and suffering, shattered societies and failing dictatorships all socialist governments eventually morph into, to stave off the onslaught of socialist presidential candidates that inundate the democrat side of the upcoming election.

Yesterday as I listened to excerpts from President Trump’s speech, when he addressed the World War II veterans who had stormed the beaches of Normandy in the face incessant machine gun fire and artillery barrages that colored miles of surf with their blood, as he singled out individuals, who - now in their nineties - had returned to the scene of the bloodiest day of WWII to pay respect to their fallen brothers and renew acquaintances with the few who had survived the seven decades since “The Longest Day," I found my eyes becoming misty and my thoughts returning to that day, June 6, 1944, when the Methodist Church in Valdosta, Georgia was packed to the rafters with Americans of every stripe, who had come to beseech Almighty God on behalf of the brave men fighting and dying on a beachhead thousands of miles away.