It's just a shame . . .

Jerry Kremer

When you decide what to write in a column, there are many subjects that you could cover. There’s only one problem. Unless you can come up with several hundred words on a topic, a column doesn’t work, but all kinds of subjects deserve some type of mention. So I decided to recount all the shameful things that are happening these days.

It’s a shame we ever got involved with the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. You can’t force democracy on countries that don’t even know how to spell it. When you have car bombings, mass killings and rivalries that go back hundreds, if not thousands, of years, there’s no way the U.S. can wipe out the sordid past. And why go into Syria to put the terrorists in power?

It’s a shame that President Obama has never figured out how to be a bipartisan leader. I’m not saying that he would be able to convert some of the Republican diehards, but at least he could reach out to the few moderates left in Congress. Bipartisanship is good for the country’s health, and history shows that it works.

It’s a shame that the rollout of Obamacare has encountered so many problems. There’s no doubt that the technology people who put it together didn’t tell the nation it wasn’t ready to be implemented. And the fact that there are 16 Republican governors who refuse to participate in the program for pure partisan reasons is just as much of a shame. It’s a mess, but there’s plenty of blame to go around.

It’s a shame that Congress hasn’t acted on immigration reform — or anything else of importance — this year. No highway repair bill. No farm bill that stops payments to billionaire farming companies. No budget. The worst part is that within two weeks, the members will go on recess, and won’t return until 2014.

It’s a shame that the nut jobs keep insisting that there’s no such thing as climate change at the same time that we’re seeing natural disaster after disaster all over the world. Massive storms in our country, like Superstorm Sandy, are followed by horrendous forest fires. The record-setting typhoon in the Philippines isn’t some quirky event. It’s all out there for everyone to see, but the politicians remain stalled due to the crazies.