November 5, 2008 by Les Smart.

1) Who will your suggested “Internal Security Force” defend us against since you don’t believe in securing the boarders?  And why will it need to be the same size as our current military?

 2) If you cut the current military budget by 25% and then establish this “Internal Security Force” that is to be equally funded, aren’t you actually increasing the overall military budget by 50%?   (100 - 25% x 2 = 150)  Did they teach basic math at Harvard Law School?

3) Why did you promise so much in your campaign and then immediately try to lower expectations in your acceptance speech?  Duh, how silly of me.  Promises are made to get elected and since you’ve never really accomplished anything you’re not sure you can deliver but what the heck you got elected.

4) Do you propose to change the name of our country to The United Soviet States of America?

 5) How do you propose to tax the small business owners who earn over $250,000 per year and keep them from passing that expense on to the consumer? 

6) Are you going to change the entire tax structure so those earning over $250,000 per year can no longer take advantage of the copious tax breaks to either drastically reduce their tax burden or even to eliminate it?

7) If you are going to reduce the military budget by 25% and we can’t now afford to sustain a force in Iraq and fight a war in Afganistan at the same time without over-stretching our forces, how will we be able to defend our country from an attack by say Argentina and/or Iran?

8) Why is it important to cut our military budget if the majority of our spending goes to welfare programs considering the constitution mandates that the national government provide for the common defence but, according to the defined and limited duties of our government under the constitution, welfare should fall under the egis of the states?

9) If race was not an issue in this election, would you have won without 96% of the black vote?

10) What kind of puppy are you going to get your children?  (That’s one of the tough questions the media will be throwing at you in the days leading to you inaugeration.  I just thought I’d prepare you.)

 11) Will Rev. Wright say the prayer at your inaugeration?  If not why not and (more importantly) if so why?  Also will you allow them to play the national anthym?

12) Will Bill Ayers be our next Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security or next Supreme Court Justice?

13) What will you name your dog?  May I suggest Vladimir or Hugo?

14) Will the tax cut to Americans earning under $250,000 per year be more or less than those they will lose when you allow the Reagan tax cuts to lapse?

15) Will the American tax payers have to foot the bill every time Biden has to have his foot removed from his mouth?  If so, will that mean you will have to hold back on tax cuts or other promised programs?

16) Will Hilary be given a spot in your cabinet or will you just put her in charge of the placement of important files?

17) Will Bill Clinton be given a cabinet position or will you institute a new position of Court Jester to the President?

18) What do you consider your greatest stength your outside shot or your rebounding?

19) Colin Powell has figuratively taken Monica Lewinski’s position will he find another way to serve your White House?

20) Would you rather go on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin?

21) Are you planning on reaching out across the isle to Republicans the same way you extended your hand to ‘Joe the Plumber’?

22) Is it okay for you to wear a flag pin now that you are President or does it clash with the pink color of your politics?

23) If your wife was finally proud of America for the first time in her adult life when you were nominated, is it fair to say now that you were elected that she is tickled pink?

24) When you pull the troups out of Iraq will you put them back in when the Shia and Sunni start up a revelotion to get control of the new government or will you leave that up to Iran to settle?

25) Will you try to explain to Senator Byrd that you are really the President Elect and not Joe Biden and will you offer Senator Byrd the position of US Ambassador to the UN so the entire world can enjoy his speeches?

26) Will Barney Franks be our next Secretary of Housing and Urban Developement since his work with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped assure your election?

27) How many steps before the King?

28) Will you be able to get it all done in two terms or will you need to pull a Bloomberg?

29) Did you really get all your campaign funds $10 at a time from individual donors?  Didn’t anyone give like $11.75 or something?

30) Will you spare the lives of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity after your party distroys their careers?

More questions will follow if I’m still allow to speak and am free after this is posted.Secretary for Housing and Urban Developmentecretary for Housing and Urban Development

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October 30, 2008 by Les Smart.

     We are on the verge of a Socialist revolution in the United States of America. You can call the classes what you wish - the peasants or poor, the proletariat or the middle class, the nobles or the rich – they are practically the same as in Russia in 1905.  Economic times were and are difficult and liberal and socialists doctrines have and are giving rise to discontent among the proletariat (middle class).  The active revolutionaries were the intelligentsia in Russia of 2005.  Today it is the Democrats and the media.  The Tsar was unpopular as is President Bush and the downfall of their family/party was and is desired.

     This is not rhetoric it is fact.  In 1902 Lenin published his work “What is to be Done” that called for the organization of ‘the working class’ (middle class).  Does all of this sound familiar?

     So, Obama proposes no new taxes on anyone earning under $250,000.  Although the Reagan tax cuts will run out in 2010 and everyone’s taxes will go up, this can be rectified through legislation.  (I earned around $30,000 per year when the Reagan tax cuts came into effect and my taxes were cut.  I suppose I may have been considered rich at the time but by who’s standards?)   How may this affect the middle class (proletariat)?

     First, think of who earns $250,000 and up in this country.  Doctors, Dentists, many lawyers, professional athletes, small business owners, company executives, you may think of others but let’s first look at the small business owner.

     Running a small business is a risky and difficult task.  Some of these business are solid, some are ‘iffy’ and others are near failure.  Increasing their taxes will do several things:  1) It will put some of them out of business and they will either fall into the middle class or even possibly into poverty depending on how bad their finances are and how marketable their skills are in the current market.  2) Many will not be able to absorb the drain of this increased tax so they will pass it on to the consumer (another name for the middle class) or cut cost such as labor.  The middle classes will either absorb their tax burden through increased costs and/or the poor will increase with any laid-off worker who can’t find new employment.  3) The very wealthy can and some will leave this country to avoid paying this increased tax burden or find loopholes to avoid them.   So, who really will pick up the tab for Obama’s new proposed programs?

     Another interesting story will be the doctors.  These professionals (the rich or nobles) run small businesses at their offices and will be faced with passing the expense to their patients with increased fees and/or laying-off employees.  However, they will also be faced with the possibility of Nationalized Medicine.  A Nationally run medical system will need to regulate the fees of the doctors or they will not be able to meet the expense of running such a program.  The financial incentive people have today to invest time and money into a medical degree will dwindle and we will slowly see fewer doctors.

     Like all other socialist regimes in the history of the world, it will be important for those in control of these government run programs to quiet opposition who may stir displeasure with what they do.  The Democrats are already talking about re-establishing The Fairness Doctrine.  Why?  They are unhappy with the influence and power of Talk Radio that has been dominated by Conservatives regardless of many attempts to compete with them with liberal stations and liberal talk shows.  Who will they silence next and how?  Listen to the words and rhetoric of the Democrats who berate religious citizens and citizens who own arms.  A Democrat in Pennsylvania called his constituants racists because they will probably support McCain.  Opponents are ‘greedy’ and the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate is anti-intellectual.

     These are troubling and frightening times and either American citizens want this revolution or they are ignorant of its coming.  A dynamic speaker with a message of change is guiding them to it.  Obama said, “We will change America and the world.”  He openly advocates redistribution of wealth, my fellow Americans, that IS SOCIALISM.   Those who oppose it are not advocating greed but rather the ideals and fundamentals this country was built on and prospered with for over 230 years.

     Does the country have problems?  Yes.  But is solving those problems worth turning the control of our daily lives over to the government?  Is a Medical system where a political bureaucrat determines who gets treated and how they get treated better than what we have now?  Do we want to turn our banks and our medical system over to the people who have destroyed Social Security, Medicaid and the very banking system they are now bailing out and buying up?  How many aspects of your life do you want to turn over to government?  Socialism limits freedom.

     Everyone should vote but everyone should consider what you are actually voting for.  What change are you willing to accept?   Both candidates offer change from the current leadership but one is striving to lead our nation to socialism and, if history tells us anything, all socialist nations fail.

Think / Vote

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July 24, 2008 by Les Smart.

     The American people should be absolutely terrified about the possibility that Barak Obama could be elected president of our country based entirely on the type of Supreme Court Justices he would appoint.  Why? 

     Look at the recent case involving limiting the rights of Americans to bear arms.  Four Liberal justices voted against the small majority of five to allow states (in this case the Washington, DC) - John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Berger.  Had Bush not made the last two appointments, we would all soon be turning in our rifles and hand guns. 

     My fellow Americans read the constitution:

Article the fourth [Amendment II] A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

How can this be misinterpreted?  Does this speak of only the rights of the people to have a militia?  It would take a real stretch to read “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” as only implying to the masses as a whole.  The tradition of common law that has protected an individuals right to own and bear arms is as old and established as the constitution itself.

Also, Mr. Obama went to Iraq.  However, first he made an announcement about his policy there.  He went and observed what every-other politician of both sides admitted was great progress following the surge but Mr. Obama would not acknowledge that fact.  His position is purely political.

His immaturity and inexperience has been abundantly displayed and, were the national press not in his back pocket or if he were a Republican, he would have been vilified numerous times to date.  He is the darling of Democrats, Liberals, and the Press.  It is most fair that his opponent fight the first two but his need to fight the third is an embarrassment to the journalism.  Conservative claims that the national news media is prejudice can no longer be argued against.  They are now showing it openly.

Mr. Obama is of the party that has restricted this country from drilling oil finds in many parts of the country.  They have prohibited the building of nuclear power plants and refineries.  Had all this have been allowed and encouraged would we be in the mess we are today?  Even now they claim it is too late, drilling oil and getting it ready to distribute would take too long.  Well, I say close the barn door.  We lost a lot of the animals but there are still more we can save.

Unless we totally ban the use of petroleum products we will be using oil by-products for many, many years to come.  Yes we have to conserve, yes we have to find alternate sources of energy but that will also take time.  Our politicians promised us that we would be less dependent on oil back in the 70s.  Do any of you remember waiting in line?  Only being allowed to purchase gas every other day based on your license plate number?  Fights in the gas lines?  Having the station run out of gas just before it is your turn and you are on empty?  What have they done in 30 years?  In our new National language “nada”.

Wake up Americans.  It is not that we need McCain.  It is that we can not survive Obama.

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February 21, 2008 by Les Smart.

     Look around.  The American people are thirsty for real leadership and there’s not a cloud in sight and both sides of the aisle battle while the crops of the average American’s dreams are wilting and the heard of patriotic pride that once flooded our land is in danger from without and within.

     Now, listen.  Do you hear a Starbuck beating a base drum, shouting, “Chibilow, Chibilow nimbo” to the masses and promising us rain?  It seems like many are scraping their hard earned dollars togeather to pay this promiser of hope and better times for his services.

      Following his victory in the Wisconsin primary, McCain (in this analogy Mr McCain would be File) pledged, “I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change … that promises no more than a holiday from history and a return to the false promises and failed policies of a tired philosophy that trusts in government more than the people,”  Obama’s response was basically that McCain was a Washington insider who couldn’t understand the politics of hope. 

      The Democrats are also thursting for blood.  Their hatred of President George W. Bush has turned them into a pack of mad dogs.  The Republicans were taken out of control of the House and Senate on the promise that the Dems would end the war in Iraq.  The Democrats lacked the political courage to do the one thing they could, cut funding.  Bush not only continued the war but, created a ’surge’.

      Oh, that nasty Bush.  He stole the election in 2000 before they could have the ballots recounted so many times they would have been worn out.  Then, my God, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a politically left Florida Supreme Court and the tears and griping hasn’t stopped since.

      This is not entirely the fault of the Democrats.  When the Republicans ruled the roost, they overspent and ignored basic conservative principals.  Both sides battle rather than negotiate and all of the hot air in Washington has made things worse.

      Are the American people thirsty enough to buy the promises of a silk tongued ‘rain maker’?   Is the Republican right so disgusted with McCain that they will not support him and allow the most liberal Senator on the hill to be our next president?

      If we are still allowed, Pray.

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December 13, 2007 by Les Smart.

Barry, Barry

Big and hairy

How did your muscles grow?

What’s your excuse

For steroid use?

Don’t tell us you just didn’t know.

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December 11, 2007 by Les Smart.

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December 7, 2007 by Les Smart.

     I have been writing, reading, and reading about poetry for almost four years. I believe that the powers that be today in our poetry world and many poets in that world are snobbish and elitist. The standard of “good” poetry today has been fabricated of elements that make merely understanding a poem a struggle for an average reader. My suggestion that poets might consider widening the appeal of their work frequently is met with a question that demeans the average reader and demonstrates the elitist attitudes of many poets, “So, you want me to dumb it down?”     

     Before continuing to read this rant, go to any on-line bookseller’s site and do three searches: 1) understanding novels, 2) understanding short stories 3) understanding poetry. If you actually do this you will find that virtually nothing exists in the first two searches, but what about the third?     

     The Modern Era of poetry (1901-1045) was a time when poets decided to break from traditional poetry to experiment and be innovative. Free or open form poems became popular because they were not as restrictive as rhyming and metered poems.     

     The Post Modern Era (1945-1989) continued with this experimentation, but the content became more ironic and confrontational. The beat poets emerged and experimentation flourished.      In the current Global Era there is a mix of ethnicities, forms and rapidly shifting images affected by electronic media, the instant society.

     Through it all, the quest for originality and the infusion of Symbolism has moved the art form far away from the common reader. The vast public only experiences poetry today in popular song lyrics and greeting cards.

     (The Poetry Foundation did a survey of readers in this country and the statistics should be alarming to the striving poet. You can look it up on their web site. You will find that only about 14% of the public read on a regular basis and a very small portion of those readers read poetry. Why? Ask your non-poetry reading friends.)

     Symbolism was a movement that began during the Victorian Period primarily in France. Charles Baudelaire was it’s founder and Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, Paul Verlaine, and Paul Valery forming a group that almost created a completely symbolic world. They were trying to evoke states of feeling or awareness, often without discernable, concrete meanings. Suggesting things without stating them directly.

     This use of symbols is referred to as private symbols because it leaves two parts of symbolic patterns out and open for the reader’s interpretation. (Hour-glass sand = passage of time = aging or wedding ring = marriage = love and commitment) Symbolism leaves out the last two parts and the reader has to either determine what the author meant or provide their own association. Think of what a recent divorced person or someone in a gay relationship might conjure up when they read about a wedding ring.

     Now let’s throw into the mix the fact that originality is highly desired today, new images, new symbols, new metaphors, new similes, new, new, new. One of the worse things a poet can hear at a critique today is that their poem or any part of it is cliché. We must be new and original.

     Unfortunately, with this quest for originality rhymed and metered poetry is no longer respected. (Try to get some published.) Traditional forms are seldom used and even the old standard Sonnet is often bastardized in search of originality.

     What I have found as I interact with other poets is that many can’t handle rhyme or meter. Strictly structured poems like Ballads, Sestinas, Villanelles, and Rondeaus are way beyond anything they wish to attempt. Yet they will say that the forms are too restrictive to allow them to express freely.

     I fell like the little boy who speaks up in the crowd and tells the emperor he is naked. All the poets around me are interpreting poems and talking about how beautiful they are. They say, “poems don’t have to mean, they just have to be.” They say, “don’t ask a poet what their poem means, tell them.” I have a friend who wants me to at least agree with him that a poem doesn’t have to have intent.

     Poems are usually short and sweet, perfect for our generation of the five-second sound bite. Yet, how many people buy poetry books? How many major publishers publish poetry? Are you satisfied that your greatest possible audience is a small portion of the 14% of Americans who read on a regular basis?

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December 5, 2007 by Les Smart.

Is there anyone out there that truly understands the majority of the poems published in Poetry?

 I receive a gift subscription to this erudite publication and every month I attempt to read it and, if I have the energy, I try to understand the poems they’ve published.  Now, I’ve been struggling to write poetry since August of 2003, I read a lot of poetry, I attend poetry workshops and poetry readings, I read books about poetry, I’ve been published and I have a BS degree in Education.  So - why is it that reading Poetry makes me feel stupid.

 This publication is held up as one of the most respected in the field and yet, as I peruse the work on their pages, I want to shout, “Someone tell them Emperor he’s naked!  Please stop trying to make believe any of it makes sense!  Please!”

 This, unfortunately, is the drivel that the elitist poetry establishment who are more deeply embedded in the halls of academia than Bin Laden is in the hills of Pakistan.  It is being protected and revered by them more voraciously than extreme Islamicists defend their beliefs.  In the process the figurative heads of understandable poems are being lopped off and held up in ridicule.

 Mention rhymed meter poetry to a poetry professor and watch him sneer before he gags and/or giggles.  Read a lyric rhymed piece at a gathering of these snobs and be prepared to be stoned and, if they can see past their turned up noses, they may even hit you.  What must they think of Frost, Service, Longfellow, Poe, and so many of the masters?  Are they willing to denounce and reject their work as ‘non-poetry’?

 Thank you for reading my rant.  I am on my way to the Hallmark store to read some published poetry I can understand.  Don’t tell the poetry establishment.  I don’t want to risk a possible Fatwa.

 Les

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December 3, 2007 by Les Smart.

Dear Readers,

In this world I am Leslie Existential Right. Since I will be subjecting you to my thoughts and emotions I will fain you calling me Les.

“Why Leslie Existential Right?” you may wonder.

Well, Leslie is for the actor Leslie Howard who played the dreamer and true love of Scarlett O’Hara’s life.  Ashley was a gentleman, as am I, and I had, furthermore, already chosen the name Les so Ashley was out of the question and this explanation is as good as any I can come up with at this time.

 Existential comes from my belief in the individual’s unique position as a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of his or her choices.  I hope you will see that belief reflected in my posted musings. 

Smart is not necessarily because I want to present myself as being intellectually elite but rather that I will attempt to present my thoughts in a clever and fresh manner.  It is also the last name of my idol, Maxwell Smart.

If you don’t like this explanation or any of my posts, read someone else. 

Yours truly, 

Les

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