November 12, 2009 by fbk.

I’m going to change my name to “None of the Above” and run for President in 2012.  You?

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September 10, 2009 by fbk.

Gresham’s Law is usually stated as, “Bad money drives out good.”  Years ago the great author, H. Beam Piper, referred to Gresham’s Law of Manners, that bad manners drive out good manners.  I think Congressman Joe Wilson has illustrated this rather well.  The soi-disant Democrats or Progressives, who would more truthfully call themselves Socialists, Communists, and/or Fascists, have been using bad manners for years while the Republicans were supposed to hold themselves above that.  Barack Obama has been lying and calling others liars when they dare bring up the truth.  And after all of the lies and insults, I gather that Congressman Joe Wilson could no longer hold his tongue.  In an outburst during the President’s speech to a joint session of Congress, Congressman Wilson showed the bad manners to yell at the President of the United States of America.

Now, mind you, what Congressman Wilson said was entirely truthful.  Barack Obama was lying.  Or perhaps Barack Obama is trapped in a fantasy land spurred by some sort of psychosis?  I’m not sure that would be better for the country, but if it makes you feel better, have your own fantasy that a Democrat politician might be honestly hallucinating rather than lying.

For those of us who have been waiting for a little more tit-for-tat, a little dose of bad manners by a Republican to match the outrageous behavior of the Democrats, Joe Wilson’s honesty was refreshing.  Was it an appropriate act of taste and decorum?  Why should we care?  Democrats have been doing much worse for at least forty years.

Joe Wilson for President!

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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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July 23, 2008 by fbk.

Victor Davis Hanson had a post on The Corner recently that reminded me of some old spiritual teachings.  Here is the money quote:

“What is fascinating about the tingly-leg press is that they are exhibiting the very symptoms of arrested development and star-struck immaturity that they always accuse America in toto of suffering. The usual critique of the elite media is that we are a nation of mindless followers, who go from one fad to another, and value looks, youth, and pizzazz over substance.”

I’ve long found the best measure of a man is what he says about others.  Dr. Hanson seems to be seeing an example of the old spiritual teaching that the outer world is a reflection of the inner world.  What we see outside of us is what is actually within us and what we are.  Pay attention to what politicians say about others:

“That’s not the man I knew all of these years.”  Sounds like a man who will be different than what you have seen on the outside, doesn’t it?

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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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February 7, 2008 by fbk.

Well, with the news today, it is time for me to make a decision as to where my support should go.  Initially, I was supporting Fred Thompson, but he dropped out.  So, I shifted allegiance to Mitt Romney.  Now, he’s dropped out.  Remembering my previous Presidential election year choices, I now realize that I am a serious jinx.  So, the only thing I can do now is to make the worst possible choice of whom to support.  It’s really a win-win for me.  If the new person I support is the worst choice and drops out, it’s good for everyone.  If the new candidate takes it all the way, I’m on the winning team.  Either way works well for me.

So, Senator Clinton, I hereby officially throw my entire support toward your campaign.  (Expect to be pulling out within the week.)

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January 31, 2008 by fbk.

The Presidential primaries present an interesting conundrum this year.  The front runners of the moment are a 1940’s-style Democrat (Big Government CAN do it all, strong on defense) and a 1970’s-style Democrat, who looks and talks like Jimmy Carter, but actually votes to be strong on defense in the Senate.  Both have proven to find the truth a highly-elastic material.  The net difference between the Republican and Democratic frontrunners is that one of the two has real testicles.  Of course, they originally belonged to her husband.

Many might consider this to be an unfair characterization of Senator McCain.  He is a war hero, after all.  But, that war ended more than thirty years ago, and while he may have had a backbone against the North Vietnamese, he’s never shown one against the Democrats.  He’s thrown more punches, literal and figurative, at his Republican colleagues than at the Democrats.  He talks much more like Walter Mondale than Ronald Reagan, with references to “greedy people on Wall Street who need to be punished” and “for patriotism, not for profit.”  Anyone remember his comments from 2000 about the Christian right?  I could believe much of what he says coming from a John Kerry or Dennis Kucinich, but from the Republican frontrunner?

I cannot see myself voting for this man under any circumstances.  So, where does that leave me if he gets the nomination?  He can’t be trusted on Supreme Court nominations.  He has flip-flopped on what sort of Justice he would nominate.  Right now, he’s trying to claim to be conservative, but he’s had a reputation as a maverick for much longer.  There are also rumors that he has said he’ll only run for one term.  That means the day he takes office, he’s no longer beholden to the people who elected him.  He can follow his true inclination without worry about upsetting all of those wacko right-winger types, who just happen to be the bulk of his party.  I wouldn’t trust him on any issue.

On economic issues, issues of freedom, paying attention to the Constitution, and big government programs, he aligns pretty well with Senator Kennedy.  In fact, McCain is to the left of the former Senator Kennedy who became President.  John F. Kennedy at least understood the power of tax cuts to free the economy.  McCain would be likely to let the tax levels rise back to the former levels under Clinton, if not higher.  He certainly has no clue about regulation and its effect on the economy.  Comparing Senator McCain to the average Democrat would only yield a slight divergence on winning the war in Iraq.  But, despite many of the things she has said about the war, Hillary Clinton’s voting record isn’t that different from McCain’s.

If we’re going to get basically the same results either way, with one result being an economic disaster, wouldn’t it be better to let the Democrats have the White House for four years, and let them get the blame for the recession caused by economic ignorance?  If the candidates are so close on the issues and neither is a disciple of the truth, what’s the downside?  If McCain gets elected and does as expected, the Republicans get blamed.  I don’t consider myself so much a Republican as a conservative.  But, most of the other conservatives are in the Republican Party, and what hurts the party will hurt the conservative cause.  I’d much rather see the Democrats take it on the chin as they did in 1976-80.

I can’t quite bring myself to think that I’d vote for Hillary, but I’ve actually been considering it, which scares me.  How many other conservatives are thinking that Hillary might do less damage than McCain?  How many conservatives will just sit out the general election if McCain is the Republican nominee?  How many will seek a third party, such as the Libertarians?  How many will just hold their noses and vote for McCain?  I don’t have the answers to any of these questions.  But I have a feeling that if McCain gets the nomination, nothing good will come of it.

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December 11, 2007 by Les Smart.

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