How can you tell a politician is lying? His lips are moving.

That old joke has been around possibly since the first troglodytes gathered around a fire to plot how best to hunt down dinner. It has survived largely because it is true. Whether it is an outright lie or what we concede as ‘political doublespeak,’ politicians have a language of their own that emphasizes their belief in the stupidity of those of us who elect them.

It has always been so, but I believe it becomes a little worse each election cycle, and has reached a point that it may be the chief reason for citizens’ distrust of government. Very simply, whether they are politicians or bureaucrats, you can’t trust what they say. They lie! As lawyers for the most part, they have been taught the very best ways to manipulate, distort, and corrupt the language so that they can deliver a message to you that sounds, to the naive and uninformed, like one thing, but actually means something completely different. Even the non-lawyer politicians quickly pick up on this technique. “I did not have sex with that woman,” is a sentence that has become the poster child of disingenuous politispeak. I’m certain that politicians around the nation swell with pride each time they remember the Clinton pronouncement, and use it as the highest possible target at which to aim their syntax as they attempt to hoodwink the rest of us.

One great and longstanding example of this political mendaciousness is the decades-old debate about cutting government spending on just about any program you can name. Each election year, one party does its very best to frighten voters into believing the other party is going to “cut” their benefits in Social Security, Medicare, education spending, or any of hundreds of other programs. Whether the mantra is “Throw grandma under the bus,” or “Make America vulnerable to attack by cutting defense spending,” politicians would like us to tremble at the prospect of having important parts of our government benefits “cut” from beneath out feet. Personally, I think there are hundreds of government programs and agencies that deserve massive and real cuts in funding. That won’t happen, however, because politicians never really mean “cuts.” At best, they are talking about reducing the automatic rate of annual increase in spending, maybe from 5% to 4 ½. So you can define the word “cut” as meaning a real increase in spending that is ever so slightly less than it would have been otherwise. That is about as close as you can ever hope to see a politician actually “cut” spending. Ronald Reagan hit the bulls eye when he said, “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”

I have never been accused of being “politically correct,” so I will say it plainly as I see it.

Those of us who work for a living, who contribute to society, who pay taxes, who actually vote for these politicians even though we know they are deceiving us with their campaign rhetoric, have become far too complacent for much too long in the face of political corruption that has economically disabled this nation and brought us to the edge of the abyss. Politicians know our attention is centered on family, work, paying bills, and other personal matters, so they are free to treat us as they will with relative impunity. To fill your mind with clichés, it is past time for us to “pull our heads out of the sand,” and to “look into the abyss to see if we have any character,” before the abyss engulfs us as a nation.

We need to look to the past for the ideals and truths that founded this nation and allowed it to grow into the undisputed leader of the free world. Our current status, under the leadership of our current batch of politicians, is shaky at best, and is greatly diminished from what it was only a few decades ago. We need to remember the politicians who spoke the truth and spoke it clearly so all could understand and believe.

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Abraham Lincoln

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

John F. Kennedy

“If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”

Ronald Reagan

Those words are all straightforward, heartfelt, and unimpeachable. When was the last time you heard a politician speak so clearly?

The late Senator Everett Dirksen once said, “If we spend a billion here and a billion there, sooner or later we’re talking about real money!” The career solon from Illinois may have been the very last public servant to put the ballooning federal budget into understandable terms, but that was back in the day that our national debt could be estimated with a manageable number of zeros. Our current debt contains so many zeros one needs a fleet of Ford pickup trucks just to haul them around. Whether you listen to Republicans or Democrats as they explain their views of the national debt…is it a good thing or a bad thing, is it a necessity or a disaster, is it growing or shrinking…it doesn’t take long for our eyes to glaze over and our interest to wane. The debt has gone beyond our understanding so we have dismissed it as beyond our ability even to complain about it. Our greedy solons love the fact that they have shut us out of the conversation. Now, they feel, they can do anything!

With that in mind, here are two more pithy stories from Senator Dirksen that help put government spending in perspective:

” I am reminded of a group of men who were working on a street. They had dug quite a number of holes. When they got through, they failed to puddle or tamp the earth when it was returned to the hole, and they had a nice little mound, which was quite a traffic hazard.

Not knowing what to do with it, they sat down on the curb and had a conference. After a while, one of the fellows snapped his fingers and said, ‘I have it. I know how we will get rid of that overriding earth and remove the hazard. We will just dig the hole deeper.’” [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].”

On the same occasion, Dirksen relied on yet another “spending” story, one he labeled “cat in the well”:

“One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?’

Johnny worked assiduously with his slate and slate pencil for quite a while, and then when the teacher came down and said, ‘How are you getting along?’ Johnny said, ‘Teacher, if you give me another slate and a couple of slate pencils, I am pretty sure that in the next 30 minutes I can land that cat in hell.’”

Senator Dirksen obviously had a sound understanding of the federal budget of 1965, but today our monetary problem is much, much worse. Is anyone today capable of putting the numbers into understandable terms?  Recently, a good friend of mine, Dr. Stephen White,  crunched the numbers and came up with an explanation that even Barack Obama could understand. (Whether or not he would care is another story and another article.) This  rather brilliantly cuts thru all the political doublespeak we get, and puts our monetary
crisis into a much better perspective.

Lesson # 1:

* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000  (Note that budget cuts are less that 0.3% of national debt!)

Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts: $385

Got It ?????

OK now Lesson # 2: Here’s another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:

Let’s say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in
your neighborhood….and your home has sewage all the way up to your
ceilings.

What do you think you should do ……
Raise the ceilings, or pump out the crap?
Your choice is coming Nov. 2012

I think this sums it up better than anything I have heard or read from politicians and economists. It might be a good idea to email this explanation to your elected representatives, just to let them know that you understand what they are doing to us.

When I so rudely left you hanging last week, Lawyer Finis Bates had traveled to Enid, Oklahoma and identified the mummified remains of David George as those of the man he had known as John St. Helen. Under both names, the man had claimed to be John Wilkes Booth. Bates acquired the mummy from the mortuary and took it home with him to Memphis. To this point, this has been a strange and compelling story, but now the real fun begins.

All mummies, as you doubtless know, come with a curse, and the mummy possessed by Finis Bates apparently carried with it a real doozie! Mr. Bates had been a fairly successful lawyer and businessman for many years. His book, The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth,, was met with ridicule throughout the nation. Bates was made a laughing stock, and died penniless, his fortune and reputation destroyed by his association with what would soon become known as The Mummy of John Wilkes Booth.

For the next several years, the mummy was bought, sold, and traded among various traveling carnivals, and was presented across the nation as the mummy of John Wilkes Booth. In 1930, one of the carnivals passed through Chicago, Ill, where a team of physicians volunteered to examine and hopefully authenticate the remains as those of the Lincoln assassin. By means of a detailed physical examination and  x-rays, the doctors verified that the mummy did, in fact, have a healed fracture of the left ankle, the one Booth had broken in his leap to the stage in Ford’s Theater. Other physical attributes associated with Booth were also verified, and the doctors’ conclusions were that the mummy could very well be the remains of John Wilkes Booth. The mummy continued its carnival circuit, and became something of a celebrity as it crisscrossed the nation.

But here’s the thing: the mummy carried with it a destructive curse. Throughout decades of travel with several different carnivals, extreme bad luck befell each of its owners along the way. Some carnivals went broke soon after acquiring the mummy; some owners died suddenly of unknown causes; every carnival or owner was victim to some kind of tragedy while the mummy was a part of its cast.

For some reason that is not made clear in the annals of history, the mummy was acquired by Reverend True Wilson in 1933. Reverend Wilson was not a carnival owner, and was not a man given to whimsical pursuits. In the 1920s, the minister was a stalwart lobbyist for the cause of prohibition, and was one of the major driving forces behind the movement. Several congressmen and senators were quoted as saying that prohibition would never have come about without the dedicated efforts of Reverend Wilson. Wilson himself saw Prohibition as the crowning achievement of his life…it was the source of his greatest pride.

The greatest possible tragedy befell Reverend True Wilson when Congress repealed Prohibition with the 21^st Amendment. This repeal of Wilson’s pride and joy in life occured only a few weeks after he had purchased the mummy of John Wilkes Booth. The repeal destroyed Wilson…he drifted away into seclusion and historical obscurity.

Did the mummy of John Wilkes Booth bring about the repeal of Prohibition just to destroy Reverend True Wilson by destroying that which he loved most? If so, it carries a pretty potent curse, and it gives me a devious idea.

The mummy was exhibited in various carnivals well into the 1960s, and was last reported seen in the late 1970s. Then it disappeared. Was it buried or destroyed by people trying to put an end to the curse? Was it secreted away into a private collection? Does it lie forgotten in some dusty attic or warehouse? I don’t know, but there are people around the nation who are actively looking for it. Can the mummy of John Wilkes Booth help the conservative cause to defeat the socialist menace that is methodically destroying the Constitution, our personal freedoms, and the American way of life? Maybe so.

I suggest we find the mummy and present it as a gift to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the entire socialist wing of the Democrat party. Make them the official owners of the mummy…and the curse that goes with it.  J.W. (the name I have fondly attached to the mummy, whoever he is) brought tragedy to Finis Bates. It destroyed several carnivals. Most telling to me, it had the power to overturn Prohibition, the thing which Reverend True Wilson loved the most. Obama, Reid, Pelosi, et. al. obviously love socialism and the destruction of the U.S. Constitution more than anything else. Republican leadership just as obviously recognize that fact, but are too inept or too corrupted by government machine politics to take the necessary steps to defeat the socialist menace.  They need a little help.

Take some time this week to talk to your friends and family. Search through your attic and the dark corners of your garages and outbuildings. Somewhere, hopefully, one of us will find the mummy of John Wilkes Booth. Ship it to Washington, D.C. with a notarized certificate of title made out to the Democrat socialists. Then sit back and watch old J.W. do his work. Whether or not the mummy is really that of John Wilkes Booth, I suspect it will destroy socialism in this nation within a matter of weeks or months, giving us the opportunity to rebuild out country into the great nation envisioned by our founders.

Unleashing a mummy’s curse on our enemies is at best an unconventional political strategy that is certainly not PC, but hey! We do what we can with what we got! I’m not ashamed to reach out, for my children’s sake, to wherever help is available. Care to join me?

By the way, those of you who doubt the veracity of my little story can verify some of the facts by simply Googling various permutations of Booth, mummy, Finis Bates, and David E. George. Much of the story was published by major newspapers in Dallas, Enid, and Memphis. Finis Bates’ book is still available for purchase on Amazon.com. It actually sold more copies last year that a couple of my own missives. The mummy is real…the stories are verifiable…the conclusions are, well, speculative.  I’m a natural skeptic, but I’m headed to my grandmother’s house to check out her attic.

One of the most reviled villains our nation has ever produced is John Wilkes Booth. His assassination of President Abraham Lincoln is a tragic part of our national story that has been told and retold for almost 150 years, and the actor’s image is forever cast as that of a monster who caused great harm to a fragile and divided nation in its time of greatest need.

Please don’t send hate mail, for I am not one of those revisionists of history, and I am certainly not an image consultant trying to revitalize the image of a rogue. There are, however, some elements about the life (and even the afterlife) of John Wilkes Booth of which you may be unaware…elements that could be of great benefit to those of us who would like to defeat the socialist menace that is devouring our nation and our way of life. Some of us who dwell on the right side of political center are becoming desperate in our fight to save the American way of life, and we look for help wherever we can find it.

The following is a true story:

In the late 1880s, a dapper and well-liked bartender in the small town of Granville, TX became ill and missed work. John St. Helen had come to Granville a few years after the Civil War had ended, and proved himself to be a dependable and trustworthy worker, and a friendly man who always had a smile and a kind word, but was something of a recluse who spent most of his nonworking hours alone. His employer, Finis Bates, had noticed that St.. Helen was a teetotaler except for one day each year. On April 14th, the bartender would start drinking early in the morning and spend the entire day in a drunken stupor. He may have been anticipating the federal income tax filing date, which would not become law for a few more decades, but Mr. Bates took note of the fact that April 14 was the date of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Mr. Bates went to the home of John St. Helen to find the bartender in bed with a high fever. He spoke incoherently for a few minutes before grasping his employer’s arm and saying, “There is something I need to tell you…something I need to confess before I die.” He went on to explain that he was John Wilkes Booth, the man who had assassinated Lincoln. He told Bates to go to another house in Granville and look in a secret place to find proof. Mr. Bates left immediately and, just where St. Helen said it would be, he found a small pistol of the type used to kill President Lincoln, wrapped in a newspaper dated the day after the assassination that reported the tragic event. He hurried back to St. Helen’s house, but the man was gone. John St. Helen was never seen in Granville again.

Was John St. Helen really John Wilkes Booth? The mystery continues. On January 13, 1903, a man named David George, who was basically the town drunk in Enid, Oklahoma, made a deathbed confession to his landlord. “I am John Wilkes Booth,” he said, “I killed President Lincoln.” His confession was reported to the local newspaper, and was published a week later. The proprietor of the local mortuary recognized the possibility that federal investigators might be interested in seeing the body, so he decided to mummify rather that traditionally embalm the corpse. Government authorities had no interest in the story, but Finis Bates, the former employer of John St. Helen, who had since retired and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, heard of the mummy and decided to make the trip to Enid and see if the corpse was that of his friend and employee.

Bates identified the mummy as the man he had known as John St. Helen. He acquired the corpse from the mortuary and took it home with him to Memphis, where he reportedly kept the mummy in the garage of his home for several years. In 1908, Bates wrote and had published a book titled The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, in which he laid out his case to prove that the mummy was, in fact, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.

Were John St. Helen, David George, and a mysterious mummy kept in a Memphis, Tennessee garage, really the reviled assassin, John Wilkes Booth? Could Booth really have escaped his many pursuers and created new lives for himself? For that matter, what can this story possibly have to do with helping the conservative cause battle the evil forces of socialism in America?

I hate to do it to you, but I have already exceeded my 700 word limit and there is still a great deal more to this mystery. Stay tuned next week for Part II.

Ronald Reagan was a great president! How to measure the greatness of an American president has always been an ambiguous ‘eye of the beholder’ kind of thing that is a veritable mandate for our republic. Is a president great because of what he accomplishes in office, or how deftly he guides the ship of state through troubled times, or just because he presents himself to be…well…presidential?

In his inaugural address, President James Polk outlined the four major goals he hoped to achieve in his administration…and he accomplished every one of them!  How often does that happen? If accomplishments in office are the measure of a great president, Polk should be high on the list, but barely receives more than a paragraph in most history texts.

Gerald Ford’s administration is largely unheralded, but the mild mannered president set the perfect example as he guided the nation through the tragic aftermath of Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the divisiveness of the anti-establishment movement of the day. Like Rodney Dangerfield, Ford often “Don’t get no respect,” but he actually ranks pretty high up the list of ‘greatness.’

On the other hand, history records that John Quincy Adams was very presidential in demeanor. He had been a very proficient ambassador and senator, but proved to be an ineffective and morose president.  Strangely enough, he went on to a highly successful career as a U.S. Congressman after his presidency.

Now, we who reside to the right of political center must make a decision between four candidates (as of this writing) to represent our hopes and values in the November presidential election. Each candidate, to my way of thinking, has positive attributes that might make him fitted to be president, but the campaign has dwelt largely on the negatives, and the wounds are piling up. I personally am not thrilled with any of the choices, and dream at night of a Reaganesque white knight thundering into the Republican convention and sweeping away the delegates with his/her solid platform, aura of leadership, and love and respect for the Constitution, capitalism, and the American way of life. But that is not going to happen. We are going to be faced with a choice between these four flawed candidates, and our choice will likely come down to who we think can beat President Obama and who has lost the least amount of blood from this ‘campaign of 1000 cuts.’

I have a suggestion. One of the measures of a great president that is not politically correct but might be among the best indicators of greatness is the measure of how much the opposing side hates him. Abraham Lincoln was truly hated by the Democrats of his day. This hatred was so intense and extreme that southern states seceded from the Union and subjected the nation to four years of devastating civil war. Ronald Reagan was hated almost as much by the Democrats, as was evidenced by the daily vitriolic bashing handed to him by a liberal media during his eight years in office. His administration dealt a demoralizing blow to communism in Europe and to socialism in the United States, and the leftists vilified him for it. While there were a host of other attributes that defined his greatness in office, the hatred he still evokes from liberals is enough definition of greatness for me.

I’m not sure the Democrats harbor intense hatred for any of the four remaining Republican presidential hopefuls. For the most part, they ignore Santorum and Paul, although I suspect we will hear and read more anti-religion rhetoric from the left if the evangelical Santorum continues to gain traction. Far from hatred, the left actually seems to like Mitt Romney. Liberal talking heads always include the fact that, “Romney sided with Obama on this issue and that issue and so on.” It’s true, of course. Maybe the left doesn’t really care whether Romney or Obama is elected because the libs can press their agenda either way. No hatred there.

That leaves Newt. Left-leaning insiders in Washington harbor distrust and a strong dislike, bordering on hatred, of the former Speaker of the House. Problem is, Washington insiders on the right feel the same way. Gingrich, notwithstanding his many years as one of the ranking Washington insiders, is a loose cannon, a candidate who is almost the poster child for DID (also known as multiple personality disorder) in his loosely defined campaign strategy. A national talk show host recently said, “On his best days, Newt Gingrich is hands down the very best presidential candidate out there. On his worst days…well…he can do, say, or be anything!”

 “Loose Cannon” may not be among the definitions for presidential greatness, but I kind of like it. For now, color me still undecided, but if I don’t  soon see some rage from the other side aimed at a particular candidate, I may settle for the loose cannon.

At the very least, it will assure a very interesting presidency. That’s all I’m saying.

An entire generation of American voters came to their collective senses and did not elect a Democrat as President of the United States for 52 years, from 1860 to 1912, with the noteworthy exception of Grover Cleveland. There was very good reason for this public snubbing of Democrat candidates…Democrats were pro-slavery. They had instigated the secession of southern states that had brought about the Civil War. They were anti-business and in favor of legislating countless laws and regulations designed to ‘protect’ citizens from themselves. It’s really kind of strange. The Democrats of 1860 were in favor of states rights and a very limited role for the federal government, but once they lost the Civil War and were allowed back into the U.S. Congress, they almost immediately championed the cause of a powerful central government that could heap countless oppressive regulation, first on American business, then on the people themselves. To that end, they have been relentless to this day.

But I digress. In the midst of this 52 year epidemic of voter sensibility, Grover Cleveland was elected in 1884, defeated in 1888, and re-elected in 1892. He was a Democrat, but of a far different type than are the Democrats we find today. For one thing, he was an adamant opponent of ‘machine politics,’ cronyism, graft, and corruption among elected or bureaucratic officials. There were no Solyndras, no bridges to nowhere, no Buddhist monastery campaign contributions during the Cleveland administrations. He was an economic conservative who believed in a small federal government that exerted little influence or interference in the lives of individual citizens. Cleveland was a great believer in the goodness and self-reliance of the American people, a champion of the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, and is often remembered not for what he did  to resolve national problems, but for what he did not do!

 “Wow!” I can hear you thinking. “How did this guy become a Democrat, and does he have any descendants we can find today?”

I don’t know the answer to either question, but will tell you my very favorite Grover Cleveland story, a story that reveals the fact that politicians of both parties today (with the possible exception of Ron Paul) have completely lost that belief in Americans’ goodness and self reliance that was a principle on which Cleveland governed.

In the 1880s a severe drought that had lasted through several growing seasons was driving Texas farmers out of business. In 1887, the U.S. Congress passed a bill appropriating $10,000 to provide seeds in an effort to help the farmers. Even in 1887, ten grand was a pretty paltry sum that would have done little to assuage the problems caused by the drought, but the bill did set a precedent for federal intervention into a problem that affected only a small number of American citizens.

President Cleveland vetoed the bill. In a statement that certainly defines today’s politicians’ disdain for the Constitution, he said, “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.”

Here is an interesting footnote. Rather that just veto the spending bill, President Cleveland made certain that the major national newspapers reported to their readers the plight of the Texas farmers. Within weeks, private donations that exceeded $100,000 were sent to a fund established for relief of the drought stricken farmers. Government intervention or the goodness of American citizens…which is better?

I know it is politically incorrect in this day and age, to speak out against social programs supposedly designed to relieve human suffering, but sometimes enough is enough. Recent news revelations (that 24 hour news cycle is certainly tough on politicians) have pointed out that 70+% of the federal budget now goes to social programs, as opposed to less than 25% in the 1960s and far less before that. A more staggering disclosure is that the average amount given to recipients of social programs now exceeds the average disposable income of working Americans. Let me put that another way. If you are an average American making an average wage, for the first time in history you can now make more money going on welfare, food stamps, etc.

Even a complete idiot can tell that such irresponsible spending by government is unsustainable. Even worse, such spending strips Americans of the very personal goodness and self sufficiency recognized by Grover Cleveland.

Mark Twain said it best. “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself!”

That’s all I’m saying.

Close your eyes and allow yourself to drift back in time to April 30, 1789.  A long and brutal Revolutionary War has ended, George Washington has been elected our new nation’s first president, and the great man is stepping up to the podium to deliver the first inaugural address of a President of the United States.  What happens next?

It might surprise you to know that what would happen next was as much related to the character and integrity of George Washington as it was to the words and tenets of the U.S. Constitution. Washington was the president, but possibly more important was the fact that he was the ‘precedent’ for all those who would follow him in that office.  For day to day matters, Washington had no rule book to read, no interpretations of the new Constitution, no historical reference on which to draw or to dictate how he should govern this new republic. From his relationship with Congress, to his official relevance to the citizenry, to such mundane things as how he, as president, should be addressed, Washington had to ‘write the book,’ so to speak. Virtually every move he made in office would set the standard for each of his successors.

With that thought firmly in mind, consider this: Washington was a Federalist in his personal beliefs. That means he was in favor of a very strong central government, was opposed to a broad measure of individual and states’ rights, and, during the framing of the Constitution, was not in favor of the inclusion of the Bill of Rights. There were strong arguments for such beliefs, and those who debated during the Constitutional Convention were sharply divided into Federalist and Anti-federalist camps. Federalists understood that he average citizen of the day had no understanding of a constitutional republic. All they had ever known was monarchy and a societal structure in which they were on the bottom rung, and the very idea of electing leaders from among their numbers was a foreign and frightening concept. Many still felt allegiance to England.  Many were afraid of self-rule. Many believed an elected president and congress would be even worse than a monarch who was thousands of miles away. The general public was simply not ready for responsibility of self rule…or so the Federalists thought.

Against this historic backdrop, and after a couple of intervening centuries, Barak Obama was elevated to the office of President of the United States. There is no doubt that Obama’s personal beliefs, just like those of George Washington, favor the Federalist view of government. Just like Washington, our current president believes in a powerful central government. Obama proves his beliefs daily in supporting legislation that can mandate things like health care practices and insurance coverages, states’ rights to protect citizens from foreign invasion, and individuals’ rights to practice their religion in the manner they choose.  Like Washington, Obama is not a big fan of the Bill of Rights, as is evidenced by the way he and the Democrat faithful, keep chipping away at our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. Obama is certainly opposed, as was Washington, to a broad measure of states’ and personal rights, and without doubt believes that the general public is still not ready for the responsibility of self rule.

So if Barack Obama had been the first American President, would things have shaken out to be basically the same as they are now?  He seems to think like Washington, and, as the introductory photo proves, could even look like Washington with the right wig. Would he have governed like the Father of Our Country? Personally, I doubt it. I have dwelt on the similarities between Obama and Washington, but I have left out some notable differences…until now.

When, at one point during the long war, the Continental Army had not been paid in several weeks because there was no money in the treasury, soldiers implored Washington to overthrow the Continental Congress and declare himself King of America. General Washington declined. President Obama has yet to refer to himself as King, but the fact that he has nearly forty Czars among his appointed hierarchy indicates he sees himself at some as yet unnamed higher office. He is also on record as saying if Congress won’t vote his way, he will just do it without them. Sounds a little like a king to me.

Washington realized that the people of America had exercised their individuality, self reliance, and ingenuity to bring the American continent to a point of self-government, and he believed the new Constitution would enable them to take the experiment to an even greater end. The new president was selfless enough to step back from his own personal beliefs and allow the document and the citizens to ‘work out the kinks,’ so to speak, and build what he envisioned as a great nation. To that end, he surrounded himself with advisors from both sides of the Federalist issue, and listened intently to arguments from all as they endeavored to interpret the law of the land. When John Adams suggested that the president be referred to as “Your Majesty” when being addressed by others, Washington scoffed, and said, “Mr. President will do.” Washington was from the elite rung of society, but struggled throughout his presidency to find ways to show he was a ‘man of the people’ while at the same time maintaining the dignity and uniqueness of the office of President of the United States.

Barack Obama, to the contrary, does not appear to recognize individual accomplishment or responsibility among the populace. In fact, he seems to vilify personal success and eschew any pretext of individual responsibility from what he views as a helpless American public.  His only pre-presidential job of which I am aware was that of a ‘community organizer,’ which seems to be loosely defined as one who finds ways for government to support and get things for people who refuse to take care of themselves. He personally believes government should have ultimate control of the people, states, and businesses, and he has not backed away from those beliefs as president. Obama has surrounded himself with advisors from the far left, and seems to take advise and direction from no one else. Rather that present himself as a ‘man of the people,’ he lavishly flaunts the privileges of his office by regularly taking his family on excessively expensive vacations while average Americans are struggling to pay their light bill.

All of those things point out irreconcilable differences between the two presidents, and highlight the fact that President George Washington was a man of high character and personal integrity who loved and respected the Constitution of the United States even when it chafed against his personal beliefs. Regarding those attributes as they relate to President Barack Obama, my dear old grandma always told me, “If you can’t think of something good to say about someone, don’t say anything.”

That’s all I’m saying.

For my first post, I thought readers might want to know a little about me to help determine how much time they want to invest in reading my commentary, opinions, rants, and, occasionally, drivel. “Who is this guy?” is a fair question. Do I meet the qualifications of a seasoned reporter, political and social commentator, and trustworthy purveyor of the truth, or am I just another of the countless, opinionated wannabes who have invaded the blogosphere in recent years? I suspect opinions on that will vary as widely as those of Republicans as they decide between Gingrich, Romney, et al.

I am author of three novels and a periodic columnist for The Destin Log and The Campbell Citizen as well as being a weekly contributor to The Daily Pamphlet. When not writing, I work as a practicing dentist. I was a candidate for U.S. Congress in 1984, but, thankfully, lost the race, a fact that has allowed me to maintain my honesty, straightforwardness, and ability to ‘call ‘em as I see ‘em.’  A couple of my most notable heroes are Zane Grey and Doc Holliday, two other dentists who found gainful employment in other fields.

Most of my columns will be political or social commentary, but I also have an interest in U.S. Presidential history, and write on that subject as well.

If I have a single qualification that sets me apart from other commentators, it is that I have a wide range of experience and a pretty sound understanding of Americans from just about every walk of life. You hear people say, “I knew from the time I was a child that I wanted to be a ______ (fill in the blank). Not me. I’ve tried just about everything out there, sometimes by choice, often from necessity. Among other things, I have worked as a farm laborer, carpenter, assembly line worker, apprentice electrician, truck driver, hospital orderly, teacher (both public school and college), military officer, dentist, and author.  I have run for Congress, crashed an airplane, survived a heart attack, written five books, and been married to the same wonderful lady for 39 years. I have shared a bologna sandwich with fellow cotton-pickers while taking a brief break from our $5 per day job, and I have schmoozed with Bill Clinton during more formal meals. I even had lunch once with Connie Kresky (Playboy Playmate of the Year in 1969). She was infinitely more interesting than Bill Clinton. That’s all I’m saying.

The point of all this rambling (you’ll get used to my rambling) is to say that no matter what kind of shoes you wear, there is a good chance that I have worn them, too. Unlike many of the ‘talking heads’ you read or hear from national  media outlets, who tend to talk at or even down to their listeners or readers, I am far more comfortable talking directly to my readers at any level or from whatever perspective they choose, and, if I do say so, I am uniquely qualified to do just that.

I’ll try to keep my commentary current, but during slow news times when the muse strikes me, I may throw in a little fluff to entertain you. Stuff like ‘how President Ronald Reagan put an end to a curse on the presidency that had lasted over 130 years,’ or ‘how John Wilkes Booth may have brought about an end to Prohibition in 1933.’ Stuff you probably didn’t learn in school.

Regardless of the subject, I love your comments, pro or con. Occasionally, one of you may even change my mind.