A Story for Christmas Week from an unlikely source ......

William F. Buckley Junior who died last year was one of the most influential conservative writers of our time and he was also one of the brightest. Although he was born in New York City and was as American as Apple Pie and Chevrolet. he sounded very much like a Brit. And he had great taste with respect to his ties ........

He was educated largely, but not exclusively at Yale, and was an active member of the notorious “Skull and Bones” society, much maligned in the liberal press which means, therefore, most of it.

For years they attempted to characterize all its members as empty-headed “Frat Boys” especially when they gleefully hammered on the fact that President George W. Bush had been one of them.

Is it possible that some of those "hammerers" couldn't get in? I could tell you a story about something similar but now is not the time and I do have a story coming up as promised.

Anyway, one of the essays that William Buckley wrote posed the question; How do you define smart?

Clearly the answer is not a simple one because you cannot just use education or possession of advanced degrees as the sole criteria. Anyone who has worked in industry on either side of the Atlantic can cite countless examples of people with doctoral qualifications who could not be trusted to go out and buy a daily paper and return with the correct change.

And anyone who has had to deal either with politicians or government bureaucrats can vouch for the fact that both fields have a healthy representation of people who couldn’t find their own rear end in the dark, even with both hands.

This must surely be why countless bobbing heads on the news shows keep assuring us that the recession is over and that the good times will surely be rolling again shortly.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll know the corner has been turned when I drive across town and see new businesses start cropping up in strip malls. Right now, I still see precisely the opposite as more and more existing businesses close their doors, often forever.

And how can it be when the unemployment rate increased again in these United States?

The fact is that, no matter how great and innovative a possible new venture may be, it will fail if their potential customers have no money to spend.

Of course, the liberal media is going to insist that the talking heads on TV are right because they are still in the tank for the Anointed One in spite of the fact that they know that whatever he has tried has not worked. But Shhh ...

Obama may have the “Book Smarts” but he’s never run a business, never had to make payroll; never even been employed in any capacity involving profit and loss. And the real scary part is that he has surrounded himself with many of the same background and in the absence of experience they fall back on ideology.

Here’s a little story I got from a fervent “Obamaite”. Perhaps, they shared the same educational curriculum? And the more I think about it , the more likely that could be .......


"Anyway, imagine a slow day in a little East Texas town. The sun is beating down, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit...On this particular day a rich tourist from back east is driving through town.

He stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.The guy at the Farmer's Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town…

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today."


Well almost, but not quite, because at least here in the story everyone broke even. Actually they didn't because the hotel wound up out by $100 but it makes a better story the way it's written.

But certainly in the world in which we all live, you and I will not come close to breaking even and neither will generations as yet unborn.