This board is, at least as of this writing, on display in the area of Kansas City. Over the years, there is certainly an element who view themselves as patriots and defenders of free speech. Interstate 70 as runs between Kansas City and St. Louis has seen billboards with all kinds of messages. Ultra conservative messages, like "Get US Out of the UN", to anti abortion messages, to political messages like the one above.

Contrary to former President Jimmy Carter, these messages are not based in racism. The messages aren't based in fear. They are based in anger and frustration of the powerless. These messages strike me as being like a famous poster I had on my dorm wall in college years ago. You might have seen the poster. A mouse has been running a field, trying to get away from a hawk who has dinner in his sites. As the mouse becomes certain of his fate, he turns and with an extended middle finger, gives his last act of defiance.

The mouse strikes me as the American Taxpayer.  The hawk, the Federal Government today.

Messages like these to me are simply an exercise of one of the few rights that haven't been legislated away by the government. The right of free speech.

Rasmussen Reports, using a telephone survey of likely voters, reported that Americans are the most anger they have been since polling began with the political class. The anger has been dismissed and derided by legislators like Speaker Nancy Peolsi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Its been the subject of ridicule by David Letterman, and other of the mainstream media. Its rocked the world of progressives like Frank Rich of the New York Times who simply doesn't get it. Michael Moore has even done a movie just out, capturing what he believes is America's love affair with capitalism and pushing an argument for more government intervention in our lives.

Americans are angry. The unfortunate part is it may well be too late to save the political experiment of more than 223 years.

Unemployment is hitting numbers we haven't seen in this country in three decades. Counting those who have given up looking for work, and the underemployed, our unemployment rate is at 17%!! Gold and silver prices measured in dollars are climbing. While the stock market has rallied impressively from the depths it fell once President Obama took over, there's a problem. Insider trading, the group of people who must register their buy and sell stock activities with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is higher than anytime since the Great Depression. Think those guys know something we don't? It leads one to believe there's a fool's rally here somewhere. Again average Americans are going to be the ones who pay the price.

Free speech seems to have been forgotten by the so called progressives once they have taken nearly an unbreakable hold on Washington. There are claims that these kinds of things were never said about former President Bush. There were never Bush war crimes photos, or Bush with Hitler's mustache, or even hanging the President in effigy. I'll point you where those photos are. I lived in the Bay Area and saw and heard all the anti-American rhetoric. Can you begin for a moment to imagine the noise that would occur in the mainstream media should an Iraqi throw shoes at President Obama?

President Bush set the bar for the incoming administration pretty low. His time has generally been characterized as being full of scandal, pocket lining, and a betrayal of the American people while taking care of his friends.. He was a President who pretended to be a conservative, when in reality, he was not. We will be paying for decades for the general malfeasance and assault on our freedoms Bush 43 unleashed.

President Obama swept to office by misleading the American people. He misread a "mandate" to drastically change the way our government works and taxes us. We have to live within a checkbook. Our government has realized it has no limit on its checkbook. President Obama has committed more deficit spending in his budget that all the Presidents put together. Time will judge him as it is already judging Bush 43. In his actions over the first nine months in office, he looks much more like a poor replay of President Carter, than the savior bring hope and change he promised.

I fully support the people who put up the billboard. They are demonstrating the American right to free speech. Thank God we have it. Long may it continue.