Open Letter to Obama (For My Friend Jimmy)
This post is for Jimmy, a good friend of mine from my high school days. We haven’t seen each other in years face to face, but I remember him as having more personality than any three people I know today! Jimmy is simply one of the funniest and craziest friends I think I’ve ever had, and I’ll always remember him in that light.
Like so many people do when they move on with their lives after their school years, I lost touch with almost everyone I ever knew from my school days (including my friend Jimmy). Thankfully, like so many others have done with the advent of Facebook, I have been able to reconnect with 100′s of old friends from school through Facebook, and even more thankfully, one of those friends was Jimmy.
By the way. for any of you who don’t have the address to my Facebook profile and would like to have it, here it is: Rick Upshaw on Facebook
Anyway, to my knowledge and recollection, my friend Jimmy and I were raised in much the same manner. We went to the same schools. We played ball together. One would think we’d have grown up with much the same values. Apparently not.
To my utmost shock and amazement, Jimmy (for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration) apparently took a wrong turn somewhere in life after I lost track of him and – to my shock and amazement – turned out to be a liberal, and even more amazingly, STILL supports President Obama as he leads our country to communism, socialism and utter ruin and decay!
Frankly, I think that if we were to sit down and compare notes, it’s highly likely that Jimmy and I would find that we probably share more political views in common than Jimmy might care to admit. However, in an interesting exchange we had on my Facebook page today, I was inspired to write this letter. I encourage anyone reading this who has a blog themselves to do the same, regardless of your political leanings.
(By the way, as I was putting the finishing touches on this post, another friend of mine who is also named Jimmy entered our exchange with a comment that could not be more diametrically opposed to the position of the first Jimmy! I’m thinking of doing another post entitled, “The Tale of Two Jimmy’s”! Hmmm…)
Open Letter from Rick Upshaw to President Obama
This says it all, doesn't it?
To: Barack Obama, Self-Appointed King of America:
Out of my desire to continue to live in the free country in which I was born, and in defiance of your desire to take that freedom away from me one piece at a time, please be advised of the following:
1. I, Rick Upshaw, an American small business entrepreneur and capitalist (a dying breed in the country you are creating) will tell all of my valued clients to kiss off, file bankruptcy and close my doors forever before I will let you or any of your cronies take over my business. I am the one who is building it, not you. I am the one who is dealing with its day-to-day challenges, not you. I am the one whose blood, sweat and tears have built it to where it is today, and it will be my blood, sweat and tears, not yours, that will determine the ultimate success or failure of any business project in which I am involved!
2. I will ride a lame donkey for the rest of my life before I will ever buy another GM product for so long as “GM” really stands for “Government Motors” instead of “General Motors”. (This is coming from someone who has sworn by GM products ever since I was old enough to drive).
3. I will go to jail for the rest of my life before I will ever buy anything in ANY area of business in which the government feels it can enter the market and compete against private enterprise in violation of our constitution. I was born AMERICAN, not SOCIALIST, in a FREE United States of America!
With all due respect to you in your role as my President (may God help us all), here is the bottom line:
- Stay out of my life:- If I’m too dumb to run my life and make my own decisions, that’s my problem, not yours!
- Stay out of my business: - I don’t need government money for a bailout. If my business fails, another entrepreneur will take my place. No matter how successful I am, I will never be too big to fail. If I need help, I’ll go to a bank (one that you haven’t taken over or run out of business), or a private lender or my family. If things get desperate, I’ll go to a charity, not the government! If none of those work, then I will close my doors and try again. That’s what happens in a free country!
- Stay out of my finances – personal or professional: – If I can’t run my own finances or make the right financial decisions, and my family, friends or charity can’t help, then I will fail. I don’t need a government bailout.
- Stay out of my home and my bedroom: – For so long as what I am doing in my own home or business doesn’t affect you or anyone else, you don’t need to be worried about what I’m doing in my home or bedroom! For so long as I don’t force my own values on anyone else in public, what goes on in my home between my spouse and me is not your concern!
Basically, the message is simple:
Let me live free, as was promised to me by our forefathers long before you decided to dupe the American people into electing you so that you could start your “Self-Appointed-King-Of-The-World” campaign! Protect my country and my way of life, and then stay out of my life and let me live it!
If you have a problem with any of this, then just let me know, and advise me to which “concentration camp” – I mean – “jail” I need to report and turn myself in, and I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison as a martyr for freedom, democracy, and the American Way as I pay the price for not obeying your orders as you dictated to me how I should spend my money, run my business, and live my life in the way you, Princess Pelosi, Prince Reid, all of your czars and the rest of your communist minions dictated when you appointed yourself lord of our lives.
Rick Upshaw American Capitalist & Entrepreneur
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Amen, Brother! I didn’t think there was anyone left with enough common sense to take this position, let alone an American entrepreneur like you! You have renewed my faith in a truly free America!
Thank God for small business entrepreneurs who think like Rick Upshaw!
@LED… Thanks!
I could not have said this better myself, Mr. Upshaw! Outstanding job! Why can’t we have this kind of passion in our government (at least a passion that isn’t being faked just to get a vote!)
Hi Joe! Thanks for the comment! Yes, I whole-heartedly agree. We need to go back to our roots somehow and find people who have a high level of passion for simple integrity in our government. However, I must admit that I grow more and more cynical every day about whether or not those people even exist anymore. God help us all!
Amen, Brother! You tell ‘em! We’re with ya!
Thanks, Sandy!
Mr. Upshaw,
There are more of us out there than you might realize who long for honor in our government! Kudos to you for being willing to speak up! I think one of the biggest reasons we are in such a bad spot today is because we’ve been too complacent for too many years. It’s our fault that the lack of honor in our government has become so rampant!
Keep up the good work! Let me know if I can do anything to help you!
I appreciate your comments, “EURObamaBusters! I also really like your name! You must have seen the comment from my other friend named Jimmy. He referred to King Obama is “EUROBama” as well, and rightfully so! Nice!
I think the sentiments being expressed here, in that thread on my Facebook wall, and all over the country are sentiments that we can all agree upon in spite of our party affiliation or the lack thereof. This is just too important to be complacent about politics anymore! The problem, though, is that in spite of the best efforts of people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin and a host of others on television and radio as well as on the internet, while they all are good at identifying the problem, no one has really come up with a good solution! The consensus seems to be that we just sit and wait to vote the democrats out of office so that we can defund the Obama healthcare plan, and then vote Obama out of office in 2012. Does anyone believe that we can afford to wait that long? Yet another option just doesn’t seem to exist, because our laws assume that the men and women that we elect to Congress and the White House are honorable people, when for the last several elections, they have apparently merely represented a mere lack of options. Does anyone else have a problem with this?
May God save America from “EUROBama” and his minions, Princess Pelosi and Prince Reid!
This is a good post. I stumbled across your story while looking for some random stuff. Thanks for sharing, I’ll be sure to recommend this site to others.
Rick Upshaw appears to be one among many who want what we once had, and could have again! We need to organize a little better and present a united front against these kinds of policies that would take away our freedom!
Thanks for the comment, Joe, as well as the kind complement!
Hi Rick! I saw your exchange with Jimmy on Facebook. I appreciated the fact that even though you sharply disagreed with Jimmy on the points, that you (both) kept it civil, polite and respectful. Jimmy obviously means a lot to you. He must be a good guy and a good friend to you!
I hope that you were able to get through to him on the points. Of course we don’t think that Obama would ever actually succeed in getting rid of elections all together! However, he clearly has his sights set on taking over the country, and he’s already started to do so. I hope Jimmy and others that think like him will start to see soon what’s really going on, and join us in protecting the country this takeover!
Thanks, Joe! I’ve said many times that when it comes to what we’re facing with Obama, liberals and conservatives have a lot more in common that many might think. Liberals want the rights and freedoms to express their beliefs as much as we conservatives do, but the precedent is being set right now to have those rights taken away from us by a government that thinks it has the right to assign those rights to us and take them away at will. The constitution is the constitution, and is by design a document that is supposed to protect us from what Obama and his minions are trying to accomplish now.
I will always have nothing but the utmost respect for my friend Jimmy regardless of his beliefs. I know him to be a funny guy at heart, but I believe he’ll be standing right next to me in this fight once he realizes what’s being taken away from him. In my humble opinion, we all should have the same attitude toward the people with whom we disagree politically, because when it comes to our freedom, I don’t think too many disagree!
I don’t know that I could ever be a Republican, but I have to tell you that I could not be more fed up with my beloved Democratic Party today. President Obama has completely betrayed the trust we placed in him. I have truly come to fear my government after seeing what he and his pool of czars have gotten away with!
I don’t know much about Rick Upshaw except what I have read on this site, but I have to admit that I like the way has has put things here in this post! Regardless of what party we belong to, I think there are so many of us longing for honor in America, and Honor in Congress!
So to Rick Upshaw, I say this: “Keep Up The Good Work!” I never thought I’d have so much in common with a conservative, but now that I’ve read some of your work, I think I need to go back and take a look at what conservatism is all about! Perhaps it’s not the satanic cult that I’ve been led to believe it is!
Hello “Dem No Longer”,
You know, I really don’t write posts like this very often. Most of what I write here regarding politics relates more to how the decisions of our so-called leaders in Washington are affecting American business, especially the small business entrepreneur, on the backs of whom this country was built! However, on the day I wrote that, I was really on a roll after my interchange with Jimmy. I have such a passion for our country, and it’s truly breaking my heart to watch these idiots now in Washington on BOTH sides of the isle ruin our country and our lives and our futures all for the sake of whatever they think is in their own political self-interest! I hope you and everyone else who reads this truly gets that sense.
In any case, I must admit that I am happy to see that you are a “Dem-No-More”, although I’m really not sure at this point which party I’d recommend. As you may know, I was raised a Republican, and I am most definitely a conservative – at least on most things. On this issue, however, I just think that Democrats and Republicans alike ought to be united on the issue of having freedoms taken away from us. The precedent Obama is setting right now should scare the living H)*&^(& out of anyone who loves freedom in our country! They are arguing that people like me are being “alarmist” by making statements like that, because “common sense” should dictate that people in power wouldn’t try to do blatantly obvious things to take away our freedom. That doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that he has the power to take ANY freedom away from me as a law-abiding citizen! May God help anyone who can’t see that.
Thanks for your comment, Dem No More! Come back anytime!
I am a little mystified by this rant. I am, and have always been, a registered independent. I don’t really prefer the basic philosophies of one party or another, though in recent years I have found Republicans increasingly out of touch on big global issues like ecological instability and abuses in the financial sector. Nevertheless, give me someone who can support social AND financial freedom and I will consider lending a vote. Anyway, I LOVE what Obama is doing. I consider him a true, moderate, independent. He has not advocated ‘Socialism’ in any way that I can detect…and I have actually gone through and read the critical legislation that is so widely criticized. I have watched Beck for several hours and I now will no longer be watching that show. There are absolutely no grounds for the charges being leveled at what appears to me to be a VERY fair-minded, hard-working president, who listens to views from a broad range within the moderate middle region of the political spectrum.
Hi Matthue,
While I obviously disagree with your position, before I say anything about why I disagree, I’d just like to compliment you on the way you expressed yourself in your comment. Somehow, it seems to me that many Americans have lost the ability to disagree with one another while still respecting one another. That concept is clearly not lost on you, and for that, I’d like to show my gratitude to you.
Now, here is where I respectfully disagree:
While it is likely the case that there isn’t anything in what you’ve read that blatantly and openly supports communism, that in and of itself ought to be a cause of concern for you when you compare that fact to what the man has said openly in interviews for years. Add to that the fact that he is surrounding himself with people who openly hate everything we stand for, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Regarding Glenn Beck, everyone has their own preferences, I suppose. Perhaps some don’t like his style, such as is often the case with figures like him. I’ve heard the same said quite often about Rush Limbaugh. However, like him or not, the audio and video clips Glenn Beck has aired on his show clearly show where Obama’s intentions lie, as well as that of his minions.
The United States of America was founded so that people like you and I could live free from constant government intervention. You should have the right to have your opinion and I should have the right to have mine without the government stepping in thinking that you and I are too dumb to reconcile our differences, if that even needs to happen!
Regarding socialism, based on my own admittedly limited understanding of socialism, the government decides everything. The government decides what companies stay in business or go out of business. The government takes over businesses when it sees fit, whether or not the actual owners and managers of the business want them to our not. The government decides how much money it’s people and business can make. The government decides what kind of house you can have, what kind of car you can have, what purchases you can and can’t make, and so on, and so on, and so on. The government does all of those things and more because the assumption is that the givernment knows best because you and I are too dumb, ignorant and/or incompetent to figure it out for ourselves, yet we have 200 years of history to prove that we can, in fact, do whatever we need to do provided we are left alone to get it done!
Anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock since Obama took office can see a lot of Obama’s policies in the previous paragraph. In 200 years of history, the government has NEVER tried to dictate to people what purchases to make, nor has it used taxes or penalties in order to force people into making the choices they want you to make.
If I have more money than someone else, or a better life than someone else, in the America I was taught to love, it’s because I worked for it and made it happen for myself (or one of my ancestors did). Lots of people in the world have a better life financially than I do, but if I want the life they have, I want to be inspired to go make it happen instead of Obama taking money out of that man’s pocket and giving it to me. If that other person is being taxed at an exorbitant rate and I am receiving ANY financial benefit from the government, then the government is taking money away from the man or woman who worked their tails off to get where they are (only to find Obama in their back pockets faster than you can say, “Yes we can”, and giving their money to me. Those people don’t know me, so they don’t owe me a thing! This, in my understanding, is textbook socialism.
Perhaps most importantly, Americans became Americans 200 years ago because of exorbitant taxation without representation. This is exactly what’s happening today. The only people who get representation are the people and companies who pay millions for it behind closed doors. If we rebelled against a government 200 years ago for the exact same thing that is happening today, then the only reason Obama and his cronies would be doing this today is that their guns are bigger than ours today than they were back then! Government then had too much power, and we rebelled, and rightfully so. Why, then, would it be wrong to rebel today if the same thing is happening today? Americans fought for freedom 200 years ago so that they could have a small government that didn’t interfere with their lives. That’s all I want. I want the America that I was promised. I want my taxes to pay for our military, our infrastructure and nothing more. We are the greatest country in the world because unlike everyone else in the world, that’s all we need to make it!
Obama promised transparency and honesty from his administration and has delivered the exact opposite – more blatant back-room deals than ever, and for far more money. That alone is enough for me to want his resignation. Even though I have always been a conservative, if the man had just been honest, I’d be far more willing to give him more slack – even if it ended up being the case that I’m just giving him more rope to hang himself.
Finally, and arguably even more important than anything else in this very long comment of mine, does anyone remember when a kid growing up could aspire to be a politician, and parents would encourage them to do so? Politicians were considered to be the best of us. They had made fewer mistakes than we common folk. They were perceived as being more honorable. Today, they are nothing more than the butt of pretty much any joke that deals with honor! I want a president who tells the truth, whether I like what he has to say or not! I want a president to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, not because a public opinion poll tells him it’s the right thing to do! I want a president who is so honorable, that if he can’t keep a campaign promise for ANY reason, he goes on the air, looks us all in the eye, and tells us what happened, and then offers his resignation. That’s the level of honor in our government that I and so many people like me long for. That’s the government I think we can have if we can just stop letting these people intrude into our lives just a little more every day!
I hope you can understand where I’m coming from here, Matthue. I hope you can see that we probably have a lot more common ground between us than you might think. I want freedom, and I think you do, too. I just see a government that is taking it away from us a little every day, and you don’t see it yet. However, I can assure you that if we stay on the same path we’re on now, sooner or later, you will.
Respectfully,
Rick Upshaw
Hello could I use some of the content here in this blog if I link back to you?
Yes, Britany. I’d appreciate that!
Rush Limbaugh just says it how it is…no crap, no prettying it up…just saying it! Rick Upshaw is right on the money in is comments here!