My two-armed and amiable liberal friend, it is hard to disagree with you about so much of what you espouse, because you have the same core values as I have. However, you have a near-total inability to recognize what the "far-left" is doing to our country. First, a word about definitions: what is in the dictionary may reflect standardized usage from the time of, say, Noah Webster, but it does not reflect correct usage from a contemporary political perspective. Let us take but one word from the dictionary, and without looking it up, analyze what it means to the ordinary American. Invest, or investment, a noun or verb meaning to take a resource and use it to obtain a return greater than the starting sum. Usually we associate this with business, personal effort, etc, but it is always with something that is ours. What you find is that a lot of politicians, but Democrats in particular, do not use language the same way. Invest, to them, means to confiscate more taxes to spend on programs that offer no net GDP benefit. Take education, for example: we spend at least three times more per pupil on an adjusted, per-capita basis than we did in 1970 but the test scores are worse...EVEN after the tests were dumbed down. Trillions of dollars have been spent on President Johnson's "war on poverty", justified, I might add, by compassion even though it was highly un-Constitutional, and yet now there is a vastly bigger and infinitely more permanent group of multi-generational welfare recipients who do not, or cannot, get off the government dole. Is it compassionate to deliberately enslave a segment of the population into perpetual poverty so you can have a dependent and highly loyal block of voters? NO! But this is precisely the effect of welfare in a command and control economy; it eviscerates agency and self-reliance in favor of receiving something for nothing. Except it never has been something for nothing, as there is a very steep price to pay for the welfare handout; Dignity and self-respect. I know of what I speak in this regard through bitter experience. Is there more compassion to giving a man one fish every day, or to teach him to fish so that he may catch many fish (or at least as many as he wants) so that the surplus may be sold or bartered, or even shared with others?
And here we get to one of the core principles of the liberal vs conservative debate. Statistics have shown that conservatives open their wallet more to the poor, donate more money to charities, and are, on the whole, more compassionate with the uses of their money. Liberals are, on the other hand, more tightfisted with their own money but infinitely more willing to spend other people's money on causes they like.
 Let us be clear, taxation is theft by force, a taking of money from a person who earned it to give to another party who did not earn it. Those who favor socialist style, big government spending do  not agree with the definition of personal property rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and codified by the Constitution. They believe that property belongs to the State and that the government, at any time, may decide what is a "fair" amount for the worker to keep of the fruit of his labors, and to what favored parties the spoils can be "redistributed" to. This legalized larceny through the tax code, if left unchecked, will foster legions of rent seekers whose sole purpose in life is to game the system and participate in the ill-gotten plunder. Resources are mis-allocated, productive uses of capital are greatly diminished, and because the tax code is levied on the producers of a nation, not the leeches, tax revenues go down even as the the tax rates become ever more punitive. At the nadir of the cycle, which we see in Greece, the US and nearly every industrialized nation on our fair globe, debt becomes national debt becomes an unbearable burden. Unable to restrain itself from the bread and circuses the majority have learned they can vote themselves (there are more people who do not pay taxes than those who do in the U.S., and almost half of the population receive some part of their income from the government), expenditures outstrip revenue(again this is not revenue from a business that creates something, but rather confiscation through force by a government) and rather than spend less the government borrows against future generations. I ask, is it compassionate to saddle  your great grandchildren with debt for things you bought? NO! Remember the saying"the road to hell is paved with good intentions"? That phrase aptly describes the liberal idea of compassion through government spending.

 The whole argument about profiling is ludicrous because the actual practice of profiling is to take one particular characteristic such as hair color, gender, ethnicity and treat those who have that characteristic differently than those who do not. The argument against profiling rests on the assumption that any of these overt characteristics have no relation to underlying character traits or ability to perform a job, commit a crime, etc.  Hence the protected classes of the ADA and other legislation which make it illegal (hence unconstitutional, because laws are ipso facto constitutional until deemed otherwise) to discriminate on the basis of age, religion, gender and other inherent classes. In a law enforcement investigation, profiling is widely used to determine the suspects of a crime, and allows investigators to cull the suspect pool down to those who should be interviewed or put under surveillance: in other words, they determine who poses the most risk of having committed (or going to commit) a crime by looking at relevant exogenous factors such as group affiliation, etc. When, as many have noted, the only perpetrators of attempted (and successful) acts of terrorism in the United States have been swarthy Islamic males "SIMs", and the religion of these SIMs is an integral part of their propensity to kill innocent people, profiling becomes a necessity to protect the public interest. The liberal media and our very own Homeland Security has no problem with "profiling" Tea Party activists as being a "fringe, radical,racist organization and prone to violence, being comprised of white, fundamentalist Christian males". They are too politically correct to call out those groups who really want to kill Americans but patriotic Americans who believe in limited government are apparently fair game. So, answer me a question: who poses the greatest danger to American life and liberty? Is it the small minority of fanatics who are trying to blow things up, or the large majority of liberal, politically correct media enablers and politicians (including a President with a Muslim name) who refuse to protect American lives because they value Muslim sensibilities more? I argue that in order to fight a war successfully, one must first remove the ineffective, the indolent, and the traitorous from among the ranks of those called to lead the nation (better known as the enemy within, and as an aside,the oath of office specifies protecting the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic), then turn the focus to defeating the enemy without our borders. Should we profile SIMs? Absolutely, because they as a group represent an enhanced risk to our nation. But the real clear and present danger to our republic are those leaders, both agencies and individuals, who mock our laws and are in dereliction of their Constitutional duties. Let us profile THAT group into oblivion through every electoral and legal means at our disposal, starting with the TSA.

 
link to Jonah Goldberg column

Excellent column Pat! The original premise behind legal immigration was that the immigrants would divest themselves of any fealty to the land and rulers of their birth, thereby becoming naturalized Americans.The illegal immigrant attitude, as espoused by groups such as La Raza and Democrats, is to send the money you make home to Mexico, fly the Mexican flag, demand dual language education and complete welfare benefits so you know to vote "D", and utterly despise the country foolish enough to allow you to act in such a disrespectful manner. Pat is right, actions by white people at a Mexican soccer game comparable to what was seen in Pasadena would have resulted in not a few lynchings. Why do we keep allowing such flagrant flouting of the law and civility: I forgot..., they are a prized Democratic demographic to bribe and appease so they can help democrats continue to steal elections.

Link to Pat's column

I must confess, watching our elected officials deal with the debt ceiling, budget, and impending financial implosion of the dollar has the same morbid fascination of seeing a train wreck unfold right before your eyes. You really hope this is an Xbox game and everybody is just virtually dead, instead of real, flesh and blood gone the way of all the earth type of demise, but it is not to be. What truly adds to the surreal nature of the spectacle is the way the ruling class elite and the chattering classes have all but ignored it, preferring to engage in fear-mongering amonst the elderly (the ad about Rep. Ryan "throwing granny off the cliff" because he advocates cuts to medicaid, never mind that those cuts will not effect anybody older than 55) and steadfastly refusing to pass a budget. The Democrat-controlled Senate (I was going to say led, but there is no leadership from the Dems in that political body) has not passed a budget for almost 790 days, or for the approximate amount of time Obama has been president. There is a kernel of truth to the Democratic claim that this is President Bush's fault: They are, after all, still using his last budget... In all seriousness, the failure to pass a budget and address the fiscal catastrophe that the nation is facing is nothing less than treasonous, because the effects of defaulting on our debt and losing reserve currency status for the dollar, will hamstring the ability of this nation to prosper for generations to come, and do what none of our enemies has hitherto succeeded in doing: Relegate us to the status of a second-tier nation, a has-been like England or Spain with only the old, musty trappings of faded glory to remind their young of what once had been the mightiest nation on the face of the earth.
A nation can endure many indignities and still emerge, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of war and tragedy to reclaim material success. Japan, Germany, and the whole eastern theater of WWII combat operations bear testament to the resiliency of nations, particularly when they have the United States and the Marshall plan to help do the heavy lifting. The current economic debacle is, however,  a worldwide phenomenon, fueled by two generations of Keynesian deficit spending and welfare state policy that destroy a nation's wealth-building capacity in the name of income redistribution and social justice. The end result of such social/fiscal policies is always and ever an equality of all to be poor and miserable while the the elites rail at the stupidity of the common man for being ungrateful for being saved from themselves. Al Gore will never live in a cave as an example of "carbon-light" living, Congress will never abide by the rules it enacts for others, and socialists will never comprehend why an all-knowing government fails so miserably at creating wealth and managing the marketplace. But the Socialist/Communist experiments of the last century have shown us one area in which such governments excel above all others: in repression, genocide and the destruction of the economy, freedoms and social fabric of the nations unfortunate enough to fall under their sway. Which brings us back to to the current administration.
       Faced with the fact that a tax rate of 100% of all income from all taxpayers would still not eliminate the national debt and budget deficit (which to be precise are two enormously large, but different entities), our fearless (and clueless) Democratic party refuses to cut spending and abide by a debt ceiling, instead pushing for a tax increase! When current fiscal policies have wiped out nearly half of the asset base of the nation through the housing collapse, doubled the unemployment rate, tripled the deficit spending of the Federal Government, and pushed the actual rate of inflation up to 10% while doubling the price of gasoline and other traditional energy sources, increasing the burden on those who are already drowning is an act of sheer insanity! Unless your end goal is to destroy the USA as a world power, in which case, the cunning of a fox is a more apt descriptive term. Obama ran on a campaign slogan that was, in part, about the "audacity of hope", in which one can only wonder if the hope mentioned was to destroy the United States of America. But it is not as if he did not warn us: He did promise that he and his minions would bring about "a basic transformation of the nation".      A majority of the voters must of thought the "change we have been waiting for" was, in fact going to be positive, pleasant change,not the systematic dismantling of every facet of what made America a great and exceptional nation. Now the nation we most resemble financially is Greece, who is selling off all of her national treasures and landmarks to avoid defaulting on her debt. Anybody interested in a White House for sale in D.C.? Oh I am sorry, some folks from Chicago already bought it a couple of years ago, and have been running the printing presses to pay off their union/socialist/race-baiting lenders ever since.

Ok, I usually do not address comments before the actual column but since I am third in line, and the posters before me straining at gnats in worrying about whether a pledge is an oath per Old Testament rules, here is the pointy end of the stick: Christ said: Thou shalt not kill. 10 Commandments anyone? I think that takes precedence over rules about how to phrase an oath.  Look, Ken Connor's point is about the substance of the issue at hand, which is the sanctity of life, not the oath affirming ones' agreement with the issue itself. A man is only as good as his word, and Romney has changed the meaning and stance of his words too many times for my comfort. I get the feeling there are very few policy positions he would not be wiling to sacrifice if he thought it would guarantee him the Presidency. I will not vote for him in the primaries, although I would hold my nose and vote for him in the election because he is waaaay better than Obama. But Romney, like Harry Ried, is truly a poor excuse of an example for what conservative Christians believe, let alone conservative Mormons, because conservative people of faith do not extol such things as "pragmatism" and make virtues out of compromising ones' principles. Tell me, if you can, what is left of a man's character if he be willing to sacrifice his principles on the altar of political expediency? There is nothing foundational left except vices, and for such a man, the office of dogcatcher is placing too much of the public trust in his hands. Ken Conner is right in his premise: Either life begins at conception, or it does not. Either life is sacred, or it is not. Any politician who cannot answer where he or she stands on those two statements in a clear, unambiguous manner, and be willing to sign a pro-life pledge if that is in accord with their answers, does not deserve elective office and the public trust that goes with it. If they are willing to lie and prevaricate on such solemn and weighty issues, nothing will hold them to a fealty for truth in commonplace matters. Or, in other words: they are wolves in sheep's clothing; from such run away.
            Adding more to my displeasure with his heralded lead in the polls is that Romney is a RINO, not an actual Republican conservative. Why in the world would the liberal media be playing lapdog to his presumed "frontrunner" status otherwise, except for the fact that he is the closest to a democrat-lite from a social perspective of the current field and he likes big government? An easy rule of thumb to live by in assessing media coverage of Republican candidates is the ones receiving the most favorable coverage by the liberal media are either unelectable in a general election, so far left of the conservative Republican base that they really should change their party affiliation (thinking Specter here, although that did not save him), or suffer both defects.Kevin McCollough noted that for over a year before the 2008 elections polls indicated that in a straight up race Huckabee would defeat Obama, yet the mainstream media sang the praises of McCain while doing everything it could to vilify and marginalize Huckabee, to keep him from gaining traction. The purpose of the liberal media is to elect liberal candidates: you will never find unbiased coverage of conservative Republican candidates in the MSM unless, well....., I cannot think of an exception.
But besides the annoying victory parade being lead by the MSM almost two years before the actual 2012 election, Romney has demonstrated some very serious lapses in judgement from a policy perspective, the most glaring of which is Romneycare. Enacted while he was Governor of Mass., it is the same monstrosity at a state level that national Democrats foisted on the unsuspecting citizenry at the Federal level, hence Pelosi's famous quote that we would have to pass the legislation to be able to find out what was in it! So much for transparency in government, eh? Yet Romney is either too arrogant to admit he made a mistake in signing Romneycare into law, too duplicitous in thinking we the voter cannot tell the difference between (actually the striking similarities of) the two pieces of unconstitutional legislation, or so completely tone-deaf to the national rejection of Obamacare that he has never said he was sorry to have allowed the bill to live. Nay, he defends his part in the process, making only the feeble argument that the legislature was overwhelmingly Democrat, so he did the best he could. No, the BEST he could have done would have been to veto the beast, and let it slide into the long, dark, night of legislative limbo. So...., he is either a liar, dumb, two-faced, or arrogant to a fault: any of which disqualifies him as a presidential contender in my eyes. Say Romneycare and Obamacare in the same sentence, realizing that they both focus on the same goal of single-payer insurance run by the government, enacted through coercion, tax penalties and in Romneycare's case, characterized by a complete and abject failure to produce any positive results. Now try to say "Romney is a conservative" with a straight face. Ain't gonna happen.
Link to Ken Connor's column

I had often felt that the we are in the midst of a civil war based on the statist mentality and dependency espoused by the educated urban fringe of our country (liberal democrats) vs the fly-over country of heartland patriots focus on individual responsibility and limited government promoted by conservative republicans. Ann Coulter's new book, Demonic, takes this premise to a whole new level, which David Limbaugh brings out very well. Liberals are ashamed of America and determined to destroy her because of precisely this point: Liberals are not Americans in a cultural, historical or ideological sense! They reject the foundations the American Revolution because in their hearts they really are Robespierrians who delight in the mob mentality and lopping off the heads of all who disagree with them. In short, Liberals are really a French mob looking for their Napolean (Come to think of it, they found him in Obama) and wish to have the rest of us conform, or die. Of course they want to remake America into a socialist state, and from Rousseau to Alinsky, those with the mob mindset believe that the end always justifies the means. Until we Americans who love our country truly realize the type of conflict we are in, and the futility of compromise, we will continue to lose ground in the fight for Liberty.

 

With the demise of Bin Ladin, the argument has been rekindled about just what, and why, we as a nation are expending such an enormous amount of national blood and treasure in far off lands? I agree that conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan are unwinnable by outside forces, without employing a Genghis Khan mentality, and interior schisms between tribes and religions make any national government with real authority extremely unlikely. So, why are we involved any type of military ground operations? It is simply because to not be involved carries far worse possibilities to our national security. We may not have much leverage in these nations, but we do at least have some, as well as intelligence assets on the ground and in the respective governments. The Islamic nations may pose strategic threats to us because of the possible economic weaponization of their oil reserves, and the ever present danger of terrorism, but in every other capability they are backwards, insular nations. Pakistan does have nuclear weapons, but no long range delivery systems, so even that represents a threat only to the Asian theatre, not directly to U.S. soil.

The real intractable problem on the worlds’ stage is Pakistan/India, because of profound religious differences going back 60 years to the partition of the nation into a Muslim and Hindu homeland. They have been fighting over Kasmir for literally decades, both have nuclear weapons, and large populations of very poor cannon fodder the elites would not hesitate to expend in the name of national interest. Plus, we really do not possess the mental toughness and pragmatism to negotiate with any of these nations, so we should not even pretend we can unless we are willing to be effective in our negotiations (which requires more than throwing money around). Pakistan came around into our camp not because of our words, but because of what we did to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Piecemeal, and nuanced, approaches do not work in that region of the world, so we need to go in to win decisively, or stay out. Since staying out is not an option at this stage, winning is the only way left. Unless, of course, we want to go the way of France and Britain, appease our way into obscurity while Sharia law eradicates our national identity.

When considering the propagation of radical Islamic thought, it should be remembered that the Islamic nations have many smart, highly talented people, but the ruling regimes are so removed economically from the masses they might as well be different nations, which is why Osama and Wahabbism represent a more fundamental threat to the Gulf Arabic nations than to our own. The terrorists may blow some of our landmarks up, but they cannot destroy our culture and throw us back, as a nation, to the middle ages, as they can Saudi Arabia, Quatar, et al, because we do not have a majority of citizens in grinding poverty being radicalized by religious imams while our rulers life large.

Perhaps that is really where I feel President Obama and the rest of these oh so experienced people (BTW if they are so experienced and have been around for 40 years, why are we stilling having these problems?) miss the boat, they are focused primarily on the physical insurgency of the Islamic radicals, and refusing to acknowledge that our national security paradigm must in large part be based on defeating the ideology of Jihadism. We are a Christian nation and have no business adopting Sharia compliant financing, foot baths, clean foods, or any other politically correct genuflucting to Islam, let alone refusing to criticize radical Islamic terrorists because it might hurt their feelings! Wipe the terrorists from the face of the earth (so long and good riddance, Osama!) so they can go enjoy their 70 promised virgins, and let us move on with the task of getting along with the “moderate” muslims of the world.  What our political classes tell us we must do in the name of diversity is in reality aiding and abetting our enemy in their efforts to destroy our culture and way of life. Multiculturalism is, indeed, the murdering of our culture.

Bill, I read your books and listen to your show occasionally, but I think you are going a bit far in your efforts to be fair. Of course, we should not hate Obama the man, as that is not the Christian thing to do. However, we are taught to hate sin, which here could more aptly mean deliberately misleading policies to force America into socialism while muzzling and persecuting those who disagree with his radical agenda. I ask you,sir, can you defend his policies with a straight face, and tell me you agree with where he is wanting to take our country? If you can, you are not a conservative, nor a republican. I do not care if Obama is a  nice guy and means well, and really, REALLY, believes he is right. So did Hitler and all the other fascists throughout history. The proof is in the pudding, my grandpa always said, and what Obama is doing to this country through his policies, nominations, and budgetary shennanigans is to make us into a parody of the European socialist states. I say parody because their masses are sheep ready and willing to be fleeced by the government as long as they get their handouts, while our citizens are buying enough guns and ammo in the last year to literally arm both the Chinese and Indian standing armies. Somehow, I do not think these freedom loving patriots are doing this because they are in agreement with the Obamination our great land is becoming. Quit being an apologist for Obama, and stand up for what is right. Our president is worthy of the respect due the office, yes, and a fair chance to see what he intends for the nation. But..., after 100 days of his madness, I think any sane and objective observer can plainly tell where his path for us leads. One last question, Bill: I know you grew up in a fairly rough neighborhood, where liars and pantywaists did not thrive. How well would it have gone over if you walked around telling all who would listen how ashamed you were of being Irish, and told everybody the best ways to whip you and badmouthing all your friends who might otherwise protect you (you know, leaking national security memos, refusing to back up our allies, that sort of thing)? Your mortal life would have been measured in minutes, if even that long.  That is Obama's foreign policy in a nutshell, and you gave him a "C"??!!! The very best I can say about the man is that he is incompetent and unqualified for the job, and it goes downhill from there.

I want to ask a serious question: at what point do the depredations of the Government rise to the level that requires the use of armed force against its tyranny?
    The point must certainly be reached while we still have will and weapons to resist therewith, but really, how does the average citizen know that it is time to "root hog or die"? I hate the way things are going, but am enough of a student of history to know that it has been worse in America's history regarding Socialism and fascism masquerading as the law of the land, and we did not need armed rebellion to balance the scales.
   The real unknown is if the Obamites ( well, actually after seeing who was really in charge of the stimulus bill I ought to say the "Pelosites" aka, parasites) can pass enough laws to muzzle and outlaw free speech, freedom of assembly, religion, etc., so that when they do the gun grabbing nobody can effectively organize a resistance.
    I am not being alarmist here, just practical, because if there is not a plan for an almost certain Europeanization of our gun laws and personal freedoms, we are going to have to our heads handed to us, just like Hillary did, by Mr. Hope and Change.
      Remember, armed rebellion against tyranny is a constitutional right, and the only reason we even have a nation of our own.
     If we are not willing to risk our lives, liberty and sacred honor to defend freedom, we deserve what we get.

     Talk about losing money! We, the public, have just been alerted to the fact that the real reason  for all the panic and doom  in the credit markets was somebody got the keys to the national ATM and tried to suck us dry. That  the Fed stopped it  by basically pulling the plug on the whole system kept it from being a complete disaster to the tune of 5.5 trillion dollars flushed down the drain and Sayonara to the world economic system as we know it, is a Good Thing.
      I feel safe now......
    Oh, and by the way, it happened almost 5 months ago, and nobody thought it was important enough to tell us about. Might have kept Obama out of office, eh?  Everybody in the MSM would have blamed Bush anyway, so why sit on the news?
That is the sticky question I am wondering about , is who besides Obama stood to profit from trying to destroy the money market system, and more to the point, why has there been no investigations on this that John Q. Public  is aware of? I had always thought it a bit fishy that bad mortgages could induce the level of fear and panic we saw in Bush and the Treasury scions  in September, and now that we have been told the possibility of a 5.5 trillion run on the money markets  in the course of a few hours being averted and ONLY losing  550 billion, well, that explains a lot.
    The only single country with those kind of foreign currency reserves to withdraw is China, and it does not make sense for it to cut it's own economic throat..., the one thing China's communist regime is not is rash. So that leaves a cyber-attack on a very large scale (and you thought China hacking the Pentagon was big!), or a multinational joint effort to destroy the world economy (think New World Order, Trilateral Commission kind of thoughts), which would also explain why we have not heard about where the money went: The Fed might not know. I am not sure what bothers me more, them not telling us, or the possibility that some organization could have vacuumed our whole monetary system out of existence (along with the world economy) and we  not know who did it. 
    I do not care how sophisticated the methods, a two hour window and that amount of withdrawals is going to leave a superhighway of a trail to somewhere.Think about tracing a cell phone, except a million times bigger. 
   Oh, there is something that makes me even more enraged....,  Reid and Pelosi ( not to mention Spector, Collins, and Snowe) knew all this about the money market  crisis in Sept., and the best they can do as patriotic Americans is give us Obama and  $800 billion more of liberal pork!
   Capital punishment for traitorous politicians should make a swift comeback, along the lines of what the British did to traitors in the War of Independence. Look it up, it was quite brutal, but hey, recidivism was not a problem.
    Maybe we could even get some competence in Washington if we quartered, choked, boiled and hung traitors, but on second thought, unless the new politicians were also moral and honorable, competency would be even worse than what we have. Think about what the Dems could accomplish with their political  trifecta of House, Senate, and Presidency   if they were truly competent, and give thanks to God that they have idiots like Reid and Pelosi to lead them!

    Founded in the land of the milky hottub, San Francisco, Craigslist will allow one to post all sorts of perversions  as long as they are politically correct. Want to post x-rated businesses? No problemo. Want a quickie in the town you are going to on business, or advertise your availability for such at a mutually, ahem..., pleasurable price? Hey, CL welcomes your post. Want to buy or sell those devil spawned things called firearms? No Way Jose! As a matter of fact, a rabble of semi-literate nazi posting police will flag your post in less time that it takes to say "Pelosi and the Fairness Doctrine", which is not as odd at it sounds as I suspect they are the same type of people. I tried to sell my Glock and had it flagged about 5 times so I put an invitation into my ad to contact me and express the concerns they had with my post of a legal item for sale. Somebody actually was brave enough to send me a reply:

YOUR GUN will continue to be flaged and flaged as long as you violate this PLEASE READ for you to post your add you had to argee to this by accepting the term so me and other are ready to flag all  we want (spelling and syntax as in original email)

    The PLEASE READ referred to is the CL list of things they deem acceptable to post (see above partial list) and thus gives all the nazi wanker wannabees carte blanche to say hasta la vista to my ads. (Does including three different language phrases in one sentence qualify one as multicultural? If so I take it all back.)
So, I replied to the semantically and spell-checking impaired CL censor as follows:

    Hi  I am glad you had enough courage to at least write a reply. CL guidelines are subject to challenge, but you are right, you can keep flagging (which is,by the way, spelled with two "g's") and I will keep re-posting until it is sold. You would not happen to be a liberal democrat, would you, one of those who preach tolerance and diversity, unless it happens to  conflict with your beliefs? You will  note that in my jurisdiction (per the CL statement) my gun is perfectly legal to be sold so I am completely within my rights to advertise it, and if pressed I could probably file suit against Craigslist to force them to change their posting regulations as  violating  both the Commerce Clause, and the First Amendment prohibitions against infringing on free speech.
    The Supreme Court held in Heller that the Second Amendment explicitly protects the right of an individual to keep and bear arms, therefore any laws or policies that materially impede the ability of an individual to use, own or purchase a legal firearm in a open market ipso facto  (by the fact  of it) can be found to infringe on the right to keep (own, and how can one own if one cannot freely buy?) and  bear arms. These types of laws and policies  are therefore unconstitutional.
    As a matter of fact, one of the Court decisions most near and dear to liberals, Griswald vs. Connecticut, (the precursor to Roe vs Wade) found that couples had a right to purchase contraceptives in an open and free manner, not because contraceptives were the issue, but because reproductive rights (the more fundamental right) could not be fully exercised in the absence of easy access to contraceptives. If my item for sale is legal, I have a right to advertise it, especially as the item in question is in a protected constitutional class (firearms). If you disagree with me, please run your reply through a spellchecker first, it makes it look more professional. Thank you for your time and reply! Brian
  
    And I never thought I would get to use Griswald to beat a liberal with, wonders never cease:-)
    Does anyone think I will get an intelligent reply? I don't either, but I DO think it is important to take the time to make principled stands on small things, or there will be no ground left to fight on for conservative principles that must be defended.
   Between Sharia appeasement policies, gay right's thought police, and the general liberal demagoguery that passes for political discourse, there are very few areas of American conservative life  not under a brutal assault.  We can survive this era, as we survived the Clintons (wait..., we still haven't finished with the Clintons, but that is the subject of another post) but we have to take up the fight instead of being appeasement weenies who live only for re-election. Speaking of about 85% of Republican Congress there, and being optimistic at that. The tree of Liberty must occasionally be fed by the blood of tyrants, idiots, traitors, liberal Democrats and RINO's (but I repeat myself), if it is to flourish. Let's start the metaphorical blood flowing!

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While I do not agree with all Pat writes, as I am not an isolationist, his analysis of Obama's speech has much merit. Consider, if you will, the kind of things Obama COULD have said, indeed were said by many prominent Democrats, and you get a feeling of maturity. Pelosi said her favorite part  of the event was Bush leaving on the helicopter and it felt "like a 10 pound anvil lifting off her head."
Others made childish chants and disrespectful gestures towards the outgoing president. Obama could have gotten up and reaffirmed to DailyKos and Moveon that he was, indeed, their man and given an Ayers type speech about how bad America is (the US makes  Ayers want to puke, but he is stuck in the US as news today said that Canada denied him entrance as too big of a security risk! Wish I could have seen that, but I digress) Obama made the type of speech no one would have expected during the primary, and one, incidentally, that would have kept him from getting all the fringe left votes necessary for him to win.
Of course he is liberalizing abortion funding and espousing gay rights: He believes in those things, and is acting consistent with his beliefs. While I do not agree with him, I expect nothing less of him.
You will note, however, that there were no calls to see Amadinejad without preconditions or any such campaign tripe. Obama will be known as the Pragmatic President, to the dismay of both the Left and Right. The left is going to be sorely disappointed in its more moonbat desires, and the Right will find most of its talking points co-opted into Obama's policies.
Unless Republicans can come up with another Contract with America, and another Newt to run with it, we are going to be a very marginalized party ( even tho I do have hope for Congressional gains in 2010 as the Dems there are feckless and have no control of their liberal impulses). The implosion of the Democrats is not going to come from the White House this time.

Reply to Why doesn't anybody dare say it? Israel Didn't Leave, It Lost By Jonathan Mark


I keep wondering what happened to the Israel that won the 6 day war..., did they win  because it was only six days long and the U.N. couldn't object enough in that time frame? I look at this late armed conflict as being purely political in nature, giving the current pols in Israel a chance to look brave and fierce under the the umbrella of the outgoing Bush admin, in hopes that it will sway enough Israeli voters to keep their party in power. This was a PR war for internal consumption, and you are absolutely right, Mark,  no Israeli goals were accomplished. The only way to rout Hamas is to make the Gazan civilian population cease giving the terrorists refuge and human shields to hide behind, which is what also saved the USA's arse in Iraq, the civilian population wanting something more than death (along with the surge!).Palestinians, regrettably, do not seem as smart as the average Iraqi and seem content to pursue the path of martyrdom, so I say Give'em what they want! Netanyahu has the best chance of doing so, is ahead in the polls, and is the main reason  Barak ok'd Operation Cast Lead. Might as well have been Operation Pass Gas for all the good it did, except it truly showed that Israeli politicians can humiliate themselves more than once every three years. Angry? I am outraged! I live in the US and am not a Jew, but for such a worthless bunch of leftist whiners I can find an exception to casting the first stone. When you place the lives of your citizens on the line for a political game, you deserve to be shot. Clean your own house first, Israel, then clear off the rest of the bloody terrorists with a hand of steel. Islam respects the strong, and little else..., just ask Bin Ladin.

 The Daily Reckoning Australia newsletter of today is kind of short but what really got my attention was  short term treasury bonds trading at a negative yield. In other words, they cost more to buy than they are worth when redeemed at full maturity, which is completely unprecedented. Apparently, traders think that US bonds are the best place to put one's money, even at a negative yield (guess they figure it just loses money less rapidly??!?) If I was an investing man and had any money, small problem that, no money, I would have gone short on oil in July and had money but alas that trade is gone, and oil has very little room left  to go lower and no fundamentals for a rapid increase near term. Matter of fact it lost another $6 a barrel after OPEC swore on everything but the Bible that it was going to cut production by up to 2 million barrels per day last week. Kind of like the stock market after Bernecke, Paulson and co. pushed the funds rate to zero, small rise and then the continuing plummet. The perceived reality is nobody has enough cred for the market to have a lasting faith in, and things are not even close to being unwound yet. Think the housing bubble is bad, wait until the commercial paper starts to shred.  Oh and BTW, AP asked the largest banks, you know, the billion dollar bailout babies, what they did with our money, and they either said they did not know or they refused to tell. We do know they have been doing everything BUT what the purpose of the money was intended for, which was lending it to people so they could  buy  some of those repossessed houses. What to do, short of applying for a bailout?  I would probably buy some gold futures on pullbacks (gold is even for 2008 if you can believe it, after hundreds of dollar per ounce price swings! But further into the deleveraging/deflation cycle I would start looking at gold stocks on producers, like Newmont gold for example, because they will be bargain basement price after the stock crunch and cost less to buy with  higher upside  return than physical gold), and do option puts (selling a commodity short) on overpriced commodities like copper, uranium etc that are going to crash and burn as manufacturing plummets. The same holds for stocks, one can sell short a company stock, so if you do reverse analysis and look for the weakest of the major players in a sector or industry, you can make money on their way down. The real problem, as these authors note, is that everything seems so obvious that everybody KNOWS what has  to happen in the markets. (which is the sure sign to run the other way, or at least wonder why all lemmings love cliffs...) The real kicker is the timing..., just ask me as I was right on the direction of every trade I made but lost my money because of timing, usually by being too early into a trade. I really think in the short term gold, and gold stocks,  are going to take a hit also, perhaps down to the $600 range before the deleveraging is done and inflation kicks in. One thought I want to leave with you as an investing strategy these people don't talk about, and that is you can make money when companies and commodities are going down, not just when they are going up, so your asset management strategy does not have to be solely preservation. You can recoup your nest egg now and watch for the change in gold and other commodities when the inflation spike comes, which will be more rapid than the oil spike and slump was, in my opinion. I just think deflation is going to continue for the next few months and any money you can spare is better placed on strategic short bets.