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!

Comments on

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. 

Hi Eric been reading your blog on liberal blogs and violence, either you are a more patient man than me or have a lot thicker skin, as I have never tried to reason with those of rabid tongue and mind in their own pits. About your assertion that we will not, as conservatives, retaliate as in a tooth for a tooth, I am not so sure. The problem is a matter of our survival. As long as conservatives could feel that this too shall pass, People of the Book type morality allowed  the turning of the other cheek. God would avenge your wrongs and all that. However, we are entering a period of history where the liberal left is unhinged enough to try exterminating conservative thought ( and any conservative not willing to change affiliation) quicker than you can say "burn'em!" Von Clausewitz stated that the only way to defeat an enemy is to be willing to use the same tactics against them that they employ ( or worse), because to deny your forces a tactic out of moral qualms may well lead to the annihilation of your nation. Machiavelli stated that it is better to be feared than loved, and conservatives have gotten where they are because they would rather be loved than be in power. We are in a war for the soul  and destiny of our nation, and liberals (even though a lot of them do not believe in souls, bless their grinchy hearts) know this truth and act on it. Conservatives really cannot comprehend the depravity and depth of hatred liberals have for them, but viewed through the lens of an eternal warfare between good and evil, it makes perfect sense why they hate us so much. Lucifer, the son of the morning, was cast out of heaven for wanting the glory of the Father. His pride caused his fall, and now he wishes nothing more than to damn those who did not follow him and were deprived of a mortal experience. We got bodies and eventual resurrection, he and his followers do not. He hates righteousness, and all that is good (of God). Liberals are cut from the same cloth, because when you get right down to it, they either have deluded themselves about what they really believe in (IE they are conservatives but do not realize it yet, which is what I hope is the case with your girlfriend:-)), or they are actively fighting against God, because basic liberal tenets like abortion, gay rights, moral relativism, etc, cannot be squared with a God of laws and justice. Liberalism and God are diametrically opposed, when both are properly understood. Both Old and New Testaments talk about those who shall be sheep in wolves clothing, speaking the words of life but murdering men's souls. Now,  I want to make clear  that even though I am speaking from a scriptural standpoint, God works on the ground, so to speak. I am talking of realpolitik, a pragmatic assessment of what the path ahead is. The scriptures tell what will happen, I try to understand and be prepared, so I and my family may not fear. What I am trying to say is too many religious people are so blinded by this idea of turning the other cheek they forget the war history of the Jews under a wrathful God, the moneychangers in the Temple, the Sodom's of the world, and yes, even the Flood. It is not only just to act in defense of right, it is eventually required of all those who honor God. The imagery in Isaiah of Israel going through as a young lion among the wicked, sparing none, is not a pacifistic  one, nor of mercy either. Either we beat the liberals brutally and convincingly now  in the law, the ballot box, and the court of public opinion, or we  will be forced to do it later in the streets. Evil cannot co-exist with good, it can only be restrained and chained down to where it does the least harm: But let loose unrestrained on a supine and ungodly citizenry as we now have, the destruction of good  is the sure result. Liberals have through the Prop 8 fiasco shown themselves incapable of being governed by law (and as you noted, not one liberal is willing to call the gay activists down and discipline them), so the more their will is thwarted, the more violent they will become, until they either achieve their designs or they are met with sufficient pain to be persuaded of their folly. They are bullies, and spoiled fools whose bad manners have been tolerated far too long. Truly the Word is: Spare the rod, spoil the child (and ruin the nation). 

Ahhhh. Chicago! Gangsters, druggies, rappers, 8-mile road, convicted felons, politicians (but I repeat myself), and the ONE, even Obama or as Jonah put it, "hero-saint light-worker Jedi Knight Messiah that he is..., who can pick up manure from the clean end". How he can be elected in Daley's wonderland and remain clean is like expecting a girl at one of Nevada's "ranches" to be a virgin, it just defies logic and common sense. Yet, most of what the MSM passes for news these days has no relation to common sense either, being more like the dirty end of manure. Once the bulldog gets through with the Gov'ner and running down the who did what and knew it when, I expect Libby's memory will look pretty good to all of the Democratic politicians involved in this mess. And I will wager there will be a lot more felony convictions than the one throwaway Libby had to take a fall for. Blago has no incentive to be quiet about possible Obama malfeasance  as he is tossed under the bus, for  even he cannot be stupid enough to think Obama would pardon him, altho he was stupid enough to keep making plans to sell the Senate seat after knowing his phone was wiretapped.... It will be interesting what the MSM and other news outlets come up with over the next week or two(or if the MSM even tries). Like Buchanan said today, this one is not going away, there are too many questions  unanswered. Why oh why, does a seemingly intelligent man like Obama have such bleeping bad associates? I really think he should start being judged by the company he kept. Perhaps we are too parsimonious with our blame here, though, because after all, the voters in Illinois DO keep voting for this type of scum. I think Doug Giles is right, some people really should not be allowed to vote.

I have read quite a bit on both sides of the argument about how Obama is going to govern, and I am not totally convinced even he knows. From the time he sprang onto the national stage two years ago, he has been the epitome of pragmatism. Nothing has been too large, or sacred, to "throw under the bus" if it seemed to imperil his chances to gain the Presidency. Does that mean he has no guiding star other than power, or that he is truly an astute politician, one of the most stellar practitioners of rhetorical chicanery in modern history? By the way, I do not mean the forgoing in a positive light. Obama is not a typical liberal, in that he is not wedded to any one tenet of the liberal cause, except abortion, and even then there was no real challenge to call him on it(the partial birth fiasco ran more on whether he lied, not the substance of what he was espousing). Faced with an enraged electorate, I think he would have thrown his opposition to the "born-alive" bill under the bus too. So what does this have the do with Charles' column? Just that Obama has dreams, but when they meet reality, as his "withdraw from Iraq immediately!" met the NSA daily briefings, the dreams change to pragmatism. His vision of America is probably not that shared by most Townhall readers, but his ability to effectively Change what he Hoped to...? Pragmatically, it's not gonna happen.

Subject: Post election and back to policies:-)  my comment to George Will column on 12-11-08
Nice to see the minds functioning again instead of flamethrowers (not that it wasn't fun to be ascerbic about liberals sometimes...) I agree that Pakistan and Afganistan are unwinnable by outside forces  (without, as earlier noted, a Genghis mentality), and interior schisms between tribes and religions make any national government with real authority extremely unlikely. So, why are we involved? Simply because to not be involved carries far worse possibilities to our national security. We may not have much leverage, but we do at least have some, as well as intelligence assets on the ground and in the respective governments. The islamic nations worry us because of oil, and terrorism, but strategically they are backwards, insular nations. They 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 live  life large.
The real intractable problem on the world's 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 Kashmir for literally decades, both have nuclear weapons( which is the reason I say they are  worse than Israel/Arabs, because only Israel currently has the bomb, whereas both these countries do, and sophisticated delivery systems), 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 Afganistan. 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 and Sharia law eradicating our national identity. Perhaps that is really where I feel Gates 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 not realizing that national security must in  large part be based on defeating the ideology. 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 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 in the name of diversity we must do, is  in fact aiding and abetting our enemy in their efforts to destroy our culture and way of life. Multiculturalism is, indeed, the murdering of our culture, as noted by a previous post to Will‘s TH column.

Hello,  I wanted to thank you for writing yet another excellent column. After reading most of the recent books on string theory, black  energy and multiverses, I have been forced to conclude that it is physicists who make huge and unwarranted leaps of faith, because every ratonale they use to explain the world without God involves more faith than believing in the Bible does. For example, in the standard model of physics it seems there are some 25 or so variables that must be entered by hand, and all of them must be calibrated within a very small range for life to exist and our observable natural laws to function, yet these are mathematical equations they tout as proof there is no God. I can  prove that 2+2 does not equal 4 if given enough latitude in designing the equation and variables: mathematics that one can adjust to get the answers one is looking for is not mathematics, it is faith based manipulation. String theory and multiverses are even worse, in that as a basic premise they postulate the existence of spatial dimensions which cannot be verified empirically (ie they are purely mathematical constructs), we can never directly observe them, and yet the whole mathematical theory will not function without at least 9, or 11, or some other number of these mythical beasts. Multiverses are even worse, because the basic postulate here is that if there is any mathematical chance of anything at all happening, which is to say an infinity of choices, there will be a universe somewhere that contains that set of laws allowing for that event to occur. Then of course life is inevitable: for that matter Gods are inevitable, but are bounded by the universe they created. Or maybe not..., I can conceive of an infinite Christian god, so under the multiverse theory He must exist! Absurd ad infinitum is the pathetic ploys of people who are too smart and ever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Truly, I do not have enough faith to be an atheist:-) Thank you for writing your books and columns, the truth is good to hear. Sincerely, Brian Norton

I too thought it very interesting that the voters would split so much on a foundational issue for the Dems, ie. gay marriage, and Obama the state but uphold traditional marriage. My family and I have been having some good conversations about whether there is still a majority of good people left in the USA, and I think the gay marriage votes give some hope in that respect. For all you history buffs out there check out the rise of Hitler and the National Socialist party in Germany to Obama's rise, down to their platform of "hope and change", economic turmoil, takeover of a major political party followed by ruthless suppression of dissent and an elimination of opposition. The time it to0k to change Germany from a basically free republic to a Socialist/Fascist dictatorship (but I repeat myself): four  years, from about 1930 to 1934. Once a nation gets to a certain point on the slippery socialist slope, the fall to the bottom comes rapidly. It has also been pointed out that there is a correlation between the morality of the people and the amount of freedom they choose to have in relation to government, or to state it differently, the more righteous the people, the less government interference in freedom and individual rights. So..., we have a lot of deluded people out there who really do not understand where Socialism leads, but still have good basic moral values. As long as good people remain in the majority there is hope to change the socialist trend, but by the very nature of Socialism, it tends to corrupt minds and morals. Did I mention that in Nazi Germany, homosexuality was widely practiced among the elites, and Christianity was banished as a public nuisance/enemy to the State? Christianity and Socialism are antithetical, and cannot  coexist peacefully.  There was an excellent post about how evangelicals gave Obama the election
http://www.idahovaluesalliance.com/news.asp?id=941  
Kind of a wakeup call,eh?

I have to admit that I never was very excited about my choice of McCain, because I felt my choice of more conservative, electable men had been eliminated during the primaries by the liberal media. McCain is a great patriot, I just could never wrap my mind around him being a great conservative republican. Conservative Democrat maybe. At any rate, is it better to have a effective pragmatist in office, who may or may not govern from the center, or an ineffective Republican that would excel at National Security but have many social and fiscal policies not so very much different than Obama, or the repudiated Bush spend, spend, spend years? Bush has signed over one Trillion dollars in bailout bills that would never had been necessary had a fiscal conservative that understood money markets and the housing bubble been in office! Bush was a lot better than Gore or Kerry would have been, but to say he was competent and conservative is pushing it. So, the question remains, is effective pragmatism better than clueless RINO semi-conservatism? That is why McCain lost, too many voters asked themselves that question and chose pragmatism. Only the loony left like Moveon.org and DailyKos actually expect Obama to govern on the platform  he campaigned on in the Democratic primaries: After all, 56 million Americans did not vote for him and he said he wants to be their President too. I do not like his radical ties and background, but Obama has shown himself to be a very quick study on what works, because no rational observer would have given him odds of winning the Presidency two years ago, but he did. Despite the complicity of the liberal media, I have to assume that our electorate knew enough of his negatives to disqualify him, but chose not to, and instead elected him with enough of a margin that there is no doubt he won. Acorn and all the rest of the shenanigans Chicago politics come up with do not produce a spread of almost eight million votes. But a great majority of his general election supporters are a far different breed than Ayers, Resko, Wright and co.;  even Pelosi, Reid and Murtha are not mainstream Democrats. He will have to decide which group he gives his allegiance to, and I am willing to bet it is the centrist middle. Why? Because he wants to be a two term President who accomplishes great things, not a one term lame duck whose over-reaching Left  lost him his congressional majorities in the midterm elections, as happened to Bill Clinton in his first term. Clinton got a second term because Bush the elder sold out on taxes, and did not finish the first gulf war.Almost forget, wasn't there someone named Perot who got 18% of the popular vote that year? That could have contributed to a Bush loss too, don't you think...  Bush was, however,an incompetent semi-RINO, and shot himself in the foot, electorally speaking. Obama will not have that gift in 2012, as he will face not just a Romney or Huckabee, but possibly the likes of Sarah Palin and  Bobby Jindal, who are very popular with the conservative base and have broader demographic appeal than Obama started out with. He will have to perform very well just to effectively govern, and with the government hamstrung by fiscal crisis, he does not have enough money available for another New Deal, so he can veto the more outrageous Congressional bills without popular backlash by wearing a conservative fiscal mantle. The prospect of a  Democratic President vetoing a spending bill in the name of fiscal responsibility has a delicious irony to it, doesn't it? After all, the nation does not have enough change in her pockets left, to pay for the type of Change the radical Left wants. In fact, I expect considerably less change than wished for all around, for both voters and Democrats. We will end up a little more broke, and they will learn the meaning of a frustrated majority.

Thank you for an excellent column, Laura, and for addressing what is most on my mind this election cycle, the "what then" question. I have been working with my brother to turn his business around because he made some choices that had the potential to cost him a lot of money yet he did not enact the needed fixes I advised  until after he lost his shirt. Now he is completely changing his business without guarantee of success, a thing that would not have been necessary had he listened 6 months ago to basic business principles. What he did and what our government is doing now is so similar I want to shake somebody besides myself! Why is it that the needed common sense is sooooo absent on both a national and individual level? My brother needed to identify where he was losing money and cease operating in those areas before he could concentrate on profit making ventures, but thought refusing to fill orders (nothing like paying people to buy from you!) he had no legal obligation to fulfill would somehow damage his reputation (or something). Meanwhile, if his business goes bankrupt, he will have NO reputation, and no business. That is where you hit the nail on the head in this article, where we will be at as a nation if we do not engage in the policy analysis and tough fiscal decisions now, rather than wait for the inevitable crisis. Common sense dictates that you cannot spend more than than you make indefinitely, and government produces no goods or services, it just redistributes wealth. Even in printing new money, it actually robs citizens because of the devaluing of the extant money supply. The really fear inducing possibility is nobody will address root causes until the other shoe drops and one of the major governmental entitlement programs goes bankrupt..., then 800 billion will be small change. I like Newt's ideas for changing and fixing our broken economic paradigms in government, but confess that sometimes I wonder if there is enough common sense left in America to make them work. If Obama gets elected by a majority, what little hopes I have are going to be pretty nigh destroyed. Anyway, thank you again for an excellent column, and if you have any ideas on how to get people to invest in foresight instead of pay dearly for hindsight, I would sure like to know:-)