In war, telegraphing your strategy in advance is usually a bad idea.  Giving the Taliban a withdrawal date was one of Obama's big mistakes.  The other big mistake was getting involved in "nation building".  Will we never learn?  Nation building can be done but we, as a nation, don't have the stomach for it.  It requires a total occupation and control over the populace.  That's what we did in Japan and Germany.  We don't have support for it now.  So we should just, pardon my language, kick butt and get out.  Put Karzai in place, put Chalaby in place, whatever, and get out.  Our aim should be this:  If you mess with us, we will mess with you.  Attack our country, Mr. Sadam and you will be dead.  That simple.  Because that is within the range of the possible. 

this video is about so-called nuisance abatement in the Southern California desert where the government is forcing people off their land.  Yes these are all different people, that's why they moved out there in the first place.  All they ask of the government is to be left alone.

http://offgridsurvival.com/livingoffthegridcrime/

I agree with this post.  Too many of us chased the chimera of security (financial and emotional)  in a world in which nothing is ever really secure.      Just because we made that mistake, we should not encourage it in our children.  I married at 25 which seems young now.  Both children by 30.  Yes they impacted my career and my life choices, but they are the best thing I ever did.  

The reason colleges don't teach principles of expository writing any more is that the professors don't know how to write.  To write a proper essay, one has to engage in organized thinking.  Organized thinking is the nemesis of liberals.  They want to teach emotive writing.  They want to teach youth to gush their feelings all over the page, not how to provide a reasoned description or argument about something.

I have been a big Palin fan, but  there is not a lot of time for mourning here.  The best way to make this election about Obama is probably to nominate Herman Cain.  He isn't perfect, but who is?  I was struck by how he answered a question about what percentage of the black vote he would get.  He said he would get about a third. That answer tells me he is a realist and not a racist.  Many black voters are conservative on a lot of issues but believe the Republican party is the racist party, so they vote Democratic.  Obama and the Democrats have already made it clear that the race card is their only card.  Cain would take that away from them.  He is a practical man with conservative instincts.  He could rally the tea party.  

From a California perspective, such an amendment to our process would render California relevant again.  In states like New York and California, that are lopsidedly and reliably blue, the politicians  on both sides just come to raise money. If we assume our present congressional delegation reflects how EVs would be won, the GOP would pick up around 20 votes.   If California electoral votes were allocated by congressional district, there would be many more electoral votes in play in California than in our neighboring small states, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, that get all the attention come election day. It wouldn't just be better for the GOP, it would be better for California. One of the reasons California stays blue is that there is not enough real electoral campaigning where differing philosophies are publicly discussed.  

John Mackey's editorial in the WSJ over a year ago nailed it.  We are so divorced from the cost of medical care that neither the doctor nor the patient even knows what a procedure costs. HSA's with catastrophic coverage are the only viable solution proposed.  It reintroduces some market discipline to choices about medical care and it returns some control to the individual patient. Weisberg structured his question the way he did because he knew that feckless individuals already routinely receive true emergency care without Obamacare.  My own ER experiences have reinforced the idea that there is a lot of NON emergent care being provided in ERs because patients know ERs have to provide it and it costs welfare patients nothing. A Texas hospital found that 9 patients had cost them 2.5 million in ER costs over a 2 year period.  Note:  if you are really sick you get admitted to the hospital and it is no longer an ER cost. Prima facie, these people weren't very sick because they kept coming back and weren't admitted.   If people benefit financially from NOT using medical care, they will make better choices.