Two main reasons the USPS survives: junk mail and regular first-class mail. They are the only provider in these two categories and are legally protected from competition in them. Take away the monopolies, and I suspect they would either shape up or ship out fast.

You don't have to tell me how sickening Obama's every utterance is. But I find it fascinating that most people have the exact opposite reaction to him. I guess I'd like to figure out what I'm missing, because the suckers do vote, and they vote in overwhelming numbers when someone like Obama tickles their moral vanity bone. Maybe it's my responsibility to try to ascertain whether there is something the sane minority could do to counteract it. Can we learn from him? Can we somehow turn his own tactics against him? I'd have to take Dramamine before every speech and news conference, but I would listen if I thought it would help.

The only times I've listened to Obama since his last debate with McCain were his debates with Romney. But after the Connecticut speech got such a good reception from most people, I began to think I should be paying more attention. The only reason Obama would give such a speech, complete with crocodile tears, is as part of laying the groundwork to ram through some intolerable piece of gun control legislation. And, as I understand it, he actually hinted at this in the speech.

So, is it really our job to keep an ear open to Obama's rhetoric, simply for analytical purposes? Should we be aware of and learn to quickly identify his Alinskyite tactics? Of course, this assumes being aware would do us some good, which is an assumption I'm far from making....

This is right up there with city ordinances banning smoking in restaurants. In a referendum, I'd vote against it as unconstitutional, nanny-state overreach, but that doesn't mean I won't enjoy its effects after it passes.

And if you look at the question internationally, the only poor Americans are the homeless -- and probably not even all of them.

Where does he live and does he have dependents? In some places, a single person might live decently on minimum wage, but not if he has a child. In others, minimum wage wouldn't even be enough to pay the rent on an efficiency apartment. And then there are the people who are always short of money because they spend it unwisely and don't plan for the future. They might make a decent living yet are still one major car repair away from penury.

I wouldn't argue with the proposition that the decline of a belief system leads to the decline of a culture (it's happening in the U.S. now). But the belief system is a thing apart from the metaphysical package it's wrapped up in. I maintain that the belief system isn't the same as the religion. It precedes the religion, which is then simply tailored to fit.

I agree with Barkha on the main cultural drivers of economic prosperity. I'd also add that, to the extent religion follows culture (and I believe it does, not the other way around), the differences between Roman Catholicism and most Protestant denominations can be instructive. RC exalts poverty, which isn't conducive to economic well-being, and makes wealthy Catholics feel at least somewhat guilty for their prosperity. Protestants, while still generous givers to charity, tend to see wealth as something that is earned and thus deserved.

I'm an atheist and am personally opposed to abortion except in cases of rape and life of the mother. You don't have to be religious to recognize the value of human life and want to preserve it.

I think everyone thought the election was the Republicans' to lose. Obama's record is horrific. He exhibited no concern for the most pressing problems we faced, but instead went about checking off the items on his own socialist wish list. While campaigning for his second term, he offered no new ideas. Before that, he didn't learn anything from the massive losses his party suffered in 2010. Conventional wisdom said he was a sitting duck. When the Republicans managed to nominate an inoffensive moderate, a former governor of Massachusetts, for heaven's sake, even I thought we couldn't lose. (I would have liked him to be more conservative, but hey....) To lose in the scenario I just described has left Republicans shell-shocked and doubting their own ability to address the most basic expectations of the electorate -- or to even know what those expectations are exactly.

Very interesting question! I think it has a lot to do with religious people mis-perceiving science as being necessarily threatening to their beliefs. Strident atheists like Dawkins and his many acolytes created the false dilemma that you can believe religion or science but not both. That's hogwash. Just like the teenager who's been told not to date So-and-So because he's a bad influence, they naturally cling all the harder to what they've been ordered to abandon. In other words, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

I've been an atheist for only about 12 or 13 years, but I was a Christian (first Southern Baptist, then Lutheran) believer in evolution for far longer. One doesn't have a whole lot to do with the other -- if you think about it.

Sure, I'll give you that. But what we need to do is get better at unashamedly defining what we really believe in and explaining clearly and simply why it's better. This is not the same thing as reacting to what the left says about us.

Yes, we do have a few outspoken ninnies, and some of them have  disappointingly large followings. But I don't think we should define ourselves according to the disingenuous criticisms of leftists.  As you point out, the left worships plenty of quasi-religious, pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. Just because they point to and laugh at clowns like Akin doesn't make them smarter overall -- just better smart alecks. This is something Andrew Breitbart understood well, and it's why his death was a great loss to us.

Despite your and my views on religion, the fact is a great many smart people believe in it (or at least have never questioned beliefs they absorbed as children), including many left-leaning Americans.

And as for anthropogenic global warming, it's far from settled. We know the books were cooked, and even if you accept that warming is occurring, the evidence for its being human-caused is purely circumstantial. More scientific inquiry is  needed before we compromise our economy and our sovereignty trying to fix it.

You may well be right, Joseph. But I don't think we've ever seriously made those arguments within earshot of the masses. Sure, average people don't read Townhall.com or American Thinker. But Mitt Romney had an opportunity over the last couple of months to make some salient points while just about everyone was listening. He hinted at some of them but didn't offer the explanations he should have.* We should really try taking the arguments to the people before giving up entirely. I'm not saying I'm sure it would work, just that we haven't tried it yet.

*I refuse to do a Monday-morning quarterback job on Romney and hasten to add that his strategists probably were a lot smarter than I am. We all miscalculated.

That was my reaction, too. We're going to roll back 70 years of trampling on the Constitution (and that's just entitlements; never mind other types of trampling that began earlier) simply by saying "oh, wait, this isn't Constitutional"? Our legal scholars in Congress and on the SCOTUS delight in fashioning clever if flimsy bases for new constitutional "rights." Justifying entitlements thus would be a cakewalk -- no amendment needed. And the majority of Americans who receive some type of transfer payment would applaud. Conservatives would just end up looking silly for having questioned such a long-settled, sacred issue. The only realistic goal at this point is to slow the breakneck pace of entitlement growth, and we won't be able to even try that until at least 2017.

Pink Martini is amazing. I have all their albums, including the Christmas one.