If I want hope, I'll watch the US Women's soccer team.  If I want change, I'll go to the laundromat.  If I want hope AND change...I may have to vote for Rand.

I know that was really cheesey, but I thought it up on the way to work, and it gave me a non-creeper reason to google images of Hope Solo.  Ok, maybe it's a little creepy.  

More than anything what I love about Rand Paul is he just doesn't sound like a politician.  He sounds like a real person.  

The last time I was at the Brandenburg gate there was a dude dressed as Darth Vader dancing to hip-hop music.  Maybe Obama could do that?

B&O, Babe, B&O

I live in a small town (Lynden, WA) with demographics much the same as you describe.  population was just under 12,000 in 2011.  It is perhaps one of the best small towns in America.  We can point to a lot of reasons why it is growing.  But I'll tell you waht I think (and all of you good economists and political scientists can roll your eyes).  Lynden was founded, and continues to be inhabited, by evangelical Christians who believe blessings come from God.  The city fathers prayed for God's blessing on the land.  And the people of Lynden continue to do so.  I don't think there is any more or less to it than that.  

I am as well.  Although as I begin to articulate why in this post, I realize there is no real reason to be excited.  It's like being excited for the next season of Lost.  

I think its time for some folks to get on with their lives.  Don't we have better things to do than try and figure out if some old guy, who'll be dead in the next couple of years, was a Nazi?

"President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman", by William Lee Miller, that's the book I'm reading, in case anyone wanted to know.  

I guess I am more inclined to believe that Bush cared about the Constitution, so I was (am) less concerned about what was going on at the time.  And really, the war on terrorism is over, isn't it?  

"What difference does it make now?"

You mean that kind of oversight, which has held accountable the men and woman (dare I say man and woman) responsible for the deaths in Benghazi?  

I agree with you John on a great many things but I can't bring myself to agree with you here, not now.  I want to.  But I think the Republic is gone.

I'm excited to hear this.  I've been trying to decide in my own mind what I think of Lincoln.  Do I take the libertarian line, the he's the first in a long line of usurpers?  Or do I take the more mainstream line, that Lincoln did the right thing in preserving the union and the Constitution?  I honestly haven't made up my mind.  I'm currently reading another book on Lincoln which is very sympathetic (the name is escaping me for some reason) and I plan to read "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War" after that.  I suppose I'll also have to read Lowery's book.  I've been thinking about putting a post up here on the subject, but I don't feel like I've got enough information yet.  At any rate, should be a good podcast.

Hey, you have a new picture!

I would take Doc Epstein's words as wisdom, were the details about the NSA program to have come out under "normal" circumstances.  But over the last year or so we've seen scandal after scandal involving the government just doing whatever they damn well please.  Telling us that we are paranoid over this is like telling an Oklahoman he's paranoid when he says he's concerned about the weather.  

Oh don't get your feelings hurt.  

And what I'm trying to point out is that the folks who use B to support the NSA data collection would never use it to support more gun control.  It seems inconsistent to me.  I'm big and yer small.  

 A and B are not the same arguments.  A says that if I have a gun I may use it for bad reasons, and so it should be limited or taken away.  We are using that same rational with respect the NSA, but nobody uses that argument against guns.  B says that if I have to intrude upon everyone’s rights, even the good guys, to be sure the bad guys don’t do something bad, that’s ok.  Some of the folks on this site are using that argument to support what the NSA is doing, and gun control advocates use it to argue for more gun control.  But A and B are not the same.  So there.  I’m right and you’re wrong.