I decided to give Dovorak a try about a year ago. While practicing and reading about Dvorak, I kept coming across references to the Colemak layout. Ultimately, I concluded that Colemak is better supported by the research and while Dvorak is superior to the traditional QWERTY layout, Colemak delivers on the promises of Dvorak to an even greater degree. As a bonus, it's easier to transition from QWERTY to Colemak than to Dvorak, plus Colemak maintains most of the common Ctrl-key editing combinations (Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V for cutting, copying, and pasting, for example). I use a keyboard program called PKL to handle the layout conversion, which allows for a one-click toggle to QWERTY in case someone else needs to use my computer.

While I do believe Colemak is superior to both QWERTY and Dvorak and I'm glad I switched, we live in a QWERTY world. It's probably not worth the time and effort to learn a new system if you're an accomplished QWERTY typist. I did it more for the curiosity and novelty factors than anything else. Changing layouts is also a great way to challenge your brain.

I don't like the auto-refresh feature. I typically visit Ricochet once a day so there are quite a number of new posts and comments to catch up on. It's annoying to have my reading interrupted and be transported back to the top of the heap. It's like being in the middle of a good book and having someone come along and slam it shut on me. It's rude, and when it happens, I often simply move on to another site rather than deal with the frustration of having to find my place again.

Not exactly a conservative outlook, is it? Since when do we take things from people simply because they can afford it?

Agreed. Jindal could have made his point, both philosophically and politically, without doing it at Romney's expense. And Rubio, like Ryan before him, is starting to sound less and less conservative.  "Our mission should not be to deny government benefits to people who need them" is much too close to Bush's "When people are hurting, government has to move" for my taste.

Chesterton said that liberalism is communism in slow motion. Alas, conservatism has become liberalism in slow motion.

Obama is claiming a mandate on his tax policy based on exit polls that show that 60% of voters agree with him. But, as usual, he's playing games with numbers.  According to the exit polls:

47% - think tax rates should be raised only on the "rich"

13% - think tax rates should be raised on everyone

35% - don't want tax rates raised on anyone

Obama is adding the top two numbers together to get to 60%, but his plan is to raise tax rates only the "rich" (high income earners is more accurate), so it's really only 47% that agree with his policy, while 48% disagree.

I'm not sure this is true. My understanding is that the vast majority of "cuts" are reductions in the rate of growth rather than true spending cuts.

I've wondered about this. I saw a movie years ago -- it may have been A Few Good Men -- that referenced a Marine hierarchy of loyalty that, I believe, went Unit, Corp, God, Country, with Unit being first. While I took this to be an unofficial code, I've always wondered if it had some basis in reality or whether it was Hollywood nonsense. Maybe someone with some military background can comment.

Things might actually get better before they get worse. This election bodes ill, but it is a predictable ill. Investors who have been sidelining cash due to uncertainty will make the most of a bad situation once the new rules are established. An economy's tendency is to right itself: investors want to make money, businesses want to expand, the unemployed want to find work. So things may improve, and Obama's policies will be seen to have finally kicked in and corrected the mess the Rs made of things. Wrong lessons learned once again. If America survives, perhaps one day our conservative grandchildren will be reading a book called Obama's Folly.

"The era of big government is over... depending on what your definition of is is."

Isn't one of Alinsky's rules to hold the other side to their own standards?

Ideally, the Right should take a blended approach, using the Left's own standards (as applied to Bush during Katrina) to leverage as much political advantage over Obama as possible, while making the larger case that disaster recovery is, by nature, messy and difficult, and that government, also by nature, is clumsy and inefficient. There is a tension between these two narratives, and it's difficult to strike a profitable balance between the two. The political point is much easier, more satisfying, and more effective to make. The practical point is more important, but so subtle that it's probably not makeable in the context of an election without, as Steven suggests, ultimately ceding the Bush/Obama comparison to the Left.

JB offered an analysis, which he says is based on math, and as such should be open to counter-analysis. But you've not offered any beyond personal derision. I've no idea if Bush is right, but I'm inclined to take his position more seriously at this point.

He may be onto something. I feel like Barack Obama has been coming after me for four years.

Sadly, you may be right. I'm far less concerned about what Obama will do to the nation if reelected than I am about what it would say about the electorate.

I haven't taken the time to listen to a Romney speech in its entirety in a long time. If you haven't, you should take the time. He has really found his voice. This is a fine speech, well delivered -- confident, focused, optimistic, humble, inspiring. This is the voice of a leader.

If by returned you mean released, I gather that was on January 20th as well. Per Wikipedia:

On January 20, 1981, at the moment Reagan completed his 20-minute inaugural address after being sworn in as President, the 52 American hostages were released by Iran into U.S. custody, having spent 444 days in captivity.

That last part is exactly right, which is why the first part is so important.