Once again the world looks at the US and just shakes it head. We don't need immigration reform. The right is doing it all by themselves without writing a single piece of legislation. Who the hell would want to come here.

Thanks, David. Preaching to the choir here, I'm afraid, but I'll try to pass this along within the next day or two. (I've got a couple of busy days ahead.)

No question: We're pathetic. Big Government is the only entity with the power to change this. How do we convince them that we're pathetic and dying, as well?

Shouting apparently isn't doing it. Taking to the streets is next. . .

David, my friend's story always comes to my mind when British HC comes up. He was on the polished marble floor of Victoria Station, on his way to Paris, when he stepped on a leaf of a newspaper and went ass over tea kettle, landing on his knee and shattering his knee cap. No questions asked, he was off to a London hospital, and was under the knife for three hours while the surgeon searched down and extracted the knee shards.

The it was off to a rehab center in the countryside near London for therapy and convalescence. It was a converted WWII barracks - very clean and cheery. He said the staff was top tier - friendly, helpful and expert. After ten days he was released. At the front desk a clerk handed him an invoice - for surgery and post surgery care. "We can't force you to pay this" she said, "but we would appreciate it if you did." This bill amounted to about $450.00, and of course his state-side insurer jumped at the chance to pay it.

"The American right is world famous...."

Actually, the American right is world infamous!

Hey David ... I think . . .

. . . the American public should also take a close read on this article.

Socialism's comeback - by Neil Clark

"If socialism signifies a political and economic system in which the government controls a large part of the economy and redistributes wealth to produce social equality, then I think it is safe to say the likelihood of its making a comeback any time in the next generation is close to zero," wrote Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History, in Time magazine in 2000.

He should take a trip around Europe today.

Make no mistake, socialism - pure, unadulterated socialism, an ideology that was taken for dead by liberal capitalists - is making a strong comeback.

continues

The American people are so used to bubbles because they're living in a bubble...

~OGD~

In the meantime, people are literally dying just to get health care for their families:

Army Spc. Gregory James Missman died in Afghanistan after suffering wounds from an improvised explosive device in July.

Missman, 36, re-enlisted in the military after being laid off from his job as a computer consultant. Missman served in the Army 11 years earlier.

According to Missman's father, health care is what pushed his son back into service. After losing his job, Missman's young family, a wife and son were no longer insured.

He was deployed to Afghanistan June 5 and mortally wounded July 8.

Missman was awarded the Purple Heart before he died.

The Republican Party has as a significant portion of its base those who are still aggrieved at the loss of affirmative action for white people.

Today's Republicans are largely those who still want the government to give them a leg up and a handout.

They look nostalgically on the old days when the government ensured that they had racial preferences in schools, housing, voting, jobs, and other aspects of society.

The idea that government no longer gives them the racial preferences they had become dependent on for generations is a large source of their rage against government.

Many Republicans are deeply imbued with a sense of entitlement, but now that the racial preferences they depended on for so long have been tamed by the power of the US Constitution, they nurture a childish rage about their sense of abandonment.

We do not lack for intellectual support, we just lack for intellectual conservatives.

That is a loss. While I seldom agreed with William F. Buckley, I certainly appreciated following his logic. I cannot say the same for the current crop.

Amazing to realize that the GOP dumbed down first from intellectual gadflies like Buckley and George Will to failed covert ops types like Oliver North and Gordon Liddy. Then they dumbed down further to bombed out DJ's like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

Will the next crop of GOP intellectual more closely resemble Ernest P. Worrell or Jethro Bodean? Hard to say....