Ice Still Floating Around Lake Superior

June icebergs still roaming Lake Superior | Updraft | Minnesota Public Radio News:

Couple of nice pics and the obligatory "nothing to do with Climate Change!". I'm quite certain that Warmists will be looking at a continental glacier a mile thick and saying "on average, it is getting warmer!".

I keep having this contrarian thought that the sun is the primary determinant of earth's temperature, and our ability to fully understand solar "climate" is even more flawed than our ability to understand earth's climate. This article suggests a 1 degree C drop by 2020 based on solar activity. No doubt, depending on what "base period" you decide to use (NOAA used 1981-2010), the data could still claim it is "in the top 10 warmest" ... as will the year that the ice sheet takes out Minneapolis will no doubt be!

In the meantime, please remember that when the Great Lakes were warm, THAT was absolutely significant proof of Global Warming,!  "Settled science" operates very much like religion!

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An Atheist On Athesim

An atheist explains the real consequences of adopting an atheistic worldview | Wintery Knight:

I think this Atheist does a pretty honest assessment of where Atheists are at philosophically, but often don't want to admit.  All is purposeless accident, so attempts to create any sort of a "reasonable rules of logic or behaviour" are just wishful thinking. Reason? Why should a random universe be "reasonable"? What does "reason" even mean? For that matter, what is "meaning"? Some random human brain fart that might be "adaptive" for some random evolutionary period? As he points out, making babies with somebody elses wife and even killing her husband is just as "moral" in an Atheist universe as any other action that one might on a whim decide to take. What part of "no morals" did you fail to understand?

Certainly, Atheists try to gain converts just like any other religion, so they do their best to "dress up their faith". Their faith that there ISN'T an ultimate power that may find their blatant rejection of some pretty significant power beyond "man being the measure of all things" to be significantly on the hubristic side. God gives them every opportunity, including dying in human form to show he exists and he loves them, but he also gives free will. It is a gift that can bring great joy in this life and forever, or if used to reject God, the destruction of families, relationships and nations in this life, and ultimately eternal destruction for the Atheist.

In the Atheist world there is no "justice", and the primary faith of the Atheist is that there is no justice in the universe at all, because in their hearts, they know what justice means -- from their point of view, they know it "randomly".

Our founders knew that the US was not possible without a people that believed in God. There can be no "unalienable rights" unless there is a creator to endow those rights. In a Godless universe, all there can ever be is temporary grants from the powerful -- sometimes the masses, sometimes the wealthy, some times those of noble birth, but always whatever "rights" one thinks they have are at the pleasure of the powerful.

America abandoned rule of law to attempt to loot the wealthy for more free stuff for the masses. That looting goes on, but the net result is that the looter generations become less and less oriented to work and responsibility, so the gulf between the lower and upper classes gets larger and larger. The lower find that even with more free stuff -- housing, food, medical care, internet, smart phones, flat screen TVs, etc, their lives are even emptier and more meaningless than before.

Most of that meaninglessness is the turning from God in hopes of being able to indulge whatever lust currently suits the fancy -- gay "marriage", abortion and drugs are major sacraments of the Atheist religion Paganism, the worship of the physical planet, is the state religion, called "environmentalism". We were intended to be stewards on nature, not to worship it -- which is idolatry. The world was made for man, not man for the world.  Zealotry in paganism is common -- total life change in dress, diet, friends, etc. It is highly reminiscent of some hyper "born again" kind of cult, only this is the pagan version.

As Western Civilization dies, this is what we increasingly see around us. Thankfully, we know that Christianity and the Church will stand against this modern onslaught as it has against all those past.  There are no such guarantees for America and the people that fall prey to the hopelessness of Atheism.


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Catastrophe Keeps a Promise

Best of the Web Today: Obama Keeps a Promise - WSJ:

Around the globe and at home, we see the catastrophe that is BO increasingly clearly now. Nature and Nations abhor a vacuum, and has Slow Joe Biden remarked in 2008:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

His timing was slightly off, but BO has certainly failed all tests abysmally ... Libya, Egypt, Syria, Russia, Afghanistan and Iraq. 

As you know though, I think BO is very pleased with his results. America is diminished in fact and in image -- we talk of "Red Lines", and it is just talk. We let our enemies know years in advance that "we won't put troops in Iraq". True, BO is not to be trusted if you are and American, if he ways "You can keep your healthcare if you like it", you ought to have been certain that he was lying -- but that is a fiduciary lie to his own people of the most nasty sort. The kind of lie BO is a master at! When he is just promising to be feckless -- as in not defending a victory bought at great price in American blood and treasure, you can absolutely take him at his word. Feckless he has down cold. 

Even the VA situation has a silver lining to a guy like BO -- not caring for veterans cuts existing troop morale and makes future recruitment harder - "sauce for the goose". In a country that was awake, all would see the obvious tie between the disaster of VAcare and the disaster of BOcare, but we are no longer a country that is awake. We are too busy trying to find some scraps of what we know is a dying nation fading from the world stage.

We have guilty hopes that the Chinese will be benevolent masters, but that is one of the sad parts of having been the Great Power -- your successor generally likes to make it obvious that you have been DEFEATED, which means blood, extreme poverty and obvious submission. Both Britain and the US were rather large historical exceptions to that rule -- although not NEARLY benevolent enough for BO and many on the left, but take heart, China has a ruthless streak that will bring the historical rule back with a vengeance. 

So oil prices will rise and terrorist threats around the world will rise. Out economy was down 1% in the first quarter, a decent oil shock ought to be enough to push us into a "less possible to ignore" recession, although we know the MSM will work mightily to do so. We have solidly turned the decline corner, and a large nation in decline tends to pick up speed rapidly as it fails domestically and on the world stage. Friends run for cover in horror, enemies look for and exploit the opportunity with increasing vigor, 

"Gird your Loins". The irony that somehow BO was going to CLEAN something (Augean Stables or otherwise) is especially pungent ... Gun Runner, Benghazi, IRS, NSA, VA ... the level of scandal in this administration makes Nixon look like a saint! But of course, it is good to have "The Party" and it's media wing behind you! 

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The "Dreams" Legacy

The Prisoner Swap Deal - Thomas Sowell - Page 1:

Once again, a pearl of great price from Sowell.

One of the problems of many fundamentally decent people is that they find it hard to understand people who are not fundamentally decent, or whose moral compass points in a different direction from theirs.

As I've said many times ... and as BO said in his "Dreams" book, I think he has been VERY successful relative to his objective of tearing down "The Colonial Powers / Western Civilization" ... Sowell just says it better: 

As for Barack Obama, you cannot judge any President's competence by the results of his policies, without first knowing what he was trying to achieve. Many wise and decent people assume automatically that President Obama was trying to serve the interests of America. From that standpoint, he has failed abysmally, both at home and abroad. And that should legitimately call his competence into question. 

But what if his vision of the world is one in which the wealth and power of those at the top, whether at home or internationally, are deeply resented, and have been throughout his life, under the tutelage of a whole series of resenters? And what if his goal is to redress that imbalance?

Who can say that he has failed, when the fundamental institutions of this country have been successfully and perhaps irretrievably undermined, and when the positions of America and its allies on the world stage have been similarly, and even more dangerously, undermined around the world?

As for Barack Obama, you cannot judge any President's competence by the results of his policies, without first knowing what he was trying to achieve.

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"Voter" Relocation?

Obama Admin to Dump over 1,000 Illegal Immigrants in AZ This Weekend:

The only plausible reason for not requiring a picture ID to vote is a large scale operation to fix the vote -- we all have either been IDed for many simple tasks -- sending UPS, getting a cell phone, getting a hotel room, getting on a plane, etc, etc.

The ONLY reason that it makes sense to be against ID is that either you KNOW that an honest vote in  this nation would change what is happening IMMENSELY, or you are very worried that it would. I really don't think there are much more than say "10%" of people that actually believe it somehow "restricts the right to vote" -- if it is, then our gullibility factor is already beyond hope.

So what are the mechanisms to get illegal voters to the proper polls? Maybe bussing them in and dropping them in places that the effect is needed?

I can't see how one prevents an underage person from voting when an ID is not required?

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HOW "The Party" Will LEGALLY Limit Speech! (Both MN Senators For)

Democrats Try to Repeal First Amendment | Power Line:

Here we see the ACLU detailing what kind of Amerika TP is intent on creating. Note at the end that the law got ONLY support from TP, although the ACLU generously (for TP) uses assumptions of how it might be used by Republicans to suppress speech. "It might, legally", but not likely in the current world that is dominated by TP media and academia.

What it WOULD do however is to completely legalize what TP members do all the time -- use their positions to harass opposition candidates and organizations through campaign finance laws! This is a tactic that has been, and continues to be used against Scott Walker in WI. Read and understand the Udall Amendment, and keep the phrase "suppression of conservative advocacy" firmly in mind for the real world, much less generous than the ACLU version of looking at this.

FORTY ONE sponsors!! All  DEMOCRATS want to gut the First Amendment by giving themselves vast powers to REGULATE POLITICAL SPEECH!!!  What kind of country have we become where Senators, including those up for re-election  like Franken, can come out in favor of blatant totalitarian control of political speech and correctly assume that the MSM and general sleepy nature of our population will insulate them from damage!

THIS is why we have slid so far from being "The Land of the Free", and continue to tumble. In the ACLU letter quoted below, they try very hard to be on-partisan ... when ALL 41 of the signers were Democrats! The continued slide into tyranny demands the removal of free speech -- the Democrats are all over it.

To give just a few hypotheticals of what would be possible in a world where the Udall proposal is the 28th Amendment:

•  Congress would be allowed to restrict the publication of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming memoir “Hard Choices” were she to run for office; 

• Congress could criminalize a blog on the Huffington Post by Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, that accuses Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) of being a “climate change denier”; 

•  Congress could regulate this website by reform group Public Citizen, which urges voters to contact their members of Congress  in support of a constitutional amendment addressing  and the recent McCutcheon  case, under the theory that it is, in effect, a sham issue communication in favor of the Democratic Party; 

• A state election agency, run by a corrupt patronage appointee, could use state law to limit speech by anti-corruption groups supporting reform; 

• A local sheriff running for reelection and facing vociferous public criticism for draconian immigration policies and prisoner abuse could use state campaign finance laws to harass and prosecute his own detractors; 

• A district attorney running for reelection could selectively prosecute political opponents using state campaign finance restrictions

 And Congress could pass a law regulating this letter since it notes that all 41 sponsors are Democrats.  Such examples are not only plausible, they are endless.

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Freedom Summer II, Opportunity vs Outcome

Robert B. Reich: Freedom Summer II [Commentary] - baltimoresun.com:

Today, as then, a group of Americans is denied the dignity of decent wages and working conditions. Today, just as then, powerful forces are threatening and intimidating vulnerable people for exercising their legal rights. Today, just like 50 years ago, people who have been treated as voiceless and disposable are standing up and demanding change.

Yes indeed, millions of people are FORCED to work at Wally ... however, Reich does helpfully inform us "WalMart is no Bull Connor", gee, glad he covered that, I might have been confused!

Blacks demonstrated for equal OPPORTUNITY, current demonstrators want EQUAL OUTCOME  -- independent of their ability of lack thereof to achieve any sort of results at all. Now in theory they say "more equal", but why stop there? If $15 an hour is good, is not $25 OR $50 better? What principle would decide that number?

I've started a "balanced reading" of switching back and forth between Hayak's Fatal Conceit and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century . Piketty may be against others making a lot of money, but his book is the most expensive I've ever bought on Kindle at $22.

I'll be doing a lot of reading, but basically Hayak's Fatal Conceit is the idea that things like culture, social structures, economics are "human created" and thus human understandable. He argues that they are emergent orders selected because "they work better" over eons of time, and when we meddle with things like "the market", we do so at peril to our economic well being and possibly even our civilization. Social Science fields tend to very much forget tghe "First, do no harm" maxim and assume that they can willy nilly play with the world economy to get their "desired results". Seems so reasonable to me that it is surprising that anyone even thinks of disagreeing.

Adam Smith no more "invented" the Invisible Hand than Newton "invented" gravity -- they both DISCOVERED them, with nearly zero idea of really "why" they work, only that they do.
But of course Piketty has a much higher opinion of his abilities, and KNOWS there is a huge problem with Capitalism called "inequality". Again, I'm mystified right from the start. If one compares me to the WORST brain surgeon at Mayo, or the WORST NFL QB, or the WORST opera singer, I'd assert that all the 1000x, 10,0000k and essentially infinite x comparisons of "inequality" are expressed very well. My contribution in any of those fields and MANY more is and would be even with significant effort so pitiful to defy mathematical comparison.

So why should the area of making money, creating wealth or investing be any different? Is it REALLY that surprising that Warren Buffet is a 1,000x of even a BILLION x better investor than 99.9999% of the population? To me it is not surprising at all.

And why is that bad? If Buffet allocates resources a billion times better than some idiot that say trades a deserter for 5 top notch terrorists (hypothetica), why NOT let Buffet do even MORE investing? His allocation is likely to generate WAY more wealth for the rest of us than we would otherwise have, even if Warren "takes" (a kind of fuzzy concept in a market economy) 90% of it! As long as we can eat, have a roof, buy some beer now and then, why exactly do we care what Warren does with his money or that he has more of it?

So essentially Hayak says that we are all bent on shooting our own feet off in attempt to "even up" economic allocation, and Piketty is INTENT to show us how to accomplish it!

People can write very long books over what seems obvious to me -- but I guess that just proves how stupid the Moose really is!

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Dialectical Freezing

Keep peeing in the pool?! Climate deniers lose their minds after new EPA rules - Salon.com:

BO has unilaterally declared that there will be a 30% reduction in C(2 emissions from coal plants. At least it is consistent with aborting 100's of millions of kids, they emit CO2 as well.

If our entire economy wasn't dependent on energy, and indeed for those of us in the northern climates, life itself, some of this would be of less interest. In this past year of "Real Current Global Warming Effect", even places as far south as Memphis would have had a lot of folks frozen to death without adequate power. Much like being a Veteran and relying on VA care doesn't exempt you from the harsh realities of the disaster of government run healthcare, even climate BELIEVERS turn into Popsicles  when exposed to temperatures below 32 for decent periods of time ... even if you are screaming IT'S GETTING WARMER in their ears!

The premise of "progressivism" is that the ends justify the means and that the means can be effectively ignored because of the wondrousness of the ends -- massive debts, no energy, shrinking economy, dwindling labor force and aging population, masses of non-working younger people, all of it makes no difference next to the majesty of the "progressive" vision.

All the government sponsored studies and "real science" (the kind funded by the government rather than folks that produce something) tell the "progressives" they are right. Not that they need to be told, they KNOW in the way that only those that ignore history, deny God, eschew results vs models,  and go to all ends to say "the vast majority of people agree with us" can be confident.  Hey, 97% of scientists agree with them, they MUST be right!

So we bray back and forth and call each other names, and even the little kid in the picture HIMSELF is "fouling the pool", since we too emit CO2. Meanwhile, the planet returns to a cooling trend and we set ourselves up for an energy crisis that is actually life threatening if you live in the center of the nation N of say Arkansas -- but no matter, the "progressives" have a wonderful vision of the future!

The title is a little snark at "Dialectical Materialism" the core of Marxism and Communism ... "mumbo jumbo"  is an adequate translation in the real world.

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Problems With Atheism

Paul Wallace: The Real Problem With Atheism:



I don't hugely disagree with much in the linked column, but it also isn't really aligned with my primary problems with Atheism:

1. Hubris -- There isn't a more narcissistic hubristic bombastic statement that a tiny, mortal, stupid, smelly human can make than "there is no God".  Death will certainly fix all those problems, and even a momentary reflection on that level of hubris makes one understand the sad reality of why Hell exists. Freedom is never free, and free will has ultimate consequences. 
2. Hopelessness -- We and all those we love die. There is no way to prove or disprove an afterlife. I believe that without God there is no love, and the desire of Atheists to do away with the hope to see those that they supposedly love in an afterlife comes close to a proof that without God there is no real love. 
3. Purposelessness -- Without a creator there can be no purpose. We and all we see happened through complete random chance and is utterly without purpose. As Shakespeare said in Macbeth: “Life ... is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” In such a universe, nothing ultimately matters -- which calls trusting an Atheist into question. 
4. Truthless -- One of the names of Christ is Truth. We humans are never trustworthy, even under pain of death and hell, BUT, there is some pretty good historical evidence that a belief in a higher power and ultimate punishment improves the odds of truth and trust SOME (and in this life, that is as good as it gets). Even if it doesn't, the humility, the hope for an ultimate future, the belief that this really does all have reason for being and we are part of that plan helps make believers better bets to trust (still sorry bets, but BETTER). This is one reason that I sincerely hope that we never sink so low as to even consider an Atheist for president! 
5. Destructive -- Human civilization clawed it's way up from the Hobbesian swamp of "Nasty, Brutish and Short" over thousands of years at great cost. What we see in the West is a direct result of Judaeo - Christian Religion melded with Greek Philosophy. The 20th Century saw the breakout of the great Atheist Humanistic "isms" --- Communism and Fascism, resulting in the killing of hundreds of millions of people. Without God there is no "Natural Law", there is no "These truths are self-evident" ... there is no Truth, no Purpose, no Meaning, no Love.
   
   But death, there is LOTS of death because Atheists tend to attack and destroy. One doesn't need to spend much time reading or listening to them to hear their nasty sneering derision of believers, often times directed even more strongly at (soon to be former) friends or family members that they know will be hurt especially badly by it. Why not? It is a hopeless, purposeless, truthless, loveless nasty universe in which all that ultimately counts is the hubristic and narcissistic view of the atheist. There will be no ultimate judgment of their actions in their view, so why not try to beat the "false" hope, truth, love, etc out of those  "believers"? 

We humans always worship something. God is the worship of "that greater than which can not be imagined" -- truth, love, wisdom, hope, beauty, kindness, humility.

Atheism is very sad, but perhaps even sadder are the prayers of believers for those they love lost to this spiritual cancer. 

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US WILL Negotiate and Trade Hostages With/For Known Terrorists!

Taliban becomes our latest enemy to play Obama for a patsy | Power Line:

It is a great time to be an enemy of the US! Seize a "US Serviceman" (in name only, see some of his statements on the US and fact he likely deserted here) and trade him for FIVE big time terrorists from Gitmo!!! Man, I wonder what you could get for a busload of American school kids these days ... or maybe a planeload of US citizens headed to Disney ... BO in the WH for terrorists is basically a GEICO commercial "Happier than a witch in a broom factory"! Time to get some "chips" and reel in some goodies from the US!

The MSM is treating this with the kind of fawning admiration that one would expect for a TP administration in complete disarray, shedding the head of the VA in hopes of nipping that scandal in the bud and having jettison Carney the press secretary on the same day in hopes of keeping down VA disaster coverage.

A "helpful press" is VERY helpful to a bumbling idiot of a president, but it is very UNhelpful to the poor Americans that will pay the price for the establishment of the US as a great target for selective kidnapping.

Although perhaps it only works if the person taken has politics that agree with BO?

Bergdahl, "solider" released quote: "I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting."

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TP Propaganda In Action

The Most Epically Hypocritical Democratic Party Smear Ever! This Is One for the Record Books | Power Line:



I've documented a lot of examples of how TP (The Party - Democrat) uses it's near total media dominance to manipulate the public. What TP hates about Fox News is that it does similar ops on the conservative side on a much smaller scale and that should NOT be allowed! TP can ultimately only rule when there are NO ALTERNATIVES -- meaning the people who think differently are in the gulag or dead!



 If there are alternatives, then things like the VA, the ongoing tragedy of BOcare, the Climate Hoax, etc will be pointed out and it will  be clear to far to many people that TP is like the Wizard of Oz ... a fake and a humbug, and unlike the wizard, actually BAD!



The Koch brothers REALLY ARE demons! Pay no attention to the fact that the guy taking time out to castigate them and the Ordway  for putting on a children s theater day was not that long ago trying to do a couple million of business to point out how environmentally responsible they are!



Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!



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Economy Down 1% First Quarter

The Economy: Don’t Look Now, But . . . | Power Line:

So now we find that 1Q 2014 was negative growth -- if BO was an R, that would be a RECESSION! It used to be 2Qs of negative GDP for either party, but TP decided that the new rule is apparently AT LEAST 2 quarters if TP is in power, and 1Q of "something like negative growth" in the unlikely case of an R in the WH!

Not that it makes much difference, what counts for "growth" under BO is so tepid and so weighted to a few states that have economic policies in direct opposition to BO, that we have been basically in a recession all along.

Apparently, some are blaming the cold winter. I suppose that can be marked down as an example of "climate disruption"?

I heard on the news this AM that consumer spending was DOWN in April -- a normal sign of recession under way, so we will see. I'm sure that the general media will be doing all they can to minimize people's knowledge of the state of the economy as much as possible, as they have been doing since BO took over.

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Private Space Capsule Looking Good

BBC News - SpaceX unveil 'no runway' Dragon V2 space capsule:





NASA is one more giant government agency to flame out spectacularly ... it got us to the moon, which was amazing, but it only gives one more example of what government CAN do, all be it usually quite inefficiently and often with GREAT expense in both money and lives.



Single focus, TIME LIMITED projects --- War, Building a nuclear weapon (Manhattan Project), "Getting to the moon by the end of this decade" ...



When the project is open ended and less than PRECISELY defined -- "have a space program", "make people happy", "end poverty",  "provide health care",  the result is always disaster ... slow expensive crushing embarrassing disaster.



The NASA shuttle was a damned impressive thing in that it was huge and it worked at all, but it was obviously flawed from the start -- tiles and giant solid boosters tacked on the side ... both of which caused catastrophic failures with total loss of crew and craft. From the POV of any engineer, those items were "hacks" at best.



How good will Dragon be? No idea, this is the marketing release -- of course it looks good! But it does look very cool. Being able to land vertically sure sounds wonderful -- but having to carry enough fuel to do it back through the atmosphere at re-entry temps still makes me wonder if given chemical propulsion, parachutes aren't good enough ... maybe a parasail with some control and some thrusters to make a ground landing at a more predictable location and softer.





But at least it is private -- which makes the chances that they know what they are doing better.



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When TP (The Party) Attacks, You Are to SHUT U{P!

Reporters Shocked When Their Targets Talk Back | Power Line:



What TP (The Party, Democrat) hates the WORST about the Koch brothers! When you are slandered and attacked you are to SHUT UP! and the Koch brothers have the unmitigated gall to FIGHT BACK!



Our education and media system works long and hard in "the public service" to make it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that if you don't tow the party line they will take your NBA team, your job and your reputation! You will be friendless and ostracized -- the IRS, NSA or other agency will be forced to go after you! You MUST SHUT UP!



Are people daft? If TP can't control people by "civil means", the US will be FORCED to go the same way as every other totalitarian government in history -- people like the Kochs are a THREAT TO AMERIKA! Are people too foolish to realize that if this "Fascism with a smiley face" doesn't work, TP is going to have to put some people down by "stronger means" .... clearly for the good of "all of us"!



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Support for Norms Is Not Exceptional

Obama’s insulting version of American exceptionalism | Power Line:

BO likes to SAY that he is for American exceptionalism ... we know he is not, and if it wasn't for the MSM, his attempts to claim that he is would be a laughing stock of the highest order.

In short, LIMITED GOVERNMENT is what once made America exceptional ... liberty that released  unprecedented human energy, innovation, prosperity and unprecedented wealth for a huge middle class!

America WAS once both Exceptional and GREAT! Now what we have is "history" ... and a strong case of BO.

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