Well … the damn thing is over now; NATO has picked up and moved on. The world leaders have met, discussed and departed, for good or ill. And with the exception of a few fatigued, dedicated stragglers most of the lunatics that occupied the Chicago streets have also departed.

They descended upon the city with the same grace and meaning as a drug addled truck driver swerving down Lake Shore Drive and destroying nearly everything in its path, leaving nothing but chaos in its wake and striking fear into everyone within range and causing them to shake their heads in horror and confusion while others hopelessly attempt to draw a rational motive from the bloody spectacle ... but never will.

It was on Friday when a friend of mine was forced to drive downtown. She came to a stop sign and waited for a young man wearing a suit cross the street. When he reached the other side  he was greeted by Occupy protesters who proceeded to dump a bucket of excrement on him while cursing him for being a business man before storming off in a chant, “Tax the Rich, Tax the Rich”. Troubled youths intoxicated by the very spirit Barrack Obama has instilled in the hearts of so many in this country: wealth is sin and rich people are evil. Perhaps if the government paid for everybody’s suit the young man wouldn’t have been met with such malice.

The young business man isn’t totally free of blame though. Chicago businesses have been warning their employees for weeks now not to wear suits this weekend. He should have known better.  read more »

Far-right conservatives don’t protest far-left institutions the way leftists protest even center-left institutions.

Witness liberals’ uproar over the NATO summit held in Chicago earlier this week, at which protester turnout was augmented by Occupy Chicago sympathizers seeking to recapture the rancid magic of last fall’s anti-Wall Street movement.

What’s puzzling about the left’s agitation over the summit is that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not exactly the John Birch Society.  The topics on the agenda this year included: removing international troops from Afghanistan by 2013, not intervening militarily in Syria, and rolling back austerity measures in France—all stances you’d think the protestors would be in love with.  Yet leftists marched and rioted and looted all weekend as though Mitt Romney had established Mormonism as the state religion of Illinois.

What is it about leftists and protesting?

Conservatives certainly protest a thing or two, now and then; witness the vigorous and effective Tea Party movement of the past three years.  But note the differences in how conservatives and leftists make their views known:  read more »

Tonight is the second part of a two-night Dancing With The Stars finale.  Donald Driver will probably win, because he is a good dancer, and his freestyle last night was just that awesome.

Next season is the long awaited all-star season.  Tom Bergeron has said that the participants will be a mix of former champions, former runners-up, fan favorites, and controversial contestants.

By "controversial," they could mean Kate Gosselin.  She tried to get her professional partner, Tony Dovolani, fired from the show.  He probably would have been relieved to be done with her, and gone off to do toothpaste commercials or something.  But asking for someone's head on a platter is surely not a good way to nurture a dance partnership.

It is far more likely, though, that "controversial" is code for Tom DeLay and Bristol Palin.

The last song Tom DeLay danced to before he was forced to withdraw from the competition due to stress fractures in both feet was Why Can't We Be Friends?  It was a fun, and funny, samba that featured him with a sparkly elephant on his costume, and his professional partner Cheryl Burke had a donkey on hers.
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I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard Mitt Romney ‘repudiate’ a Super PAC message that hadn’t even been produced yet. It was a jolt of deja vu, harkening back to the bleak political tapestry created by the entrenched Republican beltway establishment. We’ve seen this entire story played out time after time, where the supposed champions of constitutional governance have been rolled over by the DeMarxists, simply because the agents of freedom have utterly failed to stand for the very principles they espouse.

John McCain’s candidacy was a joke to anyone who followed politics closely. What I saw in John McCain was the reincarnation of the hapless Bob Dole  ‘good old boy’ presidential run. This ‘next-in-line’ mentality of the beltway establishment has utterly failed the Republican Party and the American people. Had it not been for the introduction of Sarah Palin to the national political scene, McCain would have suffered one of the greatest defeats in party history.  read more »

I received a hilarious email that said reelecting Barack Obama would be like backing up the Titanic and driving it into the iceberg a second time.  I laughed, and laughed, and laughed.  Then I somberly realized something.

The death of America at the hands of Barack Obama is not a laughing matter.

Is "death" a bit of hyperbole?  Well, that depends.  (No, I'm not going to crack a joke about what the meaning of "is" is.)  The Obama vision for the country is Zombie America, still walking around, but not alive.  It's a place where the very much alive people are at risk of having the life sucked out of them by the tax code, the regulations, and the zombies who won't deign to work.

I was hoping someone dynamic, charismatic, and electable would show up.  Alas, Ronald Reagan is dead.  So instead, we get Mitt Romney.

He was by no means my first choice.  That would have been Gary Johnson, before he fled to the Libertarian nomination.  He believes in a lot of what I do:  Reforming the tax code, auditing the Federal Reserve, school choice, standing up for Israel if they are attacked, reforming entitlements so the whole thing doesn't go bust, and creating a business-friendly environment so the economy can prosper.  But there was no room for him, because there were other parts of his message that offended Republicans.

So instead, I'll be voting for Mitt.  And so will a lot of other people who aren't in love with him.  It isn't perfect, but it could be worse.
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Everywhere you look, somebody or other is accusing republicans of "voting against their own self-interest."  It's on TV, in print media, and all over the internet.  Why, it sounds like you could practically call it waging war on self-interest!

But what does it mean?  What are people really trying to say when they play the 'voting against one's self-interest' card?

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but "self-interest" seems to be a pretty euphemism for "other people's money."  Voting for the people who promise you more of someone else's stuff, instead of the people who want you to keep more of your own stuff, is all the rage across the land.  And really, what's the harm?  Richie Rich has way more money than he needs, so why not take it from him?  Why would anyone vote against that kind of "self-interest"?

We could start with "because it's excruciatingly unethical."  Yes, that's right, boys and girls of the collective.  I'm going to throw down the gauntlet and challenge your ethics.  The law says you can vote yourself a lifetime supply of free cheese and beer at someone else's expense, and then vote for someone else to pay for your triple bypass and liver transplant too.  But is that ethical behavior?  Just because the system says you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD.  So yeah, paying your own way is more ethical than robbing Richie to pay for 100 strangers whose only claim on his assets is that they want them.
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Serendipity: A happy chance or accident. Precisely the opposite of what happened to Senator Dick Lugar last Tuesday in Indiana. At the risk of being redundant, I wrote at the time of the 2010 elections that it wasn’t over ’til it’s over, but that the American Tea Party Patriots had put a new face on American politics.

I said that the ‘Republicans-in-name-only’, the ones not voted out in the 2010 sweep of the US House of Representatives, were not the only ones who had to look to their seats in the upcoming 2012 primaries, House and Senate races. I’ve also commented on the not inconsiderable number of House and Senate members who, having seen the hand-writing on the wall, have announced that they would not seek re-election in the upcoming contests. Thus far, it looks like five Democrats, three Republicans and one ‘independent’ have stated they will not seek re-election. There are thirty two members of the House who are dropping out.  read more »

The media have been gasping in horror over claims that Mitt Romney engaged in gay bashing 50 years ago in high school, including one iconic incident in which he brutally hacked off a gay student’s bleached blond locks.

Except that said student, John Lauber, wasn’t openly gay.  When interviewed by the non-partisan Auto Weekly before the haircut story surfaced in the mainstream media, key witness Phillip Maxwell never even mentioned the supposedly traumatizing incident.

Maxwell, a Democrat, did offer that Romney was disciplined, focused, and smart, and would probably make a great president—points that somehow didn’t make it into the trim 5,500-word Post piece, no doubt due to space restrictions.  One tipoff that the Post may have been proffering a biased report was its admission that most of the five witnesses it interviewed were Democrats.  read more »

Hardly the middle of May and the behavior of the Obama campaign indicates grave concern. It is highly unusual for an incumbent to stink of desperation this early in the game. The wounds Romney endured during the bloody republican primary seem innocuous at this point. Political pundits and analysts that predicted residual effects seem to have discounted the wounds America has sustained in Obama’s last three years in office which dwarf Romney’s primary battle wounds to a small paper cut – at best.

The Obama campaign strategy is clear: divert as much attention as possible from the economy and pretty much every aspect of his first term with the exception, of course, his decision to kill Osama Bin Laden. But they’ve even blown that, with their recent efforts to politicize the event backfiring after even members of the far left such as Arianna Huffington having chastised the attempt. Now it’s all about creativity.  

Their latest ploy: Obama announces he has “evolved” and now supports gay marriage – actually, he announced his support for the state to decide, which is how it is already. So as usual, nothing has changed. Two days later the Washington Post has now uncoincidentally put out a front page story alleging that while in high school Mitt Romney bullied a classmate named John Lauber, who was suspected of being gay. Another affirmation of the existential collusion between the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, that Andrew Breitbart dubbed the Democratic-Media Complex.  read more »

As the Republican Party settles on its 2012 presidential nominee, the Obama campaign is gearing up to implement a coherent twenty-seven-prong strategy to secure every conceivable voting bloc in the country.

The Obama 2012 website includes separate pages targeting:  read more »