GET RICH QUICK
Re: Daniel Oliver’s Selling Obama Short:

I’ve been a professional trader/investor for 50 years. Right now, I don’t want to be long or short BHO or the stock market. And, I’m not a fan of savings accounts or corporate or municipal bonds.

I’ve found a place to hole-up and have invested in gold, guns, and gin — I’ll be ready once the socialists get tossed out.

It’s the 3 G’s for me!
— Jack Hughes
Chicago, Illinois

George Soros’s recent apocalyptic statements about the world economy prompted much speculation about what, exactly, it was he was shorting. Perhaps, now we know.
— Jerry Shenk
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

“If Barack Obama were a stock, would you be buying or selling?” Thanks for the laugh.

By the way, if I still had a stockbroker and he/she were to mention such junk stock, that’d be the last bit of advice I’d be taking from him or her. 
— C. Kenna Amos
Princeton, West Virginia 

If Obama were a broker selling stock in America, would you buy it?
— David Govett
Davis, California

IN THE WINGS
Re: Quin Hillyer’s Jindal’s Perpetual Potential:

As Governor of California, Ronald Reagan raised taxes, signed the most liberal abortion law in US history (a harbinger of Roe v. Wade), grew state government…. As president he promised to shrink government, but created the Veteran’s Affairs bureaucracy, grew the Departments of Energy and Education, expanded the Commerce Department and SBA, massively raised Federal taxes 7 times, spent like a Democrat and increased the national debt.  The fact is no politician is perfect, but as many conservatives are discovering after years of disparaging President Bush and Republicans in Congress the Democrat alternative is far worse.
— Michael Tomlinson
Jacksonville, North Carolina

I’ve watched Bobby Jindal for some years and marked him as a potential presidential candidate from the day I saw him. You wonder if he is ready to lead? I think he was ready years ago and his readiness so outstrips what we now have in the White House that it is ridiculous to even attempt to compare.  The only area in which Obama excels is in his speech style, which was trained in the best environment; the black church, with black preachers who are the masters of persuasion and glorious rhetoric. Jindal, in contrast, speaks to the realities of life and true conservative principles. He has actually accomplished things, worked with real budgets and actualized his visions. Obama can’t claim any of that, since the presidency is his first real job. I would love to have seen the Obama’s personal budgets over the years to see if they even managed that very well. The way things are going, I don’t think he has much perspective on reality. He is operating on a “buy it on the credit card” basis.
— Bette S.
Miami, Florida

NOT THE BRIGHTEST BUNCH
Re: Chris Robling’s The Chicago 360:

I think the senate should get its own house in order before spending anymore time crucifying Senator Burris.

The list of crooks, both Democrat and Republican in both houses is too long go into here.  Many (if not all) of our problems have been caused by crooked politicians forcing banks and other corporations to do their bidding. Their interference caused the problem and beware of getting between one of them an a TV camera when they come out to swear that they are innocent (Frank, Dodd, Reid to name just a few). They are all quick to fix the blame on anyone but themselves.  Remember the old adage:  “figures don’t lie but liars figure!”

At times I feel that if one were to take the IQ’s of all members of congress and add them together, you still wouldn’t have the IQ of an idiot.  Case in point:  A trillion plus dollar stimulus (read spending and pork) bill passed by the congress before it was published and before any member could read it.

Such an unconscionable act should cause the electorate to scream for term limits in both houses. The argument that “we can vote them out” is specious in that election rules and laws have been changed by the Congress to ensure that no incumbent (except perhaps Senator Burris) can be replaced by the popular vote.  We must go back to a Senate where the members are appointed by the states and a constitutional amendment is must be passed to outlaw gerrymandering in any form, for any federal office; particularly the house of non-representatives.

Finally, I would like to see Senator Burris defy the crooked members of congress and stay in office as long as he can, voting with the opposition on every bill coming before the senate.  He would go down in history as a major agent for change, in a rigged system!
— C.D. Lueders
Melbourne, Florida

LONG RETURN TRIP
Re: J.T. Young’s Republicans Return to Fiscal Conservatism:

Republicans are consigned to eternal oblivion because they lack leadership and principles to distinguish them from their ostensible opponents. They are Democrats a generation late, which is why they get no respect. Everyone knows that they will capitulate to liberalism, statism, and socialism but just are not hip enough to board the train when it arrives at the station. So we find them a few years later racing down the tracks trying to catch the tax and spend express with as much fervor as the real thing already riding in the luxury Pullman.

After the disgraceful way in which they governed and legislated during their 10 years in power their credibility is forever vanquished. But the reason for their abandonment of constitutional first principles is because the leftist vision is imprinted on every law, text book, and news channel in the nation. There is no one who can articulate a jeremiad against big government, high taxes, the Federal Reserve or any other instrument of statist expansive government. Republicans are not equipped with the intellectual tools or convictions to support limited government, sound money, and modest defense. If those were ever the ideals of Republicans they were discarded long ago.

If Republicans utter objections to obamafication it is only one of degree — not of kind. If Republicans return to fiscal conservatism it is merely a token of an abandoned belief and a realpolitik of Machiavellian impulse rather than of core belief. I have explained elsewhere that it is impossible to create a conservative majority when 50% of Americans pay no net taxes and when educational institutions are fundamentally Marxist and redistributionist. The intellectual capital to fight these systems is unavailable to future republican leaders. Thus they have been absorbed and neutralized with no more substantive value than an appendix.

Fiscal conservatism is a mirage in any event. Every politician knows that taxes are not required to increase spending. When the taxing option is not viable there is the foreigner and the bond market via the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to obtain larger chunks of American wealth and income. So the fiscal conservative talks out of one side of his mouth about holding the limit on taxes yet out of the other side speaks no evil against creating money out of thin air to accomplish the same goal of increased take of the economy.

There is absolutely no substantive difference between a Republican and a Democrat. It is merely illusion or a matter of time. In the end we are all socialized whether we like it or not.
— David Bonn

FACT CHECK
Re: Peter Ferrara’s Repeal Health Care Fascism:

I am an independent voter. I just finished reading Peter Ferrara’s piece on the proposed health care reform by President Obama. I would be more open to Mr. Ferrara’s arguments if they included specific examples and avoided contentious partisanship. For example, in referencing former Senator Tom Daschle, Mr. Ferrara reported that he “failed to pay ALL of his federal income taxes.” This is an inflammatory statement, slanderous, and incorrect based upon media reports elsewhere. I almost stopped reading right there as I assumed that the entire piece was likely a fabrication based upon the writer’s beliefs. Whether you like him or not, Daschle did pay some of his taxes. It was specifically the taxes related to his car and driver that he did not pay. This was reported by several media sources.  Are all those other reports incorrect? Is so, Mr. Ferrara, tell me why and give me the facts. You presume the reader is stupid with such statements.
— Christian Jordal

HONOR BETRAYED
Re: James Bowman’s Sean Penn’s ‘Milk’:

I read James Bowman’s book Honor: a History, and thought — here’s a man who understands virtue, the life of meaning and the importance of virtue, integrity and commitment to tradition.

Then he writes this silly little review of the movie about Harvey Milk, a twerp if there ever was one.  

Milk was a creep, the movie is creepy, Bowman has been living around and tolerating homosexuals too long.

Tolerance is the sentiment of a dying culture or a man with no honor.

It’s called perversion for a reason, Mr. Bowman.  These people predate children and adolescents and you think it’s cute? You, sir, have no HONOR.

Shame on you for defiling your family HONOR.

You think your grandfather or your father would be proud of your sycophantist review and sentiments?  Are you secretly hoping to be a part of the new sexual liberation? They would want to know if they are or were alive.

Words do make a difference, Mr. Bowman. That book on my shelf will remind me that you write about honor, but are not familiar with HONOR.
— John Dale Dunn
Brownwood, Texas

YOU WILL PAY FOR SCIENCE
Re: William Yeatman and Jeremy Lott’s The Doomsday Bias:

Once again, if one ascribes to Democrats the plan to remove from Americans their basic and fundamental freedoms, doomsday science is a perfect fit.  If global warming is not such an immediate and earth ending threat most Americans, no matter how liberal, will not support the confiscation of their wealth and destruction of their way of life for climatic reasons.

However, provide the fear of cataclysmic and immediate end of all life on earth and they will be willing to listen to the need to give up freedoms like travel on you own, reliable electricity, and housing not mandated by government.  They have already meekly surrendered freedom of religion because Christianity offends government.

So lunatic science, which has been practiced here for decades is a perfect tool for Democrat control.  Remember when the radical leftist loonies went after nuclear power?  Who did they ask about its properties?  That’s right: Jane Fonda.  She certainly is one of America’s preeminent nuclear physicists.  Now their shill is Al (The Prince of Pollution) Gore who knows less about science than he does about politics.  Even Al’s wife is a control phreak.  You will remember Tipper when she decided American needed to ban music back in the 70’s.

So always view any catastrophe invented by the radical left — now in control here — as a move to take our liberties away and install a Cuban-style socialism and you will immediately find its real purpose.
— Jay Molyneaux
North Carolina

CHASING THE IMMIGRANT VOTE
Re: Richard Nadler’s Closed Door Politics:

Whatever Republican legislators do, they won’t get the votes of immigrants looking for a handout. However, if they should be foolish enough to consent to the legalization of tens of millions of illegal immigrants, they will relegate the Republican Party to permanent minority status.

Does any politician in Washington give a damn about the middle-class taxpayer?
— David Govett
Davis, California