Because I came across it a few days ago, some words of wisdom:

 "A Rendevous With Destiny" - R. W. Reagan, 10/27/64

Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has
been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer
hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been
permitted to choose my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in
the next few weeks.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit
to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us
cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us
that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and
prosperity. The line has been used "We've never had it so good."

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't
something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in
history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its
national income. Today, 37 cents of every dollar earned in this country
is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend
$17 million a day more than the government takes in. We haven't
balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We have raised our
debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national
debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all
the nations in the world. We have $15 billion in gold in our
treasury--we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are $27.3
billion, and we have just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will
now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would
like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in
South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be
maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just
want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American
is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We are at war with
the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb
from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war,
and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record
with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did
the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it's time we ask
ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by
the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban
refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of
his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't
know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you
are! I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the
entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to.
This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is
beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to
sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the
long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this
election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or
whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little
intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us
better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a
left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing
as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old
dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and
order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their
sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our
freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great
Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must
accept a "greater government activity in the affairs of the people."
But they have been a little more explicit in the past and among
themselves--and all of the things that I now will quote have appeared
in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have
voices that say "the cold war will end through acceptance of a not
undemocratic socialism." Another voice says that the profit motive has
become outmoded, it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare
state; or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of
solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fullbright
has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He
referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he
said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on
him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for
us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another
articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs
of the masses through the full power of centralized government." Well,
I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you
and me--the free man and woman of this country--as "the masses." This
is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that,
"the full power of centralized government"--this was the very thing the
Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't
control things. A government can't control the economy without
controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do
that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also
knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions,
government does nothing as well or as economically as the private
sector of the economy.

Now, we have no better example of this than the government's
involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the
cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in
America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of
farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the
per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of
farming is regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the
last three years we have spent $43 in feed grain program for every
bushel of corn we don't grow.

Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater as President
would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little
better, because he will find out that we have had a decline of 5
million in the farm population under these government programs. He will
also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from
Congress an extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths
that is now free. He will find that they have also asked for the right
to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the
federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to
seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals.
And contained in that same program was a provision that would have
allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the
soil.

At the same time, there has been an increase in the Department of
Agriculture employees. There is now one for every 30 farms in the
United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain
headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes
never left shore.

Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked
the government to free the farm economy, but who are farmers to know
what is best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program.
The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the
price of wheat to the farmer goes down.

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on
freedom carries on. Private property rights are so diluted that public
interest is almost anything that a few government planners decide it
should be. In a program that takes for the needy and gives to the
greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a
million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must
be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more
compatible use of the land." The President tells us he is now going to
start building public housing units in the thousands where heretofore
we have only built them in the hundreds. But FHA and the Veterans
Administration tell us that they have 120,000 housing units they've
taken back through mortgage foreclosures. For three decades, we have
sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government
planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The
latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency. They have just declared Rice
County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred
oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over $30 million on deposit
in personal savings in their banks. When the government tells you
you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a
thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way
by taking advantage of the thin one. So they are going to solve all the
problems of human misery through government and government planning.
Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and
they've had almost 30 years of it, shouldn't we expect government to
almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling
us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help?
The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the
program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million
people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true.
They were all on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families
in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than
$3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark
depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now
do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45
billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be
able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present
income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is
running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there
must be some overhead.

So now we declare "war on poverty," or "you, too, can be a Bobby
Baker!" Now, do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add $1
billion to the $45 million we are spending...one more program to the
30-odd we have--and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it
just duplicates existing programs--do they believe that poverty is
suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should
explain that there is one part of the new program that isn't
duplicated. This is the youth feature. We are now going to solve the
dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like
the old CCC camps, and we are going to put our young people in camps,
but again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we are going to spend
each year just on room and board for each young person that we help
$4,700 a year! We can send them to Harvard for $2,700! Don't get me
wrong. I'm not suggesting that Harvard is the answer to juvenile
delinquency.

But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too
long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young
woman who had come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was
pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her
husband was a laborer earning $250 a month. She wanted a divorce so
that she could get an $80 raise. She is eligible for $330 a month in
the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women
in her neighborhood who had already done that very thing.

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are
denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are
always "against" things, never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with
our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know
so much that isn't so. We are for a provision that destitution should
not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have
accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we are against those entrusted with this program when they
practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge
that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to
those who depend on them for livelihood. They have called it insurance
to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared
before the Supreme Court and they testified that it was a welfare
program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people.
And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the
government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund,
because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a
congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this
moment is $298 billion in the hole. But he said there should be no
cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they
could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail
them out of trouble! And they are doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary...his
Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an
insurance policy that would guarantee $220 a month at age 65. The
government promises $127. He could live it up until he is 31 and then
take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now, are we
so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound
basis so that people who do require those payments will find that they
can get them when they are due...that the cupboard isn't bare? Barry
Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would
permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon
presentation of evidence that he had made provisions for the
non-earning years? Should we allow a widow with children to work, and
not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband?
Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be
under these programs, which we cannot do? I think we are for telling
our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied
medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we are against
forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government
program, especially when we have such examples, as announced last week,
when France admitted that their Medicare program was now bankrupt.
They've come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested
that our government give up its program of deliberate planned inflation
so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy
a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents' worth?

I think we are for an international organization, where the nations
of the world can seek peace. But I think we are against subordinating
American interests to an organization that has become so structurally
unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the
General Assembly among the nations that represent less than 10 percent
of the world's population. I think we are against the hypocrisy of
assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony,
while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths
about the millions of people enslaved in Soviet colonies in the
satellite nation.

I think we are for aiding our allies by sharing of our material
blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs,
but we are against doling out money government to government, creating
bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help
19 countries. We are helping 107. We spent $146 billion. With that
money, we bought a $2 million yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress
suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenyan government
officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no
electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought $7 billion
worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this
country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government
programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau
is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth.
Federal employees number 2.5 million, and federal, state, and local,
one out of six of the nation's work force is employed by the
government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of
regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How
many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's
property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal
hearing, let alone a trial by jury, and they can seize and sell his
property in auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico
County, Arkansas, James Wier overplanted his rice allotment. The
government obtained a $17,000 judgment, and a U.S. marshal sold his
950-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a
warning to others to make the system work. Last February 19 at the
University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-time candidate for
President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater
became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United
States." I think that's exactly what he will do.

As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only
man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present
administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great
American, came before the American people and charged that the
leadership of his party was taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and
Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he
died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking
that party, that honorable party, down the road in the image of the
labor socialist party of England. Now it doesn't require expropriation
or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on
a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to
your business or property if the government holds the power of life and
death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists.
The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it
chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment.
Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights
are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has
never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at
this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these
issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest
between two men...that we are to choose just between two personalities.

Well, what of this man that they would destroy? And in destroying,
they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I
hold dear. Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say
he is? Well, I have been privileged to know him "when." I knew him long
before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you
personally I have never known a man in my life I believe so incapable
of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.

This is a man who in his own business, before he entered politics,
instituted a profit-sharing plan, before unions had ever thought of it.
He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took
50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program,
a pension plan for all his employees. He sent checks for life to an
employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provided nursing care for
the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged
by floods from the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew
medicine and supplies down there.

An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas
during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to
get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas, and he said that there were a
lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. Then a
voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Any men in uniform wanting a
ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such," and they went down there,
and there was this fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane.
Every day in the weeks before Christmas, all day long, he would load up
the plane, fly to Arizona, fly them to their homes, then fly back over
to get another load.

During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man
who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer.
His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said,
"There aren't many left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to
know I care." This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, "There is
no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin
to build your life upon that rock, with the cement of the faith in God
that you have, then you have a real start." This is not a man who could
carelessly send other people's sons to war. And that is the issue of
this campaign that makes all of the other problems I have discussed
academic, unless we realize that we are in a war that must be won.

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the
welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace
without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say
if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will
forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are
indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex
problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy
answer--but simple.

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we
want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is
morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat
of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion
now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom
because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your
slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer
disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's
set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between
peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have
peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this,
but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in
appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends
refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and
it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and
surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat,
eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what
then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our
answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the
pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver
the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we
will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically.
He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for
"peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator
put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And
therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the
rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and
peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.
If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the
face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to
live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the
cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their
guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs
of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to
stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the
road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price
we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance.
This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through
strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not
measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in
the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There
is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space,
which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our
children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence
them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in
us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and
the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

"And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears
fought are still at issue around the globe – the belief that the rights
of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of
God."

- John F. Kennedy

Obama: WOO HOO! We're broke so let us continue doing what we've been doing.

I hope that the Bamster's words are discussed outside the conservative blogosphere, because his statement is so bizarre, almost Bidenian. The statement that we are out of money is shocking enough, but to blame our problems on a lack of action in the past on health care?

Scully deserves a nod for asking better questions than the Bamster gernerally gets, and for drilling down once he senses there's something there. This is another illustration of how lost the Bamster can be without his Binky. Let's hope this gets to the networks and newspapers in spite of the long weekend.

There are many other excellent discussions of the Bamster's interview in the blogosphere; here's just one: Obama Blames 7 Straw Men for Being Out of Money: http://www.americanthinker.com

Atlantis in re-entry, landing at Edwards, CA, expected 10:39 ET.

Well, he's telegraphing his punches, isn't he?

He's trying to persuade the public that the solution to all problems will be healthcare reform. Which, of course, means that he wants a blank check from the American public to "fix" healthcare, and therefore solve all problems. Do you want to make America a paradise? Just allow Uncle Barack to do whatever he wants.

These guys aren't subtle.

I don't know how many of you are watching the pre-race coverage at Indy. I for one have had enough Danica to do me for the rest of the day. She has done nothing to prove herself. Yeah she won one IRL race but that was over fuel mileage. I am sick of Brett too. (Where is Dan Fouts when you need him ala The Waterboy) 

There is one thing for sure. We won't have to be treated to this Danica crap when the World 600 pre-race show in on. Indy has the name but the World 600 is the RACE on Memorial Weekend.

Semper suprene nitens

This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

Obama is using this tactic of fear mongering to push one agenda after another; health reform, closing Gitmo ("emboldening our enemies), etc. The current crisis is caused by a myriad of long term and shorter term policy issues - including a hangover from the dot.com bubble crash, and the Obama supported Clintonesque/Cuomo HUD policy of lowering lending standards and targeting tens of millions of lower income families by ordering Fannie/Freddie to guaranteed $trillions in guaranteed loans - and that was the feeder for creating the housing bubble crisis. Say you're sorry Pres. Obama. 

So, we're in the current condition because of health care? And we're out of money BUT should start a new entitlement program?

 Exactly - Hey, we're out of money - so let's spend another quick $trillion. The press should ask Sixth graders - somehow, I think they'd make more sense out of what to do.

Finally, Medicare and Medicaid are in financial trouble, but these problems will go away with a new entitlement program? Huh?

Raises a good question, here. Has Obama proposed any policy here which will not only improve the quality of the limited health plan, called Medicare, and to lower the cost of Medicare (not to mention Medicaid)? If we're in deep financial trouble becasue we are spending too much money on these lousy government health plans, how is spending more money on government health plans going to promote sudden solvency?

Here in CA, Medical (CA's Medicaid), pays assigned doctors $26 for an office visit. Private insurance, like a Blue Cross PPO plan, pays doctors something like an average of $75+ for an office visit. Medicare's compensation for doctors is about the same as Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid is an utterly inferior product compared to the private health insurance plans - and, the M's are not cheaper.

A note: If Medicare is so damn good, as the D's and the MSM likes to proclaim, then why for years have seniors been buying up private Medi-gap (suppliment) plans to cover all that which is not covered by Medicare? The problem is the government.

So - why are we not marching on Washington? If they ever do pull this off, other than having health care rationed, one can assume that the govenment will have to deeply slash what doctors and nurses are paid. Immediately thereafter, the quality of healthcare will be slashed.

(;~/ gary

America appears to be cursed by this wretched family.

RFK's Son (Chris) Plans to Run for Obama's Senate Seat: http://www.weaselzippers.net

This guy really is more stupid than he looks!

He's too dumb to see that he's a about to place the last straw on the camels back! I smell revolution brewing!

San Fran Nan is in China, doubtless apologizing to them for our lack of stewardship of the Earth's resources.

Before she leaves, she'll have the Dalai Lama perp-walked before Hu Jintao for water torture.

• General Motors - You get what we pay for

I'm in Costa Rica....enjoying the sights and most of all the plants....at home in Florida we  call it landscaping!

It is gorgeous here, but I do miss your company. (Not the politics, though....that's the one thing I've figured out....media bias and politics raise my blood pressure waaaay too much).

Anyway, I'll be here for a bit, internet is spotty....but hola, mi amigos!

I hope he fails, too.

Which bears the question. If you and Obama were standing on a cliff with no one around for a thousand miles, and you would never be caught, would you?

Susan Boyle does it again.

He had my vote

NORTH KOREA CLAIMS SUCCESSFUL NUKE TEST Report: Pyongyang also test-fires short-range missile...
SKorea military forms crisis team...
Japan says test 'unacceptable'...
U.S. 'gravely concerned'...
Britain: 'Breach' of UN resolutions...
Asian markets rattled... 

-Dave

US "gravely concerned" about apparent Nork nuke test: http://bit.ly/EfIOx

Gee, ya think?

-Dave

First- I'm pretty sure it will emerge that Clinton and Maddie were acting on the advice of Governor Bush- clearly making it his fault.

Second- what's Hilldog had to say? Can she get a "reset" button over there quickly?

And third- in all seriousness- the Biden remarks were largely (in my view) meant to indicate that the "test" would be for publicity more than provocation. Much like the left's belief about Al Qaeda- they're not really a threat, just saber-rattling. This is the danger we all face. As two of the three Axis of Evil Empires rush headlong into possessing nuclear weapons (the other one was defeated by the Bush Administration to the dismay of the Left), Obama and his band of miscreants continue to misjudge the threat. They'll read some mildly defiant statements from liberal speechwriters, all the while holding on to the fairy tale that if we just be nice, they'll let go of their misguided objectives. 

We are in very serious times, with a very non-serious, juvenile president (not capitalized.)

He admits we're out of money, but he's not honest enough to admit he's the one who spent it all.  Because he's so busy blaming all previous administrations before him for "the mess I inherited".

But that won't stop him from trying to pass nationalized health care which costs money.  Lots of it.