[VinnyTex]

We're sunk, basically. It's not so much that we've been destroyed from within and have no substance or Common Sense left, but our 1.2 million abortions a year and a President that uses a spoonful of Scripture to help the ECSR go down evidence quite clearly that we've actually embraced exactly those fundamentally evil premises which leave us poised to take the next ... and the next ... and the next Reasonable Step.

Well Askie, let me make a suggestion... It's friday, get outta the house and get down to the quarter and get siht faced drunk...

[Askel5]

Got drunk last night, thanks.

Where else do you think I got the courage finally to approach the guys at Engine No. 9 to see if they'd be interested in some beef jerky and maybe a cheesecake?

When I say "we" I'm speaking in terms of our Government. Our government is going to be bested at every turn until it assumes and acts on the moral conviction and with the will of which MANY, if not most, of its citizens do.

Our government doesn't particularly "suffer" from the scourge of drugs or the threat of terrorism ... our government grows Bigger and Fatter and More Powerful, from what I can tell.

It's the people who suffer and it's the people who'll grow wise and who'll make the difference. Where there are folks willing to lay down their lives for the liberties and self-evident truths enumerated in our Declaration (and we find them often in exactly those nations who've been under the thumb of dictatorship), we'll win.

Where we just have a bunch of goons who want us to take our Clean Hands bombs and wipe Afghanistan off the face of the earth "in kind", we lose.

I have every faith in the triumph of the human spirit, in the will and ability of individuals ... and in Common Sense. But that faith is not somehow restricted by nationality or ethnicity or faith. The US by NO MEANS has a monopoly on "goodness" ... particularly where the US has contraverted its own founding principles.

Being that it's my signature Puerto Rican Rum cheesecake I'll be making this evening ... it's quite possible both the meat and I will be marinating nicely. A pity you can't come hang -- as do most of my neighbors from time to time -- while doh-poppin' on the porch. I suspect if we sat and talked you might better understand where I'm coming from.

[walden]

Oh cheer up-- the war has nothing to do with abortion. I fully expect this war to be much like the Cold War, which I lived through and I suspect you might not have. It lasted so long that the average American forgot from day to day that we were fighting it, and we eventually won, because communism failed economically. Sure, we fought localized wars here and there during that time period, but it didn't take a World War to defeat communism. Actually, when I read this article I got more cheerful about our prospects of defeating Islamic fundamentalism than I had been before-- I hadn't realized that the Iranian ayatollahs took over the economy as well. That's EXCELLENT! They'll fail, just like communism: in the mean time, we have to do the same sort of down and dirty CIA work as in the Cold War to disrupt and destroy terrorist cells. Add to that military strikes when necessary (most especially to eliminate WMD), financial sleuthing to screw up their funding, and the right diplomatic pressure in the right places at the right time, and it's a done deal.