Yeah, Bill, the government had nothing to do with that. The government had nothing to do with:
roads that these people used to get to training facilities
reliable foodstuffs and water sources that kept them healthy and allowed them to spend time training instead of hunting/gathering
police forces that allowed them to use their energy on things like training instead of constantly looking for roving barbarian hordes
electrical grid that delivered power for the equipment they use
the government research that brought the internet to life
the regulations on medical facilities and personnel that ensured they got taken care of once they were injured/sick
knowledge of medicine, medical practices, and techniques that came from government-funded research

Show me one person throughout all of history that has done it all on their own. If you even know about someone you think did it on their own, remember, some public resources were used to get that info to you, be it school, a library, the internet, whatever.

In these examples, its the inability to empathize with others that probably bothers me the most.

h/t to ozone for this:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

The fact is, LeBron James, despite growing up in a tough Ohio neighborhood, had the opportunity to practice basketball, a first world opportunity, instead of being a child laborer in some textile mill or shot and killed by thugs or kidnapped and taken to another country for slave labor. That's because of a relatively decent government system that doesn't allow such things from happening. He also learned to play basketball in high school, which was free for him.

R.A. Dickey is the benefactor of government interference in what is most certainly a cartel/monopoly: the MLB franchise. Without government interference over the course of the 140+ years of the MLB existence, R.A. Dickey might be earning $2000 a game, with no trade clauses and dumped at any moment.

Clint Eastwood's bulk of money came from acting and directing. Besides being allowed to film in certain areas with police and local approval to help cordon off the filming locations, allowed permits to film, Eastwood's work have the help of copyright and anti-piracy laws written to benefit him and other film makers. He also had the benefit of specific laws on safety so that when he did a stunt, he knows he'll have a good chance of survival. He is also a member of the SAG, a union, a legally allowed association that helps him make decent wages for his movies. Without SAG, the film distributors would have a monopoly on distribution and can dictate the fees to actors and and actresses.

As for Lady Gaga, if she were in a land without a full system of government from the top-down, say a Somalia or Afghanistan, she'd be dead on the street if she decided to wear one of her beef dress, when the local populace consider stoning her for impropriety.

Notice how there aren't too much of a motion picture industry in Somalia? Not too much of an entertainment industry in Afghanistan? It's because there's no government system there to enable people to take a risk without being killed by thugs if they were ever successful. People don't want to succeed if that only means a bunch of thugs come in and take everything away. Is paying taxes a better option? Hell, paying 30% of NET PROFIT in taxes to ensure that there's local police who can come by and stop a bunch of "protection racket" musclemen from horning into your business is better than to actually pay the protection racket 70% of the net profit.

The even the police has gotten better (unbelievably). During the Barbary Coast time in San Francisco, the police were the protection racket, demanding freebie sex from prostitutes, demanding money from businesses. Chinese businesses in Chinatown prior to the earthquake had to deal with the chinese thugs demanding protection money and the police also demanding protection money. Yeah, we've moved a long ways from that we should all be thankful. Back then, with little sense of government oversight, we had 12 year old girls sold by her parents in China, brought to the US (San Francisco in particular) as child prostitutes. By the time they were 20, if that old, they were so diseased and shredded that they were just left to die. Literally. There were these "death rooms" where they're sent and left there. No food or water. Two weeks later, a doctor or someone would come by to see if they're dead, and then take the body out for dumping. That's the reality of a laissez-faire, government-free economic system.

So F-you Bill O'Reilly.

Weaver95: um....am I the only one who has no idea what the hell the point of that article was...?

Bill O'Rielly is unaware that the government consists of more than just politicians, so he is confused by Obama's reference to success in this country being dependent on services that the government provides. Based on this false assumption, he then makes the same bad joke five times in a row.

I would say that he is just pretending to not understand the role of government in our society in order to be outraged, but from previous statements that he has made I can only conclude that Bill O'Rielly is an idiot.

What I really don't understand is this. The right wing says (in theory) that it wants a free and fair economic playing field that doesn't unfairly benefit special interests. At the same time, conservatives are actively facilitating corruption. They argue that a corporation - as a person - has a constitutional right to donate as much money as they want to support a candidate, and that these contributions shouldn't be made public, for fears of "demonizing" those corporations.

So to summarize: A for-profit corporation's sole purpose - by definition - is to make a profit. Free market principles dictate that corporations shouldn't get special benefits from the government, because that's the government interfering with the perfectly efficient free market.

But, corporations are equivalent to natural citizens (and presumably have interests identical to any natural citizen). Therefore, corporations have a constitutional right to lobby the government to do things. Since any given corporation exists in a competitive market, and its only purpose is to makea profit, that corporation will presumably lobby the government to pass laws that will increase that corporation's profits. Since money is speech (for some reason), the corporation is has a constitutional right to spend as much as it wants to promote candidates and laws that will benefit corporate profits.

Oh, and on a final note, a corporation that spends money to get a law that increases its profits passed shouldn't be required to disclose those expenditures. Making them do that would reveal what the corporation was up to (gaming the system to get an unfair advantage), and then it would be "vilified" by the public.


To summarize my post - the GOP's platform is to pay lip service to the "free market" without "government handouts," while actively doing everything within its power to protect the "right" of corporate special interests to secretly spend as much money as they want to get candidates in office to pass laws that will give them special government handouts, contrary to the free market.

It's impressive how much cognitive dissonance you need to believe that federal, state, and municipal governments only impede the "free market" and don't do anything to benefit it.

Business interests have cultivated this anti-government view brilliantly. By convincing a large number of people that "generally speaking, the government sucks at regulating the economy and only hinders business," they have an instant, standardized reason for opposing any regulation that either levels the playing field, or hurts their bottom line.

What's lost in the mix is that the people buying into this absurd, overgeneralized proposition tend to not even be conscious of the fact the fact that every facet of our economy is dependent on adequate government regulations, and the government providing adequate infrastructure, education, safety, and other public goods.

Only in this day and age, with this massive, ingrained cognitive dissonance, could half of the country be "outraged" that the president pointed that out. And the special interests will bark on, extolling the virtues of the free market and calling Obama a socialist, while at the same time they spend millions of dollars to elect candidates and lobby for laws or tax breaks that will unfairly benefit their business at the expense of the "free market."

I didn't use your FDIC insurance, your copyright protection, your trademark protection, your laws that keep my corporation separate so I can't be sued, your roads, your fire department, your police protection, your laws the prevent grey market chinese knockoffs, your subsidies, your government backed small business loans, or any of your stupid free classes giving me tips to succeed.

I did it all by myself.

Also, as Andrew Sullivan pointed out recently, every rightist's favorite quote from Reagan (peace be upon him) is incomplete. The full quote is "In this current crisis, government isn't the solution to the problem, government is the problem."

But, as Willard is trying to prove, plenty on the right are too stupid to deal with things like context and complete quotes.

hubiestubert: What most folks fail to realize that the "government" that they complain about so vociferously about are our employees. Doing what we ask them to do. With specific mandates and specific instructions. This government isn't imposed upon us by some outside source. It is by, of, and for the people.

The government IS us. All of us. It's supposed to enable us to succeed, because we keep asking it to do things to allow that. Clean air, clean water, safety net so old people don't die in the streets, food standards, keeping our kids out of work houses, no selling of citizens to other citizens, putting out fires, catching the guy who stole your car, supporting tech that isn't necessarily profitable, but is still important, keeping a supply of medicines that aren't necessarily needed now, but might be down the road.

Some folks really hate that.

But it doesn't keep them from using what they've paid for, or asking for more...


For the life of me I can't understand why this isn't blindingly obvious to most people. WE put people in office to represent US; WE get to remove people from office if they do things we don't like; WE set the agenda by telling our representatives what is important to us; WE all pay into this system of representation through taxes. At the scale of nation- and state-wide institutions, there is nothing designed to be more responsive to the broad swath of people's needs than government.

And yet, people (i.e. Republicans) talk about government as if it were some alien entity, just sort of hovering there detached from all human experience. They make it out to be some monolithic and malevolent force which must always be beaten down so we human beings can solve our problems on our own. And all the while, they go on about how awesome the Free Market is, because it supposedly makes corporations answerable to their consumers --but when was the last time your average Joe had any input about who would become the CEO?

Mrbogey: rohar: Hardly. This thread seems more to acknowledge the role of government and insult the defective individuals.

Hey, when some people see a dog taking a crap on a sidewalk some, like myself, see crap. Others, like Divine, see a tasty brownie. I'm not surprised all you see are brownies in this thread.

Newsflash: Conservative see a proper need for gov't too. The straw men built in this thread not withstanding.

I agree with you - but then, how does Citizens United make any sense? Profit-driven special interests should have the unfettered right to spend money to elect candidates, who will then presumably pass laws that will increase the profits of those private special interests?

True conservatives would want money out of politics and strict ethics rules, because that would avoid the situation where an elected official is improperly influenced to tinker with the "free market."

Instead, the GOP is taking conservatives down this idiotic path where they fool the people into thinking that a special interest making massive campaign contributions is not only not a problem, but is that special interest's god-given constitutional right, and that right is critical for a "free society" to thrive.

paygun: mekki: Serious Question Time: When did the idea of "everything that is the private sector is and will forever be better than anything the government sector can offer" come into fruition?

It came about as an answer to "corporations are evil" which is equally retarded.

No, it came about as an answer to "Boy, the voters really hate our Republican asses after Watergate. What can we do to shift that hate away from ourselves?"

Hobodeluxe: Chummer45: It's impressive how much cognitive dissonance you need to believe that federal, state, and municipal governments only impede the "free market" and don't do anything to benefit it.

Business interests have cultivated this anti-government view brilliantly. By convincing a large number of people that "generally speaking, the government sucks at regulating the economy and only hinders business," they have an instant, standardized reason for opposing any regulation that either levels the playing field, or hurts their bottom line.

What's lost in the mix is that the people buying into this absurd, overgeneralized proposition tend to not even be conscious of the fact the fact that every facet of our economy is dependent on adequate government regulations, and the government providing adequate infrastructure, education, safety, and other public goods.

Only in this day and age, with this massive, ingrained cognitive dissonance, could half of the country be "outraged" that the president pointed that out. And the special interests will bark on, extolling the virtues of the free market and calling Obama a socialist, while at the same time they spend millions of dollars to elect candidates and lobby for laws or tax breaks that will unfairly benefit their business at the expense of the "free market."

unfortunately legislation is part of the free market. sold to the highest bidder.

Exactly. GOP voters and tea partiers are vote for a party that claims to be interested in "free markets," but is profoundly against passing laws to ensure that the market is efficiently regulated, free and fair to all participants. And is profoundly for unlimited, confidential campaign contributions so those at the top of the market can get candidates elected who will give them special treatment.

Hey O'Reilly
Your show is beamed off of a satellite that was launched using govt facilities and equipment. made possible by decades of research and development using taxpayer money.
it runs along a cable supported by public works telephone poles. access to these poles are provided by publicly funded and maintained roads.
The fact that your building hasn't been overrun and burnt to the ground is because the NYPD protect your ass and that building.
Laws enforced by the judicial system paid for by tax dollars make sure you can go to sleep every night without worry.

so shut your freaking pie hole or move to Somalia you jackass.

Serious Question Time: When did the idea of "everything that is the private sector is and will forever be better than anything the government sector can offer" come into fruition? Because as we've seen this is lately, more times than not, not always the case.

If it was up to the private sector, we would be eating apples made from sawdust with NEW! and IMPROVED APPLE FLAVORING because it would be cheaper to produce than actual apples. It's the government that keeps the private sector in line.

And when the government sector does actual good, people always claim that it is the private sector at work. Hence, the protest signs of GOVERNMENT, HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE!

When did this idea form and how come it is so hard to shake?

tomWright: And food. some of the roads are provided by government so government provides food too.

And water. It falls through government provided air, so we would all die of thirst without government.

Oh, Oh, and the AIR ITSELF. It flows over government lands so we would all suffocate without it.

And gravity! why, without all that government land holding the planet together, we would all be floating amongst boulders and dust speeding through space to our very doom!

Thanks government, for making the planet and life as we know it possible at all. Gee, you sure are swell.

You know the internet was created using government money. So why not stop being a hypocrite and stop using it and make the world a better place.

hubiestubert: What most folks fail to realize that the "government" that they complain about so vociferously about are our employees.

I always struggle to try to explain to anti-government zealots that we are the government. Government isn't some alien entity that controls the country, we literally choose among our own citizens who will hold office in government. However flawed the system is it remains a government of and by the people (the for can be debated).

I'm trying to put it in therms they can understand. Perhaps this will work:

The government is not a witch. The government is you.

Don't Troll Me Bro!: Yeah, Bill, the government had nothing to do with that. The government had nothing to do with:
roads that these people used to get to training facilities
reliable foodstuffs and water sources that kept them healthy and allowed them to spend time training instead of hunting/gathering
police forces that allowed them to use their energy on things like training instead of constantly looking for roving barbarian hordes
electrical grid that delivered power for the equipment they use
the government research that brought the internet to life
the regulations on medical facilities and personnel that ensured they got taken care of once they were injured/sick
knowledge of medicine, medical practices, and techniques that came from government-funded research

Show me one person throughout all of history that has done it all on their own. If you even know about someone you think did it on their own, remember, some public resources were used to get that info to you, be it school, a library, the internet, whatever.

At first I was gonna suggest my great grandparents. None of these things existed when they started their farm in N.D. They were pretty much on their own. Then I remembered the farm started as a federal land grant same as most of the farms in flyover country.

/damn
//I gots nothin

Wow, the right-wingers sure are making the most of a misquote. The cognitive dissonance is amazing

Mr. Coffee Nerves: A local jackwagon is always running his mouth about government interference in letters to the editor and such. He claims that, as a Real 'Merc'n Small BusinessHero, he creates jobs and doesn't count on the government for anything.

It's a paving company. That paves roads. Municipal roads.

I bet that guy rips lips on the government contracts, then complains about government waste.

That one might be my personal favorite when in mixed company. Its easy to hear a contractor gloat how they bilked the government out of extra money on the contract, then during the same day, biatch about waste.

DempseySR26: I love how the government claims it owns the air.

Maybe the government is a person?

o5iiawah: propasaurus: Sure, except for the part where he specifically mentioned the roads. And bridges.

Which the business owner pays for.

The fallacy in Obama's argument is that he downplays individual efforts, "you say you worked hard -, a lot of people work hard. you say you're smart - a lot of people are smart" and overemphasizes the role of government.

In reality, for the successful business owner and the failed business owner, government is, or should be the same. They both went to public school both drove on roads and bridges and both drink clean water so there has to be some reason why one succeeded and another failed besides sheer, stupid luck.

With green energy, he socializes the risk while privatizing the profit and in the case of individuals, he socializes the profit while privatizing the risk.

Everybody pays for roads and bridges. The difference is the value that the individual gets out of them. For the everyday Joe it's a convenience. For the business owner it's a necessity to get goods to market in a timely manner. The speech is addressed at those who say they don't need the government while being seemly oblivious as to how much their business relies on its services.

paygun: mekki: Serious Question Time: When did the idea of "everything that is the private sector is and will forever be better than anything the government sector can offer" come into fruition?

It came about as an answer to "corporations are evil" which is equally retarded.


Corporations are evil. Evil in the sense that their mere existence is designed only for self preservation and profits. They are not beneficial to society, they are beneficial to themselves. Thus people need to look at a company as merely a vehicle for economic benefit, rather than how your conservatives want everyone to look at them as; the sole reason for your existence, to serve the corporation. Thus the governments job is to keep a corporations power in check. To regulate it, to give and revoke its charter if it strays from its limited job and does harm to the society it is supposed to serve.

The right wing has changed the point of society to serve the corporation and further its economic goals. That is the scariest and most dangerous idea in decades.

barneyfifesbullet: He couldn't make a more left wing crazy statement if he tried.

When you describe a statement that's objectively true as "left wing" and "crazy," it says something about your mental capacity.

ox45tallboy: paygun: Anyway, if in a practical sense a corporation allows someone to be shielded from prosecution, that may be. I just never heard that the reason why you would incorporate is so that you can then break the law with impunity.

Limited Liability Company

Although, as paygun just mentioned, that's not what they were intended to be, nowadays with all this "corporations are people" nonsense, it is the practical effect.

I sat in a class at Stanford taught by very libertarian libertarians. They advocated for the removal of the Incorporation or LLC standards. All companies should be sole proprietor or partnerships. They can be "public" in that they offer stocks on a stock exchange, but then all stockholders are then equally (or proportionally) responsible for any suits and damages by the company.

In such cases, if the partnership or sole proprietorship commits a crime, the owner or owners will be tried and if convicted, will go to jail.

At least these libertarians were willing to privatize the risk along with the rewards.

I hope Drew was paid well for having that article posted.
Yes, people are born with natural talent. We're not doubting that. However, it takes public school teachers and coaches to fine-tune that talent. It takes taxpayer money to maintain the public fields where these natural talents can be fine-tuned. Public schools help to provide the equipment to play these sports. When these athletes go to college, they typically don't make enough money playing high sports to pay their tuition. Therefore it takes scholarships to fund their education and further their sports career. If and when these players make it to the pros, the arena/studium is subsidized by taxpayer money. Nobody makes it on their own. No man is an island.

I owe my education and career to public education and federally subsidized loans. I owe my success to the public school teachers that pushed me along that way. This author can go fark himself with a spool of razor wire.

DancingElkCondor: JerseyTim: American Airlines Arena is actually owned by the Miami-Dade County Government.

Most arenas and stadiums are government owned....AAA in Miami no exception

However, one arena-stadium not government owned is not too far from AA Arena.....Sun Life Stadium, the Dolphins home, is owned by the team. When Joe Robbie owned the Dolphins, he built the place with his own money

And, even more ironic......the Washington Redskins Fed Ex Field is owned by Dan Snyder....a privately owned stadium in the most government socialist metro area in the world

Even if they're government owned, the permits and safety codes and inspections were done with government specs. Building codes aren't created ex nihilo. They came about from years of experience on what works and what doesn't. Water and plumbing into and out of the stadiums are agreed by government agencies to recognize whether there is enough resources to send that much water into the stadium. The land may have been bought from dozens of prior owners of smaller subplots with agreements that the government helped craft. The quality of the concrete and construction methods are all codified by government agencies. Dan Snyder didn't just say, "yeah, just pour some concrete here and let it set." OSHA was involved so that the builders didn't fall off a scaffolding, and those who worked there had permits, and certificates attesting to their skills, and are paid decent wages.

And if someone thinks it's not possible to do that, pay construction workers decent wages and have work permits and certificates attesting to their skills, they should look in India or Dubai or Qatar. There are construction booms happening there, and there are millions of hungry indians willing to work for almost nothing (say $20/month). There's a big business in bringing in bodies from India to Dubai or Qatar, or other parts of India to do the work (the people sending these bodies make $5/month per body, times 200 bodies and that's $1000/month once that body is working, not bad when $1000/month is equivalent to $20,000/month in the US). Now, those people who get sent to Qatar or Dubai, are they really qualified? Heck no. They don't even speak the same language as each other, as they're from different parts of India and India still has about 1000 different unconnected dialects. (Hindi is the official language, but there are probably more English speaking Indians than Hindi speaking Indians.) They can't follow directions, don't know how to put up a wall. But they're cheap and easy to get. And if one falls and breaks a neck, toss that body away and get another. They sleep 20 to a building, given 2 squares a day and busses to the job site.

How do I know this? I was scheduled to go to Qatar to manage one such project.

paygun: I wonder how the health care debate would have gone if Obama said he wanted the whole country to have a health care system like the military has. I hear a lot of people here say Obama is the best troll president ever, and that may be true. But he hasn't reached master level or that's what he would have done.

During the healthcare debate, Obama was still trying to "reach across the aisle" and come up with a solution that both parties could agree on--which obviously didn't work because the Republicans voted "no" en masse against a bill that ended up being virtually identical to one they themselves had proposed just 15 years earlier.

I think it was about a year later that he realized that the Republicans literally couldn't be bargained with, and started using his current set of troll tactics. Perhaps if he had realized the futility of bargaining with Republicans from the start of his term, he would have done exactly what you described.

mgshamster: Whenever my dad has to do a job with the government, he charges three times what he normally would. Calls it a "pain in the ass fee," because, apparently, construction jobs with the gov't is a pain. And later on he complains about wasteful spending on the government's part.

I worked construction for a couple summers, hired away from my employer where I sold construction equipment, by a customer that asked me if I could swing a hammer and wanted to make prevailing wage on state jobs all summer. In my experience the typical construction worker is pretty conservative. None of them had a problem making prevailing union wage.

Mrbogey: rohar: Hardly. This thread seems more to acknowledge the role of government and insult the defective individuals.

Hey, when some people see a dog taking a crap on a sidewalk some, like myself, see crap. Others, like Divine, see a tasty brownie. I'm not surprised all you see are brownies in this thread.

Newsflash: Conservative see a proper need for gov't too. The straw men built in this thread not withstanding.

The proper role of government being to enrich the wealthy, punish the poor, keep women from making basic decions and ensuring that gays are denied equal rights?

tomWright = the reason no one takes Libertarians seriously.

I find this a especially interesting view coming from an employee of Fox. I remember when that brand was the little fish in network broadcasting. Government regulations were the only thing that kep NBC, CBS, and ABC from just drowning out their signals or bulldozing them under UHF-style.

These idiots just don't get it. While the specific service and/or product itself might be a product of their hard work, the infrastructure which provided the conditions and stability to allow it to prosper were provoded by the government. I think the biggest problem is like with good officiating in a sporting event, you just don't notice good governance. The instances of bad governance stand out like a sore thumb, but good governance is almost invisible. People in California notice the roving blackouts, but the people in the Tennessee Valley seem to be oblivious of the benefits the Tennessee Valley Authority provides and have provided them. In my city we have the TVA to provide affordable energy and make the Tennessee river navigable for commerce. We have a huge army base & NASA center providing thousands of jobs & millionsof dollars into te local economy basically shielding our local economy from the Bush recession. Yet listening to most locals (even the government workers), they are the most self-sufficient and bootstrappy people ever who don't need the government meddling in their lives.

scrumpox: cameroncrazy1984: DrBenway: Is incoherent raving guy still drunk from last night, or is he off to a particularly vigorous early start with the Bloody Marys this a.m.?

Why not both?

It's a combination of straw man and chicken-farking. A straw-chicken argument,if you will.


You know know how every fallacy has a Latin name? We should refer to chicken-f*cking as pullum irrumabo.

In the very near future manufactures are going to be facing a huge issue with 3D printers and hackers. They will be screaming for government help. Think the RIAA outrage multiplied by a billion. People are downloading your song? Yeah well, people our downloading our car.

just like Joe Republican ...
Link

SquiggelyGrounders: I see what you are getting at subby but....

retarded headline is still retarded

And shame on you mods for drinking so early.

Big Man: "New York Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey was once a mediocre performer, but he became a star by perfecting the knuckleball. Word is that Nancy Pelosi took the pitcher aside and demonstrated just the right spin to put on his delivery."

Knuckleballs don't spin.

But Knuckleheads do

I see what you are getting at subby but....

retarded headline is still retarded

He's trying (and failing) to make an argument for smaller government. Cool, now let's talk about abortion, gay marriage, the war on drugs, and separation of church and state. Still want to talk about smaller government?

I can't believe he closed with "And now you know the rest of the success story."

O'Rielly doesn't have nearly enough journalistic integrity to co-opt Paul Harvey's long time closing line and Paul Harvey would never have read such a hack piece to his audience.

I've really tried hard to give Townhall.com a chance. Reading the narrative from another's perspective, getting a fresh take on the facts, that whole deal. It's so sad, tho. It is one fallacy after another, a continuous dahurr fest.

Not to mention it's got to be one of the most poorly designed sites ever.

Marcus Aurelius: Have you noticed all the great ideas and enterprises coming out of low tax havens like Somalia and Afghanistan?

If Steve Jobs' parents stayed in Syria you think you'd be reading this on your IPad?

Mr. Coffee Nerves: A local jackwagon is always running his mouth about government interference in letters to the editor and such. He claims that, as a Real 'Merc'n Small BusinessHero, he creates jobs and doesn't count on the government for anything.

It's a paving company. That paves roads. Municipal roads.

I find myself wishing they'd quit paving roads for a while just so he could go out of business. Not that it'd help change his views, but just so I could laugh at his misfortune.

People typing out their dumb opinions which will be transmitted worldwide in seconds using networks built almost exclusively with government/university/defense industry funds, and maintained for the most part by state/industry partnership corporations.

Well, we clearly need better quality government-provided education.