"What does "very patriotic" mean? I mean, how does it differ from simply being patriotic? Does it mean nationalistic?"

It means that you are going to see as many American flags at an Obama Rally as you would at McCain rally, even though both men espouse different beliefs and ideals.

And if you have a whole lot of money, you don't buy the gun, you hire a professional to use one for you, if necessary.

"If there were thopusand round magazines for AR-15s (are there?), and someone complained about their destructive capability, tomorrow they'd be sold out of the stores, by persons who wanted their destructive capability."

To the best of my knoweldge, there are no 1000 round magazines. I've seen 200 round, but that's it. If there were 1000 round magainzes, the amount of ammunition you were carrying would come pretty close to equalling the cost of the gun, and that's for an AR-15 using cheap .223 ammo. Get into the next size up, the AR-10 (which I prefer), and you're looking at over $1000 in ammo just to fill the magazine. Furthermore, it would be heavier than hell and very difficult to shoot unless you were firing from a prone position. I'm a strong dude, I don't know that I could do it.

The bottom line is that if you have the money, you will ALWAYS have access to weaponry. You can buy cannons, aircraft, tanks, virtually anything, if you have the money to do so. But heavy weapons are very rare and very expensive. I recently saw a listing for an M249 light machine gun, NIB. It was $75K. There's also a gun auction show on TV where they recently sold a fully automatic MP5 9mm submachine gun. Used, it was $23k.

Windows 8 sucks. I'm using it right now. In order to make it work, it takes about three more completely unnecessary steps than it used to.

"If you kill an assailant in your home there, you're charged with murder."

A few years ago the country sent an SAS operative to prison for having a gun that was given to him as a gift by an Iraqi after the 2003 invasion. I don't know where you are going to find someone more qualified or competent at using guns than someone from the Special Air Service.

Wanna hear something funny? My six year old just asked if she could take my .454 for show-and-share at school. I told her it probably wasn't the best idea. She should take her guitar instead.

But it does speak volmes that a six year old has no fear of this weapon, yet progressives nationwide piss themselves at the thought of an american citizen being able to privately own one. I won't even get into the Brits, who might poop themselves if they ever ventured into Wyoming or Montana. You know, where Yellowstone is.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. AJ literally broke the story on the Bohemian Grove.

Anti-Capitalists Riot in Seattle.

It's like saying Klansmen burn a cross in Alabama. No [...].

"Separation is necessary. I've said it for years. The only question is---with--or without bloodshed. I've advocated a peaceful separation, but it looks like a lot of people want blood."

I just filed for divorce from my wife of nine years yesterday. the mother of my two amazing daughters. It was amicable. We sat down and talked through everything before I went in to see the lawyer.

I don't see why a separation of states would have to be any different. If you are a blue-stater, you get to hold on to a lot of money that goes from the federal coffers into the hands of red state governments. So you can afford more expansive welfare programs. You don't have to worry about the fact that people in midwest and southeast want to outlaw abotion of not legalize gay marriage. For the Red Staters, they can reduce or eliminate welfare programs, liberalize gun laws, and not let gay people get married. or whatever.

The people in Wyoming and Idaho are unlikely to find much common ground with the people of Massachusettes or Vermont. That's fine as long as one doesn't try and dictate policy to the other.

"Link?"

What exactly are you looking for? A list of everyone that was born poor and later when on to achieve success?

"What constitutes a willingness to do the work?"

The willingness of an individual to gain a skill or trade and sell it to another person at a rate which they have determined to be sufficient to provide a desirable standard of living.

"And what is that work, exactly?"

Any act that someone else is willing to pay you to do. If I want to pay my daughter $1000 to sit in her room and play video games, that's her "work."

"Can it be done as readily by someone with a felony conviction, a fourth grade reading level, a borderline personality disorder?"

Yes. All of those things can be overcome or mitigated against.

"Congratulations on proving the author's point that we've gone from a market economy to a market society."

He made his point just fine, thank you. But here's the problem. If a majority decide to give up a right, and right, they don't just do it for themselves, they do it for the whole of society. That's a problem. Just because I want to go buy a giant SUV, should everyone else be obligated to as well.

"So, they're making free-market choices in a capitalist society, decisions which belie a fundamental lack of morality?"

Would they be better off if they were denied those things they wanted? I think that rampant consumerism is silly, but not immoral. Or at least not immoral in the way that lying and cheating are immoral. And it would be immoral to take from those that have and give those that don't, especially when those that don't, don't by choice.

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Higher consideration by whom? Those who utilize labor directly, or some otherwise univolved third party. Consumers do consider the cost of labor, and they value each unit of labor provides. That's why a doctor makes more than a ditch digger, and why for $20 hour only a few people will hire a landscaper. For $1 an hour, who wouldn't hire one?

Armed Revolution? Never happen.

Conservatives are concerned about loss of civil liberties and individual rights, so any action they take would likely be defensive. Not to impose their will on someone else, but to prevent others from imposing their will on them.

The constitution is relatively clear on the role of natural rights, and any violation of the constitution by a political leader or appointed official would be illegal. So no one would be obligated to follow it. In fact, if the president were to commit an unconstitutional act, it would be the role of the military to ensure it wasn't enforced. And if any military member were to follw an unconstitutional (and therefor illegal) order, it would be grounds for punishment.

The military is incredibly conservative. Out of the 150 or so aviators I work with, there are about ten democrats. I don't know that you would find anyone at all left of that. It's unlikely they would support the forcible implimentation of a progressive agenda, or any other act that one might think would lead to revolution.

"I doubt it. Lots of people who work find their work enjoyable and rewarding in its own right. If you've ever been unemployed for a long period of time, you know how depressing it can be. Much better to be working, even doing something menial."

Many people won't take jobs that they consider to be beneath them. or are in somewhere they don't want to live. or don't pay what they think they deserve.

If what you said was true, the government could successfully re-impliment a program like the CCC, but I don't think it would work. You can make more on public benefits than you could as a CCC employee.

"But a free society is a function of a government powerful enough to protect that freedom.

So it all comes back to government."

Incorrect. It is the duty of the people to protect their own freedoms, or at least determine at what price they are willing to given them up.

"Money becomes "analgesic" once you're earning over about $75K for a family of four. For people below that threshold, money can the difference between life and death, between sickness and health, between education or no path out of poverty."

Incorrect again. If this were true, or it mattered, then humanity would have gone extinct years ago. Also, how many people making under $75 use their money to purchase iphones, ipods, designer clothes, and all the other consumer crap that Farrell is lashing out against in his article. Pretty close to everyone, right?

And poverty is easily escapable for those that are willing to do the work, not that we have real poverty in the US. I guess it would be more accurate to say that a low income lifestayle is easy to escape for those that are willing to put forth thr effort.

People become wealthy as a result of being successful at the game of life. Those same attributes that made them successful will drive them to ensure their children are successful as well. So this all sort of makes sense. What the article doesn't discuss is what percentage of poor immigrants have children with good grades. Americans are lazy and want everything given to them. Many immigrants are still willing to wor for the same things, although I can't imagine why. There's no point in working for something you can get from the government for free.

"I want one. It's my second amendment right ya know."

Is it?

You don't bear an M1 Tank.

It bears you.

But if you really want one and have the cash available, I'm sure you could get one.

"If the middle class life were still enjoyable and acheivable, people wouldnt be scamming and cheating each other to get into the .1%, or at least not nearly as much."

It's more complicated than that. If you want to earn a good income, you already know the way ahead. Go to college or gain a skill. Starting incomes for college grads rose 3.6% in 2011. For those people, the middle class dream is very achievable. In fact most will wind up at the top end of the middle class, and into the upper class, depending on how you do your accounting. But it's a lot of effort to go to college and get a degree, so a lot of people choose not to. Is that their fault, or somehow a fault of society's. Does the individual bear any responsibility. More importantly, do those who have succeeded bear any responsibility to those who have not. Especially when they weren't even trying.

"Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of individual rights. "

You can have capitalism without explicitly protecting the rights of the individual, but capitalism is the function of a free market, which itself is the function of a free society.

But I don't think that is the author's point. It's not an economic argument, but a moral one. Are people greedy, greedier than at some other point in history. Probably. Because they think money (or those things that money can buy, rather) will make them happy. At best it is an analgesic that can take the edge off of life's smaller problems. But being able to buy the new iphone or a new SUV isn't going to make a parent who just lost their child any happier.

And greed isn't limited to one segment of society. Most americans, rich and poor, are greedy. And they might should consider focusing more on those things that matter. I think that is the author's point, but I could be off base.

Even getting an FFL is pretty difficult. I wanted to get one a few months back, just due to the fact that it is relatively cheap ($200), and by holding one you are not obligated to pay another license holder to have a gun delivered to them.

The problem is you have to demonstrate that you are conducting business. You have to state the address of your business, the number of hours per day you intend on being open, etc. I was just doing it for me, and wouldn't have had much of a chance. But if you buy a gun at auction, you must have it shipped to an FFL holder. If you buy a gun at a store in a different state, they must ship it to an FFL holder. I thought everyone understood that.

"How do we incentivize Federal Firearms Licensees to become more active and interested in keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals?"

What makes you think that they aren't in favor of keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals. I think that an ideal business plan right now would involve getting an FFL and finding a way to import Russian weapons manufactured at Izmash, as they won't have any of the politcal problems that american gun manufacturers might face. And even better solution would be for the federal government to issue each household a rifle and a handgun. Sort of like what Switzerland does.

You can bet that there are people out there who only want to make a buck, and will sell weapons to people even knowing that they intend to use those weapons in a crime. But they are the rare exception. And I don't know how many people would really mind submitting to a background check. I don't. There may be some constitutional problems with it, I dunno, but I personally wouldn't have a problem with it.

"Most of the time poachers just get fined."

You shoot a griz, and you're likely to have a Blackhawk belonging to game and fish show up with forensic experts to determine whether or not you were justified in killing the bear. You might get fined for killing a porcupine or a Pine Marten, but you may as well shoot a person as shoot a bear.

"No kidding! Especially when we can just go the store!"

Fer real. No point in having livestock when you can get everything you need at the grocery store.

People r dum

"The difference between N.O. and the Dakota's is they actually took responsibility, stood up and took care of business, rahter than wait for someone else to help them."

Yup.

When Minot flooded in 2011, the military sent most of the personnel at the air force base to fill sandbags. People with trailers came and loaded them up to deliver them to wherever they needed to go. There was at least one Canadian guy who came down with his trailer for the express purpose of helping out. And in the end, we had a surplus of sandbags. Just left them at the fill site for whomever might need them. There were also a lot of people just driving around neighborhoods, looking to see if anyone needed household goods moved to some other place to avoid the flood. It was pretty cool.

It didn't seem to me like there was that level of civic involvement for Katrina. Instead of asking how they could help, people simple expected someone else to help them. Certainly there are good people down in NOLA, but not enough to make a real difference. There were cases where USCG helicopters were shot at by people in the flood zone. Why they would do that, I can't imagine. but that would be one of the few times where I would have had no problem with the helo crews firing back. Lil' Wayne might need to learn that lesson the hard way. Especially if it serves as a lesson to other degenerates that might think about endangering those folks that are actually trying to make a difference.

That's not to say that the government was in the right. It does seem that some agency of government attempted to confiscate privately owned firearms at a time when they were needed most. I also saw a Marine Corps public affairs officer make the claim that if the USMC was directed to confiscate weapons, they would do it. Must have been an OCS guy, or a a graduate of knife-and-fork school. As an officer, it is your job to disobey orders that contradict your oath of office, which starts out with supporting and defending the constitution. That's not to say it couldn't be done, but not without guidance from SCOTUS or some other tier 1 legal authority.

"It's slightly different from actual "envy", more like disgust. I don't want to live extravagantly whatsoever, and I despise those who must."

Most likely, you do live extravagantly when compared to the global 99%-ers. Do you despise yourself for it?

"Why do poor people and leftists pretending that they don't want all the money, when they know if they could, they would be rich too. Difference is, they just want money handed to them."

Many low income earners are quite content with their lives. A person making $30,000 a year in the US would be considered poor. But they would in fact be making more than most Europeans. Happiness is more than just the amount of money you make. Progressives expend a lot of effort attempting to demonstrate otherwise. Mostly because if they are successful, it is the key to gaining absolute control over society.

"So appointing the an incompetent moron to be head of FEMA wasn't Bush's fault. Well, I beg to differ"

NOLA is full of incompetent morons. I might even go so far as to say it raises incompetent morons. When that happens, it becomes unreasonable to expect that the government can compensate for individual human stupidity. For that reason, I beleive, it is very difficult to assess whether GWB addressed the Katrina crisis poorly or not. But what I do know is that there are a lot of people in the city of NOLA who simply suck at life, and at the very least should have made some effort to save themselves.

Contrast that with the floods we have up in the Dakotas, where the government makes a rather small contribution to what is largely a volunteer effort. Huey Long's legacy at work.

"What Rigel says has some truth, we were stupid to go into Afghanistan but when we finally do leave the Taliban in Pakistan will be left to deal with the Taliban by itself."

You would have to put at least a squad of army or USMC personnel in every populated area of Afghanistan to have any real effect. The Taliban are stupid, but not so stupid as to go toe to toe with real soldiers. They just go to the place where the soldiers aren't at and harrass them.

I don't know that the plan to go into Afganistan was syupid, but the execution certainly was. Written and directed by people who don't have the first clue on how to win a war. Night one should have resulted in heavy bombers destroying the taliban. It didn't. because politicians were worried about civillian casualties. targets were placed off limits unless it could be verified that there weren't civillians present. And then there was the airlift of evil, where US forces were directed not to attack Pakistani cargo planes that were evacuating top AQ, Taliban, and ISI personnel, in addition to Pak Army troops and various other sympathisers. US SOF forces watched the entire episode. Had they been cleared to do so, they could have destroyed both aircraft, as well as all the undesirables they contained.