Tab Clearing - Weekend Reading Edition

Robert Gore: The Only Issue That Matters

When your freedom is gone, it doesn’t matter who took it or what “ism” they spout. All you see is the gun. Freedom has one foot in the grave in the US and the eventual coup de grâce will amount to a trivial irrelevance. Perhaps it will be the masters of our police state apparatus going full rogue, some sort of outrage by a group the government labels as terrorist, the threat of an epidemic, or something else, but only the stubbornly myopic do not see the totalitarianism on the horizon. 

Paul Begala: Candidate's gun remarks should scare us (CNN)

To argue that the Second Amendment allows citizens to turn their guns on their government is to repudiate the actions of George Washington, as well as the Constitution itself.

Well.  Allow me to retort.

Iowa Senate candidate, Joni Ernst, was correct to say the Second Amendment gives her the right to defend herself and family against an intruder or a tyrannical government.  The Second Amendment was written and passed after the colonials waged war on their government, under the leadership of George Washington.  It was second only to the freedom of speech and religion to the founders.  A+ for creative writing.  F for failing, or choosing to ignore, the origin of the greatest lines ever written.

Dr. Louis M. Profeta: ER Doctor: What Scares Me Even More Than Ebola

Dr. Profeta, will they – the staff, you, your partners – show up?
That, I don’t know.

RaconteurReport: The Daily Beatdown Of Reality

That means the disease overwhelmed the 1700 beds US troops are building by mid-November (over a time span of two months) in just the first 14 days of September. Even with the 70-90% Ebola death rate helping us, with the true increase being 2-3 times that speed of spread, WE CAN NEVER, EVER CATCH UP.

So every day we keep our troops there, they become less relevant, and more at risk, with the crisis point guaranteed to be reached, and the eventual compromise of their health and safety, or both, a virtual certainty. We're trying to put out a forest fire with a bucket brigade, and it's going to fall on us. (Most specifically, it's going to fall on 300-3000 American troops in way over their heads. The service chiefs who haven't resigned over this and gone public are dickless, spineless, brainless wonders of selfish careerism, and deserving of nothing but contempt.)

Dickless and spineless indeed.