Do you admire what the Olympic athletes have been able to accomplish, and do you think they should be applauded for their outstanding performances?

The good side of humanity is revealed when we praise and reward such people. The bad side of humanity is shown by those who wish to punish success.

Socialists of all stripes, whether they be politicians, tenured professors, unthinking students, bureaucrats in government (including those enjoying tax-free salaries at international organizations, such as the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) have a common refrain that they want equality of outcomes in the name of "fairness" (but not for themselves, of course).

In the name of fairness, should we not allow anyone more than 6 feet tall to play basketball? Should we have given medals to all of the Olympic athletes so none of them would feel bad because they did not get medals? After all, they tried. If we did reward them equally, what affect do you think it would have on the future level of performance?

Yesterday (7/30), military judge Col. Denise Lind found Wiki-leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning guilty on five counts of espionage, as well as multiple counts of theft, computer fraud and military infractions.

Giving Manning every benefit of the doubt, the judge found him not guilty of the charge of intentionally aiding the enemy - but still convicted him on 19 of 21 counts.

Now begins the separate sentencing phase of Manning's military trial. But the long "guilty" list ensures he'll spend decades in a military prison.

Yet two "unindicted co-conspirators" were missing in the dock throughout the trial. Not Julian Assange and his Wiki-gnomes, but the US Army and our Blame-America culture.  They are Manning's enablers.

Welcome to the shortest day of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere - or, as it's also known this year, Moron Day.  Today, anyone with a three-digit IQ gets to make fun of morons and retards - in particular, all the morons who panicked over Mayan Calendar Idiocy, and all the morons to whom TIME Magazine credits for re-electing Zero.

Actually, though, the End of the World didn't happen today because that already happened on November 6^th.  At least for America....

Yet there are some House Pubs who aren't whimpering.  Yesterday, 13 of them pushed Speaker Boehner's Plan B off a cliff.  This turned even the folks at Fox into Nervous Nellies, blaring Fiscal Crisis Nears As Plan B Fails.  This is a real two-fer. 

First, the quicker we go over this dreaded "fiscal cliff" thing, the better. Second, this vote damages Boehner's speakership hopefully beyond repair.  All it takes is 17 of the 234 House Pubs to Just Say No to Boehner on January 3^rd, and he's out. 

John Boehner is a nice, amicable, and competent guy.  But he's the wrong guy now to be in charge of the only chance we have for fiscal sanity and reigning in Emperor Zero.  There's a scene in Godfather I that every House Pub should be thinking of now.

Which level of government do you think should have the responsibility for protecting the rights of the disabled -- local, state, federal or the United Nations?

The United States has been a global leader in protecting the disabled and advancing its interests. Over the past few decades, this has been accomplished through a combination of federal, state and local laws and regulations. But now the United Nations is trying to get involved.

The United Nations was originally established to prevent war among countries. Having repetitively failed in that mission, it has been interjecting itself into virtually every other aspect of human life, including demands for various forms of global taxes to be collected and distributed by U.N. bureaucrats.

On May 18, President Obama sent the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities to the Senate for ratification. Such a treaty requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has just passed this convention, and it is now awaiting floor action by the entire Senate.

This treaty must be disabled.

Last month TTP gave you a heads up that Hillary, in order to run in 2008, will gut Kerry with an October Surprise. Last week all of Hillary’s players were put in place. She immediately leaked Slick’s advice to Kerry delivered by phone from his hospital so the Clinton-as-guru/Kerry-as-neophyte story dominated the news. She then conned Kerry into inserting a raft of Clintonistas deep into his campaign. Guys like Paul Begala, James Carville, and Joe Lockhart will just make a lot of noise, however. The real player is Hillary’s former chief of staff, Howard Wolfson.

You see stories now about Kerry’s campaign divided into two camps, the Massachusetts crowd who used to run the campaign, led by Mary Beth Cahill (Ted Kennedy’s chief of staff) and the recent addition of John Sasso (Michael Dukakis’s campaign manager in 1988), and the Clintonistas. Many of the media stories focus on the resultant chaos and confusion - not realizing that this is by Hillary’s design.

The Obama administration and its apologists, including many in the media, keep telling us that the Great Recession was the worst since the Great Depression in the 1930s, and that is why the recovery has been so anemic. Is that true?

In many ways the economic situation in the early 1980s was far darker when President Reagan took office, as the one that Mr. Obama faced when he did.

The unemployment rate reached 10.8 percent in the 1982 recession, but only 10 percent in the 2009 recession. When Reagan reached the Oval Office the inflation rate was 12 percent. In contrast, when Mr. Obama assumed office, the inflation rate was zero percent.

Reagan was faced with the problems of slaying the dragon of inflation and reviving economic growth. Mr. Obama only had to revive economic growth. Yet Reagan solved his problems while Obama has failed to solve his.  Here's what happened, by the numbers.