So Unhappy

Four years ago, there was a sense that America was clearing its last hurdle on race and ideological animosity. There was pride in electing the first black president, even by those that didn't cast their vote for Barack Obama. Fast forward to even before Friday's massacre, and there was a malaise hanging over the nation ripping it apart on so many levels. Americans pitted against fellow Americans. It's not good enough to lose elections anymore, there has to be complete demonization and the absence of any compromise.

God is under attack, traditional values are being abandoned, and capitalism is considered heartless as many romanticized the notion there is a form of socialism that could be nicer. Then last week something happened that, like the election four years ago, could have galvanized the nation, but instead threatens to rip it apart even more. The first line in Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" speaks volumes about where America is these days.

It's very difficult to think or discuss investing and politics in light of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. I haven't felt so empty since 9-11, when unstoppable tears strolled down my face as I tried to navigate crowded roads to reach the schools of my children, all the time looking to the sky wondering when the next plane would crash into a building or fall from the sky. Sadly, what happens next will be another battle that rips apart the nation. While there will be no debate over better mental health testing and surveillance, the idea of going after gun owners is going to be ugly.

Most will agree on changes to so-called assault weapons, but warranted suspicions of ulterior motives will make certain registrations and other legislation is a battle. I don't own a gun, but I think people have the right to own them and to protect themselves, their families, and businesses. In the meantime, a media onslaught has already begun, painting gun owners and folks that visit gun ranges as bad people. Already, I despise how moderately successful people are being painted as greedy and mean-spirited, worthy of scorn and higher taxes; now, more ordinary citizens will be painted as villains.

We are an unhappy country that will only grow sadder. We need help, leadership that finds a way to inspire everyone to do things they may not like but understand it's for a greater good. In the meantime, we can never forget those children in Newtown, Connecticut. How we honor their deaths remains to be seen. This could move us closer as a nation, or this just might move us further apart.

'Leave truth to the police and us; we know the Good;
We build the Perfect City time shall never alter;
Our law shall guard you always like a circle of mountains,
Your ignorance keep off evil like a dangerous sea;
You shall be consummated in the general will,
Your children innocent and charming as the beast'
W.H. Auden

The Never-Ending War

Since the inception of this nation, there has been a never-ending battle for the right balance between a giant central government and smaller local government. and it rages like a wildfire today. The Newtown massacre will fuel that debate just as the fiscal cliff has been its central battlefield. Lost on Friday was an olive branch from Speaker Boehner that was immediately rejected by democrats and hated by conservatives. The offer included higher taxes for those at $1.0 million and pushing the debt ceiling debate off a year.

I must say republicans mishandled this thing from the start, but Boehner has been more than accommodative. Even though there are polls that suggest a vast majority of Americas want give and take, the narrative has been the GOP comes out as the bad guys if we go over the cliff. I would suggest they forget the polls. If the will of almost half of Americans are trampled completely then at this point so be it. I get why President Obama keeps waiting and snubbing the GOP, Boehner keeps negotiating with himself, giving away more and more and still losing his grip.

Feeding the Beast

The American public has given up so much over the last five years even as government spending continues to run amok. I keep hearing politicians talk about how much it costs to run the government, but its rings hollow to people that have made real sacrifices. Outside of student loans, Americans have cut back during the Great Recession. Our government simply will not.

Where to Put Your Money

I mentioned on Friday there is a strange chance that the stock market might be the only game in town for those seeking growth. I think a lot of money will find its way into the housing market, but it's still a long way from being robust as mostly investors are stirring the action. If all the possible taxes go into effect, there is no reason to invest in "safe" dividend stocks. At some point, the bond market will implode and while gold should be in everyone's portfolio the Fed will find a way to manipulate official inflation readings.

Of course, there is the question of how the market and society at large handles yet another impasse in Washington. I think the nation will sink deeper into a depression, mental not economic, although that becomes the risk as well.

In the long run, being part owner of great American companies might be the only economic salvation but, for now, there are a lot of questions.

The only thing we don't have to question is that our unhappy family is unhappy in every way.

On the most basic level here, conservatives would never imagine using a tragedy to push a political agenda, liberals couldn’t even hold off for the first press conference before they were pushing for their weapon bans.

The whole ‘let’s just get along’ crowd needs to stop their whining. Because honestly, what they’re saying is ‘we’re going to push our liberal agenda, and you need to stop trying to stop it.’

Sorry, I’m a conservative. I’m not going to wait until they put an abortion mill in my local middle school to raise objections. And if that offends someone, then good. Sorry to make your brain hurt by thinking, of offering an alternative.

“There was pride in electing the first black president, even by those that didn’t cast their vote for Barack Obama.”

Only for those who didn’t comprehend that he was an undocumented Marxist.

As for the current “national malaise,” it’s a deliberate creation of the Marxist-in-Chief; such a malaise always precedes a revolution, which is what President Lenin plans for the formerly free United States.

Good luck to those who value freedom; we’ll need it.

A big part of my retirement income is from dividends, maybe 15 or 20% and at that, they are reinvested but I still pay the 15% tax every year. Now Obama says I’m one of the “millionaires” who isn’t paying a “fair share”. What per cent does his welfare recipients pay? He wants 43.4% of my dividends now.

I worked hard and saved and invested all my adult life and retired early because I did. Obama wants the fruit of my labors now because he considers me, one of the rich, whose wealth he wants to redistribute - to be “fair”.

There has been no one ever, who has disgusted me more than Obama.

So well said, Charles. I’ve always liked his style and is one of the few financial talking heads I listen to, along with Cavuto.

And I share in his feelings of despair and sadness for a once great country. The last four years have been the worst in my life..I just don’t see how we do it for another four. My patience is long gone, my patience for the D.C. shuffle is WAY past gone. My patience for former friends who voted for this asshat is gone, I can no longer can speak to them. Any joy, feeling positive about the future, is a daily struggle. I am still trying...and will put one foot in front of the other..but it gets harder with each passing atrocity that this administration and its minions foist on us. I have no answers.

I agree. Payne simply gives Obama a pass. It was Obama who promised hope and change and gave us bitterness and divisiveness. No other national figure in our nation’s history has sought to divide Americans and create enmity than has Obama.

Obama has demonized group after group of Americans, from doctors who performed needless surgeries for money, to any successful America. Obama has torn America apart for purposes of political gain. He spent a billion dollars in his last campaign shredding a successful American.

All this destructive activity is occurring with the willing and eager assistance of the corrupt MSM. No gun owners are the next class of people being demonized.

Have we not seen Communist country after Communist country systematically demonize who swaths of people to ultimately eliminate them so tyranny can come to fruition?

I greatly fear we are on the same path now.

“Have we not seen Communist country after Communist country systematically demonize who swaths of people to ultimately eliminate them so tyranny can come to fruition?
I greatly fear we are on the same path now.”

Yes, and a ‘cultural revolution’ scenario like China's would be embraced by many here in the US. There is resentment and hatred throughout the land, and to deny that is dangerously naive.

You can't let untruths and false narratives go on unchallenged indefinitely, as we have. They become the fertilizer of hatred and resentment. For too long we have let inner city social ills, poverty, welfare dependency, violence etc. be blamed on ‘white privilege’, prejudice, bigotry, ‘greedy rich people’, ‘right wingers’, etc. For too long we've let the world blame America for ‘suppressing the third world’, ‘not paying it's fair share’, exporting violence, suppressing it's own citizens - especially minorities, etc..

When allegations and false narratives like this are let to stand without vigorous, passionate, and highly visible refutation, they are given legitimacy and become part of the belief system of those looking for an easy and palatable answer for why their lives are not what they think they should be. Resentment and hatred for successful Jews in Germany led to millions of executed Jews and attempted genocide. Don't think for a minute that that same degree of resentment and hatred doesn't exist any more in the world, and that it can't be turned on you. It most certainly does and can be.

At this point what we need to do is to start the long process of seizing back the narrative, and delegitimizing the untruths and false narratives that the left has inculcated into our society over the past 60 years or more. It won't happen overnight, but it is essential.

"At this point what we need to do is to start the long process of seizing back the narrative, and delegitimizing the untruths and false narratives that the left has inculcated into our society over the past 60 years or more."

"It won't happen overnight, but it is essential. "

Too late.

There is only one way left to refresh the tree of liberty.

Payne’s list of ailments is long yet general. Get into the specific troubles facing us and it would take page after page after page to document them all. From bad education to foreign affairs blunders to corrupt banking to dirty politicians to widespread secrecy and lies in an “open” society, everything is turning sour. Everything! This must be what January of 1942 felt like, with bad news piled on top of more bad news.

I’ve been feeling the same malaise that Payne mentions, interspersed with bouts of sadness, anger, hopelessness and resolve. How could so many Americans stand by and watch their great nation be dishonored and dismantled? Are there no patriots left?

Perhaps it is too late and too complicated to repair. Maybe we do need to plow the ground again and plant fresh seed. What a sad state of affairs.

“Payne simply gives Obama a pass.”

EVERYONE gives Obama a pass.

Because of the color of his skin, Whites want to be “open minded”, while Blacks and other ethnics want to stick him in everyone else’s face.

He, meanwhile, keeps working away according to the blueprint he learned in his youth - building the road to American communism, even if it’s long been out of fashion in Russia and China.

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Since the inception of this nation, there has been a never-ending battle for the right balance between a giant central government and smaller local government.

Alexander Hamilton tried to build a giant central government but was frustrated by the Anti-Federalists (the liberty faction)and James Madison (who wrote the Bill of Rights that Hamilton deprecated).

It was Abraham Lincoln who managed to accomplish John Quincy Adams's idea of taking over several States and "reorganizing" their governments, to administer a beat-down to the agrarians and libertarians of his day and deliver the now-national agenda of an overmastering central government to the business interests and their political allies.

We've had undiagnosed Stockholm Syndrome ever since.

Resentment and hatred for successful Jews in Germany led to millions of executed Jews and attempted genocide.

I think that race hate and homosexual vindictiveness are precisely what drive Obama; I think he is just flat stuffed with ugly motives.

Remember that the biggest killers have always been Communists who came up from comfortable, middle-class backgrounds like Obama's.

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