Massachussetts isn't really going to elect this loon to the Senate, is it?

Elizabeth Warren, she of the excrutiatingly tenuous Cherokee heritage, she who inspired the MEC's "you didn't build that" rant, now says that China's approach to infrastructure is just what America needs to emulate.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - this hour's edition

Maxfield & Oberton, the makers of Buckyballs and Buckycubes, reinforced their adult-aimed marketing efforts and further clarified the warning labels on thier products in light of some injuries to children.  Not good enough for the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which is trying to shut them down.  The company is fighting back, which is a good thing.

Not only do our overlords hate freedom, they hate prosperity, too.  They are orchestrating the decline of our country.  M&O made $25 million last year.  It has eight full-time employees.  A true success story, particularly heartening in these time of planned economic deterioration.  It provides a living to a sales force of 200, as well as small retail establishments around the country.

The regime can't have that.  What is particularly insidious about the way it wields its evil power is that it couches its reasons for doing so in do-gooder rhetoric.

Don't fall for the feigned pity of the overlords.  See yourself as a responsible adult who, were you to go out and buy a set of Buckycubes, would have the good sense not to let some toddler put them in his or her mouth.  Let the jackboots know you see yourself that way.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

It's the kind of story that's starting to occur with sufficient frequency to be considered commonplace.  A baker, this time in Lakewood, Colorado, is approached by a homosexual couple about creating a cake for the "wedding."  The baker declines their business; they cuss him out, flip him off, and launch a capaign of vitriol on Facebook against him and his bakery.

Stories like this are the easiest proof to provide for why the terminology used here at LITD is neither over the top nor pulled from thin air just to indulge in name-calling.  The culture war in our society never faded away and is in fact raging with unprecedented ferocity.  The left uses stormtrooper tactics to try to stamp out the free market, Christianity, basic human decency and logical consistency.

It's true that the left has probably gone too far in the general public's assessment and will suffer in the arenas of politics and policy for its infantile brand of totalitarianism, but, as with any twilight struggle, you don't stop pounding your enemy until you're sure he is completely incapacitated.

File under "developments that were bound to happen"

Some Syrian rebels are becoming disillusioned with the Free Syrian Army's lack of organization and switching their allegiance to al-Qaeda.

One of those stories peeling back the layers of which takes you exactly where you thought it would

So, like everybody else, a few minutes ago I saw the featured Yahoo News story about the billboard in Idaho comparing America's reaction to the Aurora, CO shootings to US policy in Afghanistan.  It features the vulgar side-by-side visual of Holmes over the death toll of his rampage and the MEC over the troop-casualty stats for Afghanistan.

First thought before I even finished the news story: libertarian stunt.  A quick Google search confirmed my hunch: Lew Rockwell has blogged his endorsement of the move.  The particular group that put up the billboard is the Ralph Smeed Foundation.  So a search based on Smeed and Rockwell takes one to Rockwell's eulogy for Smeed when he passed away, a piece that includes a photo of Smeed shaking hands with Ron Paul.

In a world where lack of seriousness has become the norm, this particular brand of it is perhaps the most annoying, maybe even moreso than the knee-jerk Freedom-Hatred of the left.  How an ideology that gets it so right on economic matters could be so wacky on foreign policy eludes me no matter how many explanations of it I read.  These people don't even seem to care that they sabotage their own devotion to freedom by turning their movement into a distraction from what the world is actually grappling with.  The news of the day could be some cultural outrage, or, more to the point, some economic front on which freedom is being snuffed, and these people want to talk about how "America should mind its own business."

I have a dear old friend - he and his wife socialize frequently with me and my wife - who goes in for this stuff big-time.  It used to be that we could have some great, lengthy conversations about the statist threat to liberty, and the insanity of financing a caretaker state with ever-soaring debt.  We were on the same page.  Now, when I see him in the supermarket or some such place and begin a conversation with "How about that [insert latest move by FHers in Congress, or speech by the Most Equal Comrade]," he immediately veers into something about the perpetual war machine, utterly obscuring any difference between this administration and past ones that actually did forcefully look after America's strategic interests (which this one doesn't).  It is now so front and center among his concerns that his whole outlook is distorted.

They sabotage their own love of liberty by providing low-hanging fruit to the wacky left that will use something like this billboard to once again gin up "climate-of-hate" and even "racism" rhetoric to try to squelch any criticism of the Most Equal Comrade.  All free-market proponents thereby have a much harder task as a result.

Libertarianism doesn't work because a cherishing of freedom must be anchored to an understanding that the universe has an order to it that requires our vigilant defense.  Freedom isn't worth much in a world of irreversible chaos.

Want to hear an electrifyingly fantastic foreign-policy speech?

Mitt Romney today in Jerusalem.

A feel-good compendium of inspiring acts of courage to start your week

Nice Deb has compiled a great collection of political ads, interviews and pundit commentary from the last few days.  In this war for freedom, decency, dignity, common sense and Western civilization, we can take solace in the assurance that brilliant minds and principled hearts are waging fierce battle on our behalf.  Lots of video and excerpted text from an all-star roster: John Bolton, Paul Ryan, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Andrew McCarthy, Allen West, Laura Ingraham.

The various exhibited snippets cover a range of specific issues: the Chick-fil-A situation, Israel, tax policy, the budget deficit, "you didn't build that," blaming rightie for the Aurora shooting, immigration, Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the US government.


It's Sunday.  Take time to luxuriate in the treasure trove of footage and commentary.  Then go out and do your part with all your might.

There's another view of this one than that of the RGS-afflicted

There's a growing list of defenders of Michelle Bachmann's quest to investigate Muslim Brotherhood ties in US government.  Edwin Meese is the latest.  Eric Cantor is the most prominent member of Congress.

New Years Eve this year may be more conducive to hemlock-hoisting than champagne-sipping

Of course, there's the "fiscal cliff," to be exacerbated by the automatic hike in taxes on the Americans best able to hire the rest of us for jobs, but there is also the damage that sequestration will do to America's ability to defend itself and lead the free world.

The mayor of Boston is a totalitarian who hates prosperity as well as freedom

Singles out the Chick-fil-A chain, run by a devout Christian family that employs thousands of people nationwide and sponsors a number of charitable activities, and says it's not welcome in his city and that he will do everything in his power to make it prohibitively difficult for the chain to open stores there.

UPDATE:  You didn't think it would stop there, did you?  Rahm Emannuel vows to ban the chain from Chicago.

UPDATE: The Boston Globe runs an excellent editorial saying that Mayor Menino is way off-base in attempting to using government power to prohibit a private enterprise from doing business where it wants to.

Even erstwhile allies smell something rotten

Sen. Diane Feinstein says she's fairly sure a lot of the security-leak activity is originating in the White House.

A flying-pigs moment in the television world

Jon Stewart  - you read that right - asks the question of the day: What does a guy have to do to get fired by ABC News?

The advanced state of the MSM's rot - today's edition

NBC's Norah O'Donnell finds Paul Ryan's refusal to call the tax rates that have been in place for nine and eleven years repsectively "tax cuts" laughable.  "Confiscatory" equates with "normal" in the minds of Freedom-Haters.

It's on purpose - today's edition

What to say about the level of poverty in our society we haven't seen in 50 years?  That it's disgusting?  That it's shameful?

How about chilling?  Is it enough to get a critical mass of Americans to realize that it's deliberate?

This is not a natural cyclical phenomenon.  This is being orchestrated by a regime that wants the United States diminished in stature.  A few of them are even Cloward-Piven disciples, hoping it will utterly collapse our system and usher in revolution.

The remaining producers in this country should certainly continue to produce - at least in cases where there is a market for what they're producing, and the reasonable prospect of doing so profitably, but they had better spend a considerable portion of their energy fighting.  Ferociously.  As if they were the next to join the ranks of those on their knees, begging the state for their daily gruel.

He ought to be proud of having succeeded on his own terms

I'm not usually too keen on the poster / bumper sticker means of getting across points of public policy, but this one so plainly tells one of today's most urgent truths that I have to give it a wider readership.  HT: Pundit & Pundette.

The obligatory Aurora, Colorado post

Perhaps a post on yesterday's movie-theater shooting has been conspicuous by its absence.  The fact is, there's not much to say.

A lot of discussion I've been hearing about it, from all sides, has a tone along the lines of "Of course, the shooter is principally to blame, but what underlying factors do we as a society need to examine?"  Some want such a premise to lead to an argument for gun control.  Others want it to lead to reflection on the state of rot that characterizes the modern entertainment industry.

These are worthy discussions to have, but the fact of the matter is that awful random occurrences - natural disasters, plane wrecks, nut-case mass murders - are a statistical inevitability that, if we are going to be grounded in reality, must be factored into our worldview.

Setting the record straight on where the first economist was coming from

A lot of times I read some ridiculous hooey at some soft-left - or even hard-left - outlet and I get a little antsy waiting for one of our bunch to refute it.  Such was the case yesterday when Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker had the temerity to appropriate Adam Smith's argument for the consumer in The Wealth of Nations.  He tried to make Professor Smith out to be some kind of champion of class struggle, pitting producers against consumers. 

So it was heartening to see Yuval Levin's takedown of Gopnik at NRO today.

It's looking ugly for the regime

A slew of bad poll numbers and a surge in jobless claims..

Something I've noticed today on my Facebook newsfeed is the number of entrepreneurs, freelancers and just plain citizens who are posting their outrage over the Roanoke speech.  This has really touched a nerve.  It seems like it's crystallized just what's at stake.

America is shaking off its royal bitch-slap and staggering to its feet, blinking its eyes and realizing what the flip is going on, and not a moment too soon.

here's how it works out when "we all do things together" - also known as using taxpayer money to play favorites in the free market

Nevada-based solar energy company Amonix goes bust - a scant two years after the Most Equal Comrade, the Lightworker-in-Chief, the Righteous Lion of the Freedom Haters, praised it as a model of how to craft and execute energy policy.

Amonix joins a rather lengthy list of federally backed "green" "companies" that have gone belly-up.

On the matter of "putting in context" the MEC's Roanoke speech . . .

. . . I cede the floor to Zombie at PJ media.

If they'll do this with a bus . . .

Prime Minister Netanyahu is quite certain Iran was behind the bombing of a busload of Israeli tourists at a Bulgarian resort.

This regime wants America on its knees begging for its daily gruel - today's edition

The Ernst & Young report on what would happen to the economy if the FHers got their tax increase on those making over $250,000 a year - disastrous decreases in employment, wages, output and investment - is damning indeed.  FHers know that, and, in fact, aren't even trying to be too covert about the fact that it cheers them.  How else to explain Steny Hoyer's remark that the most stimulative measure government could take right now would be to make food stamps and unemployment benefits available to more people.

The point is to impoverish you and make you desperate.  Do not doubt this.

The MEC campaign really needs to shut its hypocritical mouth about offshore tax havens

Betsy Wodruff at NRO offers a look at five top MEC bundlers and where they stash their cash.

Some choice words from actual entrepreneurs

Owners of a variety of small businesses participating in a Romney campaign conference call weigh in on the collectivist dog vomit the MEC spewed forth in his Roanoake speech.

The best speech I've ever heard Mitt Romney give

Today, in Irwin, Pennsylvania.  It had everything it needed to have: a savage attack on the Most Equal Comrade, a celebration of success and achievement, a clear delineation of the role of government, an explanation of what makes America exceptional, and a proclamation of the divine origin of our rights.

LOST is a lost cause

Sen. Jim DeMint says he has the 34 votes to prevent ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty.

What happens when you let your country's economic policy become less and less tethered to reality

The IMF doesn't believe that Spain's debt situation will stabilize over the next five years.

And how is the MEC campaign's "event registry" going?

Epic fail, sorta like his Marxism.

The dark, fetid environment in which the RGS microbe multiplies

The US Senate is still the main repository for Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome.  So while that Tennessee newspaper is justifiably outraged that Lamar Alexander voted yay on the EPA's smokestack-scrubber rules, he was one of four ostensible Pubs (others: Kelly Ayotte, Scott Brown, Collins and Snowe) to join the Freedom-Haters in so voting.

Naked blackmail

The speech that Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) is scheduled to give at the Brookings Institution will threaten January 2013 taxmageddon if Pubs don't agree to increased taxes for the wealthy.

Just when you think the MEC can't possibly outdo himself

The speech he gave yesterday about how if an entrepreneur started a profitable enterprise with his or her own resources adn vision, "you didn't do that," a speech that was chock full of "giving back" and society-paved-the-way-for you freedom-hating dog vomit may be the most chilling address he's given so far in his career.

There may still be denial in some quarters, but surely no doubt still exists among anyone.

Two vailant pro-security, pro-prosperity, pro-American greatness warriors take on the regime

Gulf coast Senators David Vitter and Jeff Sessions push a bill aimed at reversing the Interior Department's ban on outer-shelf oil drilling.

Should anybody in America still need proof that this regime wants us all on our knees begging for our daily gruel . . .

In the last week, we've seen the USDA using Spanish-language soap operas to dispense propaganda - aimed at non-citizens - about how it's convenient and perfectly respectable to sigh up for food stamps, and now the regime has issued an "official policy directive" to allow HHS to waive the work requirements of the 1996 welfare-reform act.

"It's as if the top job has opened up just as the company is about to go under"

Peggy Noonan's WSJ column today is insightful, and it gives me the creeps.  Her point is that, at a point of crisis for our nation, the presidential race seems inconruously subdued.

It's so easy to debunk FHer smear jobs

Take, for instance, this recent push to make it look like Mitt Romney was at Bain Capital longer than he was.

We will not have some failed international body usurping our freedoms

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks plainly of the dangers of the UN Small Arms Treaty now under consideration.

They don't give a flying diddly that Freedom-Hater-care costs three times as much as they originally told us it would

Latest CBO estimate: $2.6 trillion.

They think that's dandy, splendid and wonderful.  Freedom-Haters love to see America on its knees, begging for state pity on its dire plight.

That's because he finds him admirable

The MEC tells a Miami reporter that Hugo Chavez is not a serious threat.

What happens when the world acquiesces to madness - today's edition

As we know, the Islamic Brotherhood is in control of the presidency and legislature in Egypt now - pending its standoff with the military.  Clerics there are now calling for the destruction of the Great Pyramids.

He's counting on you to be stupid - today's edition

The MEC's tax-policy announcement yesterday was a real gem of disingenuousness.   He knows it isn't some nice clean line of demarcation between the folks down the block and the muckety-mucks.  He knows it doesn't do diddly to reduce the deficit.  He knows it will put a further damper on hiring.  And he knows it's naked class envy.  But he's appealing to the most vulgar and juvenile aspects of the human character, which is all he has left.

If any of your FHer acquaintances ever try to cite Norway as an example of a robust, debt-free welfare state, remind them of these facts

Remind them of the considerable demographic differences between that nation and the US, but most importantly, the way Norway drills, baby, drills.

He can feel it coming in his office

New York-based physician and professor of medicine Mark Seigel says that the main results of FHer-care are going to be a loss of freedom for everyone, fewer doctors for anyone, and the end of innovation in the field of medical technology.

We pretty much knew that, but he speaks as someone versed in both public policy and seeing living, breathing patients in his office.

Is our worst fear being realized?

I'ms seeing way too many articles like this Jed Babbin piece at The American Spectator for my own comfort.  There's a pervasive sense taking hold among conservatives that, within Romney's character makeup, the ratio of ideologically principled warrior to decent guy who's got a great business head is tilted in favor of the latter.  In short, he's too afflicted with Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome to rescue America.  It's looking disturbingly like we've cast our lot with yet another mush-head, just as we have every damn election for the last fifty years excluding the two when we chose Ronald Reagan whether we won them or lost them.

There is an ample supply of fire-breathing, plain-talking champions of freedom and American greatness on the political scene today - Allen West and Paul Ryan come to mind (as do a number of Romney's primary opponents) - but in general, there is something about the right-of-center sensibility that renders it ill-suited to go up against those who will spare no thuggery in their imposition of statism and decline.  From committed conservatives to those skirting the center line from the right, we all tend to assume a level of comity among our opponents, a shared sense of decency.  Even the fact that I would here choose the term "opponents" rather than "enemies" in order to keep my prose from striking the reader as distractingly purple demonstrates in the first person what I'm addressing.

By definition, conservatism is about preserving that which fosters human refinement.  It is about high standards for interaction with others.  We rightly champion the ideas and verities that  define us.  The irony is that one such core principle is a national willingness to mount a defense against foreign forces that would violate us that's commensurate with the challenge.  Nothing short of victory, ever.  Why would we bring any lesser degree of resolve to political stuggles?

My alarm level was raised considerably a few months ago when Romney said, "He [the MEC] is a good guy; he's just in over his head."  It is now time for him to walk back that statement.  It's the kind of admission of a mistake that would not only not harm his standing at this point in the race; it would galvanize his whole campaign and electrify huge numbers of currently wary voters.   He could say, "I've had a chance to consider my opponent from a wider perspective now, and I can see that he is not a good guy and the problem is far worse than his being in over his head; he's a socialist who holds the country he presides over in utter contempt."

I mean it.  It's time to talk about the MEC's lifelong radicalism, about how the principle that a person's money is his own knows (or at least should know) no class boundaries, about how the EPA, the HHS, the Departments of Justice, Agriculture, Thransportation, Education and the Interior have been turned into tools of a mad regime, about the peril posed to the world from no longer having American leadership, about czars, executive fiat, ruinous debt, the vulgarity and nacricissm of the celebrities with whom the MEC chooses to associate, the childishness of class envy, about how health care by definition cannot be considered a right, and about how late in the day it is.

Maybe there's somebody on Team Romney whose job duties include taking the pulse of the conservatism, reading articles like Babbin's, listening to Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh.  If so, that person ought to be authorized to bitch-slap our ostensible standard-bearer and tell him to get a clue and fast.

Isn't it just like the Most Equal Comrade . . .

 . . . to invite new Egyptian president Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood to Washington for a state visit?

That would be the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood whose chairman just reiterated the organization's tenet that it is the duty of every Muslim to bring about the end of Israel.

The plain truth is that this regime is nothing short of totalitarian - today's edition

Check out what Transportation secretary Ray LaHood had to say at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival last month about the advantages of the Chinese system for getting infrastructure built.  Take in each aspect of it - his praising of a decision-making process that only involves two or three people, his ongoing enamoration with high-speed rail, even though it's been a costly failure for his beloved Chinese, his castigation of the Congressional Pubs sent to Washington in the midterm elections for "doing nothing."

What kind of madness makes a person love civilizational ruin?

30 times out of 32 reports

That's how many times the regime has told us "not to read too much into one month's report" on job creation - often using the very same words.

It's on purpose - this hour's edition

Second quarter of 2012 worst for hiring in two years.

It's on purpose - today's edition

As we know, culture precedes politics.  If proof were ever needed, the current state of the societies of Greece and California serve well as examples.  A populace that has opted for perpetual adolescence is going to get a government that, on the one hand, is going to see to all its needs and wants from cradle to grave (even long after it's doing so on borrowed money) and, on the other hand, is going to lead it around by the nose. 

The regime with its grip around America's throat has many instruments for ruining the nation at its disposal: the EPA, the Department of Justice, HHS.  The Department of Agriculture is one of its most insidious. It seems said department is sending agents into pockets of Appalachia to overcome "mountain pride" and get people to sign up for food stamps. Trying to convince folks of hardy Scots-Irish stock that government handouts for seeds for their gardens is what they should aspire to.  It's overt.  The regime agents speak of it this way themselves.

This is downright sinister.  "Mountain pride" is merely the colloquial from of the basic human urge to declare individual sovereignty and take charge of one's destiny.  They are telling us plainly now that they want to destroy that.

I wish there were a sufficiently effective countervailing force that could defeat what we're up against, but I'm not at all encouraged.

The model of a doctor being a supplier of a service to a consumer is so yesterday - kind of like the notion of a United States of America

One level on which conservatism can be demonstrated to be true, right and good is that on which its simplicity is apparent.  It is rooted in what can actually be observed and experienced.  It doesn't doll up its core tenets with nuance or special circumstances.

The current battle over health-care policy is a great example.  Along with the destruction of our country and the increased cost to me personally, one reason I hate FHer-care is the yet more complexity it will add to a system that is already downright bewildering.  It's a good thing my wife and I are basically healthy.  Especially her.  She is now eligible for Medicare, and I have no idea what all the different Schedule Thises and Schedule Thats and supplemental coverage and doughnut holes mean.  We're used to going to the doctor to have things fixed and either paying on the spot or setting up a payment plan.

If you get sick in America, be prepared to deal with a towering citadel of paperwork.

Daniel Henninger at the WSJ says that this is also the case if you are a doctor.  Those who slog through the process of getting their credentials and enter the field of medicine expecting to spend most of their time looking actual patients in the eye and consulting with them on actually caring for their health are going to be quickly disillusioned.  And many of them will say - are saying -  "the hell with it," and leave for other lines of work.

Damn right, I'm an absolutist

That's why I adore the clarity of Calvin Coolidge's July 4, 1926 speech on the eternal verities enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

It's on purpose - today's edition

U.S. manufacturing activity shrank in June for the first time in three years.

We'll be discerning his motives forever

The CBS News report that Roberts had originally sided with the four conservative SCOTUS justices and subsequently switched is going to engender an avalanche of speculation.  So far, anyway, I can't think of a single theory that doesn't reflect poorly on his integrity as a jurist.  His reasoning was too tortured and, as we've seen since, too susceptible to being ignored by a regime that, now that it's squeaked by the Court, wants nothing to do with the tax characterization, for me to think he felt like he was on solid intellectual ground.

On the approach of this year's Independence Day

The comment thread under some post at Free Republic the other day included several proclamations that those commenting would not be celebrating Independence Day this year.  Their hearts weren't in it; it would be pointless given the unrecognizability of this country at present; it would be an empty gesture that could be coopted by the enemy.

I hadn't stopped to think about it for myself.  Since I put that holiday on the same plane of sacredness with Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Thanksgiving, it's pretty much hardwired into me.

But now I am thinking about it.  What is the meaningful way to  - let's say commemorate; celebrate probably doesn't fit this year - acknowledge the day's special nature?  It's an important question.  How to do the flags, patriotic music, classic American summer food, fireworks (which are actually out of the question this year, given the drought and heat wave) and reflective pronouncements in such a way that takes into account the deeply damaged and - yes, let's use the Most Equal Comrade's term here - transformed country in which we presently live?  Rah-rah Sgt.-York/ Yankee-Doodle-Dandy/Judy- and-and-Mickey-Strike-Up-the-Band boosterism is no weapon at all (as is also the case with some kind of Sean Hannity-type mullet-fest; thankfully he has let his yee-haw concert series run its course) in the struggle to re-establish the actual nation founded in 1776.

I think the first step is to be up-front about our level of alarm - in any greetings we post on Facebook, in any public speaking we do, in any conversations around the grill, picnic table or pool.  Speak plainly of the defilement.  This is not the time for "it's-still-a-great-country" rhetoric.  For God's sake, the Pentagon now celebrates Transgendered Month.  Per the post below, NASCAR has inked a deal with the EPA - as wicked an agency as any to be found in North Korea or Cuba - to go "green."  The government can now tax any kind of inactivity that a legislative majority deems taxable.  Russia, China and Iran treat us with contempt.  One seventh of our population is on food stamps.

What this leads to is a focus like never before on our Founders and our founding documents.  This may actually be an opportune moment for reaching those who can be reached in order to impart a sense of the uniqueness - indeed, miraculousness - of the circumstances of this nation's birth.  To state once again the commonly made point about it, no country before in human history had been founded on the idea that human beings were naturally free, designed by God to so live.  Expediency, pragmatism, and focus on the particulars of contemporary economic or foreign-policy issues were not the central concern of those who crafted the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist, or the Constitution.  There eye was on the long term - indeed, on matters eternal.

Be completely candid about the element of mourning and the element of fury in your celebration this year.  When challenged by those who think developments of the last three years - indeed, the last eighty years - have refined and improved a nation commonly referred to as the United States of America (presumably because we are now more "fair" or "compassionate"), sharply disagree.  Look the person so asserting in the eye, stand your ground and be a worthy patriot.   The exchange may not end pleasantly.  On the other hand, the United States of America is not ending pleasantly, and no one is doing enough to reverse that.

When venerable American institutions succumb to the totalitarian regime under whose thumb we currently live

Last month, NASCAR lost any claim it ever had to being an embodiment of the American spirit by signing a deal with the EPA to "promote awareness" of the Freedom-Hater regime's mad environmental vision.