President Barack Hussein Obama held a news conference Tuesday.  When it was over, his friends in the news media wondered why. * * * * Obama thinks he can say anything, and get away with it. But foreign leaders pay attention to what the president of the United States says, so the weakness and passivity Zero displayed in his news conference - especially his backing and filling on "red lines" in Syria, is sure to cause us trouble. * * * * The news media's Omerta about Benghazi may be about to break. * * * * The genuinely conservative UK Independence Party has done spectacularly well in local elections in Britain, early returns indicate - despite press coverage that makes the treatment the Tea Party has received from journalists here seem favorable.

A few weeks ago, the odds an immigration reform bill could pass in both the Democrat-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives were closer to “none” than “slim.” The main interest Democrats have in immigration reform is the prospect of having millions of newly enfranchised voters voting for them. But there were indications President Barack Obama would rather have the issue than a bill that could pass the House. But the president’s humiliating defeat on gun control and the Boston Marathon bombing have changed the dynamic. After the gun control debacle, Mr. Obama badly needs a “win” on a substantive issue, lest he become a lame duck far earlier than any president before him. He can get that “win” only on immigration.

Is a happy marriage about compromise? On the surface, I’d say yes, compromise is certainly part of two different people sharing a life together. You can’t do everything you want whenever you want it, etc. But looking at this question a little more closely, I’d have to say an emphatic, “no.” Compromise is not really the key. Compromise is when one person wants a room painted yellow, the other wants it painted blue, and so you compromise and get green. Compromise is sometimes win/win, sometimes not. There are certainly times when you have to compromise, but that isn’t the driving force of a great relationship. What is the driving force of a great relationship? A winning premise; a conception of what your relationship is all about that includes a shared vision of the two of you together. A great relationship is founded on the premise that you and your mate are allies; that you are a team together.

With money running low, government functions become inviable As a mental challenge, try to think of all of the governmental activities — federal, state and local — that could be privatized. Now, go a step further. Suppose you were required to develop a plan to privatize, or make self-supporting through user fees, nearly every activity of government. Could you or a group of your friends do it? Try it. I expect your success will surprise you. The reason this is relevant is because most governments will reach their borrowing limits in the not-too-distant future, which means they will have to operate on current revenue from taxes and fees. Many governments have reached or are reaching their ability to increase taxes, and income-tax systems will begin to fall under their own weight. Governments will be forced to downsize and privatize — or private citizens and groups will just take over as they are increasingly doing because of failing government schools, for example. The U.S. government was created to protect people and property and to ensure liberty; but more and more often, it does just the opposite.

After this week's developments in the Boston Marathon bombing, it's easy to see why a Marxist sociopath would pretend to be a bipartisan moderate: *Tamerlan Tsarnaev stayed home collecting welfare benefits and plotting terror while his wife worked 80 hours a week *Russia warned the FBI repeatedly about Tsarnaev, but the FBI let Tsarnaev's listing on a terror watch list list expire while he was in Dagestan, where he may have gotten guidance on bomb-making. "Is the FBI focused enough on the real bad guys?" asked the editors of the Washington Post.  If it's the Washington Post asking that question, you can be pretty sure what the answer is. * * * * Zero's latest effort to make sequester budget cuts hurt backfired, big time. * * * * Democrats are nearing full fledged panic about Obamacare. * * * * President Obama chose dolts to be his secretary of state and his secretary of defense. I was certain SecDef Chuck Hagel would be the bigger dufus. I was wrong. * * * * There is an absolutely terrible reason for Republicans to support immigration reform, and an equally terrible reason for Republicans to oppose it.

Entropy is a term from physics that describes the tendency for matter to move from order into disorder. Life can be seen as deliberately working against entropy. With our minds, we train our own brains to hold the structure of our lives. The habits that we practice daily, weekly, monthly; they are all based on neural pathways that we have established in our brain that make it easy and natural for us to follow these routines. These habits – if they are good ones - help us to resist entropy and have a sense of meaning, purpose and direction. When you have a plan, and you are persistent with that plan, your habits become your allies. They work for you to reach your goals, so that you don’t have to work against your habits. What you create through your own fight against entropy is the masterpiece of your life.