Sales and prices of small businesses have fallen quite a bit this month.  You heard that small businesses are the backbone of America.  Well, its not good when they aren’t worth much and people aren’t investing in them.

Nationally, fewer deals are getting done.

Across the United States, BizBuySell reported 1,040 closed deals in the second quarter, down about 50 percent from the same time a year ago. The median sales price for those closed transactions was $160,000 in the second quarter, compared with $200,000 a year ago.

In addition to the decline in closed transactions, business-for-sale listings are down 15.7 percent across the country, according to BizBuySell.

“We haven’t seen any signs that we are on the rebound yet,” Handelsman said. “I don’t know when the recovery is going to happen, but I feel confident I know what it’s going to take for it to happen.”

The reason valuations continue to tumble is that buyers aren’t willing to pay as mush as sellers are trying to get, Handelsman noted. Sellers have to become more realistic, he said.

The liquidity market must also ease so would-be entrepreneurs can raise the money needed to buy businesses.

“Buyers don’t have cash and don’t have access to capital, so they are buying businesses at lower valuations,” Handelsman said.

A ton of state AG’s support extending the right to keep and bear arms to limit not only the Federal government but also state and local governments. Hurrah!

For the red-blooded, heartland crowd:

And then there is this. Throw in some angst for the urban, Gen-Y crowd:

I don’t know, but in a strange way I prefer Sarah in waders to Sarah in running shorts.  Well, and she does a pretty good job in the interview.  Not the same Palin from the Couric interviews for sure.
Embedded video from <a href=”http://www.cnn.com/video” mce_href=”http://www.cnn.com/video”>CNN Video</a>

Finally, a serious Republican effort to put some housing bubble blame on government intervention.  The Dems succeeded in the past few months of blaming virtually the entire housing bubble on greedy Wall Street bankers, perpetuating the myth that rich people are to blame for everything and courageous government is the answer to everything.
Some Republicans have [...]

Gallup’s poll says so.  So that’s good news.  The job market, well, that’s bad news.
Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and [...]

After a few days of constant media repetition of term “military coup” in reference to the political developments in Honduras, some journalists (outside the MSM) have tracked down what the Honduran Constitution actually says and concluded that the whole affair has been legal all along.  Even some liberal commentators are now acknowledging that the removal [...]

Since the Reagan Doctrine, that is.  Back in the old days we resisted communism everywhere and supported democracy, especially in Latin America.  These days our President shakes hands and yucks it up with leftist pseudo-dictators, gets himself some anti-American reading, listens attentively to “America is awful” tirades.
Then when one Latin American country tries to stand [...]

North Korea fired some warm-up missiles today, short range missiles which may prove to be precursors to a bigger fireworks display on the 4th of July.

Missile defenses around Hawaii were beefed up following a mid-June report in a Japanese newspaper that the North might fire a long-range missile toward the islands in early July.
The head [...]