Dr. Jack Wheeler
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/21/14
THE 1974 OBVERSE
CHINA DEFAULT?
China faces the biggest property default on record as credit curbs threaten to break the housing boom, leaving a string of "ghost towns" across the country. The Chinese newspaper Economic Daily News said Xingrun Properties, in the coastal city of Ningbo, is on the brink of collapse with debts of $570m, mostly owed to banks. The local government has set up a working group to contain the crisis. "As far as we know, this is the largest property developer in recent years at risk of bankruptcy," says Zhiwei Zhang, from Nomura Securities. "We believe that a sharp property market correction could lead to a systemic crisis in China, and is the biggest risk China faces in 2014. The risk is particularly high in third and fourth-tier cities, which accounted for 67% of housing under construction in 2013." Yu Xuejun, the banking regulator for Jiangsu province, says developers are running out of cash. This risks undermining land sales needed to fund local government entities. "Credit defaults will definitely happen. It's just a matter of timing, scale and how big the impact is," he said. The charts below tell the story.
IGNORING THE GLOBAL WAR
The "news" is resolutely out of context. A subject about which virtually nothing is known - the mystery of the missing airplane - gets saturation "coverage," while events of potentially earth-shaking importance are largely unreported. Any self-respecting "news network" would relentlessly run stories about the ongoing demonstrations from Caracas to Maracaibo - demonstrations surely the equal of those from Maidan Square in Kiev - but no. The Venezuelan uprising may turn out to be the biggest story of all, because it is part of a world-wide battle that pits anti-Western tyrannies against their own people, and against their neighbors. It is of a piece with Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran and Russia itself, where, just a few days ago, fifty thousand Muscovites demonstrated against Putin's imperialist moves in Ukraine. I've been saying for years that we're the target of a global war, that the Pyongyang-Beijing-Moscow-Tehran-Damascus-Havana-Caracas Axis of Evil is hell-bent to dominate and destroy us. Now the evidence is so clear that only a willfully blind man could fail to see it.
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/14/14
Important Announcement: the last section of this HFR is devoted to addressing concerns regarding the New TTP Forum. The theme for the week is Birds of a Hubristic Feather. The shades of Sophocles and Aeschylus are looking up at us from the depths of Hades in sad wonder that humans in power never learn the lesson the Greeks knew so well two and a half millennia ago. Thus we get such marvelously good news this week as Pelosi Galore announcing that Dems Won't Run from Obamacare in Midterms. You're just not going to get a better example of masochistic hubris than that. It's of course the path to electoral disaster in November. Zero could take a different path, but can be supremely confident this will never happen - because Zero is a solipsistic narcissist who lives in Hubris City. In addition, he's ignorant, uneducated, and actually pretty stupid - all his affirmative action Ivy League degrees notwithstanding. He's glib and shrewd and smooth - but not smart. Now,is there anyone on the planet more hubristic than Zero? Why, yes - that would be Vladimir Vladimirovich Pooty-Poot Putin. Oh, look! He's riding a horse without a shirt! Oh! He's so big and tough and strong! Oh, what a pile of horse manure.
IS PUTIN IN A FANTASY WORLD?
Russia risks a wave of capital flight and a shattering economic crisis as the West prepares a package of sanctions over the seizure of Crimea. Chancellor Angela Merkel spelled out the danger for Russia in a speech to the German Parliament yesterday (3/13) that silenced pro-Kremlin voices in her own coalition and left no doubt that Europe is now fully behind the US on punitive measures. "If Russia continues on its course of the past weeks, that will not only be a great catastrophe for Ukraine. It will cause massive damage to Russia, both economically and politically," she said. "None of us wants it to come to this, but we are determined to act. Let me be absolutely clear; the territorial integrity of Ukraine is not up for discussion." The West has threatened visa bans and an asset freeze on individuals as early as next Monday (3/17) unless Russia steps back from the brink on the annexation of Crimea. And that is only the begining. Russia has threatened to retaliate with "symmetrical sanctions" but Tim Ash, from Standard Bank, said it is a one-sided contest that Moscow cannot win. Here's why.
THE POGO PRESIDENCY
Ever hear of a guy named Walt Kelly? He was born in Philly in 1913, moved to California in the 30s to draw Donald Duck cartoons for Walt Disney, and started his own newspaper comic strip in 1949. It featured anthropomorphic animals in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, with the main character named Ponce de Leon Montgomery County Alabama Georgia Beauregard Possum - a dig at the South's pretentious aristocracy. Kelly titled his comic strip after Ponce's nickname - Pogo. If you grew up in the 50s or 60s, you grew up with Pogo, along with an innumerable cast of lovable animal characters (there were almost 1,000 over the years), all poking gentle fun at the human condition. In 1971, two years before his death from diabetes, he published the cartoon for which he is best known. 
This is more frighteningly relevant today than 42 years ago - and the "us" is all of us. There are varying degrees of complicity. At the top, of course, is an Anti-American President who hates his own country. Zero is an affirmative action baby, handed everything on a platter without earning it because of his race and made-up bio. He's our #1 security threat because he doesn't want to defend us, and worse, doesn't know how if he did want to. Bad combo. Which bring us to the real security threat beyond our shores. It isn't Russia, with its one-trick pony economy that can't even get itself above water with oil at $100 a barrel. Putin is all bare-chested bluster, all hat and no cattle. No, the real foreign threat we face is China. I've been going to China since 1979, and as you know, just got back from there again last week. Here are three pictures of the spectacular places we visited that I took with my Panasonic DMC-TZ5 compact camera. There is a particular reason for me to show them to you.
SURVIVING OBAMA
Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg minced few words in discussing the interview that US President Barack Hussein Obama gave him on the eve of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's latest visit to Washington. Speaking with journalist Charlie Rose, Goldberg equated Obama's threat to stop supporting Israel in international forums to the talk of a mafia don. Obama told Goldberg that if Israel doesn't cut a deal with the Palestinians soon, "our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited." He added, "And that has consequences." Obama's statement, Goldberg noted, was a "veiled threat" and "almost up there with, ‘Nice little Jewish state you've got there. Hate to see something happen to it.'" Goldberg saw the interview as Obama's way of showing that he is beginning to abandon the pretense of supporting Israel, now that he no longer faces reelection. In Goldberg's words, "It's not that the gloves are coming off. It's more that the mask of diplomatic language is coming off." Now that he no longer has to concern himself with the wishes of the American public and its representatives in Congress, Obama has dropped the mask of opposition to Iran and forged ahead with a diplomatic process that all but ensures Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. So what can Israel do? Well, here is Priority #1: Israel needs to directly attack Iran's nuclear installations - by covert action as well as through overt military strikes, as required. And Obama be damned.
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/07/14
It is always an intensely interesting and educational experience on any visit to China. Now that I'm out, I can talk about it, as everything you do online is monitored - just like in the US (except that you can use an anonymizer like Cryptohippie which is blocked in China). On Saturday, March 01, there was an astonishing terrorist attack at the railway station of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province. Six men and two women, wearing masks and all black uniforms of some kind, bearing long knives - no other weapons, just knives - stabbed 29 people to death and wounded well over one hundred. I was not far away at the time, and flew through the Kunming airport the next day. *** What's so totally ridiculous about this two-bit KGB thug Putin seizing Crimea and playing the Russian bear is how our very own President Pussy hasn't the cojones to kick him in his vulnerabilities. *** My friend John Bolton nailed it yesterday (3/06) in his speech at CPAC: "Our biggest national security crisis is Barack Obama." John could not possibly be more spot on. Yet Zero is not only the Number One threat to America's national security. He is the Number One threat to America's economy, to America's freedom, to America's culture, and to America's future. So let's see where Zero and his DemFascist minions may have screwed up this week.
“WE NEED TO ABOLISH THE IRS”
You may have seen the headlines that yesterday (3/05) at the CPAC conference in Washington, I called for the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service. It's true. I said "The IRS should go the way of the dodo." The IRS is currently considering new rules to limit the free speech of the very same groups it illegally targeted. In short, the Obama Administration is trying to do through regulatory fiat what it was unable to legally do before: limit the First Amendment rights of Americans. Below is the letter I sent to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for a special prosecutor to investigate IRS's illegal targeting of conservative groups. My speech at CPAC was entitled How We Win. I explained that "If you want to lose elections, stand for nothing." By contrast, you win elections by standing for principles and believing that there is a better tomorrow. How do we inspire people? Number one we tell the truth.... The truth is Washington is corrupt. As more and more people make great wealth in Washington, young people, single moms, and small business owners suffer. Real change is changing the corruption that is here in Washington, D.C.
THE ISRAELI SOLUTION
In its annual survey of American Jewry published last October, the American Jewish Committee found that 75 percent of American Jews agree with the statement, "The goal of the Arabs is not a peaceful two-state agreement with Israel, but rather the destruction of Israel." And yet, American Jews supported the establishment of a Palestinian state 50% to 47%. Next week over 10,000 predominantly Jewish American supporters of Israel will gather in Washington at AIPAC's annual policy conference. Given their high commitment to Israel, probably most of those gathered belong to the 47% of American Jews who opposed Palestinian statehood. These committed supporters of the Jewish state have been sternly lectured that Israel is doomed if it doesn't give the Palestinians an outlet for their political impulses outside of Israel, because within a year or two there will be more Palestinians than Israelis west of the Jordan. The same day AIPAC's delegates meet with members of both houses of Congress, my new book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East will be released by Crown Forum, a division of Random House. In my book, I show that the demographic time bomb is a dud, and a malicious one at that.
HAS ANYBODY NOTICED THAT WE MIGHT BE WINNING?
It's all about winning and losing, but the best man doesn't always win, and outcomes frequently have more to do with luck than with merit. Brilliant strategies fail, and fools stumble into glorious victories. Napoleon preferred a lucky general to a brilliant one. Which brings us to today. The headlines are grim, the pictures from Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine are blood-chilling, executions and demonstrations are mounting in Iran, and Obama doesn't know what to do about anything. So he doesn't do anything; he and his strategists just dither. And yet... And yet, our enemies may be on the verge of losing. Big time. The global anti-freedom alliance consists primarily of jihadis and radical leftists, the two principal forces committed to the destruction of what is sometimes known as the Western world. That alliance is cracking, because many millions of people are fighting the anti-Western tyrants. Here's the scorecard.
HIDDEN AFRICA
THERE IS NO PRESIDENTS DAY- IT’S WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY
This Saturday, February 22, is the 282nd anniversary of the birth of America's founder, the equal in nobility, heroism, and virtue of any human being who ever lived -- George Washington. What it is not, nor is any day such as last Monday (2/17), is the phony holiday called "Presidents Day." Let's be quite clear on this. There is no such holiday. It exists only in the minds of furniture dealers, car salesmen, and Hate-America leftists. It wasn't until 1870 that there were any national holidays at all, recognized by the federal government and granting federal workers a day off, although four were recognized by most states: the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. In 1870, Congress declared them national. In 1879, Congress added Washington's birthday to the national list, which had been unofficially celebrated by most Americans for many decades. Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day after the custom of decorating Civil War soldiers' graves with flowers), was traditionally celebrated on May 30, but had no formal designation until 1968 with a law called the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. It was the Democrat Congress and President who damaged the memory of George Washington with this act of anti-patriotism. Here it is:
WHAT SECRET SERVICE AGENTS SAY ABOUT PRESIDENTS AND FIRST LADIES
I'm Ron Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect. This week, we celebrated something called "Presidents Day." I thought you might enjoy the most revealing comments the many Secret Service agents I interviewed made regarding the Presidents and First Ladies they protected. They are all quotes from my book. We start with John and Jacqueline Kennedy and end with Barack and Michelle Obama. Here is what Secret Service agents actually think of them.
UNDERSTANDING OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY
I don't think it's hard to understand Obama's foreign policy. Although there's a lot we don't know about him, his basic impulses are clear enough. He's told us what they are (although, to be sure, he often misleads and obfuscates), and his actions are in keeping with his announced impulses. Furthermore, there's nothing unique or surprising about them - you can hear them in our classrooms and our college dorms, and read them in the establishment press every day. He's an establishment member in high standing. Voilá: He believes that most of the serious problems in the world are the result of past American actions. Call it imperialism. Call it meddling. Call it arrogance (as the Iranians do). Whatever you call it, it means that pre-Obama policies were bad. Ergo, it's mostly Bush's fault. (Shorthand for "before me, they didn't understand. Anything.") It follows that the single most important action to ensure good policies is...
WILL CHINA POP THE WORLD’S BUBBLE?
China's Xi Jinping has cast the die. After weighing up the unappetizing choice before him for a year, he has picked the lesser of two poisons. The balance of evidence is that most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Tse-tung aims to prick China's $24 trillion credit bubble early in his 10-year term, rather than putting off the day of reckoning for yet another cycle. This may be well-advised for China, but the rest of the world seems remarkably nonchalant over the implications. Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and the commodity bloc are already in the cross-hairs. "China is getting serious about deleveraging," says Patrick Legland and Wei Yao from Societe Generale. "It is difficult to gently deflate a bubble. There is a very real possibility that this slow deflation may get out of control and lead to a hard landing." Societe Generale has defined its hard landing as a fall in Chinese growth to a trough of 2%, with two quarters of contraction. This would cause a 30% slide in Chinese equities, a 50% crash in copper prices, and a drop in Brent crude to $75.
THE NSA’S ACHILLES HEEL?
I have to keep this short as I'm soon boarding a very long flight to China. Jack Kelly will be manning the HFR ramparts while I'm gone, but I have to tell you this now. The story starts with an obscure state politician representing District 67 of the Utah House of Representatives named Marc Roberts. If you look at that official state government website, you won't see anything unusual. Like most pols, he also has his own site: marcroberts67.com. How many elected politicians start their site off with a quote from Bastiat's The Law? Followed by a statement of commitment to State Sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment? Yet it's not Roberts' words that are most interesting, however, it's what he is doing. He may have found the Achilles' Heel of the NSA. You may have heard of the gigantic $1.5 billion, one million square-foot date collection center the NSA is building in Bluffdale, Utah called Bumblehive. It will require 1.7 million gallons of water a day to cool the massive NSA computers spying on all of us. Roberts knows how to cut off the water supply.
THE AIR FORCE’S PROBLEM IS BIGGER THAN THE F-22 VS. THE F-35
In last week's Half-Full Report (see the section on Debbie Does USAF), Jack asked me to comment about America's F-22A Raptor and F-35A/B/C Lightning II fighters. Namely: if the F-22 Raptor was the better fighter, why was it canceled in favor of the F-35? Both fighters sit at the nexus of some pretty big assumptions and questions about US air power in the next few decades, so it's hard to give a brief answer, but I'm going to try. In brief: Yes, the F-22 is a much better fighter than the F-35. Indeed, it remains the best fighter in the world by a wide margin. The flip side is that it can't perform some roles, costs a lot to maintain, and will cost quite a lot ($7 billion or more) to upgrade to modern standards. But the bottom line is thatI don't think the core problem is F-22 vs. F-35. The core problem is...
THE MESSIAH AND THE LEPER
With no prospects for a successful legislative agenda in Congress and even his talk of governing by executive order not impressing either friends or foes, President Barack Hussein Obama seems to be drifting inexorably toward lame-duck status. But there is no better indication of just how politically toxic Obama has become than the rumblings that came out of last week's meeting between the president and Senate Democrats. As Politico reports, the White House has agreed to stay out of most of the key races that will decide whether Democrats retain control of the Senate this year. In 2008, Obama was a Messiah. In 2014, Obama is now a Leper. To an increasing number of Democrats. Here's why.
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/07/14
Was there some kind of football game last Sunday? I remember Broadway Joe's totally bitchin' fur coat that got all the PETA pussies in a tizzy. 
And of course, Tim Tebow's fabulous commercial: {youtube}xTaH-OtUv94{/youtube} But other than a safety being scored in the first 12 seconds, not much else. Oh, yes, there was President Smidgen, demonstrating for the billionth time that he hasn't a smidgen of honesty in his devious heart of darkness.
FROM THE BEST TO THE WORST IN ONE GENERATION
103 years ago on this day, February 6, 2014, Ronald Reagan was born. I wish I had the capacity to describe adequately what it was like being in Ronald Reagan's presence. I have met many extraordinary people in my life, from Hollywood's most famous stars to presidents of countries. But Ronald Reagan had a magic that was unique to him alone. There was a depth of character to his charisma that seemed bottomless. There was a solidity of integrity and humanity behind the dazzling charm that was matchless. You loved Ronald Reagan for his ideals and his complete fearlessness in advocating them - and you loved Ronald Reagan for the man, the human being, he was. On March 30, 1961, as a spokesman for General Electric and well before he entered politics, he gave a speech to the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, which he entitled "Encroaching Control." In it, he delivered one of his most famous quotes: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. It is one thing to read these words. It is another to listen to him actually say them: {youtube}SDouNtnR_IA{/youtube} The power of his voice makes you cry, doesn't it? Because his words have so devastatingly come true.
HIDING FROM GOVERNMENT
However it happened, it is now clear that the US spy agencies, and the NSA in particular, have gone off the reservation. The military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about has turned inward, and the perps are now us. That may be a bitter pill for many of us to swallow, but it's true just the same. So, here we are. For most of our lives, we thought it was only criminals who needed to hide from government. Now we find that it's time for the citizens to hide. Sad as that may be, it's something we need to face. Before I explain how to hide, let me repeat something that a lot of us have said before: We do not hide because our works are criminal, but because we need to protect ourselves from criminal punishments, seizures and prosecutions. How do we hide and protect ourselves? Here's how...
TWO AMERICAS
The Democrats are right, there are two Americas. The America that works, and the America that doesn't. The America that contributes, and the America that doesn't. It's not the haves and the have nots, it's the dos and the don'ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, to obey the law and support themselves and contribute to society, and others don't. That's the divide in America. It's not about income inequality, it's about civic irresponsibility. It's about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It's about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. The politics of envy was on proud display when the president said he would pledge the rest of his term to fighting "income inequality." He notes that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that's not just. It is the rationale of thievery. The other guy has it, you want it, Obama will take it for you. Vote Democrat.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/31/14
Whoa... the response to The TTP Portugal Retreat has been so strong that Rebel and I were compelled to schedule a second one! And now that's just about filled as well. There might be a space or two left on the first one - March 20-25 with a 3-day extension - and a few on the second - April 24-29 with a 3-day extension. Carpe diem to not miss out coming to sunny, beautiful, historical Portugal with Rebel and me. In between these now-two Portugal Retreats, there's The Land of the Dragon's Blood Tree. This was announced last Monday the 27th - and by today, only five days later, that's almost filled too! I am truly excited about this. There is absolutely no place on earth like Socotra. It is "completely unique on a global scale," as the National Geographic says. Look at the pictures and see for yourself. Please don't miss the opportunity to experience one of the most extraordinary places on our planet.... ...I considered for an entire femtosecond watching Zero's SOTU Tuesday night (1/28), but decided there were far more productive things to do, such as reorganizing my sock drawer. There was, however, one hilarious moment during this soporific soliloquy.
THE BRICS HIT THE WALL
Half the world economy is one accident away from a deflation trap. The emerging market bloc makes up half the world economy, far higher than in any previous crisis. Roughly $4 trillion of foreign funds swept into emerging markets after the Lehman crisis, much of it by then "momentum money" late to the party. One country after another is now having to tighten into weakness. Neil Shearing from Capital Economics says Brazil, India and Russia are all suffering from the 1970s curse of "stagflation," unable to stimulate their economies to revive growth. Mr. Shearing said the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are in worse shape than many of the other emerging market states, but the strains are spreading. While every story is different, the common theme for the BRICS is that they have exhausted their catch-up growth models, let credit booms get out of hand and failed to push through reforms while the going was good. Productivity rates have plummeted almost everywhere. That most certainly includes China.
THE TRIUMPH OF MONOGAMY
The tragic death of an Indian minister's wife and the overdose of a French president's "wife" give a startling insight into the misery that infidelity causes in a monogamous society. In cultures like India and France, it is just not possible now for men to reap the sexual rewards that usually attend arrival at the top of society. President Zuma of South Africa has four wives and 20 children, while one Nigerian preacher is said to have 86 wives. Chinese emperors used to complain of their relentless sexual duties. Why the difference? Human monogamy is an enduring puzzle. Among mammals we are the exception: just 3 per cent of mammals form pair bonds. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas, are promiscuous, very promiscuous, territorial-polygamous and harem-polygamous respectively. Yet we are clearly monogamous by instinct as well as by tradition. Even in societies that allow polygamy, most people are in one-partner couples. Free-love communes always, without exception, collapse because people will insist on falling in love with particular individuals. This pairing tendency would baffle a bonobo, where sexual jealousy is apparently unknown. So at some point in the distant past, we developed the habit of monogamous pair bonding. In human beings, monogamy probably goes back hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. (See Jack Wheeler's Marriage and the Missing Link, September 2009.)
THE LAND OF THE DRAGON’S BLOOD TREE
Although it's known as the most alien, strangest, weirdest and bizarre place you can go to in the entire world, it's also completely safe and incredibly beautiful. Anybody who comes here returns saying, "You have to see it to believe it." That's just what we're going to do. What is this place? It's the World Heritage Site of the island of Socotra, the "Galapagos of the Indian Ocean," 240 miles off the coast of Yemen to which it belongs. It's hidden, remote, and far away - yet we're going to get there (and someplace else that's amazing) from your home and back in one incredibly memorable week. Ready? Here we go - and yes, the pictures are real. HALF-FULL REPORT 01/24/14
Well, Portugal, here we come! On Monday (1/20), we announced The TTP Portugal Retreat, and as of today (1/24), it's almost booked out. Those TTPers who took my advice to move quickly were smart to do so. We only have a couple of spaces left. So there's no time to waste. Don't miss out on coming to sunny, beautiful, historical Portugal with Rebel and me. We're going to have a fabulous time. (And yes, Rebel has agreed to have a 3-day post-retreat excursion visiting five World Heritage Sites and staying in a King's Palace.) *** We have a lot of ground to cover, so let's start right off the bat with the HFR Hero of the Week. He's a professional boxer - the Heavyweight Champion of the World. He retired undefeated last month, so he could run to be elected president of his country. But to do that, he has to lead a revolution against a brutally corrupt dictatorship - literally, with barricades in the streets, burning tires, and Molotov cocktails. This is for real. This is a scene on the streets of Kiev, Ukraine from yesterday (1/23). Let's also hope and fervently pray that such scenes will not become necessary in America to retrieve our freedom.
CELEBRATING LIFE ON THE DAY OF DEATH
This has got to be the best picture from yesterday's March for Life. It was truly an extraordinary event - hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers marching from the White House to the Supreme Court in bitterly below-freezing cold, and doing so in good cheer. Actually, the event in Washington DC was only one of many Marches for Life that took place in cities all over the country on the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court's most hideous - and ludicrously unconstitutional - decisions, Roe v. Wade, on January 22, 1973. It's pretty easy to understand - inhuman not to, in fact - why people would be passionately anti-abortion, and be morally revolted by a mother killing her own child. The obverse is more difficult. While it may be understandable that under certain circumstances of a woman's life, she could feel that terminating her pregnancy was her only solution, what is unfathomable is the hysterical, fanatical frenzy of passion that consumes pro-abortionists. It's clinically pathological. It's one of the clearest markers that folks on the Left aren't just mistaken, they're deranged. What were the villains of the Harry Potter novels called? Death-eaters. That's them. The good news is that an increasing majority of Americans looks upon them as such. Even better news is that the reason this number is increasing is because it's composed of Millennials - young folks 30 and under.
HOW DID WE GET TO THIS SPYING-ON-EVERYONE FIASCO PART II
So, in Part I on January 8, I left on the note about how many of you had thought the RSA had been bribed to handover backdoor information of their supposed unbreakable code. Not as cute the government finally thinking "Hey, we forked over all this money for this equipment. We actually own it or parts of it and now we demand access to our stuff." Then they thought: "Our partners under the 1994 CALEA law - the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act - requires communications companies to help us and provide a means and method to surveil so as not impede our investigations! Let's have a talk with them. Only this time we bring some of our other partners like DEA and DOJ into the conversation and let's get serious on this." So the list of agencies who can surveil you just got bigger. But how did they start surveiling? Let's discuss begin with just one program called Carnivore.
A PHYSICIAN’S VIEW ON THE SANCTITY OF LIFE
My entire professional life has been devoted to saving and enhancing lives. Thus, the thought of abortion for the sake of convenience does not appeal to me. I have personally met several people who have told me that their mothers had considered abortion, but happily decided against it. Most of us instinctively want to protect helpless creatures and sometimes go to great lengths to do so. The television commercials about abused animals are very poignant and as a society, we sometimes delay or cancel large construction projects to protect an "endangered" insect, amphibian or fish. Yet many of us turn a blind eye to the wanton slaughter of millions of helpless human babies who are much more sophisticated than some of the other creatures, when nothing is at stake other than the convenience of one or both parents. I am not saying that we should abandon our efforts to save baby seals and a host of other animals. Rather I am saying shouldn't we consider adding human fetuses and babies to the list?
THE TTP PORTUGAL RETREAT
Again, this is different than a Rendezvous, where a lot of us gather to enjoy each other's company and to hear our speakers. This is an intimate get together of no more than a dozen TTPers to discuss the world in depth. And I might as well give you a warning up front.
In addition to learning more about the world than you thought possible over a long weekend, you run the risk of falling head over heels in love with Portugal. I describe it as utterly captivating, and once you are there you'll easily understand why. Actually, you'll understand just with the pictures below. Here's our schedule.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/17/14
Where's the pony? Ronald Reagan was fond of describing an optimist as a kid on a farm happily digging through a huge pile of horse manure, yelling, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!" What would he say about a week, or a time like this? Knowing him, I think he'd say, "Well, sometimes there just isn't any pony." Yes, there will be days like this. But three more years of days like this?? One thousand ninety-eight more days? (See the Countdown Clock to the end of the Zero Presidency.) And realize there is a high probability that those 1098 days are going to be progressively worse. With each passing day and week and month, we're going to have more fascism, more unemployment, more dependency, more cultural depravity, more corruption, more crony capitalism, more liberal hate, more Enemedia lying and cover-ups of Zero scandals, more persecution of Tea Partyers, and more surrender to America's enemies like Iran and the Chicoms. So - how can we possibly stand it? What in the Diety's name are we going to do? First, we'll review how grim it's been this week. Then we'll discuss six alternatives to dealing with it. (No fair skipping ahead, but one of them is following the advice of Josey Wales.)
CALIFORNIA IN EUROPE
We'll have to deal with the deluge of dictatorship Zero and his minions are inflicting upon us in the HFR tomorrow. Today, we have to take a break and get outta this place. How about to one of the world's most pleasant places, Europe's California? Especially since we're going to have a TTP Retreat there in March. More about that later. Both my wife, Rebel, and I grew up in California, so we know it when we see it - and we recognized it right away in Portugal. The weather, the plants, the ocean, the sunsets in the ocean, the coast - which is more beautiful than Italy's (okay, except for Amalfi), way more friendly than France's (surprise), and far less known and populated than Spain's. Then of course, there's the great wine and great food. Also of course, there are differences. California, as anyone who grew up there knows, no longer exists - it is Mexifornia, as Victor Davis Hansen terms it, with a Hispanic vise-grip on the government in Sacramento welcoming an illegal alien flood. The European corollary is Eurabia - the flood of Moslems demographically destroying so many countries like France, where half the schoolchildren in many major cities today are Moslem. But not in Portugal. The Moslem population is miniscule. Make that invisible. You never see a mosque, you never see a woman in a burka. The Portuguese are Christian Europeans. They kicked Moslem invaders from Africa out of their country 764 years ago (in 1249) and are happy to keep it that way. California's history is as recent as Portugal's is ancient. People have been living there before they were people.
SHARON’S FINAL ROAD
During his long career, Ariel Sharon built a lot of roads. As housing minister in the early 1990s and as national infrastructures minister in the late 1990s, Sharon played a key role in building everything from the Trans-Israel Highway to access roads to isolated communities. Since he passed away on Saturday (1/11), his role in building Israel's national infrastructures has been widely noted. But no mention has been made of the final and most important road that he paved. That is the road to Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. Here's how it got built.
A MESSAGE TO WHITE AMERICANS
Every day I am amazed at the insanity I witness in our America and here is another example. According to a report in The Hill, Attorney General Eric Holder is at it again with his racial preference policies:
Attorney General Eric Holder called upon the nation's school districts Wednesday to rethink "zero tolerance" disciplinary policies that he said disproportionately punish minorities and push too many students into the justice system. Alarming numbers of young people are suspended, expelled or even arrested for relatively minor transgressions like school uniform violations, schoolyard fights or showing ‘disrespect' by laughing in class," Holder said during a speech in Baltimore.So now the US Department of Justice under Eric Holder will use its power to enforce "civil rights protections" in school disciplinary actions. In fact, the DoJ and DoEd are putting schools on notice that they are prepared to use their authority to investigate the claims of racial disparity in the punishment of students. Thus my message to white Americans:
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/10/14
I despise Gov. Fatso so I'm enjoying this. 
The instantly-dubbed "Bridgegate" scandal erupted Wednesday (1/08). Christie held a long press conference yesterday (1/09) which resulted in more ridicule and condemnation. We all used to like this guy. That was back in 2010, his first year as governor of Joisey, when he seemed a breath of conservative fresh air and eviscerated Democrats and Enemedia hecklers with aplomb. Jack Kelly and I began calling him the Fat Reagan. But by January 2011, the HFR reported that Christie had nominated a Moslem attorney connected to the terrorists of Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood to a New Jersey Superior Court judgeship. "Looks like Christie has fallen under the influence of the Islamist Svengali of the Right, Grover Norquist. What a terrible disappointment," I commented. There have many more disappointments since. But what I most despise about Christie, however, was his last-minute help to get Zero reelected in 2012.
WHY THE LEFT IS RACIST AND FASCIST
These are the two most common accusations the Left hurls at the Right. It's what psychologists call "projection" - accusing others what you are guilty of. Let's take them one at a time, then see how they are connected. To understand how the Left is racist, we'll do a thought experiment by asking: What if Obama were white? Let's suppose that his bio is exactly the same, except that his Kenyan father was white. Kenya, of course, was created by white British colonialists at the end of the 19th century as the British East Africa Protectorate, and renamed the Crown Colony of Kenya in 1920. So - flaming Marxist anti-Western Civilization self-hating white guy, community organizer who never had a real job, professional Alinskyite agitator turned professional politician with absolutely no business or executive experience whatever, freshman Senator with no legislative accomplishments whatever, no real intelligence, just a pathological narcissist with a shrewd manipulative cunning behind a glib voice and flashy smile. Would anyone in the Democrat Party, the Enemedia, the Moonbat blogosphere, Academia, or the public at large have paid any attention to this white guy's running for president - much less clamored for him to do so or swooned when he did? Of course not. The only, single, solitary reason anyone paid any attention to Obama is that he's black. His candidacy, his election, his presidency is entirely racist. America has a Racist Presidency because he wouldn't be president if he were another white guy, albeit with exactly the same bio.
HOW DID WE GET TO THIS SPYING-ON-EVERYONE FIASCO?
Howdy, folks. I put this history lesson on telecom and how we got to this No Such Agency spying-on-everyone mess on the Forum, and both Jack and Skye bugged me to put it into a TTP article series because they said it was so good. So here we go with Part One. It's long so grab a drink. Edward "Snowjob" Snowden didn't really do anything other than give NSA's program a name: "PRISM". There are many such programs throughout the government. There are various telecom laws that have been enacted since the 1934 Communications Act that enabled the government to do just what they have been revealed to be doing. So we'll start at the beginning in order for you to understand the fullness of how government bureaucrats justify infringing on your 4th amendment and 1st.