Dr. Jack Wheeler
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/02/11
Do you hear him? It's Al Jolson laughing about political events this week, and warning us that we ain't seen nothin' yet. We're living in Volatility City now, the presidential campaign is just beginning, and it is very silly to claim this candidate is toast or that candidate has it in the bag. The only outcome you can be confident of is that most Intraders betting their money on their favorite Pub nominee will lose it. Yes, the campaign already seems interminable, but it's all prologue. The Fat Lady hasn't even cleared her throat. This is so not over. Just to give you an idea, here's how it is possible - albeit not probable - for Sarah Palin to be the nominee, and without even running in the primaries. ** There's lot's more this week. Such as: it's really going to surprise you who is behind the series of unfortunate events that have been mysteriously bedeviling Iran.
THE ANTI-ALLY OF PAKISTAN
After days of vehement denials and indignant claims that NATO's recent attack on Pakistani outposts was unprovoked and deliberate, a "senior Pakistani defense official" has admitted that it was the Pakistanis who started the firefight with "mortar and machine gun fire." His words come a bit too late to stop the firestorm of anti-Americanism and the damage to the Afghan war effort, but may prove useful if they prompt Washington to take a sober look at our "alliance" with Pakistan. The stark reality is that ten years after we forced Islamabad into a shotgun wedding in the aftermath of 9/11, Pakistan is no more of an ally (let alone a "strategic" ally) than before, but an adversary with interests often diametrically opposed to our own. A survey of the Pakistani press in the days since the border incident reveals a society that is in serious trouble. Hysterical anti-Americanism aside, stories included:
STUCK ON STUPID
Up until election day in 2008, I could not make myself believe that a majority of American voters were suicidally stupid enough to elect a Hate America Empty Suit (O=Zero, June 2008) as their president. The choice between him and an obnoxious Rino jerk like McCain was ridiculous. It was nonetheless a no-brainer, as McCain was for all his flaws a patriotic American with no intention to harm and impoverish his country on purpose. Ever since, I chalked up their choice three long years ago to a spasm of temporary insanity. Until now. Surely, the American people will come to their senses, I was convinced. Now I am wondering, what if they no longer have any senses to come back to? Did they shoot their bolt of rationality with the congressional and state elections in 2010, then lapse into political derangement as before? I am, of course, talking about...
SHAPES OF THINGS TO COME
"We should do what we can to wake people up, but reality is far more eloquent than we can ever be." -- Dagny on the TTP Forum I'm afraid Dagny is right. America probably won't wake up until the OPM (Other Peoples' Money) suddenly runs out, quite possibly with the dollar blowing up and all the drastic consequences (how do we then import oil?) thereof. Although we don't know yet which candidate will win the Republican nomination or whether that candidate will replace BO, we already know enough to foresee some near future consequences that will occur whoever wins. Whether BO wins another term or one of the plausible Republicans wins, the five most important existentially threatening problems and their outcomes will be the same. These are the shapes of things to come.
HALF-FULL REPORT 11/25/11
Perhaps the best characterization of this Thanksgiving week's events would be droll, which means curiously amusing. We'll resist the temptation to name Tatyana Limanova, a well-known news anchor on Russian television, the HFR Hero of the Week for flipping the bird to Zero. Who among us has not done the same when confronted with his repulsive presence on our TV screens? Tatyana, however, did so with 120 million Russians watching. You know a lot of them applauded, and so do we. ** You're not going to get a better example of Joel Wade's Democrats Are In A Cult, Republicans Are In A Trance than the Supercommittee fiasco which so predictably ended in failure on Monday (11/21). From start to finish, this was a charade engineered by Dems to sucker hapless Pubs into keeping their perpetual spending machine running as usual. ** Perhaps the best news of the week is the double-whammy Warmism took... And the Word of the Weeke is Eurogeddon... ** As you know, I was in Africa for the past while. Last weekend, Pope Benedict XVI was in Africa as well, in a country called Benin, which borders Nigeria. As it turned out, I was in Benin at the same time...
THE PILGRIMS WERE THANKFUL FOR THE BOUNTY OF CAPITALISM
On Thanksgiving Day, Americans gather with their family and friends to celebrate the blessings that Providence has bestowed on their beloved country. A deep appreciation of these blessings involves understanding that they were earned. It is to understand the awesome truth of how "God helps those who help themselves" applies to the Mayflower Pilgrims and their First Thanksgiving at America's birth. This is an appreciation and understanding of which those on the Left are incapable - for it would mean celebrating the capitalist freedom that made that original Thanksgiving possible. This no liberal, no Democrat, no leftie can do. Thus they must distort history instead. The distortion starts in Kindergarten, with the childish make-believe of your kid's school play portraying the noble Squanto teaching the helpless Pilgrims how to feed themselves. So let's drop the curtain on the distortion and watch the real thing. Here it is.
CHRISTIANITY’S FRONT LINES
Oshogbo, Nigeria. 
We are here in the Osun Sacred Grove, dedicated to the Yoruba goddess of fertility, Osun (pronounced like ocean), and designated as a World Heritage Site. We are alone and have the place to ourselves. Nigeria is devoid of visitors. The only foreigners are diplomats, international bureaucrats, and oil or oil-related businessmen. They consider it so dangerous to be here that they require a police escort to take them from their hyper-expensive hotel in Lagos (where all business is done) to the airport. The thought that a lone American would get a plain car and driver to take him 300 kilometers north of Lagos strikes them as lunacy. Yet that's just what I've done - with no problems in the slightest. It is a revelation being here. I've been a lot of places in Africa, but Nigeria is Africa on steroids. More relevantly, Nigeria is where Christianity is on steroids. If you want to see where Christianity, every variant of it, is alive, muscular and flourishing like nowhere else on earth, here is where you come. Here is where you find the front lines between Christianity and Islam. Here is where Sharia Islam is going to lose.
HOW OBAMA IS AFRICAN
Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. It took coming here, to the darkest pit of hellhole Africa, for it to finally dawn on me who Zero really is, to what total extent he isn't American at all, but African. Freedom House, in its 2011 Worst of the Worst report, highlights Equatorial Guinea as "one of the world's most repressive societies." Its dictator, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo,has ruled since 1979, declared himself to be his country's God who "can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell" in 2003, and last January was elected by leaders of the 54 member-states of the African Union (AU) to be its Chairman. Obiang uses his country's oil revenue as his personal piggy bank, enriching his friends and family while the average citizen of his country lives on $1 a day. But there is nothing at all exceptional about him. He is merely yet another example of what in Africa are called Big Men - narcissistic charismatic sociopaths who gain power however they can, never let go of it, look upon themselves as demi-gods for whom ordinary morality does not apply, utterly convinced they deserve to be worshipped with total obedience, and to live in complete extravagance while being completely indifferent to the poverty of others. Remind you of anyone in America?
MY NIGHT AT THE MARINE CORPS BALL
I'm writing this after attending an event that turned out to be one of the most moving evenings I've ever had. I had the honor and privilege last Saturday night (11/12) of attending The Basic School Instructor Battalion 236th Marine Corps Birthday Ball at the Greater Richmond Convention Center with Corporal Kelsey DeSantis. I knew I would have an evening that I wouldn't forget. Something I could tell my friends about. What I didn't know was how moved I would be by the whole experience. I've always been very vocal about my support of our Armed Forces. I've always felt like they offered us the opportunity to live our lives freely without the fear that so many other nations have to endure still to this day. And, they do it without asking for anything in return. I had this very feeling walking into this dinner. So, to say I was stoked to be there would be more than accurate.
FAILING SCHOOLS ARE A SIGN OF FAILING NATIONAL CHARACTER
During a workout last weekend, I watched and listened as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan bemoaned our "crumbling schools." Sorry, but it's not our schools that are crumbling, Mr. Secretary: It's our values. But we can't even discuss the problem honestly and have to trim the conversation to keep it within politically correct patterns. Well, when yet another survey trumpets that the U.S. has fallen to sixth place in teaching math or science, or that we're fifteenth in education overall, my reaction is "Okay, break those scores out by specific school locations." Generally, our suburban and many small-town schools still deliver competitive (if less than optimal) educations. Our statistics skew sharply downward because of the appalling conditions in the inner-city and barrio holding pens and teacher's-union bunkers we pretend are real schools. The left, for political advantage, has written off poor blacks and browns educationally-confining them in schools that are now about the unionized teachers, not the students. And let's be honest: Conservatives have made no serious attempts to reform those schools, either.
GORILLAS, PYGMIES, AND THE FRENCH
Bangui, Central African Republic. Pygmies are the original Africans. Africa was populated almost exclusively by them for millennia. Then came larger folks like the Bantu who exterminated them, pushed them deep into the rain forests of Central Africa, and enslaved them. There are now only a few groups of Pygmies left, scattered in pockets of the densest jungles, still practicing the original human way of life, hunting and gathering. There are three kinds of gorillas. The giant hairy kind you see in zoos, and the thuggish human kind who rule over other people as "Big Men." Africa has plenty of both. Then there's the French colonial gorilla, which still has control over Francophone Africa. The poster child for the French gorilla is the CAR. Of all of Africa's capital cities, this one is at the bottom of the Dark Continent's barrel. Most of the city's streets are dirt with more potholes than road, what few streets are paved are more of an asphalt quilt riddled with bumpy pothole patches, most buildings are decrepit, there isn't one new modern building or establishment of any kind. So why am I here? To arrange an astoundingly awesome expedition. There is a hidden pocket of the southwest CAR where it, Cameroon, and Congo-Brazzaville come together. This three-country region is the most uninhabited area in all Sub-Saharan Africa. Save for two small villages of a few hundred, no one lives there except for pygmies and gorillas - tens of thousands of gorillas, outnumbering humans at least 100-1. This only hints at the extraordinary profusion of wildlife. No one knows about it. And now I know how to take you there.
NO MORE ON-THE-JOB NATIONAL SECURITY TRAINING FOR A PRESIDENT
Until recently, most politicians, pundits and others among the "smart people" insisted that Election 2012 was all about jobs, jobs, jobs. The more broad-minded contended that the related issues of the lousy economy and the imperatives of deficit reduction also might feature. But that was all that mattered, especially in the presidential contest. Then, GOP candidate Herman Cain, a successful businessman who has risen in the polls in no small measure on the strength of his claim to have actually created jobs, gave an interview in which he seemed unaware that Communist China has the bomb. Without skipping a beat, the intelligentsia denounced him as unfit to serve on the grounds that a man who was not proficient in national security and foreign policy matters could never become president. The jobs-jobs-jobs leitmotif gave way, at least for a time, to a new theme: The White House is no place for on-the-job-training about the nation's defense. How quickly they forget. What Barack Hussein Obama knew about U.S. security policy before he became president amounted to little more than the anti-colonialist sentiments of his father and the virulently anti-American agitation of Palestine Liberation Organization flak Rashid Khalidi, terrorist William Ayers, revolutionary Saul Alinsky and radical pastor Jeremiah Wright.
ARE WE HAVING FUN NOW?
"The sun does not rise in the east. That cannot happen. We can't allow it. If the sun were to rise in the east - just for the sake of argument for it is impossible - then Greece will default, the euro will collapse, the European Union will disintegrate, and all of civilization will face a doom worse than the catastrophe of Global Warming, which by the way, is real." Don't you find this awesome denial of reality by all the leaders of Europe absolutely hilarious? Yet this only scratches the surface of mirth regarding what is happening in our world now. Speaking of our world, I'm writing this 35,000 feet above it, flying to Africa on a wing and a prayer. The wing is an Airbus 380-300's, the prayer is that I'll have an internet connection in Bangui in the Central African Republic once I get there so I can post this on TTP. Where I am and where I'm headed is perhaps an apt metaphor. I'm over the Sahara now, with its sandy uninhabited wastes reminding me of Zero's desertification of America's economy and culture. I'm going into the unknown, the deepest jungle abyss of the Dark Continent, similar to the chaotic unknown future facing America. Yet this non-stop Air France flight from Paris is packed, full of folks with no sense of foreboding whatever. Nor should we, facing the future we are bound for. It's about time we began looking forward to it.
HALF-FULL REPORT 10/28/11
There's no resisting starting this week's HFR with the funniest headline of the year: Man Beats Woman With Frozen Armadillo. Only in Texas. I also have to tell you about Steven Pinker's book that just came out: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Both Joel Wade and I are fans of Pinker, professor of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science at Harvard. (See Joel's The Blank Slate, April 2006.) Pinker takes a gargantuan amount of evidence to amass an irrefutable case that we today are living in the most peaceful era of human history - by far. Really far. But is it the freest? That's another question. Euroweenies are way less violent than they used to be, but are also way less free, having relinquished their freedom to Leviathan. This, of course, is Zero's plan for us. Nonetheless, Pinker provides cause for optimism. The trajectory of declining violence is one of centuries now. We are on the cusp of staying on it while expanding our freedom, which we have the opportunity to do little more than 12 months from today. All we have to do is carpe diem. Speaking of Euroweenies...
DO CONSERVATIVES WANT TO WIN IN 2012 OR NOT?
This is a serious question, by no means rhetorical. Conservatives may be full of sound and fury against Zero, but it signifies nothing without actual evidence, of which there is little. Tea Partyers can wave the American flag and proclaim their passion for reclaiming America, but you can't beat something with nothing. If this isn't true, then why is a Total Rino way ahead in the polls? The difference between Establishment Republicans and Conservatives is that the former care more about winning than principles, which is why they constantly compromise them. Thus their mantra of ABO - which they morph into the con that only Rino Romney can beat Zero. When conservatives - such as Ann Coulter - make the same argument, then they have ceased being conservatives and have become the very establishment Rinos they claim to despise.
CUT, BALANCE, AND GROW
[This is the text of Gov. Rick Perry's speech at the ISO Poly Films plant in Gray Court, South Carolina yesterday, October 25] Thank you. It is great to be in the stomping grounds of a great conservative senator, Jim DeMint. I want to thank ISO Poly Films CEO John McClure for opening his business as we discuss my plan to get America working again. Today I lay before the American People my cut, balance and grow plan. It cuts taxes and spending. It balances the budget by 2020. And it grows jobs and the economy. It neither reshuffles the status quo, nor does it expand the ways Washington can reach into our pocketbooks. It reorders the way they do business in Washington by reinventing the tax code and restoring our nation to fiscal health through balanced budgets and entitlement reform. In other words, it's the kind of economic stimulus President Obama could have achieved if he wasn't hell-bent on passing big government schemes that have failed American workers. We are on the road to ruin paved by state serfdom.
HALF-FULL REPORT 10/21/11
Rough justice. You've all seen the phone camera pics and videos. They are horrific, but you can't have much sympathy for a murderous monster like Gaddafi. He got what he deserved - especially since he was given a plethora of opportunities to safely leave Libya and live out his days in comfortable exile. The choice to end like this was his. So Bush got Saddam and Zero will claim he got Gaddafi - even though Marco Rubio was right in observing that it was the Brits and French. The contrast in how they were "gotten" is, however, instructive in the extreme. That contrast is between the humane calm professionalism of American soldiers pulling Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, and the bloody frenzy of ragtag Libyan rebels pulling Moammar Gaddafi out of his drain pipe. This is the difference between civilization and barbarism, between democracy and mobocracy. It is tempting to say the difference is reflected in that between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.
THE REAL DEBATE
The most ridiculous part of the GOP candidate debate last Tuesday night (10/17) in Vegas has been the hilariously irrelevant commentary on it by much of punditry left and right. So while everyone else is focusing on silliness like claiming Perry is finished because he was a bully for interrupting Romney too much, you and I are going to focus on the real debate that took place and draw some substantive lessons from it. First, load the full debate transcript in another browser window so you can refer to any part of it as we go along. We'll start with this question: would you go to Vegas and put your entire wad on one spin of the roulette wheel coming up red?
HALF-FULL REPORT 10/14/11
The next GOP presidential candidate debate is four days from now, Tuesday, October 18, in Vegas on CNN. It will focus primarily albeit not exclusively on foreign policy. I've been asked by friends of a particular candidate to provide him with a private briefing on the most critical foreign policy issues America faces. What follows is not the usual HFR but a condensed summary of that briefing, which contains much of my Map of the Future talk at Rendezvous XI last weekend. Russia. Putin is an ersatz macho-man, all hat and no karovi. Russia's navy is made of rust. Russia's ill-trained army of drunkards couldn't conquer Romania. Russian male life expectancy is lower than that of Bangladesh. Russia is a mafiacracy with a doomed economy dependent on oil & gas exports that fracking in Europe & the US will make uncompetitive. Do svidanya. China. No wives, no water, no banks - and a hyper-dangerous military. Much of China is uninhabited - deserts, mountains, and wastelands. Habitable China is about the size of the US east of the Mississippi, with over a billion people squeezed into it. Northern China is turning into a waterless dust bowl. Scores of millions of Chinese men will never get married due to the Chicom's idiotic one-child policy and resultant mass female infanticide.
THE FORGOTTEN CHRISTIANS OF THE EAST
Last Sunday (10/09) in Cairo, some two dozen Coptic Christians were murdered by the Egyptian military egged on by a Moslem street mob. It is but the latest atrocity perpetrated upon Christians in Moslem countries, where they have been systematically persecuted for decades. Sadly for the Christians of the Islamic world, their cause is not being championed either by Western governments or by Western Christians. Aside from Evangelical Protestants, most Western churches are uninterested in defending the rights of their co-religionists in the East. Instead, these churches and their related international bodies make repeated efforts to attack the only country in the Middle East in which the Christian population has increased in the past 60 years -- Israel.
THE MOST ENDANGERED SPECIES IN AMERICA
I wouldn't think it would be worthwhile to draw attention to the Occupy Wall Street "movement," or its list of demands that wouldn't pass muster in an average kindergarten class. But President Obama sees these demonstrations against corporate America as reasonable protest toward "the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to crack down on abusive practices that got us into this situation to begin with." This should provide perspective to what our most fundamental problem is today. We have an endangered species in America whose loss threatens our future. That species is...
HALF-FULL REPORT 10/07/11
So we're down to three this week. Christie out to no one's dismay - except for his die-hard fans known as "girthers" - and so is Palin to the serious dismay of many. It's too late for late entries - say goodnight Donald and Rudy - while the other candidates are there just for stubbornness or ego. Rick, Mitt, or Herman, those are the only choices now. The next debate is this coming Tuesday, 10/11. It could be make or break for Perry. The Forum's resident Perryista, Ella - she's a Texas gal - assures us that, while he wasn't prepared for the first three debates due to his laser focus on raising $17 million in 49 days, he's primed and pumped for this one. Let's hope so. I for one am rootin' for Rick to come out with guns blazing. It's show time. Will it be show time for Cain? Will one of his competitors ask him about the fatal flaw in his 9-9-9 tax reform plan?
THE KEY PROBLEM OF OUR ECONOMY: POLITICAL MISALLOCATION OF CAPITAL
If a Republican wins in 2012, and if the economy doesn't markedly improve by 2016, a Democrat (quite possibly Hillary) will almost certainly win in 2016. What would it take for the economy to markedly improve by 2016? To understand that, one needs to understand elementary classical (Austrian) economics. The fundamental problem is that governments, both in the US and around the world, have politically misallocated tens of trillions of dollars of capital to economically lower valued uses because these uses were of higher political value. Wasting so much seed corn year after year, decade after decade, has inevitably resulted in progressively leaner harvests. Unfortunately, this extensive capital misallocation is being done by many different methods and the misallocated capital is going to many politically favored groups, so there is no one silver bullet that will fix the mess. A partial list:
TRADE WITH CHINA AND OUR NATIONAL SECURITY
With a fledgling economy the focus of the 2012 presidential campaign, there has been one glaring omission from the debate so far: the failure of our current trade policy, particularly with China. Trade policy affects national security by putting the safety of our people and their jobs at risk. Between 2000 and 2010, the United States ran an aggregate trade deficit in goods of $6.8 trillion. This is one measure of how much money went to support production and job creation overseas rather than here at home. Last year, the trade deficit in goods was $635 billion. The import share of the domestic economy has grown very rapidly in textiles, machinery, computers, electrical equipment and motor vehicles. We buy a third to a half of these products from overseas, leaving American factories idle and American people jobless. One-third of the trade deficit in goods over the past decade was with communist China. Our 2011 trade deficit with Beijing is on track to hit a record $300 billion. In their new book, "Death by China," University of California at Irvine economists Peter Navarro and Greg Autry calculate that this deficit has cost America 10 million jobs over the past decade.
CAIN AND THE CASTRATION OF THE LEFT
Rendezvous XI begins tomorrow evening (10/07), and quite frankly, if you're not there you'll really wish you were. In addition to the extraordinary camaraderie you get with your fellow TTPers, you'll hear from billionaire investor Robert Agostinelli on The Future of the World Economy and You, New Tang Dynasty satellite television manager Dong Xiang on What's Really Going On In China, the next United States Senator from Texas (and incredibly inspiring conservative speaker) Ted Cruz on Texas, the Senate, and 2012, Jack Abramoff on It's All Bribery Now in Washington, plus... We are so honored to have a great American hero, on the battlefield and now on Capitol Hill, Lt.Col. and Congressman Allen West speak to us in a special presentation. There's so much more (e.g., what you'll learn from one of our speakers Saturday night will totally blow you away), so if you don't want to miss out, call Miko now - immediamente - at 703-992-4529 to see how he can squeeze you in. A Rendezvous is an opportunity to just relax and be with our own kind, rational conservatives. There will be no zombies. It was Bob Hope who first explained the connection between zombies and Democrats in his 1940 movie, The Ghost Breakers:
GOOD STUFF HAPPENING IN WISCONSIN
Since Governor Scott Walker signed the Budget Reform Bill, limiting collective bargaining for state employees to wages only on March 11, Wisconsin school districts and cities have been rescuing their budgets. No longer, for example, were the districts forced to purchase health insurance from the teachers' union insurance company (WEA Trust Insurance) at exorbitant rates. The savings have been substantial (all figures and quotes compiled from local news reports): Ashland School District - saved $378,000 on health insurance. Kimberly School District - saved $821,000 by dropping WEA Trust Insurance. Edgerton School District - dropping WEA Trust, expecting to save at least $500,000. Pittsville - will see a 9% decrease in the school portion of their property tax levy. "This is the first year we have not needed to short-term borrow," stated Board President Strenn. Appleton School District - will save $3.1 million just in health insurance costs due to being able to bid out the coverage and being able to drop WEA Trust.
MR. OBAMA AND THE FOOL’S GOLD OF FAIRNESS
The product of a long -term relentless indoctrination in the progressive radical school, President Obama has never varied from his life mission. Yes, a portion of Americans absorbed the staccato of the "One" , the chant of "change we can believe in" and the seduction of the healer. Many simply "wanted" to believe in something that never existed. It was a mirage. An imagery and technique right out the text book of tyrants from across the ages. However the truth was always there for all to see. The only surprise is they didn't. Now as the Obama Presidency is in free fall, the gesture and notions of accommodation are being fully discarded. Now the creation of imagined enemies and emasculation of the virtues that made this country great be it free enterprise, individual rights, or capitalism are laid out as evil in the quest for that fool's gold of the left: "fairness". This twisted logic is at the fraudulent core of the soul of socialism. It is a primary mover of their mania and a mantra which overshadows each act.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/30/11
The evidence that the presidential ship, the USS Zero, is sinking like that boat Leo DiCaprio was on continued to pile up this week. When Euroweenies publicly call the President of the United States pitiful, sad, arrogant, and absurd, plus stupid; when he can't even beat Ron Paul in a national poll; when predictions mount that he will pull a 1968 LBJ and not run; when libtards like Newsweek Editor Tina Brown abandon him, it's pretty clear his presidency will end up sleeping with the fishes. He totally clinched it yesterday (9/29) with a pathetic replay of Jimmy Carter's 1979 Malaise Speech, blaming the disaster of his presidency on Americans being "soft." Like Carter, Zero does not possess the moral intelligence to grasp the irony of his claim. Americans were sunk into a deep malaise after the debacle of Watergate and defeat in Vietnam - and Carter was elected as an expression of it. If it weren't for the "crisis of confidence" he complained about, Americans would never have placed a nebbishy schlemiel like him in the White House. And if Americans hadn't gone soft accepting liberal welfare and liberal guilt for decades, they never ever would have elected an affirmative action president, a Marxist Alinskyite attending a Hate America church whose only qualification for office was the color of his skin.
THE POLISH STAKE INTO THE RUSSIAN VAMPIRE
Warsaw, Poland. We killed it once, when it was disguised as the Soviet Union. But vampires have this way of not staying dead, and it has risen again to suck the life blood out of any country it can sink its teeth into. So it looks like we're going to have to kill this creature all over again. This time, let's drive a wooden stake through its heart and end it for good. Looks like the stake will be made in Poland. Poland's history is one of tragedies and triumphs. It starts in 966, when the chief of the Polan people, Mieszko (930-992), rejected the entreaties of other Slavic tribes to accept what was becoming the Russian Orthodox Church, and chose to be baptized as a Roman Catholic instead. It was a momentous decision that turned his people towards the West, rather than the East. Miesko's son Bronislaw created Poland as a Christian nation, with Pope John XIX declaring him the first King of Poland in 1025, and the Poles starting to participate in Western culture. The greatest Polish King, Jan Sobieski (1629-1696), is also one of the greatest heroes in the history of Western Civilization. In a word, he saved it.
CAN WE HAVE A SERIOUS DEBATE PLEASE?
The presidential debates are looking more like symptoms of our problems than they do like part of the solution. Maximum style, minimum substance. Focus on sizzle, forget about the steak. These events are supposed to be about quality information, raising the bar, and producing a thoughtful, informed electorate. But they are being produced to provide entertainment, and we are barely getting that. Technology doesn't take the place of substance. YouTube and real-time polling are not substitutes for thoughtful, provocative questioning. Can it really be, after all the heat he has taken on Social Security, that Rick Perry was not pushed on how specifically how he would reform it? Can it be, as expert after expert has laid out the long list of failures of Romneycare in Massachusetts and its unquestionable similarities to Obamacare, that Mitt Romney was not called out on his sidestepping and denials? Can it be that, on a day (9/20) where the stock market in our country dropped 3.5 percent and in China by 5 percent, that candidates were not asked what they think is wrong with the global economy?
WANT REAL TAX REFORM? CALL 9-9-9
Between now and Election Day, President Obama will have to create 8 million jobs just to tie for last place with the previous worst recovery since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, Americans are rightly demanding dramatic overhauls to get this country back on its feet. What does the president do? He doubles down on his philosophy of continuing the beatings until morale improves. My fellow presidential candidates, to varying degrees, have been tinkering around the edges. With all due respect, you don't prune weeds - you pull them out at the roots. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's 160-page, 59-point plan has "faculty lounge" written all over it. It protects most of the current tax code. Looking for an executive summary, I flipped to the appendix. Frankly, Mr. Romney lost me after his first two points: "Maintain current tax rates ..." and "Maintain current tax rates. ..." Are those rates really worth maintaining? Leave it to a politician to start with the current tax code and then move a step or two in the right direction. Leave it to a real businessman to start with what is right and get there immediately.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/23/11
Question of the week: How do we reconcile Perry's incredible President Zero ad - the most powerful political ad of modern times - {youtube}8EL5Atp_vF0{/youtube} with his botched debate performances, which keep getting worse, as we saw last night? Isn't he supposed to be a kick-em-in-the-groin take-no-prisoners Texas Aggie? And what's up with the you-have-no-heart schmaltz if you deny in-state tuition to illegals? Perhaps, however, you think the question should be: What about Sarah? When Perry announced and she refrained, it was clear she was waiting to see how Rick would do. She was never worried about Bachmann, knowing that MB would flame out and she has. Now that Perry might also, will she jump in? The HFR has learned there is another reason for her hesitation beyond the patience of a huntress.
ISN’T FASCISM FUNNY?
It looks like a Photoshop gag, but it's real. At 13 minutes and 50 seconds into the CNN video of Zero's risible Jobs Speech to Congress (9/08), Slo-Jo flicked his tongue out for a moment to lubricate his dry lips at the exact time Zero closed his eyes to blink - so in a freeze-frame capture, one looks like the doofus he is, the other blind like he is. The WaPo's lib columnist Dana Milbank noted that Zero's speech had the GOP Senators and Congressmen in hysterics, treating it as a "big fat joke." Can you recall a time when a Joint Session Congressional audience actually laughed at the President of the United States? An angry outburst, like Joe Wilson's "You Lie!" at Zero, or audible grumbles of disagreement by Dems at George Bush, yes - but out loud laughter and ridicule to the president's face? A fascist becoming a joke whom nobody respects is a very good thing. It's hard to be afraid of an object of ridicule. Losing our fear of the fascists continuing to tighten their chokehold around our lives is a vitally necessary condition for starting to fight back against them.
OBAMA’S POLICY TOWARDS ISRAEL IS INSULTING, DANGEROUS, AND NAÃVE
[This the text of Gov. Perry's speech at the Israel-Palestine Conference held in New York City yesterday, 9/20.] Thank you. Let me begin by thanking Dr. Solomon Frager and Aron Hirtz for helping us organize this press conference today. I am joined today by a diverse group of Jewish leaders from here and abroad who share my concern that the United Nations could take action this week to legitimize the Palestinian gambit to establish statehood in violation of the spirit of the 1993 Oslo Accords. We are indignant that certain Middle Eastern leaders have discarded the principle of direct negotiations between the sovereign nation of Israel and the Palestinian leadership, and we are equally indignant that the Obama Administration's Middle East policy of appeasement has encouraged such an ominous act of bad faith. Simply put, we would not be here today at the precipice of such a dangerous move if the Obama Policy in the Middle East wasn't naïve, arrogant, misguided and dangerous.
THE UN DIPLOMACY THAT MAY LEAD TO WAR
In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Guns of August," Barbara Tuchman chronicles how a cascading series of seemingly minor developments led inexorably to World War I and the worst carnage known to man up to that time. In the future, historians may point to the present "Diplomacy of September" as the catalyst for the next horrific conflict now in the offing in the Middle East, and potentially beyond. Specifically, this means three agenda items slated to take place in the United Nations or on the margins of its meetings in coming days. Combined, their synergy could lead to a horrific war.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/16/11
Little doubt who the HFR Hero of the Week is, right? No one else but a 70 year-old retired cable guy from Queens named Bob Turner. Let's put his victory on Tuesday (9/13) into real historical perspective. It's not just that New York's 9th Congressional District has been held by the Dems since the election of 1922. It's that Dems have held it for all but nine years since 1857[1]. So Turner's win is about as historic as congressional turnovers get. The effects are immediate, in no way confined to being a Dem panic signal for 2012. First, NY9 drives a stake through the heart of Zero's "Jobs Bill" (what Jack Kelly calls Son of Porkulus). It is now officially DOA. Second, Zero is now forced to take specific pro-Israel actions at a critically dangerous time for Israel. He will now order his hate-Israel UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, to veto the upcoming Security Council vote on granting full statehood for the Palestinian Arabs. He's got to flip the bird to the Saudis and their impossibly arrogant (then again, when aren't they?) threat that the veto would end the "special relationship" between them and the US. Well, hallelujah.
THE SARACEN TOWER
The Amalfi Coast on the Sorrentine Peninsula south of Naples, Italy, is considered to be the most beautiful coastline in the world (click on Read More for pictures). It is riddled with crumbling stone buildings known as "Saracen Towers." They were built over a thousand years ago to protect the region from invasions and attacks from "Saracens" - the term Medieval Europe used for Moslems, from the ancient Greek Sarakenoi, the nomad bandit tribes of Arabia. In the centuries before the invention of Islam when all of the Middle East was predominantly Christian, the Sarakenoi developed a fearsome reputation for their raids on monasteries and murdering monks. This became vastly worse when they acquired a religious rationale for their banditry. They called their new religion Islam, the Arabic word for "submission," claiming it meant submission to their deity Allah - but what it really meant was "unbelievers" submitting to them. And what that meant was they had a religious right to enslave Christians. Last Sunday, we commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 Moslem attack on America. The 19 terrorists, most with Saudi visas, murdered 2,977 innocent people in a more grotesque way than any horror movie. It was an unforgivable act of unmitigated evil that traumatized us all. We continue to deal with the trauma today - and what may help is to place it in a historical context. The examples of Islamic barbarity history provides are legion - so let's focus on that of the Saracen towers.
CRONY CAPITALISM WILL DESTROY US IF WE DON’T ROOT IT OUT
In my recent speech in Iowa, some eyebrows were raised when I took on our government's enormous economic problems caused by crony capitalism. As if on cue, just days later President Obama selected someone who exemplifies a major crony capitalism problem to sit next to the First Lady when he delivered his "jobs plan" speech before Congress. He selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as his honored guest. Having grown up with great respect for GE thanks to stories my grandfather shared with us about his days working for the company and even meeting GE spokesman-at-the-time Ronald Reagan during a company event, I am saddened at GE's leadership evolution. This corporation is now the poster child of corporate welfare and crony capitalism. Joining GE in the pantheon on crony capitalism is another Obama favorite that has been in the news of late: Solyndra.
CONSERVATIVES NEED TO STOP BEING AFRAID OF THE MOSLEM BOGEYMAN
Why have conservatives become such captives of fear? Before 9/11, conservatism stood for stalwart courage and confidence in the United States of America. Across the past decade, however, we succumbed to a weird mania that wildly exaggerates threats and revels in our purported strategic vulnerability to furtive religious perverts sinking along with their doomed civilization. The enthusiasm with which many of my fellow conservatives paint militant Islam as a mighty movement capable of a takeover of Europe and America is a grotesque wallow in political masochism. Islam is on the ropes of history, battered, bleeding and disfigured. And it's never going to be a contender again. Yet, many Americans appear determined to cower in our corner of the ring. It's baffling: We're winning in every possible respect, but tell ourselves we're losing.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/09/11
Well, it took folks like Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer a while, but they've got it. President Zero is now our current POTUS's official nickname. Google the term today (9/09) and you'll get 400,000 hits (earlier this week it was 80,000 - it'll be fun to see that number increase). The New York Times can't stand it. TTP, as you know, originated the appellation in June, 2008, in O=Zero - which went so viral that Snopes had to verify it was written by me. We've been selling O=Zero T-shirts ever since. I was in Dunhuang, China on election day, November 4, 2008, whereupon I wrote The End of the Silk Road and forswore using the name of "the Marxist Hate-America Gangster who was just elected by a majority of American voters to lead them to their doom."