Dr. Jack Wheeler
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/27/12
Here's a quartet of choices for who should be the HFR Hero of the Week. When the week started out, the choice seemed obvious: an extraordinary athlete with the initials of TT. Not Tim Tebow, however admirable he is. It's the greatest hockey goalie on earth, who enabled the Boston Bruins to win the 2011 Stanley Cup (he was named MVP), Tim Thomas. Then on Wednesday (1/25), two Republican governors came into Hero contention. First is Arizona's with a name all tipplers admire, Jan Drinkwine Brewer (yes, Drinkwine is her maiden name and she married a fellow named Brewer: how can you beat that?). You've all seen the picture of her telling off Zero on the Phoenix tarmac regarding his attack on Arizona's attempts to protect its border from illegal invasion. The night before his tarmac scolding (1/24), Zero delivered his pathetic SOTU speech to a bored Congress. The GOP response was delivered by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. This is worth reading entire. So who could give TT and these two governors competition this week? We don't know their names and never will, just that they are Navy SEALs.
HOW MUCH TIME DO WE HAVE?
Is there a road so long that, no matter how many times you kick a can down it, you will never reach the end? The answer is yes, there is - because the operative word in the question is not "road" or "long," but "you." The game is to keep kicking your can down the road until you're able to force others to make it their can, like taxpayers or your children when you die. Another proven successful alternative is to blame the existence of the can on a scapegoat, like "the 1%" or "capitalism." Most successful of all is to deny there is a can at all, and demonize anyone who says there really is one. All of these strategies work - until they don't. Reality exists, no matter how much people engage in reality-denial. Thus the time always comes when reality bites. So the question we all need to face is, how much time do we have until it does? For reality is getting ready to bite us all in our backsides big time. When almost everyone engages in reality-denial, the kicked can really does reach the end of the road, and that's just about where we are right now. Here are two screamingly unpalatable facts. The first is, the odds are growing now that Zero will be reelected. The second is, it may not make much difference if Zero is defeated.
CALIFORNIA IS OBAMA’S DREAM
I live in California. If you were wondering what living in Obama's second term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are living there now. California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democrat Left enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The unemployment rate is 12%. California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, and seven income tax brackets. In California, we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in Hollywood, in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the productive rich. California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of deindustrialization. All of this is Obama's dream.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/20/12
Absolutely no doubt who the HFR Hero of the Week is: Rick Perry, who took a bullet for the team. He was all set to give an adaptation of a suggested closing statement I wrote for him (appended below) at the South Carolina debate last night (1/19), when he decided that if he continued, the Not Romney vote would remain so split Romney would win. Now he won't. Gingrich will win the SC primary tomorrow (1/21) - despite the Obamamedia trying to take him out with his coyote ugly shrew ex-wife from Hell - thanks to Perry. That said, there is also absolutely no doubt who the HFR Jerk of the Week is - the schmuck, the phony "social conservative," the corrupt horse's derriere of the year - who singlehandedly caused Perry to lose the nomination because Perry told him to shove it for soliciting a bribe while Santorum said, "Let's talk." We're talking about...
DOES AMERICA STILL HAVE THE COURAGE TO BE FREE?
"It does little good to summon those very citizens who have been made so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power. However important, this brief and occasional exercise of their free choice will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus slowly falling below the level of humanity." -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America, 1835 De Tocqueville wrote at a time when large numbers of Americans not only were alive during the Revolution but had fought in it. Yet his astounding prescience accurately depicts exactly the unique form of tyranny enveloping and strangling us right now. He had no name for it, as "the type of oppression which threatens democracies is different from anything there has ever been in the world before." It is an oppression that its subjects willingly submit to. It is a voluntary surrender of freedom. It achieves an "immense protective power" through keeping people in "perpetual childhood." Under such an "administrative despotism," he concluded that "It really is difficult to imagine how people who have entirely given up managing their own affairs could make a wise choice of those who are to do that for them." Today, that "administrative despotism" in America has in fact finally been achieved. We're there. De Tocqueville's future is now. So - what do we do about it?
PERRY AND TURKEY’S “OPEN PRISON”
In the Republican candidate debate in South Carolina last Monday night (1/16, link is to debate transcript), moderator Bret Bair of Fox News asked Governor Rick Perry: "Governor Perry, since the Islamist-oriented party took over in Turkey, the murder rate of women has increased 1,400 percent there. Press freedom has declined to the level of Russia. The prime minister of Turkey has embraced Hamas and Turkey has threatened military force against both Israel and Cypress. Given Turkey's turn, do you believe Turkey still belongs in NATO?" And Gov. Perry replied: "Well, obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by, what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO, but it's time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it." This prompted outrage by Ankara, condemnation by the liberal media, and a strong defense by Perry of his claim. So is Perry right? Let's take a look at what is actually going on in Turkey today.
ROMNEY AND CAPITALISM
The two most anti-capitalist groups in America today are university professors and big businessmen. --- Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics Our nation is at a genuine crossroads. Even if we could scale back the trillions in new spending that Obama has larded into our federal budget, we would still be in trouble. Government has taken over major parts of American life and to regain our vitality, significant reforms must be made. Reforms of major areas of American life where Americans have grown accustomed to the heavy hand of government will be impossible if a large percentage of our population is mistrustful of free markets and business. To get this kind of change, leadership that inspires trust in free enterprise is essential. There's good reason for skepticism when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney showcases his business background as the reason he will inspire this kind of trust.
THE MEETING THAT WON’T CHANGE THE WORLD
At least it was cordial. But the 150 or so "movement conservatives" gathered at Paul Pressler's this weekend (1/13-14) were a fractured lot. Maybe 10% were for Perry. Almost all of them were against Romney. Well, sort of. Caveat below. When the case was made that Perry was the only candidate who actually understood the Constitution and the power of the 10th Amendment, the only one who was not a big government guy, the most successful governor in the country who has a rock solid record of job creation and conservative judicial appointments - they just didn't care. I want that to sink in. These conservative leaders really do not care about jobs, people hurting like the Great Depression, America's economy falling into an abyss. All they care about is "the family as the fabric of society," and other Rick Santorum social conservative platitudes. So a majority of them voted for Santorum. They could care less that Santorum would not do anything to reduce metastasizing government, much less castrate it (like Perry would), or has not the slightest trace of executive experience of any kind, government or private. When asked one-on-one why they were going for Santorum when they knew he had no money, no organization, and stood not a ghost of a chance to win the nomination, the truth came out:
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/13/12
We begin with the announcement many of you have been patiently waiting for: The 12th TTP Rendezvous (RXII) will be in California on Memorial Day weekend, Friday May 25 to Sunday May 26. Monday the 28th is Memorial Day, which gives everyone a day to either relax or return home at a leisurely pace. RXII will be The Plan B Rendezvous. We'll have a few sessions where a speaker talks and folks listen. But the main focus is for this to be a working rendezvous, discussing what strategies you can avail yourself of to best protect and prepare yourself for an increasingly probable fascist maelstrom. We all hope for an end to the Zero Presidency this November (actually next January). Yet we can't bet our farms on this, nor that there won't be extremely severe economic, social, and political problems in the aftermath of its desired demise, due to the inertia of fascism it has built up. How you and your loved ones surmount those problems is quite likely to depend on how good your Plan B is. The purpose of The Plan B Rendezvous is to enable you get a Plan B that really works for you. A number of TTPers have already done this, and they'll be there to teach you how. I'll see you there. Now here's a question of the week: What is Rick Perry's Plan B? He does have one, you know.
PERRY, OBAMA, AND HARRY TRUMAN
It's starting to look like 1948 all over again. Mark Twain observed that while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes. The 2012 presidential campaign is now rhyming with that of 1948 in iambic trimeter - the poetic form tragedians of Ancient Greece such as Aeschylus and Sophocles used to best express portending doom. So let's revisit that extraordinary yesteryear of 1948, resulting in the most famous upset in American politics - Democrat Harry Truman defeating Republican Tom Dewey - and see how we can avoid a similar outcome by using it to our advantage. How to do so is an opportunity being handed to Rick Perry on a platter. The opportunity is to agree with Zero...
THE CHOICE
This election -- including the Republican primary contest -- is about a fundamental question in American politics: We have an opportunity to decisively turn away from big government in Washington. Do we want to take it? Conservatives across the country are fed up with President Obama's Washington approach to governance. Massive, budget-busting, deficit spending (except on defense, where he proposes cuts that are downright dangerous). Bailouts. An ever-mounting national debt. A federal government that has reached its tentacles further into Americans' lives, by virtue of Obamacare with its noxious individual mandate to purchase health insurance. Excessive, bureaucratically dictated, job-killing environmental regulation. Dodd-Frank. Yet there are "big government conservatives" who argue that a big intrusive government is fine, desirable even, so long as it pursues "conservative" goals, which frequently when scrutinized are neither conservative nor worthy. Big government conservatives will never truly overhaul Washington because they need the status quo in place to accomplish their objectives. They don't want to rebuild the machine; they simply want to change the people pulling the levers. But that is not what the American people want. There is such deep and widespread discontent that nothing short of a complete overhaul will satisfy their justifiable demands.
ARE WE REALLY CAUSING THE OCEANS TO DIE?
Coral reefs around the world are suffering badly from overfishing and various forms of pollution. Yet many experts argue that the greatest threat to them is the acidification of the oceans from the dissolving of man-made carbon dioxide emissions. The effect of acidification, according to J.E.N. Veron, an Australian coral scientist, will be "nothing less than catastrophic.... What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime, and they will stay that way." This is a common view. The Natural Resources Defense Council has called ocean acidification "the scariest environmental problem you've never heard of." Sigourney Weaver, who narrated a film about the issue, said that "the scientists are freaked out." The head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls it global warming's "equally evil twin." But do the scientific data support such alarm?
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/06/12
As Jackie Gleason always said at the start of his show, "And awaaaaay we go!" with the first HFR of 2012. The first week of the year got shot out of the fascist cannon with Zero declaring war on Congress by making four presidential appointments that are egregiously unconstitutional. Ed Meese, President Reagan's Attorney General, explains why. The fury of Boehner Congressfolk means nothing to Zero. As an example of how hopelessly feckless the Pubtards are, Republican Senator Scott Brown (remember how excited we were about him a year ago?) announced his support for Zero's fascism. Michael Savage is no doubt correct in predicting that Zero's reelection will result in a Hugo Chavez-type banana republic dictatorship, for we are well on our way towards it right now. The fascist unconstitutional lawlessness of our federal government has built up a monumental amount of inertia, which won't be halted or slowed down merely by Zero's defeat. It will take an equally monumental effort to reverse its direction. Which brings us to the pointlessness of Mitt Romney. Why is he running for president other than to be president? That's really what's going on, you know. He wants to live up to his dad.
PRISON NOT PROFITS FOR INSIDER TRADING MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Earlier this week (1/04), the Chicago Tribune ran a little noted editorial on the insider trading scandal plaguing Congress, calling out phony efforts to reform the rules and demanding that we finally put a stop to this outrageous and unethical behavior. It's not enough members of Congress make $174,000 a year, some -- from both parties -- are trading on inside information to use their public service to enrich themselves. This has to stop. And more. In addition to calling for tough measures to outlaw insider trading by Members of Congress, I've called for making Congress part-time like the Texas legislature, cutting congressional pay in half, and amending FOIA to apply to Congress and the White House.
THE MEETING THAT CAN CHANGE THE WORLD
Gobsmacked. It's the word Brits use when they are stunned by something ridiculously astounding. Late Tuesday night (1/03), I was beyond gobsmacked when I heard the results of the Iowa Caucuses. Now it is Thursday (1/05), and I remain profoundly shaken by the stupefying stupidity of the Iowa caucus voters. It tells me that Zero's election in 2008 was no fluke, no spasm of temporary masochistic insanity. That voters are into reality-denial up to their ears. That whatever part of their brain they are using to vote with, it is most assuredly not their ratiocinative part. Iowans have no idea what they did to their country Tuesday: they substantially increased the odds that Zero will win re-election in November. It wasn't Romney or Santorum who won in Iowa. It was Zero who won, hands down. So let me tell you about a meeting that could change the world.
THE DISASTER OF SANTORUM
I'm trying to think of good reasons why Rick Santorum did so well in the Iowa caucus, only losing to Romney by 8 votes. So far all I can come up with is: 1. He's not Mitt Romney. 2. He's not Newt Gingrich. 3. Iowans feel more intellectual voting for the only candidate with a surname which sounds like a Latin genitive plural. What this doesn't mean, though, is that we're going to end up with President Santorum. Or, if we do, it will be a disaster. Santorum is the very opposite of what the US wants or needs right now. He's a big government conservative.
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/30/11
Happy New Year! You may be wondering how to cheerfully greet the coming darkness of 2012. Sounds like the folks getting crucified by the Romans singing Always Look On The Bright Side of Life in Monty Python's Life of Brian. Well, screw the darkness. Screw Obama and his fascist minions, his fascist regulations, and his fascist enemedia lapdogs. Life is about rising to the challenge, and that's what we're going to do in 2012. Other people are. Like in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad has had his goons gun down Syrians by the thousands, yet the Syrians keep fighting for their freedom. They are not giving up. Each day Assad gets weaker and they get stronger. Next year, they will win, with Assad ending up in a coffin or exile. Let the Syrians be an inspiration to us.
THE YEAR OF NOW OR NEVER
The way I write may surprise you as much as it surprises me. I get an idea of something I think is interesting, compile sources and references for it along with a few minimal notes, start writing with no clear picture of how this is going to turn out, then keep writing with no major edits or re-writes until I get to the end - which most often says something I had no idea I was going to say when I started. So let's see how this what's-coming-for-the-new-year effort turns out - because I have to tell you I wish I could be Rip Van Winkle now. Just go to sleep and wake up in 10 or 20 years when the awfulness of 2012 and the decade or two it took to recover from it is gone. I want to shed light on the darkness descending upon us, but as an example of how hard this is, consider that...
WE MUST HAVE A CLEAR CONSERVATIVE ALTERNATIVE TO OBAMA
Several new polls come as a jolt as they reflect the dismal state of mind of the American people. As USA Today's Susan Page sums up the latest USA Today/Gallup poll: the nation is "more downbeat, more dissatisfied with its political leadership and more concerned about the country's direction than at almost any point in modern times." New Pew Research Center polling shows a whopping 67 percent saying that most members of Congress should not be re-elected. This compared to 51 percent saying this in October 2010 before the last congressional election. From what I see, there are serious reasons why Republicans should be worried. Some conclude this all means that Republicans must water down the conservative message and nominate a moderate. But Americans crave answers, clarity and leadership. This call will not be answered by ambiguity. Obama is no moderate. If Democrats can nominate a hard core liberal, why can't Republicans offer a clear conservative alternative?
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/23/11
First things first. Merry Christmas!! As Jack Kelly observes, "There is no happier day." It is the day to honor the true meaning and origin of Christmas. It is the day, as Joel Wade notes, to honor our loved ones with gratitude. It is the day of squealing delight of little children when we give them presents from Santa. And it is a day that expresses one of humanity's most profoundly admirable abilities. Christmas originated in the Northern Hemisphere where it is winter in late December. It is dark, the hours of sunlight are few. It is freezing cold, the skies are gray and gloomy, there can be blizzards and snow and ice. All the leaves are gone, nature is hibernating. It is the lousiest time of year. Yet we humans choose to make this a time of glorious joy, a magical time of love and celebration. How extraordinary. How extraordinarily admirable that we have this capacity to do such a thing. Christmas is, then, a most appropriate time to reflect upon and be grateful for the goodness that Providence has bestowed upon the human soul.
WORSHIPPING THE WICKED
You've all seen the news clips of North Koreans in a state of religious lamentation, grieving their guts out over the death of their dictator Kim Jong-il. Cynics who have never been there claim the tears are fake. Nope, the tears are real. And what's more, all those Norks in mourning believe the entire world mourns with them. They would be stunned literally beyond belief to hear that their Dear Leader was regarded as a little fat nebbish laughingstock for all normal people on the rest of the planet. This was epitomized by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the funniest movie of modern times, Team America (TTP October 2004). After Kim throws UN nuclear negotiator Hans Blix ("Hans Brix") into a shark tank where he is ripped to shreds, Kim launches into a song: "I'm so ronery... so sadry and ronery arone..." It's the classic portrayal of Kim Jong-il as a joke - yet Kim Jong-il in reality was a hideously evil ogre, not a joke. He caused the deaths by famine of millions of his countrymen, and forced those left to live in impoverishment and the most brutal tyranny. Why, then, was he worshipped? The answer explains his worship in North Korea, and the electoral strategy of the Democrat Party in America.
THE ANTIDOTE TO CAPITALISM IS CAPITALISM FOR REAL
The anti-capitalist of the "Occupy" movement have a point: capitalism is proving unfair. But I would like to try to persuade them that the reason is because it is not free-market enough. The market, when allowed to flourish, tears apart monopoly and generates freedom and fairness better than any other human institution. Today's private sector, by contrast, is increasingly dominated by companies that are privileged by government through cozy contract, soft subsidy, convenient regulation, and crony conversation. That is why it is producing such unfair outcomes. For example, the finance industry upon which the Occupiers focus their fury, are protected from upstart competition by high regulatory barriers to entry, and handles the supply and demand of a good - money - that is priced by government fiat. For doing so, it pockets big bonuses even when arranging the issuance of bonds to pay for the bailing out of itself. It may be called capitalism, but it's not a free market, capitalism for real.
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/16/11
When someone asks, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?", which do you choose to hear first? I always choose the bad to get it over with, so that's what the HFR is doing today. Bearer of the bad news is economist David Malpass, whose nail-on-the-head analysis of the economic/political mess we're in - And The Crisis Winner Is? Government - appeared in this morning's (12/16) Wall Street Journal. Malpass is making it unavoidably obvious: The 2010 Republican House Majority under John Boehner has been worthless. He is also making it painfully obvious that the Tea Parties are as worthless as the Boehner Republicans. They have accomplished exactly nothing in Washington. Nothing. Nada, zilch, zero. What a flame-out. Evil always triumphs when good people do nothing, and they are doing nothing. So brace yourselves for the longest year of your lives: 2012. More joblessness, more economic decline, more deficit spending, more government intrusion into everyone's life and business, more anger and parasite demands from the Moocher Class, more demonization of the Producer Class, with the Grin of Evil that inhabits the White House laughing in our faces 24/7. Okay, okay, okay, okay, thanks for the downer, Jack, just what I needed at the end of the week - so what's the good news?
MOSLEMS IN THE NEWS
These days, we're constantly being subjected to news reports of Moslem antics in various parts of the world. This steady drizzle increased to a downpour over the past week, a global deluge of Islamic weirdness. Here's a sample of examples: Gujranwala, Pakistan. (Gujranwala is Pakistan's sixth largest city with 2.5 million.) On December 12, the Pakistan Express Tribune reported that a local villager, Asif Ali Babar murdered his mother for refusing to force her 12 year-old daughter (and thus his sister) to marry his brother-in-law in a "vani" settlement. Vani is the Islamic practice of selling a daughter in a child marriage as a means of settling a dispute between two families. Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Over a million British tourists come to this Red Sea resort a year (and more from other Western countries). Tourism is the only hope for recovery of the Egyptian economy devastated by the chaotic overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last February. Nonetheless, Islamic fundamentalists who are winning political power in the current elections announced today (12/15) that they intend to ban bikinis and booze at Sharm el-Sheikh and other Western tourist watering-holes. Oh, and the beaches must be separated into men and women only areas. This way, the fundies say, Westerners can "enjoy a vacation without sins." What fun.
TERRORIST SUPERHIGHWAY
President Obama deserves credit for authorizing the execution of Osama bin Laden and for significantly intensifying the drone campaign against terrorists. He's largely stopped romanticizing the Palestinians; has recognized that Putin made an ass of him; and has even hinted that he might stand up to China on some issues. But even if he turns into a combination of Ike, Reagan and Carl von Clausewitz in the coming months, his administration's foreign-policy record will forever be defined by his disastrous rush to leave Iraq - then brag about it. Does anybody at the White House look at a map? I realize that, thanks to the left's death-grip on our education system, we've stopped teaching trivial subjects like geography in favor of gender studies, but you don't have to be able to name all 17,000 islands belonging to Indonesia to recognize that simply quitting Iraq opens a terrorist superhighway straight from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Lebanon, Hezbollah, northern Israel and the eastern Mediterranean.
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/09/11
Why didn't I ever think to call Russian dictator Vladimir Putin The Gremlin In The Kremlin? It took the London Telegraph to come up with the cleverest headline of the week. At last, Russians are realizing what a punk Putin is, who tries so achingly hard to be a macho-man. (You know I have personal experience over what a lightweight he is.) ** Meanwhile, the hammering of Newt continues. What's really gone viral - particularly in Iowa - is this video hit comparing Newt's values to those of Kim Kardashian. Ouch! ** It's a contest as to who should be the HFR Hero of the Week. We report, you decide. ** Now for the HFR Word of the Week. Rehypothecation. It's literally a trillion-dollar word. To understand why, we need to talk about Cameron and Corzine.
THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE THE WORLD
There is a genre of historical fiction writing called Alternate or What-If History. Its purpose is to focus on one of history's critical forks in the road, and by speculating on what might have happened had a different fork been taken (e.g., if Lee had won at Gettysburg or if Booth had missed) it can advance our understanding of what did happen. It can only be useful in that regard if it is to be anything other than pure entertainment and idle speculation - for history cannot be changed. What did happen, happened, and not something else. History is stochastic, a series of uniquely unrepeatable events. Nonetheless, what-if alternate histories do help us realize that some events are more important than others, suddenly determining an outcome affecting the fate of very large numbers of people for generations to come. Ideally, they could be forward-looking, helping us distinguish between inconsequential forks we're facing and those we need to pay attention to - most especially enabling us to see when we're headed for a major Fork of History, one that future historians will be writing about. Like right now. A Fork that will determine the fate of the world, how the lives of billions of people will turn out. A Fork that will be endless fodder for future what-if histories. A Fork of History down one path of which lies doom, down the other lies liberation. We're there, folks. It's time to choose. There's only one thing that can extricate the world from the calamity descending upon it.
AMERICA AND NEHEMIAH
[This is the text of Gov. Rick Perry's address to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington DC yesterday, December 7] It is an honor to be with you today and to share my thoughts on faith, foreign policy and the free State of Israel. As we gather today, I am struck by the coincidence that two of the American citizens being unlawfully detained abroad today are Jewish: Alan Gross in Cuba, and Warren Weinstein by al Qaida in Pakistan. In both cases their offense was spreading political and economic freedom to better the lives of less advantaged people around the globe. The repressive Castro regime should not be rewarded with increased tourism while Mr. Gross languishes in prison, and Pakistani authorities should clearly understand the significance of rescuing Mr. Weinstein from terrorist elements within their borders if they value the foreign aid they seem to take for granted. We have an Administration in Washington today whose foreign policy is an incoherent mess. They embolden our adversaries while isolating our allies.
GORILLAS & PYGMIES EXPEDITION
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.