No snide comments how "rational Frenchman" is an oxymoron.  There are plenty of them, albeit not enough.  I had lunch with one of them here in DC yesterday.  He's Pierre Lellouche, who represents Paris (4th district) in the National Assembly (France's Parliament) and is President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

If you had been there with me, you'd have come away wishing he were Bush's National Security Advisor for Europe.  Even better, though, is that after Nicolas Sarkozy is elected President of France next April (see Sarko vs. Eurabia, January 2005), M. Lellouche may be France's Defense Minister.

So if you had joined me for lunch, here's how you would have heard him describe France and the world.

Get a few conservative Congressmen together over a few beers and a favorite conversational topic will be, Who's the worst president in modern memory?

No, it's not George Bush.  But a number of them can make out a good case that it's his father.

Worse even than Jimmy Carter? will come the astounded response.  Yes, they say.  Carter inherited a lousy economy and the Soviets on the imperial march.  He was a disaster because the little wimp made a bad situation so much worse.   

Bush the Elder, on the other hand, inherited a revitalized America, a surging economy, and a collapsing Soviet Union.  He did everything to reverse all three.  Then he rescued Red China.

Yet you won't get a debate out of them as to the worst Senate of modern times.  No question about it:  this one, with fellow Republicans in charge.

Do you think your taxes are too high or too low? Though I expect that well over 90 percent of you are thinking "too high," the liberal media and political class keep telling us taxes are too low.

The left-leaning intelligentsia, in their arrogant smugness, claim we just don't know what is good for us. Yet, they are the ones who ignore the empirical evidence and are unable to distinguish between variables and constants.

As a prime example, a May 7 editorial in The Washington Post, advocating higher tax rates on the rich, states: "Economics cannot predict how high taxes can be raised before they reach counterproductive levels."

The editorial then says an increase of "taxes on the top 1 percent by 5 percentage points would raise $85 billion annually or perhaps a bit less if it spurred some extra tax evasion."

Which country receives the most in total foreign aid from all donors? The official numbers show Iraq at the top with $3 to $18 billion in aid (depending on how you define "aid") and all the other recipient nations of the world at less than $3 billion per year.

However, if you look at which nation benefits most from foreign subsidies, the U.S. would come out on top by a very wide margin.

If you live in Washington and you're a guest on Fox News, the producers graciously send a car and driver to take you to the studio and back home after the show.  One of the Fox drivers is a colorful character everyone calls "Wolf."  He grew up in Yugoslavia (in what is now Bosnia), and he told me a very illuminating story.

Wolf had read The Natural Gas Solution (soon after we first met he became a TTP subscriber) and explained how he knew it was accurate.  "I drove a Yugo car when I lived in Sarajevo back in the 70s," he said.  "Gas was so expensive and it was rationed.  So I, like several of my friends, installed a CNG (compressed natural gas) tank in the trunk, hooked a line up to the carburetor, and ran the car on natural gas.  We got such great mileage and the car ran so well, that we could drive to Trieste (in Italy) on weekends."

Jack,An independent Ph.D. energy economist disagrees with your dismissal of LNG (liquefied natural gas).  He claims "it's economic to transport LNG at $3-3.50 mBTU [million British Thermal Units]," and that "if the world price is high enough, it will make economic sense for producers to liquefy it and send it to China."  In other words, natural gas (NG) is not "de-coupled" from the world market as you say.  He asserts that natural gas is "just as fungible as oil."

John M.

Reply:

John,Could this fellow be shilling for Chevron or some other outfit hyping LNG?

Well, not quite yet, but soon.  The funniest headline of the week was "South American Leaders Support Bolivia Gas Nationalization."  Yesterday (5/4), at Puerto Iguazo, Argentina, Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentine President Nestor Kirchner met with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales and promised to "respect" Morales' nationalization of Bolivia's natural gas.

Only folks who are interested in buying bridges in Brooklyn are going to believe that.

A number of perceptive folks on Capitol Hill have noticed some very odd things about OBL's latest audio tape.  The principal eyebrow-raiser was his call to take the Jihad against the Crusader-Zionists away from Iraq and into Darfur, Sudan.

Normally it takes at least some time for the CIA to claim an OBL audio tape is authentic.  This time it was almost immediate:  "Yep, it's him, no doubt about it."

Putting the weirdness about Darfur-focus (aren't there a lot more "Crusader-Zionists" in Iraq than in the central Sahara Desert?) and Langley's over-eagerness to authenticate together, and you get the latest Capitol Hill buzz:

The voice on the tape wasn't Osama but an Arabic-speaking CIA impersonator.  Agents slipped the faked tape to al-Jazeera which cooperatively broadcast it, then the CIA authenticated its own tape.

While Neil Cavuto was very cordial when I was on his Fox news show recently, he was nonetheless startled to hear me claim that Mexico is the greatest national security threat to America, more than Iran, China, or Moslem terrorism.  He suggested my prediction of a possible Second Civil War could be "inflammatory."

How inflammatory, then, would he consider these public statements?

Excelsior, the national newspaper of Mexico: "The American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot."

Jose Pescador Osuna, Mexican Consul General: "We are practicing 'La Reconquista' in California."

Augustin Cebada, Brown Berets:  "Go back to Boston!  Go back to Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims!  Get out!  We are the future.  You are old and tired.  Go on.  We have beaten you.  Leave like beaten rats. You old white people.  It is your duty to die . . Through love of having children, we are going to take over."

America is not in a struggle regarding "illegal immigration."  America is in a struggle for its physical existence.

Why do Mexicans only have one-third the per capita income (on a purchasing power parity basis) of Canadians and only one-fourth that of Americans?

The answer is that Mexicans are relatively poor because have been plagued by semidespotic regimes that have ignored the rule of law and often engaged in destructive economic policies.    

Mexicans have been free of their Spanish colonial masters for almost 200 years (almost as long as their American neighbors and far longer than Canadians have enjoyed independence).

Mexico has a better growing climate than Canada, and it is rich in natural resources -- oil, gas, and metals.

Ever so often, the America-hating depravity of liberals is exposed with breathtaking clarity.  Normally, they try to hide their embarrassment at being an American.  Or they'll get angrily defensive.  "Are you questioning my patriotism?" they'll intimidatingly ask.  To which the answer is:  "I would if you had any patriotism to question."

They fudge and smudge over the fact that they are always on the side of America's enemies.  They always blame America for any problem in the world, and root for America to lose in any conflict.

What they hide best is their secret admiration for Osama Bin Laden.  They know how many Americans would like to tar and feather them if they admitted they were thrilled that a guy in a beard and turban living in an Afghan cave destroyed the world's tallest buildings in America's greatest city, killed thousands on American soil, and humbled the Great Superpower in the eyes of the world.

So liberals keep this to themselves.  Once in a while, though, one of them exposes himself and reveals the ugliness of his soul. 

Like a fellow named Richard Marshall did in an email to me this week.

The myth of Birthright Citizenship is one of the more extraordinary frauds committed in America today.  Liberals insist that the "Citizenship Clause" of the 14th Amendment - which states "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" - means that children of illegal aliens born on US soil automatically are US citizens.

The 14th Amendment means no such thing.  When it was ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of native-born Black Americans, whose rights were being denied as recently-freed slaves, the Citizenship Clause's author, Senator Jacob Howard, made it explicitly clear that the clause did not apply to "persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States."

Ufda.  That's Wow! in Swedish.  The reaction to the concept of a Radio Free Mexico has been amazing.  Yesterday (4/19), for example, I was interviewed on the Roger Hedgecock talk show in San Diego, and he was so excited about RFM he barraged me with questions:  Have you got your funding yet?  When will it be launched?  Do you have your programming lined up?

The Jade Steps

Chapter Twenty-Five:  Prisoner In His Palace 

As they were returning to their quarters in the Palace of Axayacatl, Cortez announced, "If we cannot yet say Mass and have a chapel upon that temple, then at least for now we must be able to do so where we are housed.  Doña Marina, please send a request to Montezuma asking that we be allowed to build this chapel in his father's palace."

When word came quickly back that the request was granted, Cortez assigned his best carpenter, Alonso Yañez, to the task.  Early the next morning, Yañez, escorted by Juan Velasquez de Leon and Francisco de Lugo, interrupted the morning meal of Cortez and Malinali.  "Captain, we have found something you should see," he said.

Yañez brought them into a small room.  "We thought that this room would be appropriate for our chapel," he explained.  He walked over to one of the room's walls.  "Then I noticed something strange.  You can see that there is fresh plaster and paint here, most likely covering up a door.  A door to what we think is a hidden room."

Without hesitation, Cortez responded, "Señor Yañez, you are to be congratulated for your sharp eyes.  Let us open this hidden door."

Cortez called for torches.  Bernal appeared with lit torches for all just as Yañez and his assistant broke through the plastered doorway.  Cortez was the first to step into the black entrance of the sealed room, followed by de Leon, de Lugo, Malinali, Yañez, and Bernal. 

The Pentagon takes the military and terrorist threat of Iran extremely seriously.  Yet the brass in Rummy's inner circle could not keep their faces straight with all the recent announcements from Tehran.

A week ago on April 7, the air force chief of Pasdaran, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Hossein Salami, announced the successful firing of a stealth missile impossible to detect by radar, hailing the Fajr (Dawn) 3 as a "remarkable" achievement.

Turns out it was a primitive Shahab-2 copy of an unsophisticated Russian Scud-C.

Sunday April 9, the deputy naval commander of Pasdaran, Gen. Ali Fadavi announced the launching of "the world's fastest underwater missile," a torpedo so fast it was undetectable.

Turns out it's a poor copy of a Soviet-era rocket-powered torpedo, the Shkval.  It's range is less than four miles, has no target designation devices and is not self-homing.  It's huge wake makes it easy to spot and destroy.

A To The Point Editorial

Why is it that the left always denounces people on the right for ‘wrapping themselves in the American flag,' and is so fond of saying ‘patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels' - and then celebrates this same behavior when performed by illegal aliens?

The giant pro-illegal immigration rallies of Monday April 10 in many US cities have got to be the greatest exercises of phony flag waving in the history of America.  And newspapers like the Washington Post promoted it to the hilt, with front page pictures of demonstrators waving a sea of American flags and carrying signs saying ‘We are all Americans'.

It was such an incredibly obvious act of mass political cynicism.  The first mass pro-illegal alien demonstrations a couple of weeks before displayed the demonstrators' true loyalties by waving the Mexican flag.  Now they all turn on a dime and there's hardly a Mexican flag to be seen.  It's all we-love-America-red-white-and-blue.  Yet the chant is still the same:  Si se puede in Spanish, not ‘Yes we can' in English.

There's a cheap and easy way for anyone protecting the US-Mexico border from the alien invasion - such as the Minutemen - to spot an illegal a mile away.  So if you know any Minutemen, feel free to forward this to them.For here's how they can make their own Illegal Alien Detector.

Want to turn your kids on to some great rock and roll?  To right rock and roll, pro-American rock and roll, not the left-wing anti-American trashy sleaze they've overloaded their iPod with because they never heard anything else?

Then turn them on to The Right Brothers.  They're a young, hip conservative trio out of Nashville whose hit song Bush Was Right is driving the left crazy.  The music is hard driving rock, the beat is foot stomping, and the lyrics... well, just imagine your kids singing along to them:

Bush Was Right by The Right Brothers Lyrics by Frank Highland

Freedom in Afghanistan, say goodbye Taliban Free elections in Iraq, Saddam Hussein locked up Osama's staying underground, Al Qaeda now is finding out America won't turn and run once the fighting has begun Libya turns over nukes, Lebanese want freedom, too Syria is forced to leave, don't you know that all this means

Bush was right! Bush was right! Bush was right!

The Jade Steps

Chapter Twenty Four:  The Jade Steps

When the food arrived, turkeys and maize cakes in great abundance, Malinali ate quickly.  She had no time for conversation with Bernal, eager to talk about the wonders of the palace.  She cast a knowing glance at Cortez and fled from the room.  She returned within the hour, Cortez inviting her to join the group of officers with whom he was conferring.  Everyone looked at her expectantly.

"I heard no talk around this palace or out on the plaza of any trap.  I overheard talk between guards, nobles, priests, and common people.  They all talk of you using the word teotl (tay-ottle), which means wonder, awesome, terrifying power.  They talk of how the strangers are men from another more powerful world, men they have never seen before.  Montezuma, it seems, can talk of nothing else.  There is no anger in what I heard, only teotl."

A year ago, in Bye-Bye Bolivia, you learned that if Evo Morales were to take over Bolivia, the country would split in two.  Sure enough, after less than four months in office, Morales is well on his way.

Morales, recall, leads the Quechua and Aymara ethnic majorities up in the Andean highlands, and got elected by focusing their resentment on the Spanish and other European ethnic minorities in the eastern lowlands.  Yet the lowlands have all the oil and gas reserves.

With Morales promising to nationalize - a euphemism for "steal" - the lowland resources, the governor of the lowland province of Tarija, Mario Cossio, has met with government officials of neighboring Paraguay and Argentina, asking their support in declaring Tarija's secession from Bolivia.

He is being joined by the governors of the lowlands' other three provinces, Santa Cruz, Pando, and Beni.  The new country could be called after its nickname of Media Luna, "Half Moon," from the provinces' collective shape.