Dr. Jack Wheeler
HALF FULL REPORT 08/08/08
This week we'll be talking a lot about numbers. It's a mark of a primitive brain to be superstitious about particular ones, to believe that certain numbers are "lucky" or "unlucky." For all their vaunted rationality, most Chinese for example have a Stone Age superstition that the number 8 brings good fortune. So they quite purposefully are having their Olympics begin today, 08/08/08, precisely at 8:08pm Beijing time. People with primitive beliefs are vulnerable. If the Chicom Olympics don't live up to expectations, don't bring China the world's adoration and respect, then the Chicoms risk losing the "Mandate of Heaven" - the superstitious belief that fate favors them. Watch the Games unfold over the next two weeks with that context in mind. There's a lot more drama going on than just in the athletic contests. *** Now for fun with numbers. Magic numbers. The most magic number in America right now is 112.
THE EVIL EMPIRE OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Ronald Reagan first condemned the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando Florida on March 8, 1983. Publicly naming the explicit nature of Soviet imperialism provided the necessary focus for those of us working on a strategy to rid the world of it - a strategy the press called the Reagan Doctrine. Less than eight years after President Reagan spoke those immortal words, the Soviet Union was no more. Ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin is determined to resurrect this evil empire with oil billions, gangster capitalism, and Russian thuggery. But Russia is dying demographically and by 2015 half the Russian Army will be Moslem. By 2020 or maybe before, the eastern half of Russian Siberia will be Chinese Siberia (TTP, November 2006). Russia has no future beyond ephemerally high oil prices. Once they crash, so does Russia. So is there an heir to the title of Evil Empire in this new century? Yes. It is China. One principal reason is that the internal structure of the former Soviet Union and China are the same. One benefit of the Beijing Olympics is to make that blindingly clear.
DESTROYER OF THE GULAG BUT NO LOVER OF FREEDOM
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died Sunday (8/03) of heart failure at age 89, was a titan in Russian literature and politics of the 20th century. He survived the Stalinist purges, World War II, eight years in the gulag, a successful battle with cancer, and communist denunciation. After spending 18 years exiled in America, he made a triumphant return to his homeland in 1994. Mr. Solzhenitsyn's life was full of contradictions. Together with another giant, Russian Nobel Prize winning physicist Andrei Sakharov and fellow dissidents, he contributed greatly to the exposure of totalitarian socialism's moral bankruptcy. However, he was a harsh critic of liberal democracy, and of America, despite the fact that it gave him shelter and protection during his difficult years of exile. A Harvard commencement speech in which he accused Americans of hedonism and cowardice became a scandal. While his family became U.S. citizens, he refused to do so. Russia today probably approaches Mr. Solzhenitsyn's ideal.
WHAT HAPPENED TO JUSTICE IN AMERICA?
What happened to justice in America? It certainly wasn't served on July 28 when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the unjust convictions of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. During the appellate court's hearing on December 3, 2007, the judges exhibited a disapproving posture towards the government's case. My communications director, Tara Setmayer, witnessed one of the appellate judges say first hand, "it does seem the government overreacted" in this prosecution. The judges questioned why the prosecutors "stacked" the charges and got the government's attorney to admit their drug-smuggling star witness "told some lies.". Yet the judges, after almost eight months of deliberation, issued a 46 page ruling in complete contrast to what happened in court. What could have possibly happened between the December 3rd hearing and now?
RUSSIAN MADNESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
In March 2009, Russia will deploy modern S-300 long-range anti-aircraft missiles in Iran. By June 2009, they will become fully operational, as Iranian teams finish training with Russian instructors, according to U.S. and Russian sources. Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian Senate, visited Washington last week. He said Iran is likely to produce a nuclear bomb "soon." Given the blood-curdling rhetoric of its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it is feared that Iran may use it against Israel. The deployment of the anti-aircraft shield next spring effectively limits the window in which Israel or the United States can conduct an effective aerial campaign aimed at destroying, delaying or crippling the Iranian nuclear program.
HALF-FULL REPORT 08/01/08
This week it became abundantly clear what a certain megalomaniacal naïve neophyte narcissist presidential aspirant should most appropriately be named. Predecessor names have been Obambi, The Obamarama, Obamessiah, The One, and The Child - the latter due to the rumor that when in Israel last month, he made a secret visit to Bethlehem to see where he thinks he was born. They are all obsolete now, because as of this week, he shall henceforth be called: Egobama. A proverb of the ancient Greeks applies to Egobama: He whom the gods wish to destroy they first drive crazy. For the Greeks, it was a particular kind of craziness that caused self-destruction: hubris. Not rational earned pride but lunatic self-importance, egomania. *** The HFR breathes a sigh of relief that at last the invertebrate incompetent crook running Israel, Ehud Olmert, is stepping down. Getting this despised man out of power has been like trying to pry an abalone off a rock (any diver knows how hard that is). And tragically, he'll still be around for many more months - the mortally critical months from November to January in particular. Those are the months - specifically from November 5 to January 19 - between the US election and inauguration. That's when Bush will have a fully free hand to conduct a US strike, or assist an Israeli strike, on Iran. *** Should the HFR raise a glass to coincidences? Like the coincidence between the Half-Full Report 07/16/08 revealing the CIA-ISI-Taliban-opium nexus and the CIA leaking to the New York Times two weeks later (7/30) a story about the Pakistan ISI links to the Afghan Taliban? Isn't it funny how all of a sudden, right after but never before - for years never before - the To The Point revelation, there's a flurry of big time media stories denouncing the ISI-Taliban connection? How about this headline in the Washington Post today (8/01): U.S. Officials: Pakistani Agents Helped Plan Kabul Bombing. Even funnier is how CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappes is doing the CYA Dance after the TTP revelation, leaking these stories. What's not funny is that it's all smoke and mirrors.
THE CHINESE MIRACLE ON CAPITOL HILL
A miracle took place on Capitol Hill yesterday, July 31, 2008. Democrats and Republicans in the House united on a vote of 419-1 to explicitly and in itemized detail condemn the Chicom government of China. The single lone Congressman to vote No was Ron Paul (R-TX) - demonstrating once again that his total incapacity to defend America against its foreign enemies is why his presidential campaign failed. House Resolution 1370 is the most pro-American statement of Congress in modern times. For it is China that is and will be the greatest national security threat to America for the foreseeable future. Far more than Islamic crazies running around chanting allahallahallah, and believing that blowing themselves up will somehow force the world back into the 7th century. To The Point is thus pleased to provide the full text of H. Res. 1370. It is an astounding compendium of Chicom perfidy.
THE DESTROYER OF AMERICA
A rally in Berlin in front of a quarter-million glistening-eyed, bosom-clenching, swooning Germans is a historically awkward spot for a leader to proclaim his worldwide goals for tomorrow. But that's where Barack Hussein Obama chose to declare: "The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between natives and immigrants cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down. We know that these walls have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a union of promise and prosperity." That last sentence would suggest that Obama is not terribly keen about nation-states - ours in particular. That is why, presumably, he says that we must tear down the walls between the countries "with the most" -- that would be the United States -- and those with the least. That is why he calls for tearing down walls between "natives and (illegal?) immigrants."
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/25/08
Yes, it's the Breck Boy, making headlines in Tuesday's (7/22) National Enquirer: Sen John Edwards Caught with Mistress and Love Child. And get a load of the mistress' picture. Isn't she a looker? Can you imagine waking up next to that? Last October, the Enquirer ran a story about Edwards cheating on his wife, whose cancer he was milking for the sympathy vote during his presidential campaign. But the Enquirer never revealed her name, so her identity came as a big surprise to the public when it was revealed now. A surprise to the public - but not to you. For the day after that first NE story, on October 11, 2007 you learned her identity in The Breck Boy Is Cleared From The Presidential Field. She's a New Age Bimbo named Lisa Druck, who now goes by the name of Rielle Hunter. But as a TTP'er, you already knew that - a long time ago. The HFR raises its goblet of glee that the Breck Boy has been cleared from the vice-presidential field. *** Now let's have a beer on the beach - Huntington Beach in Orange County, California, where the Republican Party will triumph or die in November.
GOOD NEWS FROM BULGARIA
I fell in love with Bulgaria when I was first there as the Soviet empire was collapsing in early 1990. There's thousands of years of history - Bronze Age tribes, the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, medieval Christian kingdoms, hidden monasteries protecting Christianity from centuries of Moslem oppression by the Ottoman Turks, finally gaining independence in 1908 only to lose it to the Soviet Union during World War II, and now free at last. And all through this, Bulgarians forged and kept a Christian culture and heritage. Hundreds of thousands of people come from all over the world to visit the extraordinary monasteries such as Rila the Bulgarians built to preserve their culture from Moslem imperialism. Even more visitors - millions in the height of the summer - come to vacation on the gorgeous beaches of Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. In the winter, skiers flock to ski resorts high in the Balkans. It's a country of such profusion of flowers everywhere there's an entire valley called the Valley of Roses. You couldn't ask for a more hospitable warm-hearted people - or ask for a better way to be shown hospitality, for Bulgarians really know how to make good wine and are more than happy to share a glass with you at every opportunity. And speaking of opportunity... There are more opportunities to make a lot of money in Bulgaria than almost anywhere else in the world. Especially because a major obstacle of those opportunities was removed this week.
TALL, SLENDER, INCOMPREHENSIBLE, AND SIMPLISTIC
Watching Obama glide through his foreign trip so far, nervous Republicans and other patriots have to hope that American voters will not view Obama through the eyes of a Hollywood casting director. That's because one could not cast a man who visually can portray a worldly statesman better. We all must envy his ability to effortlessly drape his tall, imperially slender form in gilded Louis XV chairs in foreign palaces. Mixing just the right combination of worldly bonhomie and serious mien, his presentation (conveniently presented to the world with video but no audio) make, by comparison, Henry Kissinger, FDR and Winston Churchill all look like clumsy provincial oafs. The visual is everything in his campaign, for when he does submit himself to the occasional press interview, his actual words read in print must make his handlers as nervous as his visual images make Republicans nervous. His discussion of his Iraq policy is almost incomprehensible, and his understanding of the world stunningly simplistic.
THERE IS NO EVIDENCE CARBON EMISSIONS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING
I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects. The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet. But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming.
THE REAL OBAMA IN AFGHANISTAN
[Last Saturday, July 19, Barack Hussein Obama paid a brief visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on his way to Kabul. US Marine Battle Captain Jeffrey S. Porter wrote a brief eyewitness account in an email to his family and friends, which To The Point is able to publish here.] Hello everyone, As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram, Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to 'The War Zone'. I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers were lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General.
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/16/08
So many of you have said they miss the Half-Full Report during our summer schedule that I figure I better change the schedule rather than give the HFR a summer hiatus. So here we go, although with so many goodies to choose from, where do we begin? Let's start by trying to decide who gets this week's prize for being The World's Most Wonderful Hypocrite - Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh or the Editors of the New Yorker Magazine. Is there a single person possessing a three-digit IQ on the entire planet who actually believes New Yorker editor David Remnick's claim that his cover cartoon of Obambi as a Moslem imam, Mrs. Obambi as a Black Panther, and them fist-bumping in America-hating admiration of Osama bin Laden is a satire? ...Nonetheless, When it comes to sheer straightforward look-you-in-the-eye hypocrisy, India's leaders leave the guys at the New Yorker in the dust. In lyrical words full of glowarming pieties, they've just announced India will be increasing its CO2 emissions by twenty times in the coming years. ...There's even happier glowarming news. The world's most fascist scientist, the founding guru of global warming and Algore's mentor, James Hansen, may be about to get what he deserves. And now it's time for us to retire to a quiet table off in a corner of the barroom where we can talk and not be overheard. This will be between just you, me, and bottle of Famous Grouse.
WHAT IF, MR. BERNANKE?
What if Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and the other Fed board members actually believe that the Consumer Price Index means the same thing as it did in the 1970s? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (an agency of the Labor Dept.) calculates the CPI, not the Federal Reserve. If the Fed Governors are unaware of the changes since then in how it is calculated, it would explain why they aren't in a panic over the current real consumer inflation rate. It would explain why they really seem to be certain that we are not in a recession. It would also mean that unless they wake up from their time warp, the dollar and our economy are truly doomed.
WEST OF THE DEAD SEA
You're lazily swimming in the Mediterranean Sea just off a beautiful beach. The beach goes on for miles, lined with resort hotels, and it's crowded with people. Young fit men playing volleyball, beautiful bikini-clad young women sunbathing, families relaxing under umbrellas, children making sand castles, multitudes of folks peacefully enjoying themselves in the sun, the sand, and the gentle sea. You swear you're at one of Spain's great beaches, like Valencia, Marbella, or Barcelona. But you've noticed that a small light plane has flown along the shoreline several times. Your son asks, "Dad, why does that plane keep flying by?" "It's an IDF spotter plane," you tell him. "Watching for a boatload full of Arab terrorists who might land to machine gun to death as many Jews on this beach as they can. Stuff like that can happen here anyplace, anytime. That's life in Israel." Nope, we're not in Valencia. We're in Tel Aviv.
THE DEMAGOGUE AND THE PIGEON
Way back last month in June, Barack "middle name not permitted to be mentioned" Obama campaigned on the theme of "Change We Can Believe In." Now, several days later, in July, his theme should be "Change We Can't Keep Up With." Abortion, gun control, capital punishment, FISA laws, the status of Jerusalem, faith-based federal programs, public financing of his campaign, welfare, NAFTA and free trade, and his commitment to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church have all fallen to reconsideration, re-phrasing, changed rhetorical modulation and other semantic miracles. His Iraq position is currently in the process of glissading from "anti" to "pro" - so we will have to wait a while before saying he has actually changed it. Which brings us as it always does in such circumstances to America's greatest fraud-sniffer, H.L. Mencken. He defined a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
UPDATES FOR A HAPPY FOURTH
637 million IE Browsers at risk Researchers claim there are 637 million Internet Explorer users at risk, because they are less likely to update their browser for security updates, than Firefox, Safari and Opera users. If this is you, please protect yourself and update now. Independence Day Happy July 4th to all Americans, we have so much to be proud of! People know your Bill of Rights You live in the land of the free, please know your rights! Syllabus of SCOTUS in District of Columbia ET AL. V. HELLER No. 07-290. Argued March 18, 2008-Decides June 26, 2008. America The Beautiful Katharine Lee Bates first wrote this song in 1913. We've all sung the first stanza many times - but there are seven more. For all the stanzas and a history about her, click on the link above.
FREEDOM’S BIRTHDAY 2008
[This was originally in To The Point for July 4, 2004. This is the version for 2008. We at To The Point wish all of you an exceedingly happy Fourth of July.] July 4th is Freedom's Birthday. My suggestion is, amidst the fireworks and barbeques and flag-waving fun - all of which are great - that you take the time to feel good about America. Put aside your worries and concerns, your frustrations and fears about what's wrong with America. For one day, forget the negative - put it all in a zip-lock bag, hide it in the back of the freezer, and pretend it doesn't exist. You travel around the world and you see the remnants of history's great civilizations. You walk through the preserved wreckage of Rome's Imperial Forum or the Acropolis of Ancient Athens and you wonder -- what was it really like to be here when these civilizations were at their peak? You can do that today in Washington DC -- or your hometown. We Americans are privileged to live in one of history's supreme moments. We Americans are participants in one of history's greatest civilizations in its prime. Someday in some future epoch, history will have moved on, and there will be distant centuries between that time and the American Era. People will then look upon America as we do upon ancient Egypt or Greece, and will do so with same wonder and awe. I suggest you look upon America with that wonder and awe now.
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA
The 2,000 year-old Rose Red City of Petra was the religious center of an ancient desert people named Nabataeans. They didn't build huge temples such as this - they carved them out of cliffs of rose-red sandstone in their hidden mountain sanctuary east of the Dead Sea. Their capital was the ancient city of Ammon, known to the Greeks and Romans as Philadelphia, after the Hellenic ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309-246 BC). Nabataea flourished until it was conquered by the Roman Emperor Trajan (53-117 AD). The Nabataeans converted to Christianity and lived as peaceful farmers until they were overrun by Arab invaders in the 7th century who forced them to submit to Islam. They vanished, and so did any memory of Petra until it was discovered by a Swiss explorer, Johann Burckhardt, in 1812. Ammon, pronounced Amman (ah-man vs. ah-mone) by the Arabs, had been reduced to rubble by a series of earthquakes during the Middle Ages, and remained a small village with some Roman ruins for centuries. The entire area east of the Dead Sea was a forgotten desert wasteland, incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in the early 1500s and ignored by the Sultans in Istanbul. And then the history that continues to shake our world today began...
A PESHMERGA’S QUESTION
This is Mir Mokhsen, a Peshmerga or Kurdish freedom fighter who has fought in hundreds of battles for Kurdish freedom for half a century. He has faced Saddam Hussein's tanks, Russian-made helicopter gunships, chemical weapons and poison gas, the unspeakable brutality of Saddam's soldiers countless times - and survived. He has never given up. Never. This revered warrior has a question for you: As an American, the freedom he has risked his life so much for has been given to you - so what are you doing to preserve it? Mir Mokhsen has heard that there will be a gathering of Americans dedicated to preserving their freedom in Boston at the end of August. He wishes he could attend, but he belongs in the mountains of his beloved Kurdistan. You, on the other hand, belong in Boston, where the American Revolution began. The To The Point Revolutionary Rendezvous is August 22-24. Don't disappoint Mir Mokhsen. Don't disappoint yourself. Be there and join your fellow TTP'ers for a revolutionary good time. To participate, click on the Rendezvous box in the TTP left side bar, and call TTP General Manager Miko de los Reyes at 703-992-4529 or [email protected]. Please call or email Miko right away. No procrastinating. That means now! After all, you wouldn't want Mir Mokhsen to think you're not a freedom fighter, would you?
THE KURDISH MAP
One of my favorite lecture topics is "The Map of the Future." In a talk I've given to business groups in a number of countries and all over the US, I put a big map of the world up and start describing the map's illusions. I point to Russia, the largest country in the world at 17 million square kilometers (msk, 6.5 million square miles or msms); Canada, the second largest at 10msk, 3.8msm; and Greenland, the world's largest island at 2.2msk, 0.85msm - all totaling 29.2 million square kilometers or 11.3 million square miles. Spread out across the top of the map, they look like they take up half the world. Africa, squat and compact athwart the Equator, looks dwarfed in comparison. Yet in reality, you could fit all of Russia, Canada, and Greenland combined into Africa with room to spare - for Africa exceeds 30 million square kilometers or 11.7 million square miles. The flat world map is a lie. Gigantic Greenland is actually the same size as Saudi Arabia. If you wanted to go directly in a straight line from Gibraltar to the Bering Straits, you wouldn't go across Russia, you'd go across the North Pole. "Now let's talk about another set of lies and illusions on this map," I continue. "These lines drawn all over, which governments of countries call their ‘borders,' and claim they actually exist. They are desperate to keep the illusion that they exercise ‘sovereignty' within their ‘borders' and will do anything to preserve the illusion." The Kurds, at 40 million the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, are in the geopolitical business of exposing such illusions. To see how, let's take a look at two maps, one from the past, another from a proposed future.
‘ANY AMERICAN WHO HATES GEORGE BUSH IS CRAZY’
You're looking at the oldest continuously occupied city in the world. For 7,000 years, people have been living in what is now called the Citadel - the same people who live there now: the Kurds. The Citadel is the center of Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. I am writing this from a hotel room - with wireless Internet! - overlooking this most ancient of cities. The sense of history here is enormous. A couple of dozen miles northeast of here is a wide flat plain called Gaugemela, where in 331 BC, the 40,000 Greek soldiers of Alexander the Great met the 100,000 Persians of Darius III. Utilizing a battle strategy so masterful it is studied by all students of warfare, Alexander destroyed the Persian army, killing 50,000 at a loss of 4,000. Darius fled and was killed by his own generals, who surrendered the entire Persian Empire to Alexander. The Kurds celebrated their liberation from Persian tyranny, and thanked their god, Yazdan, and his prophet, Zoroaster, for Alexander. Today, they thank Yazdan for George W. Bush.
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/12/08
The Chicoms' prospects for their Genocide Olympics keep rolling downhill. The latest headline indicator: Will The Olympics Not Be Televised? Incredibly, the Chicoms are putting so many restrictions hampering television coverage that IOC officials fear the Beijing Games may not be broadcast to the world at all. The whole thing is increasingly likely to be one giant MCF - Mongolian Cluster Foul-up... ...An even bigger MCF may have caused China's Sichuan earthquake last month. It's become known that the earthquake zone was where China had its secret nuclear weapons research facilities. What's much less well-known is that a nuclear explosion occurred at one of these secret underground facilities, either triggering or triggered by the earthquake... ... The HFR now raises its glass of rice wine to toast cumbay! to all those poor demented souls in Seoul suffering from Mad Korean Disease... Yet Mad Obambi Disease is far more dangerous to America than fear of mad cows is to Korea. To see just how dangerous it would be to our national security, watch this 52-second anti-military rant Obambi goes on... ... Which is why the HFR hoists a mug of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer to Tony Rezko in hopes he lives a long life - or at least long enough for him to turn state's evidence and rat on Obambi.
SUMMER 2008
In a few hours from now (6/12 noon), I'm off to Iraqi Kurdistan, then Jordan and Israel. In July, I'll be retracing Cortez's route from Vera Cruz to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) launching his conquest of Mexico in 1519. In August, there's our To The Point Revolutionary Rendezvous in Boston. So this is to let you all know we're switching to our summer schedule for To The Point starting next week. There will be pretty much the same number of articles per week, but we'll be posting them as they come in - rather than compiling them in the TTP Weekly Report on Friday afternoon. Because other TTP authors also will be traveling a lot as well. Right now, for example, Joel Wade is in the wilds of the Australian Outback with his family. Thus instead of a Weekly Report, we'll be sending you a TTP Article Alert whenever a new article is up. Now let's talk about the Revolutionary Rendezvous. The place: Boston. The dates: August 22-24. The schedule:
IPHONES AND WIKIS
Apple announced Monday June 9th at the World Wide Developer Conference that the new iPhone would be released for sale on July11th, 2008. While the original iPhone release was slick and had a great touch interface, it missed the business niche market. The new device should fill those missing elements nicely. Here is why. The new phone has GPS, which is a big plus for the business traveler. It also will provide metadata to an image captured with its built-in camera to provide your exact location where the image was taken. Lets talk 3G. The iPhone with 2.0 software will cruise nicely on 3G networks which the rest of the world has been doing for a while. AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the US has bumped up their networks to 3G levels in all major markets. The effect of this is downloading files, watching UTube videos, and email attachments will now be quicker.
CONFIRMED: BUSH IS NO RONALD REAGAN – AND NEITHER IS MCCAIN
On February 11, 1985, President Ronald Reagan hosted a State Dinner for Saudi King Fahd at the White House. It was earlier in the day at a private meeting between the two that history was made. With oil at sky high prices and the Soviet Union producing more oil than the Saudis, the oil revenues provided Moscow with a cash cow financing an incredibly aggressive expansion of its imperialist empire. The Soviets had added 14 colonies to their empire in recent years, and with Nicaragua and the El Salvador insurgency as its bases, were ready to make a move on Mexico. The largest Soviet embassy in the world was in Mexico City. With this in mind, Reagan told Fahd what he wanted the Saudi king to do: quadruple oil production and crash world oil prices. Fahd was stunned. "Why should I ever want to do that? " was his response.
COMMENCEMENT 2008
[This commencement address was originally published three years ago. We rerun it annually at college graduation time. Feel quite free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.] Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends: It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all reached the finish line: college, goodbye, we're outta here. Yet of course, "commencement" means a beginning, not an end. But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things. So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable movies. If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago. His most famous movie was of course Gone With The Wind. He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy. It's a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost. Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs. Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget. Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you least expect it. Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan turns to his men and says:
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/06/08
It's pretty obvious what most needs to be celebrated this week: that unless she manages to have Obambi rubbed out in the next few months, the nightmare of President Pantsuit has been postponed to at least 2012... ... We need to celebrate something else that crashed and burned like the Clintons this week: the greatest piece of fascist legislation since the 16th Amendment, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act... ... We need to follow this victory up now with a Pro-CO2 Movement, extolling the extraordinary benefits of more CO2 in our atmosphere - such as wiping out hunger. As we discussed in Solar Warming back in September 2005... ... The best way to produce more CO2 is to produce more of what we need more of most: oil, oil and gas, oil and gas and coal. Thus the HFR is grateful to the US Geological Survey and the Minerals Management Service (USGS/MMS) of the Interior Department for releasing its current assessment of our country's oil and gas resources... ... One thing the world needs a lot more of is Moslems converting to Christianity. Which is why a shocked HFR hoists an amazed glass to the Church of England, which announced it is launching a campaign specifically targeting Moslem for conversion... ... and the HFR has lots more this week.
DOING BUSINESS WITH THE FRENCH
Traveling to Paris in search of business for a Belgian steel mill, after trying 14 days to find the responsible person in the ministry of energy, I sent a telex to the "Director General of the ministry of Energy, department Coal Mines", even though I hadn't a clue what his name was. Arriving unannounced the next morning at the ministry I bluntly show my telex to a clerk with a pretentious uniform, and, miracle of miracles, he calls somebody who calls somebody and another uniformed clerk appears who guides me through the portals of heaven. I am ushered in a palatial office, compared to which the Oval Office is a cubicle, and I am introduced to a rotund gentleman behind a massive desk: Director General Vautran of the French Coal Mines. My telex had specified why I wanted to see this Emperor of the French Mines. He looks at me and my young face, asks me my age and: "Do you drink wine?" I admit that I like a glass from time to time and let slip that my father-in-law is a wine merchant. He ducks behind his imperial desk and hauls a 5 liter (1½ gallon) belly bottle of wine, fills two glasses, hands me one, says "santé" and gulps his down. It is not quite 9 o'clock in the morning.
O = ZERO
To The Point is proud to present its candidate for Best Bumper Sticker of 2008: 
The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No résumé, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance. He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya. Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively. What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is "African-American," the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it. Let that sink in: Obambi is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.
THE MCCAIN-HILLARY PACT TO SCREW OBAMA
The Democrat Circus continues to be the zaniest show in town. Obambi exults the nomination is barely his while Hillary the Loser angrily demands she be his running-mate. Angrily demanding something is rarely the most effective negotiating technique to get what you want. A smart person will use it only when both the anger and the demand are a pretense, when you want your demand rejected, not accepted. Yes, intimidation often works when your opponent is a pussy. Obambi is indeed a pussy, and voters' suspicion that he is would only be confirmed if he capitulated to Clinton intimidation - which is why he has to reject her, even though he knows she wants to be rejected. It's not complicated once it's understood what Hillary's game plan is now - and the pact she's making with John McCain to achieve it. So the plan works like this.
HALF-FULL REPORT 053008
Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the HFR was trying to shake a couple of drops out of its far-from-even-half-full glass? Well, fill up the flagon, barkeep, we're going to hoist a few this week. We have a selection of heroes to toast. Let's start with a tankard of Pilsner Urquell for the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus... We follow that with a chalice of Brennan 2006 Viognier with its bouquet of bluebonnets and West Texas crude to that good ol' boy from Wichita Falls, Rex Tillerson, chairman of Exxon-Mobil... Finally, a tumbler of Glen Morangie single-malt (no defiling it with ice or water - the Scots consider that a "mixed drink") to a spy coming in from the cold, CIA Director Michael Hayden... That's the last of the good stuff for now. The HFR pours instead a cup of contempt for bimbo-airhead actress Sharon Stone... Here's the fun episode of the week. The HFR guzzles a goblet of glee over Obambi's latest embarrassment, Father Michael Pfleger... Let's close with a potpourri of good news, because if drank to each one we'd get seriously wasted... One last item. Your humble HFR author takes personal satisfaction in the new movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull .
BLUE PLANET IN GREEN SHACKLES
[Vaclav Klaus is President of the Czech Republic] It is a great pleasure to announce the English translation of my book Blue Planet in Green Shackles, published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Authors often claim their books speak for themselves. I cautiously agree and will, therefore, speak not about the book itself but about my motivations to write it. My thinking today is substantially influenced by the fact that I spent most of my life under a Communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom, which wanted to command not only people but also nature itself. To "command wind and rain" is one of the famous slogans I remember since my childhood. This experience taught me that freedom and rational dealing with the environment are indivisible. It formed my views on the fragility and vulnerability of free society and gave me a special sensitivity to all kinds of factors which may endanger it. I do not, however, live in the past and do not see the future threats to free society coming from the old and old-fashioned communist ideology. The name of the new danger will undoubtedly be different, but its substance will be very similar.
WHY THE LEFT HATES THE GOOD NEWS IN IRAQ
Whenever retreat-now activists or their favored presidential aspirant are confronted with our progress in Iraq, their stock reply is, "Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq in 2003." Well, I happen to agree with Sen. Barack Hussein Obama and his supporters on that count: At most, the terrorists had a tenuous connection with Saddam's regime. But it's 2008, not 2003. And our next president will take office in 2009. It's today's reality that matters. And today's reality is that Al Qaeda is nearing final collapse, Iran has failed in its bid to take over Iraq, and the democratically elected government is gaining in popularity. What don't the critics like? Democracy? The defeat of Al Qaeda? Moslems turning to the US military for help? Troop cuts? The dramatically improved human-rights situation? What's the problem here? The answer's simple:
THE GIFT OF OBAMA – TO REPUBLICANS
Rupert Murdoch is one of the world's savviest businessmen - but his prediction today (5/29) that Obambi will defeat McCain next November in a landslide is straightforward idiocy. Someone could make an intelligible argument that he could come out on top in a close contest - but a landslide? That's nuts. For the odds are far, far greater that it will be the other way around. McCain is going to wipe the electoral floor with Obambi. Obambi is going to be torched by white women, Reagan Democrats, Hillary supporters, and most everybody else except blacks, academics, college kids being taught by the academics, and urban-elitist liberals whose brains have been similarly damaged by the academics. He'll carry Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and maybe New York - maybe. Not a lot more. Not even California. Murdoch would have been on much firmer ground predicting a Dem landslide in the House and Senate - but that wouldn't be news, for that's the universally accepted wisdom. Predictions are ubiquitous that the Pubs are going to lose 10 to 20 House seats and 4 to 6 Senate seats at a minimum. It could be much worse, a lot worse. So much worse that the Dems will gain a filibuster-proof majority of 60+ seats in the Senate, preventing the passage of any decent McCain legislation or the confirmation of any decent McCain judicial appointment. How ironic, then, that the hero who can save the day and rescue the helpless Pubbies from certain disaster is... the Dems' very own champion, Hussein Obambi.
HALF-FULL REPORT 052308
The HFR's goblet is raised this week in sympathy to this young lady and not to her murderer. She is Mary Jo Kopechne. Her death at the hands of a drunk Ted Kennedy served one purpose for which America must be forever grateful: it prevented his ever being elected President of the United States. The HFR goblet contains no mawkish, treacly, fawning oleaginous encomiums to a man who has done more objective damage to his country than any American alive today. Millions more would be alive today if it were not for his truly fanatical crusade in the Senate to allow mothers to murder their unborn babies for any reason whatsoever. Those millions have been replaced by countless hordes of illegal aliens thanks to his immigration bills of 1965 and 1986. No one - no one - has done more to destroy American culture on purpose by being the key advocate of every culturally destructive left-wing lunacy for the last 40 years. On purpose because there is clear evidence he was a traitor, offering to work with Soviet leaders such as Yuri Andropov to thwart Ronald Reagan's efforts to win the Cold War. The HFR does not gloat upon the pain and suffering of any fellow human being. His type of brain cancer is fatal and cannot be cured. It affects the area of the brain that controls speech, writing, and reading. The HFR hopes that his suffering will be minimal and his passing peaceful - but nonetheless raises a full glass of gratitude that he will soon no longer be in the Senate and in a position to do further damage to America.
DOING BUSINESS WITH GERMANS
Forty years ago I found out what it's like to do business with Germans. The lessons learned, I've discovered since, can apply to dealing with businessfolk in general who don't play fair. During my stay as a director in a Belgian steel mill I was in direct competition with the biggest steel mills of Germany. I was the first to export our special steels to Germany, something like selling sand to the Arabs. When I started travelling to Germany I found a closed market from the heavy steel industry down to the smallest distributor. They had one price list and the biggest buyers, the German coal mines, still had to buy rigidly from the local distributor. The mines bought thousands and thousands of tons per week and the local distributor got rich while asleep. It was an ironclad market, completely locked up. When I visited the distributors they laughed me out of town. So I went to the German coal mines and the German ship yards with impossibly low prices. What I expected happened, those consumers called their distributors, who called the big steel mills. Within a couple of weeks I was called out of the blue by a "Herr General Direktor Wolff" who from very high in his steel blue sky ordered me to cease my foolish interference in the German market or else! I told him politely that I was going into the German steel market no matter what...
OUR HATEAMERICA MEDIA HATES OUR WINNING IN IRAQ
Do we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there? If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines. Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating. But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily. You won't see that above the fold in The New York Times. And forget the Obama-intoxicated news networks - they've adopted his story line that the clock stopped back in 2003.
IS OBAMA ON DRUGS?
The number of extraordinary gaffes committed by Obambi has been proliferating of late. Among those just this month are not knowing Afghans don't speak Arabic and that his own state of Illinois doesn't border Kentucky. Most incredible of all is his telling an audience, "I have now been to 57 states with one left to go," then says that one is "Alaska and Hawaii." No matter how exhausted from campaigning you are, you don't make a mistake like that under any normal circumstances. Saying there are 57 states - actually 58, or is it 59? - is such an egregiously stupid error that it is evidence of brain malfunction. A neuroscientist with years of research into drug abuse and brain chemistry tells To The Point that the behavior exhibited by Obama is consistent with the use of either amphetamines or cocaine. In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obambi admitted his drug use when young: "Pot (marijuana) had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow (cocaine) when you could afford it. Not smack (heroin), though." Teen-age drug use isn't, of course, evidence for its use in one's 40s. But when someone who may be elected President of the United States starts behaving suspiciously, then it's justified to ask that those suspicions be allayed. Thus, To The Point calls for Barack Hussein Obama to be drug tested.