THE CRIMINAL FRAUD OF OBAMACARE BY THE NUMBERS
Ever since President Barack Hussein Obama promised to "cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year," discussion has focused on how much more health insurance costs families and businesses. It's easy to understand why. In the 12 months between February of last year and this February, premiums for individual and family policies rose more than in the eight years preceding combined, according to eHealth Insurance. In the first 3 months of 2014, premiums rose 12 percent for individual policies, 11 percent for small group policies, according to Morgan Stanley's quarterly survey of insurance brokers. If premiums rise at the same rate for the rest of the year, individual policies would go up 48 percent in 2014; small group policies 44 percent. Our focus on the hardships Obamacare has imposed on many families obscures how badly the taxpayers are getting hosed. At its heart and by its numbers, it is a criminal fraud.
DO YOU WANT MORE GOVERNMENT OR MORE PROSPERITY?
Do you think there would be more jobs, less poverty and higher real incomes if government was 60 percent or 18 percent of gross domestic product? Fortunately, a global economic-growth experiment has been underway for more than a half-century. Some countries have opted for the big-government model, others for the small-government model. Based on the data, the small-government crowd wins. Periodically, as new data becomes available, I revisit the topic of how big or small government should be. Many on the left in the United States want a big government like they have in France, which they think will be fairer and provide better services. There are success metrics, such as real per-capita incomes, economic growth, job-creation rates and life expectancy to give us a good indication of what works and does not work. This table gives us recent data about how well 10 rich countries are doing:
LIBERAL HASHTAGS AND MOSLEM HORROR
"My husband and I are outraged and heartbroken," said First Lady Michelle Obama, subbing for the president in his weekly radio address May 10. "In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters." She expressed her outrage and heartbreak with this picture: 
Mrs. Obama was referring to the 276 predominantly Christian schoolgirls kidnapped from their dormitory in a village in northeastern Nigeria by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, which is planning to sell them into slavery. The response has been to ridicule the First Lady as "Mrs. Hashtag."
HALF-FULL REPORT 05/09/14
We start with this Urgent Announcement from Carol Bundy, wife of Nevada's Patriot Rancher Cliven Bundy
Please make your way to Blanding Utah this Saturday May 10th 9AM to protest the BLM Closure of Recapture Canyon. Blanding has been the site of many BLM overreach efforts, including the horrific BLM SWAT team raids that resulted in the deaths of three Blanding residents. County Commissioner Phil Lyman has organized a peaceful ATV ride into "Recapture Canyon". This Canyon was "temporarily" closed over 7 years ago by the BLM. You do not need an ATV to participate. We need to help the people of Blanding re-establish who is in control of the land. This is your next stand. Will you be there to help them like you helped us? Please make the trip to Blanding, we need to keep sending the message loud and clear wherever the BLM is illegally asserting its power. Thank you, CarolA message with direction and map from San Juan County Commissioner Lyman is appended[1] at the end of this HFR. Blanding is in the Four Corners region where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet. For any TTPers anywhere near - Taos, Phoenix, even Denver - try to be there. The BLM - Bureau of Land Management - unconstitutionally controls over 270 million acres or 422,000 square miles of "public" lands. That's an area as large as Texas and California combined, or twice the size of France. It has morphed into a Fascist Police State agency of militarily-armed Gestapo goons. The people of Blanding and all San Juan County are so totally fed up with federalie BLM fascism that San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge personally went to the Bundy ranch in Mesquite, Nevada, to ask for their support. Thus this plea from Carol Bundy. This is incredibly short notice, yes - but try to be there if at all possible.
WE’RE NOT RUNNING OUT OR USING UP THE WORLD’S RESOURCES
How many times have you heard that we humans are "using up" the world's resources, "running out" of oil, "reaching the limits" of the atmosphere's capacity to cope with pollution or "approaching the carrying capacity" of the land's ability to support a greater population? The assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff-metals, oil, clean air, land-and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption. "We are using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce, and unless we change course, that number will grow fast-by 2030, even two planets will not be enough," says Jim Leape, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (formerly the World Wildlife Fund). But here's a peculiar feature of human history: We burst through such limits again and again. After all, as a Saudi oil minister once said, the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones. So here's why all the ecologists' scaremongering is baloney.
CHINA AND THE JEWS
Over the past couple of decades the Chinese have become more interested in the Jews. Of late the Chinese regime has been bringing Jewish scholars and theologians to the People's Republic to discuss Torah, Talmud, Mishnah and even some of the more mystical tracts. Believe it or not, there are now Chinese government radio broadcasts in Hebrew. The Jewish experts who are brought to China find themselves speaking Hebrew with their Chinese interlocutors. Why? It's no surprise that China-Israel trade is increasing, nor that the China-Israel relationship has grown and deepened. After all, Israel may well be the most dynamic country in the world, bursting at the seams with high-tech startups, dazzling inventions-especially in military and medical technologies-and highly educated and talented people. But I'm not talking about Israel here. This is about the Chinese fascination with the Jews and Judaism, the religion and the People of the Book. I've got a theory.
CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE OR CHECK YOUR CHARACTER?
Hi, my name is Tal Fortgang, and I'm a freshman at Princeton University. I'd like to tell you about a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. "Check your privilege," the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung. "Check your privilege," they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world. I do not accuse those who "check" me and my perspective of overt racism, although the phrase, which assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it, toes that line. But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.
ARE YOU FLOURISHING?
At an investment conference in Carlsbad, California last month, there were dozens of experts sharing their best ideas on stocks, bonds, interest rates, currencies, commodities, real estate and metals. But I had the distinct honor of introducing someone who wasn't there to tell attendees how to optimize their portfolios. He was there to show us how to optimize the rest of our lives. It was my good friend, Dr. Joel Wade. As one of Jack Wheeler's closest friends, Joel has been writing The Virtue of Happiness column since the inception of TTP in 2003. But I thought you should know more about him beyond the wisdom of these columns. He offers a vital service.
WHY PUTIN IS CAUSING WAR IN UKRAINE
Most wars result from at least one side overestimating its chances of success and one or more of the sides not having a clear "endgame." Russian President Vladimir Putin has a clear goal, which can be discerned from his own statements and actions, and from discussions with those who know him well. It is to leave as his legacy the re-establishment of the Russian Empire. The Russian Empire existed from 1721, when Peter the Great proclaimed it, until its collapse in 1917. At its high point in 1866, the Russian Empire included all of modern-day Russia plus Alaska, Finland, the Baltic nations, much of present-day Poland, parts of other Eastern European countries, the Central Asia "Stans," part of Mongolia, and the shores of the Caspian Sea. Mr. Putin, a master of strategy and timing, sees that he has a 2-year window of opportunity to grab or control much of the former Russian Empire. He correctly sees President Obama as weak and indecisive, and hence unwilling to stand in his way -- giving him a window before Americans likely elect a stronger president. And he must start in Ukraine. Here is why.
THINKING ONE WAY AND VOTING ANOTHER
The federal government is too big, too powerful, said 66 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll in January. Big government is "a threat to individual liberty," said 54 percent in a Rasmussen poll in April; a bigger threat than big business or big labor, said 72 percent in a Gallup poll in December. The tax system needs sweeping changes, said 72 percent in a Pew poll last May. Replace it with a flat tax, said 62 percent in a Reason-Rupe poll in April. A special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the IRS, said 76 percent in a Quinnipiac poll in February. Abortions should be restricted to the first three months of pregnancy, said 84 percent in a Marist poll in January. All these views and others like them are more in accord with what Republicans think than with what Democrats think. But many who hold them vote for Democrats. Why?