THE NSA’S ACHILLES HEEL?
I have to keep this short as I'm soon boarding a very long flight to China. Jack Kelly will be manning the HFR ramparts while I'm gone, but I have to tell you this now. The story starts with an obscure state politician representing District 67 of the Utah House of Representatives named Marc Roberts. If you look at that official state government website, you won't see anything unusual. Like most pols, he also has his own site: marcroberts67.com. How many elected politicians start their site off with a quote from Bastiat's The Law? Followed by a statement of commitment to State Sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment? Yet it's not Roberts' words that are most interesting, however, it's what he is doing. He may have found the Achilles' Heel of the NSA. You may have heard of the gigantic $1.5 billion, one million square-foot date collection center the NSA is building in Bluffdale, Utah called Bumblehive. It will require 1.7 million gallons of water a day to cool the massive NSA computers spying on all of us. Roberts knows how to cut off the water supply.
THE AIR FORCE’S PROBLEM IS BIGGER THAN THE F-22 VS. THE F-35
In last week's Half-Full Report (see the section on Debbie Does USAF), Jack asked me to comment about America's F-22A Raptor and F-35A/B/C Lightning II fighters. Namely: if the F-22 Raptor was the better fighter, why was it canceled in favor of the F-35? Both fighters sit at the nexus of some pretty big assumptions and questions about US air power in the next few decades, so it's hard to give a brief answer, but I'm going to try. In brief: Yes, the F-22 is a much better fighter than the F-35. Indeed, it remains the best fighter in the world by a wide margin. The flip side is that it can't perform some roles, costs a lot to maintain, and will cost quite a lot ($7 billion or more) to upgrade to modern standards. But the bottom line is thatI don't think the core problem is F-22 vs. F-35. The core problem is...
WE’RE A BANANA REPUBLIC WITH A CAUDILLO PRESIDENCY
All of us screw up from time to time. But it's hard to imagine how anyone else could screw up anything else as badly as Obama and the Democrats have screwed up health care. Democrats may have believed Obamacare would do the things they promised when they rammed it through in the middle of the night of March 21, 2010. But it's clear now it does much more harm than good. Which President Obama in effect acknowledged Tuesday (2/11) when he said he'll put off until 2016 enforcement of the "employer mandate" for small businesses with 99 or fewer employees. This is the 27th time he's unilaterally delayed a provision of the law, which he has no legal authority to do. So much for the Democrat claim Obamacare is "settled law." This is banana republic stuff, for which he ought to be impeached. No president has the right to cherry pick what laws - or portions of laws - he'll enforce, or to say some Americans needn't obey them.
THE MESSIAH AND THE LEPER
With no prospects for a successful legislative agenda in Congress and even his talk of governing by executive order not impressing either friends or foes, President Barack Hussein Obama seems to be drifting inexorably toward lame-duck status. But there is no better indication of just how politically toxic Obama has become than the rumblings that came out of last week's meeting between the president and Senate Democrats. As Politico reports, the White House has agreed to stay out of most of the key races that will decide whether Democrats retain control of the Senate this year. In 2008, Obama was a Messiah. In 2014, Obama is now a Leper. To an increasing number of Democrats. Here's why.
WE SHOULD CARE ABOUT UKRAINE
Why worry about Ukraine? To many, it seems far away and a country about which they know little. (Excepting TTPers, of course, who were updated on events there in the HFR of 01/24/14.) News clips of the recent violent demonstrations in Kiev have occasionally appeared on the news shows, but most Americans have shown little interest. Yet Ukraine has the very real possibility of setting off the next financial crisis. The first thing to grasp about Ukraine is its size. It is the largest country in Europe at 233ksm (thousand square miles), bugger than France (213ksm), not quite as big as Texas (268ksm). The second thing is its critically strategic location between Russia and Europe (see maps below). The crisis scenario is as follows: Russia is Europe's major gas supplier. About half of that gas is sent through pipelines that cross Ukraine. Further, Ukraine is increasingly unstable for three reasons:
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/07/14
Was there some kind of football game last Sunday? I remember Broadway Joe's totally bitchin' fur coat that got all the PETA pussies in a tizzy. 
And of course, Tim Tebow's fabulous commercial: {youtube}xTaH-OtUv94{/youtube} But other than a safety being scored in the first 12 seconds, not much else. Oh, yes, there was President Smidgen, demonstrating for the billionth time that he hasn't a smidgen of honesty in his devious heart of darkness.
FROM THE BEST TO THE WORST IN ONE GENERATION
103 years ago on this day, February 6, 2014, Ronald Reagan was born. I wish I had the capacity to describe adequately what it was like being in Ronald Reagan's presence. I have met many extraordinary people in my life, from Hollywood's most famous stars to presidents of countries. But Ronald Reagan had a magic that was unique to him alone. There was a depth of character to his charisma that seemed bottomless. There was a solidity of integrity and humanity behind the dazzling charm that was matchless. You loved Ronald Reagan for his ideals and his complete fearlessness in advocating them - and you loved Ronald Reagan for the man, the human being, he was. On March 30, 1961, as a spokesman for General Electric and well before he entered politics, he gave a speech to the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, which he entitled "Encroaching Control." In it, he delivered one of his most famous quotes: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. It is one thing to read these words. It is another to listen to him actually say them: {youtube}SDouNtnR_IA{/youtube} The power of his voice makes you cry, doesn't it? Because his words have so devastatingly come true.
THE CRIMINAL FRAUD OF COLLEGE
So enormous has been the harm done by the fraudsters running public K-12 schools, you'd think fraud in higher education couldn't possibly be worse. You'd be mistaken. College tuition and fees increased 1,120 percent between 1978 and 2012 -- twice as much as health care, four times as much as the cost of living. Meanwhile, colleges and universities don't offer curriculums that adequately prepare students for the workforce, said 59 percent of senior executives surveyed by the Adecco Group, a staffing company; 77 percent of senior managers surveyed by Global Strategy Group. Garbage courses and majors have sprouted like mushrooms on a manure pile. Stanford offers more courses in yoga than in Shakespeare. "Core curricula that once discussed the great tradition in literature, art and science have been elbowed offstage by banal courses in feminism, black studies and queer theory," said Stephan Kanfer of the Manhattan Institute. "The result: students who can spout a line of political correctness designed to dazzle their peers and professors. With that and $1.50 they can get a bus ride downtown to the unemployment offices. "
HIDING FROM GOVERNMENT
However it happened, it is now clear that the US spy agencies, and the NSA in particular, have gone off the reservation. The military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about has turned inward, and the perps are now us. That may be a bitter pill for many of us to swallow, but it's true just the same. So, here we are. For most of our lives, we thought it was only criminals who needed to hide from government. Now we find that it's time for the citizens to hide. Sad as that may be, it's something we need to face. Before I explain how to hide, let me repeat something that a lot of us have said before: We do not hide because our works are criminal, but because we need to protect ourselves from criminal punishments, seizures and prosecutions. How do we hide and protect ourselves? Here's how...
TWO AMERICAS
The Democrats are right, there are two Americas. The America that works, and the America that doesn't. The America that contributes, and the America that doesn't. It's not the haves and the have nots, it's the dos and the don'ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, to obey the law and support themselves and contribute to society, and others don't. That's the divide in America. It's not about income inequality, it's about civic irresponsibility. It's about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It's about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. The politics of envy was on proud display when the president said he would pledge the rest of his term to fighting "income inequality." He notes that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that's not just. It is the rationale of thievery. The other guy has it, you want it, Obama will take it for you. Vote Democrat.