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THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS A STRANGLER FIG

strangler_fig.png Ever hear of the strangler fig?  It's a parasitic tree in tropical forests that grows by wrapping its huge roots ever more tightly around a host tree until the host tree can't grow anymore and dies (see the video below).  It's what our government in Washington has become. The slowest postwar economic recovery ever is stalling out. Real (inflation adjusted) median income for American households fell $2,627 during Barack Hussein Obama's first term, according to a report released last week by the U.S. Bureau of Census.  The number of people with incomes below the poverty line rose by 6,667,000 -- equivalent to the population of Massachusetts. Our economic wounds are  nearly all the result of government policy.  The five worst offenders are:

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HALF-FULL REPORT 11/08/13

It sure is good to be back home and writing the HFR.  Thanks to the Date Line, flying east you can leave Australia at night and arrive in  the US that morning of the same day.  Today (11/08) I say goodbye to my 60s.  Tomorrow, in addition to being World Freedom Day - the 24th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - is the Big Seven-O for me.  Yes, it's good to be home, and with my life-partner of 30 years. I couldn't be more grateful to Jack Kelly, who so sturdily manned the HFR ramparts in my absence, and to Mae, who graciously filled in for him.  Thanks so much to you both! Let's get started.  I'm not sure who's the week's Hero (who do you suggest?), but it's clear who's the Jerk of the Week, a jerk named Robert Sarvis, the Democrats' stalking horse in Virginia who conned the Libertarian Party into nominating him and cost Ken Cuccinelli the governorship. In other election news, Governor Fatso was reelected in New Jersey, and promptly dubbed The Elephant Man by TIME Magazine.  I just got off the phone with my buddy Jack Abramoff, who explained why Christie the Rinocrat scares him: 

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THE LAND OF OZ

Brisbane, Australia.  I'm making a pit stop here on my way from Nauru back to the US.  Oz - Aussies pronounce their country's name Oz-trial-yah, as they don't speak English but a funny language called Strine that occasionally sounds like English - is the place to follow up on the insanity of The Island of Fubar. Besides, I can't resist having written a TTP column for you in all seven continents this year. Africa and South America in March, Antarctica in April, Europe in August, Asia in September, all those in the US (North America), and this one in Australia now. So let's talk about Oz, and how the Aussies are facing their version of a lethal threat that can destroy America.  Like the US, it is a wealthy First World country with a long difficult-to-defend (albeit maritime) border with a large, poor, and corrupt Third World country. How they ruinously handled this, and how they are solving the problem now, is a crucially important lesson for us.

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THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS A LIAR

President Barack Hussein Obama is a "flagrant liar," said Joe Scarborough, host of the "Morning Joe" program on MSNBC. That's unquestionably true, as Mr. Obama is demonstrating yet again by lying about the big lie he told to get Obamacare passed.  But it's startling to hear an MSNBC talk show host say it. The president has been able to lie with impunity, confident the "mainstream" media would never call him on his ever more frequent, ever more blatant departures from the truth. But the botched rollout of Obamacare is changing things.  It's enabling millions of Americans who voted for him to see The Zero in the White House for who he really is -- and it's a very ugly sight.

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OZ’S JOHN HOWARD STICKS IT TO THE GREENIES

"Climate change" has become a "substitute religion" for people with a "nakedly political" agenda which has less to do with saving the planet than it does with reining in economic growth and wealth redistribution. Well, we know this. But how nice it is to hear it from the mouth of a statesman as distinguished as former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in a blistering speech last night (11/05) at the Global Warming Policy Foundation here in London. Howard's own record during the great climate change scare is not entirely unblemished. Thus, Howard goes some way towards answering a question which is going to be asked an awful lot by future historians, students of economic disaster and psychologists of mass hysteria: why didn't more people speak out sooner against this costly, environmentally damaging, and utterly specious "climate change" craze?

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WHY DO JUDGES REFUSE TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION?

Do you think the government is too big, taxes too much and regulates your lives more than it should? Polls consistently show that most Americans think there is too much government. Nevertheless, those in the majority who say they want smaller government continue to vote for people who ultimately give them larger government. All too many are willing to vote for those politicians who promise more benefits to some to be paid for by others, without understanding that they will eventually become the "others." The American Founders clearly understood the danger. As Thomas Jefferson said, "When the people realize they can vote themselves benefits, all is lost." What has gone wrong and why? In an incisive, new book, "Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution's Promise of Limited Government," Clark Neily lays much of the blame at the feet of the judiciary.    Mr. Neily is the senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, and is perhaps best known for success in the Heller case, where the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns.

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THE EURO IS THE CURSE OF EUROPE

Be careful what you wish for. The euro's founding fathers dreamt of a superpower currency to match the dollar, freeing Europe from US monetary hegemony. Charles de Gaulle grumbled that America enjoyed an "exorbitant privilege" as holder of the world's reserve currency, able to get away with murder. Now they have one themselves, only to discover that it is a curse. China's central bank has been buying fistfuls of euros as it accumulates a world record $3.7 trillion in foreign reserves, and its motives are not entirely friendly. So have the central banks of Russia, Brazil and the Middle Eastern oil sheikhdoms, all aiming to cut reliance on the US dollar, part of a $9 trillion surge in reserves leaking, with tidal force, into the euro. In China's case, it is deliberately driving down the yuan to capture export share. You could say China is exporting excess manufacturing capacity to Europe, or, in plain talk, exporting unemployment. The euro exchange rate is far too high for two-thirds of the euro states, a key reason why unemployment hit an all-time peak of 12.2 per cent in September. It is pushing Europe's crisis states into Thirties-style deflation, making it almost impossible for Italy, Spain and Portugal to dig their way out of debt.

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BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A CRIMINAL

It's the most breathtaking lie in the history of American politics, the dirtiest trick a president and his political party have ever played on the people they were elected to represent. In June of 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that as a consequence of Obamacare, 66 percent of those covered by small employer plans and 45 percent of those covered by large employer plans would have their health insurance cancelled.  So would "40 to 67 percent" of those who had individual health insurance policies.  That adds up to 93 million Americans, calculated Avik Roy, the health care expert for the Manhattan Institute.  Barack Hussein Obama knew.  So did senior Democrats in Congress.  Yet both promised Americans over and over that "if you like your health insurance, you can keep it." This was a bald-faced lie.  And Mr. Obama and the senior Democrats knew it was a lie. Often before, political leaders have made mistakes which inadvertently have caused Americans pain.  Never before has a president and his party conspired to do deliberately so much harm to so many.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 11/01/13

Reality was again the nemesis of Democrats.  Millions have received word that because of Obamacare, their health insurance policies will be cancelled.  Millions more soon will.  Most of those whose policies aren't cancelled will have to pay more. The White House and Democrats in Congress have known since 2010 as many as 93 million could lose their insurance, but kept lying about it.  Instapundit makes an excellent suggestion on how Republicans might capitalize on their mind-blowing mendacity. * * * * Most world news this week ranges from bad, to very bad, to awful.  As long as Barack Obama is president, it'll get worse. * * * * The president is in "great distress," says a body language expert. But Zero may be happier than HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She's on "death watch," the Washington Post said before she testified to Congress. It's a "suicide watch" now. * * * * How can Republicans capitalize on the Obamacare meltdown? A superb strategy is that begun by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.  Proposing legislation to let people who like their health insurance plan keep it directly addresses the element of Obamacare that's causing the most pain; sounds moderate, but would be fatal to Obamacare if enacted, and will prove irresistible to Democrats in tight races.

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CHINA’S IMPOSSIBLE CONTRADICTION

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is to unveil sweeping economic reforms at the Party's Third Plenum next month, with an assault on the state behemoths and the Party patronage machine (really?). Yet he also wants to tighten the grip of the one-party, one-ideology, authoritarian state. Here's a good account from Wiang Xiangwei at the South China Morning Post. The Development Research Center (DRC) in Beijing has published its road map of reform measures. It is being taken very seriously since it is written by none other than reformer Liu Wei and by President Xi's right-hand man on economic affairs, Liu He. The problem is that these proposals skirt over/contradict the core finding of a joint DRC-World Bank report last year. It said China would not succeed in jumping to the next stage of economic development and would languish in the the "middle income trap" unless it embraces the whole package of modern free thinking. It did not quite say democracy, but that is what it meant.

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