THE ISLAMIZATION OF EUROPE
[You may have seen news stories, such as on Fox News, about the Dutch member of parliament, Geert Wilders, being prosecuted in Dutch courts for "insulting Islam." Recently, Mr. Wilders delivered this speech in New York. After reading it, you may watch his 15-minute film Fitna. Geert Wilders is a hero of Western Civilization, and he may go to jail for it. ] I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome's ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see - and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Moslem mass-migration.
PROOF THAT THE TREASURY SECRETARY IS A TAX CHEAT
Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) is Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for writing federal tax legislation. Last September, he admitted he did not pay the required income taxes on some of his private income (Caribbean rental properties, etc.). Although Republicans demanded he resign his chairmanship, Speaker Nancy Pelosi firmly supported Rangel. Yesterday (1/27), Timothy Geithner was sworn in as Treasury Secretary, despite the fact did not pay $34,023 in self-employment taxes from 2001 to 2004 when he worked at the International Monetary Fund. Geithner said that his failure to pay self-employment tax was due to mistakes made by his individual tax return preparation software, which he identified in his testimony during his Senate confirmation hearing as Turbo Tax. This is a provable lie. And it gives the Republicans a golden opportunity: to introduce the "Rangel-Geithner Equal Treatment Under The Tax Law Bill."
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/23/09
What could be more appropriate, on the eve of the TTP Carefree Rendezvous, than to hoist a pint of Four Peaks Ale brewed here in Arizona to an inspiring woman Republican governor who drives liberals out of their minds because she is a pro-family, pro-life, pro-Christian, anti-tax, anti-government spending, anti-illegal immigration Reagan conservative. Nope, we're not talking about Sarah Palin - however much the HFR is happy to hoist a glass in admiration of her at any time. We're talking about... ... Right next to the HFR Saloon is the Schadenfreude Bar, which serves goblets of frothy glee over liberals' misfortunes. One patron was happy that Tim Geithner was going to be confirmed as Treasury Secretary. "It will be wonderful to have a guy that cheats on his taxes be in charge of the IRS," he said. "Now millions of us will say, ‘If he can, so can I'." ... Let's spice up the HFR this week, shall we? With a spice that can be a solution to terrorism. Oh, and a microbe that can be a solution to energy independence.
THE OPPORTUNITIES ARE GREATER THAN THE PROBLEMS
Much has been made of the challenges facing Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, who assumes office in what appears to be the early stages of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. More should be made of the great opportunities he possesses. We Americans are more than two trillion dollars poorer, and counting, as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis, and our confidence has been badly shaken. But power is relative. So here is a key fact to keep in mind: The United States is more powerful today relative to our adversaries than at any time since Aug. 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb.
TAXPAYERS ARE CHUMPS
You work hard, take care of your family, and pay all the taxes the government says you owe as is typical of honest, upright citizens. But what happens to your tax money? It is now going to "bail out" firms that pay their senior executives millions of dollars a year. Congress also intends to spend your tax dollars on an $825 billion "stimulus program" filled with many dubious projects and plain old-fashioned "pork." Many good economists who have looked at the details of the stimulus package believe it has much more "de-stimulus" than stimulus in it and will make the American economy worse off rather than better off. While you may have thought you are required by law to pay taxes on all your income, you learn the "important" folks in Washington seem to think paying taxes is optional - for them.
NOTO PATRIOTISM AND THE GSY REVOLUTION
It's Wednesday morning here in Washington D.C., January 21, 2009. Tell me, did something unusual happen here yesterday? I heard there was some kind of ruckus on the Mall near the Capitol, some kind of circus - but there weren't any elephants, and what's a circus without any elephants? There were a lot of jackasses instead, somebody said. Anyway, I was writing all day, working on my novel, The Jade Steps, and wasn't paying attention. Well, I did take a break and turn on the TV - to watch a Clark Gable-Ava Gardner classic, Mogambo. Evidently, I learned, some guy, nobody knows who he really is, with a goofy name and big goofy ears was giving a speech full of fluffy puffy cliché-ridden platitudes and nothing else. I enjoyed my movie. Yep, I was adhering to my motto: If you can't beat them - ignore them. Or tell them GSY. We'll get to that in a moment. For these are the only two ways to cope with the terrifyingly deranged glorification of Zero.
WE WILL MISS PRESIDENT BUSH – AND SO WILL LIBERALS
George W. Bush, private citizen, left Washington for Dallas today with the quiet dignity that was typical of his personal behavior during the eight tumultuous years of his presidency. Mr. Bush leaves office as the most unpopular president in the history of polling. But it will be a decade or more before we have the perspective necessary to place the Bush presidency in history. Conservatives, for the most part, have been disappointed by Mr. Bush. During his presidency Republicans lost all fiscal discipline. Many of his appointments were alarmingly mediocre. Even when he was doing the right thing, he did a poor job of communicating why. Still, we will miss his basic goodness, and his steadfastness. But I suspect that in six months or so, it will be the liberals who miss Mr. Bush most.
I HOPE HE FAILS
TTP salutes Rush Limbaugh for having the courage to state what all rational conservatives feel. I got a request here from a major American print publication. "Dear Rush: For the Obama [Immaculate] Inauguration we are asking a handful of very prominent politicians, statesmen, scholars, businessmen, commentators, and economists to write 400 words on their hope for the Obama presidency. We would love to include you. If you could send us 400 words on your hope for the Obama presidency, we need it by Monday night, that would be ideal." Now, we're caught in this trap again. The premise is, what is your "hope." My hope, and please understand me when I say this. I disagree fervently with the people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, "Well, I hope he succeeds. We've got to give him a chance." Why? They didn't give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I'm not talking about search-and-destroy, but I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed. So I'm thinking of replying to the guy, "Okay, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails."
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/16/09
The HFR starts off this week by celebrating the first nomination of the year for the coveted Darwin Awards. As you may know, these awards are given to individuals of such inspiring idiocy they have contributed to the benefit of mankind by removing themselves from the gene pool. So it is that a Darwin Award is hereby bestowed upon the eight Somali pirates who a few days ago capsized their speedboat escaping with $3 million in ransom cash. Five of them drowned, three swam to shore, all the money was lost at sea save for $153,000 found on the body of one of the five who washed up on a beach. Now if all the Somali pirates could be removed from gene pool. There is a quick and easy way to do this. In the middle of the Indian Ocean not far from the Somali coast is an island called Diego Garcia. It belongs to the Brits, and leased by them to the US as a military base. We have B52s there.
AMERICAN SILHOUETTE
Reflecting upon what lies ahead for America in 2009, I'm tempted to think of Al Jolson, and his famous quote, "You ain't seen nothin' yet." But I'd rather think of Madame Pompadour. Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquess de Pompadour (1721-1764), was the royal mistress of King Louis XV of France (1710-1774). She ended up running Louis' government. So much so that when Frederick II of Prussia intemperately called the Empress of Russia (Czarina Elizaveta Petrovna), Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and Madame Pompadour "the three first whores of Europe," she engineered a war: an alliance of France, Austria, and Russia against Prussia. The Seven Years' War bankrupted France. So Pompadour did what all governments do with a fiscal crisis: raise taxes, and punitively. In 1759, she had Etienne de Silhouette, known for his writings on England's financial system, appointed controller-general of finance. For eight months he ravaged France with such rapacious taxation that everyone from nobles to wealthy merchants to peasants bitterly complained that they reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. By the time Pompadour was forced to fire him, an inexpensive art form had caught on, a shadow of one's profile cut out from black paper. They were called silhouettes. France never recovered from her loss of empire and wealth, yet her rulers continued to lavish money upon themselves while the people were ground into further penury - until the latter exploded with the French Revolution and the former led to the guillotine. So now comes a question as we step into the unknown of 2009: will Barack Hussein Obama be the American Silhouette?