President Barack Hussein Obama has blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries in Texas and Louisiana. TransCanada estimated it would have hired 13,000 Americans to build the 1,661 mile pipeline.  An additional 7,000 U.S. jobs would have been created in industries which supplied parts.  Keystone XL would have created up to 550,000 jobs by 2035, estimated the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The pipeline might endanger the Ogallala aquifier, and the fragile Sandhills area of western Nebraska, the president said. This, said the Wall Street Journal, ‘is a crock.'   Blocking the pipeline is ‘an act of national insanity,' said Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson, because from the standpoints of economics, national security and environmental protection, it makes no sense.  It only makes sense if Mr. Obama is being paid off to do so.

The Moslem Brotherhood (Ikhwan) was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher.  He sought a world wide caliphate governed by Islamic law (Sharia).  "Allah is our objective," says the Ikhwan's motto.  "The Prophet is our leader.  Jihad is our way.  Dying in the way of Allah is our greatest hope." Al Banna admired Hitler.  He had Mein Kampf translated into Arabic.  The Nazis subsidized the Moslem Brotherhood.  The ranks of the SS Handjar Division were filled mostly by the Ikhwan. Mein Kampf is still, after the Koran, the Ikhwan's favorite book.  "This stuff we now see in the Islamic world looks like Nazism because it comes from the Nazis," said journalist Claire Berlinski. In a 2009 sermon, Yusuf al Qaradawi, the Moslem Brotherhood's leading jurist, said: "Thoughout history, Allah has imposed upon (the Jews) people who would punish them for their corruption.  The last punishment was carried out by Adolf Hitler... Oh Allah, count their numbers and kill them, down to the very last one." The Moslem Brotherhood is today the world's largest and best financed Islamist organization.  It's in 70 countries, including ours.  And Mr. Obama wants to be its friend.

Absolutely no doubt who the HFR Hero of the Week is:  Rick Perry, who took a bullet for the team.  He was all set to give an adaptation of a suggested closing statement I wrote for him (appended below) at the South Carolina debate last night (1/19), when he decided that if he continued, the Not Romney vote would remain so split Romney would win. Now he won't.  Gingrich will win the SC primary tomorrow (1/21) - despite the Obamamedia trying to take him out with his coyote ugly shrew ex-wife from Hell - thanks to Perry. That said, there is also absolutely no doubt who the HFR Jerk of the Week is - the schmuck, the phony "social conservative," the corrupt horse's derriere of the year - who singlehandedly caused Perry to lose the nomination because Perry told him to shove it for soliciting a bribe while Santorum said, "Let's talk." We're talking about...

Ambergris Caye, Belize.  The Cayman Islands are rich, and Belize is poor. Why? Both are small Caribbean countries with the same climate and roughly the same mixed racial heritage, and both were English-speaking British colonies. Belize (the former British Honduras) received its independence in 1981, while Cayman is still not fully independent but is self-governing at the local level, with its own currency, laws and regulations. Belize should be richer: It has a larger population than Cayman (345,000 as contrasted with Cayman's 54,000). Belize has a much larger and more varied land area with many more natural resources, including gas and oil, and some rich agricultural land that Cayman lacks. Both have nice beaches, but Belize has the second-largest barrier reef in the world after Australia and also has Mayan ruins. Yet Cayman, with fewer points of interests, has done more to attract tourists. Back in the early 1970s, Cayman was as poor on a per capita basis as is Belize today. Both countries had ambitions to be tourist and financial centers. Cayman succeeded and has about six times the real per capita income of Belize. What did Cayman do right and Belize do wrong?

At least it was cordial.  But the 150 or so "movement conservatives" gathered at Paul Pressler's this weekend (1/13-14) were a fractured lot.  Maybe 10% were for Perry.  Almost all of them were against Romney.  Well, sort of.  Caveat below. When the case was made that Perry was the only candidate who actually understood the Constitution and the power of the 10th Amendment, the only one who was not a big government guy, the most successful governor in the country who has a rock solid record of job creation and conservative judicial appointments - they just didn't care.  I want that to sink in.  These conservative leaders really do not care about jobs, people hurting like the Great Depression, America's economy falling into an abyss.  All they care about is "the family as the fabric of society," and other Rick Santorum social conservative platitudes.  So a majority of them voted for Santorum.  They could care less that Santorum would not do anything to reduce metastasizing government, much less castrate it (like Perry would), or has not the slightest trace of executive experience of any kind, government or private. When asked one-on-one why they were going for Santorum when they knew he had no money, no organization, and stood not a ghost of a chance to win the nomination, the truth came out: 

We begin with the announcement many of you have been patiently waiting for:  The 12th TTP Rendezvous (RXII) will be in California on Memorial Day weekend, Friday May 25 to Sunday May 26.  Monday the 28th is Memorial Day, which gives everyone a day to either relax or return home at a leisurely pace. RXII will be The Plan B Rendezvous.  We'll have a few sessions where a speaker talks and folks listen.  But the main focus is for this to be a working rendezvous, discussing what strategies you can avail yourself of to best protect and prepare yourself for an increasingly probable fascist maelstrom. We all hope for an end to the Zero Presidency this November (actually next January).  Yet we can't bet our farms on this, nor that there won't be extremely severe economic, social, and political problems in the aftermath of its desired demise, due to the inertia of fascism it has built up. How you and your loved ones surmount those problems is quite likely to depend on how good your Plan B is.  The purpose of The Plan B Rendezvous is to enable you get a Plan B that really works for you.  A number of TTPers have already done this, and they'll be there to teach you how. I'll see you there.   Now here's a  question of the week:  What is Rick Perry's Plan B?  He does have one, you know.

Liberals once expressed great fear of an "imperial presidency."  Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich, then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, held hearings on the subject in 2008. "George W. Bush is the imperial president James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about," wrote Robert Scheer in 2007. To the founders, Mr. Bush "would seem less like a president than a king," Adam Cohen, assistant editorial page editor of the New York Times, wrote that year. They were upset chiefly with measures Mr. Bush took to fight the war on terror.   "The danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when the president takes the nation to war," Mr. Cohen said.  But, said Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Bush's "overall behavior is consonant with what the Constitution's framers would have expected from a president facing such a threat." Most of Mr. Bush's critics must secretly agree with Dr. Schmitt, because when President Obama continued policies they'd railed against, they uttered scarcely a peep.