TO THE POINT BEACH PARTY!
OK, it's all set. We gave you a heads up two weeks ago in Sarasota Rendezvous. Now the details. The To The Point Winter Rendezvous will be from Friday February 8 to Sunday February 10 at the Hilton Longboat Key Beachfront Resort in Sarasota, Florida. We have blocked a number of rooms at amazing rate of $199 (that's for a double or less than $100 per person, and realize, this is right on the beach at the highest of high season, when everyone wants to escape from February snow and ice to Florida sunshine). To reserve yours, just click on the Rendezvous picture on the TTP home page (top of the left side bar) or click here for Rendezvous Reservation. The cost of the Rendezvous itself is $285. That includes dinner Friday and Saturday nights, breakfast Saturday and Sunday mornings, and all meetings and activities. There will be in-depth briefings and discussions by me and To The Point stars such as Jack Kelly and Dr. Joel Wade. And of course, there is the wonderful fun of getting together with your fellow TTPers. We'll do so right on the beach with its world-famous white sugar sand - sunset beach parties with a bar set up on the sand just for us.
DICK CHENEY’S SILVER LINING TO THE INTEL REPORT FRAUD
As one who believes that diplomacy ought to be how to most persuasively say "Nice doggie!" until your sniper gets the range, I've never had much regard for the pinstriped weenies infesting our State Department. Today this specifically includes the three of them who wrote the nonsensically sensational National Intelligence Estimate on Iran - Thomas Fingar, Kenneth Brill, and Vann Van Diepen. But no matter how dubious its findings or motivations, the geopolitical reality is that it has taken the military option for dealing with the threat of Iran off the table. Yet the threat remains. There is only one solution for the geopolitical problem that is Iran: regime change. The current mullacracy ruling Iran must be replaced, removed from power. The only question is how. Not militarily, and not democratically, for the mullahs will never allow free elections. The only viable option for achieving regime change in Iran is revolution from within. Which brings us to the civil war in the White House between Condi and Cheney. This NIE debacle is her doing. And he sees a silver lining in it.
WE’RE NOT IN 2006 ANYMORE, TOTO
If you want to see a bunch of really happy folks who think Christmas has come early for them and can't wait for the coming new year, come to the Capitol Hill Club, the power watering hole for Republicans in Washington. There, you'll see GOP Congressmen, Senators, and their top staffers all slapping each other on the back and saying, "We're not in 2006 anymore, Toto," or "2006 is like, so over." Happy, happy guys n'gals. And why shouldn't they be? The President's got their back and they've got the hapless Dems by the short hairs. It's fun to be in DC this December. What's that? Do I hear you saying in a tone of cynicism, "Yes, Jack, but the Pubbies never know that when you've got your foe on the ropes, you put him down on the canvas. As always, they'll let the Dems off the ropes rather than finishing them off." There's a lot of history to justify such cynicism. Arguing that it's different this time is like the definition of a second marriage: the triumph of hope over experience. Yet there are three good reasons for such hope:
FRED THOMPSON AND THE IOWA CUCKOO’S NEST
Those who watched the Republican presidential "debate" in Iowa yesterday (12/12) now understand why the Des Moines Register is such a lousy newspaper. "That was not just the worst debate of 2007, that was the worst debate in Western history, and that includes the ancient Greeks," said columnist Charles Krauthammer. "There is no record in any major European record of a debate this transcendingly and crushingly dull." This wasn't the fault of the candidates, all of whom turned in credible performances. The blame for this flop belongs to the debate's moderator, Des Moines Register editor Carolyn Washburn. While most commentators compared her to an overbearing elementary school teacher, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard likened her to Nurse Ratched, the villain in Ken Kesey's 1962 novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." There was a ray of hope. The highlight of the debate, such as it was, came when Fred Thompson, like Kesey's hero Randle McMurphy, defied Nurse Ratched. His putdown was quickly put up on YouTube:
A RELIGION FAR MORE DANGEROUS THAN ROMNEY’S
Most religions contain beliefs and practices than adherents of other religions consider off-the-wall weird. But no matter how strange stuff like wearing sacred underwear may seem to some (there's actually an official site explaining it: Mormon Underwear), it's very hard to see how the religion of Mormonism is dangerous to our national security. Mitt Romney's speech yesterday (12/06) should dispel any real concern that his faith somehow disqualifies him for the presidency. I encourage you to read his speech entire, for it's impressive. Yet there is a religion that is in fact a grave danger to America, and believing in it should disqualify anyone aspiring to the presidency. It's not an alien faith of foreign invention like Islam, but homegrown, originating right here in the US. Among the members of its church are many of our country's most prominent citizens, including several presidential candidates. I refer, of course, to...
THE CLINTON COW IN THE CHINA SHOP
Hillary Clinton has been playing a dangerous game with China. After over a decade of illegal contributions to the Democratic Party and special favors to the Clintons by the Chicoms, Hillary has turned on her old Chinese friends and sold them out in a desperate bid to win in 2008. The American dollar and economy have suffered collateral damage in this Clinton double cross with China. "Chinagate" was the name for numerous illegal campaign contributions from the PRC to the Democrats that helped them to win the 1996 elections. As you may remember back in 1996, the Clintons apparently traded missile secrets to China via Loral in exchange for donations from the PRC. Thus when Hillary started her run for president, she was in a position to count on the support of the PRC. Poor residents of Chinatown were making large donations to Hillary. She was getting numerous suspicious donations from Chinese operatives including Norman Hsu and the Paw family on the west coast, and also from numerous suspicious donations from the East coast. This might have continued in a simple repeat of the 1996 election scandal if Hillary had any loyalty to her PRC benefactors. However, the reality was that she had more to gain from selling them out than continuing the game. Consider the benefits to turning on her former friends:
TO THE POINT CHRISTMAS SHOPPING
I'd sure like to make a suggestion for an ideal Christmas gift for someone you really care about: a membership in To The Point! Just click on that link and you can sign up a friend for a wonderfully memorable and enlightening month's membership for less than ten bucks - or for those you really care about, a full year. I'd also like to suggest you consider products made by your fellow TTPers. There's WineStar crystal wine glasses offered by Ed & Susan Sanders. They beat Reidel hands down. You won't believe how much better wine tastes with Ed & Susan's stemware. They make a great way to celebrate the Christmas-New Year's holidays, any other holiday, and life every day. Alex & Laurie Alexiev have 800 olive trees on four acres on their ranch near Paso Robles, California that produce the best-tasting, highest quality olive oil you've ever had. Their Allure Estates Liquid Gold Tuscan-style extra-virgin oil has now won numerous awards. You can gift yourself with a bottle, as well as your friends. Then there's my sister Judy (an avid TTPer!), with her marvelously illustrated children's book, Jessica The Furry Baroo, that's such a fun way to impart a love of nature and the critters in it to kids. Of course, there's Dr. Joel Wade's new book, Mastering Happiness. What a great gift for anyone you want to be happy!
THE ISLAMOFASCISTS’ TRILLION DOLLAR TROJAN HORSE
Suddenly, a new national debate is beginning about the national security, economic and other implications of Persian Gulf potentates using their petrodollars to buy up strategic American assets. Most recently, the Emir of Dubai's purchase at fire-sale prices of 4.9 percent of the largest U.S. bank, Citigroup, caused a level of unease not seen since he tried to buy his way into many U.S. port facilities. Almost completely unremarked thus far has been a parallel - and in many ways far more insidious - effort to penetrate, influence and dominate America's capital markets: so-called "Sharia finance." Some estimates suggest an amount nearing one trillion dollars is now being invested around the world under this rubric. If trends continue, all other things being equal, such funds may grow to many times that amount within a few years. As one Islamofascist puts it, Sharia investing is simply "financial jihad against the unbelievers."
HEALTH FASCISM
Paul Krugman, Princeton economist and columnist for The New York Times, has no problem with coercing people to do what they'd rather not do. So it's no surprise that he favors the universal health case system advocated by Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. He is worried, however, that under the more modestly coercive system advocated by Barack Hussein Obama, "healthy people could choose not to buy insurance-then sign up for it if they developed health problems later." Under Hussein Obama's system, argues Professor Krugman, "People who did the right thing and bought insurance when they were healthy would end up subsidizing those who didn't sign up for insurance until or unless they needed medical care." The old free rider problem, nothing very novel at all. Yet the problem arises only if there is coercion involved in the first place.
THE SWAG NIE
Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and probably won't be able to build a bomb before 2015 if it does restart it, a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has concluded. That's very good news...if it's true. But that's a BIG if. The NIE is a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess), not a statement of proven fact. It's a SWAG from an Intelligence Community (IC) whose predictive record about the Middle East has been poor. It's a SWAG that's challenged by Israeli intelligence, whose predictive history is much better. And it's a SWAG that is diametrically opposed to the last SWAG the IC issued on Iran's nuclear program. An IC that had "high confidence" in a 2005 NIE that Iran was building a bomb and was resistant to international pressure now has "high confidence" that Iran stopped building it two years before that NIE was issued!