GOT A QUESTION FOR ME?
Thanks to TTP'er and entrepreneur Eric Martell, we're pleased to announce The TTP Teleconference. It's a sort of "mini-rendezvous" using an interactive format based on a web-site where you can ask questions and a teleconference call where I can answer them. We're now ready to try our first free teleconference. It will be on Monday, April 7th at 9:00PM Eastern Time. The way it will work is simple.
Quran Video Test
test video
THE DEMS, THE DEVIL, AND THE DEEP BLACK SEA
Could the Democrats' dilemma possibly get any funnier or more entertaining? It's still March, we've got seven more months to election day, and the way things are going, it's going to take a cross between Einstein and Houdini to prevent a McGovernesque disaster. Even weirder, it's beginning to look like they want such a disaster. So weird that maybe their Bureau of Propaganda - otherwise known as the "mainstream media" - wants it too. Dem leaders know Hillary can't win against McCain. They know Obambi can't win against McCain. Yet they would far rather give it to Obambi - for they fear black envy and racist hatred more than they fear destroying their party. They would rather appease the former than avoid the latter. That's masochism, big time.
THE ANTI-SEMITIC COMPANY OBAMA KEEPS
Egyptian pop singer Shaaban Abdel Rahim, famous for his songs attacking Israel and praising Osama bin Laden, plans to release shortly a new song endorsing Barack Obama for president. Though Shaaban Abdel Rahim is wildly popular in Egypt, I doubt very much that Sen. Obama has ever heard of him. And I'm sure Sen. Obama wouldn't agree with Mr. Rahim's take on the 9/11 attacks (Hey People, It Was Only a Tower) or the Mohammed cartoon controversy. But why is Mr. Rahim so fond of Barack Obama? It could be the company he keeps.
FROM APPEASING NAZIS TO APPEASING MOSLEMS
Adolf Hitler realized the importance of having a good press. In Nazi Germany with its press censorship, it was easy for Hitler to have a good press. However, during the 1930s the Nazis also tried to control the media in the neighboring European countries that Hitler was planning to invade. The Nazis bullied the democratically elected governments in these countries to censor everything that resembled what today might be called "Naziophobia" - criticism of Nazism. A number of bullied governments gave in to the Nazi intimidation rather than back the few courageous individuals who spoke out against totalitarianism. Today, we are witnessing a similar phenomenon. Islamist extremists want a good press. They do not tolerate criticism. Even cartoons are deemed offensive. They warn those who criticize them "to consider the possible consequences" of Islamophobia.
TAXATION AS LEGALIZED ROBBERY
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society," while his predecessor on the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Marshall, also correctly noted, "The power to tax is the power to destroy." The American Founding Fathers, in the Declaration of Independence, state as one of their grievances against King George III, that he imposed "taxes on us without our consent." "No taxation without representation" was a rallying cry of the Revolution, and from that time it has been widely agreed that imposition of a tax without the consent of the governed is a form of tax tyranny. President Calvin Coolidge stated it succinctly, "Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery." (Ronald Reagan admired Coolidge so much he had Coolidge's portrait hung in the Cabinet Room of the White House.) So at what point does taxation move from that necessary for proper government to tyranny?
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/21/08
We should call the HFR this week The Toast Report, because that's what so many folks on the dark side have become in the last few days. Let's start with Obambi. This is going to be like watching one of those spectacular crash-explosion movie disaster scenes shot in agonizingly slow motion. One month from tomorrow (April 22) is the Dem primary in Pennsylvania. Obambi's worshippers in the media will be the guys in the movie scene reaching out in slo-mo and shouting noooooo!, knowing all the while they can't prevent the inevitable. He is going to be destroyed by Mrs. Clinton in PA. Blue-collar Budweiser Democrats will not vote for someone who takes his kids to a church that goddamns America. The same is going to happen to him in the North Carolina primary on May 6, except for his winning the huge black vote there. Then it becomes obvious the Clinton-Obama race is about nothing but race, with Obambi only having the black vote. At that point, the Dems realize they are truly, truly - in Daniel Henninger's delightful term - Mamet-worded.
THERE WERE NO ELECTIONS IN IRAN
There were no elections in Iran last Friday (3/14), whatever you may have heard. The "turnout" was shockingly low, even by past standards, as is demonstrated by the obvious panic in Tehran, where the mullahs kept the polls open an extra five hours. This was not, as they said, to make sure the patriotic citizens of the capital could drop their ballots in the box, but because they had to bus the reluctant faithful and the subservient government employees to the election offices, so as to be able to claim a large, voluntary participation. Even so, the official figure of 60 percent has no relationship to the actual event, in which perhaps 10 or 15 percent actually "voted." The fraud was so obvious that even the European Union denounced the "elections" as neither free nor fair, despite their wish to pass off the Islamic Republic (as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and current McCain-campaign advisor once famously put it) as "a democracy."
THE AL QAEDA GRAVEYARD AND THE TRANSFORMING MIDDLE EAST
Nearly 4,000 American service members and about 100,000 Iraqis (most of them in the suicide bombings for which al Qaeda has become infamous) have been killed since March 19, 2003. Has it been worth it? Iraqis apparently think so. Last week ABC and the BBC released results of a poll conducted in Iraq last month. In it 55 percent of Iraqis said their lives were going well, up from 39 percent last August. Forty nine percent of Iraqis think the U.S. invasion was justified, up from 37 percent in August. The Iraqis have been freed from an oppressive tyrant, and are the recipients of billions of dollars of economic aid. But has it been worth it for us? The Bush administration had both short and long term strategic goals for invading Iraq; some publicly stated, some not. All are on the verge of being met.
MONKEYS IN TIBET
I took this picture of the Potala on my first expedition across Tibet in 1986. Even though I've since logged over 10,000 kilometers criss-crossing Tibet, seeing the Potala is always a fantastic thrill, one of man's great architectural masterpieces built centuries ago in Tibet's capital of Lhasa. It is no thrill, however, for Tibetans. For them, the Potala is "dead," for the Dalai Lama no longer lives there. The Potala is instead a bitter reminder to Tibetans that their country has been stolen, that they are slaves to their masters, the Chinese. COA (Chinese Occupational Army) garrisons are littered throughout Tibet. The Tibetans call them Tibu Baptu, Monkey Stations. Tibetans look upon Chinese soldiers as tibu, monkeys; Chinese Communist Party officials as pakba, pigs; and the swarms of Chinese immigrants sent to colonize Tibet as chusin, crocodiles devouring Tibet's culture. After slaughtering two million Tibetans in the Chicom seizure of Tibet since 1951, destroying its sacred monasteries, exiling and demonizing the beloved Dalai Lama, and colonizing it with imperial tyranny, the Chinese Pakba have the audacity to elaborately celebrate each year the "Liberation" of Tibet. This year, wonderfully and finally, the Tibetans fought back. And even more wonderfully, it made world-wide headlines, exposing the brutality and horror of Chinese imperialism to the entire world. For the latest developments on the ground in Tibet, see SaveTibet and FreeTibet. The latter in particular will explain how you can personally participate in the liberation of Tibet and in ruining China's Genocide Olympics. What I want to discuss here are three aspects of the situation you may not otherwise hear about.