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HALF-FULL REPORT 05/17/13 |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 17 May 2013 |
Agent
Sadusky (Harvey
Keitel): "And what about you?"
Ben
Gates (Nicolas Cage): "I'd really love not to go to prison. I can't
even describe how much I would love
not to go to prison."
Agent
Sadusky: "Someone's got to go to prison, son."
---National Treasure (2004)
"My question
isn't about who's going to resign -- my question is who is going to jail over
this scandal?"
---House
Speaker John Boehner, May 15, 2013
"A few more days like this, and Obama's going to claim he was born in Kenya."
--- comedian
Dennis Miller
Now, I know
you all think that this week, the HFR glass is as overflowing as much as the
glass in Ronald
Reagan's favorite Irish joke. However, after we've yelled Bunga! Bunga! a few dozen times watching
the news and mooned Zero every time we see his disgusting face on the screen,
let's see if we can't discuss what's happening with a smidgeon of
sobriety. I admit it won't be easy.
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A HAT TRICK OF SCANDALS |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Thursday, 16 May 2013 |
Though
arguably the least significant of three burgeoning scandals that have made this
the worst fortnight ever for the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the
Justice Department's covert seizure of the telephone records of Associated
Press reporters may cause him the most grief.
Journalists unmoved by evidence his Justice Department ran guns to
Mexican drug cartels and promoted vote fraud are very,
very upset.
Some
Democrats who faithfully parroted administration talking points on Benghazi
jumped ship after the Internal Revenue Service admitted targeting Tea Party
groups. The FBI has now launched a
criminal probe.
Fewer
have been willing to parrot the party line on Benghazi since the number two guy
in our embassy in Libya testified
that during the attack on 9/11/2012, he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
it was the work of terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda. All told, this is a Hat Trick of Scandals.
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THE ROAD AHEAD FOR A BENGHAZI COMMITTEE |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Tuesday, 14 May 2013 |
Thanks
to the testimony of whistleblowers last week, and subsequent reporting of how
"talking points" were systematically scrubbed of every reference to the truth,
we know for sure President Barack Hussein Obama and senior aides were lying
when they blamed a Youtube video for the attack on our consulate in Benghazi.
More
important is what is being covered up.
To get to the bottom of what may be more a looming national security
crisis than a scandal in the past, we must have answers to a large number of critical
questions.
The way to get them is for
the House of Representatives to form a Select Committee, armed with subpoena
power, to investigate what was going on before and during the attack on
9/11/2012, and what's been happening since.
Here's
how to form it, who should be on it, and what its members should focus on. Hint: not
impeachment. There are very good reasons
why - at least not before the mid-term elections in November 2014.
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THE HUMILIATION OF JOHN KERRY |
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Written by Michael Ledeen
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013 |
The secretary of state was back in Washington a few days ago
(5/09), begging the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to take
it easy on the poor Iranians. Enough with the sanctions, he
said. Secretary Kerry has joined decades of his predecessors,
buying into the latest version of the 30-year old illusion that we can
make a deal with the Tehran regime if only we deal properly and humbly with
them.
He said there was a "window of opportunity" for a couple of
months. It doesn't much matter if he really believes this legend, or is
following instructions from President Obama, who is still pursuing this unholy
grail despite five years of swift kicks in his behind. The one he so
loves to lead with. Either way, it's an embarrassment.
But then, our new secretary of state has great flair for
embarrassing us. In Obama's community of narcissists, Kerry is a bit
different. He excels at self-humiliation, as he showed in his recent
sortie to Moscow, where Czar Putin kept him waiting for many hours before
sparing some time to "discuss" Syria and related topics, no doubt including
Iran.
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TOO LATE FOR SYRIA |
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Written by Ralph Peters
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013 |
To borrow the climactic line from Easy Rider, "We blew it." Or,
to be fully accurate, President Obama blew an unprecedented chance to aid
Syria's then-moderate opposition back in 2011.
We could have helped end the monstrous Assad regime, gaining
good will and practical advantage in a hopeful new state.
Now it's too late. And Obama may be ready to act at last.
The result could be disastrous.
Strategy isn't only about doing the right thing, but about
doing the right thing at the right time. Doing what appears to be the "right
thing" too late often makes things worse.
How did the window for aiding the Syrian rebels close?
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IMMIGRATION AND PRODUCTIVITY |
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Written by Richard Rahn
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Tuesday, 14 May 2013 |
[Note from JW: Dr. Rahn here presents an economic discussion
of immigration - after all, he is an economist.
It is not a discussion of the national security threat of immigration,
specifically that of illegal immigration from Mexico. A lively discussion of
Dr. Rahn's arguments is expected on the TTP Forum!]
How many new immigrants should the United States allow each
year? How many guest workers? These are not easy questions, which is why there
is as much fierce debate within the two parties as between them.
The two main reasons given for restricting current
immigration are the myths that immigrants take away American jobs and that
immigrants are more likely to go on welfare, thus putting an additional burden
on the taxpayers.
Rather than taking away American jobs, good economists
understand that immigrants who work create wealth in America, which in turn
creates more and higher paying jobs for everyone.
To explain the economics of this adequately would take more
space than this entire commentary, but the truth of the assertion can be seen
in the fact that high-wage countries with many immigrants such as Switzerland,
Australia and Canada tend to have much higher labor force participation rates
and lower unemployment rates than low-wage countries.
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NO FEAR OF FLU |
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Written by Matt Ridley
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Thursday, 16 May 2013 |
Here we go again. A new bird-flu virus in China, the H7N9
strain, is spreading alarm. It has infected about 130 people and killed more
than 30. Every time this happens, some journalists compete to foment fear, ably
assisted by cautious but worried scientists, and then tell the world to keep
calm.
We need a new way to talk about the risk of a flu pandemic,
because the overwhelming probability is that this virus will kill people, yes,
but not in vast numbers.
In recent years flu has always proved vastly less perilous
than feared. In 1976 more people may have
died from bad reactions to swine-flu vaccine than from swine flu. Since
2005, H5N1 bird flu has killed 374 people, not the two million to 7.4 million deemed possible by the World Health Organization. In 2009,
H1N1 Mexican swine flu proved to be a normal flu episode despite apocalyptic
forecasts.
No doubt some TTPers will remind me that, in the story of
the boy who cried "Wolf!", there eventually was a wolf. And that in
1918 maybe 50 million people died of influenza world-wide. So we should always
worry a bit. But perhaps it's not just luck that has made every flu pandemic
since then mild. It may be evolutionary
logic.
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NIXON WAS A PIKER |
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Written by To The Point News
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Friday, 17 May 2013 |
AND THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO COME!
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HALF-FULL REPORT 05/10/13 |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 10 May 2013 |
Good grief - let's see if I still remember how to do
this. I can't believe the last HFR I
wrote was February 22. I've been gone that long. Then again, there's an Agence France Presse story this week (5/09) about scientists
revealing that "Adventure
Shapes the Individual."
The more exploratory you are, the more new neurons grow in
your brain - even in adulthood, a process called adult neurogenesis - particularly in a structure of the brain
called the hippocampus, responsible for learning and memory.
AFP made a news story out of the research report appearing
in today's (5/10) issue of Science,
the world's premier journal of peer-reviewed science. Nonetheless, I learned
about the connection between adventure and hippocampal neurogenesis a long time
ago from Skye.
So let's hope all the exploration I've been doing in the
South Atlantic worked, as I have to get up to speed fast. First, though, I want to thank Jack Kelly so
very much for his marvelous HFRs while I've been gone. I'm going to have a tough time now doing as
well.
Let's cut to the chase and explain the week's main event...
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CINCO DE REALIDAD |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Monday, 06 May 2013 |
By now, I hope you are recovered enough from too many cheap
tequila margaritas celebrating "Cinco de
Mayo" last night to handle a dose of la
realidad - reality.
Cinco de Mayo is a
phony tradition, a joke on los gringos,
then exploited as a marketing gimmick by Mexican restaurant chains. So at TTP, our tradition on or about May 5th
is to explain la verdad, the truth.
Which is, to begin with: Nobody in Mexico cares
about May 5th. Only we, us gringos, pretend to. For if you ask just about any reveler at the
nearest Pancho Villa's Cantina or some such Mexican-themed bar anywhere in the
US, just what is being celebrated on
May 5th, you'll get either a blank stare or "It's their July 4th
" ignorance.
So first the real history.
Then the reality - the horrific reality of how the fascists of the American
Left are using Mexico
to destroy their own country. Their
treasonous "Immigration Reform Bill" currently proposed by a Senate "Gang of
Eight" is the latest example.
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BENGHAZI AND WATERGATE |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Thursday, 09 May 2013 |
How different history might have been if
the news media then were as blasé about Watergate as they've been about
Benghazi, if Republicans then were as disinterested in truth as Democrats are
now.
If Watergate had not brought Richard
Nixon low, the "emerging Republican majority" Kevin
Phillips predicted in his 1969 book might well have.
Democrats wouldn't have won the lopsided
majorities in the 1974 congressional elections that led to the vast expansion
of domestic spending that now threatens to bankrupt the country. President
Nixon, if unweakened by scandal, wouldn't have abandoned South Vietnam when the
North Vietnamese invaded.
The Watergate burglars were caught while
removing a bug on the phone of a Democratic National Committee official they
believed supplied
prostitutes for visiting Democrat big shots.
President Nixon and his senior aides were
furious when they found out. They were undone by their attempt to cover up a
crime in which they were not involved. A crime in which no one died, like those in Benghazi.
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IS THE CURTAIN COMING DOWN ON CHINA? |
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Written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
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Wednesday, 08 May 2013 |
Anti-reform
hardliners in China's Communist Party have become seriously alarmed by the
sharp slow-down in economic growth, creating a "task-force" to crank
up production.
China's Caixin
Magazine reports that there is a growing "sense of crisis" not felt
since the depths of the global banking crash in 2008-2009.
The State Assets
Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has assembled a team to
"protect economic growth" and pressure state companies to boost jobs
at all costs.
SASAC is the bastion
of vested interests and controller of 115 state behemoths with assets above $6
trillion and a lock on much of the economy.
The move comes amid
further signs that growth is faltering across all fronts. HSBC's gauge of
Chinese services fell three points to 51.1 in April, the lowest in almost two
years.
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IS BITCOIN A BUBBLE? |
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Written by Matt Ridley
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Wednesday, 08 May 2013 |
Seems like everyone these days is talking about Bitcoins and their implications for private
money.
Bitcoins - a form of digital private money - shot up in
value from $90 to $260 each after Cypriot bank accounts were raided by the
State, then plunged last month before recovering some of their value. These
gyrations are symptoms of a bubble. Just as with tulip bulbs or dotcom shares,
there will probably be a bursting.
All markets in assets that can be hoarded and resold - as
opposed to those in goods for consumption - suffer from bubbles. Money is no
different; and a new currency is rather like a new tulip breed.
Yet it would be a mistake to write off Bitcoins as just
another bubble. People are clearly keen on new forms of money safe from the
confiscation and inflation that looks increasingly inevitable as governments
try to escape their debts. Bitcoins pose a fundamental question: will some form of private money replace the
kind minted and printed by governments?
It has happened before.
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ISRAEL WAS REALLY ATTACKING IRAN AND RUSSIA, NOT SYRIA |
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Written by Michael Ledeen
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Tuesday, 07 May 2013 |
As information about the apparent Israeli strikes on targets
inside Syria continues to pour in, it's easy to lose sight of the central fact:
the two reported Israeli attacks are part of an ongoing war, the big war
against the West.
While the attacks were in Syria, the mission was primarily a major strike against Iran and
Russia, two key components of the global alliance arrayed against us. Both
are desperately trying to shore up the Assad regime in Damascus.
The fall of Assad would be a devastating blow to Supreme
Leader Ali Khamanei's tyranny in Tehran, would gravely weaken Russia's
strategic position in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and would threaten
the strength (and even the survival) of Hezbollah, the world's most dangerous
terrorist organization and the creation of Iran's founding tyrant, the
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The attacks apparently did great damage to Iranian missiles,
and the vaunted Russian antiaircraft system provided to both Syria and Iran was
unable to do anything to prevent them. Both have been humiliated.
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE THREAT OF CHECHNYA |
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Written by Ben English
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Thursday, 09 May 2013 |
Some three years ago, as a retired Texas State Trooper, I
taught a high school Criminal Justice class entitled "Crime in America."
This course covered the types and trends of crime in our nation, and
illustrated what someone working in our criminal justice system would most
likely encounter in a future career.
In this course I also identified
future trends in crime, including terrorism and mass killings. Examples
of the Chechen experience were utilized to explain how monstrous this could be,
and was chosen due to the high likelihood of it coming to our nation. On
April 15th, 2013, that calculation was proven true
in Boston.
Authorities have learned those
involved in this hideous act originated from Chechnya, in the Northern Caucasus region of Russia, which serves as a fertile
breeding ground for violent Islamic extremist groups. What follows is a brief history that may illuminate the horrifically bloody nature of Moslem Chechen violence -- which has now been perpetrated on us.
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