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HALF-FULL REPORT 12/26/14 |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 26 December 2014 |
Welcome to the Last Half-Full Report... of 2014. Next week we begin a whole new year, so let's
say goodbye to this old one. Should we
also say good riddance?
This being the HFR, the judgment should be, well, at least a
bit more half-full than half-empty.
Before we start, however, first a thank you. That would be for all the kind comments, both
on the Forum and by personal email, regarding Revolutionary
Constitutionalism and Declarations of Defiance (published on Christmas Eve,
12/24).
One comment by email from a long-time TTPer and dear friend
was truly humbling...
Now, what's half-full around here? Looking around the world, 2014 was way more
than just half-full for India. And the best
news for us and much of the world is the worst for the jerks of the world
(e.g., the governments of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela). There's other good news as well -- and news from an elite US college that's morally evil.
Plus a video of the HFR Hero of the Week that will make you cheer and laugh your head off at the same time...
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REVOLUTIONARY CONSTITUTIONALISM AND DECLARATIONS OF DEFIANCE |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Wednesday, 24 December 2014 |
At the end of 2014, it is clear that our constitutional
order is breaking down.
Whether by Alinskyite design, the cowardice of the GOP
Elite, or a sense of hopelessness by people in general, the barbarians are at
the constitutional gates and are rabidly tearing them down.
Barbarians
celebrating the murder of two NYPD police are marching down 5th
Avenue in New York today (12/24), while barbarians
in the Zero White House have issued over one thousand two hundred unconstitutional
"regulations" to further suffocate our freedom in just the last two weeks. Our Barbarian-in-Chief rules by executive
decree without any concern for the Constitution he swore to uphold.
There is no normal way to fix this. Our country's political and cultural
situation has become so dire that only a radical, indeed revolutionary fix will
do. This can be done, however, without
the violence of a Second American Revolution, but constitutionally, fully
within America's founding legal framework.
That is, rather than another Revolution, what we need is a revolutionary interpretation of the
Constitution, "revolutionary" only in the context of how far we have strayed from
its original meaning. Here's how to go
about it.
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DEMOCRATS ARE COP KILLERS |
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Written by Daniel Greenfield
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Tuesday, 23 December 2014 |
Al Sharpton is not just an MSNBC talk show host. He isn't a
goofy fellow who mispronounces things on the teleprompter. He isn't these
things just as he wasn't a funny fat man in a track suit wearing a gold
medallion the size of the Bronx around his neck.
Those are the things that make him seem like a joke. And he
isn't a joke. He leads lynch mobs.
In 1991, Sharpton
led an anti-Semitic lynch mob through Crown Heights and black racist
violence tore the neighborhood apart and took lives. He led a lynch mob to a
store in Harlem and the store burned with employees inside.
Since then Sharpton slimmed down and swapped out colorful
track suits for expensive custom made Soho pinstripe suits. He became a
regular visitor to the White House and City Hall. He spoke at the Democrat
National Convention and got a slot on that party's favorite news network.
Two cops are dead in New York City because Barack Obama, Bill
de Blasio and the Democrat Party embraced Sharpton and everything he stood for.
They embraced his racist ideology of hate. They made their party into the party of crime.
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THE DEMOCRATS' CLIMATE OF HATE |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Tuesday, 23 December 2014 |
The
assassination of John F. Kennedy was fostered by the "climate of hate" created
by conservative critics of the president in Dallas, many liberals said.
The
assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald,
was a communist from New Orleans, so this was a stretch.
Sarah
Palin's "inflammatory rhetoric" was to blame for the shooting in Tucson in
January, 2011, in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz, was severely wounded,
and six who'd come to hear her were killed, many liberals said.
The
shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was mentally ill, had no ties to conservative
groups, no political motive for the shooting.
You'd
look in vain to find conservative incendiary rhetoric inciting conservative
violence, but it's easy to find regarding Democrats. Now, in the wake of the murder of two New
York City police officers Saturday (12/20), prominent Democrats are fearful
Americans will hold them accountable for the consequences of their "climate of
hate."
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THE BLESSING OF HUMAN PROGRESS |
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Written by Richard Rahn
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Wednesday, 24 December 2014 |
On this Christmas Eve, you should count your blessings that
you live in 2014.
Would you prefer to live as the French King Louis XIV did
(1643-1715), or as you do today? The average low-income American, who makes
$25,000 per year, lives in a home that has air conditioning, a color TV and a
dishwasher, owns an automobile, and eats more calories than he should from an
immense variety of food.
Louis XIV lived in constant fear of dying from smallpox and
many other diseases that are now cured quickly by antibiotics. His palace at
Versailles had 700 rooms but no
toilets nor bathrooms (hence he rarely bathed), and no central heating or
air conditioning.
Louis and John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world 100 years ago, had many servants to gather and
prepare food for them, but they could not get fresh food out of season and had
a tiny choice of food compared with anyone who has access to a modern
supermarket, where one is increasingly able to purchase prepared meals of far
higher quality and variety than anything Louis or Rockefeller could obtain.
My Cato colleague Marian Tupy has created a website, HumanProgress.org, which graphically
details the enormous progress humans have made on nearly all fronts. People in
the world live far better today than they did a mere half-century ago.
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THANK GOD FOR CONCEALED CARRY |
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Written by To The Point News
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Friday, 26 December 2014 |
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HALF-FULL REPORT 12/19/14 |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 19 December 2014 |
Yesterday in the Kremlin, the Putin Huilo gave
what Bloomberg
described as an "Extremely Long Very Weird Press Conference."
It reminded me of the now-viral YouTube video
of the Chinese two year-old missing a putt:
As the London Economist
describes Putin's Russia, it's The
End of the Line.
What is happening to Russia - and elsewhere -
affords an extremely teachable moment in what makes prosperity and indeed
freedom itself possible. Let's take that
moment now....
All that aside, we nonetheless are facing Two More Years of
Hell. This week provided ample
evidence of why....
And how Islam is rapidly becoming a religion of criminal insanity....
Yet there is some good news....
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TWO MORE YEARS OF HELL |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Thursday, 18 December 2014 |
Asking you not to read this is like telling you not to think
of a pink elephant. Of course I want you
to read this - or else why am I writing it? - but I want to enjoy Christmas
first.
Christmas is one week from today (12/18). This is a time to set problems aside -
personal, national, global - and simply bask in the blessings of our family,
our loved ones, our friends, and of the life with which Providence has gifted
us.
It sure isn't a time to wallow in the mire of what's coming -
but if not now, when? After Christmas,
we're looking forward to celebrating a happy
new year. No, it's best to get this over
with quickly.
For we have to brace ourselves: the next two years are going to be the
longest two years of our lives. They
will get continually worse as our country descends into the Hell that a satanic
president wants America to be.
Zero is not Lucifer incarnate, let's be clear, but it's
obvious now that he is literally "satantic" in the sense of being fiendishly
and maliciously intent on damaging America's culture, society, and founding
institutions as much as possible.
So what do we do? Here are five options.
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THE END OF BANKS? |
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Written by Louis-Vincent Gave
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Friday, 19 December 2014 |
Banks are intermediaries, and it's the business of the internet to eliminate unnecessay ones. Thus a friend of mine observes:
What Lending Club
and other P2P
lenders do is provide an online market-place that connects borrowers and
lenders directly; think the eBay of loans
and you have the right conceptual grasp. Moreover, the business model of online
market-place lending breaks with a banking tradition, dating back to 14th
century Florence, of operating on a 'fractional reserve' basis.
So what happens to a world that moves ‘ex-bank' and where most
new loans are extended peer-to-peer? In such a world, the banking multiplier
disappears along with fractional reserve banking (and consequently the need for
regulators?).
What happens when bankers stop lending their clients umbrellas when it is
sunny, and taking them away when it rains?
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PUTIN LOSES CONTROL |
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Written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
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Wednesday, 17 December 2014 |
Vladimir Putin has lost control of Russia's economy and may
be forced to impose Soviet-style exchange controls after "shock and
awe" action by the central bank failed to stem the collapse of the ruble.
"The situation is critical," said the central bank's vice-chairman,
Sergei Shvetsov. "What is happening is a nightmare that we could not even have
imagined a year ago."
The currency spiked from 71 to 98 against the euro yesterday
(12/16) in the biggest one-day drop since the default crisis in 1998 as capital
flight gathered pace, despite a drastic rise in interest rates to 17% the day
before (12/15) intended to crush speculators and show resolve. It closed at 87,
and at this writing today (12/17) is at 83.
Yields on two-year Russian bonds spiraled to 15.36%, while
credit default swaps are pricing in a one-third chance of a sovereign default.
The shares of Russia's biggest lender, Sberbank, fell 18%.
Neil Shearing, from Capital Economics, said the spectacular
failure of the rate shock may bring matters to a head. "If a rise of 650 basis
points won't do the job, we are near the end. That means stringent capital
controls," he said.
In Washington, the White House said it had no intention of
easing pressure on Russia to halt the freefall. "It is President Putin's
decision to make. The aim is to sharpen the choice that he faces," said
White House spokesman Josh Earnest yesterday.
After years of bluster and suggestions by Mr. Putin that the
US is a paper tiger, the Kremlin is now coming face to face with the
cataclysmic consequences of what it has done by invading Ukraine and changing
Europe's borders by force.
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FEMINISM'S RAPE EPIDEMIC MYTH |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Friday, 19 December 2014 |
There's
one chance in four a coed will be raped before she graduates from college,
feminists say. Which is like saying the earth is flat, the sun revolves around
it, the moon is made of camembert.
Only
about two percent of rape charges are false, feminists claim. That number originated in Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book, "Against Our
Will." She offered no evidence to substantiate it. No study ever has, said Edward Greer in a law review article.
The worse the crime, the more vile are those who
make false accusations of it. That applies to feminists in spades.
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THE DEMOCRATS' TORTUOUS LIES ABOUT TORTURE |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Tuesday, 16 December 2014 |
"How
many legs does a calf have, if you call the tail a leg?" Abraham
Lincoln asked a Congressman during a discussion of whether he had the
authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
"Five,"
the Congressman replied.
"Four,"
Lincoln corrected him. "Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
We
can assume that Lincoln would similarly correct Democrats on the Senate
Intelligence Committee who have as expansive a definition of "torture," as he
would those feminists who include consensual sex in their definition of "rape."
Foremost
of the "tortures" Democrats decried in a 500 page report was the waterboarding
of three senior al Qaida leaders. CIA
interrogators were themselves waterboarded before using the technique on
terrorists.
Grandstanding
journalists have volunteered to be waterboarded to "prove" it's torture. Which
should prove conclusively it isn't. No journalist has ever volunteered to have
his fingernails pulled out.
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DIFI DEFINES BEING A USEFUL IDIOT |
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Written by Michael Ledeen
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Tuesday, 16 December 2014 |
I kept asking myself, why would DiFi - Senator Dianne Feinstein
- approve a "report" whose main effect inevitably would be to damage
America?
And it occurred to me that it might be a mistake to try to
understand this bizarre event in the usual context of domestic politics.
It probably belongs to a different realm of analysis: national security,
international affairs, and espionage. Maybe that was really the point of
the operation.
It benefits our enemies, after all. It undermines
other countries' willingness to share information, and to work with us "in the
field." Anyone who takes life seriously must acknowledge that, quite
aside from the merits of the "case" brought by Democrat staffers on the Senate
Intel Committee, we've been damaged.
The real scary question is: Did DiFi and her Democrat colleagues issue the "Torture Report" for no other purpose than to damage their own country? The report itself contains a very large clue why the answer may be yes.
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WILL CHILE GO FROM RICHES TO SOCIALIST RUIN? |
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Written by Richard Rahn
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Wednesday, 17 December 2014 |
Why do very successful nations often adopt policies that
lead to their undoing?
After a revolution or major reform, some countries allow a
high degree of economic freedom, establish the rule of law, protect private
property rights and establish low tax rates with strict limits on government
spending and regulation.
The economy takes off, the citizens become far richer and
then the government mucks it up, usually by attempting to redistribute income
and expand state control.
Is Chile, which has been one of the bright spots in the
world economy, falling into this pattern under socialist President Michelle
Bachelet?
For the past three decades, Chile has outperformed the other
South American countries and now has the highest per-capita income in South
America, averaging approximately $22,000 per year on a purchasing power parity
basis.
The World Bank lists Chile as a "developed
economy," and it was the first Latin American country to become a member
of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The average
Chilean has a per capita income about three times higher than in 1983.
And now the Chilean people seem poised to let Ms. Bachelet throw it all away.
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THE POWER OF HABIT |
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Written by Dr. Joel Wade
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Thursday, 18 December 2014 |
For most living creatures, instincts take charge of the
necessary ordering that life requires: finding food, finding a mate, sleep
cycles, protective behavior.
But we humans are different in a fundamental way:
our basic survival tool is our conscious mind, and unlike instinctual animals,
we can choose to use our basic tool of survival... or not.
Because of this, we can do something pretty amazing: with
our conscious minds, we train our own brains to hold the structure of
our lives. We do this by creating habits. The habits we practice daily, weekly,
monthly... are all maintained through neural pathways that we've established in
our brain that make it easy and natural for us to follow these routines.
These habits - if they are good ones - help us to build a
sense of meaning, purpose and direction. They are what allow us to persevere
and reach long term goals. Without habits, we'd need to use our willpower for
every single action we take.
The trouble is, we acquire many of our habits by default -
from routines that our family valued and practiced or that we learned in school
or from influential people in our lives. So here are some tips on how to get rid of bad habits and acquire good ones.
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