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HALF-FULL REPORT 05/24/13


The Drudge Report has been running hilarious headlines this week on Anthony "Little" Weiner's run for Mayor of New York.  It was one year ago (last week of May, 2011) that Weinergate broke, resulting in the punniest week ever for the HFR.

How could Drudge resist red-siren headlining the news of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's putdown of Weiner's candidacy as PREMATURE ELECTION, and subtitling the headline with an altered quote of Cuomo:  "Shame on us if we erect him."

Nothing is deadlier to a politician than to be a joke in the eyes of the public.  Jay Leno did it to Zero on The Tonight Show Monday night (5/20).  Here's the transcript but be sure and watch the embedded video of Kids Ask Obama the Darndest Questions.

You know the HMS (His Majesty's Ship) Zero is in danger of sinking when the rats of the Libtard Media have started abandoning it.

On Wednesday (5/22), the editorial staff of the New York Times ran an official op-ed condemning "the Obama administration" for "threatening fundamental freedoms of the press."

And yesterday evening (5/23), the entire home page of HuffPo, the Libtard media's main website, was devoted to a demand that Eric Holder resign:  "TIME TO GO"  blared HuffPo.

The only news this week that could possibly be better than Holder soon to be an ex-AG is this.

Mrs. Zero  will be taking an "extended vacation" for the next few months, running away and hiding from the world and shutting up so we won't have to suffer her insufferable busybody hectoring.

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UNCLE SAM IS ADDICTED TO OVERSPENDING


Tax revenue in 2013 will be lower (despite the just passed tax increase), and government spending will be higher than forecast. It's an easy prediction -- and this is why.

The capital gains tax rate and the tax on dividends is being raised from 15 percent to 23.5 percent for higher-income people. There are many studies, including those made by the U.S. Treasury, showing that the revenue-maximizing rate on capital gains is less than 15 percent.

Taking a capital gain is often a discretionary event, and it is well documented that capital gains realizations fall as the rate is increased. Thus, this rate increase will be a net revenue loser for the government.

Expenditures will also be far higher than forecast. The simple fact is the Obama administration and Congress, particularly the Democrats, are unable to resist the urge to spend more.

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AMERICANS ARE FINALLY BECOMING MORE PRO-LIFE

 
New Gallup polling shows that bringing abortion back into the national debate may not be a bad political call for Republicans.

Whereas public opinion has moved in recent years against the conservative position opposing same-sex marriage, the opposite is true on abortion. On abortion, Americans have become decidedly more pro-life, moving in the direction of conservatives.

A just released Gallup poll shows that 50 percent now identify as "pro-life" compared to 41 percent as "pro-choice." This is a complete reversal from 16 years ago in the mid-90s when 56 percent were "pro-choice" and 38 percent "pro-life."

In fact, the Gallup headline for the poll results is:  "Pro-Choice Americans At Record Low."

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ROMNEY AND YELLOW DOGS


Democrats have perfected Saul Alinsky's Rule for Radicals:  "Pick the target.  Freeze it.  Personalize it. Polarize it."  It's called the politics of personal destruction - and today, it's all the Dems and their media lapdogs have left. 

As they can't argue from principles, policies, or track records, all they can do is engage in personal attacks on their opponents.  Now they are so desperate to destroy Mitt Romney, they are dredging up the ancient tale of the family dog, Seamus, riding on the roof of the family car in 1983.

Turns out, though, that while Romney's dog ended up on the roof of his car, Zero's dog ended up on the roof of his mouth. 

There's even a new campaign sign: Romney 2012 -- At Least I Didn't Eat My Dog!

The signs continue to mount that Romney is headed for the presidency by a landslide.  Zero will be lucky to carry ten states (e.g., California, New York, and Leftie New England - one of them won't be Pennsylvania).  One of the main reasons will be dogs - yellow dogs. A new breed of yellow dogs.

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MAKERS OF MANNERS

The Kabuki Dance now underway between Soon-To-Be Justice Alito and Senate Democrats makes me think of Shakespeare’s Henry V.

The Democrats (and pro-abortion Republicans like Arlen Specter) will be desperately trying to get Alito to forswear any overthrow of sacred SCOTUS “precedents” such as Roe v. Wade, while Alito will genuflect before the precedent shrine and mellifluously commit to nothing.

Both sides will assiduously avoid any discussion of how these precedents were established in the first place – by overthrowing previous ones – what justified their establishment, and what would justify replacing them with new ones today.

Instead, there will be monotonous droning on about the legal concept of stare decisis (Latin for “to stand by that which is decided”), and how it makes Roe v. Wade set in unquestionable stone.

But Alito knows his Shakespeare...


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STREAMRIP YOUR iPOD

It’s a great scam, if you think about it. You bought, say, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John when it came out in 1973 (am I dating myself here?), and you still like it.

You even still have the album, although the record player is long gone, and they don’t make them anymore. You liked the album so much, you bought a cassette tape version to play in the car, and later on, a CD.

Now you’ve got an iPod or similar MP3 player, and you considering buying the MP3 version.

Hmm. Shelling out four times for the same product? There are two no-cost ways you can get the music you want into MP3 format - one using the cassette tapes you already own. The other involves completely legal downloads of popular commercial music, not running afoul ( so far ) of laws involving copying and downloading.

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IRAQIS AS THE NEW JEWS

It was widely noted, most passionately by the Iraqi blogger Hammorabi, that when Tony Blair reminded the House of Commons that many countries had been scourged by the terrorists in recent years, he omitted Iraq from the list. His speechwriters had Iraq in a different part of their database; Iraqis weren't victims of terrorism in the same way as Brits, Americans, Kenyans, and Indonesians.

One's instinct is to let it go as an oversight, but there was another country missing from the list, and this case was somewhat less widely noted: Israel. And at this point, one is forced to do some thinking. What do these two countries have in common, that they should both be ignored in the British government's response to the London attacks?

Iraq and Israel are arguably the two major victims of Islamic terrorism. Yet they did not come to Blair's mind. Or maybe they did, and maybe there was a reason they were omitted.

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PRETENDING TO BE HAPPY

Last week was the 13th birthday of my youngest son, Jackson. One evening a few days before, I was engrossed in writing on the computer when my wife reminded me it was Jackson’s bedtime. He was in bed reading, waiting for me to kiss him goodnight.

As I walked down the hall towards his room, my brain was filled with thoughts about the article I was working on. I was on autopilot and all I could think about was what I would write when I got back on the computer. For some reason, I stopped and stood still. Somehow, an extraneous thought had popped into my consciousness from nowhere.

It seemed just a moment ago when he was a little boy. Now, in just a few days, Jackson would become a teen-ager. The time was not far off when he will be too big a kid for me to kiss him goodnight. The time was not far off when he will not be down the hall at all.

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TEHRAN ON THE BRINK?

My friends at RegimeChangeIran have just received a copy of a secret report prepared by the Pasdaran Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s key security forces, for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It warns they would be unable to control a demonstration or rebellion in Tehran lasting longer than six hours.

Here’s the report’s key confession:

Society is in an unstable state. Were certain sensitive locations in Tehran to 'explode' under these circumstances, and the capital sink into chaos, if uprisings continue unabated and grow larger for more than six hours in Tehran, the situation would become uncontrollable.

You can be sure every student protestor in Iran knows about this report by now.

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WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT – ECONOMIC FREEDOM OR POLITICAL FREEDOM?


The Chinese Communist Party is trying to continue pulling off the trick that has served it ever since Deng Xiaoping defeated the Gang of Four: more economic freedom combined with less political freedom. The people can choose any good or service they want - except their government.

In many ways it has worked extremely well. In 1978 Maoism had left the country horribly poor: more than half the people of China tried to live on less than a dollar a day. Over the next nine years per capita income doubled, then doubled again over the nine years after that.

Many a left-leaning Western politician has been heard to muse about how much better we would grow if only we directed the market economy with the single-mindedness of the Chinese Communist Party. See, they mutter, a paternalistic government is best at generating economic prosperity.

Yet this is precisely the wrong lesson to draw from China. It's not because it's unfree at the top that China is growing fast, but because, at least in some respects, it is very free at the bottom. The extraordinary fact is that - economically - the average Chinese person is more free from government interference than the average Westerner.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 05/17/13


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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THE FED PLUS FANNIE AND FREDDIE EQUALS FINANCIAL DISASTER


You may have been reading how the Federal Reserve has been buying huge quantities -- almost a trillion dollars' worth -- of "mortgage-backed securities" (MBS). There is a relatively high probability that this program is going to end in disaster -- and here is why.

The Fed is a government institution, fully owned by citizen taxpayers. The dollars it creates only have value to the extent people believe that the Internal Revenue Service can extract real wealth from taxpayers to equal the value of the new dollars being created.

Either Congress will have to vote for more taxes (or engage in less spending) to obtain the wealth to cover the new money, or the Fed's printing of money will cause inflation, thereby reducing the value of the money that individuals and businesses have or receive in exchange for the government bonds they have purchased.

There are many reasons why inflation could suddenly surge and the Fed would lose control.

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WHY OBAMA’S OSAMA BRAG IS SO DANGEROUSLY STUPID


As Barack continues to bray about how he made the "gutsy call" to kill Bin Laden, it's been pointed out that the call wasn't his at all - it was Admiral William McRaven's - whom President Gutsy Call would have been able to scapegoat if the op had gone sideways.  We know this because of a memo from CIA Director Leon Panetta, recently obtained by Time magazine.

Yet Zero's campaign film, The Road We've Traveled, maintains the fiction, with Joe Biden saying:

"We sat down in the Situation Room, the entire national security apparatus was in that room, and the President turns to every principal in the room, every secretary, ‘What do you recommend I do?' And they say, ‘Well, forty-nine percent chance he's there, fifty-one ... it's a close call, Mr. President.' As he walked out the room, it dawned on me, he's all alone. This is his decision. If he was wrong, his Presidency was done. Over."

Now we know it wasn't his decision, it was a CYA move - thus, the hero of the story is McRaven, not Zero.  This is a good point - but there is a much bigger one - and it has been missed by all the media, including those on our side.  Which means there's a real story here no one in public knows, which demonstrates how dangerously stupid Zero is.

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THE LAND OF THE FREE OR THE LAND YOU MUST FLEE?


Until now, you would have considered this question to be the most ludicrous you had ever heard in your entire life.  Today, in America Under Zero, it is the most sobering.

Until now, the epithet "Fascist America" was exclusively used by moonbat lefties who hate our country for its virtues, not its vices.  Today, the moonbat lefties are fascists running the White House and the Justice Department.

Let's face the stark, tragic reality:  if Zero is reelected this November, you can kiss our America goodbye.  It will be an act of eyes-open willful national suicide. 

Personally, I cannot make myself believe this will actually happen.  In 2008, the urge to expiate racist-guilt caused brain damage to a majority of voters.  That urge is no longer there. 

Thus the odds of Zero winning a second term are greatly diminished.  But they are not 0%.  What would you peg them at - 25%, 35%, 45%?  The higher the peg, the more precautions you need to take.

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THAT TEARS IT

Harriet Miers tears it for me with George Bush. It’s the last straw. John Roberts was no straw at all. Clearly a conservative constitutionalist, overwhelmingly brilliant and qualified, he was an inspired choice. Objections to him by certain conservatives were paranoid.

But we are going from the sublime to the ridiculous with Miss Miers. This ludicrous nomination is the bottom of Bush’s barrel.

It is as ludicrous for Bush to claim that she is more qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice than J. Harvie Wilkinson, Janice Rogers Brown, or any of a score of distinguished conservative candidates, as it is unbelievable for him to claim that he “knows her heart” but has never discussed abortion with her.

Yet there is good to come of it: in the form of a conservative Congressional rebellion. The good that is coming out of Bush’s inept Katrina performance is an end to profligate spending, and deep (hopefully real deep) cuts in both discretionary and mandated programs.

In his press conference today (the 4th), Bush predicted Miers will do well in her Senate hearings. She may never get to them. The outcry from Republicans on Capitol Hill may get so loud so quick that Bush may be forced to withdraw her nomination. That will provide the chance to rebuild the Bush Presidency.

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