It is widely recognized that excessive regulation is unnecessarily killing jobs. The question has been what to do about it.

The president is telling us he is trying to do everything possible to create jobs. Members of his administration have acknowledged that regulations that do not meet a cost-benefit test cost jobs - as everyone with a basic understanding of economics realizes.

Yet the cost-benefit studies that are done by these regulatory agencies are little more than jokes, with grossly incomplete and incompetent analyses.  Here's a simple way they can be done for real.  How about it, Mr. President?

Not quite two years ago, in Terrorism and Tiny Zibbs, I discussed why one of the principal causes of Moslem terrorism is that so many Moslem men are afraid of women.

This was made quite evident in a London Daily Telegraph poll of British Moslems conducted last week that stunned the British. 24% of British Moslems, it turns out, are sympathetic with the feelings and motives of the suicide bombers attacking London, and almost one-third believe that: “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Moslems should seek to bring it to an end.”

The outrage this provoked caused most folks to overlook the poll’s internals, which showed that the great majority of those alienated British Moslems are men. Very few British Moslem women want to bring Western society to an end, for that society respects them as full human beings and gives them freedom to act as such.

So all this soul-searching navel-gazing blather in the British liberal press agonizing over the failure of British society to cure Moslem alienation utterly misses the point - as liberals almost unfailingly do. The fault, the blame, the cause of Moslem terrorism, hatred, and alienation lie not with us in the West, but with the cultural defects of Moslems themselves - and specifically of Moslem men.

To my European friends:

I see from various polls that very nearly all of you support President Obama's reelection.  The numbers are remarkable, indeed incredible.  More than ninety percent of you would vote Obama (94% of Italians, for example, and the numbers for Great Britain, France, Spain, and Germany are even higher).  Other numbers show that nearly half of you think you should somehow be able to vote in our elections, since American policies have such an enormous effect on you.

All of which reinforces my belief-speaking as the grandson of Russian immigrants who arrived in Harlem and western Massachusetts early in the last century-that the American Revolution was a great thing, and that Americans were right to abandon authoritarian Europe for the possibility of creating a free country across the ocean. 

Anyone who truly values liberty has to see that Obama is a threat.  He wants to turn the United States into a version of Europe:  big, meddlesome government, constantly higher levels of taxation, and intrusive regulation of almost everything, combined with a deliberate and systematic weakening of military power and a foreign policy that shrinks from decisive action against freedom's enemies.

That's you, sadly.  So it's understandable that you'd favor Obama (although the numbers - reminiscent of plebiscites rather than normal elections - are ridiculous).  It's yet another sign of the decadence of Europe.

As Jackie Gleason always said at the start of his show, "And awaaaaay we go!" with the first HFR of 2012.

The first week of the year got shot out of the fascist cannon with Zero declaring war on Congress by making four presidential appointments that are egregiously unconstitutional.  Ed Meese, President Reagan's Attorney General, explains why.

The fury of Boehner Congressfolk means nothing to Zero.  As an example of how hopelessly feckless the Pubtards are, Republican Senator Scott Brown (remember how excited we were about him a year ago?) announced his support for Zero's fascism.

Michael Savage is no doubt correct in predicting that Zero's reelection will result in a Hugo Chavez-type banana republic dictatorship, for we are well on our way towards it right now.  The fascist unconstitutional lawlessness of our federal government has built up a monumental amount of inertia, which won't be halted or slowed down merely by Zero's defeat.  It will take an equally monumental effort to reverse its direction.

Which brings us to the pointlessness of Mitt Romney.  Why is he running for president other than to be president?  That's really what's going on, you know.  He wants to live up to his dad.

Can an amendment to the U.S. Constitution fix the deficit problem?

Polls show most Americans think we need a balanced-budget amendment. Yet serious scholars of the issue understand that the deficit is merely a symptom of the problem, namely, that people want more benefits from government than they wish to pay for.

Various forms of balanced-budget and tax-and-spending-limitation amendments have been proposed. Almost everyone realizes that an amendment must be flexible enough to deal with national emergencies, such as a major war.

But if the amendment is too flexible, politicians will quickly find ways around whatever limitations on spending, taxing and deficits are imposed. And the more tightly drawn any proposed amendment is, the more difficult it will be to pass it because an effective amendment will limit the powers of the very people who are required to vote for it.

As we struggle to try to devise a constitutional fix to the structural problem of destructive debt, spending, regulation and taxation, it would be useful to consider the following.  Call them Rahn's Three Requirements for A Constitutional Fix:

Four months ago, on March 16, I told you about The Real Lockbox - a real fix of Social Security being devised by Republicans in Congress, superior to President Bush’s and designed to drive Democrats up a defensive tree. I then promised I would update you on its progress - and now I can report it is fast becoming legislative reality.

The wonders of US shale gas continue to amaze. We receive fresh evidence by the day that swathes of American industry have acquired a massive and lasting advantage in energy costs over global rivals, demolishing assumptions about US economic decline.

Some fifty new projects have been unveiled in the US petrochemical industry. A $30bn investment blitz in underway in ethelyne and fetilizer plants alone.

This is happening just as other clusters of manufacturing - machinery, electrical products, transport equipment, furniture, etc - are "re-shoring" back from China to the US. A 16% annual rise in Chinese wages over the last decade has changed the game. PricewaterhouseCoopers calls it the "Homecoming: Why a resurgence in US manufacturing may be the next big bet."

The revival of the chemical industry is a spin-off from the greater drama of America's energy rebound, though a very big one. The US Energy Department announced last week that the country will produce 11.4m barrels a day (b/d) of oil, biofuels, and liquid hydrocarbons next year, almost as much as Saudi Arabia. This is largely due to hydraulic fracturing - blasting rock with water jets - to extract shale gas and oil.

Europe is going in the opposite direction, drifting towards energy suicide. So is Japan.

Happy New Year! 

You may be wondering how to cheerfully greet the coming darkness of 2012.  Sounds like the folks getting crucified by the Romans singing Always Look On The Bright Side of Life in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Well, screw the darkness.  Screw Obama and his fascist minions, his fascist regulations, and his fascist enemedia lapdogs.  Life is about rising to the challenge, and that's what we're going to do in 2012.

Other people are.  Like in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad has had his goons gun down Syrians by the thousands, yet the Syrians keep fighting for their freedom.  They are not giving up.  Each day Assad gets weaker and they get stronger.  Next year, they will win, with Assad ending up in a coffin or exile.

Let the Syrians be an inspiration to us.

If you were canoeing with a friend and you believed, based upon reading the maps, that you were within five minutes of going over a massive and perhaps lethal waterfall, while your math- and geography-challenged friend believed that you had another 15 minutes before going over the falls, would you compromise by agreeing to go another 10 minutes before returning to shore?

It is delusional to agree to compromise in such a situation. Sometimes it makes sense to compromise -- other times it can be fatal.

President Obama claims that the Republicans are being irresponsible in not wanting to close "tax loopholes" for private jet owners and oil companies. As long as the government continues to grow faster than the economy -- as it has been doing -- there is no tax increase that can solve the problem.

It is delusional to think that the kind of tax increases the president has talked about would do anything serious to solve the debt situation, and would not make the unemployment problem worse.