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THE SYRIAN TEN THOUSAND – OBAMA’S CRIME AGAINST AMERICA

OsCrimetoAmericaAmerica's terrorist shortage may be reaching an end. If Orlando didn't satisfy you and San Bernardino left you wanting more; if you thought, why can't we have more Boston Marathon bombings, Obama has your back.  And your front and any other directions that a pressure cooker full of nails can hit you from.

The land of Washington, Jefferson, and Mohammed Atta has reached a new milestone by taking in Syrian refugee number 10,000. It’s unknown if the TSA will shower him with balloons and confetti once he passes the gate while clutching a Koran and a copy of the Caliphate Cookbook.

Either way we hit the big explosive ten thousand. And the clock is ticking.

Media outlets are puffing out sympathetic portrayals of the oppressed Syrians moving into some neighborhood near you, and far from the bosses behind the major media outlets. All these folks fleeing the violence of their own religion want is a safe place to live. And safe inevitably means non-Islamic.

There’s an obvious lesson here that neither they nor our expertly chattering classes seem able to grasp.

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WHY HASN’T ISIS BLOWN UP ROME?

TheGodfatherAt lunch the other day, a smart man asked me how come there hadn’t been terrorism in Italy, even though Islamic State keeps promising to attack the Vatican.

You’ve undoubtedly been asking yourself the same question, so I’m going to give you the answers.  Answers, plural, because hardly anything happens for a simple reason, especially in a country as tricky and complicated as Italy. So there are several reasons.

First, Italian intelligence, especially domestic intelligence, is a lot better than you might imagine. They are exceptionally good snoopers, since the state knows that the citizens don’t much like the powers-that-be, and so the agents of the state are forever peeking and listening.

Keep in mind that the Italian word for “privacy” is “privacy.” They lifted ours because the concept isn’t in the native language. Wittgenstein, along with Bill Clinton, will tell you if there is no word for it, it doesn’t exist.

Then there are the mafias – especially the big three based in Sicily, Calabria, and Naples.

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THE BEST INVESTMENT APPLE COULD MAKE

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Why would the Irish government argue against receiving $14.5 billion (yes that is a billion with a B) in income taxes that the European Union says Apple owes it?

The amount is greater than the entire Irish budget, yet they are saying, “No thank you.” Both the EU and the Apple executives, including CEO Tim Cook, have engaged in tax malpractice – the latter in a very different way than the former.  Correcting this would be the best investment Apple could make.

Forty years ago, Ireland was the poorest country in the EU; now it has the highest per capita income in the European Union, next to Luxembourg. The Irish wisely decided that the way to improve their people’s lives was by adopting economic policies that would lead to high growth.

Meanwhile, Congress and tax officials back in the United States engaged in tax malpractice by imposing a 35 percent federal corporate income tax rate — way above the revenue maximizing rate. In addition, many states have corporate income taxes, which makes the total rate even higher.

In order to survive, many companies have moved their headquarters to other countries with lower tax rates — thus depriving the United States of the tax revenue and jobs. Many politicians accuse corporate leaders of being disloyal by moving — when what they are really doing is attempting to survive and protect themselves against destructive U.S. tax and regulatory policies.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 09/02/16

Pantelleria
Pantelleria, Strait of Sicily, Italian Mediterranean.  Welcome to Europe’s hidden ultimate hideaway for the rich and famous.  No matter who you are, nobody cares. It’s totally laid back. No big fancy resorts, no tourists, no paparazzi, no autograph hounds, you’re left alone in peace, solitude, and private luxury. 

There’s just one little problem, right on the horizon you see in the distance.  It provides a useful perspective on the main story of the week in America – Trump vs. Clinton on illegal immigration.

This has been a news week of mind-numbing global intensity.  There are events you should know about in 15 countries on five continents.  Let’s see how many I can get to – starting obviously with Mexico.

The most surprised guy on the planet late last week was Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.  He issued a pro forma invitation to both Trump and Hillary for a meeting/discussion as a diplomatic nicety.  He got the reply he expected from her office, thanking him, will do our best to rearrange the busy schedule, our people will be in touch with your people, blah blah.

He fell out of his chair with Trump’s reply:  Muchas gracias, I’m on my way, I’ll see you tomorrow!  You can imagine the freakout in the presidential chambers:  “QUE???  Hay-soos Crees-toh!!!”  And however you say WTF!! in Mexican.

It was the very last thing he expected.  But when the shock subsided, here’s what Nieto told his aides: 

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HILLARY IS GOING TO LOSE

What does she stand for?  What are the genuine accomplishments in her life?  What new innovative ideas does she have to change the current direction of the country that two-thirds of voters think is wrong?

Then there are questions of ethics and morality.  Ereyesterday (8/28), Roger Simon laid out the stakes:

“The truth about the Clinton Foundation is already clear:  a medium to leverage Hillary Clinton's position as Secretary of State for personal enrichment and global control by the Clintons and their allies.  To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been done in the history of the United States government.

 

This means quite simply, that the United States of America has abandoned the rule of law. The election of Hillary Clinton—our own Evita—will make the situation yet more grave. Consider something so basic as how you raise your children in a country where the president is most probably an indictable criminal and most certainly a serial liar of almost inexhaustible proportions. What does this say about our basic morality and how does that affect all aspects of our culture?”

It’s been a long hot political summer, with the Lying Swine Media in a 24/7 feeding frenzy to demonize Trump and coronate Hillary as having already won before the campaign really begins.  As always, summer froth abates over Labor Day weekend, with campaigns beginning in earnest the day after – one week from today, Tuesday September 6th.

So with the LSM predicting the race for the White House is over before it begins, I figure I might as well join in.  My prediction is:  Hillary is going to lose.  She is going to lose, as Dick Cheney would say, “big time.” 

Of course I’m going to caveat that big time – I’ve been wrong too many times before not to do that.  But let’s set the caveats aside for now.  Let’s first count the abundance of ways she’s going down for the electoral count.

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HIMALAYA HELICOPTER EXPEDITION

MtEverest“Scoundrel’s View” of Mount Everest – Tibet North Face on left, Nepal Southwest Face on right

Can you imagine what it is like to actually be at Mount Everest?  Or any other Himalayan giant – like Kanchenjunga, Annapurna, or Dhaulagiri – the greatest mountains on earth?  To be in the presence of any one of them is a life-memorable experience.

To reach any one, you must trek for many days, over extremely rough mountainous terrain at very high altitude.  You must be in exceptional physical condition to do so.

Which is why almost no one, even the most ambitious trekker, has ever been to all of them.  Last May, I created an alternative:  to the base camps of all eight 8,000 meter peaks in the Himalayas by helicopter, piloted by the most experienced mountain rescue pilots in the world.

Here’s our high altitude AS350 B3 coming in to land at the Khumbu Ice Fall on Mount Everest at 17,500 ft.

Chopper on SnowWhat we did in May was so astoundingly spectacular I can’t resist doing it again this November.  Would you like to come with me?

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THE MEDIA EATS ITS OWN FOR HILLARY

MediaBiasWhere does media bias come from?  Anyone who really wanted to know had that question answered when much of the media took a break from attacking Trump to attack the Associated Press.

What does the AP have in common with Trump? Both were hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances to score payoffs from dictators, arms dealers and tycoons with terrorist ties for the next four to eight years.

The Associated Press got in trouble with the rest of the media for digging up dirt on the Clinton Foundation. Instead of just repeating the usual Clinton denials, it actually ran the numbers and noted that more than half the “ordinary folks” who got meetings with her had donated to her Foundation.

Instead of reporting on the AP story, the media went to war on its own. It wasn’t just the usual suspects like Vox and Slate who have a reputation for attacking any actual reporters who stray off the reservation and actually do their jobs. This time all the big boys were on the job.

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SO WHAT IF THE ARCTIC OCEAN MELTS?

The sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is approaching its annual nadir. By early September each year about two thirds of the ice cap has melted, then the sea begins to freeze again.

An adult male polar bear on sea ice in the Arctic Ocean north of Svalbard, near 81-degrees North.This year looks unlikely to set a record for melting, with more than four million square kilometers of ice remaining, less than the average in the 1980s and 1990s, but more than in the record low years of 2007 and 2012. (The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has been increasing in recent years, contrary to predictions.)

Meanwhile, the habit of some scientists of predicting when the ice will disappear completely keeps getting them into trouble.  But would it matter if it did all melt one year? Here’s the point everybody seems to be missing: the Arctic Ocean’s ice has indeed disappeared during summer in the past, routinely.

And when it did, during a period known as the “Early Holocene Insolation Maximum” (EHIM), it was the best thing that ever happened to humanity.  Here’s why.

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WHY WOULD THE IRS FOLKS HAVE A TAX THAT LOSES THEM MONEY?

capitalgainstaxWould you be in favor of a tax that loses money for the government, and penalizes entrepreneurship, job creation and economic growth?

Only muddy-brained or mean-spirited people would favor such a tax -- yet many such people are found in the Internal Revenue Service and Congress. The tax that I am referring to is the capital gains tax, and even more specifically, the capital gains tax as it is applied to the sale of commodities.

A capital gains tax liability occurs when you sell an asset for more than you paid for it. The asset could be stocks, bonds, real estate, art, or gold and other commodities.

Most commodity prices have fallen, after reaching a cyclical high at the beginning of the Great Recession, which means, even in nominal terms (not-inflation-adjusted), the capital gains tax on commodities is a net revenue loser for the government.

The issue is of renewed importance because of the rise of new, private digital-like monies (e.g., bitcoin).

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HALF-FULL REPORT 08/26/16

Good grief.  What a disastrous, horrible, no-good lousy week this has been… for The PIAPS.

I’m sure you need cheering up after this depressing news, and if listening to a masterful British orator won’t do it, nothing will:

Nigel Farage, however, was the least of Shrillary’s worries this week.  On Wednesday (8/24), the New York Post’s cover story was A Nation for Sale under Hillary Clinton.  But this isn’t a Post scoop – this is an exposé of the Clinton Foundation’s naked criminality by the media’s gold-standard flagship, the Associated Press itself.   Every newspaper in the country uses an AP newsfeed.  As such, it cannot be ignored by the Libtard Media and it is utterly devastating.

Trump was fully justified to declare that, “It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history.”

Jack Kelly had a marvelous column this week on Journalists as Presstitutes.  They are intentionally biased for the left, willful propagandists and shills for the Democrats.

There is another way they presstitute themselves that you should know about, for it will give you a deep insight into how journalism really works.  We use a current story about Turkey in the New York Times as a prime example.

How’s this for a headline in this morning’s (8/26) London Daily Express: Favorite to be Next Dutch Prime Minister Vows to Ban the Koran and Close All Mosques.  Yep, that’s Geert Wilders.  He and his Dutch Freedom Party lead every poll there is by double digits, and the election is soon.

We have the HFR’s favorite judge, favorite Olympian, and Hero of the Week.  Here we go. 

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WHERE THE SOVIET UNION STILL EXISTS

LeninLives
Tiraspol, Transnistria.  Lenin lives.  At least he still does here in the strangest country in Europe, as it insists on pretending it is a part of the Soviet Union.

We are in a landlocked and isolated sliver of Moldova that wanted no part of the breakup of the USSR in the wake of Berlin Wall falling in November 1989. 

Transnistria
This is where the Soviet Union still exists – and where the people consider themselves Soviet citizens. They idolize Putin – and thus idolize Trump for being Putin’s friend.

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AMERICA NEEDS A FOREIGN POLICY AS SERIOUS AS IRAN’S

IranMissileLet’s state it clearly:  Washington’s policy regarding state sponsors of terrorism is schizophrenic. As a result, our government is failing in its duty to protect Americans from terrorism.

It is not as if we need evidence of what nations are sponsoring terror attacks against us. Whether the attacks of 9-11, the Khobar Towers bombing, and the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Iran was the prime culprit, in addition to the thousands of American soldiers maimed and killed by IED’s strewn all over Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian agents.

If the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, Obama’s Iran nuclear deal)) was truly able to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, looking the other way while Iran builds ballistic missiles and supports terrorism might be considered unpalatable, but nonetheless necessary if that were the only choices before us.

But the JCPOA only delays Iran from reaching its goal of becoming a nuclear-armed state sponsor of terrorism—which all evidence suggests is happening rapidly. The effect on Middle East security is already devastating.

By our inaction, we are helping Iran create a Shia crescent from Iran to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon and to the Mediterranean Sea, an arc dominated by Iran and its terror proxies that jeopardizes the entire Middle East and especially the US allied oil producing states.

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CHINA’S DEAD MONEY TRAP

Xiaochuan
Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China

China is at mounting risk of a Japanese-style "liquidity trap" as monetary policy loses traction and the economy approaches credit exhaustion, forcing a shift towards Keynesian fiscal stimulus.

Officials at the Chinese People’s Bank (PBOC) have begun to call for a fundamental change in strategy, warning that interest rate cuts have become an increasingly blunt tool. They cannot easily stop companies hoarding cash or halt the slide in private investment.

Sheng Songcheng, the PBOC’s head of analysis, set off a storm last month by warning that the economy had “started to show some signs of being caught in a liquidity trap.”

Caixin magazine said last week (8/16) Chinese companies are hoarding record sums of “dead money” rather than spending it. The growth rate of private investment has dropped to 2.1% over the last seven months, the lowest since global financial crisis. 

The International Monetary Fund warned in June that China’s corporate debt has reached 145% of GDP. “Vulnerabilities are still rising on a dangerous trajectory. They must be addressed immediately,” it said.  China’s entire financial system is clearly out of kilter.

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