Las Vegas.  It's good to be here at Bally's in Vegas among several thousand pro-freedom folks at Mark Skousen's Freedom Fest.  It's also creepy that right across the Strip from Bally's, Zero is at  Caesar's as I am writing this. 

He gave a fund-raising speech for Lost Harry Reid last night (7/08).  Believe it or not, his very first words of the speech were "Si, si, puede" - the chant in Spanish of illegal aliens, meaning "Yes, yes we can violate America's laws and live off the American taxpayer with impunity" (then become citizens and vote to keep Dems in office in perpetuity).

The Las Vegas Review Journal eviscerated Zero's speech this morning in an editorial entitled, Mr. President, Your Economic Policies Suck.  Nevada has the highest unemployment of any state in the US, while Zero's "main economic goals," the LVRJ says, "seem to be the punishment and prevention of capital formation and business growth."  You should read the entire editorial.

One fear you'll hear expressed here - as well as on the TTP Forum - is the Dems planning an orgy of fascist legislation during a "lame duck" post-election session, as described in the Wall Street Journal today (7/09).  This fear is way overblown.  Here are four reasons why. 

Assume you are a scientist and have been given a major financial grant to prove that the mythical unicorn really did exist.

You know that as long as you can demonstrate some progress in showing the unicorn might have existed, your financial grant will be renewed each year, provided some other scientist does not come out with substantial evidence that the unicorn could not have existed.

Under such conditions, you would have a very strong incentive to disregard much of the evidence that the unicorn could not have existed and each year provide only the data that could demonstrate that the unicorn might have existed. You also would have a very strong incentive to attack any scientist who raised serious questions or provided evidence that the unicorn could not have existed.

You even might go so far as to refer to them with the disparaging term "unicorn deniers."

Islamist Bigots Lose One - And They're Outraged

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is furious. For the first time since the birth of Mohammed, it isn’t getting its way in Washington. In the past, whenever our government raised the possibility of doing the least little thing of which CAIR might not wholeheartedly approve, the soft-core jihadis shrieked, “Bigotry!” And presidents, cabinet secretaries, senators, representatives and bureaucrats—even intelligence analysts and military officers--ran for cover (while, no doubt, suggesting that their spouses don head-scarves for a probationary period).

In the face of Islamist terrorism, we’ve been foolish. In the face of Islamist bullying of our government, we’ve been cowards.

Now, just this once, CAIR isn’t being allowed to dictate its sharia-flavored will to our nation’s capital.

The underground or "black" economy is rapidly rising, and the fault is mainly due to government policies.

Here is the evidence. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) released a report last week concluding that 7.7 percent of U.S. households, containing at least 17 million adults, are unbanked (i.e., those who do not have bank accounts), and an "estimated 17.9 percent of U.S. households, roughly 21 million, are underbanked" (i.e., those who rely heavily on nonbank institutions, such as check cashing and money transmitting services).

As an economy becomes richer and incomes rise, the normal expectation is that the proportion of the unbanked population falls and does not rise as is now happening in the United States.

Tax revenues are falling far more rapidly at the federal, state and local level than would be expected by the small drop in real gross domestic product (GDP) and changes in tax law that have occurred since the recession began.

A new Middle East is upon us and its primary beneficiary couldn't be happier.

For generations, the stability of global oil supplies has been guaranteed by Saudi Arabia's reserve capacity that could be relied on to make up for any shocks to those supplies due to political unrest or other factors. When Libya's teetering dictator Muammar Ghaddafi decided to shut down Libya's oil exports last month, the oil markets reacted with a sharp increase in prices. The very next day the Saudis announced they would make up the shortfall from Libya's withdrawal from the export market.
 
In the old Middle East, the Saudi statement would never have been questioned. Oil suppliers and purchasers alike accepted the arrangement whereby Saudi Arabian reserves - defended by the US military -- served as the guarantor of the oil economy. But in the New Middle East, Iran feels comfortable questioning the Saudi role.
 
With each passing day, the Iranian regime is actively destabilizing Saudi Arabia's neighbors and increasing its influence over Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority in the kingdom's Eastern Province where most of its oil is located.

The Obama administration has failed completely to understand what is happening.

Good grief, what a weird week.  Which headline is more bizarre - the one in Cincinnati, "Naked Man Arrested With Stolen Cheese At Library," or the one in Portland, "Al Gore Accused Of Being A Crazed Sex Poodle"?

We all know, of course, that Algore's former boss is a serial rapist.  But Mr. Save-The-Planet?  Goodnight, Al, and take your warmism with you.  At least now, folks will think that Global Warmism means Rape-The-Planet with lunatic Marxist Fascism.

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Meanwhile, Zero's unconstitutional fascism gets more grotesque by the day.  Reports that he intends to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens by executive fiat have prompted a number of Senators (all R's) to sign a letter to the president (dated 6/21) requesting he deny the reports.

Like you, I have this little devil who resides on my left shoulder whispering off-the-wall provocations in my ear.  Right now, he's saying he hopes Zero goes through with this.

Today, December 3^rd, the White House is hosting a "Jobs Summit."  What should the attendees be advising the president? Unlike Ronald Reagan, President Obama was schooled in law, not in economics. Thus, he may not understand that there is really no mystery as to why we have our current unemployment, and how we can regain full employment.

It would, of course, have been no mystery to Ronald Reagan, who was fond of saying:  "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."  That is, the recipe for more jobs is simple:  lower taxes, fewer regulations. 

Job creation should be at the top of the administration's domestic priorities, because the inability to find a job causes more misery and hardship to far more Americans (and particularly to those who can least afford it) than the lack of health care for the 10 percent who are uninsured or potential global warming ever will.

If the president really wants to see employers go back to hiring large numbers of people, the administration will do the following:

It was a stunning moment of moral clarity. As the South Vietnamese refugees clambered onto rickety boats in the South China Sea to escape the victorious Communists, the American Left that orchestrated the US defeat through a sustained campaign of propaganda and fake calls for peace stood silent.

As Pol Pot, the "progressive" dictator tortured and murdered a third of his people in Cambodia, the leftists "peace" activists in the US and Europe who never saw a US military operation that was justified, turned a blind eye.

The silence of the likes of Susan Sontag, Jane Fonda, Noam Chomsky and their fellow travelers came to mind last week when the Western media and intellectual elites averted their gaze as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the long exiled spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood spoke before a crowd of millions at Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Do you think people who refuse to (or cannot for whatever reason) purchase health insurance should be subject to a $250,000 fine and/or five years in jail?

Well, a slim majority of the U.S. House of Representatives seems to think such a draconian (and probably unconstitutional) measure is just fine because that is one of the provisions of the health care reform bill they just passed.

A person, or group of people, who are unable to think through the consequences of their actions and often resort to oppression of others are either clueless or despotic.  Thinking and compassionate people, by contrast, understand that there may be many good reasons why people do not buy, or do not wish to buy, health insurance.

The health care bill is Exhibit A to demonstrate that a majority of Congress is now clueless/despotic when it comes to economic sense or understanding about how the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect individual liberty. Then there are Exhibits B, C & D.