Here are pictures taken this week of two women in the Middle East. Which woman do you think is a greater advocate of America's most cherished values of liberty and human rights? Which woman do you think has more courage to fight for those rights, and women's rights in particular?
It was back in October 2004, in Porter At The Pass, that we first discussed the true nature of the CIA:
Most folks think the CIA is a right-wing outfit. It is not. The CIA has been dominated by incompetent left-wing hyper-liberals for years.These CIA lefties - known as "Rogue Weasels" by their more competent counterparts - were conducting a covert war against the Bush Administration by leaking damaging classified information to leftwing journalists in the press.
Has there ever been a more dramatic moment than this one for the Middle East? The whole region is boiling, as the failed tyrants scramble to come to terms with the political tsunami unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq.
The power of democratic revolution can be seen in every country in the region. Even the Saudi royal family has had to stage a farcical "election." But this first halting step has fooled no one. Only males could vote, no political parties were permitted, and only the Wahhabi establishment was permitted to organize. The results will not satisfy any serious person.
As Iraq constitutes a new, representative government, and wave after wave of elections sweep through the region, even the Saudis will have to submit to the freely expressed desires of their people.
Free elections do not solve all problems. Many of the fascist tyrants of the last century were enormously popular, and won huge electoral victories; Stalin was truly loved by millions of oppressed Soviets; and fanatics might win an election today in some unhappy lands. But this is a revolutionary moment, we are unexpectedly blessed with a revolutionary president, and very few peoples will freely support a new dictatorship, even one that claims Divine Right from Allah.
But the wheel turns, as ever. Such moments are transient, and if they are not seized, they will pass, leaving the bitter aftertaste of failure in dry mouths and throttled throats.
One reason I’m spending so much time on this topic is that it’s the most important action you’re likely to take on your computer. Some of what I have to say I only learned after I reformatted my own disk.
Once you have everything in place, it’s easy to do it again. Every time your computer accumulates intruders you can’t get rid of without editing the registry according to instructions from Symantec or your anti-virus company’s support site, you can reformat and reinstall in hours. If you’ve installed too many programs which slows your computer down, perhaps uninstalling them leaves debris in your registry.
Now that I’ve got the procedure down pat, I plan to reinstall every several months.
The collapse of Ukraine's ceasefire yesterday (7/01) has shattered hopes for a quick end to the crisis in the Donbass, setting off fresh capital flight from Russia and raising the specter of further Western sanctions against Russian companies.
Markets were caught off guard as Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko launched air strikes and an artillery barrage against rebels, pleading that he had no choice after they killed 27 Ukrainian servicemen. "We will attack and we will liberate our land. The end of the ceasefire is our response to terrorists, rebels, looters," he said.
The International Monetary Fund said the conflict risks deep damage to Russia's economy, starving it of foreign funds and knowhow. "Geopolitical tensions have brought the Russian economy to a standstill... This comes at a crucial moment when the old growth model based on energy has been exhausted," the IMF said.
The EU is holding the Kremlin accountable for the failed ceasefire. Its ambassadors agreed Monday (6/30) to "intensified preparations" for new sanctions, effectively cocking the gun.
A strategy paper from Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat Party called for a complete change in policy, deeming it impossible to work with the Kremlin so long as Vladimir Putin is in charge.
Well, Portugal, here we come! On Monday (1/20), we announced The TTP Portugal Retreat, and as of today (1/24), it's almost booked out. Those TTPers who took my advice to move quickly were smart to do so. We only have a couple of spaces left.
So there's no time to waste. Don't miss out on coming to sunny, beautiful, historical Portugal with Rebel and me. We're going to have a fabulous time. (And yes, Rebel has agreed to have a 3-day post-retreat excursion visiting five World Heritage Sites and staying in a King's Palace.)
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We have a lot of ground to cover, so let's start right off the bat with the HFR Hero of the Week. He's a professional boxer - the Heavyweight Champion of the World. He retired undefeated last month, so he could run to be elected president of his country.
But to do that, he has to lead a revolution against a brutally corrupt dictatorship - literally, with barricades in the streets, burning tires, and Molotov cocktails. This is for real. This is a scene on the streets of Kiev, Ukraine from yesterday (1/23).
Let's also hope and fervently pray that such scenes will not become necessary in America to retrieve our freedom.
Do you think the government is too big, taxes too much and regulates your lives more than it should?
Polls consistently show that most Americans think there is too much government. Nevertheless, those in the majority who say they want smaller government continue to vote for people who ultimately give them larger government.
All too many are willing to vote for those politicians who promise more benefits to some to be paid for by others, without understanding that they will eventually become the "others." The American Founders clearly understood the danger. As Thomas Jefferson said, "When the people realize they can vote themselves benefits, all is lost."
What has gone wrong and why? In an incisive, new book, "Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution's Promise of Limited Government," Clark Neily lays much of the blame at the feet of the judiciary.
Mr. Neily is the senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, and is perhaps best known for success in the Heller case, where the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns.
Babies got cheaper this month. Twice.
First, Belgian scientists announced that their new method has the potential to cut the costs of some in-vitro fertilization treatments from $7,500 to below $300. Their cut-price recipe requires little more than baking soda and lemon juice in place of purified carbon dioxide gas to maintain acidity when growing an embryo in a lab before implanting it.
Second, a baby called Connor was born after 13 of his parents' embryos had their genomes analyzed using next-generation DNA-sequencing techniques in an Oxford laboratory.
Only three of the embryos were found to have the right chromosome number, and one of these "normal" embryos was then implanted in his mother. This new approach, made possible by the rapidly falling cost of DNA sequencing, promises to cut the number of failures during IVF, reducing both cost and heartache.
The two announcements are a reminder that cost reduction and productivity boosts are the purpose of most innovation. Medicine is no exception. Innovation is driving down the costs of medical interventions all the time, and the falls may be about to accelerate, thanks to biotechnology and information technology.
Whence, then, the relentless rise in the costs of healthcare? Part of the answer is known as the Jevons paradox after the Victorian economist Stanley Jevons.
[This was originally written in December 2009 as Revolution and the Barber of Seville. It is the story of an extraordinary French genius who helped unleash revolution in both America and France - and came to understand why one resulted in liberation and the other in the guillotine. As the need for a revolution to regain our freedom increases today, it is critical we know the difference.]
Paris. Christmas in Paris - what an extraordinary time to be in the City of Light. My wife Rebel and I attended Christmas Eve Mass at the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur in Montmartre and Christmas Mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Each was a moving experience yet in a different way. In Montmartre (the Mons Martis or Mount of Mars for the Romans), the Basilica was overflowing with an ethnic mélange of worshippers - Christians from India, Africa, China, and all over Europe. The Great Cathedral in the city's center, by contrast, was filled with French of all ages.
Each was confirmation of Christianity as a balm on humanity's soul - the reason why people in Europe have begun returning to it. The sophisticates of Europe have long thought Christianity obsolete. It was easy to think this way while Europe got a free ride from America which provided protection from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and Europeans got a free ride from their welfare state governments.
Now the free rides are over, while Europe faces the ancient and now renewed threat of Islam from outside and within. What Europe must also face now, and France in particular, are the consequences of its recent, and its revolutionary, past. And so must America.
The number of fellow Senators who think John McCain is psychologically unstable is large. Some will admit it publicly, like Thad Cochran who says, "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine."
Others relate times when McCain screamed four-letter obscenities right in their faces in the Senate cloak room, like Dick Shelby, Rick Santorum, or Jim Inhofe. "The man is unhinged," one Senator told me. "He is frighteningly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief."
That John McCain is clinically nuts is scary enough. What worries a small group of GOP Senators and Congressmen even more is a deep and dark skeletal secret in McCain's glorified past to which they are privy, and which the Clintons will use to blackmail him.
They have been having discussions with a Russian whom we'll call "T" for Translator. T's father was the Soviet military intelligence officer who ran the "Hanoi Hilton" prison holding captured Americans during the Vietnam War. One of those prisoners was John McCain.
I have just sent the following letter to a friend in the White House who asked for informed suggestions regarding Tony Snow's recurrence of cancer. Many TTPers have expressed their concern for Tony and are praying for him. Here is an initial series of suggestions for him.
Dear Tim,
A close friend of mine for many years is a medical researcher whose IQ was unable to be measured by MIT as it was so far above 200. Here is what he suggests for Tony, as supplementing the treatment from his physicians.
Go to this website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information and the National Institutes of Health: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/. In the PubMed search box, enter in the specific medical name of the type of cancer Tony has as determined by the pathology report, plus "treatment," plus "immune" or "immunity," plus "experimental" or "adjuvant."
There are 435 Congresscritters, and choosing who is the biggest jerk among them is not easy, for there is a multitude of choices.
Many would opt for John Murtha (D-PA), but he's just the most senile. That's not a joke - he's age 74 and actually going senile. In a recent interview with Tim Russert, he thought Okinawa was close to Iraq, so our troops could be "redeployed" there. Okinawa is 6,000 miles from Iraq.
He's reached that stage of senility called second-childhood, where the patient acts increasingly juvenile - like saying the most outrageous things possible in order to get attention, even if they are treasonous and spits on his own military record.
Some, of course, would choose anti-American racist screwballs like Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), or Maxine Waters (D-CA). But they're just bit-player kooks.
If you took a vote among the Congress members themselves for the biggest jerk among them, the most likely winner would be James Sensenbrenner (R-WI).
To the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you." — President Bush, in the State of the Union Address
Radio-wave frequency communication between computers and other devices is increasing and is almost certain to continue increasing. Throughout the first world and in much of the third world transmission stations, antennas and other infrastructure that encourages wireless communication are being steadily put into place.
Even Jerusalem is scheduled to be ‘wi-fied’ within two years, including the Arab neighborhoods. The Arab League considers such unregulated access a threat:
For most Westerners, Turkey is a hard nut to crack.
How can you understand a state sponsor of terrorism that is also a member of NATO?
How can you explain Turkey's facilitation of Kurdish independence in Iraq in light of Turkey's hundred-year opposition to Kurdish independence?
What is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan trying to accomplish here? The answer is chaos - just like Iran albeit with a very different objective.
On the terrorism support front, today Turkey vies with Iran for the title of leading state sponsor of terrorism. Here's the explanation.
