Sofia, Bulgaria. Dr. Joel Wade couldn't write his column yesterday (10/02) because he was so nervous waiting for the Palin-Biden debate.  He's feeling a lot better this morning.  So are we all.  You betcha.

So let's lift a pint of Kamenitza beer in honor of Sarah Palin and the hope she has reignited the McCain-Palin ticket... 

...Kamenitza is my selection out of a large number of excellent Bulgarian beers because of its advertising motto:  Success in your hands (there's a picture of a hand holding a bottle), followed by the ad copy:  Because you are successful, we present to you a Bulgarian beer with character.

You would never, ever see such an ad in any country in Western Europe.  In France or Germany, young people sneer at entrepreneurial capitalism as their purpose in life is to sponge off the state...

...Thus the garish irony of our election in November.

The global financial problem, stemming from the U.S. subprime mortgage mess, is a direct result of the irresponsibility and incompetence of the U.S. Congress

That Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been engaging in Ponzi scheme with taxpayer-subsidized money is obvious to anyone - even Congressmen - due to a series of major accounting and financial corruption scandals in recent years.

Politicians have used the board positions in these organizations to reward political cronies (e.g., the fired and indicted head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, was Bill Clinton's Office of Management and Budget director). Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been very major contributors to congressional campaigns.

But rather than clean up the mess they created by getting back to market basics, Democrats in Congress decided last week to make the mess much worse.

As the illustrious conclave of global warming true believers, led by President Barack Hussein Obama, gathers in Copenhagen for yet another exercise in environmental doom and gloom, observing the proceedings with the sly smirk of somebody who's "been there, done that" is likely to be the ghost of one Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898-1976).

No ordinary ghost that one either, for Comrade Lysenko was Stalin's favorite scientist for decades and the driving force behind the greatest scientific fraud in history prior to "anthropogenic global warming." Indeed, to fully understand the nature, magnitude and implications of the AGW scam, it's worthwhile to revisit Academician Lysenko's exploits, which just happen to bear an uncanny resemblance to the charlatanism currently on display in Climategate.

Anthropogenic global warming has become for its supporters what Lysenko's theory of heredity was for the Stalinists. For its small international cabal of top AGW functionaries, it was about more than money, power and prestige, though, with the connivance of sycophantic Western governments and U.N. bureaucrats, there was plenty of that too. It was about ideology.

Maybe we should all be in Tibet this week.

That's where I was 21 years ago on Black Monday, October 19, 1987.  On that infamous day 21 years ago, the Dow dropped 22.6%:  from 2,247 to 1,739, or a loss of 508 points.  (An equivalent loss today would be a fall of 2,500 points, from 11,422 to 8,840.)

We were in one of the remotest spots on the planet - the Chang Thang plateau of northern Tibet - when we learned of the crash on our short wave radio tuned into the BBC.  We were so lucky to be there...

... let's focus now on more positive developments.  One would be that Charlie Rangel is finally getting what's coming to him.  Even liberal newspapers like the Miami Herald are calling for him to resign, either from his chairmanship of House Way & Means or from Congress altogether. 

Another is the release this week of John Fund's book Stealing Elections.  This is an incredibly important book.  John exposes the plans of the ultimate "community organizer" ACORN to commit massive voter fraud in cities throughout the country - and details how Obama is an ACORN operative...

...Then there is Boliva breaking apart and Pakistan about to.

Just plain nuts: That's the only possible characterization for last night's (12/02) presidential declaration of surrender in advance of a renewed campaign in Afghanistan.

President Obama will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan -- but he'll "begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011." Then why send them?

If you're going to tell the Taliban to be patient because we're leaving, what's the point in upping the blood ante? For what will come down to a single year by the time the troops hit the ground?

Our president is setting up our military to fail -- but he'll be able to claim that he gave the generals what they wanted. Failure will be their fault. He's covering his strong-on-security flank, even as he plays to our white-flag wavers. His cynicism's worthy of a Saddam.

This isn't just stupid: It's immoral. No American president has ever espoused such a worthless, self-absorbed non-strategy for his own political gratification.

Knowing how consumers will respond is key in estimating how much revenue will come in from a proposed tax rate increase - if any. There are tax economists who can give pretty good estimates about the consumer response.  Unfortunately, they are not allowed to speak in the Joint Tax Committee (JTC) of the U.S. Congress, the "Secret Chamber" where the "official estimate" is made.

For decades, a cabal in Congress has had effective control of the official tax scoring committee. Thus, they overestimate the tax revenue that will come in from a rate increase and overestimate the loss in revenue from a tax rate cut, which serves the interest of those who, for ideological reasons, want to increase the size of government.

After all too many years, the Bush administration is at least trying to have its Treasury Department tax office (OTA) undertake some dynamic analysis (i.e., considering the behavioral response). However, Congress refuses to fund this modest effort (we are talking about less than a million dollars), let alone clean up JTC, which refuses to allow public scrutiny of its estimating procedures.

Much has been written already about what happened at Fort Hood last week but precious little as to why it happened. To understand why it happened it may be useful to start by reminding ourselves again that the mass murder at Fort Hood was the first act of suicide terrorism on American soil by a homegrown Islamic extremist.

To come to this conclusion we do not need to know what motivated Major Malik Nidal Hasan, but only that he was a Moslem and that he was on a suicide mission.  There is no doubt about the former and little doubt that somebody embarked on mass murder in a military base had much hope of coming out alive.

The real question then, is not what made Major Hasan commit mass murder, but how he became a terrorist. It is a question of seminal relevance given the strong probability that homegrown terrorism might well be a greater threat to homeland security in the future than foreign jihadists.

To understand the nature of the problem a quick look at the origins and evolution of Islamic extremism in America and its sponsors is essential.

We start with the revelation that there is a solid scientific reason for calling this the Half-Full Report.  Psychological researchers have studied silver and bronze medal winners over the last several Olympics.  It turns out that, on average, the bronze winners were happier than the silver.

Those that won the silver were filled with regret that they didn't win the gold, while those that won the bronze were happy they got a medal at all rather than nothing for finishing fourth.

The lead researcher, Dr. Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University, summed up the lesson learned:

"The key to understanding happiness is not to think about it as a trait but as a talent.  Happy people have a talent - they are able to argue that life is a glass half full."

Happy people look at life as a glass half-full.  Yes, that is exactly the purpose of the Half-Full Report!  It's good to have science behind the reason.

***

Wasn't it so much fun this week watching Obambi get the crap beat out of him by a woman and an old man?  The HFR's description last April of him as a pussy sure is turning out to be spot on:

The view of Russia is clear from where I am writing this, Bucharest, Romania.  Month by month, President Putin of Russia has been erecting a new authoritarian model that owes more of its lineage to fascism than communism.  

That model can now be named:  Putinism  - a Russian nationalistic authoritarian form of government that pretends to be a free market democracy.

Unlike Soviet communism, the new Russian state does not seek to direct every aspect of political and economic life. Instead, through limited, direct control and intimidation, plus strategic investments in both institutions and people, not only in Russia but other nations as well, the Kremlin seeks to ensure favorable global press and decisions beneficial to its interests from political and business leaders around the world.

Putinism is shrewd and ruthless -- but how long can it succeed?