Why do individuals and countries engage in self-destructive behavior? Many books have been written on the topic, but given the U.S. election campaign, it is worth examining why some politicians and other opinion leaders advocate policies contrary to both good theory and empirical evidence.

Despite this evidence of success, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to increase the top tax rates, though there is no evidence that raising the top rates will result in any more revenue but there is evidence it will result in slower growth.

They can get away with it because voters have had their brains mangled by public education.

Since education in almost all countries these days is chiefly in public institutions, except for relatively small numbers of students educated in U.S. private schools and universities, it should come as no surprise that the government employees doing the "educating" are biased toward the public sector and are anti-business.

One of the key objectives of the Tea Party people is the strict enforcement of the 10^th   Amendment :  "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

As an early 1960s vintage member of the then-new conservative movement, I remember us focusing on the 10^th amendment during the 1964 Goldwater campaign. It has been a staple of conservative thought, and the continued dormancy of 10^th  amendment enforcement has been one of the failures of our now half-century-old movement.

As the Tea Party movement in so many ways seems to represent the 2.0 version of our movement, I am thinking about the 10^th  amendment anew. It strikes me that the best way to revive the 10^th  Amendment is to repeal the 17^th Amendment -- which changes the first paragraph of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution to provide that each state's senators are to be "elected by the people thereof" rather than being "chosen by the Legislature thereof."

The Age of Zero is only ten days old at this writing (1/30), and already this is a failed presidency.  On the eve of Zero's Immaculation, his approval rating was 83%.  Now Rasmussen reports it's 63%, a 20% drop in less than two weeks.

The goofball mistakes are piling up, but here's the top three, a Stupidity Hat Trick.

His first international interview is with a Moslem news outlet, earning him the label: "President al-Arabiya."  He grovels and apologizes to the Moslem world for America being the target of their hatred, as only a liberal embarrassed to be an American can.

In return, Mahmoud Ahmadinutjob spits in his face and demands that Zero beg for forgiveness for America's sins against Iran, the number one terrorist state on earth.

Zero follows up this demonstration of brilliance by attacking Rush Limbaugh by name, petulantly demanding that Republicans not listen to him.  Did Rush somehow bribe Zero to say this?  Now, everybody is listening to Rush - who immediately takes maximum advantage of his Zero-provided megaphone and offers an extremely clever proposal:

How much money would the government have to give you and every other American to avoid a recession? You cannot answer because the question contains a false conclusion, and when political arguments are about false conclusions, the wrong policies are pursued.

To try to reverse the current economic slowdown, one first must understand the real causes and then try to correct those causes. Many in Congress, the administration, and the Fed have misdiagnosed the problem and then given the wrong medicine -AKA "the stimulus package."

There are four government-caused reasons why Washington remains "stuck on stupid" regarding the economy.

What do Haiti and Afghanistan have in common, other than the presence of our military? They're both profoundly failed states that we pretend just need the right encouragement.

We told ourselves that in Somalia, too. And we soon may be telling ourselves whopping fibs about Yemen. Or Pakistan.

Failed, failing and outright fake states come in different flavors, from societies in which tribes remain more powerful than struggling governments to those that are gang-plagued and anarchic. There's no single solution to the problem. But we and other successful states typically stand in the way of any solutions.

We -- and the locals in failed or failing states -- would be far better off if competent powers engaged in a form of triage, categorizing them into:

What could be more appropriate, on the eve of the TTP Carefree Rendezvous, than to hoist a pint of Four Peaks Ale brewed here in Arizona to an inspiring woman Republican governor who drives liberals out of their minds because she is a pro-family, pro-life, pro-Christian, anti-tax, anti-government spending, anti-illegal immigration Reagan conservative. 

Nope, we're not talking about Sarah Palin - however much the HFR is happy to hoist a glass in admiration of her at any time. 

We're talking about...

... Right next to the HFR Saloon is the Schadenfreude Bar, which serves goblets of frothy glee over liberals' misfortunes.  One patron was happy that Tim Geithner was going to be confirmed as Treasury Secretary.  "It will be wonderful to have a guy that cheats on his taxes be in charge of the IRS," he said.  "Now millions of us will say, ‘If he can, so can I'."

... Let's spice up the HFR this week, shall we?  With a spice that can be a solution to terrorism.  Oh, and a microbe that can be a solution to energy independence.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society," while his predecessor on the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Marshall, also correctly noted, "The power to tax is the power to destroy."

The American Founding Fathers, in the Declaration of Independence, state as one of their grievances against King George III, that he imposed "taxes on us without our consent."

"No taxation without representation" was a rallying cry of the Revolution, and from that time it has been widely agreed that imposition of a tax without the consent of the governed is a form of tax tyranny.

President Calvin Coolidge stated it succinctly, "Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."  (Ronald Reagan admired Coolidge so much he had Coolidge's portrait hung in the Cabinet Room of the White House.)

So at what point does taxation move from that necessary for proper government to tyranny?

The rising cases of home-grown Islamist Radicalism in the US and the several terror plots that were discovered in 2009 in the US are alarming.

The five Moslem students who went to Pakistan to wage Jihad against their own country, the Fort Hood Massacre, and the latest Christmas airline terror attempt are just a few examples of many. 

In trying to understand this trend in the first year of the current Administration, one should question whether some actions of President Obama are perceived in a way that is encouraging the Jihadists to intensify their attacks on the US.

Firstly, from a cultural perspective, the Arab world resonates with appearances of strength and weakness.  Some of the actions of President Obama that could have been perceived as weakness by the Jihadists include:

Under which recent president do you think the U.S. economy performed best?

The policies of Presidents Bush, father and son, and Jimmy Carter clearly did not work as well as Ronald Reagan's and Bill Clinton's.

So let's compare their economic performance.  For the numbers show that Democrats can continue "the-Clinton-economy-was-best" ploy only if the Republicans and the news media let them get away with the factual misrepresentation.

Google may have the backbone Congress lacks: The Internet giant is standing up to the Chicom bandits in Beijing.

Why would a for-profit company threaten to pull out of what the investment gurus (who brought you the housing bubble) insist is the greatest market in the universe?

There are three reasons, though only two have been recognized: