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WHY OBAMA’S OSAMA BRAG IS SO DANGEROUSLY STUPID


As Barack continues to bray about how he made the "gutsy call" to kill Bin Laden, it's been pointed out that the call wasn't his at all - it was Admiral William McRaven's - whom President Gutsy Call would have been able to scapegoat if the op had gone sideways.  We know this because of a memo from CIA Director Leon Panetta, recently obtained by Time magazine.

Yet Zero's campaign film, The Road We've Traveled, maintains the fiction, with Joe Biden saying:

"We sat down in the Situation Room, the entire national security apparatus was in that room, and the President turns to every principal in the room, every secretary, ‘What do you recommend I do?' And they say, ‘Well, forty-nine percent chance he's there, fifty-one ... it's a close call, Mr. President.' As he walked out the room, it dawned on me, he's all alone. This is his decision. If he was wrong, his Presidency was done. Over."

Now we know it wasn't his decision, it was a CYA move - thus, the hero of the story is McRaven, not Zero.  This is a good point - but there is a much bigger one - and it has been missed by all the media, including those on our side.  Which means there's a real story here no one in public knows, which demonstrates how dangerously stupid Zero is.

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THE LAND OF THE FREE OR THE LAND YOU MUST FLEE?


Until now, you would have considered this question to be the most ludicrous you had ever heard in your entire life.  Today, in America Under Zero, it is the most sobering.

Until now, the epithet "Fascist America" was exclusively used by moonbat lefties who hate our country for its virtues, not its vices.  Today, the moonbat lefties are fascists running the White House and the Justice Department.

Let's face the stark, tragic reality:  if Zero is reelected this November, you can kiss our America goodbye.  It will be an act of eyes-open willful national suicide. 

Personally, I cannot make myself believe this will actually happen.  In 2008, the urge to expiate racist-guilt caused brain damage to a majority of voters.  That urge is no longer there. 

Thus the odds of Zero winning a second term are greatly diminished.  But they are not 0%.  What would you peg them at - 25%, 35%, 45%?  The higher the peg, the more precautions you need to take.

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THAT TEARS IT

Harriet Miers tears it for me with George Bush. It’s the last straw. John Roberts was no straw at all. Clearly a conservative constitutionalist, overwhelmingly brilliant and qualified, he was an inspired choice. Objections to him by certain conservatives were paranoid.

But we are going from the sublime to the ridiculous with Miss Miers. This ludicrous nomination is the bottom of Bush’s barrel.

It is as ludicrous for Bush to claim that she is more qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice than J. Harvie Wilkinson, Janice Rogers Brown, or any of a score of distinguished conservative candidates, as it is unbelievable for him to claim that he “knows her heart” but has never discussed abortion with her.

Yet there is good to come of it: in the form of a conservative Congressional rebellion. The good that is coming out of Bush’s inept Katrina performance is an end to profligate spending, and deep (hopefully real deep) cuts in both discretionary and mandated programs.

In his press conference today (the 4th), Bush predicted Miers will do well in her Senate hearings. She may never get to them. The outcry from Republicans on Capitol Hill may get so loud so quick that Bush may be forced to withdraw her nomination. That will provide the chance to rebuild the Bush Presidency.

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THE LEGALITY OF FILE SHARING IS STILL OPEN

Ipods and other hard-drive and flash MP3 music players and storage devices may be getting cheaper every day, but filling them with songs has suddenly got a lot more expensive.

Let's do some basic math, shall we? If the average three-to-four-minute song "weighs" 5 MB, and your MP3 device holds 20 GB, you can fit in about 4,000 songs. As more companies start producing devices of this type, prices are sure to fall, until iPod-like devices become as common as Walkman-type tape players were a decade ago.

And until now, filling your iPod was not a major problem... if you were willing to look at things in shades of gray. Yes, file trading has been considered illegal (at least until now), but we all know it goes on.

Now, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but it takes an extremely principled music lover to ignore the temptation to download their favorite songs, especially if they need another 20 GB of music to fill their MP3 device.

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WESTERN COWARDICE AND THE TORTURE MASTERS

The cheerless creatures who rule the Islamic republic of Iran have developed a particularly wicked use of torture. Not only do they use the full panoply of physical and psychological horrors on their captives, but they then send the victims back into their homes and neighborhoods for brief periods of “parole” or “medical leave,” so that their friends and families can see with their own eyes the brutal effects of the torture.

You will not have read about this in your daily newspaper, or seen his face on your evening news broadcast, nor will you have heard about it from the Department of State — which has a considerable bureaucracy devoted to the advancement of human rights — nor from the White House, nor from the self-promoting entrepreneurs of the likes of Human Rights Watch or the intellectuals and elected representatives who call for President Bush to “talk to” the mullahs in order to “resolve our disagreements.”

Instead, our government maintains a pious silence on the matter, evidently more afraid of being accused of undermining the efforts of the French, German, and British governments to arrive at a satisfactory agreement with Iran on the matter of the mullahs’ impending atomic bomb.

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A YOUNGER BRAIN

One difference between younger and older folks is that the former feel “endless possibilities of the future,” while the latter feel the future closing in on them. Time seems repetitive - like being caught in Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. This is a significant drain on one’s mental energy. An openness to the future, on the other hand, creates a youthful mental energy.

Such a feeling of endless possibilities requires new neuronal connections in the brain. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks because the dog’s brain has become static, and has lost the capacity to grow new neurons and to establish new connections between neurons old and new. Now there may be a clever way with quite sophisticated nutrients to regrow new neurons and neuronal connections, literally youthening your brain.

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AMERICA’S SADDAM

In light of Janet Reno’s concession of defeat in Florida’s gubernatorial primary elections, America needs to remember the horrific evil perpetrated by then-Attorney General Reno in the first months of the Clinton presidency.

It is important to grasp that what happened in Waco was no accident, that the Davidians were killed on purpose in an act of revenge by the American government. And it is important to know just how they were killed, that the method of their killing was as grisly and evil as anything perpetrated by Saddam Hussein.

During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein discovered the most lethal chemical warfare agent was a combination of sulfur mustard gas with hydrogen cyanide, which he used in artillery shells to slaughter thousands of Iranians. It was in effect this same combination that Janet Reno had the FBI use to slaughter 87 men, women, and children in Waco.


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OZ’S JOHN HOWARD STICKS IT TO THE GREENIES


"Climate change" has become a "substitute religion" for people with a "nakedly political" agenda which has less to do with saving the planet than it does with reining in economic growth and wealth redistribution.

Well, we know this. But how nice it is to hear it from the mouth of a statesman as distinguished as former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in a blistering speech last night (11/05) at the Global Warming Policy Foundation here in London.

Howard's own record during the great climate change scare is not entirely unblemished. Thus, Howard goes some way towards answering a question which is going to be asked an awful lot by future historians, students of economic disaster and psychologists of mass hysteria: why didn't more people speak out sooner against this costly, environmentally damaging, and utterly specious "climate change" craze?

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HALF-FULL REPORT 05/10/13


Good grief - let's see if I still remember how to do this.  I can't believe the last HFR I wrote was  February 22.  I've been gone that long.  Then again, there's an Agence France Presse story this week (5/09) about scientists revealing that "Adventure Shapes the Individual."

The more exploratory you are, the more new neurons grow in your brain - even in adulthood, a process called adult neurogenesis - particularly in a structure of the brain called the hippocampus, responsible for learning and memory. 

AFP made a news story out of the research report appearing in today's (5/10) issue of Science, the world's premier journal of peer-reviewed science. Nonetheless, I learned about the connection between adventure and hippocampal neurogenesis a long time ago from Skye. 

So let's hope all the exploration I've been doing in the South Atlantic worked, as I have to get up to speed fast.  First, though, I want to thank Jack Kelly so very much for his marvelous HFRs while I've been gone.  I'm going to have a tough time now doing as well.

Let's cut to the chase and explain the week's main event...

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OBAMA’S FOUR HUGE HIDDEN TAXES


How is it possible that the government can spend almost twice as much as it takes in without having high inflation?

The fact is that over a long period of time, it can't. In the short run, which can be a few years, the government can paper over its fiscal irresponsibility by expropriating most of the productivity gains in the private sector through regulatory and central bank actions.

This is precisely what has been happening in the United States.

The recent gains in productivity growth have been taxed away by government. The increases in taxes are all non-legislated taxes, largely invisible to most people. There are four of these hidden taxes.  All four of them are huge and hugely destructive.

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OF ALL THE WORLD’S COUNTRIES, WHICH IS THE LEAST RACIST?


How many countries - sovereign, independent nations - are there in the world?  206, according to the List of Sovereign States.

This includes all 193 member states of the United Nations, plus 13 others of various status: non-member sovereignties like Taiwan and the Vatican, de facto states like Somaliland, a fictional state (Sahrawi), and four pretend states which are actually conquered colonies (Abkhazia and South Ossetia stolen from Georgia by Russia, Transnistria stolen from Moldova by Russia, Nagorno-Karabagh stolen from Azerbaijan by Armenia).

Deducting the five fictional and pretend places leaves 201 countries - of which I have traveled to and had personal experience in 185.

As the Democrat Media and Democrat Moonbat Left play the Race Card with mounting hysteria, it behooves us to take a look at racism around the world and see where America ranks.  It is jejune to compare racial reality in America solely with some Platonic Ideal of pure racial harmony, which has never existed in any society in the history of mankind.

We have to start with defining just what "racism" is - for the left has divested the term of any meaning.  It has no more current meaning than gibberish, like "schlacism" or "bltspilzh." It only signifies dislike by the speaker, like yelling "boo!" or a crude expletive.

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THE CHOICE


This election -- including the Republican primary contest -- is about a fundamental question in American politics: We have an opportunity to decisively turn away from big government in Washington. Do we want to take it?

Conservatives across the country are fed up with President Obama's Washington approach to governance. Massive, budget-busting, deficit spending (except on defense, where he proposes cuts that are downright dangerous). Bailouts. An ever-mounting national debt.

A federal government that has reached its tentacles further into Americans' lives, by virtue of Obamacare with its noxious individual mandate to purchase health insurance. Excessive, bureaucratically dictated, job-killing environmental regulation. Dodd-Frank.

Yet there are "big government conservatives" who argue that a big intrusive government is fine, desirable even, so long as it pursues "conservative" goals, which frequently when scrutinized are neither conservative nor worthy.

Big government conservatives will never truly overhaul Washington because they need the status quo in place to accomplish their objectives. They don't want to rebuild the machine; they simply want to change the people pulling the levers.

But that is not what the American people want. There is such deep and widespread discontent that nothing short of a complete overhaul will satisfy their justifiable demands.

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BEAUTY, MYSTERY, AND STARVATION IN THE SAHARA

niger_map.jpg

Up until recently, if you heard of the African country of Niger, you’d think of Yellowcake Joe Wilson and his CIA bimbo wife Valerie Plame with their phony scandal trying to get Karl Rove.

By now, however, you may have heard that Niger faces famine after a prolonged drought and a locust plague of biblical proportions.

In January 2003, I led a Trans-Sahara expedition across the entire length of Niger. I found it to be one of our world’s special places, of achingly lonely beauty, of fascinating and friendly peoples, and mysterious lost cities, hidden oases, and camel salt caravans.

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GENERIC TROJAN / ADWARE REMOVAL PROCEDURE

So many people have been having vicious malware attacks recently, attacks which have brought their computers down, that I am addressing the problem this week. I’ve discussed many of these items in earlier columns in bits and pieces. Apparently people don’t pay attention, don’t protect their computers, and go to dangerous sites.

In case you’ve caught a particularly wicked infection that is wreaking havoc with your computing, do the following.

Download the following items.

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HOW SERIOUS IS PRESIDENT BUSH IN THE WAR ON TERROR?

As the President’s critics are rightly reminding him, more time has passed since 9/11 than transpired between Pearl Harbor and the surrender of the Japanese empire, and our most lethal enemies are still in power and still killing our people and our friends.

It is good that the desire for freedom is now manifest among the oppressed peoples of the Middle East and Central Asia, and it is very good that dramatic strides toward self-government have been taken by the Georgians, Kyrgistanis, Ukrainians, Iraqis, and Lebanese.

But it is not good enough.

Indeed, it is shameful that we have yet to seriously challenge the legitimacy of the terror masters in Tehran and Damascus, who represent the keystone of the terrorist edifice.

Our enemies know this, because, to their delight and perhaps their surprise as well, they are still in power throughout the Middle East. Until and unless they are removed, the terror war will continue, our friends in the region will be killed, tortured, and incarcerated, and the president’s vision of regional democratic revolution will go down the memory hole.

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