The Bobax worm is the latest threat spreading across the internet. It won’t get as far, because millions more users have downloaded the latest Windows security update. I detailed how to do that in a previous column.
On the other hand its more dangerous and will cause more severe damage to your software.
[Note by JW: Ambrose has written something which should provide lively debate on the TTP Forum. Feel free to counter him with opposing facts and data.]
Americans are purging their excesses one by one. Spending by the US Federal government has seen the steepest drop as share of national income since demobilization after the Second World War.
Claims that President Barack Obama is bankrupting America with a lurch towards hard-left statism are for tabloid consumption only. Outlays have fallen from 24.4% to 20.6% of GDP in five years. Spending is roughly in line with its 40-year average. This fiscal squeeze has been achieved without driving the economy into recession or a Lost Decade, a remarkable feat.
The US Congressional Budget Office expects the budget deficit to drop to 2.8% of GDP this year, and 2.6% next year. This is about the same as the Eurozone but with a huge difference. The US economy is expanding fast enough to outgrow its debts.
The US energy revolution is of course at least half the story. It has stoked booms across the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Texas.
Francisco Blanch, from Bank of America, estimates that shale gas and oil have given the US economy an extra tailwind worth 1.9% of GDP - what he calls the "energy carry" - with effects rippling through the chemical and plastics industries. New investments in ammonia plants are rising at an exponential rate, thanks to natural gas prices that are $4.40 (per BTU) in the US and $15 on Asia's spot market.
While Obama can in no way claim credit for this, the other half of the story is monetary stimulus a l'outrance (to the bitter end) - quantitative easing - to offset fiscal tightening and prevent a "pro-cyclical" downward spiral, which is what occurred when the European Central Bank jumped the gun and raised rates twice in 2011 before recovery was entrenched, setting off the cataclysmic crisis that nearly destroyed EMU in mid-2012.
It sure is good to be back home and writing the HFR. Thanks to the Date Line, flying east you can leave Australia at night and arrive in the US that morning of the same day. Today (11/08) I say goodbye to my 60s.
Tomorrow, in addition to being World Freedom Day - the 24th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - is the Big Seven-O for me. Yes, it's good to be home, and with my life-partner of 30 years.
I couldn't be more grateful to Jack Kelly, who so sturdily manned the HFR ramparts in my absence, and to Mae, who graciously filled in for him. Thanks so much to you both!
Let's get started. I'm not sure who's the week's Hero (who do you suggest?), but it's clear who's the Jerk of the Week, a jerk named Robert Sarvis, the Democrats' stalking horse in Virginia who conned the Libertarian Party into nominating him and cost Ken Cuccinelli the governorship.
In other election news, Governor Fatso was reelected in New Jersey, and promptly dubbed The Elephant Man by TIME Magazine. I just got off the phone with my buddy Jack Abramoff, who explained why Christie the Rinocrat scares him:
Guayaquil, Ecuador. Chile and Ecuador provide an almost perfect test case of competing economic visions.
Back in 1980, Ecuador had a slightly higher per capita income than Chile. In the past 33 years, Ecuador has increased its real per capita income a little more than threefold, but during the same period Chile has increased its per capita income more than sixfold.
Chile now has the highest per capita income in South America, and most of its citizens are now enjoying a middle-class life style. Why has Chile done so much better than Ecuador? The answer is clear and quite instructive.
Shortly before the second-term inauguration of Barack Obama this January, I wrote the following of my worries over the Obama way of doing business:
But the untruths and hypocrisy hover in the partisan atmosphere and incrementally and insidiously undermine each new assertion that we hear from the president - some of them perhaps necessary and logical.
Indeed, the more emphatically he adds "make no mistake about it," "let me be perfectly clear," "I'm not kidding," or the ubiquitous "me," "my," and "I" to each new assertion, the more a growing number of people will come to know from the past that what follows simply is not true.
Does this matter? Yes, because when the reckoning comes, it will be seen as logical rather than aberrant - and long overdue.
The second week of October offers a triad of heroic anniversaries worth celebrating by any admirer of Western Civilization.
Today, October 11, we celebrate the 1,280th anniversary of the Battle of Tours in 732 AD, when Charles Martel (686-741), forever known as The Hammer, and his 30,000 Christian soldiers crushed an invading horde of 200,000 Moslem Jihadis in what is now central France.
As Gibbon noted, had the Moslems won that day, all of Europe would have been Islamized and Western Civilization would have been extinguished.
Saturday, October 13, is for celebrating the 87th birthday of the great Lady Champion of Liberty, the most heroic woman of the 20th century, Margaret Thatcher. The story of how she, with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, saved Western Civilization from Soviet Communism is told in Now There Is One (April 2005).
And we must also celebrate this October 13, for it was on this day 237 years ago, 1775 in Philadelphia, that the US Navy was founded.
Tomorrow, October 12, is for celebrating the 520th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America, for on this day in 1492, the Great Admiral landed on Guanahani (now known as San Salvador or Watlings) island in the Bahamas.
Unfortunately, Columbus Day is for most Americans just an excuse for a three-day weekend (last weekend this year, 10/06-08). What it should be is a commemoration and celebration of Western Civilization - which is why the Left hates Columbus and his holiday.
House Speaker Pelosi Galore has suffered a bombardment of criticism for pushing a vote for the Armenian Genocide Resolution, H. Res. 106. Note its date of introduction to the relevant committee with a registered bill number: January 30, 2007. Over eight months later, she starts flogging this dead historical horse. Why now?
The criticism has all been for Pelosi's "ignorance" of Turkish sensitivities in the matter and her "incompetence" for her embroiling the House in a pointless debacle. As Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) said in the Orlando GOP presidential candidate debate (10/22):
"Nancy Pelosi is not a very good Speaker and is a lousy Secretary of State."
But what if she's much worse than that? What if she is pushing the Armenian resolution for the conscious purpose of damaging America's increasingly successful war in Iraq?
And there is an even more frightening question.
Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today,Two months traveling around the world through 15 countries. Back home at last.
We just touched ground on an international runway
Jet propelled back home, from overseas to the USA.
Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway?
From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay
You can bet your life I did, ‘till I got back to the USA.
Looking hard for a drive-in, searchin' for a corner café
Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day
Yeah, and a juke-box jumpin' with records like in the USA.
Well, I'm so glad I'm livin' in the USA.
Yes. I'm so glad I'm livin' in the USA.
Anything you want, we got right here in the USA.
--Chuck Berry, "Back In The USA," 1962.
Want to turn your kids on to some great rock and roll? To right rock and roll, pro-American rock and roll, not the left-wing anti-American trashy sleaze they've overloaded their iPod with because they never heard anything else?
Then turn them on to The Right Brothers. They're a young, hip conservative trio out of Nashville whose hit song Bush Was Right is driving the left crazy. The music is hard driving rock, the beat is foot stomping, and the lyrics... well, just imagine your kids singing along to them:
Bush Was Right by The Right Brothers
Lyrics by Frank Highland
Freedom in Afghanistan, say goodbye Taliban
Free elections in Iraq, Saddam Hussein locked up
Osama's staying underground, Al Qaeda now is finding out
America won't turn and run once the fighting has begun
Libya turns over nukes, Lebanese want freedom, too
Syria is forced to leave, don't you know that all this meansBush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
The organizers of the Council on Foreign Relations special task force to promote the appeasement of Iran must be cursing their uncommonly bad luck. They scheduled a meeting in Washington today to call for increasing normalization of relations between the United States and Iran. With a fine eye for dark comedy, the Council persuaded two relics of the catastrophic Carter years to appear: Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Gates.
The principal advocate of the policy, however, is undoubtedly the president of the Council, Richard Haas, who has long seen rapprochement with the mullahs as an "historic opportunity" for the United States. Haas was the head of Colin Powell's Policy Planning Staff.
Whatever chances they had of successfully advancing appeasement were shattered over the weekend.
In the last two weeks I received several emails regarding web surfing anonymizers. These critters are portals through which you surf. They are reputed to prevent the sites you visit from identifying your personal computer.
In the words of one of the more prominent anonymizers, here’s what they claim:
Hi, fellow TTPers. You first heard from me last October when I told you about The Coming Capitalist Salvation of India.
It was a heads-up regarding the almost impossible-to-believe level of government venality and corruption in India today - and its impending cure: the election of India's Ronald Reagan, Narendra Modi. So I'd like to suggest you re-read it to get you back to speed before we discuss what's happening right now.
Ready? OK, here we go.
Since India's last general election in 2009, 100 million more voters have been added to the rolls, bringing India's electorate to 815 million. You can't have them vote all at once, so the 2014 election is taking place in 9 regional phases from April 7 to May 12. All 543 seats of India's Parliament, the Lok Sabha, will be chosen from a multitude of parties. The results will be announced on May 16.
The country has not witnessed this kind of excitement about an election since independence in 1947. There have been record voter turnouts across the country. I cannot emphasize the prominence of this election to India and the world. The result of this election will not just change but transform the country, either for good or worse.
San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands. It is odd to be on a small volcanic island on the equator in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles west of Ecuador, for a meeting of economists and a few other academics and think-tank types.
One of the lesser purposes of the meeting is to discuss what we can learn from natural selection and animal behavior that might have relevance for the world economy and modern societies. And no, this is not a government boondoggle. We are a bunch of limited-government, free-market types, here on our own tab and not burdening any taxpayer with our eccentricities.
When Charles Darwin first landed here back in 1835, he was struck by the many indigenous animal and plant species, and specialization of the animals in order to best prosper. The variations in rainfall, from island to island and within an island, determine what plants grow where, which, in turn, determine which animals use them for food and shelter. Even the tortoises vary from one island to another, depending on the food source.
The animals have had hundreds, if not thousands, of generations to evolve and exploit the food and terrain available. Humans, more specifically Americans, have had only three generations to adapt to the Internal Revenue Service. We need to adapt evolutionary defenses against it.
The Arab Spring has unleashed the Arab Collapse. Everybody still standing in the region is picking the flesh of the helpless. The Islamist cancer proved more virulent than Arabs themselves expected, while dying regimes behave with unrestrained ruthlessness.
And our diplomats still think everyone can be cajoled into harmony.
We're witnessing a titanic event, the crack-up of a long-tottering civilization. Arab societies grew so corrupt and stagnant that violent upheaval became inevitable. That's what we're seeing in Syria and Iraq - two names, one struggle - and will find elsewhere tomorrow.
We can't stop it, we can't fix it, and we don't understand it. But we can stay out of it. Here's how we can and why we should.
Beijing. I've just come back from two weeks in a hermetically sealed land. No internet, no cell phones, no contact with the outside world. It is George Orwell's 1984 made real, where its inhabitants truly, deeply, passionately love and worship Big Brother.
These people were born on an isolated political island cut off from the world, and have lived all their lives surrounded by a sea of state-worship propaganda. The State makes every effort to prevent them from learning anything about their country or the world it doesn't want them to.
The word that summarizes being here is suffocation. You are constantly, ubiquitously, unrelentingly suffocated with the deification of the rulers. The films on television or in the theatres are propaganda productions without exception, with unending smiling, laughing, happy faces, everyone so joyously doing whatever their work is.
There is never, ever, the slightest hint of criticism, cynicism, or irony. All forms of art are suffocatingly saccharine, all the pictures, paintings, songs and singing are beautiful, smiling, and sugary sweet. This is the Land Without Irony, where Doubt is never permitted.
You'd think that this is the world's craziest country. But after returning from my second venture into it - I was here two years ago as well - I am convinced that it isn't. I'm now headed for one even crazier - much crazier, in fact. Where have I been and where am I going?
