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WHY I’M ROOTING FOR OBAMA OVER ROMNEY


Let's get one thing clear: Obama unquestionably ranks among the bottom five presidents in US history.

In terms of sublime awfulness he's right up there with Britain's late and extremely unlamented ex-PM Gordon Brown - which is quite some doing, given that Brown singlehandedly wrought more destruction on his country than the Luftwaffe, Dutch Elm Disease, the South Sea Bubble, the Fire of London and the Black Death combined.

Agreed: the damage President Obama has done to the US economy with everything from Ben Bernanke's insane money-printing program, to his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, to his ban on deep-water drilling to his crony capitalism hand-outs to disaster zones like Solyndra to his persecution of companies like Gibson is incalculable.

And, of course, if he gets a second term the damage he and his rag-bag of Marxist cronies at organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency manage to inflict on the US small businessman trying to make an honest buck will make his first term look like Calvin Coolidge on steroids.

So why do I think this would be preferable to a presidency under Mitt Romney? Simple. Because I've seen what happens, America, when you elect yet another spineless, yet ruthless, principle-free blow-with-the-wind, big government, crony-capitalist RINO squish. His name is current British PM Dave Cameron - and trust me, the cure is far worse than the disease.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 06/24/11


Sofia, Bulgaria.  The irony of writing the HFR here this week is overwhelming. 

I was first here 21 years ago, June of 1990, as the Soviet Union and its colonial empire was disintegrating. I was leading a group of conservatives to be eyewitnesses to momentous history.  Among us were Phyllis Schlafly, Dr. Joel Wade, and John Perrott ("albinobushman" on the TTP Forum).

There was also a free-lance journalist among us, a young fellow who thought following a Conservative Victory Tour through the collapsing Communist rule of Eastern Europe would make a great story.  His name was Richard Stengel, and he is now Editor of Time Magazine.

How ironic that this week Time released it's July 4th issue depicting the US Constitution being shredded on the cover, and the cover story - Does It Still Matter? - written by Richard Stengel.

The blatant purpose of his screed is to shred conservatives who oppose liberal shredding of the Constitution.  Obviously, Stengel has learned nothing about either conservatives nor the Constitution in the last 21 years.

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WHY DOES AMERICA HAVE THE WORLD’S WORST BUSINESS TAX?


If you were establishing a new business whose products would be produced and sold worldwide, would you set it up in the United States, which now has the world's highest corporate-tax rate?

There is a growing realization that the U.S. is at an increasingly competitive disadvantage when it comes to taxing corporations.  Even the Obama administration said it is open to a corporate-tax rate cut, and it is expected that President Obama will propose some rate reduction in his forthcoming State of the Union address.

If he does, be wary, for he he is likely to qualify his proposal by saying that any corporate-tax reduction must be "revenue neutral."  That's code for closing "loopholes" that are pro-business.

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REMEMBER THE ALAMO

There were 140 of us, and I think we all agree - the Remember The Alamo Rendezvous in San Antonio last weekend (1/29-1/31) was one to remember.

Speaking of memory, I didn't take notes - I was a little busy - so we'll see how good my recall is as I recount it for you.  Feel quite free to add or correct what I say on the Forum.  There's already a lively discussion going.

We started right off Friday evening with a discussion of the Double-D strategy.  That quickly brought our attention to TTPer Mitch Rapp, who with the help of Bill Gregory, Jim Snape, and other TTPers, has created the Defund and Disobey website:  defundanddisobey.com - to which there is now a direct link in the left side bar of the TTP home page.

Mitch envisions his site to be the clearing house for Tea Party efforts to deligitimize the Democrats' plan to extend government control of our lives.  I encourage you to participate in it, tell all your friends in the Tea Party movement about it, and support it with a small contribution.

We all owe Mitch a debt of gratitude for what he has chosen to do.  And the Rendezvous was just getting started.

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ALL FOUR STANZAS

[One year before his passing, in 1991, famed science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote the following essay on America's national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.  Thanks to TTP members Bill and Carole Gregory who brought it to our attention, we can share it with you.  It seems particularly apt, given our country's many current travails. ---JW] 

I have a weakness -- I am crazy, absolutely nuts, about our national anthem.

The words are difficult and the tune is almost impossible, but frequently when I'm taking a shower I sing it with as much power and emotion as I can. It shakes me up every time. I was once asked to speak at a luncheon. Taking my life in my hands, I announced I was going to sing our national anthem -- all four stanzas.

This was greeted with loud groans. One man closed the door to the kitchen, where the noise of dishes and cutlery was loud and distracting. "Thanks, Herb," I said. "That's all right," he said. "It was at the request of the kitchen staff."

I explained the background of the anthem and then sang all four stanzas. 

Let me tell you, those people had never heard it before--or had never really listened. I got a standing ovation. But it was not me; it was the anthem.  So now let me tell you how it came to be written.

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DEMOCRATS WANT TO TURN ALL AMERICA INTO AN INNER CITY


Here's free advice for Mitt Romney.

Before bringing up the poor again, read my book, "Uncle Sam's Plantation:  How Big Government Enslaves the Poor and What We Can Do About It."

Romney has been taking a drubbing about his remarks in a CNN interview that he is "not worried about the very poor ... we have a safety net there ... If it needs a repair, I will fix it." And then going on to say it is "middle-income Americans ... that are really struggling" that are his concern.

What the Republican presidential front-runner missed in his off-the-cuff economic analysis of American class is that the cause driving the struggle among both low- and middle-income Americans is the same -- economic stagnation and social breakdown caused by welfare-state socialism.

As I explain in "Uncle Sam's Plantation," America's inner cities offer laboratory results that can be extrapolated to what is wrong today with the whole country.  If you want to know why America is failing, look at why our inner cities are failing.

If America is going to get back on track, we must appreciate that Democrats are doing to our whole country what they did to America's poor.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 06/17/11


This is the cover of this week's European issue of The Economist magazine:

econcover.jpg

If the British newsmagazine had the intellectual courage of long ago, the North American edition would of course had the same cover title, but instead of a smiling photo of Berlusconi, it would have been one of Zero.

Far more than his counterpart in Italy, Zero is indeed The Man Who Screwed An Entire Country - our country, America.  We will be years repairing the damage he has done.  The Economist cover is crying out to be photoshopped with a smiling Zero.  Any TTPer care to?

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REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND!


Do you think your tax dollars should be used to fund organizations that advocate higher taxes on American citizens? Well, that is exactly what has been happening.

The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in addition to reducing big, wasteful and unnecessary spending, also needs to go after and defund those programs and activities that are downright destructive.

Here's a handful of examples:

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LET’S TALK ABOUT THE WORLD


Frankly, the last thing in the world I'd like to talk with you about this week is the latest antics of Zero and the Zerocrats. 

They're like some group of high school kids practicing to be a rock band in their parents' garage.  They don't know how to play but insist they do, and they only know one song which they play endlessly - a pathetically boring threnody featuring the leader singing the word "I" over and over and over again.

So, can we please talk about something else - like, the rest of the world?  It's  a big place.  Lots of cool - and uncool - things are happening in it.  As a matter of fact, it's what I'll be talking about at the Remember The Alamo Rendezvous in San Antonio this weekend in my The Map of the Future presentation.  Since most of you are unable to be there, I thought I'd give you a trio of the highlights.

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THE ARAB WORLD’S ENDLESS FAILURES


My image of a true conservative is of a bold, honorable, responsible citizen, with just a touch of the swashbuckler. But that image is fading as so many conservatives insist on seeing bogeymen under every bed, cot, sleeping bag and beach chair.  And of all the subjects that excite exaggerated fears, terror of Islam takes the moldy cake.

Let me be clear: I agree with the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (no conservative, that boy) who characterized Islam as "a barracks religion" that stymied cultural growth. Nor do I have the least sympathy with Islam's apologists, subversives or litigious jerks. But let's get a grip, folks. 

Far from taking over the world and making obese Americans stop drooling over internet porn, Islam is pathetically weak, plagued by myriad failures and, especially in the case of Arab Islam, unable to compete successfully in any sphere of organized human endeavor. 

How can American conservatives impute overpowering strength to a religion-crippled civilization that, in the 21st century, not only cannot build a competitive automobile, but can't even produce a competitive bicycle?

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TOOLS FOR ECONOMIC LITERACY


It is hard to make sense of the world without adequate information and the words to explain fundamental concepts.

Some good news for the new decade is that the level of economic literacy is rising, thanks in part to tools being developed at free-market think tanks around the world. Americans in particular have several new tools to evaluate how their tax money is being used and how much they are being forced to spend on what.

There is now a successful a global collaborative effort to increase economic literacy across the planet and reduce miscommunication. Everyone will have the same understanding of what specific economic terms and concepts mean available on cell phones or iPads.

Meanwhile, U.S. think tanks have been building tools so Americans can more readily understand where their tax dollars are going and how much they are paying for specific government programs.

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THE COMING DEMOCRAT IMPLOSION


For all their power-grabbing fascist arrogance, the Democrats in Washington are coming to resemble Mack Sennett's bumbling-fumbling Keystone Kops more with each passing day.

Republicans in Washington are in a certain kind of awe over the Dems' performance.  Walk around the halls of Capitol Hill.  You don't need name tags to identify the Pubs from the Dems.  The former are walking with zest and smiling cheerfully - except when they cast a glance of astonished puzzlement at the latter shuffling dejectedly along and refusing to look at their cheerier colleagues in the eye.

How could everything go to hell so quickly?  That's the question both are asking themselves.  It is a mystery to both.   

"I guess we really are in a state of shock and awe over what they have done to themselves," says a buddy of mine who's chief of staff to a principal GOP Senator.  "I just hope we learn the right lesson from it."

"You think the TeaParty folks are mad at the Pelosi-Reid-Obama Gang?" he asked me rhetorically.  That's just anger in a teapot compared to the cauldron of hate boiling the Left.  One by one, he listed the Dem constituencies that are in a state of disgusted rage.

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MOHAMMED MUST NOT BE THE PROPHET OF TERRORISTS

 
As a Moslem, I've followed with great agony and embarrassment the buildup of religious frenzy across the Moslem world in response to the cartoons published in a Danish newspaper.

On the one side the show of force by Islamists underlined the extent to which Islam has been hijacked by radicals and on the other side it emphasized the vulnerability of open societies to the growing influence of militant Islam.

The demonstration of violence by the Islamists forced the democratic societies to face up to the reality that Moslems who do not reject some of the basic precepts of political Islam can never integrate in a secular society. They will always remain a hurdle in the development of a pluralist setup and intellectual progress.

The dance of insanity performed on the streets in the name of Prophet Mohammed's love and honor has also forced many Moslems to come out of their slumber and ponder as to why their faith and their prophet have suddenly become a subject of criticism and ridicule by non Moslems.

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CALIFORNIA IS OBAMA’S DREAM


I live in California. If you were wondering what living in Obama's second term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are living there now.

California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democrat Left enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The unemployment rate is 12%.

California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, and seven income tax brackets.  In California, we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in Hollywood, in sports, and in drug dealing).

But we love people who have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the productive rich. California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of deindustrialization.  All of this is Obama's dream.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 06/03/11


No doubt, this has been the punniest week of modern times.  We're talking about - of course - Weinergate.

Ask just about any Pub on Capitol Hill who he or she thinks is the most straight-out obnoxious loud-mouthed partisan jerk in the whole of Congress, and even though there's a lot of competition they'll invariably say, "Weiner."

Or they'll simply say his nickname by which he's known all over the Hill:  "Little"......  

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Time for a HFR Emergency Alert.  Calling all Texas TTPers!  Immediate action requested!

Here is a Court Order issued by Federal District Court Judge Fred Beiry against a Medina Valley High School in Castroville, Texas (a community west of San Antonio and Lackland Air Force Base.  Specifically, Judge Beiry orders that:

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