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POCKET PC: OBSOLETE?

After a break I’m resuming the discussion of PDAs this week. Last time I discussed the various models of Palm Pilots. This week I’ll take a look at Pocket PCs.

Pocket PCs have been around for a few years, and unlike Palm, are made by several different manufacturers, such as Asus, Dell, Toshiba, HP and Compaq. All have certain features in common, including a stereo headphone jack, IrDA infrared ports, stylus, built-in speaker and microphone, and Windows MediaPlayer (which can handle MP3 files and Windows Media format movies, ASF and WMV), as well as Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, and Pocket Internet Explorer, a calculator, MSN Messenger and Pictures for viewing photos. Many come with Terminal Services and MS Reader. In recent months some manufacturers have added WiFi, Bluetooth. and even a digital camera.

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THE CIA IN DEEP QAQAA

Since new CIA Director Porter Goss blocked the October Surprise agency left-wingers had prepared against Bush (discussed in “Porter At The Pass” last week), they desperately rigged another one, working with Mohammad ElBaradei at the UN.

What nobody is focusing on in Al Qaqaagate is that the CIA is behind it.

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THE QUACKERY OF CLIMATE ALARMISM


If any business were to submit a prospectus as patently false and deliberately dishonest as the ones used to advance the cause of the global warming industry, its directors would all be in prison by now.

One candidate for prison would be whoever tweets under the name @BarackObama. When he Tweeted: "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous" he was promulgating a demonstrable untruth.

No one has ever doubted that climate changes.

Pretty much everyone - probably more than 97 per cent, even - agrees that there is a degree of anthropogenic input, even it's just the barely measurable contribution of beef cattle farts or the heat produced by cities.

But the dangerous bit? No one has come even close to demonstrating it, there is no reliable evidence for it, and very few scientists - certainly far, far fewer than 97 per cent of them - would ever stake their reputations on such a tendentious claim.

So how do the eco-swine go on getting away with it? Jamie Whyte provides a fascinating, erudite and original answer in his new paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs: Quack Policy - Abusing Science in the Name of Paternalism. 

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DOES OBAMA WANT THE UNEMPLOYED TO DIE?


If you were unemployed, would you prefer a job or a handout? Most people would say a job because of the self-respect that comes with being productively employed. What is not widely recognized is both the emotional and physical damage long-term unemployment does to many people.

Over the past several decades, there have been many studies about the effects of long-term unemployment on individuals. If you do a Google search of such studies, you will find a remarkable consensus among the researchers -- even though some are funded by government, some by labor groups and some by employer groups.

In sum, all agree that death rates increase markedly for those who lose their jobs. The unemployed, not surprisingly, are much more prone to develop stress-induced conditions such as diabetes and depression. Not being able to find work is stressful, particularly for those with family responsibilities.

It is interesting that even though nearly all agree that involuntary unemployment is harmful to the individual and society, many policymakers are willing to accept it rather than focus on what can be done to prevent it.  President Obama certainly seems to be among them.

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HOW MUCH TIME DO WE HAVE?


Is there a road so long that, no matter how many times you kick a can down it, you will never reach the end?

The answer is yes, there is - because the operative word in the question is not "road" or "long," but "you."  The game is to keep kicking your can down the road until you're able to force others to make it their can, like taxpayers or your children when you die.  Another proven successful alternative is to blame the existence of the can on a scapegoat, like "the 1%" or "capitalism."

Most successful of all is to deny there is a can at all, and demonize anyone who says there really is one.  All of these strategies work - until they don't.  Reality exists, no matter how much people engage in reality-denial.  Thus the time always comes when reality bites.  So the question we all need to face is, how much time do we have until it does? 

For reality is getting ready to bite us all in our backsides big time.  When almost everyone engages in reality-denial, the kicked can really does reach the end of the road, and that's just about where we are right now.

Here are two screamingly unpalatable facts.  The first is, the odds are growing now that Zero will be reelected.  The second is, it may not make much difference if Zero is defeated.

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RENEWING AMERICA


This is the full text of Texas Governor Rick Perry's presidential announcement speech in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday, August 13. The video of the speech is at the end.]

Howdy...  It's sure good to be back in the Palmetto State, in South Carolina. I enjoy coming to places where people elect folks like Nikki Haley, true conservatives. And also where they love the greatest fighting force on the face of the earth... the United States Military.

And I want to take a moment and ask you to just take a silence, think about those young Navy SEALs and the other special operators who gave it all in the service of their country. Just take a moment to say ‘Thank you, Lord, that we have those kind of selfless, sacrificial men and women. Their sacrifice was immeasurable, their dedication profound, and we will never, ever forget them.'

I stand before you today as the governor of Texas. But... I am also the product of a place called Paint Creek. Doesn't have a zip code. It's too small to be called a town along the rolling plains of Texas. We grew dryland cotton and wheat, and... what I learned growing up on the farm was a way of life that was centered on hard work, and on faith and on thrift. Those values have stuck with me my whole life. But it wasn't until I graduated from Texas A&M University and joined the United States Air Force, flying C-130's all around the globe, that I truly appreciated the blessings of freedom.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, I realized that the United States of America really is the last great hope of mankind. What I saw was systems of government that elevated rulers at the expense of the people. Socialist systems cloaked maybe in good intentions but were delivering misery and stagnation.

And I learned that not everyone values life like we do in America, or the rights that are endowed to every human being by a loving God.  You see, as Americans we're not defined by class, and we will never be told our place.

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DINNER WITH TOM

On Thursday evening, May 12, in Washington DC, a number of pro-Americans are hosting a testimonial dinner for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. It will be a very impressive show of support for Tom by the conservative movement, and of its determination not to let the Democrats’ War on DeLay succeed.

If you can be in Washington on May 12, I would like to personally encourage you to attend. The stakes in this war are large - control of Congress, smoothing or thwarting Hillary’s path to the White House - as explained earlier this month in Hillary’s War on DeLay .

You can get the details and make your reservation by clicking here: Dinner with Tom. Or you can call Stacie Rumenap at the American Conservative Union, 703-836-8602. Please tell her you want to sit at my table.

I hope I’ll see you there!

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LIMBIC PICTURES

What launched the “Reagan Doctrine” - the strategy that dismantled the Soviet Empire - was a series of pictures. They were ones I had taken of individual Afghans, Nicaraguans, Angolans, and others who were risking their lives to rid their countries of Soviet tyranny. At a meeting in the White House in late November 1983, for the first time those attending actually saw what these people looked like - rather than reading classified reports about them, ink on paper.

There were plenty of pictures of folks with weapons. But the picture that got to them most was of Amin, a young Afghan boy whose hands had been blown off by a Soviet butterfly bomb disguised to look like a toy:

amin.jpg

Such pictures can bypass all the information-and-analysis processing filters we have in our neo-cortex, and go directly to the primitive, emotional structure of the brain called the limbic system. They are Limbic Pictures, hitting the brain’s emotional bullseye.

Because the Pro-Life movement has begun to understand the power of limbic pictures, an end to legalized infanticide in America may now be in sight.

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FIREFOX AND THUNDERBIRD – DID I SPEAK TOO SOON?

Now that I’m using Firefox and Thunderbird exclusively, I’ve become disappointed. Not surprisingly, I’ve read more about them, and a number of blemishes have been showing up in the Information Technology press. Some even question the integrity of Mozilla Organization.

Furthermore, press reports indicate that Internet Explorer 7 will be released this year. It will have a tabbed interface, cut way down on resource use, and allow third party additions that will dig less deeply into the operating system itself. I’ve also heard this directly from two Microsoft contacts, both of whom are in positions to know.

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THE PECULIAR MORALITY OF SECESSION

The deluge of teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling grief-tormented hysteria washing over every liberal media outlet in the Milky Way Galaxy has reached a high-water mark with space-patrol talk about secession - as in the Kerry-voting “Blue” states actually seceding from the United States. Here’s Geraldine Ferraro fomenting on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes November 6:

You know what? Just let me make one point. You were talking about the map before. If indeed all those blue states all got together and seceded from the union, think what would be left for those red states, nothing. There would be no educational system. You would have nothing. What would be left to you? I mean, where is all of this talent in this country? It's on both sides, the Northeast corridor.

We can shake our heads in laughable wonder at this, and gloat about BDD’s - Brain Dead Democrats. But their maniacally empty threat is a gift, as it creates a marvelous “teachable moment” whereby the LibDems can learn a lesson about their moral values.

Recall that it was Democrats who seceded the last time from America, in 1861. They were in full righteous fury defending the morality of slavery. Throughout the Confederate States, slavery was known as “the peculiar institution,” with the moral right to own human beings as personal property unquestioned and believed in with fanatical zeal. Just like abortion in the Blue States today.

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THERE IS NO BEE CRISIS


Contrary to what you may have heard, there is no "bee-pocalypse." There is lots of alarmist talk about "colony collapse disorder," people are blaming pesticides and talking about hundreds of billions of dollars at risk. But a closer look tells a very different story.

Yes, honeybees are dying in above-average numbers, but the most likely cause is the varroa destructor mite and associated viruses.

Moreover, if you look at the actual numbers, they undermine much of the catastrophic rhetoric. In the United States, where we have good data, beekeepers have adapted to CCD. Colony numbers were higher in 2010 than any year since 1999. The beekeepers are not passive victims.

Yet, scare stories abound. We are being warned that "bee deaths may have reached a crisis point for crops," and some commentators go as far as invoking an impending "bee-pocalypse" or a "bee-mageddon."

They fondly  employ a quotation attributed to Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live." The implication seems to be that if the smartest guy on the planet was alarmed, we should be too.

However, the quote seems to have been made up, first appearing in 1994 in a pamphlet distributed by French beekeepers, protesting the high cost of sugar for feeding bees and opposing a proposed reduction of tariffs on imported honey.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 02/22/13


What a hornet's nest on the TTP Forum got stirred up by that Congressista's questioning of Social Security in The Traitor in the White House.  I guess some clarification is required.

He meant it as a "teachable moment," a thought experiment to demonstrate that just as his conservative audience was determined no matter what to demand their Social Security payments, so is everyone else in America who's receiving some sort of government payout.  He thus sees truly cutting government spending as a hopeless task.

He was not questioning Social Security, and was quite interested - as were his two colleagues - in the concept of selling off federal lands (1/3 of the entire US) to pay owed SS benefits when I mentioned it.  But his thought experiment backfired, both in his townhall meeting and the TTP Forum because of the visceral emotions surrounding SS.

Here's my perspective.  People have been conned by government scammers into thinking that SS taxes are somehow different from income or other taxes.  All the money taken by force or extortion by the federalies was earned by those from whom it was taken. Social Security is a government racket, a gigantic Ponzi Scheme.  There is no Trust Fund.  It does not exist.  Your money has been spent.

Further, the purpose of Social Security is to make people dependent on government.  Even conservatives, most especially conservatives.  I personally look at SS taxes as stolen and gone just like all others. Stealing money is what governments do, and SS money is no different.

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THE PRACTICAL WAY TO ABOLISH THE INCOME TAX


Why should the federal government bother to impose taxes when it can use the Federal Reserve to "print" all the money it needs to pay its bills?

Last year, the Fed bought 77 percent of all of the government's new debt, which is the equivalent of printing money. The government borrowed almost 40 cents for each dollar it spent, with the Fed printing 30 cents of each dollar spent through its bond purchases (creating new money) -- an amount equal to about 7 percent of gross domestic product.

What would happen if the Fed printed enough money each year to cover the cost of the federal income tax of approximately $1.4 trillion? Most people who have taken a course in economics know that it ultimately would result in ruinous inflation.

Can one envision a world where there is both apparent price stability and no income taxes? The following is to encourage you to think about possible alternatives to the existing economic order.

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DOES AMERICA STILL HAVE THE COURAGE TO BE FREE?


"It does little good to summon those very citizens who have been made so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power.  However important, this brief and occasional exercise of their free choice will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus slowly falling below the level of humanity."   -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America, 1835

De Tocqueville wrote at a time when large numbers of Americans not only were alive during the Revolution but had fought in it.  Yet his astounding prescience accurately depicts exactly the unique form of tyranny enveloping and strangling us right now.  He had no name for it, as "the type of oppression which threatens democracies is different from anything there has ever been in the world before."

It is an oppression that its subjects willingly submit to.  It is a voluntary surrender of freedom.  It achieves an "immense protective power" through keeping people in "perpetual childhood."

Under such an "administrative despotism," he concluded that "It really is difficult to imagine how people who have entirely given up managing their own affairs could make a wise choice of those who are to do that for them."

Today, that "administrative despotism" in America has in fact finally been achieved.  We're there.  De Tocqueville's future is now.  So - what do we do about it?

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BY GOD, WE WILL NOT SQUANDER WHAT HAS BEEN GIVEN US!


I'm surprised that so many people seem surprised by S&P's downgrade of our credit rating. Weren't people paying attention over the last year or so when we were getting warning after warning from various credit rating agencies that this was coming?

So, how shamelessly cynical and dishonest must one be to blame this inevitable downgrade on the very people who have been shouting all along "stop spending"?  Blaming the Tea Party for our credit downgrade is akin to Nero blaming the Christians for burning Rome.

We have to face this storm head on. It won't be easy, but there are real solutions to grow our economy and reduce our debt.  We need to stop this deficit spending, balance our budget, repeal Obamacare, cancel all unused stimulus funds, and reform our entitlement programs.

We will have entitlement reform and a balanced budget; it's just a matter of how. We can do it ourselves in a calm, methodical, and responsible manner, or we can wait for the world's capital markets to ram it down on us. Let's be responsible and do it ourselves.

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