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SHARON’S FINAL ROAD


During his long career, Ariel Sharon built a lot of roads. As housing minister in the early 1990s and as national infrastructures minister in the late 1990s, Sharon played a key role in building everything from the Trans-Israel Highway to access roads to isolated communities.

Since he passed away on Saturday (1/11), his role in building Israel's national infrastructures has been widely noted. But no mention has been made of the final and most important road that he paved.

That is the road to Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.  Here's how it got built.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 07/12/13


While waiting for my flight in the airport lounge in Sofia, Bulgaria yesterday (7/11), it was hard to ignore the big TV monitor tuned to ABC News.  There was Diane Sawyer announcing the "latest development" of the Zimmerman trial, and up flashed the ABC intro graphic to start the story.

On one side of the screen was a picture of Zimmerman in the gray suit and tie he wears to the trial.  On the other side was a picture of Trayvon Martin - not as a six-foot tall 17 year old but as an angelic smiling 12 year-old.  It's the same picture ABC uses to identify him on its website:

Somebody switched the channel to CNN - funny how many American news channels there are in Bulgaria - which was devoted to some lawyers discussing mindless minutiae of the trial.  Not a word about the real "latest development" - the disclosure on Wednesday (7/10) that Eric Holder's Justice Department organized with taxpayer money racial protests and racial unrest against George Zimmerman.  

The best op-ed of the week on this racist farce is in Tuesday's (7/09) IBD.  It's IBD's conclusion that everyone needs to understand  -- that any blood from planned race rioting will be on Obama's hands.

Let's get out of the stuffy air in here and into the world a bit.  There's no resisting, for example this headline of the week:

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OBAMA DENIES ROLE IN GOVERNMENT


WASHINGTON -President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has "played no role whatsoever" in the U.S. government over the past four years.

"Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am," he said. "Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization."

The President's outrage only increased, he said, when he "recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice."

"The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more certain I am that I would not want to be associated with them," he said. "They sound like bad news."

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TAKING MONEY FROM BUSINESS BENEFITS ONLY BIG GOVERNMENT


Can you name the worst tax? In recent weeks, there have been a slew of articles in major publications about how many multinational corporations have found legal ways to reduce their tax burdens by running some of their operations through low-tax jurisdictions. In response, those who love high taxes and big government demand that corporations pay more.

Economists dislike the corporate income tax because it reduces productive labor and capital and is an additional tax on income that has already been (or will be) taxed. Politicians love the tax because it is largely invisible to most voters. Because of tax competition among countries, corporate tax rates have been dropping globally, resulting in the United States having the world's highest rate.

Now the high-taxers are fighting back.  They need to be stopped.

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OBAMA’S TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA


"It's unbelievable," said an unemployed waitress. "How can Obama be leading in the polls and likely to win enough electoral votes for a second term despite the worst economic performance by any President in the past 100 years?"

"It's downright frightening," said A small business owner. "What is the real plan that Obama and the Democrats have for their ‘transformation of America' and, more importantly, how are they going to achieve that plan and how will it affect my business and my family?"

The answers to these critical questions is clear. There is enough evidence, both direct and circumstantial, to provide reasonable answers. Yet, the reasons for Obama's showing in the polls and his transforming plan are kept masked by a media and a public who is seduced by the silver-tongued politician.

Obama's ability to mask his intentions produces an almost opium-like effect. That mask, however, will be removed once re-elected and America will, more clearly than ever, see and feel the impacts of the ‘plan'.  Here is that unbelievable, frightening plan to transform America.

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MOOCHERS IN PARADISE


Repeatedly, TTPers at the Seascape Rendezvous last weekend raved about how ravishing the setting was, on a flower-filled bluff overlooking the Pacific with gentle waves rolling onto a beach that went on for miles.

It was captivating, as was the sunny, blue-sky weather.  After the Rendezvous, Rebel and I drove down the California coast through the Big Sur - one of the world's most breathtaking coastlines - past towns and farms, cities and countryside on the way to see her folks in San Diego. 

The beauty and bounty of California was simply overwhelming.  It's called the Golden State for good reason. Not just for the 1849 Gold Rush, but for how the sunlight magically transforms the landscape into a Renaissance painting of ethereal light. 

Yesterday (6/06), flying back to the East Coast, I was transfixed looking out the window at America The Beautiful as it passed in boundless variety beneath me.  And again, it hit me.  No place on earth has been more blessed by Providence, in both natural resources and in the moral values and political principles that make freedom and prosperity possible. 

How could it be that so many Americans would choose to trash both their freedom and their prosperity?

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BAJA DEMOCRATS


Cabo San Lucas, Baja California.  The balcony view from a suite at the Marquis Los Cabos overlooking the Sea of Cortez is breathtaking.  My wife Rebel and I are here attending a business conference - but at the moment, we are enjoying a margarita and a spectacular sunset in the ocean.

Ever-observant, Rebel notices that my eyes have become unfocused, and asks what I'm thinking about.  "Nicholas Trist," I answer.  "Who's he?" she asks.  "One of the great jerks of American history," I respond.  She takes a sip of her margarita, gazes out upon the shimmering sheet of sunlit blue in front of us, and waits for the rest of the story.

So here it is.  Starting almost 500 years ago, it's ultimately about the negative value of Baja Democrats.

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THE PILLAR GANG

Today's (2/17) Wall Street Journal has an op-ed by a CIA intelligence officer, Guillermo Christensen, entitled Un-Intelligence.  The article exposes the self-serving attack on President Bush and the War in Iraq by a fellow CIA officer named Paul Pillar in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Pillar is now being lionized by the left for his anti-Bush screed - but you first learned about him here at To The Point in October 2004.

Porter At The Pass revealed that Paul Pillar and his left wing cabal at the CIA, which I named The Pillar Gang, was conducting a covert campaign of leaks and disclosures to damage George Bush's chances of re-election and help John Kerry's.

As explained in "Porter At The Pass":

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IS PARIS BURNING?

Hitler’s infamous question is being asked anew by Moslem immigrants, characterized by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy as “thugs” and “scum,” now into their eighth day of violence in Parisian slum suburbs.

French President Jacques Chirac promptly condemned Sarkozy rather than the Moslem rioters. Such talk by Sarkozy – Chirac’s main political rival – showed a “lack of respect” for the rioters, which “could lead to a dangerous situation.”

Further confirmation that France is doomed.


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FAKE WINDOWS PATCH IS A WINDOWS KILLER

We had a genuine worm outbreak two weeks ago, but this week's top threat is a fake patch for it called a phish (pronounced ‘fish.’)

What is a phish? Here’s a short definition:

Phishing is a type of a social engineering scam, which attempts to gain your bank details, usually by presenting you with a form that looks identical to a popular bank's website.

Most phishing attacks are quick hacks, but some put some effort into their programming. One such example is a phony “Windows update” known as Downloader.EJD. It's a Trojan horse program that uses an updated version of an old trick,a false Microsoft security patch. Here's how to protect yourself from it.

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The Jihadis’ Primal Scream

Unless you depend on CNN for information - CNN totally and stunningly transformed the story, as Instapundit informed us yesterday - by now you have heard of the New York Times story about the discovery of a 17-page letter from Abu Musab al Zarqawi, written from Iraq in the middle of last month to the leaders of al Qaeda. It's an extremely explosive story.

According to the Times - whose correspondent, Dexter Filkins, saw both the Arabic original and a military translation, and "wrote down large parts of the translation" - the letter is a sort of jihadist primal scream.

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HOW DID WE GET TO THIS SPYING-ON-EVERYONE FIASCO?


Howdy, folks. I put this history lesson on telecom and how we got to this No Such Agency spying-on-everyone mess on the Forum, and both Jack and Skye bugged me to put it into a TTP article series because they said it was so good. So here we go with Part One.

It's long so grab a drink.

Edward "Snowjob" Snowden didn't really do anything other than give NSA's program a name: "PRISM". There are many such programs throughout the government.

There are various telecom laws that have been enacted since the 1934 Communications Act that enabled the government to do just what they have been revealed to be doing. So we'll start at the beginning in order for you to understand the fullness of how government bureaucrats justify infringing on your 4th amendment and 1st.

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HOW MUCH TIME LEFT UNTIL OBAMA TRIES TO STEAL YOUR RETIREMENT ACCOUNT?


Neither the United Kingdom, France nor the United States have a credible plan to bring their deficits down to a level below realistic expected growth rates, which is what is needed to avoid a financial meltdown. All three governments have what they politely call a "moving target" for spending, deficits and economic growth. The moving target is one that never gets any closer.

The Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of England, the U.S. Federal Reserve and others have been engaged in a currency war in which they try to reduce the value of their currency relative to the others. This past weekend at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, the above-mentioned nations and others denied they were in a currency war and then pledged not to do more of what they said they were not doing. Don't bet your life on that.

Many of the central banks are trying to do the impossible: To increase inflation while keeping interest rates very low. They want to raise inflation to erode the real value of the debts their governments have been creating, but they are fearful that raising interest rates will make the costs of servicing both private and public debt unmanageable.

Where will all of this lead? Argentina provides an interesting case study.

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THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT MUST DISAVOW TODD AKIN


Rep. Todd Akin has, unwittingly to be sure, harmed the pro-life movement, his senatorial race in Missouri, the Republican Party, and therefore quite possibly the nation.

Every person who speaks or writes for the public will make an occasional faux pas, and sooner or later, will write or say something inappropriate. The game of "gotcha" that the media play -- especially with regard to Republicans and conservatives -- is what makes so many politicians sound robotic when they speak.

But Congressman Akin said something that cries out for condemnation and retraction -- and necessitates an explanation.

On a Missouri TV program Sunday (8/19), he was asked his position on abortion in cases of rape. Akin responded, in part, that "from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

As one wit put it about such a comment: that was worse than wrong, it was stupid. Akin should say so. And so should the pro-life movement.

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WHY OBAMA WILL LOSE BY THE GALLON


How many gas stations do you pass by on an average day?  For most folks it's several.  Dozens every week, a couple of hundred or more every month.  Every one of them throughout America is loudly displaying a campaign ad against President Zero.  Look at the next gas station you drive by and you'll see the campaign ad shouting at you - wordlessly, for the ad consists only of numbers.  It's the price per gallon.

This is the best campaign ad ever - a daily infuriating reminder of what a ruinous loser Zero has been as a president, and what his presidency is costing you in real money.  Plus it's free - neither the Romney campaign nor the GOP Super-Pacs have to spend a dime on them.  All they have to do is turn the negative ad against Zero into a positive ad for Romney.

The question is:  Can they do it?  Can Romney do it himself, and persuasively?

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