Out of the mouths of babes and crackpots�

There's no doubt Pat Robertson has a penchant for saying manically crackpot things like warning the city of Orlando, Florida in 1998 that if it allowed a Gay Pride parade, God would punish the city by sending “earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.”

The press has had a field day this week reciting past wacky Patisms in an attempt to deride his call for the assassination of Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. And yes, the point is well made that Christian ministers are not the sort of folks who should advocate such things. But what Pat said is nonetheless true.

Of course, we or somebody, anybody, should knock off Chavez. Doing so would be one of the greatest contributions to peace and freedom in the world today.

With people dying from infected water in New Orleans, which won’t be drained for weeks, it is critically important to disinfect the flood water as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The Army Corps of Engineers has many years of institutional experience at safely chlorinating sewer water. They can scale up that experience for the “Sewer City” that New Orleans has become.

Chlorine is a standard treatment for disinfecting sewage. It would take a few railroad tank cars of liquid chlorine for the job.

These are times that try men's souls, wrote Thomas Paine in 1776, and so is the time that's upon us now. So, it is time to examine our core beliefs, very clearly and plainly. More than anything else, difficult times demand that we know what we believe - not with shallow slogans, but down to our depths.

"Conservative values" are not a core belief - they are derivative, not primary. The term is, at best, a short-hand reference to a set of ideas. But unless you have a very clear grasp of what those values are, the slogan becomes a cheap imitation. We must know the real thing, not merely a group of words that stand in its place.

Have you ever asked yourself what makes a government legitimate?

Legitimacy in human government is far more important than force. Ruling humans by force alone is a losing proposition: The ruled will adapt; they'll hide their grain before it can be taken, or they'll just leave. In order to rule humans successfully, they have to be willing. This willingness can be attained either by manipulation or by convincing people that joining together provides better results.

A government that convinces people to support it has a valid claim to legitimacy. A government that manipulates people into supporting it does not.

Absolutely no doubt who the HFR Hero of the Week is:  Rick Perry, who took a bullet for the team.  He was all set to give an adaptation of a suggested closing statement I wrote for him (appended below) at the South Carolina debate last night (1/19), when he decided that if he continued, the Not Romney vote would remain so split Romney would win.

Now he won't.  Gingrich will win the SC primary tomorrow (1/21) - despite the Obamamedia trying to take him out with his coyote ugly shrew ex-wife from Hell - thanks to Perry.

That said, there is also absolutely no doubt who the HFR Jerk of the Week is - the schmuck, the phony "social conservative," the corrupt horse's derriere of the year - who singlehandedly caused Perry to lose the nomination because Perry told him to shove it for soliciting a bribe while Santorum said, "Let's talk."

We're talking about...

Did you know that in Denmark, the poorest 30% pay 14.1% of all taxes and the richest pay 48.7%  -- while in the United States, the poorest 30% pay just 6.1 % of all taxes and the richest 30% pay a whopping 65.3%?

The surprising thing is not that the richest pay most of the taxes but that the U.S. has nearly the most progressive tax system in the world, while the Scandinavian countries have about the least progressive tax systems, contrary to commonly held belief.

The above facts, along with hundreds of other useful tidbits, are found in a compelling new book, Government Versus Markets: The Changing Economic Role of the State (Cambridge University Press, 2011), by one of the world's most highly regarded economists, Vito Tanzi.   It, and one other book, should be required reading for Washington dummies.

With apologies to John Fogerty and Credence Clearwater Revival:

I see the bad Palestinian moon arising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightning.
I see bad Gaza times today.

Don't go around in Gaza tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad Palestinian moon on the rise.

I may have awakened him.  The late James Jesus Angleton, once the chief of CIA counterintelligence, sounded kinda groggy to me after I got him-loud and clear!-on my famously untrustworthy ouija board.  Of course I have no idea whether he gets to sleep at all.  I don't quite know exactly "where" he is, after all, and he doesn't answer direct questions on the subject.  Anyway, there he was, and I started right in.

ML:  So what am I supposed to think about Petraeus?

JJA:  That you're living in a country where espionage is rampant.

ML:  Huh?

JJA:  Have you read those stories about the "software breakdowns" in the Romney get-out-the-vote program "Orca"?

ML:  Sure, it didn't work, passwords didn't work, it was a gigantic snafu.

JJA:  Uh huh.  And has anyone raised the possibility that the Romney organization was penetrated in order to introduce "fatal errors" in their computers?