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THE DIFFERENCE THAT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

Here’s what’s confusing about happiness: On the one hand, we can think that happiness means simply being cheerful. On the other hand, it’s supposed to be about a long-term sense of meaning and joy. Then we’re told momentary pleasures are often just habitual resignation to temptation… There are so many different notions of happiness, how do we make sense of it?

If momentary pleasure is bad, then why do we feel so good when we succeed at something, or have a wonderful time with a loved one, or have a good workout?

I’ve talked about the deeper, long-term sense of happiness that we earn over time; today I want to clarify something about the immediate feelings of happiness that will make more sense of these emotions – and make it easier to have a genuinely good time.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 08/28/15: Comments working again

The Chinese Roller Coaster took the whole world for a ride this week, but that wasn't the only thing going on. Europe is fracturing along several important axes, with follow-on effects that will be both good and bad.

The Iran treason involves Iranian money to key American politicians. We have a quick round-up of American news, along with some implications for activists. There are good signs from the culture, if you know where to look.

Richard Feynman puts in a guest appearance. And a band of unlikely heroes showed us some very important truths. Let's roll!

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THE LAND OF NOAH

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Nakhchivan. All of us know the story of Noah and the Ark told in Genesis (chapters 6-9). But do you know where Noah’s grave is?

Genesis 9:28-9 says “Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died.” But it doesn’t tell us where.

Yet there is a tradition thousands of years old that he died and is buried here in the Land of Noah – Nakhchivan. “Noah” is the Anglicized spelling of the Hebrew Noach, pronounced “knock” here, spelled “nakh.” “Van” means “land,” “chi” means “of.” (And yes, the map above has the place spelled wrong but it was the best I could find.)

Nakhchivan is an isolated enclave of Azerbaijan, cut off from the rest of the country by a strip of Armenia reaching Iran. You never heard of it because it’s unknown with a strange name – but the name literally means the Land of Noah. His tomb has been built, destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again repeatedly over the millennia. It’s now been built yet again on the original site. Here it is:

 

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HACKERS AND ASSASSINS

There is so much hacking going on that it seems to have become almost boring.  But it behooves us to take hacking very seriously.  I think if the public knew more about the way hacked information is actually being used, we’d pay closer attention and defend ourselves more effectively.

Who cares about all the hacking? Take a hypothetical example: suppose American soldiers in the Middle East start receiving emails that sound something like this:

“Good morning. We thought you would like to know that we are carefully watching your daughter Rosie, the one who lives in Wichita at 1234 State Street. This is to inform you that if your tank moves 100 meters north, she will not live to see the sun rise tomorrow.”

That’s the sort of thing that can happen when personal data get into dangerous hands. American troops aren’t afraid to die in combat, but their children did not volunteer.

This sort of blackmail is credible and effective.  Threats against the kids are more powerful than those against the troops themselves. And this is only one way in which the hackers and their clients can exploit all those millions of files.

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TOTO AND TRUMP IN ALABAMA

Toto the dog wasn’t needed in Mobile last Friday night (8/21) to pull the curtain from behind The Great and Mighty Trump. Trump let his own curtain flutter open, showing to much of the audience the humbug within.

In an hour-long verbal meanderthon at half-filled Ladd-Peebles Stadium, Trump allowed an atmosphere of electric excitement to dissipate, and then he split town without his promised post-show press conference. As I left the stadium, a red-hatted lady of my acquaintance spotted me and pulled me aside, saying: “Somebody needs to tell that man when to shut the you-know-what up. People were leaving in droves.”

The line of the evening belonged to Rob Holbert, a former press aide to Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi and now the co-publisher of the port city’s Lagniappe weekly. “That speech was more disjointed,” he said, “than a skeleton after tumbling down four flights of stairs.”

Sure, Trump’s speech got some bursts of enthusiastic applause. Still, compared with the remarkable buzz leading up to the tycoon’s visit, the actual performance was missed opportunity. Typical was this frustrated Facebook post by a local tea-party leader: “Substance!!!!!!!!! No substance!!!!! . . . Trump, please stop rambling. Please, do you have a plan???”

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DOES CHINA HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO SAVE ITSELF?

China has injected $100bn of liquidity into the country’s financial system and cut interest rates to records lows in a "shock-and-awe" bid to restore confidence, but worries persist that even this may not be enough to avert a crunch as capital flight surges.

The move came as the authorities abandoned their futile efforts to shore up the stock market, allowing the Shanghai Composite index of equities to plummet by a further 7.6% yesterday (8/25). It has tumbled by 22% in the past four trading days.

The central bank (PBOC) cut the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for lenders by 50 basis points to 18%, freeing up roughly $100bn of fresh funds. It also cut the one-year lending rate by 25 points to 4.6%. It may not be enough to add any net stimulus to the economy.

The PBOC has intervened heavily on the exchange markets to defend the yuan, drawing down reserves at a blistering pace. The unwanted side-effect is to tighten monetary policy. It is a textbook case of why it can be so difficult for a country to deploy foreign reserves – however large on paper - in a recessionary downturn.

The great unknown is exactly how much money has been leaving the country since the PBOC stunned markets by ditching its dollar exchange peg on August 11, and in doing so set off a global crash.

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THE MOST UNTRUSTWORTHY PEOPLE WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT

President Obama says we should trust the Iranians to do self-inspections and not to cheat on the nuclear deal. Hillary Rodham Clinton says we should trust her when she tells us that she had only deleted personal emails from her private server and did not send or receive any classified emails. I cannot think of anyone I know (who is not in government) whom I would trust less than Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

The reason I trust people in the private sector more than I trust people in government is that most often those in the private sector who lie, cheat and steal, or just make honest mistakes, can be held accountable, while those in the public sector who do the same often can get away with a simple, lame "I am sorry" at best.

When the folks at BP were involved in an unintentional oil spill, the company was fined $54 billion, and the top executive, Tony Hayward, as well as many others in the company were, in essence, fired.

When the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) was involved in an unintentional spill, heavily polluting a river in Colorado with dangerous heavy metals a couple of weeks back, Gina McCarthy, EPA administrator, had nothing to say but "sorry."

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HALF-FULL REPORT 08/21/15

The news is so good about The PIAPS we have to start with it. On Tuesday (8/18), Rasmussen reported Hillary Meter Drops Dramatically.

Meanwhile, her Servergate scandal is getting so bad Trump’s claim that it’s “Watergate on steroids… she could get 20 years in prison” made headlines – because he’s right. The FBI has in fact launched a criminal investigation of her.

We’d love to see her behind bars where she belongs but we know that’s not going to happen. As all TTPers understand, Zero is behind siccing the FBI on her to force her to drop out and make way for Biden….

We’re now going to talk about what’s going on in Britain. Why should we do that with all the insanity going on here?

Because all that insanity – from Planned Parenthood videos to mass illegal immigration to race riots to cultural degradation to ruination of our military to giving Iran nukes to a no-job economy with 90 million unemployed and on Food Stamps – all of this is due to the Democrat Party’s lurch to the radical left, cheered on by its amen chorus in the media and academia.

What’s happening in Britain at the moment may be instructive as to where this is heading.

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ANCHORS AWAY

No, this is not about the stirring anthem of the US Navy, Anchors Aweigh. It’s about the latest example of libtard lunacy designed to purposefully destroy – or in Zerospeak, “fundamentally transform” – our country.

It’s about how to solve and put an end to the Fascicrat Fraud of “birthright citizenship.” There’s a deafening roar of cacophony over it now on every TV news channel or radio talk show, and throughout conservative or libtard punditry. But only here at To The Point will you get a solution you won’t find anywhere else.

As you likely know by now, I’m no Trumpista. Loudmouth bullies turn me off, especially ones who pretend they’re conservatives. As Carly Fiorina so incisively puts it: “Since he has changed his mind on amnesty, on health care and on abortion, I would just ask, what are the principles by which he will govern?”

Yet however much I think Trump is a thin-skinned jerk posing as presidential timber for the publicity, I applaud him for making illegal immigration a cause célèbre, and using it to channel contempt upon the gutless cowards of the Republican Establishment Elite.

Another loudmouth bullying faux conservative is Fox’s Bill O’Reilly. So it was fun to see Trump and O’Reilly go at each other Tuesday night (8/18) – and I’m happy to admit I was rooting for Trump.

But not even Trump has thought of what you’re about to read.

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THE ADVENTURE DUET

Two of the world’s most extraordinary natural wonders lie just below America’s doorstep. The first is unknown – you won’t believe the pictures. The second you likely have always dreamed of seeing.

This is an opportunity to experience all of this in just ten days. And the time to do so is now. This is an Immediate Adventure Opportunity – this November, before Thanksgiving. Here’s why. We begin with the unknown.

LiquidRainbow1 LiquidRainbow2

This is Caño Cristales, the Liquid Rainbow, the most beautiful river in the world. From late July to early December, its unique ecosystem allows plants to grow in its gin-clear water that turns every color of the rainbow. There’s no place like it on earth.

It is in a remote region of Colombia at the junction of the Llanos grasslands, the Andes mountains, and the Amazon rainforest. We’ll spend two days here taking pictures your friends won’t believe, swimming in perfect temperature pure water pools and frolicking under the myriad waterfalls. Caño Cristales is not only jaw-dropping beautiful, it’s fabulous fun. Here are more amazing pictures.

Then it’s off to a place on everyone’s bucket list: The Galapagos Islands.

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TRUMPING THE PARTY

Donald Trump has now said that he would reverse President Obama's executive amnesty for "DREAMers" - illegal immigrants who've been here since they were children - and deport every last member of the Undocumented-American community.

The amnesty for the kids was supposed to prefigure an amnesty for their parents - for what mean old politician would advocate breaking up families? But, as he told NBC's Chuck Todd, Trump plans to keep the families together by deporting every single one of them: “They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don't have a country."

Now there's a campaign slogan. In other words, as every functioning society understood until two generations ago, immigration has to benefit the people who are already here. Government owes a duty to its own citizens before those of the rest of the planet - no matter how cuddly and loveable they might be.

The fact that it is necessary to state the obvious and that no "viable" "mainstream" candidate from either party is willing to state it is testament to how deformed contemporary western politics is.

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ISLAM AND RAPE

There was a brief flurry of outrage at the report that the “Caliph” of the Islamic state had repeatedly raped American aid worker Kayla Mueller before she finally died in an attack against IS targets. The New York Times devoted a lot of space to what it called the “theology of rape” that is an integral part of the doctrine and practice of the “Caliphate.” 

The Times story suggested that the systematic use of rape was of relatively recent vintage for IS, but the violent treatment of women by radical Islamists is nothing new. It ranges from rape and honor killings to beating, to formal, legal definition of women as inferior beings. 

Some years ago, I worked on a story about the daughter of a Palestinian immigrant in St. Louis. It will turn your stomach like that of Kayla Mueller will.

Rape, honor killings, and the oppression of women are not limited to Islamist men. But the systematic use of rape certainly seems more common to them than to any other contemporary group. Why?

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THE ABORTION INDUSTRY IS CORRUPT TO THE CORE

Together with my co-authors of this article, Troy Newman and Mark Crutcher, I have devoted my life, for decades now, to ending abortion. We have done so -- and continue to do so -- with the conviction that abortion, and the industry that sells it, is collapsing under its own weight.

We have each seen, time and time again, how exposing the horror of abortion itself causes many people to reject it, without us making a single argument or rationale for doing so. We simply need to expose to the light of day this evil which continues, in large part, because its purveyors are experts at keeping it hidden.

The abortion industry is corrupt to the core because you can't practice vice virtuously. If your conscience has deteriorated to the point that you can kill babies, you're going to do a lot of other evil as well. Your ability to discern right from wrong has been destroyed, and there's no way that the fallout is only going to impact one segment of your activities.

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JIM WEBB – THE OLD TIME DEMOCRAT

The old Democrat Party was a motley collection of selected plutocrats, labor bosses, Southern segregationists, smaller farmers, urban liberals and, as early as the 1930s, racial minorities. It was no doubt a clunky coalition but delivered big time: winning World War II, pushing back the Soviet Union and making it to the moon while aiding tens of millions of Americans to ascend into the middle class.

Only one Democrat candidate in the 2016 presidential race, James Webb, represents this old coalition. A decorated combat veteran, onetime Reagan Navy secretary and former U.S. senator from Virginia, Webb, 69, combines patriotism with a call for expansive economic policies to help the middle class.

He speaks most directly to white working-class voters, particularly in places like Appalachia, the South and in rural hamlets and exurbs across the country, precisely where Democrats are now regularly thrashed in elections.

So far, his candidacy is attracting little to no mention, because he identifies with an America – white, rural or suburban – disdained or ignored by the official press. Many current Democrats not only dislike these constituencies, but don’t even want to deal with them, counting, instead, on their lock-step support of minorities, rich liberals, single women and prefamily millennial voters.

Today’s “Post-American” Democrat Party is heading where Barack Obama has pushed it – a full-throated program of statist gentry leftism. Jim Webb wants to reverse that direction.

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