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.

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:

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 21^st century, not only cannot build a competitive automobile, but can't even produce a competitive bicycle?

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.

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.

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:

For a change, there is some good news. The double-dip recession that some of us had feared if Congress raised taxes on the most productive people has been avoided for the moment, and as a result, many forecasters have increased their growth estimates for 2011 to more than 3 percent.

But the country needs sustained growth rates above 3.5 percent to bring down unemployment in a reasonably rapid way.

More good news is that the unsustainable increase in federal government spending is likely to be curtailed because of the efforts of the House Republicans and one man in particular, Rep. Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, the new head of the House Budget Committee.

Mr. Ryan is a fine economist and a man of courage who understands the real world. His committee will take on both entitlement spending and discretionary spending, and the committee recommendations are likely to be passed by the House.

Unfortunately, the still Democrat-controlled Senate will lack the courage and will continue to deny the reality of what needs to be done.

In the Republican candidate debate in South Carolina last Monday night (1/16, link is to debate transcript), moderator Bret Bair of Fox News asked Governor Rick Perry:

"Governor Perry, since the Islamist-oriented party took over in Turkey, the murder rate of women has increased 1,400 percent there. Press freedom has declined to the level of Russia. The prime minister of Turkey has embraced Hamas and Turkey has threatened military force against both Israel and Cypress. Given Turkey's turn, do you believe Turkey still belongs in NATO?"

And Gov. Perry replied:

"Well, obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by, what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO, but it's time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it."

This prompted outrage by Ankara, condemnation by the liberal media, and a strong defense by Perry of his claim. So is Perry right?  Let's take a look at what is actually going on in Turkey today.