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ATLAS IN AMERICA


Insanity has its consequences.  Every day now, another consequence of America's insanity - and I mean that literally - of November 4 becomes apparent.  It's funny to see the MSM frantically trying to disconnect Zero from Blago, as the dim bulb in the brains of those who voted for him starts to shine a glimmer of light on his corruption.

Insanity and stupidity usually go together (the evil genius is a Hollywood myth, rare in reality).  And when Atlas shrugs, it makes a lot of stupid people go nuts.  That's what's happening in Greece this week.

After all the unending ever-increasing assaults on entrepreneurial capitalism by Washington for decades, November 4 has turned out to be the last straw.  Electing Zero is what it took for Atlas to shrug in America, with one result the huge increase in unemployment since the election.

Massive job losses are only the start of bad news in 2009.  Zero hasn't a clue of how to create wealth.  Like all liberals, he only thinks of how to steal it ("redistribution" is just a liberal euphemism for "theft") from those who have created it and give it to those who have not for personal political gain.

But what happens when the creators of wealth stop creating, so the thieves no longer can continue stealing and the moochers can no longer live off stolen wealth?  That was the question asked and answered by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  There is now the very real possibility that America is going to live through the answer in the coming Zero years - and that what is happening to Greece this week is going to come to our shores starting next year.

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TENDER LOVING CAIR


Islamist Bigots Lose One - And They're Outraged

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is furious. For the first time since the birth of Mohammed, it isn’t getting its way in Washington. In the past, whenever our government raised the possibility of doing the least little thing of which CAIR might not wholeheartedly approve, the soft-core jihadis shrieked, “Bigotry!” And presidents, cabinet secretaries, senators, representatives and bureaucrats—even intelligence analysts and military officers--ran for cover (while, no doubt, suggesting that their spouses don head-scarves for a probationary period).

In the face of Islamist terrorism, we’ve been foolish. In the face of Islamist bullying of our government, we’ve been cowards.

Now, just this once, CAIR isn’t being allowed to dictate its sharia-flavored will to our nation’s capital.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 07/02/10


Sark, Channel Islands.  This is a uniquely interesting place from which to celebrate this Fourth of July weekend.  As one of the Channel Islands (as in the English Channel although they are much closer to France than England), it is a "Crown Dependency" - meaning it is sovereign and independent except for defense and foreign affairs.

Guernsey and Jersey (along with small Herm and Alderney) are the other islands and interesting as well - but Sark is fascinating as the only feudal fiefdom left in Europe, and for being a microcosm of a number of  America's difficulties.

Think of how useful to our freedom the Sark tradition, dating back to 10th century Norman law, of Clameur de Haro would be.  If a citizen believes his rights have been infringed, he can confront the infringer and call out in the presence of witnesses:  "Haro, Haro, Haro! À mon aide mon Prince, on me fait tort!" ("Haro, Haro, Haro! To my aid, my Prince! I am being wronged!").  After which he must recite The Lord's Prayer - in French.

With this, and the complaint registered with the local court, the accused must immediately cease his actions against the accuser.  Think of how this could stop fascist tyrannies by bureaucrats, local to national!  Whoever is found by the court to be in the wrong - accused or accuser - is fined or penalized.  Loser pays.  Imagine making a bureaucrat or politician personally pay for trying to violate a citizen's rights.

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UNDERGROUND AMERICA


The underground or "black" economy is rapidly rising, and the fault is mainly due to government policies.

Here is the evidence. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) released a report last week concluding that 7.7 percent of U.S. households, containing at least 17 million adults, are unbanked (i.e., those who do not have bank accounts), and an "estimated 17.9 percent of U.S. households, roughly 21 million, are underbanked" (i.e., those who rely heavily on nonbank institutions, such as check cashing and money transmitting services).

As an economy becomes richer and incomes rise, the normal expectation is that the proportion of the unbanked population falls and does not rise as is now happening in the United States.

Tax revenues are falling far more rapidly at the federal, state and local level than would be expected by the small drop in real gross domestic product (GDP) and changes in tax law that have occurred since the recession began.

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ZEROCARE


As the TTP Weekly Report was being delivered to your inbox last Friday afternoon (12/05), thanks to our fine TTP staff, I was undergoing abdominal surgery at Akta Medika, a small private hospital in Sevlievo, Bulgaria.  I'm writing this from a hospital bed there right now.

Abdominal surgery is a serious matter, especially when it's done to repair the errors of a previous surgery ten years ago.  So I didn't come here just because it's 1/20th of the cost in the US.  I came because it's better.

That's not a putdown of American physicians - but it sure is of American medicine, so completely hamstrung by government rules and regulations, the nonsense of "third-party providers," and protections of medical monopolies like the AMA:  the antithesis of free market medicine.  Yet if you think it's bad now, wait until you see what Zerocare does to it.

This is not the place to discuss the specifics of how the government makes medical care in the US ridiculously expensive, complicated, and obsolete.  It is, rather, to discuss the opportunities for you to avoid - and even profit from - the mess that Zero will make so much worse with his and Teddy Chappaquiddick Kennedy's "Universal Health Care" health fascism.

And to explain the "flanking movement" Republicans can make to provide an alternative to Zerocare health fascism, saving Medicare hundreds of billions of dollars in so doing.

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IRAN IS THE PRIME BENEFICIARY OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST


A new Middle East is upon us and its primary beneficiary couldn't be happier.

For generations, the stability of global oil supplies has been guaranteed by Saudi Arabia's reserve capacity that could be relied on to make up for any shocks to those supplies due to political unrest or other factors. When Libya's teetering dictator Muammar Ghaddafi decided to shut down Libya's oil exports last month, the oil markets reacted with a sharp increase in prices. The very next day the Saudis announced they would make up the shortfall from Libya's withdrawal from the export market.
 
In the old Middle East, the Saudi statement would never have been questioned. Oil suppliers and purchasers alike accepted the arrangement whereby Saudi Arabian reserves - defended by the US military -- served as the guarantor of the oil economy. But in the New Middle East, Iran feels comfortable questioning the Saudi role.
 
With each passing day, the Iranian regime is actively destabilizing Saudi Arabia's neighbors and increasing its influence over Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority in the kingdom's Eastern Province where most of its oil is located.

The Obama administration has failed completely to understand what is happening.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 06/25/10


Good grief, what a weird week.  Which headline is more bizarre - the one in Cincinnati, "Naked Man Arrested With Stolen Cheese At Library," or the one in Portland, "Al Gore Accused Of Being A Crazed Sex Poodle"?

We all know, of course, that Algore's former boss is a serial rapist.  But Mr. Save-The-Planet?  Goodnight, Al, and take your warmism with you.  At least now, folks will think that Global Warmism means Rape-The-Planet with lunatic Marxist Fascism.

***
Meanwhile, Zero's unconstitutional fascism gets more grotesque by the day.  Reports that he intends to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens by executive fiat have prompted a number of Senators (all R's) to sign a letter to the president (dated 6/21) requesting he deny the reports.

Like you, I have this little devil who resides on my left shoulder whispering off-the-wall provocations in my ear.  Right now, he's saying he hopes Zero goes through with this.

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THE TOTAL WASTE-OF-TIME JOBS SUMMIT


Today, December 3rd, the White House is hosting a "Jobs Summit."  What should the attendees be advising the president? Unlike Ronald Reagan, President Obama was schooled in law, not in economics. Thus, he may not understand that there is really no mystery as to why we have our current unemployment, and how we can regain full employment.

It would, of course, have been no mystery to Ronald Reagan, who was fond of saying:  "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."  That is, the recipe for more jobs is simple:  lower taxes, fewer regulations. 

Job creation should be at the top of the administration's domestic priorities, because the inability to find a job causes more misery and hardship to far more Americans (and particularly to those who can least afford it) than the lack of health care for the 10 percent who are uninsured or potential global warming ever will.

If the president really wants to see employers go back to hiring large numbers of people, the administration will do the following:

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THE ZERO WHITE HOUSE AS A TARGET-RICH ENVIRONMENT


Are we having fun yet?  We might as well try, amidst the multiple looming disasters awaiting our economy and our country - not to mention a lot of other countries as well - with the Zero White House running Washington.  One way to do so is to look at Zero's new home as a target-rich environment.

Here's target number one.  "Zero," of course, is an alternate name for the individual we called NMP - Not My President - shortly after November 4.  Now it's turning out that vast multitudes don't look upon him as their president either, due to this crazy controversy over his birth certificate.

Crazy because producing a verifiably genuine birth certificate should be the simplest thing in the world to do, instantly squashing the controversy.  Yet Zero won't produce it, allowing the issue to metastasize to the point of full page ads in the Chicago Tribune.

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THE WEST’S PROXY WAR AGAINST THE JEWS


It was a stunning moment of moral clarity. As the South Vietnamese refugees clambered onto rickety boats in the South China Sea to escape the victorious Communists, the American Left that orchestrated the US defeat through a sustained campaign of propaganda and fake calls for peace stood silent.

As Pol Pot, the "progressive" dictator tortured and murdered a third of his people in Cambodia, the leftists "peace" activists in the US and Europe who never saw a US military operation that was justified, turned a blind eye.

The silence of the likes of Susan Sontag, Jane Fonda, Noam Chomsky and their fellow travelers came to mind last week when the Western media and intellectual elites averted their gaze as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the long exiled spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood spoke before a crowd of millions at Cairo's Tahrir Square.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 06/18/10


Do you hear that music?  Sure sounds beautiful.  As the Left becomes more disenchanted with Zero, folks inside the Zero White House are leaking what's going on to leftie blogs.  Here is a compilation of those leaks that is appearing all over the liberal-left blogosphere. 

Disturbing and mesmerizing whispering that the Oval Office is the scene of stormy and romantic melodrama between POTUS and his most senior and trusted advisers. Whispering that POTUS is sleeping poorly and is much aggrieved at slights, shortfalls, interruptions. Whispering that POTUS is vulnerable to jet lag. That POTUS has returned to chain-smoking. That POTUS hesitates to heed his advisers, because POTUS frets that he is being sand-bagged by experts, allies, confidantes. Whispering that POTUS frailties most in display in West Wing settings. That POTUS evidences a Nixonian persecution mania. Can any of this be confirmed? Not easily. Less detailed, POTUS is said to express his opinion to pals in Chicago that he dislikes his job. Wilder whisperings that some pros are now weighing that POTUS try an LBJ exit after one term - rather than face a Carter collapse.
What music to our ears. 

You may recall this from The Zero Resignation Challenge from a year ago (June 2009):

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CLUELESS, DESPOTIC, OR BOTH?


Do you think people who refuse to (or cannot for whatever reason) purchase health insurance should be subject to a $250,000 fine and/or five years in jail?

Well, a slim majority of the U.S. House of Representatives seems to think such a draconian (and probably unconstitutional) measure is just fine because that is one of the provisions of the health care reform bill they just passed.

A person, or group of people, who are unable to think through the consequences of their actions and often resort to oppression of others are either clueless or despotic.  Thinking and compassionate people, by contrast, understand that there may be many good reasons why people do not buy, or do not wish to buy, health insurance.

The health care bill is Exhibit A to demonstrate that a majority of Congress is now clueless/despotic when it comes to economic sense or understanding about how the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect individual liberty. Then there are Exhibits B, C & D.

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MUMBAI AND THE SILIGURI GAP


Before we get started, let's first dispense with this stupid name of "Mumbai."  The place is Bombay and that's what we'll call it.  The city was created and named by the British East India Company in 1668, after the Hindi name for the area, Bambai.  It was just typical politically correctness to rename it in a local dialect (Marathi).

As Bombay was created by the Brits, so was all of India as a unified nation, as they stitched together hundreds of small kingdoms and petty statelets ruled by Hindu rajahs and Moslem sultans.  It was not stitched well. 

Thus the question to ask in the wake of the Bombay terrorism just committed by Moslem proto-hominids is:  will it precipitate India's unraveling?  One place to look for the answer is far away from Bombay, called the Siliguri Gap.

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LARA LOGAN AND THE MEDIA RULES


To date the most egregious attack on a foreign journalist in Cairo's Tahrir Square took place last Friday, when CBS's senior foreign correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and brutally beaten by a mob of Egyptian men. Her own network, CBS, took several days to even report the story, and when it did, it left out important information. The fact that Logan was brutalized for 20 to 30 minutes and that her attackers screamed out "Jew, Jew, Jew" as they ravaged her was absent from the CBS report and from most other follow-on reports in the US media.

This week, a group of female US soldiers filed a class action lawsuit against Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld. The plaintiffs allege that both men and the US defense establishment are responsible for the sexual assaults they suffered during their military service. They claim that the men who abused them were a product of US military culture.

The US media has provided blanket coverage of the story, which effectively places the entire US military on trial for rape.

What is interesting about the lawsuit story is that it highlights the alleged perpetrator. Coverage of the lawsuit has been heavy on details about the alleged misogyny of US military culture.

In stark contrast, coverage of Logan's sexual assault makes almost no mention of the perpetrators.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 06/11/10


Well, hasn't this been a fun week.  An icon of the liberal media - the execrable Helen Thomas - is exposed as a disgusting anti-Semitic racist and her life career ends in ruins.  Zero exposes himself as a no-class punk president who belongs in Junior High School rather than the White House.

His kick-your-ass taunt is that of some 8th-grade wimp trying to pretend he's tough.  All such a taunt gets is derision and ridicule.  It invites the response for which the Brits are applauding London Mayor Boris Johnson  - "Hey, STFU!" 

On both sides of the Atlantic, this summer's most enjoyable pastime promises to be Dissing Zero.  Kicking things off, America's favorite Congresswoman, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) views Zero as "infantile," and "the worst president in US history."  That was followed by the leader of that cabal of America-haters, the ACLU, saying "I'm disgusted with this president."

Now for more fun...

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