HALF-FULL REPORT 08/07/09

Here’s a shocker.  The HFR, after checking to make sure its glass is really just half-full, raises it this week to… this is not easy, how did this glass get so heavy?… to… take a deep breath… to Hillary Clinton.

How is that possible?  Two words:  Eritrea and Honduras.

Back in the 80s, Eritreans were heroes, fighting for their freedom against the hideous Soviet Communist dictatorship of Mengistu Mariam in Ethiopia.  They won their independence as the Soviet Union was disintegrating in 1991.  They had the world on their side.

They proceeded to pick fights with all their neighbors, Sudan, Djibouti, even Yemen (on the other side of the Red Sea over islands in between), and of course, Ethiopia.  They started a huge war with Ethiopia – even though it liberated itself from Mengistu in 1991 and let Eritrea freely go – with tens of thousands killed over patches of desert wasteland.,

They continue to harbor such pathological hatred for Ethiopia they will do anything to hurt it.  Such as sponsor the Moslem "Al-Shabab" terrorists trying to take over Somalia – because Ethiopia is supporting a Somali government opposed to the terrorists.

Yesterday (8/06) in Nairobi, Mrs. Clinton condemned Eritrea for supporting Al-Shabab and threatened sanctions against it.  Good for her.  It’s about time Eritrean evil was condemned, and on the world stage.

On to Honduras.  Perhaps you saw this headline yesterday:  US Drops Call to Restore Ousted Honduran Leader.  The announcement was contained in a letter Mrs. Clinton, in her official capacity as Secretary of State, wrote to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN).

This is the result, as explained in last week’s HFR, of Micheletti hiring heavyweight Clintonista Lanny Davis.  And as predicted, the moonbats, such as on Daily Kos, have gone anti-Hillary ballistic.  The only one angrier is Hugo Chavez.

He is simply rabid not only about his protégé Zelaya losing, but on top of it the Yanquis will be deploying their soldiers on seven military bases next door in Colombia.  Further infuriating him is that the governments of Chile and Brazil – who initially announced their opposition, now support Colombia.

This was after Hillary had nice phone chats with Chile’s Michelle Bachelet and Brazil’s Lula da Silva.  Of course, the $10 billion loan the US just made to Petrobas, Brazil’s state oilco, provided the sweetener for Lula.  Yes, Hillary was behind that too.

Hillary, you see, is positioning herself for 2012, as she’s figured out Zero is a one-termer.  So she is distancing herself from Zero’s anti-American foreign policy.  And for that, the HFR raises a half-full glass.

***
Oh, what about that other Clinton?  The one hogging the headlines in Norkland?  Was there some sinister sellout, some secret deal Slick made with the Norks to the grave detriment of his country?  The answer is no.

Of course, as explained this week by Jack Kelly, Zero gave his approval because it fits in with his "all appeasement all the time" agenda.

But that’s not Bill Clinton’s agenda.  His is:  all ego all the time.  He’s an egomaniac – but at least that’s all he is.  Kim Jong-il is an egomaniac and a Hitlerian megalomaniac.  He desperately wants world respect and attention.  He thought he could get both (not just the latter) by having Bill Clinton stand next to him.

Clinton realized that’s all the little putz wanted – no deal, no message, just the picture making world headlines.  So he said sure, because he would get the world headlines too.  For a picture, he gets the two girl hostages back.  That was the deal, nothing more.

The tipoff is in the pictures.  No one is more camera-sensitive than Slick and he’s always smiling for one.  Yet in the picture with Kim – who is smiling big time – Slick is stone cold unsmiling serious. 

You’ve got to hand it to him – it was a very slick, very smart media extravaganza.  But raise a glass to him?  That’s a bridge that the HFR cannot cross.

***
Now for the most thrilling headline of the year:  Federal Tax Revenues Plummeting.

The AP reports that "the recession is starving the government of tax revenue," that "tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression."

Leviathan is starving – now that’s fabulous news.  The HFR is getting to be a huge fan of this recession.  Oh – and don’t you love how Zero’s Labor Dept. cooked the books today (8/07) in reporting a drop in unemployment of .1% when 247,000 more folks lost their jobs last month and 400,000 gave up looking for them?

Real unemployment in the US is over 20%.  As explained by ShadowStats (3^rd graph), the government lies about unemployment by throwing "discouraged workers" out of the calculation.

Deficits will continue to explode to the moon while real unemployment continues to rise and the economy falls deeper into the toilet.  Millions of jobless folks have been living off unemployment benefits for well over a year – they can last up to 79 weeks in many states – which will end for them this fall. 

They’ll be hungry and broke and won’t blame it on Bush, but Zero.  The anti-Zero anti-Dem protests we’re seeing in August won’t hold a candle to what we’ll see in October and beyond.

***
The more the HFR sees these protests escalate, the more it thinks that concern over ZeroCare is just the proximate cause.  The real underlying cause is anger over how their country (and in many cases themselves personally as voters) was suckered into electing Zero in the first place.

And the more the HFR sees how this anger is escalating, the more it looks at Zero as LBJ redux, only faster.  For the anger is not going away until Zero does.  It took 3 years to get rid of Lyndon Johnson (1/65 to 3/68 when he announced he wouldn’t run again, and he coasted from then on).  The anger today, however, will not wait that long, not even close.

By this fall, a crescendo of  calls for Zero to resign will start.  By spring it will be deafening.  At some point before November and the mid-terms, a delegation of top Dems – perhaps after they’ve removed Pelosi and Reid from the leadership to save their party electorally – will sit down with Zero in the Oval Office and tell him he has to step down "for the good of the nation."

This may never happen.  But it is a possibility on the horizon – and the direction we are headed right now is towards it.

***
Between the two giant islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia there is a small island called Anak Krakatau – the Child of Krakatoa.

On August 27, 1883, the child’s parent, Krakatoa, erupted in the greatest volcanic explosion in recorded history – equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT or 13,000 times the force of Little Boy, the nuke we dropped on Hiroshima.

The explosion was heard by boat captains and crews 3,000 miles away.  The tidal wave it caused killed 36,000 people just on the island of Java alone.  Then the island sunk into the sea.

When another island rose in its place in 1930, the natives called it Anak Krakatau – and now it too looks ready to blow.

An Italian photographer has taken an incredible series of pictures of the Child’s current activity.  But note also this observation in the accompanying story:

"Krakatoa had an extraordinary effect on the planet last time round. Average global temperatures following the eruption fell by as much as 1.2 C, as the huge quantities of sulphur dioxide pumped into the atmosphere resulted in clouds that reflected a greater amount of incoming light from the sun."

Global cooling!  And isn’t this the mechanism for global warming/cooling described in Solar Warming almost five years ago (9/05) in TTP?  Granted, it’s the sun’s magnetic activity instead of the volcano, but you can see it’s the same mechanism at work.

The Chinese and Indians understand the real mechanism causing "climate change" – and that it isn’t us humans.  So might we all if Krakatoa blows again.