HALF-FULL REPORT 01/15/10

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the moonbats to figure out how to blame Bush for the Haiti earthquake.  Note their arguments in the Puffington Host. 

It’s all Bush’s fault because he supposedly engineered the 2004 rebellion that overthrew Haiti’s fantastically corrupt Marxist dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and that Bush had all US aid to Haiti channeled through private aid organizations and not through bottomlessly corrupt government officials.  They actually claim this.

This was quickly followed by media moonbat Keith Olbermann of MSNBC arguing that the disaster in Haiti is why the US needs ObamaCare.  You can trust the Left to never let a crisis go to political waste.

Here’s something to focus on during the Haitian horror:  the humanity of Judeo-Christian values.  Look down the full list of countries, companies, and organizations (current as of today 1/15/10) providing aid to Haiti or an abbreviated summary of the list here. 

First, note that with the exception of miniscule aid from Turkey (an emergency management expert and a psychologist), not one single Moslem country is providing a dime.  It is one of Mohammed’s five requirements to be a Moslem that you contribute to charity – for other Moslems.  People who aren’t Moslem aren’t really people at all, they are sub-human infidels, kafrs, not deserving of charity.

Note that India is not on the list.  Charity is an alien concept to Hindu thought.  Your fate in this life is what you deserve for the way you were in past lifetimes, your karma.  Better luck next lifetime.

Note that giant China, with its trillions of dollars in foreign reserves, is digging deep with $1 million – the same as tiny, poverty-stricken Guyana.  Predominantly Chinese Singapore is forking over a hot 50K.  Charity and conscience play little roles in the Chinese psyche.  If you want them to help, the only thing that works is to shame them in to it.

The only other countries in all of Asia helping Haiti at all are South Korea at $1 million, and Japan at $5 million.

Charity – helping your fellow man when in dire need – is a predominantly Western concept, a predominantly Jewish and Christian concept.  Which is why Israel immediately sent two Boeing 747s with medical teams and aid to Haiti, and why most all the countries, companies, and charities helping Haiti are Western.

You can look down that list and take pride in your culture – that we in the West are foremost in helping those suffering horrific disaster.  If you wish to help yourself, consider The Salvation Army’s effort in Haiti or the Haitian-based Haiti Foundation.

***
Funny how ever since the HFR on January 1^st advocated the Third D (to the Double D strategy of Defund and Disobey) – Default – lots of folks have started talking about it, even Pat Buchanan albeit in a once-over-lightly way.

There are only two ways a government can deal with a titanically crushing debt burden:  pay it off with hyperinflated currency (thus reducing the debt to pennies or even fractions of a penny on the dollar), or default on it.

The government debt we have now – the real debt on which interest has to be paid (rather than future liabilities of, say, Social Security) – is over $8 trillion (over 57% of GDP), to which another $1 to $2 trillion will be added every year from now on the way the Dems are going, cannot be sustained for much longer.  One simple reason why is that the Fed cannot maintain near-zero interest rates for much longer, and once they go up, the debt interest costs start to rocket.

The solution of hyperinflation, which annihilates most people’s life savings and impoverishes anyone living on a fixed income, can only be avoided by the alternative of debt default.

The most illuminative description of the horrifying consequences of hyperinflation is Adam Fergusson’s When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse.  This link is to the Mises Institute website that has published the entire book online.  This is not a dry economic analysis; it is the fascinating first hand experiences of survivors of the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s.

The TTP Forum’s resident genius "Skye" will be giving a presentation on how to implement the Third D Default Strategy at the San Antonio Rendezvous.  He is encouraging all "Rendezvousers" to read the Fergusson book ahead of time so they will be able to ask him far more valuable questions than if they haven’t.

Skye will discuss how we can force default before the politicians can hyperinflate – and why this will be the end of Big Government as we know it.  "With great dangers come amazing opportunities," he says, and wants you to know how to take advantage of them.

***
I found the message, if not the theme song, for the Triple D Strategy in the 1969 Santana song Evil Ways.  You’ve heard it lots on Oldies radio stations, and the line that’s the message for Washington is:

You’ve got to change your evil ways, baby – this can’t go on… no, no, you’ve got to change

***
My old friend, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard – now international business editor for the London Daily Telegraph – agrees with me about US default, but thinks another country will "go Weimar" before we do:  Japan.

Our federal debt is soon to be 60% of GDP – Japan’s will soon be 250%.  This can’t go on, as Ambrose and Santana warn.  It’s gone on this far because the Japanese are the world’s greatest savers and have loaned all their life savings to their government. 

But now Japan is the oldest country on earth demographically, there aren’t enough younger people to save, the elderly are cashing in their government bond pension funds, and soon the Japanese saving rate will "crash to zero."  The government really can’t default on the money they owe their own people – so it will Weimar-hyperinflate the Yen.  It’s going to be, Ambrose predicts, a "global fiasco."   

***
Speaking of fiascos, there sure is one coming in Russia.  The Russian economy is a one-trick pony of oil&gas.  The Western majors that have the money, expertise, and technology required to exploit Russia’s oil fields have finally learned you can’t do business with the Mafiosi in the Kremlin. So bye-bye Russkie oil.

The only thing left is gas, monopolized by the Kremlin company Gazprom.  Putin’s billions (yes, he’s made several billion getting a percentage of oil/gas deals) is mostly tied up in Gazprom stock.  Gazprom had gargantuan plans to build new pipelines to Europe and control Europe’s energy supply.  It even intended to make the US dependent on its LNG supplies.

That is over.  Bloomberg reported this week (01/12) that America is now – thanks to the new technology for exploiting "unconventional" gas – the world’s largest gas producer, leaving Russia in the dust.  While US production last year increased 4%, Gazprom’s dropped 17%.

And since gas prices have plunged, Gazprom is selling less gas for less money, while there is a glut of LNG in Europe.  No wonder Russia’s GDP dropped 8.5% last year, and industrial output fell by 11.5%.  I’m so sad.  I’m sure you’re just all broken up by this too.  Meanwhile, the Chinese are thinking a lot about Siberia these days.

***
We’ll end on a high note, but before we do, a word of caution on Haiti.  Yes, we can take pride in our culture’s goodness of heart towards the people of Haiti.  But the people of Haiti have had one of the most dysfunctional cultures on the planet for a long time.  There are deep cultural defects which are responsible for Haiti’s fourth world poverty and corruption.

All this aid is very unlikely to correct these flaws – as this instructive example from Colorado Springs shows, where charitable citizens gave boxes of clothes and food to a group of homeless folks who proceeded to completely trash the area.

Indeed, Zero may be about to exacerbate Haiti’s defects by allowing Aristide – currently in exile in South Africa – back into the country. 

For charity to be worthwhile, people have to deserve it.  Let’s hope the Haitian people do.  This could be their finest hour – or it could be their worst.

***
OK, folks, time for the good stuff.  I think all of us are simply unglued with excitement and anticipation over the growing possibility of Republican Scott Brown defeating Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts next Tuesday (01/19).

TTP’s Jack Kelly tells me now he is convinced Brown is going to win.  I wish I had that confidence for it seems too much of a dream come true – and remember we had the same hopes for Doug Hoffman in the NY23 race last November.  As I said to my friend Paul Pressler of the Southern Baptist Convention, "Yes, Paul, miracles can happen – but not in Massachusetts!"

But maybe they do.  Just about every sign there is now points to a Brown victory.  It’s hard to exaggerate the impact should he actually win.  You have to be in Washington to really gut-level feel what it would do the Dems.  Words like devastating, demoralizing, depressing don’t come close.  They’ve been so deep in denial.  Strip them of their capacity for denial – which is what a Scott Brown victory would do – and they are going to go catatonic.

There is now a clear chance that Brown will not only win, but win going away, winning so convincingly that all the Dem cheating can’t overcome it nor delay his swearing-in.

The Dems will thus try anything they can in the next four days to prevent this.  The next four days are going to be excruciatingly long.  Don’t hold your breath, just cross your fingers and pray.  Miracles can happen – even in Massachusetts.