HALF-FULL REPORT 03/19/10

There’s so much cool stuff to talk about this week – but first I’ve got to clear up a confusion.   We normally have two Rendezvous a year, winter and summer.  This year, we’re adding a third, the San Diego Spring Rendezvous, May 14-16.

A number of folks are hesitating about this as they think there’ll still be another in the summer.  Obviously, I should have explained this earlier:  There will not be a Summer Rendezvous this year.  I will be traveling – South America, Asia, and Europe – August through October.  The next Rendezvous after San Diego in May will be The Victory Celebration Rendezvous in Washington DC, November 5-7.

That’s the weekend after the November 2 elections, and we should have a lot to celebrate.  But there’s a long meantime between now and then – even longer if you consider the total gap between the San Antonio Rendezvous last January and next November. 

So – the only way to see your fellow TTPers, and get a deep grasp of what’s happening to our country and in the world, without waiting all the way to late next fall, is to join us in sunny San Diego in May.  Capiche?

I am also enormously pleased to make an announcement.  All of you who are familiar with the works and philosophy of Ayn Rand know of her most famous protégé Nathaniel Branden, author of numerous world best-sellers on the psychology of self-esteem. 

Nathan and I have been friends for over 40 years.  I am really excited about this – Nathaniel Branden will be speaking to us at the San Diego Rendezvous. 

Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was dedicated to Nathan.  He started the Objectivist philosophical movement.  Sales of Atlas are exploding today, more than 50 years after its publication in 1957, because it describes with such eerie accuracy what is happening to America now.  There is no one more than Nathan who can explain how Ayn Rand knew what the fate of America was to be.

This is an incredibly rare chance to interact with one of the great minds of our time.  Don’t pass it up.  Don’t wait until November.  Be with me in San Diego.

***
OK, here we go.  There’s no doubt who the HFR Hero of the Week is:  Bret Baier of Fox News for his Pulitzer Prize-worthy interview of President Zero.

At last, a journalist who won’t lob softballs and won’t put up with Zero filibustering his questions.  When Zero complained that Baier kept interrupting him, Baier shrugged it off and kept hammering.  Zero came off "unprepared, petulant, and evasive," observed the Wall Street Journal, stammering, stuttering, and sophomoric.  Baier cleaned Zero’s clock – a media star is born!

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The most bizarre moment in Baier’s interview was when Zero defended the "Louisiana Purchase" of Mary Landrieu’s vote for ObamaCare by saying that money would help with "the earthquake in Hawaii" –

Since Hawaii has suffered no earthquake at all, perhaps Zero was confusing Hawaii with Haiti and thinks Haiti is America’s 57^th state.

Yet more bizarre – fantastically so – was Zero, in a speech this week (3/15) in Strongsville, Ohio, claiming that ObamaCare will reduce folks’ insurance premiums by 3000%.  Yes, he actually said "fall by as much as three thousand percent."

 
 
Reducing anything by 100% is to eliminate it, reducing it to 0%.  2900% of Zero is a very large negative number.  Can you imagine what a wahoo! field day the leftstream media would have had if George Bush ever made a claim of such bald stupidity?  Fortunately, there are scores of millions of Americans now who would love to see 3,000% less of President Zero.

***
Thus there is a full-on rebellion brewing across the entire country against the illegal and unconstitutional imposition of ObamaCare. 

The Governor of Idaho signed the Idaho Health Freedom Act this week (3/17), declaring that Idaho will not obey ObamaCare’s mandate requiring Idahoans (and every other American) to buy health insurance.  Virginia has passed a similar law, and 36 additional states are considering this legislation.

Public leaders like the head of the John Locke Foundation, John Hood, are declaring that if ObamaCare is enacted into law, it is not legally binding and they will personally refuse to obey it.  Period.

Mark Levin has announced his Legal Landmark Foundation will sue President Zero in federal court if ObamaCare is passed via the "Slaughter Rule" (it’s named after coyote-ugly Louise Slaughter, D-NY).

Perhaps best of all, calls for impeachment are in the air.  For attempting to invoke the Slaughter "deem-and-pass" rule, Michele Bachman (R-MN) is calling for Nancy Pelosi to be impeached.  (As you listen to Michele’s interview with Sean Hannity, note her reference to the "Treason Media."  Great term – that’s a keeper.)

The Washington Times has now called for Republicans to campaign on a promise to not only repeal ObamaCare should they gain the House majority in November, but to impeach President Zero.  Especially because Zero is not only advocating the "high crime" of using the Slaughter Rule to seize 17% of the US economy, but to use it for additional legislation such as granting amnesty to illegals.

Kinda makes you hope ObamaCare passes, doesn’t it?  We really do need a clear tipping point that opens up a different window for getting government out of our lives.  We need a crisis, a real full-blown crisis, that weakens the federal government instead of strengthening it as past crises (including, unfortunately 9/11) always have.  This could be it.

***
Last month the HFR showed you Carly Fiorina’s off the wall Demon Sheep ad blasting Tom Campbell, her opponent in the California GOP senate primary.  With Campbell flaming out due to revelations of his relations with Moslem terrorist groups (see last week’s HFR), and Carly pulling almost even with Dem incumbent Barbara Boxer in the polls, she’s going over the top again with Boxer in her YouTube gunsights.

The video is 8 minutes long, depicting Boxer’s head swelling up as a blimp that floats over the US telling us "how to live our lives."  It quotes Boxer: "One of the very important national security threats we face right now is climate change."  It’s a real quote, and the narrator simply responds, "What?"

It nails BarBox on her "18 years in the Senate and passing only three tiny bills" – one for naming a river in Virginia.  BarBox is collapsing in the polls – just like the Boxer Blimp does at the video’s end.  Carly could win this – she sure has the moxie to do so.

***
As long as we’re into YouTube videos this week, have you seen Ray Stevens’ latest?  It’s an ode to Sarah "Caribou Barbie" Palin:

***
Let’s have a little fun around the world, shall we?  Hear about Dwarfgate?  That’s the scandal that has tout le France in a tizzy.  David Cameron, Britain’s next Prime Minister after the June elections – he’s six-foot – evidently made a joke about "hidden dwarfs" regarding a picture of him next to five-foot-six French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sarko is reportedly terminally miffed – perhaps as a distraction from the disaster that’s befallen his wife Carla Bruni’s face…

A world leader who’s more focused on substantive matters than Sarko is Brazil’s Lula da Silva.  He’s gotten a lot of flak lately for seeming to be best buds with Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.  Turns out, he agrees with how TTP prefers to spell the Iranian leader’s name:  Ahmadinutjob.

The Brazilian newspaper O’Globo is reporting that when queried by a European leader (the paper doesn’t identify him), Lula responded, "You can’t leave someone who is nuts on the loose."  So he must travel to Iran (and to Venezuela) periodically to "control the man," meaning Nutjob and Chavez.  Wonder how welcome Lula will be in Tehran and Caracas now…

Is gold becoming the world’s new reserve currency?  It’s a question being asked by a number of international bankers now as central banks from Russia to China to India and elsewhere are busy adding the most gold to their reserves since 1964.

With gold near all-time highs now, you wouldn’t think the central banks would be buying as much as they can.  How could gold, that "barbarous relic," be of more real value than paper fiat money?  Looks like the international investment and banking community may at last be figuring out the answer…

Let me ask – are there any world leaders with greater hubris and arrogance than Zero’s?  There sure are:  China’s.  No leaders in the world are more insufferably superior.  Yet very bright guys like Jim Rickards, James Chanos, and Ken Rogoff are convinced China is going to have a meltdown.

This week (3/16) at the Asset Allocation Summit in Hong Kong, they agreed that, in Rickard’s words, China’s economy "is the greatest bubble in history with the most massive misallocation of wealth… a bubble waiting to burst."

One example is that China’s local and regional governments have built up a debt of $3.5 trillion.  This dwarfs China’s vaunted foreign reserves, much of which is dead weight, uselessly tied up in illiquid US Treasuries.

Next month, the Treasury Department is required to issue a finding on whether China is a "currency manipulator."  It is, of course, as the yuan is way undervalued, just like Zero and everyone else in Washington, Republican and Democrat, says it is.  The finding will trigger mandatory trade sanctions, possibly a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports.  It could be the pinprick for the bubble to burst.

***
One more item, then I’ll wish you a pleasant weekend.  Perhaps you’ve seen Joel Wade’s notice at the bottom of his Virtue of Happiness columns on his life coaching service.  Joel has been one of my dearest friends for a quarter-century, but, as we talk frequently, it frankly never occurred to me to avail myself of his professional skills.

When I noticed that there were things that were bugging me and holding me back from being as productive as I wanted, I knew I couldn’t ask Joel for a freebie.  So I paid full freight, and he’s been coaching me on my goals for a while now.

I have to tell you the effect is dramatic.  I haven’t a clue as to how Joel does it.  He has this magic way of getting you to talk completely at ease about what he thinks is important, of guiding you towards better directions, and somehow, without even really trying, I’ve become much more productive.

Joel has no idea that I’m writing this – but I felt that you should know.  These are increasingly tough times for lots of us.  Becoming more resourceful and productive is crucially important right now.  What Joel has to offer is uniquely valuable.  It’s not an expense – I look at it as an investment on which I’m getting an immediate ROI.

As an example of just how tough things are getting, I suggest you look carefully at The New Jobless Era in this month’s Atlantic.

The "new era of joblessness" is being foisted upon America by Zero and the Democrat Fascist party on purpose, by design.  They are deaf to calls that they focus on "jobs!" instead of deathcare reform, carbon taxes, preventing oil and gas drilling, illegal amnesty, anything and everything but increasing employment because they don’t want more jobs, they want more people dependent on and working for government.

We can start putting an end to this in November – but that’s a ways away, and it will still take time to turn the aircraft carrier of the economy around.  So figuring out however you can be more resourceful and productive right now is really something to consider.

Enjoy the official advent of Spring this weekend.  And don’t forget – plan to see me in sunny San Diego in May.