HALF-FULL REPORT 04/16/10

Remember the Republicans’ Contract With America they promised to implement should they win control of Congress in 1994?  A lot of it was penny-ante inside baseball, like promising to ban committee proxy votes. 

At Tea Parties all over America yesterday (4/15), a new Contract was unveiled – a Contract From America – that tells folks in Congress what to do if they expect to be elected in November.  It is sunlight-to-moonlight better than that wimpy thing of Gingrich’s 16 years ago.

It demands politicians, to get the Patriotic American vote, pledge to scrap the entire IRS tax code and replace it with one no longer than 4,543 words – the length of the Constitution – scrap Cap & Trade, scrap all earmarks… and my favorite, defund Obamacare.

Yes, the Defund Strategy, first propounded right here in TTP, then moved forward by TTPer Mitch Rapp with the Defund & Disobey website, has now been adopted by the entire Tea Party movement.  Congratulations, Mitch!  Congratulations to all TTPers who helped bring this about.

Every day the Dems are digging themselves deeper into a grave where they will be interred this November by a Tea Party electorate.  If only the Pubs figure out that will be the fate of RINOs as well.

***
This week was a quite appropriate time for Jack Kelly to tell us about Ishmael Jones and why The CIA Should No Longer Exist.  A perfect example of why is the fawning media coverage of a treasonous CIA official who just resigned, Stephen Kappes.

Take a look at this treacle by Fox News – Fox! – describing Kappes as a "legend" and bemoans his loss to the Agency. 

TTP veterans may recall my explaining back in 2004 how the CIA is a left-wing, not a right-wing outfit, dominated by incompetent hyper-liberals for years.  The good guys in the Agency called them the "Rogue Weasels."  President Bush replaced CIA director George Tenet with Porter Goss to root out the weasels.

As revealed in The Weasels Have Won from June 2006:

One of the chief weasels Porter was able to dump was Deputy Director of  Operations Stephen Kappes, who had been a principal conduit of classified information leaked to Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Walter Pincus.  

How the weasels struck back and got their revenge on Porter was explained in Porter and Casey last month.

Now this week, we have final confirmation of the weasels’ triumph.  Walter "Kneepads" Pincus authored the most incredibly fawning puff-piece on Monday (June 19) in the Washington Post, headlined Kappes Is Expected To Boost CIA Morale.

Pincus calls him "a famed operative," "a legendary CIA clandestine operative."  Kappes became "legendary" among his fellow weasels for stabbing Porter Goss, his boss, in the back, and "famed" at the WaPo for treasonously leaking classified documents to the press.

Kappes belongs in jail – but instead he is now Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  The weasels have won.

At least Kappes is out of the CIA, hopefully for good this time.  Now we can see from this that Fox wears kneepads for CIA lefties just as much as the WaPo.  Fox cannot be trusted.

***
Ralph Peters gives us a sobering summary of the dangers of Putin and President Putty this week – but I disagree with his claim that there is not "a single potential president in either of our political parties who’d be a match" for Pootie-Poot.  I think Rudy Giuliani would slice him up.  I think Sarah Palin would as well.

Given Russia’s gross vulnerabilities, wiping the floor with Putin would be easy for either of them.  Russia has no conventional military – it was all it could do to conquer one part of tiny Georgia in 2008.  The soldiers are drunks and the officers brutes.  Russia has no economy save for oil, and production is falling off a cliff.  Russia has no rule of law, so foreign investment is down 41% from a year ago.  

If Russia is no military or economic or financial threat, just what sort of weight does it have to push around?  Putin would be a pushover for Palin, or Giuiliani, or a Col. Allen West.  I have to admit, though – I can’t think of anyone else anymore than Ralph.  Can you picture Mitt Romney taking down Putin?  You can’t even try without laughing.

***
All that said about Putin, I have to say it’s highly doubtful he did a hit job with the crash of the Polish leadership plane in Smolensk.  However unpalatable to conspiracy theorists, the facts are these:
 

• Poland has a parliamentary, not a presidential system.  Real power lies in the office of the prime minister, currently held by Donald Tusk.  The office of the president is more ceremonial.
• Lech Kaczynski was an increasingly unpopular president.  Virtually all polls showed him losing badly for re-election this October. 
• Just three days before last Saturday’s crash (4/10) – on Wednesday April 7 – Putin flew to Smolensk to meet with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and hold a ceremony where they jointly laid the cornerstone of a church and memorial to the 22,000 Polish officers slaughtered by Stalin’s secret police in the Katyn Massacre.
• Thus the ceremony Kaczynski wanted had already been held.  Incensed that his arch-rival Tusk (who had defeated his twin brother for the prime ministership) had upstaged him, Kaczynski insisted on holding his own ceremony and took many of the Polish elite (particularly that of the military) with him.
• Attempting to land at the fog-shrouded airport – the same airport Putin and Tusk landed at three days before – in Smolensk and told by the flight controllers not to land but to fly to another airport instead, Kaczynski’s famous bad temper rose as he suspected a Russian ruse to spoil his ceremony.  He ordered the pilot to land anyway, and tragedy resulted.

Putin is a murderer, but a very cautious and selective one.  There is no payoff in knocking off a guy who was no threat, had no clout, and was soon to be politically washed up.  All risk, no gain.  This was a tragedy, not a conspiracy.

***
From tragedy in Europe we move to farce.  We can shed tears of sympathy and sadness for the people of Poland – and tears of laughter for the people of Greece.  This is getting really funny.

Major Euroweenies like Joschka Fischer are hyperventilating over Angela Merkel’s balking at bailing out Greece, calling her a combo of Otto von Bismarck and Margaret Thatcher – an ultimate insult for a Euroweenie.

Sarko – French president Sarkozy – is in a state of apoplectic rage over "that German woman" and her refusal to have German taxpayers bail out French banks who are $80 billion in the hole with their Greek bonds.  Tweaking Sarko further, Merkel wants the IMF to loan money to Greece – as she winks at IMF chief Dominique Strauss Kahn, who has his eye on Sarko’s job. 

She is well aware that any Eurozone taxpayer bailout of Greece violates Articles 123/4/5 of the Lisbon Treaty signed last year (now known as TFEU, Treaty for the Functioning of the European Union) – and would be thrown out by Germany’s Constitutional Court (the Verfassungsgericht).

Greece is screwed, there’s no way out.  You can’t get out of debt by getting in more debt, lots, lots more.  It’s Default City for Greece and the euro.  Don’t laugh too hard, though.  We’re next.

***
Let’s end the week with an inspiring story about one of your fellow TTPers.  Gary Cagle runs the medical logistics for an outfit called Team Rubicon.  After the Haiti earthquake last January, he helped put together a group of medical and military guys who all by themselves, with no government permission or assistance, got out into the field with deployed medical teams – and have come up with a totally different dynamic in disaster response.

In little more than 60 days, they raised $500K in private donations to help folks in Haiti, Chile, and now Qinghai Province, China.  Gary wanted me and his fellow TTPers to know what Americans can do – what they are doing – for the good of others, without big government involvement, funding, or approval.

I encourage you to consider participating in Team Rubicon in any way that you are able.  Take a look at the members of "TR."  These guys are great Americans.  We should be proud of and grateful for them.  Thanks, Gary.

***
One last note.  The San Diego Rendezvous is just four weeks away.  We have such a fabulous schedule with such fabulous speakers.  Your mind will be expanded, overflowing with new knowledge and understanding of the world.  Your spirit will be refreshed and recharged with the energy to sustain you through all the months until November.  Call Miko now – 703-992-4529 – to tell him you’ll be there.

Don’t be wailing and gnashing your teeth on May 17 when you learn what you missed.  Be in San Diego with us May 14-16.  I’m counting on you.