HALF-FULL REPORT 12/10/10

Hard to believe Christmas Eve is two short weeks away.  For those folks not yet checked off on your Christmas gift list, the HFR suggests a copy of The Jade Steps. 

Or a Gift Subscription to To The Point.  You can gift a friend with a one-month, a three-month – or for a special friend an entire year – of the insights on the world that only TTP provides.  The HFR can’t think of better gifts than these, that will be more valued and appreciated by your friends. 

(I should add here that Dr. Joel Wade’s Pocket Guide to Mastering Happiness makes a great low-cost stocking stuffer…)

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Before we look at the dog’s breakfast in Washington this week, let’s have some fun at the Chicoms’ expense.  Ever heard of the Confucius Peace Prize?  Neither did its recipient, who didn’t bother to show up at the awards ceremony.

Today (12/10) in Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee presented the gold medal of the Peace Prize to an empty chair – whereupon dignitaries and official representatives of dozens of countries across the globe gave the empty chair a standing ovation.

For the first time since 1936, a Nobel Peace Laureate was not allowed by his country to attend, nor was any relative.  Liu Xiaobo, founder of the human rights movement Charter 08, is in prison and prevented from attending by his country, Communist China.

How fitting that the country that didn’t allow its jailed recipient (peace activist Carl von Ossietzky) in 1936 was Nazi Germany.  The Nazis denounced the award with righteous fury and its recipient as a "criminal" – just as the Chicoms have done now.

Hitler proceeded to proclaim a Nazi Peace Prize which the world ignored.  Taking his lead, the Chicoms announced an alternative award to compete with the Nobel called the Confucius Peace Prize, with the first award ceremony in Beijing yesterday.  The recipient was a former vice-president of Taiwan named Lien Chan.  He turned it down, didn’t show up, and the ceremony was "an obscure farce," as one news story described it.

So the Chicoms ended up this week being laughed at and compared to the Nazis at the same time.  The world needs more of this.
 

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There was another heroic Nobel Laureate this year.  Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and on Tuesday (12/07) in Stockholm (the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Peace Prize, the Swedish Committee awards all the others) he gave one of the most pro-freedom speeches in Nobel history.

After praising Latin America for its overall progress towards political freedom, he nonetheless pointed out that:

"We are afflicted with fewer dictatorships than before, only Cuba and her named successor, Venezuela, and some pseudo populist, clownish democracies like those in Bolivia and Nicaragua."

Then he delivered his clarion call for freedom (and note the naming of Liu Xiaobo):

"Dictatorships must be fought without hesitation, with all the means at our disposal, including economic sanctions.

"It is regrettable that democratic governments, instead of setting an example by making common cause with those, like the Damas de Blanco in Cuba, the Venezuelan opposition, or Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu Xiaobo, who courageously confront the dictatorships they endure, often show themselves complaisant not with them but with their tormenters.

"Those valiant people, struggling for their freedom, are also struggling for ours."

The world needs more Vargas Llosas.

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What the US Senate needs is more Jim DeMints.

It was DeMint who got Mitch McConnell to persuade all 42 Pub Senators to block (by not voting for cloture which requires 60 votes – the Dems have only 58) passage of any legislation until the Bush tax rates are extended (they expire Dec. 31) and a budget to fund the federal government next year is passed.

It was a masterstroke, for now everything from DREAM illegal amnesty to DADT military homosexualization is on hold. 

In response, Zero comes up with his "compromise" to extend the rates even for "the rich" at the price of larding on the most revolting array of bribes, payoffs, subsidies, and pork:  $56 billion in extended unemployment "benefits," extending ethanol subsidies and tariffs, vast billions for "renewable energy" scams, on and on billions more – all in exchange for extending the current tax rates for another measly two years instead of making them permanent.

And McConnell caves!  He says "most Senate Republicans will support it" – this is the GOP Senate leader.  But DeMint is not buying it.  He wants this garbage tax-cut deal tossed in the garbage pail.  (Incidentally, it’s typical Dem agit-prop to call this thing a "tax cut."  Nobody’s taxes are being reduced.  The whole controversy – tax cuts for billionaires! – is fraudulent, as this is to keep the current tax rates where they are and not raised.)

"This (Obama "compromise" deal) should be rejected and then fixed," says DeMint. "We can easily extend these tax rates without increasing spending once the new crop of Republican senators, including Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Ron Johnson are sworn in."

DeMint is not only morally principled, he’s politically brilliant.  You’ve seen all these stories predicting stock market collapse and economic disaster unless the Bush tax rates are extended?  They’re true – for without the extension, on January 1^st, all Americans will get hit with the largest set of tax increases in US history.

DeMint thinks this is great – bring it on.  The Dems fail to get the rates extended, the economy tanks, the Dems get the blame, the Pubs take over Congress in January, immediately pass the tax rate extension and make it retroactive (which Zero will not veto), the markets skyrocket in response, and the Pubs bask in glory.  Thanks to Jim.

Let’s review the bidding here.  The Dems want to use the Lame Schmuck session to pass their Hate America agenda.  The Dems know this is their last hurrah, for once the 112^th is in session, their agenda is toast.  There are enough RINOs and GOP cowards to let it pass. 

Then Sir DeMint rides to the rescue, conning McConnell into blocking the whole agenda.  As a result, DADT Repeal fails (with any luck finally), and the same with DREAM illegal amnesty.

Then he throws a monkey wrench into Zero’s attempt to unblock the agenda – and shifts all the blame on the Dems by getting a Dem Senator, Bernie Sanders, ticked off enough to filibuster it.

Now we have this rage-filled, envy-fueled debate among the Dems who are promising to scuttle Zero’s dog-breakfast compromise.   Which, very importantly, is soaking up time.  Christmas Eve is two weeks away.  There is just no way Pelosi and Reid can keep the Lame Schmucks in session for much more than another week.  Then it’s over.

Once it’s over, it’s Yogi Berra Over for the Dems.  After New Year’s, the GOP Cavalry arrives, saves the day, and gets a ticker tape parade. 

And that’s why, folks, Jim DeMint is the HFR Hero of the Week.

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The HFR must also award an Honorable Mention for this week’s hero to Bob Samuelson, WaPo’s (yes, WaPo) resident economist-columnist.  This Monday (12/06), he wrote words of revelatory wisdom that should be memorized by everyone from 1^st grade on up.  From Europe to America, he says:

"Modern democracies have created a new morality. Government benefits, once conferred, cannot be revoked. People expect them and consider them property rights. Just as government cannot randomly confiscate property, it cannot withdraw benefits without violating a moral code. The old-fashioned idea that government policies should serve the ‘national interest’ has given way to inertia and squatters’ rights."

Samuelson is no Tea Partying conservative.  But he is a smart and rational guy.  He wants to replace the "self-serving expedient morality of perpetual programs" with something better and genuinely patriotic.  Tea Partyers should help him provide it.

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Now for the Anti-Hero of the Week.  It’s painful to do this.  If you’ve read Atlas Shrugged, you know how much Ayn Rand idolized self-made industrialists of capitalism as her ultimate heroes.  Thus a British industrialist who started with nothing and founded over 400 successful companies, including Virgin Records, Virgin Airways, to become a billionaire, knighted by the Queen, and a mega-celebrity, would certainly qualify.

But no.  Richard Branson is instead proof that that acceptance of politically correct liberalism causes brain damage, and that Ayn Rand’s John Galt fantasy of capitalist heroes being crypto-Objectivists was divorced from reality.

Branson spoke at the UN summit on "climate change" at Cancun this week as the tropical resort was suffering the coldest weather in 100 years.  That didn’t stop him from making idiotically apocalyptic predictions if we don’t abandon real energy to heat our homes and drive our cars, and opt for "carbon-free" and "clean" renewable energy instead.

It’s not hyperbolic.  Branson is proof that PC Liberalism really does cause actual brain damage.  Sorry, Ayn.

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Let’s highlight Sir Richard’s cerebral hypoxia with this revelation that America will soon be not  only energy independent, but be a major supplier of cheap energy in the form of clean natural gas to the world.

Thanks to gigantic discoveries of shale gas and the technology to exploit them, the US has now surpassed Russia to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas.  It’s being called the Great Energy Reversal.

Here’s just one of the enormous implications.  CNOOC, the Chicom oilco, is paying big bucks to participate in Chesapeake Energy’s gas play in Texas.  It’s dawned on the Chicoms that the US will soon be the world’s biggest natural gas exporter – and they will be the world’s biggest importer.  So they want a part of the action.

Think about this.  The Saudis have had us over a barrel of their oil for decades, because we are dependent on their energy. Suddenly, it’s not just that our dependence on the Saudis stops, and we can screw Wahhabism with impunity. What happens when China is dependent on our energy? 

Yes, China has big shale gas and coal gas reserves – but ours dwarf theirs.  We will be China’s Saudi Arabia.  Better be nice, Chinese boys and girls.  The Great Energy Reversal is aptly named.

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Thus the 112^th "Drill, baby, drill" Congress is arriving just in time to prevent Dems and their eco-fascist buddies from demonizing the technology that’s making this all possible.  It’s called "fracking," and Citizen K and Skye on the Forum will explain how scientifically ludicrous the Luddite Left’s arguments are against it.

And speaking of the 112^th, here’s the Headline of the Week in the Let’s Hope So Department: Secret GOP plan: Push States to Declare Bankruptcy and Smash Public Unions.

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Talking about the Saudis above.  There was another delicious WikiLeaks disclosure this week that brought back a memory.  The first time I ever spoke to a conservative gathering – my political debut – was to the CPAC convention in Washington in 1983.  No one had the slightest idea who I was, and I was introduced as some adventurer who took elephants over the Alps and sky-dived onto the North Pole.

I proceeded to tell everyone how to get rid of the Soviet Union with all kinds of nefarious tricks.  One of them was smuggling Playboy Magazines into Russia.  (Reagan’s people actually did this later to great effect.)  I got a standing ovation.  Nobody had ever told conservatives how we could go on the offensive and shaft the Russkies up the wazoo.

So we learn this week via WikiLeaks that "Satellite broadcasts of the US TV shows Desperate Housewives and Late Show With David Letterman are doing more to persuade Saudi youth to reject violent jihad than hundreds of millions of dollars of US government propaganda."

The deranged campaign against Julian Assange reached its latest peak this week with his arrest in London based on an obvious-to-everyone trumped up "rape" charge by a Swedish feminazi misandrist, Anna Ardin, and her co-conspirator, Sophia Wilen.

Assange is no Commie Hate-America Marxist, but more of a anarchistic anti-government – any government – guy, an "anarcho-libertarian."  Well, so is Doug Casey, well known to many TTPers. 

I haven’t talked to Doug about this, but I can only imagine he is enjoying the WikiLeaks as much as I am – although I am no anarcho-libertarian.  I’m also enjoying them for lacking any Moonbat dogs barking as pointed out by El Rushbo:

"Where are the WikiLeaks documents to prove 9/11 was an inside job by George Bush and Dick Cheney? Let me ask you liberals, where are these cables? . . .  Produce all this stuff that you kooks believe.  Where are the documents to prove Bush intentionally lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to invade the country . . .  Where’s all this good stuff?"

Good for Rush.  There is a complete absence of any confirmation or evidence for Moonbat conspiracy theories regarding GW or conservatives.  What’s not to enjoy?
 
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We close with a special treat – a politician whose eloquence match his principles and courage.  He is Nigel Farage of Britain, who founded the United Kingdom Independence Party after leaving the Conservative Party in 1992 when it betrayed Margaret Thatcher.

He is today a Member of the European Parliament representing Southeast England.  His is the voice of freedom against the suffocating oppression of the European Union bureaucracy that unelectedly rules Europe today. 

Watch him as he eviscerates that bureaucracy and its leaders such as Herman Van Rompuy at a EU Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, telling them, "The Euro game is up," and asking them point blank, "Who the hell do you think you are?"

America needs guys like this.  We should put Nigel Farage and Jim DeMint together.