HALF-FULL REPORT 06/17/11

This is the cover of this week’s European issue of The Economist magazine:

If the British newsmagazine had the intellectual courage of long ago, the North American edition would of course had the same cover title, but instead of a smiling photo of Berlusconi, it would have been one of Zero.

Far more than his counterpart in Italy, Zero is indeed The Man Who Screwed An Entire Country – our country, America.  We will be years repairing the damage he has done.

In truth, that damage had been accumulating for decades before the last two years accelerated it into hyperdrive.  The monstrosity of the morass of government regulation, most all of which is unconstitutional, has become so massive that the barriers to starting and running a business today are paralyzing.

Which is one main reason why a group of TTPers and I are in Bulgaria right now – where the opportunities are vast, the taxes are low (10% personal, 10% corporate), and regulation reasonable, so that you can focus on your business and not the ridiculous demands of an army of bureaucrats.

The Economist cover is crying out to be photoshopped with a smiling Zero.  Any TTPer care to?

UPDATE:  TTPer Steve Teskey did it — thanks, Steve!

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The world is riddled with leaders who have royally screwed their countries – Putin, Gaddafi, Assad, Mugabe, Chavez, the list could go on and on.  Most all of them are dictators who seized power either by guns or electoral fraud. 

Only ever so often do a people freely elect a leader determined to screw them in an act of masochistic perversity – such as Americans did in 2008.  Last week Peruvians decided to follow in their footsteps, electing a Marxist acolyte of Hugo Chavez as their president.

Ollanta Humala came close to winning back in 2006.  The consequences to Peru and her neighbors of Chile and Colombia, should he have won back then, were explained in The Amazon Trapeze (January 2006).

The article is worth reading now, for it explains Peru’s future today.  The country’s economy will fall off a cliff, and Humala will provide a jingoistic distraction with military provocations upon his neighbors – such as teaming up with Evo Morales in Bolivia against Chile.

Peruvians have done something truly stupid, and now they must pay for it.  Just like Americans are doing now.

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One neighbor Peru will leave strictly alone is Brazil, the 800-pound gorilla of South America.  It’s economy was on fire during the Lula years (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president 2003-2010), but no longer.

Lula conned Brazilians into electing as his successor his chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff — who was once a leader of a Marxist urban guerrilla group that conducted bank robberies, kidnappings, and murders.

Dilma’s father, Petar, was born here in Bulgaria, and was chased out of the country in the 1930s for being an agent of  Stalin’s Soviet Union.  He fled to Brazil, where he raised his daughter as a hard core Communist.

Now (since January) she’s running the country, she’s a thimbleful of the politician Lula is, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, inflation is kicking in, interest rates are over 12%, and the economy is starting to falter.  It won’t be long before Brazilians will start wondering if they made the same dumb mistake as Peru.

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Just as TTP warned you about Peru’s Ollanta Humala years ago, for just as long has it been warning you about the danger of Chicom imperialism in the South China Sea.  Thus The Indo-China Con from June 2005, and The Trap of Lizzie Webber from March 2009, are the articles to read to give you the context of the duke-out going on there right now between China and Vietnam.

For the last couple of months, the Chinese have been deliberately bullying and provoking Vietnam in the South China Sea.  As Lizzie Webber above explains, the dispute is over the Spratlys.  No matter how much oil wealth may lie under these islets and reefs, China cannot be allowed to claim them and the entire South China Sea as its own.

Which is why the Philippine Navy announced yesterday (6/16) it has been removing Chinese buoys and markers from several of the Spartlys, Singapore is criticizing China’s actions as "aggressive," and a US Senate Resolution introduced Tuesday (6/14) condemns China’s use of force.

President George Bush authorized a number of talks with the Vietnamese regarding the US Navy returning to Cam Ranh Bay, the finest deepwater shelter in Southeast Asia and directly athwart the South China Sea.  They weren’t brought to fruition, but word is, Hanoi is desperate for America to come back now. 

Zero will most likely wimp out, but Panetta, once he’s in as SecDef, may insist.  The irony of our being back in ‘Nam will not be lost on veterans of a certain age.

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This sure has been a fun week for news in the US.  Most fun, of course, was The Little Weiner resigning yesterday (6/16).  What a putz.

Then there was the Palin email frenzy, with the enemedia drooling over finding juicy disclosures they were sure would destroy her once and for all.  As Jack Kelly explains today, her emails enhance her while enemedia frenzy flamed out. 

The thousands of emails during her Alaska governorship show her to be smart, serious, and seriously competent.  On July 15^th, the extraordinary documentary on her life, The Undefeated, will open in AMC theatres nationwide.  Combined, the email triumph and the movie really seals the deal. 

Every single sign is pointing to her officially announcing her presidential run this summer – although, playing by her own rules, she may wait until after Labor Day.

In Political Energy this week (6/15), I speculated that if Rick Perry declares, she might not.  I’m taking that back.  Michele Bachmann is not slowing her down and neither will Perry.  Palin likes and has a high regard for both of them.  She’ll run a respectful campaign towards them.  But she is The Mama Grizzly.  Once again:  Palin-Rubio 2012!

(A note here re: Allen West, whom many TTPers are rooting for VP.  He’s fantastic, but brings little to the ticket as blacks will still vote for Zero.  Rubio delivers Florida for sure, plus mucho millions of Hispanic votes a Pub would otherwise not get.  Remember, there are twice as many Hispanics as Blacks now.  So – West for SecDef!  We need him running the Pentagon.)

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More outstanding news this week:  on Tuesday (6/14), the Wisconsin Supreme Court by a 4-3 vote, reinstated the state’s new law banning collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers.  PTL for Justice Prosser winning his re-election! 

This is a big deal.  It greenlights a lot of states to pass similar laws.  Public worker unions and collective bargaining with them is one of the great ripoff scams in US history.  Eliminating them is a necessary condition for a return to fiscal sanity and solvency.  Finally, we’re on that elimination path.

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Political Energy above discussed the revolutionary consequences of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" technology.  Looks like it’s coming just in time.  We may be headed for another Little Ice Age, folks, and we’re going to need all the energy we can get our hands on to keep us warm.

The depth of the Little Ice Age (1400-1900) saw a series of cessations of the sun’s sunspot activity, during which the Thames River in London and the Po River in Italy froze solid.  This week (6/14), the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society reported evidence that another period of sunspot cessation is beginning.

As discussed in Solar Warming from September 2005, there is a causal connection between sunspot activity and global temperatures.  The more activity, the warmer the earth; the less activity, the cooler.  CO2 is a trace gas and has nothing to do with global warming or cooling.  Anyone who believes in "man-made global warming" via human CO2 emissions is either stupid, a crook, or a fascist (possibly all three).  Bring on the fracking!

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We end with the best and most refreshing news of the week.  Here’s yesterday’s (6/16) astounding headline:  Senate Votes to End Ethanol Subsidies. Further, it passed by a veto-proof majority of 73-27 which was fully bipartisan (33 Pubs, 40 Dems).

Yesterday was a banner day for dooming the ethanol scam, because the House voted 283-128 to defund any spending on the special blender pumps and tanks necessary for EPA-mandated higher concentrations of ethanol.  The ethanol lobby had been depending on the pump/tank subsidy to replace the tax credits and tariffs eliminated by the Senate vote.

As Political Energy described, we cannot hope to have any return to fiscal sanity or end the "energy crisis" scam of the government until the ethanol ripoff is killed dead. The ethanolistas took a couple of major hits yesterday.  A few more will prove mortal.

It’s been a fun and good week!