HALF-FULL REPORT 01/02/15

A brand new year.  Is it time for predictions?  OK, here’s one you can count on.  There will be a whiteness of Black Swans.

Yes, a "whiteness" is the collective noun for swans, even when they are black (the subspecies Cygnus atratus in Australia).  These days, a capitalized "Black Swan" refers not to a bird but an event – something that comes sailing into history right out of the blue and bites us right in the tuches.

Depending on whose tuches is being bit, they can be both positive and negative.  The crash in oil prices ($112 last June, $57 today) is wonderful news for most everyone but a disaster for Russia and other schmucks of the world like Venezuela, Iran, and environmentalists.

The worst, most negative Black Swan in modern American history continues in 2015 – the Zero Presidency.  Interestingly, the Curse of Zero will test my next prediction:  that whatever and how many Black Swans bite the world this year, America will sustain them – even triumph over them – better than anywhere else.

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Now why would that be?  The guy who came up with the "Black Swan" metaphor, statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, calls economies/societies that can best tolerate them "robust" – but best of all are those that can thrive on Black Swans.  These he calls Antifragile:  Things That Gain From Disorder.

Taleb is very clever, but what he’s really done is repackage what Ludwig von Mises taught many decades ago.  "Antifragile" is simply a fancy new term for "capitalist" – real entrepreneurial capitalism, the closer to laissez faire the better, the antithesis of crony-phony ersatz-capitalism.

The latter is a desperate attempt for maintenance of the status quo, to stave off the creative destruction of innovation and competition via government-enforced protection and subsidies.

Then a Black Swan flies out of the wild blue yonder like fracking – so fast that the anti-capitalist bureaucrats, enviros, commie activists, and status quo corporate suits are caught so flat-footed they can’t stop it.  By the time they figured out scaremongering myths to stop it – "Fracking causes earthquakes too small to feel! Fracking poisons our drinking water thousands of feet below the water table!" – too late, suckers.

Except of course in such bastions of corrupt anti-capitalism like Andrew Cuomo’s New York State.

But by the time the invented-in-America technology reached EuroweenieLand, it wasn’t too late.  Fracking has been banned and demonized all over Europe.  Another glaring example among so many of how Europe is not "antifragile," i.e., is anticapitalist.

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On Tuesday (12/30), Stratfor’s George Friedman listed his "Top Five Events for 2014."  Numero Uno is "Europe’s Persistent Decline" – yet he doesn’t identify the fundamental cause – Europe’s retreat from freedom, from the explosion of unleashed capitalist innovation and entrepreneurialism that powered its revival after WWII.

Whatever Black Swans occur in 2015, the EU and particularly its Eurozone will be ill-positioned to respond positively, driving it more deeply into stagnation instead.

Any chance for such an unleashing in Russia after the end of the Cold War was strangled in its crib.  The gangsterification of its economy has resulted in its being the world’s poster child for crony ersatz-capitalist fragility.  This may well result in the Putin Huilo and his Siloviki KGB Elite to desperately create their own Black Swans.

In retrospect, that’s what they already did last year in Crimea and eastern Ukraine – which resulted in them living in Backfire City losing billions of their own money and their entire economy down the tubes.

Beings thugs, odds are they will not learn their lesson but double down, creating Black Swan chaos somewhere – e.g., seizing ethnic-Russian Narva in Estonia or getting their Iranian proxies to attack Saudi Arabia.

China Ends 2014 on a Sour Note ran the Business Insider headline on New Year’s Eve.  FoxNews predicted: 2015: A Tough Economic Road for China.  The crony capitalist glut of state-owned enterprises and its rulers’ fixation on keeping their monopoly of power at any cost is making Chicom China more fragile by the day.

China is not dying like Russia, and is far less likely to lash out with Black Swans of its own creation.  The question of 2015 for China is how well or poorly it will handle the Black Swans that come its way.

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With all this prelude, the question I assume that’s bugging you now is:  What Black Swans are coming our way and how might we handle them?

Well, the whole point of a Black Swan is that it’s an unpredictable surprise, right?  We’d be dumfounded, for example, if the Boehner Congress had a spinal transplant and started standing up to Zero.  How about, then, this AP headline from yesterday (01/01): GOP Legislators Thwart Bids to Expand Medicaid.

Just like Boehner, many Pub governors are only too anxious to accept federalie bribes, but there may be enough state legislators to stop them.  This statehouse drama will be played out across the board on Capitol Hill throughout the year.

Pollster Pat Caddell’s just-released poll shows that 60% of Pub voters don’t want Boehner as Speaker.  He’ll be voted in when Congress convenes on Tuesday (01/06), but he knows how thin the ice is he’s skating on.  The first big test for him is at the end of next month (2/27), when funding for DHS – the agency implementing Zero’s Amnesty – expires.

Zero cannot threaten to shut the government down, for it got funded through the Crapnibus bill last month.  The GOP Congress can easily fund a DHS bill prohibiting any money whatever spent on amnestying illegals – and if Zero vetoes it, well, no money at all for DHS, too bad.

Two weeks later (3/15), the debt ceiling limit expires.  Congress must vote for the federalies to keep borrowing – or not, and let them twist screaming in the wind.  This drama will be fun to watch.

For much of the year (February through September), we’ll be treated to a never-ending duke-out over the FY2016 federal budget.  If the thing is not passed by 09/30, it’s Shutdown.  This is when to defund the EPA, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and so much else.

It’s going to be an entertaining year.  Sit back and enjoy it.  And watch out for those Cygnus atrati swooping low overhead.

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Much of what happens on Capitol Hill this year will be in the context of a titanic struggle within the GOP between the Rino Elite and TeaPartyers over the 2016 presidential nomination. 

It will be between over-the-hill has-beens like Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, or failures like Chris Christie (comparing the performance of Jersey’s economy to Rick Perry’s Texas is a joke) – and 10^th Amendment governors and senatorial powerhouses like Scott Walker, Rick Perry, and Ted Cruz.

It’s a struggle between power & perks, and principles & patriotism.  It’s going to be vicious.  Our side has got to go for the other side’s jugular – or huevos – for the other side is determined to slit or kick ours’.  Remember, there are no rules in a street fight.  All that matters is who wins.  That’s the way the other side plays it – Rinos and Dems.  So must we in 2015.

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Let’s hope this is a harbinger of good news:  Abortion Clinics Nationwide at Record Low.

And this:  25 States Continue Their Battle Against Obama’s Immigration Executive Actions.

Then there’s King v. Burwell, a Supreme Court decision on which could destroy Obamacare.

Yet the federal fascist krytocracy continues unabated:  Federal Judge Forces Florida 36^th State to Make Homosexual "Marriage" Legal.  In almost every state, voters voted to make it illegal and federalie judges made up some unconstitutional rationale to ignore them.  It is far past time for a 10^th Amendment rebellion against krytocratic fascism.  

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It’s also time to introduce a new feature in the HFR.  Most every week, I’ll try to include a useful tip on health & fitness.  None of us are getting progressively younger, but we can all do any number of things to slow our progress down in the opposite direction.  Here’s the HFR’s first entry.

Have you ever heard of a cardio protocol called HIIT: High Intensity Interval Training?  Originally developed by Izumi Tabata in Japan, it involves all-out bursts or sprints as fast as you can for 20 or 30 seconds, followed by a slow-down of between 30 seconds to a minute or two, then repeat 4 to 5 times.

Tabata’s research, confirmed all over the world by other trainers, shows this to be far more effective than jogging endlessly.  The thing is, you need a road or trail or track to do this – outside where it’s raining or freezing or stifling, or an indoor stadium somewhere.

There’s a way to do HIIT sessions of a few minutes each right in your home before or after work, or even in a small sectioned-off office corner at work.  That’s with a mini-trampoline.  They’re cheap and you can get them anywhere:  Walmart sells one for 27 bucks.  Amazon will ship a slightly bigger one to you for $41.

You jog slowly for 2-3 minutes, go all-out, really high-stepping it as fast as you can for 20 seconds or so, get your breath near normal by slow jogging for another minute or so, repeat 3-4 times.  The whole session will take less than ten minutes.  Do this every other day and you’ll be amazed how your fitness will improve.  It sure has mine.

Another benefit is that it really helps improve your balance.  Let me know how this Mini-Trampoline HIIT works for you.

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We’re going to close with… Perspective Time.

One of the most widely read libtard sites by "progressives" – TTP calls them regressives – is Salon.  Conservatives are fond of denouncing yellow-bellied sell-out Rino Republicans – but that’s nothing compared to the raging angst and fury felt by those on the other side – hard core Lefties – for the Democrat Party and its leadership.

So here for your edificatory enjoyment is an end-of-the-year screed in Salon by an aide to Bill Clinton calling for Progressives to Abandon the Democrat Party.

Take heart in knowing that however gloomy you may feel over Republicans, libtards are far gloomier over Democrats.  "Nancy Pelosi says it wasn’t a wave election. She’s right. It was the Johnstown Flood," Salon bemoans, a catastrophe "swept by the most extreme major party in American history."

Yes, libtards view the Party of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell – they’re not talking about TeaPartyers here – as "the most extreme major party in American history."

Can we have fun with this or what?  If Boehner freaks them out, just imagine how Ted Cruz could have the poor little darlings end up with vapors on the fainting couch?

Consider though, that Boehner – Boehner!! – scares and depresses them.  That’s how far out they are, that’s what losers they are, that’s how much they should be easy pickings. 

Bottom line:  I think 2015 is going to be a good year for America, Zero’s fascism notwithstanding, Black Swans and all.  Or maybe because of Black Swans, which we can handle like no other people on earth.

Happy New Year to all TTPers!  Happy New Year to America!

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