HALF-FULL REPORT 03/24/17

“RINOcare.”  Aka Ryancare/Obamacare 2.0.  This entire debacle is ridiculous.  My question asked of many on Capitol Hill is:  Why is Trump being rolled on this?

The consensus answer is that McConnell and Ryan have conned him into believing that a full repeal cannot get past a Dem filibuster, that only a partial repeal can under “Senate rules” requiring it to qualify as a “reconciliation” bill needing only a simple majority.

Got that?  The key word in that sentence is “conned,” because it’s all nonsense.  A simple majority vote is all it takes to eliminate the filibuster.  There is nothing in the Constitution nor any law requiring 6o votes to pass a bill instead of 51 – it’s a tradition, nothing more.

Which is why Chuck U. Schumer is the Perverse Hero of the Week right now.  (For the real HOTW, see below at the end – but no fair peeking, dessert comes after the main course…)

Yesterday (3/23) on the Senate floor, Chuck U. announced he and his fellow Dems would filibuster Gorsuch.  This is cause for celebration, not hand-wringing.  The last thing on earth Senate Pubs should do now is to try and pry enough Dems off the filibuster, who will be coy and demand legislative bribes to do so.

Instead, they should see what Chuck the Schmuck has done is a heaven-sent opportunity to get rid of the obstacle preventing not just a SCOTUS confirmation, not just Full Repeal of Obamacare, but all of Trump’s agenda demanded by the electorate.

Which is why Trump should be tweeting “Hallelujah!” over Schumer.  He’s got to realize that everything he wants from Congress will be blocked and held hostage to a Dem filibuster until it is eliminated.   Will he?

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This week revealed that Trump has made two massive blunders at the inception of his presidency.  The first is not firing FBI Director Comey – “a jerk for all seasons,” as Wes Pruden so indelibly describes him.

As Breitbart reported on Monday (3/20), “The Fix Is In,” with Comey using a Democrat company’s lies to smear Trump.  Sessions, who is Comey’s boss (recall that the FBI is simply the investigative arm of the Justice Dept.), should demand the resignation of this 6’8” Tower of Inflated Ego forthwith.

The second is not firing Ryan as Speaker.  Of course, it’s the House Members who choose their Speaker, not the POTUS.  But Trump’s promise to the voters is to “Drain the Swamp” of Washington, and the Ryancare debacle is the latest evidence that Ryan is part of the swamp.

That is, the RINOs need the Dem filibuster as an excuse to not drain the swamp – oh, the House can’t pass anything that the Senate Dems will filibuster, oh, woe is us….

Ryan has so pretzeled Trump that the president is threatening solid House conservatives instead of the RINOs regarding their vote on RINOcare.

All Trump has to do is follow Rand Paul’s advice to have Vice-President Pence be the President of the Senate (as he constitutionally is) during a vote on Obamacare repeal.

Instead, he’s having a temper tantrum, saying if he doesn’t get his way, Obamacare remains. He’s threatening the good guys in Congress, like Louie Gohmert who “can’t vote for this bill,” instead of the RINOs.

As you know now, this afternoon he didn’t get his way.  RINOcare is dead.  This is good news.  It may be even better news for it likely portends the end of Paul Ryan’s Speakership.

Now a new Speaker can work with Trump to do what the President promised:  get rid of Obamacare lock stock and barrel.  Go for it, Donald.

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Break time for the Question of the Week.  It’s in response to the headline: Hillary Clinton: I Am Ready to ‘Come Out of the Woods’.

The HFR is waiting for a journo with the moxie to ask her:  “When will you be ready to come out of the closet?”

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The “You can’t top this” Headline of the Week has got to be:  Imam Arrested for Running Prostitution Network from Saudi Mosque.

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One headline you mysteriously don’t see today – hard to find on FoxCNNWaPoNYTimesABCNBCCBS – is about the release yesterday (3/23) of WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 Dark Matter.

It’s documentation detailing how the CIA has been infecting Apple computers and iPhones since 2008 with factory-embedded spyware.  You’ll read how any Apple device you have is being listened to with Dark Matter, Triton, NightSkies, DerStarke and other Langley confections.

Or how about this?

Cisco Systems is the largest networking company in the world, making much of the hardware, like routers and switches, that runs the world’s Internet.

On Monday (3/23), we learned that the CIA has installed a command to take control of Cisco switches.  This allows them to manipulate virtually the entire Internet.  The company announced they just discovered this “critical vulnerability for which there is no fix.”  However, a friend who knows about such things tells me:

“Unfortunately, Cisco has been building backdoors into their routers for some time. They almost certainly built this ‘vulnerability’ at the CIA’s request. The press release is to cover their behind, only because Wikileaks exposed them.  The American tech industry has been selling out their customers to CIA/NSA/FBI/etc. for a long time. They only squawk when they get caught.”

Speaking of getting caught…

On Tuesday (3/21), Freedom Watch sent a letter to House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes, telling him about a NSA/CIA whistleblower, Dennis Montgomery, who has disclosed to the FBI 600 million pages of NSA/CIA documents, containing illegal surveillance on Americans, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Donald J. Trump.

Little wonder yesterday (3/23), ace national security reporter Bill Gertz headlined: Intelligence Reports Reveal Improper Political Surveillance of Trump, Transition Team.

Trump was right all along, Comey has been lying, the NSA/CIA are in beaucoup deep kimchee, and Democrats are setting their hair on fire.  As  Gertz notes:

“The explosive reports uncovered by Nunes contradict public testimony Monday by FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers.”

In other words, they lied to Congress.   Gertz further notes:

“The House chairman said it is possible Obama directed the spying.

‘We don’t know who sent the taskings, if the taskings were changed into what went into these intelligence reports, but we’re going to try to find that out,’ Nunes said.

Asked if he could rule out that Obama was personally involved in the surveillance, Nunes said ‘No, I cannot.’

The disclosures about the spying appear to vindicate Trump, who was widely criticized for claiming he was spied on by the former president.”

Another Lying Swine-Democrat Fake News Trump Scandal Invention blows up in the perps’ faces.

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Story time.  In 2002, I was the keynote speaker at a conference in Cartagena, Colombia.  The president then was a wimp named Andres Pastrana who, in order to achieve “peace” with the Narco-Communist guerrilla thugs of FARC, had given them a safe-haven sanctuary the size of Switzerland (no hyperbole, 16,000 sq/mi, almost 4% of the country’s 440,000 sq/mi).

So I told the audience about a phone call made to Pastrana by then-president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori.  Pastrana knew Fujimori despised him for being a coward.  After all, Fujimori saved the very existence of Peru by defeating the horrific Khmer Rouge of South America, the Communist guerrillas of Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path.

Thus Pastrana was pleasantly surprised to hear Fujimori congratulating him on his FARC Sanctuary.  “You really like it, Alberto?” Pastrana beamingly asked.  “Of course I do!” Fujimori replied.  “It’s brilliant!  Instead of these bandits being spread all over the country, now you’ll have them all in one place, where you can kill them all at once!”

Pastrana was not amused – but Fujimori sure was, who couldn’t stop laughing during Pastrana’s long silence.

Okay, why did I tell that story?  Because of this recently-issued Pew Research Report: 20 metro areas are home to six-in-ten unauthorized immigrants in U.S.

60% of the over 11 million illegal aliens in the US are in only 20 cities.  As the Daily Wire points out, illegals are flocking to Sanctuary Cities.  Well, that makes finding them a lot easier, doesn’t it?

Obviously, finding them not to kill them but to deport them if criminal, or deny them welfare privileges such as food stamps only due to citizens.  Nonetheless, the HFR proposes to call these outlaw cities defying both law and President Trump Fujimori Sanctuaries.

And congratulate them on making it easier for ICE to find the illegals.

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This week’s geography lesson is how the Left distorts everything, they can’t leave anything alone and are compelled to twist it into an Anti-West, Anti-Christian narrative.  That includes maps.  The headline from yesterday (3/23): Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion.

In an effort to “decolonize the curriculum in our public schools,” Boston will no longer use the Mercator projection, “which exaggerates the size of  imperialist [i.e., evil, white, Western, Christian] powers.”

The hilarity is that the substitute map is almost as bad as the Mercator.  The latter’s distortion is making lines of longitude straight instead of curved, so that ultimately the North and South Poles are lines instead of points.  Thus Greenland in the far north looks as big as Africa, when it’s the same size as Saudi Arabia.

But the Gall-Peters projection doesn’t show continents in their “correct proportions,” it merely stretches them out; longitudinal lines are still straight (see link above).

The only flat map accurately depicting a round world is Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Spaceship Earth Map, marvelously showing all seven continents as an archipelago of islands.

You might consider sending the Dymaxion Map to Colin Rose’s Facebook page, as he’s assistant superintendent of opportunity and achievement gaps for Boston public schools.  You might also send him Sam Cooke singing “Don’t know much about geography” as well.

Sam Cooke’s 1960 classic was entitled “What A Wonderful World.”  Yes, what a wonderful world it would be if leftie academics didn’t politicize everything with their hatred for Western Civilization.

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And that brings us to the HFR Hero of the Week.  He passed away last Saturday (3/18) at age 90.  He was born on Goode Street in St. Louis, Missouri in 1926.  He was black, and suffered all the slings and arrows of the racist, segregated Jim Crow South.  He often went to sleep as a child dreaming he’d wake up in the morning white.

But he had talent, which made him wealthy and famous.  Nonetheless, he was arrested for violating the Mann Act, taking a girl across state lines for immoral purposes – the girl was white and he was black and this was Jim Crow South in 1959.

Did he become a victim and sink into a pit of hatred for Racist America?  No, instead in 1959 he composed and performed a song entitled Back In The USA.  Here are the lyrics:

Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today,
We touched ground on an international runway
Jet propelled back home, from overseas to the U. S. A.

New York, Los Angeles, oh, how I yearned for you
Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge
Let alone just to be at my home back in ol’ St. Lou.

Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway?
From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay
You can bet your life I did, till I got back to the U. S. A.

Looking hard for a drive-in, searching for a corner café
Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day
Yeah, and a juke-box jumping with records like in the U.S.A.

Well, I’m so glad I’m livin’ in the U.S.A.
Yes. I’m so glad I’m livin’ in the U.S.A.
Anything you want, we got right here in the U.S.A.

How joyously American can you get?  It took a great man with a great soul to overcome his circumstances to write this – and perform it with such cheerful conviction the audience knew he meant every word:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCW2xnexKyo

Yes, the Hero of the Week is Chuck Berry.  The Culture of Chuck Berry embodies the optimism we once had about America and so desperately need again.

Johnny B. Goode (1958) is the most famous rock song in music history. Here is Chuck Berry with Bruce Springsteen giving that optimism in 1995 to 50,000 ecstatic fans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C37egBZcVLIv

Yes, he could play a guitar like ringing a bell.  He could make us dance with joy like no one else.  And he could make you cry with his love and optimism for America.  That’s what his C’est la vie does for me.

The original version, written and recorded in 1963, is in the famous dance scene of John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction (1994).  It tells the touching and beautiful story of two teenagers who get married, and to the surprise of everyone, they succeed with a happy, successful life.  Thus the chorus:  C’est la vie said the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.

Yes, we old folks may doubt in America’s future, but that is unwise.  America will succeed and triumph in the end.  Reflect on that as you listen to Chuck Berry praise the American triumphal spirit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1oyvAMtFsk