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HALF-FULL REPORT 12/11/09

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Wow – what a workshop!  The first TTP Financial Plan B Workshop in St. Louis this week (12/09) was a true substantive success, where the close to 80 TTPers in attendance got a plethora of solid guidance in developing strategies to "survive and thrive" during Zero’s attempt to ruin America. 

Congratulations to my bride Rebel for organizing and conducting it, to Dr. Joel Wade for co-emceeing it, and to TTP administrator Miko for his tireless work ensuring the workshop’s success.  It was such a success that we’ll definitely have another this coming spring.

***
Certainly the funniest news of the week is Norway getting what it deserves.  Norwegian undies are all in a twist because the man they awarded their Nobel Fis Prize to rudely snubbed them in Oslo.

Front-page headlines all over the world blared about Zero canceling his appearance at a number of events – most insulting of all was not having the traditional lunch with the Norwegian monarch King Harald. 

The irony is cosmic.  The Norwegians trash their holy prize by awarding it to a man who has accomplished nothing to deserve it – just like Americans trashed their presidency in the same way – and he trashes them in return.  Norway and Zero deserve each other.

***
Certainly the best news of the week is that Copenhagen is imploding.  The "Climate Change Conference" is where the world’s Fascist Left intended to cement its control of a global bureaucracy.  But then China and India balked, demanding they be paid oodles of Western money to reduce their "carbon footprints."  Whereupon every hick country from Tuvalu to Sudan demanded they be bribed as well, calling the bribes "climate reparations" from America and the West.

Knowing there is utterly no way to extract hundreds of billions in such bribes from Congress, the chief US negotiator at Copenhagen, Todd Stern, publicly told all those demanding bribes to forget it.  The US rejects "any notion of debt," he said. "Any sense of guilt or culpability or reparations" are "categorically rejected."

Stern is no conservative.  Take a look at his bio.  Yet this guy – under orders from his boss, Hillary Clinton, which is intensely interesting – has done the quintessential thing most necessary to protect America:  reject envy, tell the envious their guilt-mongering has no power. 

This could be a one-time aberration or it could be a real tipping point, expanding envy-rejection in other areas of American diplomacy.  But Stern’s announcement (made Wednesday 12/09), combined with the Climategate exposure that global warmism is a fabrication, could result in the Copenhagen climate summit being a colossal failure, a farcical imbroglio signaling doom for the Fascist Left’s latest rationale for ruling our lives.

There’s still a week to go (the conference ends next Friday 12/18), but this is high drama unfolding.  The US has finally told the world to take its envy and shove it.  This is Hillary at work, folks, doing a number on Zero who would never do such a thing.  Lots of drama on several levels.  Enjoy the show.

***
Here’s one question of the week:  Do North Koreans deserve to starve?

Every year for decades, we’ve all read news reports about how North Koreans are facing massive hunger and starvation requiring massive amounts of Western food aid.  In the mid-1990s, three million people starved to death.  In 2002, people were eating grass to survive.

Now, yet again, thanks to a currency devaluation and another perennial "bad harvest," North Koreans are on the brink of mass starvation.  Do they deserve this?  Do people (almost) always get the government they deserve?

For 30 years (1923-1953), Joseph Stalin ruled Russia as one of history’s most murderous oppressors.  Yet in all that time – thirty years – there was not one single known attempt on his life.  Not one.  If Russians weren’t willing to fight for their freedom, they didn’t deserve to be free.

Last weekend, mass protests are reported to have broken out in Pyongyang and other Nork cities which the army has not put down.  Maybe the army is becoming unreliable, maybe this is finally the North Koreans’ moment to prove they deserve to be free and not to starve.  Or maybe they’ll prove otherwise, as they have for over a half-century.

***
One people who are proving to deserve freedom, who are showing the world more every passing day now they will fight for freedom, are the Iranians.  Starting Monday (12/07), all this week tens of thousands of Iranians throughout the country have been demanding regime change in their country.

No more "reform."  They want regime change, an "Iranian Republic" instead of an "Islamic Republic."  They’ve ripped the word for "Allah" out of the Iranian flags they wave.  They are burning pictures of Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khomeini.  They are beating the crap out of the regime’s Basiji thugs.

When the protests against Ahmadinejad’s election fraud erupted last June and were horrifically suppressed, the HFR noted that:

"This is a regime with no future.  It’s worth recalling that the revolution replacing the Shah with the Ayatollahs did not occur overnight.  The protests started in January of 1978, and succeeded with the Shah fleeing the country in January of 1979.  During that year, there were many periods of quiescence, when the protests seemed to vanish and the Shah’s rule was deemed secure.  Then they would crank up again, and up a notch.

"So this is a marathon, not a sprint.  There is very serious dissention within the mullahs themselves, there is no longer a center of the regime that can hold.  The protestors are young, determined, and smart.  This is far from over, it has only just begun."

Now, the post-June quiescence is over and it’s cranked up several notches.  Iran deserves to be free.  The Iranians are proving it.  The single greatest contribution to freedom and peace in the world at this moment in history would be regime change in Iran. 

***
It’s hard to think of better news on a global scale than the dual collapse of global warmism and the mullah regime of Iran.  If you want some good news closer to home, how about a judge in Ohio allowing the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles to cancel the registration of 45,000 cars being driven by illegal aliens?

The illegal alien advocacy groups are all up in arms about the ruling, and may get a higher court to overturn it – yet it is a portent of how the tide is turning against the illegal alien flood.

***
Talk about turning tides.  They are ebbing so fast for Zero and flowing in so fast for Sarah Palin that they are crossing each other in the polls. 

As TTP’s Jack Kelly tells the HFR, Sarah’s book tour has become a cultural phenomenon, with thousands of people waiting hours or even days at each stop to meet her.  "Could Barack Obama — who now seems so last year — inspire that kind of devotion today?" asks Mr. Kelly.

More fascinating than to watch Palin’s rise in the public’s opinion of her is the rise in the media’s opinion of her.  The lib journalists well know how savagely they tried to demonize her, which would have destroyed the spirit of most anyone.  Yet she has not only withstood it but done so with grace, guts, and humor.

It’s really hard not to respect that.  So it was an astonishing scene at the Gridiron Dinner last week during the reception before her speech to see all these media honchos crowding around her and asking for her autograph.

Then she stands up in front of them, the folks who have made every attempt to trash and destroy her publicly, and blows them right out of their seats with this lovably clever and hysterically funny speech.

No, they’re not going to love her like Zero.  But the media libs have a new, a profoundly new, respect for her.  The dynamic between Palin and the media has dramatically changed.

Clear evidence is the review of Going Rogue this week (12/07) by New York Times columnist Stanley Fish.  Folks, this is in The New York Times!  You should read every word.  This liberal journalist’s conclusion:

"In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character… The message is clear. America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again. Her political opponents, especially those who dismissed Ronald Reagan before he was elected, should take note. Wherever you are, you better watch out. Sarah Palin is coming to town."

***
Of course, you have a copy of Going Rogue and are reading it, yes?  I’m about half-way through.  My favorite quote so far is this one.  Who can resist a woman who has the moxie to say:

"I love meat.  I eat pork chops, thick bacon burgers, and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak.  But I especially love moose and caribou.  I always remind people from outside our state that there’s plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals – right next to the mashed potatoes."

The sun is setting on Zero and rising on Sarah.  So – the next time you’re gloomy and blue over what’s happening to our country, repeat two words a few times and you’ll find the gloom soon gone with the wind.  The two words are:  President Palin.  See?  I bet you feel better already.