HALF-FULL REPORT 08/19/11

Let’s start with a trio of quotes.

On Monday (8/15) in Decorah, Iowa, President Zero explained why he has been a total economic failure:

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again.  But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck."

Which recalls the observation of Lazarus Long in Robert Heinlein’s 1973 sci-fi classic Time Enough For Love:

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people.

"Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck’."

And on Wednesday (8/17) in Bedford, New Hampshire, Texas Gov. Rick Perry explained:

"America’s crisis is not bad luck, it’s bad policies from Washington DC…  Our economic plan shouldn’t depend on luck, it should depend on sound economic fundamentals."

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Of course, sound economic fundamentals is the very last thing a gangster government would base its economy on.

If any further confirmation is needed that we are ruled by a true Gangster Government, it was provided by the New York Times report this week (8/17) that Eric Holder’s Justice Department is conducting a payback investigation of the Standard & Poor rating agency.

There are three major rating agencies.  Only S&P issued a downgrade of US government debt from AAA to AA+.  Only S&P is being investigated for "improperly" rating mortgage securities prior to the 2008 meltdown.  The other two, Moody’s & Fitch, rated those securities the same as S&P, but are not being targeted.

That’s because Moody’s kept the AAA rating, albeit with a "negative outlook."  That qualifier is what triggered the dark hints in the NYT that DOJ "might" extend its investigation to Moody’s.  Fitch is home free, because the day before the NYT story, it announced (8/16) the US would keep its Triple-A with a "stable outlook."

No more proof required that Zero is operating an extortionist thugocracy.  Q.E.D.

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The most fascist act committed by the thugocracy remains ObamaCare – which took a major hit this week (well, actually late last Friday, 8/12, after the HFR came out) with the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals declaring the critical part of ObamaCare – the individual mandate – to be unconstitutional.

This is in direct conflict with the 6^th Circuit’s decision on June 29 that O-care with the mandate is constitutional.  Conflicting circuit court decisions – a "circuit split" – can only be resolved by the Supreme Court itself – so conservatives all over Washington are high-fiving with the expectation that a 5-4 SCOTUS decision killing the beast will come soon.

Yes, that depends on what side of the bed Anthony Kennedy gets up on the morning of the decision – but also upon whatever stalling tactics Holder’s DOJ may employ to delay it.

The 11^th‘s decision, as are most all, was delivered by a three-judge panel.  One delaying tactic would be for Holder to request an en banc decision from the entire 17 judges.  Another would be to wait the full 90 days before having to appeal.  There are other tricks, the purpose of which is to push acceptance by SCOTUS past next January, which may result in not having a decision in time to affect the November 2012 election.

So watch for the stalls.  O-care will reach the Supremes, but maybe not right away.

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This has to be the coolest surprise of the week:  a feature story in a lib women’s fashion magazine, Elle, that praises (mostly) conservative women – The Best and the Rightest in the current (Sept) issue just out.

Elle calls them "baby Palins," but Regis Giles, S.E. Cupp, and others featured are no babies.  Regis, for example, likes to hunt wild boar with a spear and has a website Edd Forke will love:  Girls Just Wanna Have Guns.

The site has a video of Regis speaking at a conference:  "My company stands for those girls who’ve decided to arm themselves with a gun that will pump lead into an attacker at 1,200 feet per second. I wanna see more headlines stating ‘Girl kills attacker with gun’ than ‘Girl found dead after being raped and choked to death."  She is TTP’s kind of woman.

You’ve seen S.E. (Sarah Elizabeth) Cupp, on Fox, but you’ll learn about a number of young women who are making "conservative feminism" hip – like Karin Agness who founded the Network of Empowered Women, which has chapters on 20 campuses, or Ashley Sewell of Smart Girl Politics with 50,000 members nationwide.

Good for Elle – and good for these pro-American young women.  Here’s my favorite quote from one of them:

"Real women want a husband, while feminists pine for a sugar daddy in Uncle Sam."

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Here’s the puzzle of the week:  why is über-conservative website WorldNetDaily promoting a moonbat pro-Moslem terrorist "international lawyer" on Gaddafi’s payroll to smear Libyan freedom fighters?

Franklin Lamb is a rabidly anti-Semitic champion of every terrorist outfit in the Middle East – Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, you name it.  If you’re trying to blow up Israeli school buses, slit Israeli children’s throats, or demolish Israeli towns with rockets, he’s on your side.

Why in the world would WND give credence to this guy, and trumpet his charge from Tripoli where he’s Gaddafi’s guest that the Libyan opposition is kidnapping children, torturing them, and selling them into slavery?  My sources at NATO Command tell me it’s such a depraved lie it shows how desperate Gadaffi is getting.

But how did Gadaffi get WND to be on his side? 

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The disappointment of the week is the hysterical crusade my friend Pam Geller has launched against Rick Perry.  Pammy is a good person with a good heart, but she’s lost it on Monday (8/15) with her disgraceful article in American Thinker, Perry’s Problematic Pals. 

She got suckered by that Salon.com hit piece I discussed in last week’s HFR, just as I was afraid some conservatives would.  She doubles down on it, demonstrating a remarkable ignorance of Ismailism.  Somehow, because one group of them allegedly (the history is murky) formed the Assassins a thousand years ago, Ismailis are no different from Jihadist Wahhabis today.

Then the very next day (8/16), she doubles down again with an even more disgraceful attack, calling him "The 5^th Column Candidate" in (where else? WND.  Since Perry works with Grover Norquist on tax reform issues, and Grover is a notorious Moslem apologist (certainly true), therefore Perry must be a closet supporter of Moslem terrorism and sharia – this sophomoric logic wouldn’t fool a 6^th grader.

Then she goes off on the "pro-sharia school curriculum" Perry signed off on.  Turns out it (the Muslim Histories and Culture Project) was written by a San Antonio history teacher, Ronald Wiltsie, who is a devout Christian and proudly calls himself a pro-Israel Zionist.

You can read the details in a well-written rebuttal to Pam’s off-the-rails accusations, which Edd Forke made us aware of in the Forum.  I’m not upset at Pam, just sad.  I’m sure she’ll regain her balance.

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One more Perry item.  Jack Kelly has turned me on to this PajamaMedia article appearing today by an old hand at Texas politics:  Perry Is Playing Obama and the Media Like a Fiddle. Isn’t that the truth?   Definitely worth reading.

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Kelly and I are also splitting our sides laughing.  Just when we thought the warmists couldn’t get more looney with their CO2 religion rationales, they come up with this – a NASA paper, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis.

Most of it involves speculation regarding the Fermi Paradox (the question asked by Enrico Fermi, "Where is everybody?" in response to the assertion that ETI, extraterrestrial intelligence must be common in the universe).  But then they leap straight into the looney bin:

"Given that we have already altered our environment in ways that may viewed as unethical by universalist ETI, it may be prudent to avoid sending any message that shows evidence of our negative environmental impact.

"The chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere over recent time may be a poor choice for a message because it would show a rapid accumulation of carbon dioxide from human activity. Likewise, any message that indicates of widespread loss of biodiversity or rapid rates of expansion may be dangerous if received by such universalist ETI."

That is, "universalist" or "ethical" aliens would be environmentalists so offended and outraged by us evil humans creating a "loss of biodiversity" through global warming they might attack us and destroy us.

This scenario, they argue, "gives us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets."

Yep, the religion of warmism does indeed induce brain damage, especially among government or government grant-dependent scientists.

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We’ll close with a heads-up caution.  Ever wonder how the least acceptable GOP candidate, the biggest Rino, the one we never imagined would snare the nomination last time around – John McCain – won all those primaries?

He did it via the most masochistic political idiocy you could come up with:  open primaries.  The GOP is not called the Stupid Party for nothing.

An open primary is one in which any registered voter can participate, from any party or no party at all.  In 2008, massive numbers of Dems voted in open Pub primaries and handed the nomination to McCain.

You’d think that the RNC would have corrected this, but of course not.  Thus there are 17 – 17!! – open primaries for the Pubs next year, unless pressure can be brought to bear to change the party rules and soon.

Those states are:  Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin, plus Hawaii, Minnesota and North Dakota with open caucus primaries.

Just as they did in 2008, Dems will flock to these to vote for the weakest Pub candidate whom Zero is most likely to beat.  Just as in 2008, they intend to choose Zero’s 2012 opponent, not Republicans.

If you live in one of the states above, consider demanding your state Pub committee to revert to a closed primary wherein only registered Republicans may vote.  We cannot let Dems choose for us.

For your reference, here is the 2012 GOP presidential primary/caucus schedule.

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One final note:   I got some company this week (8/17) regarding my prediction that Zero may be LBJ Redux:  Why Obama May Pass On Reelection.  Let’s hope so.