HALF-FULL REPORT 12/16/11

When someone asks, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?", which do you choose to hear first?  I always choose the bad to get it over with, so that’s what the HFR is doing today.

Bearer of the bad news is economist David Malpass, whose nail-on-the-head analysis of the economic/political mess we’re in – And The Crisis Winner Is?  Government – appeared in this morning’s (12/16) Wall Street Journal.  This is the Must Read of the year.  Here’s the essence of his bad news:

"Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are trying to use the crisis to grow rather than shrink. News of Europe’s fiscal incompetence abounds, but Washington had no budget at all in 2010 or 2011 and the federal deficit grew at record pace. President Obama sailed through 2011 without any significant spending cuts or government downsizing…

"Across the U.S. and Europe, big government is winning the crisis game, adding taxes, regulatory power and whole new institutions. Voters want restraint, but there’s no mechanism to control government spending, so debt-to-GDP ratios go up rather than down."

Malpass is making it unavoidably obvious:  The 2010 Republican House Majority under John Boehner has been worthless.  This is completely confirmed by their passing a $1 Trillion "Omnibus" garbage bill that cuts or defunds nothing but "avoids a government shutdown." 

Just to give you a hint of how worthless these guys are, one of them, Paul Gosar (R-AZ), publicly calls the Omnibus bill a "crap sandwich" – yet he voted for it anyway.

Malpass is also making it painfully obvious that the Tea Parties are as worthless as the Boehner Republicans.  They have accomplished exactly nothing in Washington.  Nothing. Nada, zilch, zero.  What a flame-out.  Evil always triumphs when good people do nothing, and they are doing nothing. 

So brace yourselves for the longest year of your lives: 2012.  More joblessness, more economic decline, more deficit spending, more government intrusion into everyone’s life and business, more anger and parasite demands from the Moocher Class, more demonization of the Producer Class, with the Grin of Evil that inhabits the White House laughing in our faces 24/7. 

For this is exactly what he wants for America.  Not only because he loathes our country, but because the Great Depression enabled the Democrats to control Washington for decades, with their policies and programs entrenched to this day.  So his and his party’s obvious path to power is to recreate the economic devastation of the 30s.  It couldn’t be more obvious – except for Boehner Republicans.

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Okay, okay, okay, okay, thanks for the downer, Jack, just what I needed at the end of the week – so what’s the good news?

Well, actually, I just got started on the bad news, but we’ll take a break and go to Iowa where at least there’s a growing possibility of good news.  Which is:  "Newt Romney" are destroying each other while Ron Paul only has his Paulbots.  Which means: the last man standing is Rick Perry.

Here’s one cogent argument for his comeback from Business Insider.  Here’s Rush explaining why, "as this Newt and Romney thing disintegrates," there are "a lot of people" hoping Perry will come back.  After the Sioux City debate last night (12/15), Rush declared that it’s a four-person race now between Perry, Romney, Gingrich, and Bachmann. 

Paul is finished after acting like he was the spokesman for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last night, gaining the nickname "Tehran Ron."  And after Bachmann comes in 5^th place in Iowa on January 3^rd, she’s finished too.  The real question is how will Perry do against Newt Romney on that day?

The best pollster for Iowa is InsiderAdvantage – the link is to their poll on Monday (12/12).  It shows Romney imploding in 4^th place, with Perry 3^rd after Paul and Gingrich.  But look carefully, for those are the Total tallies.  Only registered Republicans can vote in the Iowa Caucus – and in the poll’s Republican column, Perry comes in 2^nd after Newton. 

Yes, Iowa has these phony registration rules where you can claim you’re a Pub on the very day of the caucus and vote.  But that means only unless Indies and Dems flood in to phony register for Paul, he’ll be behind Perry.  Of course, we’re 18 days away and a lot can change.  The way it’s going, though, is towards Perry. 

One reason is the backing of military veterans, as the Christian Science Monitor explains (12/14).  Perry is going all out in Iowa – million dollar ad buys, 2-week bus tour, retail politics that he excels at.  The ads are really powerful.  Here’s the full-length version of one:

It’s way Pollyannic to say he could win Iowa, but don’t be dumbfounded if he does.  What is increasingly probable is that he’ll come in 2^nd or 3^rd.  He says he’ll focus on New Hampshire (Jan 10), but not really.  His real focus will be on South Carolina (Jan 21), after which Gov. Nikki Haley will feel really stupid for endorsing Romney today instead of him.   

The bottom line is that we may yet get a candidate that conservatives and pro-Americans can rally around, who can energize them to take on the Boehner Congress wimps, clean Zero’s clock in November, and proceed to get the government out of the way of freedom and prosperity.  And that’s as good as the news is going to get.

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Any other good news this week?  The Senate Pubs on Monday blocked the re-appointment of hyper-leftie Mari Carmen Aponte as Ambassador to El Salvador. Last June, she managed to outrage devout Roman Catholic Salvadorans for demanding they adopt Hillary Clinton’s pro-homosexual agenda including homosexual "marriage."  For such "blatant disregard for Salvadoran culture," as Jim DeMint put it, the Senate gave her the thumbs down.

Then there’s the funniest headline of the week:  Pakistan Dismayed Over US Congress Aid Freeze Bill.  Pakistan is our enemy supporting the Taliban killing our soldiers in Afghanistan, Congress finally wises up and derails their gravy train, and the Paks get their shalwar kameezes in a twist. The more "dismayed" they get, the better.

Here’s seriously good geopolitical news:  the Israelis are saying Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is doomed.  Defense Minister Ehud Barak believes regime change is just weeks away.  Even more important, Barak and other key Israelis have finally decided this is a good thing.  So far, they have refused to help Syria’s freedom fighters, for fear of a Moslem crazy takeover.

At last, they’ve realized how much Assad gone would damage the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the mullah regime in Iran.  Islamic fundies like the Iqwan (Moslem Brotherhood) are not strong and organized in Syria like in Egypt. The great majority of Syrians are Sunnis who really don’t like Hezbollah or Iranian Shias. The opportunities clearly outweigh by an order of magnitude the dangers of regime change in Syria.

Even our State Department is catching on.  On Wednesday (12/14), US envoy to the Middle East Frederic Hof testified at a Congressional hearing that Assad is "a dead man walking."

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Regime change in Syria would put an end to the Terrorist Superhighway feared by Ralph Peters, from Tehran to Syria and Lebanon via Iraq.  Ralph remains right, however, regarding Zero’s traitorous abandonment of the sacrifice made by thousands of American soldiers in Iraq. 

All week long, the news has been filled with stories about the super hi-tech surveillance drone – the RQ-170 Sentinel – of ours "brought down" by Iran.  Claims and counter-claims are all over the place.  It’s a fake, say folks at the Pentagon.  It wasn’t  "lost," it was sold by corrupt Afghans to Iran.  Iranian engineers exploited a "weakness" in the technology and made it land in Iran.  "Ridiculous," say US intel officials.  It just ran out of fuel and it was bad luck it landed in Iran.

On top of it all, there’s Zero acting like a pathetic Jimmy Carter pansy begging for it back.  Dick Cheney rightly condemned Zero’s cowardice:  "The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it… with a quick airstrike."

So what actually happened?  Get ready, as it’s worse than you thought.

Thanks to technical assistance from China over the past several years, for some time now Iranian military engineers have been conducting a robust program to decrypt feed coming from drones over the Iraq-Iran border.  They are able to see what CENTCOM, Langley, and other agencies see when our drones are flying.  Thus, they have had a long time to practice and hone their skills.

Simply put, Iranians now possess the technology to break the drone’s comms encryption, take over controls of the drone and land it inside Iran.  And that is what they did.  This comes from an extremely reliable and highly-placed friend of mine in Middle East intel.

Now you know.  Hardly anyone else will, because the enemedia avoids embarrassing Zero.  And yes, my friend assures me that Cheney is right, we could have destroyed it with an airstrike but Zero said no, and chose to beg for its return.  Ahmadinejad laughed at him, as he should have… as we all should.

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Is this good news?  My buddy Ambrose Evans-Pritchard describes today (12/16) China’s Epic Fail engulfing it.  Home prices in Beijing dropped 35% in November (yes, over a third in one month).  That’s a bubble-pop – big time.  The Shanghai Composite (the Chinese Dow) is down 30% in the last six months.  China’s $3T foreign reserves are collapsing with "hot money pouring out of the country."  Kiss yuan appreciation goodbye. Say hello to a major devaluation of the yuan, massive export dumping and resultant trade wars. 

China’s credit pump-priming is into deep marginal disutility, pushing on a string. Epic Commie Fail.  Yet another disaster flick coming in 2012.  Will Chicom China implode or explode?  It’s too chaotic to tell.

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You know I’m not going to leave you gloomy.  So the HFR is going to close with a marvelous photo essay from today’s (12/16) London Daily Mail  (why can’t an American newspaper do this?). It’s about The Breathtaking Views From One World Trade Center.

The pictures will bring tears to your eyes – not because they are spectacular, but because they so vividly illustrate America’s capacity to rise above and triumph over tragedy. 

We suffered a hideously evil tragedy on September 11, 2001, and the One World Trade Center is rising above it.  We are suffering an evil tragedy today, brought about by people who hate our country as much as Osama Bin Laden – and we are going to rise above it.  We are going to triumph over it.

We have less than 11 months to go of enduring this tragedy.  Then the rebuilding of America begins.