HALF-FULL REPORT 01/06/12

As Jackie Gleason[1] always said at the start of his show, "And awaaaaay we go!" with the first HFR of 2012.

The first week of the year got shot out of the fascist cannon with Zero declaring war on Congress by making four presidential appointments that are egregiously unconstitutional.  Ed Meese, President Reagan’s Attorney General, explains why.

The fury of Boehner Congressfolk means nothing to Zero.  As an example of how hopelessly feckless the Pubtards are, Republican Senator Scott Brown (remember how excited we were about him a year ago?) announced his support for Zero’s fascism.

************

Zero’s lawless behavior is such an overt example of the inertia of fascism we face today. 

As Newton taught us, inertia is double-sided:  if something is moving, it will keep moving unless something else stops it; if something is not moving, it will stay not moving unless something else moves it.  Further, the bigger something is, the more force it will take to stop or start it.

Michael Savage is no doubt correct in predicting that Zero’s reelection will result in a Hugo Chavez-type banana republic dictatorship, for we are well on our way towards it right now.  The fascist unconstitutional lawlessness of our federal government has built up a monumental amount of inertia, which won’t be halted or slowed down merely by Zero’s defeat.  It will take an equally monumental effort to reverse its direction.

Which brings us to the pointlessness of Mitt Romney.  Why is he running for president other than to be president?  That’s really what’s going on, you know.  He wants to live up to his dad.

George Romney (1907-1995) was a self-made successful businessman and popular governor of Michigan (1963-1969).  Tall, square-jawed, handsome with a distinguished tinge of gray to his full head of hair, he looked type-cast presidential and was the leading candidate for the Republican nomination until disaster struck.

During his campaign (Sept. 1967), he was asked by a reporter why he had changed (we’d say flip-flopped now) his position on the War in Vietnam from being "morally right and necessary" to opposing it.  He answered that on a trip to South Vietnam in 1965, he had gotten a "brainwashing" from our generals there from which he had since recovered. 

He was toast. Time Magazine called him "The Brainwashed Candidate," he became a joke (one wag commenting, "a light rinse would have been sufficient"), and dropped out of the race by the following February (1968).  His rival, Richard Nixon, went on to gain the nomination and the Oval Office.

His son Mitt, 20 years old at the time, was permanently traumatized by what happened to his father.  Most searing were the jokes, like his dad’s fellow Republican governor, Jim Rhodes of Ohio, telling friends, "Watching George Romney run for the presidency was like watching a duck trying to f*** a football."

So Mitt made it his life’s goal to be president like his father never was.  That’s why he’ll say whatever it takes, why he has no core, why he has no passionate vision of what he wants to do, to accomplish, as president – just be what his father was denied.  And that’s why he offers no solutions, nor will implement any to reverse the inertia of federal fascism.

************

There’s a saying in the Palmetto State:  "They pick corn in Iowa, they pick candidates’ pockets in New Hampshire, they pick Republican nominees in South Carolina."

Next Tuesday (1/10), the increasingly irrelevant New Hampshire primary will be won by the increasingly irrelevant Mitt Romney.  Then on to the Main Event, South Carolina on Saturday, January 21, followed by Florida on Tuesday, January 31.  The purpose of these contests will be to determine who the Not-Romney is:  Gingrich, Perry, or Santorum.

The purpose of the meeting on January 13 I told you about is to get behind one of these three in time to affect the outcome of South Carolina.  The momentum among those attending this meeting is now towards Santorum, which I consider to be suicidal as it all but guarantees four more years of Zero.  The government-media complex will skin Santorum alive.  CSI will have to perform a forensic analysis of his remains to recognize him.

Perry thinks he can take Santorum in PalmettoLand for a number of reasons.  Among them are Santorum is a Yankee northerner, while he and Gingrich are from the South; Santorum hasn’t got the money or organization that Perry has – and even if Santorum raised the money now, the ad space is bought out; Gingrich is focused on taking down Romney, with Santorum as his secondary target; media gutting of Santorum will soon get underway (called "vetting"); Perry’s ace in the hole:  veterans.

There are a full half-million vets in South Carolina, who vote and resonate with Perry like no one else.  Perry is a vet, and Gingrich-Romney-Santorum are not.  Further, Santorum made a major gaffe yesterday (1/05), by claiming being a politician is comparable to military service.

Perry will hammer Santorum on this.  He will also make sure everyone in the state sees what could be his "defining moment" – his take down of a smart-ass leftie reporter (Mike Allen of Politico) in Iowa:

In 1980, George H. W. Bush was the consensus candidate of the GOP establishment.  Ronald Reagan was the cowboy outsider.  Bush had cleaned Reagan’s clock in Iowa.  Then in Nashua, New Hampshire on February 23, 1980, the defining moment came.  Here it is:

That one line, shutting down a jerk – "I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green" – sent Reagan on his way.  "You got a name?" could do the same for Perry especially if he keeps it up enough so people begin imagining him shutting down Zero.

************

Before we escape from politics and get out into the world, I should say a word about why I don’t include Ron Paul in the electoral equation, even though many TTPers are Paulistas. 

I understand your support for Paul, as he’s the guy who most consistently and decisively wants to cut the federal monster down to constitutional size.  I’d be his cheerleader too if he stuck just to that – even more so if he were a Pro-Defense Libertarian like my mentor John Hospers (Chairman of the Philosophy Dept. at USC and 1972 presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party).

But tragically, Paul is a Blame-America-First Libertarian who suggests we brought 9/11 upon ourselves, and it’s our fault that Iran sponsors terrorism against us.  It’s always our fault.  It would be refreshing for Paul, just once, to take America’s side against an enemy of ours.

This is tragic because people equate Paul’s anti-American foreign policy – which in truth is more to the left than Zero’s – with libertarian constitutionalism. He is discrediting and delegitimizing the very argument we most need to get a constitutional government.

Paul stands no chance whatever of gaining the nomination, much less the presidency.  None whatever, 0%.  You can’t factor 0 into an equation, electoral or otherwise.  The only way he could make it more than 0 would be to start advocating a pro-American foreign policy, start taking our side (and Israel’s by the way).  Then he’d have my vote.

************

I’m suggesting to my friends in the Canadian government that their Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, invite the Dalai Lama for a chat about Free Tibet at 24 Sussex Drive (the PM’s Residence in Ottawa).  After all, His Holiness is a Honorary Canadian Citizen.

Zero has managed to infuriate everyone with his dithering on the Keystone Pipeline that would carry Canadian tarsands oil to the US, creating thousands of jobs while enraging Luddite enviros.  This week (1/04), American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard warned Zero to approve the project or face "huge political consequences."  (It’s wonderful to see someone with cojones to threaten the schmuck.)

One of those consequences already happened, when Athabasca Oil Sands announced (1/03) it had sold 100% of one of its main projects to PetroChina.  Harper is so ticked at Zero that he wants to sell Canadian oil to China instead of us.  The Chicoms have leaped at the opportunity, and have offered to build a pipeline to Vancouver where the oil will be loaded onto Chinese supertankers.

What does this have to do with Tibet?  Well, a Brit reporter friend of mine doing a story on Chicoms in Canada has learned the Chinese are engaging in a whispering campaign suggesting to officials in the Alberta Provincial Government (the tarsand oil is in Alberta) that they would be set for life if they were to advocate Alberta’s secession from Canada.

There has been a Free Alberta movement for some time now, with a website FreeAlberta.com.  There’s a lot of sentiment for secession, as a lot of Albertans think with a great deal of justification they are being ripped off by Ottawa.

But for the Chicoms to aid and abet this as a way to reward Harper for inviting them to make a fortune in Canada?  Not smart.  Harper coming out for Tibetan secession ought to wake them up.

************

On the other hand, I don’t have it in me to anoint Chicoms as the HFR Heroes of the Week – but I’m tempted when they told the EU yesterday (1/05) their airlines will not pay the EU carbon tax.

Any airline flying into a EU airport must now pay a "carbon tax" as part of the Warmist scam, or pay a fine of 100 euros per ton of untaxed carbon dioxide their planes emit.  You can’t make this up – the mandarins in Brussels are actually trying to enforce this.  Airlines around the world from India to the US have complained – but China’s are the first to step to the plate and say they won’t obey and they won’t pay.  They’ll stop flying to Europe, Brussels can shove it.

Now that China has done so, it’s a good bet that all those other world airlines will do the same.  This is a major global two-fer:  both Warmism and EU fascism take it in the shorts.  Good for the Chinese.

************

Perhaps you’ve noticed that euros are disintegrating this week (down to 1.27 to the $ today, 1/06) while Italy is paying over 7% to borrow them.  Christopher Booker explains the dilemma:  Europe cannot save the euro, nor save itself from the euro.

It really is insanely stupid for the Brussels mandarins to have augured themselves into this.  Other than global warming, the biggest per capita money rathole in European history is Greece.  After running up a total debt of $550 billion with a GDP of $300 billion (and falling into a hole with minus 5% growth), Athens got a $142 billion EU bailout last May, plus a $100 billion write-down of private debt.

Yet this week (1/03), Athens announced it must have another $169 billion EU bailout, or else it will have to declare bankruptcy, exit the euro, and go back to the drachma.  That’s $411 billion in welfare bailouts in the last 8 months for a population smaller than Ohio – less than 11 million Greeks.

Watching a train wreck in stop-action slow-motion is torture, as the inevitable should just be gotten over with.  But the mandarins keep flogging the dead Greek horse – so the economy of 500 million folks in the eurozone may now die with it.

************

The sickening irony for us is that the EU mandarins are unelected bureaucrats imposing their edicts on the citizens of sovereign countries, who can in turn complain they have no say in the matter.  But we Americans, a clear majority of voters, voluntarily elected a man to rule them whom they knew hated their guts so much he wanted God to damn them to Hell.  And he is succeeding in what he thinks is God’s mission for him.

We may find out what hope there is for rescue from the Nightmare of Zero tomorrow night and the following morning.  Saturday (1/07) at 9pm eastern and 12 hours later, Sunday (1/08) at 9am eastern, the Pub candidates will go at each other in back-to-back New Hampshire debates.

Huntsman and Gingrich will try to tear Romney apart.  The debate moderators will try to tear Santorum apart.  Perry will be speaking to South Carolineans.  Only Huntsman cares any more about New Hampshire.  South Carolina is what counts now.  The debates this weekend may give us a clue as to how it will turn out.

[1] .  Here’s the Jackie Gleason show’s opening from 1962.  Enjoy!