Dr. Jack Wheeler
‘ANY AMERICAN WHO HATES GEORGE BUSH IS CRAZY’
You're looking at the oldest continuously occupied city in the world. For 7,000 years, people have been living in what is now called the Citadel - the same people who live there now: the Kurds. The Citadel is the center of Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. I am writing this from a hotel room - with wireless Internet! - overlooking this most ancient of cities. The sense of history here is enormous. A couple of dozen miles northeast of here is a wide flat plain called Gaugemela, where in 331 BC, the 40,000 Greek soldiers of Alexander the Great met the 100,000 Persians of Darius III. Utilizing a battle strategy so masterful it is studied by all students of warfare, Alexander destroyed the Persian army, killing 50,000 at a loss of 4,000. Darius fled and was killed by his own generals, who surrendered the entire Persian Empire to Alexander. The Kurds celebrated their liberation from Persian tyranny, and thanked their god, Yazdan, and his prophet, Zoroaster, for Alexander. Today, they thank Yazdan for George W. Bush.
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/12/08
The Chicoms' prospects for their Genocide Olympics keep rolling downhill. The latest headline indicator: Will The Olympics Not Be Televised? Incredibly, the Chicoms are putting so many restrictions hampering television coverage that IOC officials fear the Beijing Games may not be broadcast to the world at all. The whole thing is increasingly likely to be one giant MCF - Mongolian Cluster Foul-up... ...An even bigger MCF may have caused China's Sichuan earthquake last month. It's become known that the earthquake zone was where China had its secret nuclear weapons research facilities. What's much less well-known is that a nuclear explosion occurred at one of these secret underground facilities, either triggering or triggered by the earthquake... ... The HFR now raises its glass of rice wine to toast cumbay! to all those poor demented souls in Seoul suffering from Mad Korean Disease... Yet Mad Obambi Disease is far more dangerous to America than fear of mad cows is to Korea. To see just how dangerous it would be to our national security, watch this 52-second anti-military rant Obambi goes on... ... Which is why the HFR hoists a mug of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer to Tony Rezko in hopes he lives a long life - or at least long enough for him to turn state's evidence and rat on Obambi.
SUMMER 2008
In a few hours from now (6/12 noon), I'm off to Iraqi Kurdistan, then Jordan and Israel. In July, I'll be retracing Cortez's route from Vera Cruz to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) launching his conquest of Mexico in 1519. In August, there's our To The Point Revolutionary Rendezvous in Boston. So this is to let you all know we're switching to our summer schedule for To The Point starting next week. There will be pretty much the same number of articles per week, but we'll be posting them as they come in - rather than compiling them in the TTP Weekly Report on Friday afternoon. Because other TTP authors also will be traveling a lot as well. Right now, for example, Joel Wade is in the wilds of the Australian Outback with his family. Thus instead of a Weekly Report, we'll be sending you a TTP Article Alert whenever a new article is up. Now let's talk about the Revolutionary Rendezvous. The place: Boston. The dates: August 22-24. The schedule:
IPHONES AND WIKIS
Apple announced Monday June 9th at the World Wide Developer Conference that the new iPhone would be released for sale on July11th, 2008. While the original iPhone release was slick and had a great touch interface, it missed the business niche market. The new device should fill those missing elements nicely. Here is why. The new phone has GPS, which is a big plus for the business traveler. It also will provide metadata to an image captured with its built-in camera to provide your exact location where the image was taken. Lets talk 3G. The iPhone with 2.0 software will cruise nicely on 3G networks which the rest of the world has been doing for a while. AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the US has bumped up their networks to 3G levels in all major markets. The effect of this is downloading files, watching UTube videos, and email attachments will now be quicker.
CONFIRMED: BUSH IS NO RONALD REAGAN – AND NEITHER IS MCCAIN
On February 11, 1985, President Ronald Reagan hosted a State Dinner for Saudi King Fahd at the White House. It was earlier in the day at a private meeting between the two that history was made. With oil at sky high prices and the Soviet Union producing more oil than the Saudis, the oil revenues provided Moscow with a cash cow financing an incredibly aggressive expansion of its imperialist empire. The Soviets had added 14 colonies to their empire in recent years, and with Nicaragua and the El Salvador insurgency as its bases, were ready to make a move on Mexico. The largest Soviet embassy in the world was in Mexico City. With this in mind, Reagan told Fahd what he wanted the Saudi king to do: quadruple oil production and crash world oil prices. Fahd was stunned. "Why should I ever want to do that? " was his response.
COMMENCEMENT 2008
[This commencement address was originally published three years ago. We rerun it annually at college graduation time. Feel quite free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.] Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends: It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all reached the finish line: college, goodbye, we're outta here. Yet of course, "commencement" means a beginning, not an end. But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things. So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable movies. If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago. His most famous movie was of course Gone With The Wind. He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy. It's a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost. Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs. Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget. Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you least expect it. Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan turns to his men and says:
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/06/08
It's pretty obvious what most needs to be celebrated this week: that unless she manages to have Obambi rubbed out in the next few months, the nightmare of President Pantsuit has been postponed to at least 2012... ... We need to celebrate something else that crashed and burned like the Clintons this week: the greatest piece of fascist legislation since the 16th Amendment, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act... ... We need to follow this victory up now with a Pro-CO2 Movement, extolling the extraordinary benefits of more CO2 in our atmosphere - such as wiping out hunger. As we discussed in Solar Warming back in September 2005... ... The best way to produce more CO2 is to produce more of what we need more of most: oil, oil and gas, oil and gas and coal. Thus the HFR is grateful to the US Geological Survey and the Minerals Management Service (USGS/MMS) of the Interior Department for releasing its current assessment of our country's oil and gas resources... ... One thing the world needs a lot more of is Moslems converting to Christianity. Which is why a shocked HFR hoists an amazed glass to the Church of England, which announced it is launching a campaign specifically targeting Moslem for conversion... ... and the HFR has lots more this week.
DOING BUSINESS WITH THE FRENCH
Traveling to Paris in search of business for a Belgian steel mill, after trying 14 days to find the responsible person in the ministry of energy, I sent a telex to the "Director General of the ministry of Energy, department Coal Mines", even though I hadn't a clue what his name was. Arriving unannounced the next morning at the ministry I bluntly show my telex to a clerk with a pretentious uniform, and, miracle of miracles, he calls somebody who calls somebody and another uniformed clerk appears who guides me through the portals of heaven. I am ushered in a palatial office, compared to which the Oval Office is a cubicle, and I am introduced to a rotund gentleman behind a massive desk: Director General Vautran of the French Coal Mines. My telex had specified why I wanted to see this Emperor of the French Mines. He looks at me and my young face, asks me my age and: "Do you drink wine?" I admit that I like a glass from time to time and let slip that my father-in-law is a wine merchant. He ducks behind his imperial desk and hauls a 5 liter (1½ gallon) belly bottle of wine, fills two glasses, hands me one, says "santé" and gulps his down. It is not quite 9 o'clock in the morning.
O = ZERO
To The Point is proud to present its candidate for Best Bumper Sticker of 2008: 
The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No résumé, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance. He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya. Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively. What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is "African-American," the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it. Let that sink in: Obambi is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.
THE MCCAIN-HILLARY PACT TO SCREW OBAMA
The Democrat Circus continues to be the zaniest show in town. Obambi exults the nomination is barely his while Hillary the Loser angrily demands she be his running-mate. Angrily demanding something is rarely the most effective negotiating technique to get what you want. A smart person will use it only when both the anger and the demand are a pretense, when you want your demand rejected, not accepted. Yes, intimidation often works when your opponent is a pussy. Obambi is indeed a pussy, and voters' suspicion that he is would only be confirmed if he capitulated to Clinton intimidation - which is why he has to reject her, even though he knows she wants to be rejected. It's not complicated once it's understood what Hillary's game plan is now - and the pact she's making with John McCain to achieve it. So the plan works like this.
HALF-FULL REPORT 053008
Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the HFR was trying to shake a couple of drops out of its far-from-even-half-full glass? Well, fill up the flagon, barkeep, we're going to hoist a few this week. We have a selection of heroes to toast. Let's start with a tankard of Pilsner Urquell for the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus... We follow that with a chalice of Brennan 2006 Viognier with its bouquet of bluebonnets and West Texas crude to that good ol' boy from Wichita Falls, Rex Tillerson, chairman of Exxon-Mobil... Finally, a tumbler of Glen Morangie single-malt (no defiling it with ice or water - the Scots consider that a "mixed drink") to a spy coming in from the cold, CIA Director Michael Hayden... That's the last of the good stuff for now. The HFR pours instead a cup of contempt for bimbo-airhead actress Sharon Stone... Here's the fun episode of the week. The HFR guzzles a goblet of glee over Obambi's latest embarrassment, Father Michael Pfleger... Let's close with a potpourri of good news, because if drank to each one we'd get seriously wasted... One last item. Your humble HFR author takes personal satisfaction in the new movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull .
BLUE PLANET IN GREEN SHACKLES
[Vaclav Klaus is President of the Czech Republic] It is a great pleasure to announce the English translation of my book Blue Planet in Green Shackles, published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Authors often claim their books speak for themselves. I cautiously agree and will, therefore, speak not about the book itself but about my motivations to write it. My thinking today is substantially influenced by the fact that I spent most of my life under a Communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom, which wanted to command not only people but also nature itself. To "command wind and rain" is one of the famous slogans I remember since my childhood. This experience taught me that freedom and rational dealing with the environment are indivisible. It formed my views on the fragility and vulnerability of free society and gave me a special sensitivity to all kinds of factors which may endanger it. I do not, however, live in the past and do not see the future threats to free society coming from the old and old-fashioned communist ideology. The name of the new danger will undoubtedly be different, but its substance will be very similar.
WHY THE LEFT HATES THE GOOD NEWS IN IRAQ
Whenever retreat-now activists or their favored presidential aspirant are confronted with our progress in Iraq, their stock reply is, "Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq in 2003." Well, I happen to agree with Sen. Barack Hussein Obama and his supporters on that count: At most, the terrorists had a tenuous connection with Saddam's regime. But it's 2008, not 2003. And our next president will take office in 2009. It's today's reality that matters. And today's reality is that Al Qaeda is nearing final collapse, Iran has failed in its bid to take over Iraq, and the democratically elected government is gaining in popularity. What don't the critics like? Democracy? The defeat of Al Qaeda? Moslems turning to the US military for help? Troop cuts? The dramatically improved human-rights situation? What's the problem here? The answer's simple:
THE GIFT OF OBAMA – TO REPUBLICANS
Rupert Murdoch is one of the world's savviest businessmen - but his prediction today (5/29) that Obambi will defeat McCain next November in a landslide is straightforward idiocy. Someone could make an intelligible argument that he could come out on top in a close contest - but a landslide? That's nuts. For the odds are far, far greater that it will be the other way around. McCain is going to wipe the electoral floor with Obambi. Obambi is going to be torched by white women, Reagan Democrats, Hillary supporters, and most everybody else except blacks, academics, college kids being taught by the academics, and urban-elitist liberals whose brains have been similarly damaged by the academics. He'll carry Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and maybe New York - maybe. Not a lot more. Not even California. Murdoch would have been on much firmer ground predicting a Dem landslide in the House and Senate - but that wouldn't be news, for that's the universally accepted wisdom. Predictions are ubiquitous that the Pubs are going to lose 10 to 20 House seats and 4 to 6 Senate seats at a minimum. It could be much worse, a lot worse. So much worse that the Dems will gain a filibuster-proof majority of 60+ seats in the Senate, preventing the passage of any decent McCain legislation or the confirmation of any decent McCain judicial appointment. How ironic, then, that the hero who can save the day and rescue the helpless Pubbies from certain disaster is... the Dems' very own champion, Hussein Obambi.
HALF-FULL REPORT 052308
The HFR's goblet is raised this week in sympathy to this young lady and not to her murderer. She is Mary Jo Kopechne. Her death at the hands of a drunk Ted Kennedy served one purpose for which America must be forever grateful: it prevented his ever being elected President of the United States. The HFR goblet contains no mawkish, treacly, fawning oleaginous encomiums to a man who has done more objective damage to his country than any American alive today. Millions more would be alive today if it were not for his truly fanatical crusade in the Senate to allow mothers to murder their unborn babies for any reason whatsoever. Those millions have been replaced by countless hordes of illegal aliens thanks to his immigration bills of 1965 and 1986. No one - no one - has done more to destroy American culture on purpose by being the key advocate of every culturally destructive left-wing lunacy for the last 40 years. On purpose because there is clear evidence he was a traitor, offering to work with Soviet leaders such as Yuri Andropov to thwart Ronald Reagan's efforts to win the Cold War. The HFR does not gloat upon the pain and suffering of any fellow human being. His type of brain cancer is fatal and cannot be cured. It affects the area of the brain that controls speech, writing, and reading. The HFR hopes that his suffering will be minimal and his passing peaceful - but nonetheless raises a full glass of gratitude that he will soon no longer be in the Senate and in a position to do further damage to America.
DOING BUSINESS WITH GERMANS
Forty years ago I found out what it's like to do business with Germans. The lessons learned, I've discovered since, can apply to dealing with businessfolk in general who don't play fair. During my stay as a director in a Belgian steel mill I was in direct competition with the biggest steel mills of Germany. I was the first to export our special steels to Germany, something like selling sand to the Arabs. When I started travelling to Germany I found a closed market from the heavy steel industry down to the smallest distributor. They had one price list and the biggest buyers, the German coal mines, still had to buy rigidly from the local distributor. The mines bought thousands and thousands of tons per week and the local distributor got rich while asleep. It was an ironclad market, completely locked up. When I visited the distributors they laughed me out of town. So I went to the German coal mines and the German ship yards with impossibly low prices. What I expected happened, those consumers called their distributors, who called the big steel mills. Within a couple of weeks I was called out of the blue by a "Herr General Direktor Wolff" who from very high in his steel blue sky ordered me to cease my foolish interference in the German market or else! I told him politely that I was going into the German steel market no matter what...
OUR HATEAMERICA MEDIA HATES OUR WINNING IN IRAQ
Do we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there? If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines. Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating. But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily. You won't see that above the fold in The New York Times. And forget the Obama-intoxicated news networks - they've adopted his story line that the clock stopped back in 2003.
IS OBAMA ON DRUGS?
The number of extraordinary gaffes committed by Obambi has been proliferating of late. Among those just this month are not knowing Afghans don't speak Arabic and that his own state of Illinois doesn't border Kentucky. Most incredible of all is his telling an audience, "I have now been to 57 states with one left to go," then says that one is "Alaska and Hawaii." No matter how exhausted from campaigning you are, you don't make a mistake like that under any normal circumstances. Saying there are 57 states - actually 58, or is it 59? - is such an egregiously stupid error that it is evidence of brain malfunction. A neuroscientist with years of research into drug abuse and brain chemistry tells To The Point that the behavior exhibited by Obama is consistent with the use of either amphetamines or cocaine. In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obambi admitted his drug use when young: "Pot (marijuana) had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow (cocaine) when you could afford it. Not smack (heroin), though." Teen-age drug use isn't, of course, evidence for its use in one's 40s. But when someone who may be elected President of the United States starts behaving suspiciously, then it's justified to ask that those suspicions be allayed. Thus, To The Point calls for Barack Hussein Obama to be drug tested.
HALF-FULL REPORT 051608
Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the HFR's glass was overflowing? This week the HFR is staring at a glass that's just about empty. What with the eco-fascists' victory of fraud over science regarding polar bears, the homo-fascists' victory of cultural insanity in the California courts, the Republicans in Congress in full yellow-belly retreat from any conservative principles (e.g., over half of House Pubs voted for $300 billion of pork in the Farm Bill on Wednesday, 5/14), John McCain proving on Monday (5/12) he remains a clueless ignoramus on "global warming," and other such dregs of the week, the HFR has to search hard for a few drops of good cheer. Should we start with the tabloids? Perhaps you've seen, as have millions of others as they stood in the check-out line at the market, tabloid front pages blaring: 
Trashy tabloids like the Globe are not to be taken seriously, of course. Is Obambi bisexual? The HFR has no idea. But what is clear is that...
THE WAGES OF WHITE HOUSE COWARDICE
When President Bush condemned the "false comfort of appeasement" in his speech to the Israeli Knesset, Barack Hussein Obama and the Pelosicrats promptly went bananas with phony outrage over Bush's statement, thinking it was comparing their Dem Messiah to Neville Chamberlain. But the compulsive appeasers Bush was really talking about were his Secretary of State Condi Rice, his National Security Advisor Steven Hadley - and, indeed, himself. If Hussein Obama wasn't such an effeminate metrosexual pantywaist, he would have brushed off the defensive chip on his padded shoulder and condemned Bush for embodying such a "false comfort." Instead, he doesn't have the brains - nor do his Pelosicrat hysterical defenders - to grasp that his "protest too much" claim of not being an appeaser only serves to highlight in voters' brains that he is - that he would be vastly more of a coward in the White House than GW.
HALF-FULL REPORT 05/09/08
The HFR opens this week by celebrating Naqba - that glorious event the suicidal schmucks of the Arab world, the Palestinians, call "the Catastrophe." Yes, the creation of Israel 60 years ago in May of 1948 was a catastrophe for people filled with envy and hate. But for anyone who admires triumphs of the human spirit, the existence of Israel is not just something to celebrate on its 60th birthday, but every single day.... .... From one inspiring story to another. The HFR raises a glass of Chianti to a great Italian, Roberto Calderoli. The government of Libya had threatened (last Friday, 5/02) new Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with "catastrophic consequences" should Calderoli be appointed to his Cabinet. That was because in February of 2006, Calderoli, a leader of Italy's Northern League Party, appeared in an interview on national television wearing a t-shirt with cartoons of Mohammed - in sympathy with the Danish cartoonists who drew them.... ... The HFR switches to Chablis to look down its nose at all the white wine liberals in such a tizzy over Hillary Clinton's channeling George Wallace by saying "hard working white Americans support me." Then her key advisor Paul Begala had the chutzpah to point out an obvious truth: that "Obama can't win with just the eggheads and African-Americans." So here is the HFR's prediction.... ... We close this week's HFR with two additional indications of why Obambi Hussein is going to lose.
HOW TO BE FREE OF FOREIGN OIL
In a speech last Friday (5/02), President Bush called for increased oil and gas production "in Alaska and our outer continental shelf." Nancy Pelosi actually had the Orwellian effrontery to respond: "Drilling is the failed energy policy of yesterday that has brought us record gas prices today." Producing more oil causes higher prices! How Orwellian doublethink can you get? She sneered at Bush's policy of increasing production and his promise to veto her party's attempt to demonize oil producers by calling it "drill and veto." If the Republicans from John McCain on down are too stupid to take the Dems to the electoral cleaners with that, they deserve to lose. If McCain & GOPco did have the brains, we could free of foreign oil, or well on our way, by the end of his first term. Unfortunately, they don't - especially McCain. He's so braindead he's opposed to drilling ANWR because it would be like drilling in the Grand Canyon. But if by chance, his economic advisor, former Senator from Texas Phil Gramm, can persuade him to put national security over a howling Alaska wilderness, and get him to somehow grasp that the way to be free of foreign oil is through increased domestic production, then here's how it can be done.
THE GREATEST ENEMY OF MOSLEMS IS SAUDI ARABIA
As corrosive as the Saudis have been for our system, they're far worse for Moslems. The crucial point you have to grasp is that the Saudis don't give a downtown damn about Moslems - flesh-and-blood men, women or children. They only care about Islam. They'd sacrifice tens of millions of Moslems to further their perversion of the faith. I've visited over a dozen Moslem countries and many more that have significant Moslem minorities. In every case, I've found the Saudis funding evil. From Thailand to the United States, the Saudi goal is to prevent Moslems from integrating into their host societies. In poor countries, such as Kenya, they pay families to pull their children out of state schools and send them to madrassahs - where they learn to recite the Koran, but no career skills. The Saudis don't mind if Moslems live in poverty and squalor - as long as Moslems don't identify with the societies around them. They want strict religious and cultural apartheid.
TRYING TO MAKE A BUCK IN BELGIUM
This is a personal story of what it's like doing business in Europe - specifically a part of Europe called Wallonia, or French-speaking Belgium. In 1976 Occidental Oil constructed the Claymore Alpha gas production platform for the North Sea. The platform had a total steel component of more than 600,000 tons. The modus operandi was to construct the platforms with prefabricated modules of 500 tons weight max each and put them together module by module. Since the North Sea only allows a good weather gap of 1 to 2 months each year in summer time, the costs and time delays were staggering. A Dutch maritime engineer-pioneer, Pieter Heerema, had the fantastic idea to start constructing with 5,000 ton modules, ten times as big as before. He was the first to use an old tanker, welding compartments in it, and with the help of sensors and computer steering pump with massive pumps seawater in or out of the different compartments to counterbalance the heavy loads. But he had a very big problem. I made the mistake of trying to solve it in Belgium.
HALF-FULL REPORT 05/02/08
What could be more delightful than the Dems tearing themselves apart? That they go broke doing it. The best news of the week - Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright trashing Obambi and Obambi trashing him back - shouldn't qualify for the HFR as the glass is just too intoxicatingly, overflowingly full. And, besides, we discussed this in Obama in Greece. But right in second place has got to be Democrat Coffers Run Dry. The Dems have raised so many millions - and blown them all. Only Democrats could do this. What do they know about living within their means, anyway? Even a DNC official admitted that it's "nuts that we're spending so much money fighting each other instead of Republicans." To which we can only say, don't stop now. We're enjoying seeing your IQ-challenged donors seeing their money go up in smoke, for nothing. We're also enjoying listening to the grinding and gnashing of Democrat teeth over...
OBAMA IN GREECE
If you could bring the playwrights of Ancient Greece - Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes - from 5th century Athens to watch the Democrat primary race of today, they would recognize it instantly. It is a perfect Greek tragedy. All the incredible amounts of money being spent, all the frantic energy and hysteria, the entire swirling maelstrom created by a vast cast of characters - all of it is for naught, for there can be only one outcome, an inescapable outcome of doom. The old playwrights would scoff at our naïve notions of free will, our arguments that each of the participants in the tragedy - such as the "superdelegates" - really do have the capacity to act for themselves. No, they would say, the characters have no choice, for no matter what they do, they are drawn into a trap of ineluctable fate, like a fly caught in a web of invisible silk strands, so invisible he doesn't know he's caught while the spider approaches. The 5th century Greeks would have understood the play. A 4th century Greek would understand what happens to the audience watching the play.
THE LIBERAL HAT TRICK OF IGNORANCE, ENVY, AND DELUSION
Have you ever wondered why so many people see higher taxes and more government as the solution to every problem, despite the empirical evidence that more government reduces economic efficiency and growth, plus diminishes our liberties? As will be shown, the arguments from the big government advocates are usually based on a combination of economic and historical ignorance, envy, and just plain delusional thinking. The New York Times editorial page has long been a bastion of this delusional thinking. On April 24, the paper produced one of its classic inane editorials in favor of higher taxes on labor and capital, which contained this gem of a sentence: "Memo to McCain: 401(k) savers get no benefit from a low capital-gains [tax] rate." Everyone who has ever taken basic economics should know a lower tax rate on an investment (i.e., the capital-gains tax) will lead to a higher rate of return, and hence the investment will be worth more. Though this concept is not difficult for most people to understand, it seems beyond the knowledge and reasoning ability of those who write editorials for the New York Times. Unfortunately, the Times has plenty of global company when it comes to economic ignorance, envy and delusional thinking. We find it among many politicians in almost every government world-wide.
THE COMING DESTRUCTION OF RUSSIA
Which of two kinds of fascism do you think are more dangerous - one stemming from a culture's or a people's feeling of inferiority or superiority? If a country possessing a Fascism of Inferiority got into a war with a country possessing a Fascism of Superiority, all else being equal which do you think has a better chance of winning? Russians are xenophobic because they deeply suffer from a lack of cultural self-confidence and an inferiority complex towards the West. Han Chinese are xenophobic because they feel they are a culturally and racially superior form of humanity. Westerners, Japanese, Blacks, Tibetans, et al, are all sub-human compared to the Han. Russia is dying - literally. Life expectancy is lower than that of Bangladesh. Millions of Russian men drink a gallon of vodka a week. Millions of Russian women are sterile after having so many abortions. This is a culture with a death-wish, one that does not want to survive. The conclusion that CIA Director Michael Hayden draws from Russia's demographic collapse, given in a speech at Kansas State yesterday (4/30), is that Russia will have to import millions of foreign workers. There's only one place that can supply a sufficient number of such workers: China. The question really is, will Russia surrender peacefully or put up a fight - maybe even a nuclear fight?
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/25/08
We open the HFR this week by asking: Dare we hope for Hillary? It's a fun debate over who would be easier for McCain to beat, Obambi or the PIAPS, almost as much fun as watching them rip each other's political guts out. McCain could score a Reagnesque electoral victory over either of these two losers, but I want him to go up against Her Shrillness. There's suddenly real hope that he will... ... Which brings us to the delightful subject of the North Carolina GOP Anti-Obama ad. It is fabulous -- And it is really funny to see how many smart conservatives - even Rush Limbaugh who's normally really smart - have been suckered by John McCain's denouncing it... ... Let's raise a more than half-full glass of congratulations to the brave leaders of the North Carolina Republican Party. We need more Republicans with their courage. What we need fewer of is the editorial writers of the New York Times, whose op-eds provide the propaganda marching orders for the entire liberal media. Looks like we get our wish... ... We close the HFR this week with absolutely the most thrilling and uplifting headline of recent times: Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries How great is that? Nothing like a little mass world-wide starvation to make people doubt in the religious dogma of warm-mongering. Finally - finally - it just may be that people aren't willing to go back to the Stone Age in order to placate Algore.
JOHN NEHRING 1942-2008
One of the most beloved members of our To The Point family has passed on. Anyone who knew him could assure you that you'll never meet a kinder, more decent man than John Nehring. There was a sweetness, a gentleness to him, combined with a profound love of liberty and a core of pro-American steel. An Eagle Scout and National Merit Scholar from Columbus, Ohio, John graduated near the top of his class at the Air Force Academy. He was an F-4 Phantom fighter pilot in Vietnam, got a Masters degree in economics at Georgetown, taught business & economics at the Air Force Academy, served in the Air Force for 30 years and retired as a full bird colonel. For the past several years, John taught economics at Embry-Riddle University in Colorado Springs, opening his students' eyes to the great advocates of economic freedom, such as Ludwig von Mises, Frederic Bastiat, and Milton Friedman.
THE CHINA INTERNET FREEDOM PROJECT
While Beijing was sending in troops to crack down on protesters in Tibet, they also made sure to boot out the foreign journalists, jam the short wave radios, and lock down the Internet. So, how did the Tibetans get the news out? By using DynaWeb and UltraReach - tiny software tools that seek out cracks in the Chinese Great Firewall and connect users' computers to the biggest anti-censorship network in the world. These tools scramble the users' communications and shuttle the data back and forth along an underground cyber network in a way that cannot be detected by high-tech monitoring and jamming equipment. At this point, the censors' firewalls virtually disappear to the users. They can now access blocked websites and also freely communicate with the rest of the world. The group that built this special network and tools like DynaWeb and UltraReach and recent additions, GPass and FirePhoenix, is the Global Internet Freedom Consortium or GIF. You may have never heard of GIF, but it is easily the largest and most mature anti-censorship operation in the world -- loved by users, loathed and attacked by censors.
OBAMA THE FASCIST SAVIOR
Speaking last February of the man she knows better than anyone else, Michelle Obama said that her husband, Illinois Senator and Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., is the only candidate for president who understands that before America can solve its problems, Americans have to fix their "broken souls." She also said that her husband's unique understanding of the state of souls of the American people makes him uniquely qualified to be President. But then, saving souls is hard work, and Mrs. Obama won't place the whole burden on her husband. He'll make the Americans work for him. As she put it, "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed." At base, Mrs. Obama's statement is nothing less than a renunciation of democracy and an embrace of fascism. The basic idea of liberty is that people have a natural right to live their lives as usual and to be uninvolved and uninformed. And they certainly have a right to expect that their government will butt out of their souls.
ENDING CHINA’S THREAT TO TAIWAN
The single greatest threat to peace in the world, the one with the most potential to escalate into all-out and even nuclear war between China and the United States, lies in the Formosa Straits, the 100 miles of ocean separating mainland China and the island of Taiwan. At this moment, the Communist Chinese have 1,400 CSS-6 and CSS-7 short-range ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan. The handful of Tien Kung-3 (Sky-Bow-3) air defense missile batteries (based on our Patriot II system) the Taiwanese have is wholly inadequate against this massive threat. What Taiwan needs is a missile defense system that can blanket its west coast facing the mainland as well as its cities, that is cheap to build, quick to build, easy to operate, and very effective. A system that would allow few if any Chinese missiles to get through, that would blow any Chinese attacking warplanes out of Taiwan's skies, and against which any Chinese landing craft in an amphibious invasion would be dead ducks. This system could be put in place within 24 months. Once it is, China's threat to Taiwan is essentially gone. Here's how Taiwan can do it.
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/18/08
The HFR can stand only so much good news. How can it report on things half-full when the glass is overflowing? So this week we'll have to use one of those huge beer steins from which Bavarians imbibe at the Munich Hofbraühaus: 
We begin, of course with Obama The Infantilizomaniac. 
ENDING INFLATION IN THREE WORDS
There is no more horrific tax than inflation. It can wipe out a lifetime of savings with ease. It's also the easiest way for politicians to escape fiscal jams of their creation. Medicare, for example, goes cash-negative within 24 months from now. Its cost to taxpayers will mount almost exponentially in the years to come. There are only three ways to deal with the cost: raise taxes monumentally, cut benefits drastically, or inflate the value of the dollar to cover the ballooning cost. Which one do you think Congress will choose? There is a three-word solution to this, and TTP's favorite Paulista, economics professor John Nehring, had better be prepared or else his head will explode with excitement. The three words are:
DOES CONGRESSMAN WAXMAN WANT TO DESTROY THE US ECONOMY?
What would you think if members of Congress voted to require the U.S. military to forgo purchases of most of Canada's oil and thus be forced to increase their dependency on Saudi Arabian produced oil? As bizarre as it may seem, this is not a hypothetical question. It is precisely what Congress did in passing the falsely named Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Chairman Henry Waxman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wrote a letter to Chairman Jeff Bingaman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on March 17 of this year, detailing the "proper interpretation" of the Act. Mr. Waxman's interpretation makes one wonder if his purpose is to cause as much damage to the US economy as possible.
TRULY POST-MODERN ART
"Modern art" is typified by meaningless blobs of paint splattered on a canvas, with "post-modern art" equally mindless and unintelligible. TTP is therefore pleased to salute a real artist Chris Hopkins and his magnificent painting Saluting Reagan: 
The price of the original oil on canvas is $50,000. A poster, however, is only 24 bucks. At that price, we can all afford to salute the 20th century's greatest American president.
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/11/08
The HFR this week salutes Absolut Vodka for its absolute stupidity in running an ad depicting pre-1836 Mexico as a map of "an ideal Absolut world." These Swedish marketing geniuses were inundated with emails like the one I sent, informing them that I shall never, ever, buy a bottle of Absolut for the rest of my life. I encourage you to make the same vow... ... The good news continues in South Korea. The triumph this week of newly-elected president Lee Myung-bak's Grand National Party in parliamentary elections cementing Lee's majority control of the government means his plans for overthrowing Kim Jong-il's communist regime and unifying Korea can proceed... ... The HFR raises a glass of no-pity to the terrorist-loving Palestinians of Gaza... ...and a glass of schadenfreude to Oprah Winfrey, who has seen her popularity and tv-show ratings take a nose dive since she came out in support of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr... ...while celebrating the unfolding exposure of Obambi as a crook and a lightweight. The more one looks past Obambi's smooth rhetoric, the uglier it gets. And the squishier. For it's his ballbreaker wife, Michelle, who has the cojones in the family, not him. More and more now, it's becoming clear: Obama is a pussy.
THE ISLAMIC OPPRESSION OF CHRISTIANS IN EGYPT
I have recently returned to the United States from Egypt where I was on a fact-finding mission to see what life is like for non-Moslems who live under Islam. What I saw was a dire situation of oppression and discrimination that many in America and the West have all but ignored. A place with rampant police brutality and corruption, where non-Moslems are second-class citizens at best, who are brutally victimized on a daily basis. All this in a nation which is a popular U.S. tourist spot, and has been the recipient of American aid in excess of $28 billion in the last three decades. I wanted to learn what life would be like if our enemies and their allies got their way. What I saw was an example of the harsh life in store for future American generations in Islamic-dominated regions of the U.S. if we do not work to bring attention to the issue of Islamic oppression now at this critical time in American history.
DOES THE DEMOCRAT PARTY BELONG IN JAIL?
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. - Mark Twain (1897) Twain's humorous quip, unfortunately, is all too close to the current reality. "Willful misconduct," a criminal offense, is legally defined as "intentionally doing that which should not be done or intentionally failing to do that which should be done, when knowing that injury to a person will probably result, or recklessly disregarding the possibility that injury to a person may result." Congress, by failing to act in the case of a clear and present danger to parts of the American financial system, could reasonably be considered engaging in "willful misconduct." And here is why.