One of the nicest and sharpest guys in the Senate is John Ensign of Nevada.  As the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he's in a good position to handicap the Senate races for 2008. He did just that at a small briefing on Capitol Hill this week, promising to do so without any Pollyannic varnish.  Judge for yourself.  Currently, of 100 Senate seats, 51 are Democrat (counting Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman), 49 are Republican.  The odds seem slim that the GOP could gain the majority, but less slim that the Dems will expand theirs.  Thirteen months is an eternity on an election clock.  There will be surprises on both sides, count on it. There are 22 Republican seats up, including five retirements, while the Dems have only 12.  Many GOP seats are vulnerable, but the Dems' main targets are:

A fellow I know, Dave Marlett, answered yes to this question and has come up with a real way to do so.  A real way any individual American can. It happened when he wanted to get his house painted last spring.  He couldn't find, out of all the house painting businesses that he called, one that could guarantee it didn't employ illegal alien workers. There have to be companies who follow the law and refuse to hire illegals, he told himself.  But how would he or anyone find them?  What if there was a way to find them, a sort of clearinghouse enabling customers all over the country to locate companies that have pledged to hire only legal workers? That's how Dave conceived of ProAmericaCompanies.     http://rebelholiday.biz/    rebel holiday

The Germans have a word for it:  schadenfreude (shay-din-froy-deh).  It means someone being happy over someone else being unhappy.  The only English equivalent is the term "Roman holiday," referring to the happy excitement Romans got over gladiators' suffering in the Colosseum. It says a lot about us that we don't even have a word for this terrible and all too-common emotion.  Yet all of us have probably experienced it at one time or another, and right now it's hard to resist it regarding folks who are biting the financial dust with ethanol. As this recent story, Ethanol Boom Is Running Out of Gas, in the Wall Street Journal details, the glut of ethanol plants has caused a collapse of ethanol prices while the price of the corn from which it is made is rising.  Thus many ethanol companies are now "under deathwatch." So of course, the corn farmer lobby and ethanol producers are screaming for more subsidies from Congress. They won't get them because a Nobel Prize winner has just pounded in the final nail in ethanol's coffin. No - not the phony you just thought of, a real Nobel Laureate.

On our hike through the Garden of the Gods at the TTP Summer Rendezvous last August, TTPer Ed Sanders gave me a good-natured ribbing about my mentioning in some previous article that I loved to celebrate things by drinking good red wine in a Reidel crystal glass. Ed and his wife Susan, it turns out, are the US distributors for Reidel's competitor, WineStar.  "Our hand-blown unleaded crystal leaves Reidel in the dust, Jack," Ed told me.  "If you drink a favorite red from our Diamond Cru instead, you'll be blown away by the difference." Ed kindly offered to send me a sample to prove it.  There was a shipping delay and it just arrived.  Okay, I asked myself, I've got the glass - what do I celebrate?  Well, tonight, October 12, there is celebration to savor.  Not only is it time to toast the 515th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America, but of the world's greatest buffoon winning the world's most tawdry and degraded award. Whatever glass you have, WineStar or not, fill it full and raise it to Algore's Nobel.  You can be quite sure that one person who will not is Hillary Clinton. 

What is happening to Dem presidential aspirant John Edwards - the Breck Boy - is too awesomely delicious not to quickly brief you on. The National Enquirer is now running a story about Edwards cheating on his wife.  The Enquirer doesn't reveal her name or anything about her identity.  Evidently she is Lisa Druck, the former girlfriend of novelist Jay McInerney who described her as "jaded, cocaine-addled, (and) sexually voracious."

Knowing how consumers will respond is key in estimating how much revenue will come in from a proposed tax rate increase - if any. There are tax economists who can give pretty good estimates about the consumer response.  Unfortunately, they are not allowed to speak in the Joint Tax Committee (JTC) of the U.S. Congress, the "Secret Chamber" where the "official estimate" is made. For decades, a cabal in Congress has had effective control of the official tax scoring committee. Thus, they overestimate the tax revenue that will come in from a rate increase and overestimate the loss in revenue from a tax rate cut, which serves the interest of those who, for ideological reasons, want to increase the size of government. After all too many years, the Bush administration is at least trying to have its Treasury Department tax office (OTA) undertake some dynamic analysis (i.e., considering the behavioral response). However, Congress refuses to fund this modest effort (we are talking about less than a million dollars), let alone clean up JTC, which refuses to allow public scrutiny of its estimating procedures.

OK, this is a shameless plug.  It has nothing whatever to do with geopolitics, history, science, or whatever else we at TTP normally focus on.  My kid sister Judy has written a book - and it would just be wrong if I didn't tell you about it. Judy teaches natural history at the Heard Museum near Dallas.  What that means is that her calling is teaching children to love nature and the critters you find in it.  Now she's written a book to impart that love for children everywhere. Entitled Jessica The Furry Baroo, it's about a dog, Jessica, and her encounters in the woods with various wild things like skunks and snakes.  It's an entertaining and fun way for a young child to understand and appreciate them.  The book is beautifully illustrated, has a story kids will really like, so if you know a young person under 12 you might consider it for them.  It's also a fun book to read aloud to a child too young to read themselves. So - congratulations to Judy, my sister the author! 

In 1966, The Beatles wrote Hillary Clinton's theme song. The quote that most perfectly encapsulates her philosophy of government was delivered on June 28, 2004 at a San Francisco fundraiser for fellow senator Barbara Boxer in which she announced to her wealthy listeners and all Americans in general: We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. The underlying philosophy of the Democrat Party as personified by the PIAPS is fascist thuggery posing as humanitarian compassion.  Witness her project of giving $5000 to every child born in the US (legal or illegal).  "Giving" is not the right term of course - it would only be if it were her money. What she is in fact proposing is to steal at the point of a gun money from people who have earned it and hand it over to those who have not.  That's called theft, not "giving" or "being compassionate." Thus Hillary's Theme Song, the first track on the 1966 Revolver album.  The Beatles had Hillary and her fascist ilk in mind when they wrote it.  It's called The Taxman:

The view of Russia is clear from where I am writing this, Bucharest, Romania.  Month by month, President Putin of Russia has been erecting a new authoritarian model that owes more of its lineage to fascism than communism.   That model can now be named:  Putinism  - a Russian nationalistic authoritarian form of government that pretends to be a free market democracy. Unlike Soviet communism, the new Russian state does not seek to direct every aspect of political and economic life. Instead, through limited, direct control and intimidation, plus strategic investments in both institutions and people, not only in Russia but other nations as well, the Kremlin seeks to ensure favorable global press and decisions beneficial to its interests from political and business leaders around the world. Putinism is shrewd and ruthless -- but how long can it succeed?

The difference was made gin-clear by a recent editorial in the International Herald Tribune, wholly owned by the New York Times, sneeringly entitled The Nanny State? The difference is this:  A bank robber doesn't claim he has a moral right to steal your money.  A bank robber doesn't claim his thievery makes him the moral superior over his victims. Liberals do - which makes them far more immoral than common criminals, thugs and thieves.  According to the IHT, "The United States has long had one of the most meager tax takes in the industrial world [at least they call it ‘take,' as in ‘theft'].  America's social spending [i.e., welfare programs] is almost the stingiest among industrial nations." Such meager and stingy theft is condemned as a "moral outrage," a contemptibly "tightfisted" approach to "public needs." It is liberal thievery that is the moral outrage - and we have a Congress in Washington run by such thieves because too few conservatives have the courage to denounce the criminality.

In recent years, the old "let's tax them more" crowd was on the defensive. But now, with a politically weakened president, the tax increase lobby is out in full force. All the Democrats running for president have promised to increase taxes. Almost every week, some senator or representative advocates more taxes to impose upon the American people. The tax increasing Democrats are betting the new generation of voters does not remember how the old, high tax rates affected the economy. The U.S. has only suffered three "down" quarters of economic growth since 1982 - a record never before enjoyed. To pull off the "new taxes will not hurt" charade, the Democrats need to convince people the Reagan and Bush tax cuts had nothing to do with the unmatched economic growth and job creation. If Benjamin Franklin were with us today, he would rephrase his famous quote and say, with Democrats, nothing is certain but lies and taxes.

Alpbach, Austria. Nestled in the middle of the Alps, this is about as scenic as a place can be. The homes and lodges, all of which have the distinctive Alpine architecture, are graced with lovely hanging red and white flowers. There is no crime, no graffiti, no litter and no apparent poverty. In short, it is the perfect place for the 63rd annual Alpbach European Forum, where many European opinion leaders gather each summer to discuss the problems of, and opportunities for, Europe. Alpbach, of course, is no more representative of Europe than is the Disney-created town of Celebration, Florida, representative of America. They are both attempts to produce the ideal community. Many conference participants seek to fashion their ideal version of Europe, yet fail to understand that the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment and the economists of the Austrian School (along with their University of Chicago comrades) many years ago set forth the rules that need to be followed for Europe and the rest of the planet to achieve peace, tolerance and ever-increasing prosperity. Ironically, America learned the lessons from these Europeans better than did Europe, and now many Asians are learning them and becoming ever freer and more prosperous as a result. Yet today, many in Europe claim they have a more humane economic system than one with the rough edges of American style capitalism. However, reality shows a very different picture.