Dennis Turner
VISUALIZING THE IMPOSSIBLE
In this occasional series on science, which started a year ago (2/06) with The Search for Dark Matter, I discussed Einstein's concept of special relativity last August in A Personal Journey Through Relativity. Jack Wheeler provided an engaging account of it two years ago (2/05) in Aristotle, Einstein, and Ayn Rand. Einstein though did not have a Theory of Relativity -- ‘a' as in one. He had two. His Special Theory is about the relativity of time. His General Theory is about the relativity of gravity. The puzzles and paradoxes of the first pale in comparison to those of the second. So much so that most anyone can visualize clocks telling time at different rates and astronauts coming back from another galaxy much younger than the people they left on earth. The math and explanations may be hard but one can at least visualize the effects of special relativity. It seems well-nigh impossible to visualize gravity not as a force but as a manifestation of curved space.
LIGHTWEIGHT JACKASSES, HEAVYWEIGHT ELEPHANTS
All the CW (conventional wisdom) talk in DC here is about how the Republicans are deep in doom over their prospects for the presidency in 2008 while the Dems are high in the sky. Don't buy it. It's the Defeatocrats who are in deep kim-chee. There are now 9 - nine - of them running for their party's presidential nomination: Joe Biden, Wesley Clark, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack, Barack Hussein Obama Jr, and Hillary Clinton. Lightweight City. Only one of them can be taken seriously, possibly two. Kucinich is a pint-sized left-wing moonbat. Dodd is a tall left-wing moonbat who loves Fidel Castro. Clark is a flake on a ego-trip. Richardson has a room-temperature IQ. The Breck Boy (Edwards) is a Jay Leno joke (re: his rich/poor "Two Americas" campaign theme, Leno shows a picture of his $12 million mansion and quips, "We know which America he lives in"). None of them have an ounce of gravitas, political weight, heft, seriousness. Lighter than any of them, however, is The Obamarama. He is nothing but a media creation of hype and frenzy, stories about whom are more appropriate in the supermarket tabloids among the latest breathless revelations regarding Brad and Jen and Jolie. The PIAPS is as good as the Dems have got. Now let's look at the other party's roster.
THE SKELETON IN ISLAM’S CLOSET
I very much appreciated the responses and comments regarding The Fragility of Islamofascism posted in the TTP User Forum. I also received requests to explain the Koran's "Satanic Verses" more fully. The saga of the Satanic Verses starts with the earliest accounts of Mohammed's life written by accepted Islamic scholars such as Ibn Ishaq (died 767 AD) and al-Tabari (d. 923). "Accepted" means by Islamic tradition. Mohammed supposedly died in 632 and Ishaq wrote about him over 100 years later - so could not have interviewed anyone who knew him. Yet we only know of Ishaq through quotes of him by Tabari, who lived 300 years after Mohammed. Thus the earliest source of Mohammed's life and the alleged founding of Islam was written three centuries later. The saga of Mohammed is a myth for which there is no genuine historical evidence whatever. I discussed this in The Myth of Mecca, written a few days after the Moslem attack on America of September 11, 2001. So we are talking "sacred history" here, not actual history.
HILLARY IN DANGER
The 2008 Democrat presidential primary season has gotten off to a good start -- for the Republicans. As the Democrat Party presidential aspirants finished their speeches last week to the party's winter meeting, the early big political fact is the dangerous populist and anti-war pull that the candidates feel. This is particularly dangerous for Sen. Hillary Clinton as she ratchets-up, almost weekly, her anti-war Iraqi rhetoric and policy. Only Jimmy Carter after the Watergate scandal and her husband after the fall of the Soviet Union got a pass from the American electorate on their national-security shortcomings. Hillary won't be so lucky.
REPUBLIC TO OLIGARCHY: A History of America
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin, then 81, had gained a reputation for shrewd realism. The handiwork of the Continental Congress impressed him, but he believed it imperfect; he knew it was better than any other plan for government on earth but he feared the plan might not survive. As he left the Convention for the last time, a group of anxious citizens asked him what kind of government the delegates had created. The deliberations were secret and, so, the curiosity of Philadelphians had reached a fever pitch. Responding to the inquiry, Dr. Franklin replied, "a republic, if you can keep it." Sadly, 220 years later, we have lost it. Today our nation is largely run by the unelected heads of the federal independent regulatory commissions. Those heads are the most powerful political leaders in the United States, more powerful than the President, any member of Congress, and any federal judge. Their will is very much the law. In their hands rest legislative, executive, and judicial powers which they wield daily without having to answer to anyone for the consequences. They rule as oligarchs. A simple legal fix could put an end to their unconstitutional rule.
HEDGED IN BY BUREAUCRATS
What is a "hedge fund"? If you have trouble answering the question, you are not alone, because the term is commonly used to describe many types of pooled investments that may have little in common with each other. Yet despite the lack of agreement about what exactly are hedge funds, a host of politicians, commentators and financial regulators now advocate more regulation of them. I am sure you are just so surprised.
REGIME CHANGE IN KOREA
Note that neither "North" nor "South" is prefixed to Korea, for we are talking about coming regime change in both. The current ruling anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-appeasement party ruling South Korea is about to be replaced by its opposite: pro-American, pro-capitalist, anti-appeasement. Its leaders are determined to precipitate the collapse of North Korea's communist tyranny. They plan to do it with the help of the Communist Chinese. And George Bush.
THE REAL SURGE AND THE PHONY CIVIL WAR
The Traitor Media and their Democrat allies are so fond of chanting the mantra of "the civil war in Iraq." Google "civil war" plus "Iraq" and you'll get 3,800,000 hits. Barack Hussein "The Apostate" Obama and other lefty Senators condemn Bush for sending Americans to "die in someone else's civil war." The truth is that there is no civil war in Iraq. A real civil war is two armies or armed militias fighting each other for control of a government or country. They fight each other. This is exactly what Sunni and Shia terrorists are not doing. They are engaged in committing terrorist atrocities upon each other's civilian population. What is going on in Iraq is terrorism, pure and unadulterated. You can call it "sectarian" terrorism and violence, but it's not civil war. Neither Sunni-Baathist-AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) terrorists nor Shia-Moqtada terrorists are fighting to topple the elected Maliki government and seize governmental power. Neither is fighting the other. Meanwhile, Senators and Congressistas and the Media are all blathering on about the 21,000 extra troops to be positioned mostly in downtown Baghdad. But that's really a diversion, a small part of the real surge.
STILL HOPE FOR EUROPE
For those doom-and-gloom pessimists convinced of the inevitability of the Islamization of Europe, here's a wonderfully cheery news bulletin: Moslem imams are fleeing Holland in droves. Of course, the BBC reports this as proof of Dutch Islamophobia. The tuth is that the Dutch are finally waking up to the threat of Islamofascism in their midst. There are over one million Moslems in Holland now, and in cities like Rotterdam, well over a third of the children are Moslem. Now, if the Dutch could just get regular Moslem immigrants to follow their imams out of the country... Yet there is far better news in France. The fate of Europe will be decided there in the presidential election on April 22, with a runoff if necessary on May 6. The "Sego-Sarko" race is the most important political event in the world for 2007.
A COMMUNITY OF VALUES
Wow. That's my and everybody else's reaction to our first To The Point Rendezvous in Las Vegas last weekend (1/26-28). The abundantly clear lesson we learned was: members of To The Point really get along with each other! At every get together, I was so hesitant to begin speaking as I didn't want to interrupt folks who were having such an obvious good time together. Then again, I had such a good time. Another thing I learned is that TTPers are a curious bunch. I can't begin to remember all the topics we discussed. Countries all over the world. The Washington circus. How politicians exemplify a Hyper-Peter Principle. The Peter Principle, that people are promoted to their level of incompetence, applies to companies. Politicians (and bureaucrats in general) shoot way beyond it, into hyper-incompetence. The just-elected governor of Nevada, Jim Gibbons, is a perfect example. He is an absolute fool, and is wife Dawn is an even greater ditz. Sad to say, he's a Republican. Yet a neighbor Democrat governor, Bill Richardson, is...
THE FRAGILITY OF ISLAMOFASCISM
[This is the text of a speech I am giving to the Council for National Policy at Amelia Island, Florida, Friday, February 2.] It has been my good fortune to experience a great deal of the world and get to know people from close to 200 countries. There is a common humanity shared by most folks around the globe. The fact that there has never been a war between two genuine democracies clearly shows that most people prefer peace to war, and simply want a decent life for their families and children. Yet as we all know, history is full of examples of people going berserk, falling victim to some frenzied hysteria. It can be a frenzy of paranoia, such as the lunacy we are currently experiencing over "global warming." It can be a frenzy of greed, like the dotcom bubble or the Tulip Craze. The worst are frenzies of criminal insanity, like the Gulag Communism of the Soviet Union, the National Socialism of Hitler's Germany, or the barbaric imperialism of Tojo's Japan. An entire people like the Germans or Japanese can go criminally, murderously nuts. Such mass criminality has to be ended by whatever means necessary. But once the frenzy is over, the people crazed by it can become normal human beings again. Just such a mass criminal insanity has today taken over the minds of a substantial fraction of the world's Moslems. Today, we're going to talk about how to put an end to it.
THE SUICIDE OF SHARIA
Some two years ago Saudi clerics issued fatwas forbidding Moslems to play soccer unless its rules were replaced by "Islamic rules," or it was used as physical training for jihad. To the extent that anybody noticed that in the West, they were promptly dismissed as the inconsequential ravings of misguided fanatics. This is not likely to be the fate of recent promises by British chancellor and prime minister-in-waiting, Gordon Brown, to make Britain "a key hub for facilitating Islamic finance" and to turn London into "a major enabling and structuring center for global Islamic finance." Yet, completely different as these two cases appear to be at first blush, they are both part of a concerted effort by radical Islamists to make the rest of us accept their reactionary worldview as legitimate in the name of multiculturalism and diversity.
THE COMING PALACE COUP IN IRAN
It has become obvious that US action against Iran has dramatically sped up recently. The US Navy has a second carrier group now in the Persian Gulf, overwhelmingly intimidating military power on Iran's doorstep. At last, Bush has authorized US forces to hunt down and kill or capture Iranian operatives in Iraq. The White House is targeting Iranian financial assets throughout the world. So, finally we are going faster - but towards what? Is the US goal a democratic revolution effecting genuine regime change, with all the mullah terror masters out of power? No - not if the State Department has its wish. Our Foggy Bottom Pinstripes are doing everything they can to prevent genuine regime change in Iran. What they want instead is a palace coup, the seizure of the government by different forces within the government, not outside it. Here's how it's going to come down.
OBAMATRUTH, HILLARYTRUTH
The fun of watching The Obamarama being dismantled by the Clintonista attack machine continues. It may, or may not, surprise you to learn that certain members of the PIAPS's "Oppo" team (opposition research) read To The Point. When they saw The Audacity of Apostasy earlier this month, they promptly zeroed in on the meanest and stupidest way to attack Obama's Moslem upbringing. How his campaign is about to respond will totally blow you away. You better be sitting down. But rather than let her campaign be blown away by him, she has already come out with an even more vicious assault. Here are the entertaining details....
SHUT YOUR MOUTH: The Democrat Fascist Assault on the First Amendment
The conservative "activist" community here in Washington got itself into a foaming lather last week over the attempt by Senate Democrats to subject their activities to criminal penalties. Section 220 of the S.1 "lobbying reform" bill required all activists - even bloggers on the internet - who communicate in any way with 500 or more members of "the public" to register and file reports with the government as lobbyists, and face criminal penalties including heavy fines and one year in jail if they fail to do so. It was a straightforward and outrageous assault on the First Amendment, true blue fascism embedded right in the very first Senate bill in our new Democrat-controlled Congress. The New York Times had nary a word of complaint, nor did the rest of the major media. Yet it was simply the latest example of the assault Democrats are making on our 1st Amendment free speech rights across the board. For their "lobbying reform" is part of a growing comprehensive effort to silence and criminalize speech liberals don't like.
HATING HORATIO
Ancient Rome's greatest historian was Titus Livius, known to us as Livy (59 BC-17 AD). In the Second Book of his monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), he tells the famous story of Horatio at the Bridge. In 510 BC, Rome was threatened with destruction from an invading army of Etruscans. All Romans living in the countryside had abandoned their homes and fled for protection inside the city. The city walls were heavily garrisoned, but the most vulnerable point was a wooden bridge, the Pons Sublicius, across the river Tiber and into Rome. When Etruscan forces focused their attack on the bridge, the Roman troops guarding it fled in fear - save for one man, a soldier named Horatius, whom we call Horatio. Watching the President's State of the Union speech last night, I thought of Horatio at the bridge. When I talked to Tony Snow, the president's spokesman today, I understood why.
CLEANING YOUR REGISTRY AND HARD DISK WISELY
I've discussed playing with the Windows Registry in the past. Tweaking the registry is risky but necessary. As a constant reader of what's new on the net, I found a new safe registry cleaner that's easy to use and is free. For Windows users, there's usually nothing riskier than playing with the all-powerful and awe-inspiring Registry. One wrong move - one incorrect click of the mouse, one letter, number or hash mark out of place - and you can kiss productivity good-bye, as you will be stuck for hours, if not days, reinstalling, recovering and retreading your computer's operating system and hard drive, seeking what once was, but has been lost. And yet, the Registry needs treatment, once in awhile. A gunked-up Registry can seriously slow down your computer, if not paralyze it altogether. Windows fix-it sites will all give you instructions on what to look for and how to clean things, but you have to be careful - one wrong move, and you know what happens. It takes guts, wisdom and expertise to work the Registry. It's no place to fool around if you don't know what you're doing. That's why I was so happy to get my hands on a new, easy to use, very safe, very wise and very free Registry cleaner...
THE COMING COLLAPSE OF VENEZUELA
If Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez deliberately intended to sabotage his nation's economy, he would be hard-pressed to do anything different from what he is now doing to his country. It has been widely reported that Mr. Chavez has been increasingly taking control of the oil, telecommunications and energy sectors, as well as the media. What has not been reported is the full extent of the corruption in Venezuela and how this ultimately will destroy the economy. The financial scandal taking place there is far bigger than Enron, and may ultimately even exceed the U.N. "oil-for-food" scandal, the biggest financial disgrace of all time. Venezuela has had a rapidly growing economy for the last few years, due to high oil prices, but the house of cards is about to collapse.
DEMOCRAT VULTURES
David Ignatius, the highly esteemed journalist at The Washington Post, wrote a revealing column last week based on an extensive interview with Democratic congressional leader Rahm Emanuel. Here is the last paragraph:
The secret for the Democrats, says Emanuel, is to remain the party of reform and change. The country is angry, and it will only get more so as the problems in Iraq deepen. Don't look to Emanuel's Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It's Bush's war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces.This is vulture politics. Rahm Emanuel's Democrat Party is so bereft of a sense of national responsibility, that he apparently feels comfortable brazenly telling The Post that his plans for his Democrat Party is to not even try to stop things from getting worse in Iraq - so they can pick up the political pieces afterward. His is a party of vultures.
ISLAMOCOMMUNISM
This past week, the chief proponent of Jihadi Islam and the use of terror to force people to believe in his religion, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, traveled to Latin America to create an alliance with three atheistic Communists: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. This emerging "Marxist-Islamist entente," as it has been described, has caught a lot of folks by surprise. How in the world, they ask, could Chavez toast Ahmadinutjob by hailing him as the leader of "a revolution kindred to the Venezuelan revolution: the Islamic revolution." What could the imposition of atheistic Marxism upon a society, Chavez's goal, have in common with the imposition of a theocracy? The answer must be, can only be for these puzzled folks, the bond of anti-Americanism. As an editorial in the conservative New York Sun expresses it:
That the left makes common cause with the Islamists is one of the bizarre facts of modern geopolitics. The only thing Marxists like Messrs. Chavez, Ortega, and Correa have in common today with the likes of Mr. Ahmadinejad is a hatred of America. That is the foundation on which the Marxist-Islamist scheme is formed and the motivation behind any actions it carries out.
The New York Sun is almost infinitely superior to the New York Times in its understanding of the world. It is well aware of the dangers of the alliance of Marxists and Islamists to America's national security. Yet the common bond between the two is far, far deeper than a simple emotion of hate. The bond is as deep as you get. It is metaphysical. That is because Marx and Mohammed share the same view on the nature of reality.
COAL AND KYOTO
There were a lot of responses to and questions about Arabia in America. After discussing them, we'll discuss how "global warming" is just a scam to de-industrialize America and has nothing to do with cutting world-wide CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. John Boland made a very informed and cogent case for the safety and practicality of nuclear power. Ryan M. asked about the role of natural gas, in light of The Natural Gas Solution from last May. Bill Gregory mentions the trillion barrels of oil in Colorado and Wyoming that can be extracted from oil shale with new in situ technology. While I am all in favor of more nuclear power plants, they produce electricity and not gasoline to run our cars. I focused on coal not for power plants but on coal-to-oil liquefaction plants to replace the 11 million barrels of foreign oil we import every day. The grotesque phoniness of the Left on global warming is most clearly demonstrated regarding coal. Pelosi Galore is forming a new House Committee on Global Warming, while Barbara Boxer is submitting a bill to ban all coal power plants in the country. It's all hate-and-blame America all the time.
BAD KARMA FOR CASTRO
Death came quick to two of the world's most evil men recently - Sapamurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov, dictator of Turmenistan, dead of a heart attack on December 21, and Saddam Hussein. It's coming slowly to a third - Fidel Castro. Castro's medical care has been overseen by a team of physicians from Spain, some of whom are providing details of his condition to the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI), Spain's CIA. The picture is truly horrific. After four disastrous surgeries, he can now only be fed intravenously. He is constantly doped-up on pain-killers like morphine. The prolonged agony and suffering he has endured for seven months may even have exceeded that of the thousands of political prisoners he ordered tortured during the decades of his tyranny. Castro is dying ugly. If there is anyone who deserves such bad karma, it is him. There is almost no way he can live for much longer - a few weeks or months at the most. Once he goes, his brother Raul will try desperately to hold the dictatorship together, and he will fail - fast.
THE BRIGHT SIDE OF 2007
Any conservative so Pollyannic as to be optimistic about 2007 risks comparison to the folks being crucified in the Monty Python movie The Life of Brian while cheerily singing, "Always look on the bright side of life." But so far, so good. We're off to a great start. For openers, at the very moment Bush was giving his speech last night, in which he promised to "seek out and destroy" the networks of Iran and Syria supporting insurgency in Iraq, five US helicopters landed on the consulate of Iran in Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, disgorging US soldiers who told the Iranian occupants in three languages to surrender or be killed. They proceeded to seize all the consulate's computers and documents, then turned the building over to Kurdish "Peshmerga" security forces. Now that is cool. And Bush has just begun.
ARABIA IN AMERICA
No, this is not about the coming Islamification of America or similar conspiracy theory. It's about energy independence, and how crucial that is to defeating Islamofascism. Remember that "senior White House official" that I talked to yesterday (1/10), mentioned in The Bright Side of 2007? Here's another thing he told me:
You'd be amazed at how much time we waste in the White House worrying about some tribal chief in Nigeria, a nutcase in Venezuela, Sunni-Shia nonsense in the Middle East, or how best to walk on Saudi eggshells, all because of oil. We have got to be free of all this. Almost no issue involving national security is more important than energy independence.This why we are soon to have an amazingly vicious struggle on Capitol Hill over a technology that can result in our producing far more oil than Saudi Arabia. And it's going to be between Democrats.
REPLIES REDUX
Notice from the header above that this article is in the category of "Replies from Dr. Jack." It is my fault this category has been defunct for a while, even though it remains listed in the left side bar. One reason is because I try to participate in our User Forums and respond to member questions there. But this means a short response, and often a member comment or question requires something longer. So I am re-instituting the "Replies" section and will try to have at least one every week from now on. What triggered this was a question member Jeffrey W. had regarding Red State Louisiana. I had predicted that the destruction of the New Orleans' corrupt 9th ward meant the destruction of the Democrat Party machine in the state and the election of Republican Bobby Jindal as governor this coming October. Jeffrey asked:
Interesting article, but what are your thoughts about the machinery which re-elected Ray Nagin even after the Katrina disaster? How could this play out when the time comes to elect a new Governor? Do you think enough of this machinery is still intact to thwart a Republican victory?After discussions with conservative Republican friends of mine in Louisiana who have a deep and long-time understanding of politics in their state, the answer that emerged was really surprising.
Chapter Thirty: THE GLORY OF OTUMBA
The Jade Steps Chapter Thirty: The Glory of Otumba They set off as dawn broke to stumble into Tlacopan where the chiefs of the city met them with fear in their eyes. "Malinche!" they addressed him. "We warned you to stay here where you would be safe, and not to go to Tenochtitlan. Now you have been destroyed, and we with you, for the Aztecs will soon follow to kill you and us." Cortez stood arrow-straight and calmly spoke to Malinali. "Doña Marina, inform these gentlemen that we greatly value their friendship and shall see they not suffer for it." The chiefs remained worried. "You must not stay here, Malinche, for the Aztecs are sure to attack. Not far from here is the temple of Otoncalpulco with a large courtyard surrounded by a wooden wall. There you will be safer. I will order our people to carry your wounded on litters and help in which ways we may." Cortez thanked them profusely and the chiefs issued their orders. One of them turned to Malinali. "Malinche must know that we are Tepanecs, not Aztecs. Our kingdom was the first to be enslaved by them. It was our hope that Malinche was the answer to our prayers to be free of their rule." He looked pleadingly into Malinali's eyes. "Is there any hope left?" Malinali returned his gaze. "As long as Malinche is alive, there shall always be hope."
KING DAVID IN IRAQ
It's official: Dave Petraeus, one of the U.S. Army's most impressive leaders, is headed back to Baghdad to take charge. The assignment means a fourth star and the chance to save a desperate situation - or preside over a grim strategic failure. With back-to-back tours of duty in Iraq behind him and the most positive image among Iraqis of any U.S. leader, military or civilian, Petraeus is a natural choice. His intelligence, drive, devotion to service and negotiating skill make the lean, young-looking general seem perfect. When he led the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq in 2003, he proved such a superb diplomat that the Kurds called him "Malik Daoud" - King David - as a mark of respect. He listened patiently, spent money wisely, used force intelligently and truly did win hearts and minds. So what could possibly be doubtful about the choice of Gen. Petraeus to take over the leadership of our forces in Iraq?
A TRIO OF LEGACIES
It is hard to get there if you don't know where you want to go. Despite the Democrats gaining control of Congress and his own previous mistakes, President Bush still has the opportunity to leave a constructive economic legacy, but to do so he must first clearly define his goals and determine what is realistically doable. It turns out there is a trio of legacies - regarding reforming Social Security, excessive spending, and excessive regulation - being made available to him.
RED STATE LOUISIANA
Washington politics can be so much fun if you look upon them as the world's best circus. This week's clown act was hilariously performed by the Breck Boy, John Edwards, announcing his candidacy for the presidency in the 9th Ward of New Orleans. It was especially funny for me, as I was in New Orleans at the time for New Year's. The 9th Ward was the area most devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The day after Edwards' appearance, I drove my son Jackson through it. Endless block after block after block, street after street after street, the small cottage homes are unlivable and abandoned. At the most, one home out of every two or three dozen is repaired and occupied. Even many of these, however, have only cosmetic repairs covering up irreparable damage from mold. After all, all these homes were under water for weeks. Thousands upon thousands of homes that have to be torn down are still standing because Mayor Ray Nagin insists they be rebuilt - which they never will be. What he can't face, what John Edwards can't face, is that the corrupt heart of Democrat control of Louisiana - New Orleans' 9th Ward - is gone.
YOU PREDICT
In reading the profusion of predictions for 2007 so many of you were kind enough to send in this past week, what became most obvious is the individuality of To The Point members. TTPers think for themselves. Thus it has been such an enjoyable experience to read them all. I want to thank you so much for every one. I hope you'll understand that there are too many to discuss, that I have to pick and choose. I also won't quote anyone with their full name - with one exception. Bill Gregory informs me that his wife Carole, after a wee dram or two of 18 year-old single malt, predicts that Hillary Clinton will remove herself from the 2008 presidential race after discovering she has testicular cancer. So seriously, folks.... All the rest were in fact serious. Some were so pessimistic that, should they prove true, we'll need to be heavily fortified with single malt ourselves just to get through the year. Yet others are equally optimistic. Here's a compendium of what you predict for 2007.
THE AUDACITY OF APOSTASY
One of the most entertaining opportunities that will emerge in 2007 will be using Barack Obama to fight Islamofascism. He is the product of a black Moslem from Kenya, Barrack Hussein Obama, and a white atheist from Kansas, Shirley Ann Dunham, who met at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. That is why his middle name is the same as Saddam's: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. His first name is taken from the Islamic term in Arabic for "blessed," baraka, used in the Koran. His father deserted the family when Barack Jr. was two and returned to Kenya. His mother then married another Moslem studying at UH, Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia. He moved with his mother and stepfather to Jakarta when he was six, where he attended a Moslem medressa (religious school). That makes him a Moslem. That he denies that he ever was and is a Christian instead makes him, in Moslem eyes, also something much worse: an apostate. Apostasy in Islam is punishable by death.
A DIFFICULT YEAR
2006 is coming to an end much as it began: with war, terrorism, bloodshed and moral confusion. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia in the Horn of Africa, warfare continues between regular military establishments and irregular radical Islamist forces - which range from straight-out terrorist groups to private militias, death squads, war lords and criminal elements. On Christmas Eve the Associated Press reported from London that: "Islamic militants want to attack the Channel Tunnel between England and France during the holiday season, a British newspaper said Sunday, citing French and U.S. security sources. The Observer said the French foreign intelligence service, DGSE, warned the French government of the threat in a Dec. 19 report after a tip-off from the CIA." Of course, rumors of terrorist attacks have become the background noise of our times -- to such an extent that they are largely discounted by most of the public. Also in that background noise of civic life is the growing assertiveness of many Moslems in the West.
LIBERAL VERBAL TRICKERY
In a mildly interesting exchange in The New Republic, between one of the magazine's senior editors, Jonathan Chait and Cato Institute scholar Brink Lindsay, the idea of a possible alliance between liberals (like Chait) and libertarians (like Lindsay) was recently debated. No one, I think, really believed in a serious prospect for this alliance but my own attention was piqued when Chait responded to Lindsay's suggestion that Social Security ought to be (somewhat) privatized as this could appeal to "younger liberals." (I must admit it always irritates me to call these folks "liberals" when they have no interest in human liberty whatsoever any longer!) Chait asks, "And why would we force retirees into the individual medical insurance market?" Focus on his use of the word "force."
CIVILIZATIONAL CONFIDENCE
Here's a tip for all of you younger folks in your 20s and 30s. If you think the world is strange now, wait ‘till you get older. For the older you get, the weirder the world looks. For me, one of the world's weirdest places is an airport. Specifically, being at an airport waiting to board an incredibly complex machine that will lift me and hundreds of other people thousands of feet into the air, and land us safely on the ground thousands of miles away in a few hours - a simply astounding achievement of reason and civilization - while a few minutes before I had to take off my shoes and had a tube of toothpaste confiscated because of fear of proto-hominid barbarians chanting Allahu akhbar who want to destroy such achievements. What is stone cold weird is that the civilization capable of such achievements tolerates the proto-hominids for a picosecond. So we come to what will emerge this new year of 2007 as the key fundamental issue of our day, the outcome of which will determine our future: civilizational confidence.
PREDICTING 2007
I am expecting a lot of things to happen in 2007. Things that I won't be surprised by if they do happen. 2007 will be a wonderful year for the death of dictators - Castro croaking at last, Saddam hung at last, and with any luck Hugo Chavez will get himself assassinated. Iran's Ahmadinutjob is not a dictator, as he serves at the whim of the ayatollahs. Their whim seems to be now that he is no longer useful, so we may soon be rid of him. With any luck, that will not prevent the Israelis from taking out Iran's nuclear facilities. With even more luck, the Israelis will be smart enough to accomplish this via sabotage rather than airstrikes. China should be on its best behavior for 2007 with no saber-rattling at Taiwan. The Chicoms don't want anything to spoil their coming-out party at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. However... I'm going to stop now and turn the tables. What I want is to ask you for your predictions. What do you think will happen in the world and in America in 2007?
LONE STAR AMERICA
I'm in a small town called St. Francisville in an obscure part of Louisiana. Visitors who come here stop briefly to gaze at the nicely preserved 19th century homes on its main street before hurrying off to the area's principal attractions nearby - magnificent ante-bellum plantation mansions like Rosewood, the Myrtles, or Oakley where Audubon stayed and painted many of his birds. Almost no tourists pay any attention to a flag that flies in front of the courthouse along with the stars and stripes and the state flag, nor have any idea what it symbolizes: 
It's the Bonnie Blue flag of the Republic of West Florida, the capital of which was here. In 1810, St. Francisville was the capital of an independent country. How it got to be, and what it may mean for America's future, is a story that goes from Spanish explorers to American rebels, from Napoleon to the Alamo, from the "Halls of Montezuma" of the Marine Hymn to the invasion of America by illegal aliens from Mexico. So curl up and get cozy in your favorite chair during a winter weekend evening, and let me tell you the story. It starts with a man named Hernando de Soto.
THE GIFT OF TO THE POINT
We've just made it really easy to give a friend the enlightening gift of a subscription to To The Point. There's a new option on our subscription page: a one month only non-recurring gift subscription for $9.99. Now what could you give a friend that could more open his or her eyes to the world and give them more insight upon it than this - and for less than ten bucks? It's also the way to bring a currently non-member friend to the To The Point Rendezvous in Las Vegas next month (see Rendezvous at Mandalay). Here's how it works.
A CHRISTMAS LETTER TO ANTI-CHRISTIANS: 2006
A version of this was first written for Christmas 2004. It is addressed to members of the ACLU and other Anti-Christian Liberals. It is obviously not addressed to TTP members! But feel free to send this to any ACLU member should you happen to know one. Merry Christmas. If that offends you, why should I care? It's your problem, not mine. Let me explain your problem a little more fully. America is a Christian country. It's your job to deal with that, because you're not going to change this fact. America has always been a Christian country, and - open wide now, because you're going to have to swallow this - it will continue to be. It will continue to be because most Americans aren't Euroweenies. They haven't lost the moral courage to be proud of their country and their civilization. Notice the "most" - which you are not a part of. You are anti-Christian because you are anti-American. You are anti-American because you are anti-Western Civilization. You are anti-Western Civilization because you are afraid of and intimidated by the envy of the world's impotent. Fear of being envied defines your liberal soul.
HOW CONSERVATIVES ARE GOING TO GET IN BED WITH NANCY PELOSI
How many times have you heard that old adage, "politics makes for strange bedfellows"? But no matter how many times that's been, you're not going to believe how many conservative Republican Members of Congress are about to jump in bed with Speaker Pelosi. One of the things that most drives these folks around the bend is the sell-out of their party's principles to Country Club Corporate America. They can't stand Big Business's addiction to cheap labor. It's an addiction that blocks effective attempts to stem the flood of illegal alien immigration from Mexico, or to stem the flood of trade deficit dollars to China. The list of issues that conservatives in the House will oppose Pelosi on seems endless, and amnesty for illegals plus refusing to fence them out is certainly one of them. But there is one issue not on that list, an issue of the gravest national security on which they are sure cooperation with her is possible. That issue is...
OPENING THE DOORS OF ISLAM
It has become a commonplace observation that Islam today requires a Reformation with an Islamic Martin Luther. This is the absolute last thing Islam needs now, the triumph of faith over reason with resultant bloodshed and sectarian slaughter lasting over a century (ca. 1520-1648) and costing the lives of millions. That horror was the Reformation. What Islam needs instead is an Enlightenment. It turns out there is a term in Arabic for enlightenment, for analysis and interpretation through reason, that has an honorable tradition in Islamic jurisprudence and thought. Get to know the word, for it is the salvation of Islam: Ijtihad.
For every verse in the Koran the moderates can cite, the Islamofascists can refute them with a dozen. There is no possibility of women’s rights in Islam or an end to Islamic terrorism, for example, until verses like Sura 4:34 that condone wife-beating, or those that condone slavery and killing infidels and spreading Islam with violence, on and on, are challenged as not being the true words of Allah.
That they are being challenged by a growing number of Moslem scholars, that there is an emerging Ijtihad Movement stirring within Islam, is the best hope for an Islamic Enlightenment.