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.
PARIAH JOHN: TRAITOR IN VIETNAM, NOW TRAITOR IN IRAQ
On January 20, Iranian agents kidnapped five US soldiers in Karbala, Iraq. They killed one immediately. The bodies of the four other Americans were found later. President Bush's subsequent decision to permit U.S. troops to kill Iranians who are trying to kill them came shortly after the Karbala attack, which in earlier times would have been recognized by one and all for the act of war that it was. But as evidence mounted over the weekend of Iranian involvement in the terror in Iraq, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, describing his country as an "international pariah" for fighting it. Sen. Kerry followed to the podium former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami, whose speech he praised. Sen. Kerry's remarks were front page news in Iranian newspapers. In the "War Crimes" museum in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), there is a photo of Sen. Kerry greeting the general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist party. Perhaps Sen. Kerry is angling for similar recognition in Tehran.
GLO-BULL WARMING
For the last two weeks the weather in Pittsburgh has been typical for January -- it's snowed almost every day. And for the first time this winter I've heard complaints about the weather at work. I heard none during our unseasonably warm December. I note this to put in perspective the latest scare report on global warming from the United Nations: Hypothetical piled upon hypothetical, based on computer models which cannot duplicate the actual climate of the present or the recent past. Alarmists attribute warming to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But CO2 accounts for only about 0.03 percent of the earth's atmosphere, and less than 10 percent of the greenhouse effect. Only about 14 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from burning fossil fuels. That means all of Algore's hysteria, all the economy-destroying restrictions of the Kyoto Treaty, are about stopping carbon emissions responsible for 1.4% of the greenhouse effect.
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...