Warning Signs

Obama: The Politics of Showmanship

2008-07-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

For political theatre, there is no denying that the speech Sen. Barack Obama delivered in Berlin drew a huge, adoring crowd and was filled with the kind of talk intended to impress, not just Berliners, not just Europe, not just America, but the entire world that a new leader has appeared on the scene to work miracles.

Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director summed it up best when he pointed out that the same speech could have been delivered by Sen. John McCain because its content was ideologically the same in many ways. The critical difference is that McCain is imbued with the values of a family that has fought to protect American values, American freedoms for generations.

Both believe that industrialization and modern society is contributing to a climate apocalypse of melting Arctic ice and rising sea levels. Both believe the free world must defeat Islamofascist terrorism. The former is a corruption of science. The latter is the single most important issue of our times. At one point, Obama sounded a call for Iran to relinquish its nuclear weapons ambitions.

“People of the world, this is our moment, this is our time…”, said Obama, followed by an echo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, citing freedom from fear and freedom from want. The other freedoms Roosevelt cited on January 6, 1941 were freedom of speech and expression, and freedom to worship as one chooses. Islam opposes both.

The date of the Roosevelt speech is worth noting because eleven months later, on December 7, 1941, the United States suffered a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan, plunging it into World War Two. Congress declared war against Germany as well. Not since those days has a craven Congress formally declared war on any nation despite the Constitutional requirement to do so.

Roosevelt had called for “a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world.”

In Berlin, Obama made a similar call for a reduction of nuclear weapons, but this ignores the fact that once invented, no technology can be un-invented and a new technology can be used for good or evil. It took a nuclear weapon to end Japan’s aggression.

The notion that nuclear weapons will be reduced or the threat of their use be eliminated is no more plausible today than FDR’s wish for a reduction of armaments in 1941. Those in leadership positions seem to feel they have to say such things, but they know better.

Obama and McCain should know better when they talk about global warming and say stupid things about either of the poles melting or rising sea levels. Talk of reducing carbon emissions is baseless given the fact that carbon dioxide plays virtually no role in climate change. The Earth has been through any number of ice ages, has seen mass extinctions of life, and, after 4.5 billion years, continues as the only place in our galaxy with life forms as complex as ours.

An estimated 100,000 gathered to hear Obama and one cannot help but be reminded that Germans gathered in the 1930s to hear another spellbinding speaker. That one plunged Europe into war. The urge to be part of a huge movement is a powerful component of the human psyche, but that doesn’t mean that any good will come of it. As often as not, it has led to bloodshed and misery.

So listening to Obama toss off phrases about “global citizenship” and the need to “share the benefits (of wealth) more equitably” because such wealth should not “favor the few” tended to get my attention amidst the bursts of applause. That is the promise of communism, not capitalism.

When I hear Obama talk of welcoming immigrants I think of the twelve million or more here in America living illegally and parasitically off native-born and naturalized Americans. There are good reasons why nations have borders.

When I hear him say that “this is our moment, this is our time” I think that this is always everyone’s moment, everyone’s time, and that is an individual thing, not something to be melded into a vast collective ideology that will ultimately destroy individual rights, human rights.

What we are witnessing is the showmanship of politics. What we are hearing are ideas and beliefs that obscure the same dangerous ideologies that have caused so much conflict and misery that, if we fall prey to the theatrics of Barack Hussein Obama, we will surely pay a fearful price.

© Alan Caruba, July 2008

Do Not Send a Boy

2008-07-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

It is an old adage. Do not send a boy to do a man’s job.

That appears to be what a lot of Americans intend to do when they vote for Barrack Obama.

Perhaps it is from my vantage point of some seven decades on Earth, but when I listen to or see Obama on television, what I see is a very appealing young man who needs to put some time in, oh say, the U.S. Senate. Barely halfway through his first term, he has spent most of his time running for the highest office in the land. Talk about audacity!

Some might say that the experience he gained as an Illinois legislator counts for something but he mostly voted “present” during that term in office. The job of legislator requires taking a position on weighty issues. Just being “present” suggests a lack of any strong convictions except, perhaps, for wanting to be the President of the United States of America.

Previous “experience” appears to be something called “a community organizer” and he has certainly organized a heck of a campaign. He’s quite skilled at mass rallies and reading speeches from a teleprompter; speeches presumably written by someone else, full of rhetorical grandeur, but devoid of any substance, leaving us at a loss to know what he believes in other than wanting to be the next President.

When one of the leading liberal daily newspapers in the nation, the Washington Post, takes a candidate to task, that candidate should begin to worry. In its Wednesday, July 23 edition, an editorial called into question his assertion that those whom he met in his Iraq tour agreed with his view of a swift withdrawal of troops. They did not.

The Post then took him to task for his rather odd view that Afghanistan is “the central front” of combat in the Middle East when clearly the very oil-rich and centrally located Iraq is. The Post noted that al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan—the Taliban is—and that the U.S. cannot operate militarily in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden is presumably located.

Visiting a whole bunch of nations in a week’s time doesn’t quite strike me as “experience” in foreign affairs. I have a cousin who has traveled all over the world and can tell you what shots to take before going to Africa or India, but I don’t ask him for an opinion on how to resolve long-standing, often intransigent international issue.

Obama’s military “experience” doesn’t exist. All things considered, I have more military experience, having been drafted into the U.S. Army and being honorably discharged with a good conduct ribbon. By comparison, Sen. McCain, a graduate of Annapolis, a Vietnam War fighter pilot, and former prisoner of war leaves young Obama in the dust.

The policies of the Bush administration have resulted in what most people agree is a belated, but successful conclusion to the war in Iraq. The only debate about Iraq is how soon to leave and, as the Washington Post has noted, Obama is increasingly vague, saying he will be guided by our generals there. That’s been Bush’s policy for the last five years! When he fired Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and actually started to listen to them, we began to win.

What we do know about Obama is that he is possibly the most politically liberal candidate since Jimmy Carter to run for the office. If elected, he and the Democrats will introduce every tried and failed “solution” to America’s present problems, making them worse if that is possible. And it is.

These are, after all, the same people who have resisted any drilling or mining for America’s vast natural energy resources. They are the same people still talking about “global warming” a decade into a scientifically certified cooling cycle that began in 1998. They are the same people who see nothing wrong in letting millions of illegal aliens ignore our southern border. These are people who think banning the sale of the incandescent light bulb will save the Earth.

John McCain is always being called “old.” Ronald Reagan was called “old.” Reagan did a pretty good job as a result of having real governing experience and real convictions. Rejecting real experience and the often sage advice that comes with it is something that children do. Ask any parent.

Voting for Barrack Obama because he can sink a basketball and is skilled at contriving a variety of photo opportunities is just not good enough. Obama supporters need to grow up. So does their candidate.

Apparently We Have Won the Iraq War

2008-07-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

I had an odd thought the other day. Apparently we have won the Iraq war.

The president of Iraq thinks so and he wants us to leave. That's good enough for me, but apparently not for George W. Bush or John McCain. Neither of these gentlemen seems inclined to be leave. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is still trying to make up his mind when to leave. If elected, my bet is that he will find an excuse to stay.

There's all this talk of departure "horizons" versus "timetables." The good news is that we not engaged in shoot-outs every day and that the Iraqi army and police force now numbers over 500,000 men.

As matters stand now, Rasmussen Reports has posted notice that 63% of those surveyed as of July 22 want the troops to return home. That is a virtual mandate.

This war has been marked by endless absurdities starting with the USS Abraham Lincoln where President Bush announced that combat had ended and reconstruction would begin. That was in 2003. The war had been pursued on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Turns out he didn't by the time we invaded, but—surprise—he did have tons of "yellowcake", the stuff you need to make nuclear weapons.

Was there ever a more political round of absurd nonsense than the fuss over The New York Times opinion piece by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, followed by the revelation his wife worked for the CIA? A massive and needless investigation of White House aides ensued, led by a prosecutor who knew exactly who leaked the facts about her. Wilson had written that he had found no evidence that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy yellowcake. He has been proclaiming his indignation ever since. Nobody likes a crybaby.

The Iraq War will likely qualify as one of the most curious in our very long history of military interventions in the Middle East. The troops, bless'm, were in Baghdad within in a week or so, but once there the Iraqis began looting everything that wasn't nailed down and burning a great deal of their own infrastructure including schools, libraries and universities.

Having gone in with too few troops, nothing could be done to secure the city and, after the looting, the nation became a killing ground as various internal and external factions made war on each other and on us. In the process we lost some 4,000 troops. Eventually, the level of Iraqis killing Iraqis reached a point where even they found it nauseating.

The result? Peace, glorious peace!

Americans tend to forget that, in the Middle East, most political disagreements are settled with assassinations such as the murder of Egypt's Anwar Sadat and, more recently, the killing of Benezir Bhutto in Pakistan. In Lebanon, the Syrians assassinated a whole raft of politicians whom they found irksome. Several efforts have been made to kill Hamid Karzi of Afghanistan. In Gaza, Fatah was forced out by Hamas at gunpoint. Having achieved zero cooperation for decades, world leaders keep insisting that the Israelis negotiate with Fatah, giving them land and lollypops.

In the midst of the speculation about a possible war with Iran, people forget that, under Saddam's leadership, Iraqis fought Iranians for eight years in the 1980s. The result was a million casualties and a total stalemate. Then Saddam invaded Kuwait, occasioning our first visit there. And people still wonder why Bush43 concluded that it was cheaper in the short run to just invade and kill Saddam.

The history of conflict in the Middle East suggests that Arabs are not very good at fighting wars. If Lebanon's Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, decides to attack Israel again, the only thing left of Beirut and the rest of the nation will be its wall-to-wall smoldering ruins. It's always a bad idea to attack Israel, particularly for a second time.

Listening to presidential candidates arguing back and forth about withdrawing from Iraq is a tad surreal. Realistically it will take at least a year or more to get out of Iraq because we have a ton of hardware there. Most of it will be warehoused in Kuwait and Qatar.

Tucked away in desert wadis, encampments of American troops will likely be pulling duty in Iraq for a very long time to come. Once we invade a nation we never really leave.

The Middle East is what it has always been; a festering cesspool of oppression, corruption, backwardness, and despair. What else is new?

In truth, the United States has been sending troops to the Middle East since Thomas Jefferson commissioned our first Marines to kill Barbary pirates. We built the first U.S. Navy precisely for that purpose.

No doubt there will be some kind of big international confab to conclude the recent unpleasantness in Iraq and everyone will toast each other with champagne and toss back some really good caviar.

Saddam Hussein is dead. We won. It's time to redeploy to some other nation foolish enough to get our attention.

Not as Dumb as They Think

2008-07-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

One thing that both journalists and politicians hold in common is their belief that the American public is really dumb. This is why politicians keep telling us that there’s only enough oil in Alaska for six month’s use, that puddles left over from a rain storm should be regarded as “navigable waters” and every species known to man and God is “endangered.”

It is written that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but I would add that contempt for some politicians and journalists is also a sign of maturity and insight.

Rasmussen Reports conducted two telephone surveys and posted news of them today (7/21/08). In one it revealed that most Americans are confident about the U.S. banking system. “Nearly seven out of ten Americans (69%) are confident in the stability of the U.S. banking system…” Will some banks fail? Probably. Are deposits secure? Yes. In fact, 65% of those surveyed expressed little or no worry of losing their money.

I thought it was interesting that Rasmussen noted that, “Democrats are twice as likely (39%) as Republicans (19%) to be worried about the money they have in the bank. Once, long ago, I was a Democrat, but as St. Paul says in Corinthians, when I became a man I put aside childish fears.

It was also reported today that the results of another Rasmussen survey revealed a whopping 50% of Americans believe “the media makes economic conditions appear worse than they are.”

No one is suggesting that the economy is not having a difficult time navigating through $4-a-gallon gasoline or that some have seen the value of their homes decline, but overall the economy is remarkably resilient and people know that. This is the filter they apply when they read or hear dire reports and predictions served up by journalists.

“Only a quarter (25%) think reporters and media outlets present an accurate picture of the economy and 18% believe they actually portray it as better than it is. Just 34% trust reporters more when it comes to news on the economy, and 32% see stockbrokers as more reliable.”

That’s an impressive 75% who are wary of what reporters have to say about the economy, though it would be well to keep in mind that stockbrokers often have no better idea than the rest of us. Their job is to sell stocks and any reason to do so is sufficient. Stock market going down. Great bargains to be had. Time to buy. Stock market going up. Don’t miss out on great opportunities. Time to buy.

In truth, given the volatility of the stock market, one can see the role that emotion plays in the whole buying and selling equation. A wafting rumor is sufficient to create a wave of buying and selling.

This is also why the siren call of “change” and “the future” is likely to lose a lot of momentum by next November.

Part of the reason for the present volatility is the gradual expansion of economic power in Asia, but recall too that Japan, South Korea, China and India will be subject to the same limits on energy resources, an educated workforce, the introduction of new technologies, and other factors that affect the entire global marketplace.

Proceed at your own risk, but risk is what Capitalism is all about!

The good news is that the majority of Americans who actually take time to pay attention to the many sources of information about events, issues and personalities are capable of sorting through it to conclude that the U.S. economy is essentially sound, that will we get passed this mortgage loan bubble and debacle, and barring something horrid like another 9/11, we shall get on with our lives with relatively little discomfort.

Obama the Intellectual

2008-07-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

Anyone who has ever studied history knows that intellectuals have been the cause of more misery in the modern world than any other group.

It was an intellectual, Karl Marx, who decided he could cure the ills of society by coming up with an economic system designed to redistribute a nation’s worth by destroying every pillar of human society and assigning all power to the “state” which is, of course, composed of very imperfect humans.

The result, Communism, has killed more people than all the wars in modern times and been the source of such misery as to defy description. Other forms have included Fascism and the watered-down version, Socialism. None of them work. All of them make people into beggars, forever trying to manipulate the system for their advantage.

The latest version is the charade of sending economic “stimulus” checks to taxpayers instead of letting them keep they own money and decide how to spend it.

Did you know that Harry S. Truman was the first U.S. President who did not attend college? Compare the remarkable legacy he left behind to that of Woodrow Wilson, a former president of Princeton University and Governor of New Jersey. Undoubtedly a man of intellect, he also managed to lay waste to every institution he led. The wreckage he left behind at the Treaty of Versailles following WWI led inevitably to WWII.

By comparison, Truman and the men he selected to serve the nation rescued Europe from Soviet domination after WWII, began the transformation of Japan and Germany into democracies and thriving economies, saved South Korea from communist domination, and are remembered for the Berlin Airlift that defied the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

So now the nation is being asked to elect a classic intellectual, Barack Hussein Obama, to lead us and, typically, he has no idea about the lives of ordinary Americans holding jobs, raising families, and trying to survive the idiocy of several previous administrations that have left the nation hostage to foreign oil and locked in battle with the worst elements of resurgent Islam.

I personally take some comfort that John McCain finished far down in the bottom half of his class at Annapolis. Smart enough to graduate, smart enough to fly fighter jets, smart enough to rise in the Navy’s command structure and tough enough to survive five years of torture by his North Vietnamese captors. Despite his differences with his own political party and inclined toward the element that greases any government action, compromise, McCain offers the capabilities and character that suggests an understanding of human nature.

Compare this with Barack Obama whose interpretation of the 9/11 attack on America was due to “a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers.” If Obama took the time to learn why Osama led the attack, he would have discovered that in 1998 he was a leader in the World Islamic Front for Combat Against the Jews and Crusaders. Since the Koran repeatedly commands attacking unbelievers and killing apostates to Islam, Obama has demonstrated extraordinary ignorance and foolishness.

Indeed, Obama attributed the attack and its lack of empathy to feelings that grow “out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.” Bin Laden is a university graduate with a degree in engineering. He comes from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. His close associate, Ayman El Zawahiri is a doctor of medicine. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who planned the attack is a graduate of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University with a degree in engineering. Mohammed Atta who flew one of the airliners into the World Trade Center was a graduate of Cairo University, an architect. They were neither poverty-stricken, nor ignorant.

They are or were intellectuals who took great pleasure in destroying the lives of 3,000 Americans and bringing down two great skyscrapers in New York and destroying a big chunk of the Pentagon.

In a similar fashion, Obama expressed the view that Americans in “small towns in Pennsylvania and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest” are guided by feelings of bitterness. “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

In short, Obama hasn’t a clue about ordinary Americans who go to church, may enjoy hunting or the concept of self-defense, and are angry with a government that has done nothing to stem the flow of illegal immigrants who will deny jobs to Americans and drive down their wages in the process. Americans are not anti-trade. They buy stuff from China and everywhere else in the world if the price is right.

Obama’s stint as a community organizer managed mostly to make a number of Chicago developers wealthy without improving the lives of those he was supposedly trying to help. He got himself elected to the Illinois legislature where he was reluctant to vote much of the time and then to the U.S. Senate where he has served less than half of his first term in office, having devoted himself solely to getting elected the next President of the United States. His attendance record in the Senate is worse than a joke. It is an offense to those who elected him.

He is, in a word, clueless.

This is a common characteristic of intellectuals who are convinced they know how everyone else should live their lives and convinced that only an all-powerful central government can and should determine the content of those lives.

Tilting at T. Boone Picken's Windmills

2008-07-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

You may have seen the television commercials with T. Boone Pickens, a multi-millionaire who made his money in oil and is now trying to double up selling wind. That is wind as in wind power—as in hundreds and hundreds of wind turbines to generate electricity.

That’s why I find it more than strange that Picken’s television and print ads all start off talking about oil. In the current edition of Business Week magazine he has a full-page ad with a headline that says “It’s time to stop America’s addiction to foreign oil.”

Well, first of all, we are not “addicted.” We buy foreign oil because, back in the 1980s the White House and Congress set out to reduce domestic oil exploration and drilling. It was and it is a deliberate policy in which the U.S. guarantees the security of Middle Eastern nations so they can sell us their oil instead of our being able to compete with them in the global marketplace with our own extensive reserves of oil.

So, no, we are not “addicted.” It turns out that virtually every car, truck, and other vehicle on the roads and highways of America uses gasoline or diesel. That’s not addiction. That’s internal combustion. We don’t drive vehicles that run on lemonade or beer.

Virtually all of the oil we import goes to use for transportation and that includes, of course, aircraft, boats, tractors, off-road and recreational vehicles. There is nothing inherently wrong or sinful in this. It’s the way they’re made.

So why does T. Boone’s ad then go on to say “In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil. Today, it’s 70% and climbing”? Is this some kind of revelation he’s sharing with us? Is there anyone left in America that doesn’t know our politicians won’t let our oil companies drill for our own oil (while blaming them for not doing so)?

Here’s where it gets weird. T. Boone isn’t even interested in oil. What he’s really selling is wind power. If it weren’t for the photo of a wind turbine, you might not know that from his advertisement.

And, guess what? Vehicles, unless they have a big sail attached to their roof, don’t run on wind power.

Wind power is about electricity and, except for limited, small projects like running a farm off of a wind turbine or some other small usage application, wind power is just about the dumbest way to generate large amounts of electricity you can name.

My friend, Robert Bryce, an authority on energy and the author of “Gusher of Lies”, points out that, “even in the best locations, wind turbines produce power only about one-third of the time. And many produce at lower rates.” There is no comparison between the kilowatts generated by wind power and the billions from America’s nuclear or coal-fired power plants.

It’s not like it’s a secret that wind turbines are an unreliable source of electrical power. Bryce points out that, “In July 2006, for example, wind turbines in California produced power at only about 10 percent of their capacity; in Texas, one of the most promising states for wind energy, the windmills produced electricity at about 17 percent of their rated capacity.”

That means that there has to be nuclear, coal-fired or natural gas power plants functioning fulltime as a backup to the pathetically unreliable and inefficient wind farms. Moreover, what electricity they do generate is lost to some degree in the process of transmitting it over long distances to distribution facilities.

No one wants to live near a wind farm. You could have a nuclear power plant in your backyard and not know it was there unless you looked out the window. Wind farms are noisy neighbors and can make people crazy listening to them. Legislatures have to pass laws to exempt them from law suits identifying them as a public nuisance.

I do not fault T. Boone for wanting to make more millions, but his advertisements and public relations campaign talks about oil to divert people’s attention and awareness from what he really wants to do and that is build lots of wind farms and sell electricity. That’s deceptive.

Are we running out of coal in America? Not for hundreds of years. Can we build more nuclear power plants? You bet.

Like all the other hoaxes perpetrated by the environmental movement, “clean energy” is just another way for a few folks to get rich while the rest of us get screwed.

Let's Ban Al Gore

2008-07-17T14:37:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

[Warning! This is satire. If there is any resemblance to reality in the text below, it is purely intentional.]

Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and winner of a Hollywood Oscar for his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, was at it again, giving another of those “The End is Near” speeches in which he advises the rest of us to stop driving, get rid of our air conditioners, and do everything else to avoid global warming.

He says we only have ten years in which to do this. After that, says Al Gore, there will be so much carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere we will all be fried like ants on the sidewalk. Considering that there’s only 0.038% of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, listening to his idiotic bloviating can and has impaired the mental health of countless people.

His latest Gore-a-tion is that we need to stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity because, as he put it in his usual understated way, “The future of human civilization is at stake.”

Briefly, it’s worth noting that coal accounts for just over 50% of all the electricity we use, nuclear for another 20%, natural gas for just under 20%, and the rest from minor sources like hydroelectric. Solar and wind power, combined, accounts for less than 4% because it remains a really stupid way to generate electricity.

Instead of banning everything Al Gore and his Little Green Friends want eliminated from modern life, why can’t we just get Al Gore banned?

Frankly, I think a case can be made that Al Gore represents a compelling reason to set aside the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free press. (But only for him!)

Single-handedly, Al Gore has frightened more pre-school and school-age children in the history of the nation. These tots are all convinced that the end of the Earth is coming in their lifetimes. The reason for this is that they’ve all been forced to sit through “An Inconvenient Truth” several times, often to the point where they weep uncontrollably and beg to be allowed to leave the room.

I know that Constitutional purists will say that Al Gore cannot and should not be banned, but I maintain that anyone who wrote, as he did in his book, “Earth in the Balance”, that the internal combustion engine should be eliminated has no right to speak in public or be published for any reason.

This is such bizarre and demented nonsense that the real question is why Al Gore has not been institutionalized?

It can be argued, I maintain, that anyone who crammed as many lies into his award-winning documentary as Al Gore did should not be allowed to roam freely. Here again, I know that some will say that if we locked up every liar in public life, the nation’s Capitol Building would be empty along with many of Washington, DC’s various bureaucracies whose job it is to steal private property and fleece taxpayers.

I repeat, I only want Al Gore banned.

I maintain that it would be a public service to put Al Gore under house arrest where he could continue to burn through more energy than twenty average homes in Nashville, Tennessee. This single act would render the entire world a Gore-Free Zone where polar bears would not be exploited for being cute to everyone except seals and some citizens of Alaska for whom the word “cute” does not come instantly to mind when one of them is in the backyard.

A Gore-Free Zone would be one in which the rest of us could devote more time to figuring out what to do as the Earth enters its second decade of atmospheric cooling and, unless the Sun warms up soon, slides into the next Ice Age.

My Stimulus Bribe

2008-07-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

I received my stimulus check yesterday. It was $600 and I put it into my checking account and immediately paid a bill that accounted for half of it. I have serious doubts that it did anything to stimulate an economy that is undergoing a crisis of confidence in its financial and government institutions.

There is a serious crisis of trust in Congress. Polls indicate that most Americans think it is the worst in modern memory. They have good reason as they watch two horribly polarized political parties ignore some of the nation’s most pressing problems. These are the morons who banned the future sale of incandescent light bulbs. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans concentrate on seizing enough control to decide who gets to spend and waste our money.

It is, of course, our money. Or more precisely, it's the money the U.S. government borrows from other nations in our name. Giving everyone who paid taxes a pittance in return suggests that Congress thinks we are so stupid that we will actually be grateful.

Why should we be grateful to a government that, as it grows larger and larger, seems increasingly less competent to address common sense solutions to our energy needs, refusing to permit the exploration, drilling and mining of our own national resources?

Why should we be grateful to be told that we need to drive slower, purchase cars the size of golf carts, or use mass transit when we have ample, known reserves of oil?

Why should we be grateful for government mandates for ethanol that do nothing other than drive up the price of food and drive down mileage per gallon?

Why should we be grateful for the push to impose a bogus “cap and trade” system that will do nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? Why create a market for “credits” that will make those trading in them immensely wealthy? Why do this when, in addition to oxygen, CO2 is the most essential gas to the maintenance of all life on Earth, vital to the growth of all vegetation?

Why should we be grateful for the privilege of being the world’s policeman when Europe thinks we’re a chump for defending it long after they should have taken on that responsibility? Or when a prolonged occupation in Iraq is greeted with the perfectly natural request that we leave? There are 566,000 Iraqis in police or military uniform these days.

Why should we be grateful when we might be taken into a war with Iran over its demand to be a nuclear power when it is surrounded by nuclear powers in Pakistan, India, Russia, and China to name just four? Isn’t a nuclear Iran their problem too? Why do we assume that the prospect of having its cities obliterated and millions of its citizens killed would not have a sobering affect on Iran’s leaders?

Why should we be grateful to a government that, during the Bush administration, spent $45 billion on "climate change" research at a time when the Earth is a decade into a natural cooling cycle that any freshman in Meteorology 101 could understand? Could the billions spent on the mission to Mars been spent more wisely on repairs to our nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges?

Why should we be grateful to a government that is inattentive to millions of illegal aliens crossing our southern border, taking up residence while taking jobs that might otherwise be available to native-born and naturalized Americans, and draining the financial resources of states and cities that must educate their children and pay for their medical care?

Why wouldn’t a wall along the southern border have some effect on illegal immigration and the huge flow of drugs into the nation? Surely that has a greater priority than Mars?

Why should we be grateful to a government that adopted an idiotic policy to not manage our nation’s forests, leading to California's catastrophic fires and the previous loss of countless forested acres in Yellowstone? Removing aging and dead trees and underbrush protects forests. Instead of a thriving timber industry, we have Smokey the Bear.

And why should I believe that my $600 is going to make any difference in the resolution of an economic mess created by banking and investment institutions that gave away billions in mortgage loans to people who could not afford them and now want to be bailed out…with our money? Right now, some of these same institutions are driving up the cost of a barrel of oil by gambling in the world’s mercantile exchanges.

The nation is being run by people who are clearly delusional over a non-existent “global warming” or committed to a failed “No Child Left Behind” law that transfers control over the nation’s schools to a central government. There is no Constitutional authorization for federal involvement in education.

We need a stimulus in rational solutions to real problems. We need something that a government must earn, not confiscate, and not secure through a bribe. It’s called trust. It’s called confidence.

Where's Our National Guard? Overseas.

2008-07-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

Here’s an interesting fact. Between now and the end of President Bush’s term in office, almost half of the soldiers who are scheduled to deploy to Iraq will come from the National Guard.

Here’s another; At least 35 states have deployed more National Guard units to Iraq and Afghanistan than to any war since World War II.

I learned these facts from the Veterans for America (VFA), an organization that describes its mission as encouraging the American public to support policies that address the needs of those currently in the military, veterans, victims of war overseas, as well as initiatives to make our world more secure.

“VFA builds on the 26-year history of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation—cofounder and coordinator of the Nobel Prize-winning Campaign to Ban Landmines. There is a social contract between a nation and those it sends to war.”

I cannot tell you how much of VFA’s agenda is pro-veteran and how much is anti-war, but I suspect it tilts to the latter much of the time. It should definitely not be confused with the Veterans of Foreign Wars or the American Legion.

That said, the statistics it cites are worthy of consideration. For example, more than half of the National Guard combat units deploying to Iraq between now and the end of Bush’s term will be on their second tour.

In the months ahead, units from Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington will send units to these combat zones. In the spring of 2009, by which time the U.S. will have a new President, the following states will send National Guard troops; Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania (again), Tennessee, Texas (again), Vermont, and Wisconsin.

This has got to be highly disruptive to families, employers and communities in the states where this is occurring and it raises the question of why the federal government is so dependent on these men and women as opposed to the full-time military. In our zeal following the Vietnam War to end conscription--the Draft—and create a professional Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force from enlistees, somewhere along the way we have failed to meet adequate manpower needs.

The fallback has been the National Guard whom governors traditionally call upon for assistance in times of natural disasters. Here’s what the Congressional Research Service has to say about the National Guard:

“The National Guard plays a major role in the defense and security of the United States under the federal component of its mission. Although the military reserve component’s responsibilities and duties have increased since 2001, a March 2007 report by the congressionally chartered independent Commission on the National Guard and Reserves has found that many Army and Air National Guard units stationed in the United States are rated “not ready.” That rating is based primarily on current military equipment shortages and concerns for long-term operational reserve capacity.”

Not ready? No long-term operational reserve capacity? What’s wrong with this picture?

It has been many decades since I served in the Army and I lay no claim to understanding much about the role of the National Guard, but common sense suggests that the heavy reliance on it for combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals a real need to build up the troop strength in our current, fulltime professional military.

The only other option would be a return to the Draft to meet present and future needs, but I don’t see that happening for a whole range of reasons. The nation currently depends on a fairly thin slice of Americans willing to serve.

For now, the dependence on the National Guard should be a cause for concern. Given the other things Americans are concerned with, it is not likely to be high on the list.

Let's Declare Victory and Leave

2008-07-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

At a point in the Vietnam War when it was dragging on, costing lives, and there was no end in sight, some politician suggested that the United States simply declare victory and leave. In the end, we did leave and it was pretty much a rout.

I was reminded of this with all the back and forth statements being made by Iraq president Maliki and the response of the White House. Maliki wants the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal of troops and the White House made it known that some troops might, indeed, be coming home sooner. There is also the possibility some may be transferred to Afghanistan where things are looking bleak.

Like a lot of people I went from the notion that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good thing (it was) to the realization that there were too few troops to secure the nation while it came up with something resembling a democratic government. As time went along the U.S. mismanagement of the situation in Iraq became the fodder for dozens of books by observers and participants.

There is a point at which people in an occupied nation, no matter how grateful they may be to be rid of a tyrannical despot, want the foreign troops to go home. After five years, we are well passed that point.

If George W. Bush could declare “mission accomplished” on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, then he can declare victory tomorrow and announce that the troops will be out before the end of 2009. What he also said that day was that “our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”

With oil selling near $150-a-barrel, my guess is that Iraq has the money to reconstruct itself without another U.S. dollar except for the oil billions we are shipping to the Middle East as it is.

My initial reaction to the White House statement that our troops would begin to come out was that it was a cynical political ploy to help the lackluster McCain campaign, but I think now it was just part of the bargaining going on with the Maliki government.

I have no doubt that the administration wants to leave a hefty contingent of U.S. military permanently billeted in Iraq given the bellicosity of Iran, but I also think the Iraqis and Iranians remember the eight-year war that Saddam waged with Iran and want no part of a similar conflict. They share a very long common border.

The U.S. did for Iran what it could not do for itself by getting rid of Saddam Hussein and this raises the question of just how capable Iran is militarily. Could it invade Iraq or any other nation in the region? Would it do so if it meant risking attacks on its oil fields, its command and control facilities, and, of course, its nuclear facilities?

With the exception of Turkey which had a secular government imposed on it by an enlightened leader and backed up by its military, there has been no true, functioning democracy anywhere in the Middle East.

I am not ignoring Israel when I say this because it is a Western enclave, not a Muslim nation. Lebanon had a democratic government of sorts thanks to an agreement that apportioned key roles to Christians, Muslims, and Druze, but the nation was essentially run by an oligarchy of wealthy families. The influx and growth of its Muslim population has ended that bit of political theatre.

The United States has a window of opportunity to leave without looking like it is running away or has been defeated.

That leaves the mess in Afghanistan, purveyor of 80% of the world’s supply of heroin, and home to tribes that have been competing with one another since the dawn of civilization. If the Afghanis don’t like the Taliban (and they don’t), let them kill them on their own. We can supply the guns and bullets.

Then there’s Pakistan where, if anyone is paying any attention, we have propped up a very unpopular dictator and where a real demand for democracy is being led by that nation’s lawyers and judges.

In the same way previous colonial powers have learned to their regret, the Middle East defies any control imposed by the West. Empires have foundered there. Ships of state have gone aground there.

All is not lost. We have a serious military presence in the Gulf States and a carrier fleet or two that have been there since we guaranteed the security of the Strait of Harmuz back in the 1980s and stopped drilling for oil here at home.

We also have a military that is stretched too thin and is tired from this occupation without end. We are beginning to offer huge benefit packages to retain soldiers. The generals have even begun to turn a blind eye to the homosexuals serving our nation. We need to recruit and re-equip across all of the branches.

Politically, we have voters who will vote for anyone who says he will pull out U.S. troops.

Ultimately, the world cannot take the kind of uncertainty that the Middle East represents. The speculative price of oil is testimony to that.

Left to their own designs, the Arabs (and Persians) will go back to what they know best, dictatorships that use some of their oil income to pacify their population. There is no great demand for democracy in the Middle East. It won’t occur because we want it to.

Iraq has become a distraction. It is time to declare victory in Iraq and come home.

The Nation's Governors Sleepover Party

2008-07-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

Take heart, America! Your nation’s governors have been meeting in Philadelphia this weekend for the National Governors Association centennial meeting. From Friday through Monday they are attending various sessions that are almost all devoted to the environment.

On Saturday, America’s most famous former philanderer-in-chief, William Jefferson Clinton, gave the keynote address. When he was the Governor of Arkansas, he also had served as chairman of the NGA. I am sure it was a stirring address on one of the great mysteries of our times, why Hillary lost the nomination and how many speeches he will have to give to retire her campaign debt.

Sunday had sessions such as “Creating a Diverse Energy Portfolio” and “Options for a Secure and Affordable Energy Future.” Visions of endless windmills and acres of solar panels must sure have been the highlight of these sessions, but I doubt that a word was spoken about building any nuclear or coal-fired plants to generate electricity or the possibility of actually drilling anywhere in the United States for oil or natural gas. Well, the Governor of Alaska probably was thinking about this, but few others.

At $4-a-gallon for gasoline, I suspect there was a big banner in the conference hall that said, “We can’t drill our way out of this!” I’m not a governor, but even I know we can and we must begin to drill.

Monday’s plenary session is devoted, of course, to “Clean Energy Technology: What’s here and What’s Coming.” What's here is $4-a-gallon gasoline and what's coming is $5-a-gallon gasoline.

What’s here are some heavily subsidized wind farms that only provide a small among of electricity when the wind is blowing, and must be backed up at all times with standard generation facilities powered by coal, gas or water/hydro sources. There may even be some solar farms contributing, but their combined contribution is less than 5% of all the electricity the nation uses. The subsidies are a form of hidden taxation on consumers.

You have a choice between so-called “clean energy” or no energy if the governors don’t start endorsing the construction of a lot more plants. These plants will use either the cheapest, most abundant energy source in America, coal, or they will use nuclear energy. Thanks to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV), the nation’s nuclear plants still cannot get rid of their waste despite the fact the U.S. government has spent $7 billion for a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, that is still not yet permitted to operate.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with providing affordable fuel for the nation’s 300 million autos, trucks, tractors, and other vehicles.

Minnesota Governor, Tim Pawlenty, this year’s chair, says, “America is ready for bold, innovative energy policies that will make us safer, more independent, and better stewards of the planet. We’ve been asleep at the switch for too long—the time for action is now.”

America’s governors are not elected to be “better stewards of the planet.” They are elected mostly to tend to matters in their own states such as appallingly bad schools, crumbling highways and bridges, attracting business and industry, and overseeing insanely bloated budgets. The occasional natural disaster gets their attention.

A word in your shell-like ear, Gov. Pawlenty; America’s governors, in addition to Congress and the White House, have been and still are a very big part of the nation’s energy problems since the 1980s.

Resisting the building of coal-fired or nuclear plants has been part of the problem. Not demanding that congressional mandates for ethanol use be rescinded is part of the problem. Opposing offshore exploration and drilling is part of the problem for governors of our coastal states and not encouraging mining and drilling for those in between is part of the problem.

Talking for three days about “clean energy” while ignoring America’s real energy problems will not solve those problems. At what point will the rest of us hear any of you discuss and act upon some real solutions?

A New Definition of Agriculture

2008-07-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

When is a car not a car? When you decide to call it a bicycle. When is a horse not a horse? When you decide to call it a cow. Just because you call something a name that does not properly describe it does not change its reality, but I live in New Jersey where reality is subject to the whim of the morons we elect to represent us.

Thus, I give you a piece of legislation sponsored by State Senator Bob Smith that would redefine wind turbines and solar panels as “agriculture.” And all this time you thought agriculture was about growing crops and raising livestock.

An Associated Press article in the July 1 edition of The New Jersey Farmer, one of my favorite publications, the headline read, “N.J. weighs bill encouraging alternative farm energy.” It would define solar and wind energy generation as an “agricultural activity.”

Now, I grant you some savvy farmers have installed solar panels to generate electricity to run their farms, but to suggest that covering acre after acre of preserved farmland with solar panels and wind turbines is a truly bad idea. In fact, it’s so bad that the bill offers those who would do this protection “from nuisance complaints from neighbors, similar to protections farmers have from complaints about the smell of manure, for instance.”

If you don’t like the smell of manure, it’s probably not a good idea to build your home near a farm, something that people who think food magically appears on the shelves of supermarkets, were unaware of when they decided to retire to the bucolic areas of the state.

“Despite New Jersey being the most densely populated state, it is a leader in farm preservation, with more than 18 percent of its farmland preserved.” This was one of the few good ideas the legislature enacted. It has cost the state $680 million and another $358 million from local government and charities to ensure that our little paradise is not entirely paved over or turned into wall-to-wall strip malls and housing developments.

I am not alone in thinking it is a bad idea. Alison Mitchell, a policy director with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation points out that “farm preservation is meant to save agriculture and farmland—not spur new construction on preserved land.” You think?

The bill has cleared a N.J. Senate committee and is awaiting a vote by the full Senate. It has yet to have received assembly consideration. New Jersey is a state in which its entire Congressional delegation and Governor remains unalterably opposed to offshore exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas, but apparently covering farmland with solar panels and wind turbines is a good thing.

Imagine the joy of going to the shore and enjoying one of our many beaches and then driving home past miles and miles of wind turbines or solar panels, some of which are actually producing a small measure of power if the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. The rest of the time they would just be a giant eyesore.

And then imagine that they are “agriculture” and not some demented politician’s idea of what farming and ranching really should be.

Here's what everyone should worry about. Laws like this get picked up and enacted by other States.

The Greens HATE Oil

2008-07-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

I have marveled for years at the failure of Americans to make any connection between the hatred for oil that has dominated environmental activities and the reason why we are all now paying over $4.00 a gallon at the pump.

Take, for example, two recent news reports. The Associated Press on July 1 in a report from Billings, Montana, noted that “Groups Seek Oil Drilling Ban Near Sage Grouse Habitat.” I suspect one could make an “endangered species” pitch that any oil drilling anywhere involves some poor “endangered species” even if it included areas over which birds migrate.

In this particular case, “two conservation groups have asked the federal government to impose new restrictions on oil and gas development in the West to protect the greater safe grouse, a popular game bird on the decline.” Well, if it is a game bird and a popular one at that, the likelihood that hunters are dining on them is probably causing a decline in their population. On the other hand, hunters have been doing this since the earliest Native Americans discovered what a tasty meal they make.

Here’s where it gets troublesome. “Federal rules now say oil and gas companies cannot drill within a quarter of a mile of sage grouse breeding areas.” No doubt there are a dozen more such species whose existence is used to justify a ban on drilling for oil or gas. This is how the idiotic Endangered Species Act works and, indeed, why this useless piece of legislation was enacted. Why Congress continues to renew it is part and parcel why Americans can’t get access to their own oil and natural gas.

If Congress were actually to authorize drilling offshore, the environmentalists would be filing law suits to protect dolphin or jellyfish.

Meanwhile, in Whiting, Indiana, the National Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit on July 9 “intended to stop the expansion of a BP oil refinery” on the grounds that the permits granted to BP by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management “simply do not protect the public and do not live up to the law.” One can be fairly sure that the NRDC did not ask any member of the public their opinion regarding this action.

One of the major contributing factors to the rising cost of gasoline has been the failure to build a new oil refinery anywhere in the United States since the late 1970s. Some expansion of existing ones has occurred, but how do environmentalists expect a population of 300 million in a nation where there is at least one car or truck for every one of them to get anywhere without expanding the capacity to refine oil into gasoline and other products like jet fuel?

The answer is, of course, Greens don’t want us to have additional gasoline and they have been instrumental in securing Congressional mandates that the gasoline we do use includes a mixture of ethanol. Ethanol requires more energy to produce than gasoline and provides less mileage than gasoline. Its drawdown on the nation’s corn and soy crops also drives up their cost per bushel and the cost of the literally thousands of foods and products that utilize them in some fashion.

Meanwhile, in the name of reducing greenhouse gases that have no impact on a global warming that is not occurring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it is “considering” fuel efficiency standards for autos that are far more stringent than the current mandate for 35 miles per gallon.

Experts at The Heartland Institute such as James M. Taylor, a Senior Fellow for Environmental Policy asked, “Does EPA have any heart at all? If the agency mandates still-tighter fuel economy standards, consumers will needlessly feel the double-punch of higher gasoline prices and higher automobile prices.” Over at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Sam Kazman, General Counsel, noted that no matter what it costs consumers, “none of this is good enough for politicians and bureaucrats who think technology mandates are a cost-free panacea.”

Then there is the immutable law of thermodynamics that says that there is only so much energy that can be gotten from a gallon of gasoline and even less if you mix it with ethanol.

The answer, of course, is that the EPA is the same agency that banned the manufacture and use of DDT, a pesticide that could have prevented the deaths of millions in Africa from malaria, along with a bunch of other pesticides whose purpose is to protect the rest of us from the diseases that insects and rodents spread. After the introduction of West Nile Fever on the East coast, it took barely five years for it to reach the West Coast.

The bottom line is that, along with oil, environmentalists hate anything that might keep us alive and gets us from point A to point B without costing a fortune.

Back to the Democrat Future

2008-07-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

Are we in some kind of weird time warp? Is it the 1970s all over again? Or the 1980s?

Why is it that Democrats are unable to look to the future unless it involves dopey computer models that say the Earth is doomed. According to the Democrats we have give up using any energy that might produce carbon dioxide, a gas that is vital to the growth of all vegetation.

Recently Sen. John Warner recommended that the oil crisis can be solved by requiring that everyone drive 55 miles per hour as in the good old days of the 1970s. That was when OPEC decided to jack up the price of oil because it was pissed that the Israelis had beaten the pants off of some pan-Arab army that, as usual, wanted to destroy it. Seems the U.S. took the position that Israel had a right to exist. Talk about radical.

So for a while there were lines of cars at the pumps and the mandate that we all drive slower to get anywhere. This is what politicians call a “solution” and everybody else calls really stupid. It didn’t work then. It won’t work now.

The fact that anyone would suggest this “solution” to our energy problems today is testimony to the fact that Democrats are forever stuck in the past and the only way they can see the future is by returning to failed ideas that, as I recall, lost them the White House in the 1980s and eventually control of Congress in the mid-90s.

They are back in control of Congress now and, boy, are they doing a bang-up job of solving the nation’s many problems. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot. We’re talking about Democrats here.

The Senate Majority Leader says oil and coal are making everyone “sick” and global warming (which doesn’t even exist) will destroy the Earth. The rest of the idiots keep blathering away about solar and wind energy when the problem is $4-a-gallon gasoline while U.S. oil sits idle in the ground. Madame Pelosi wants the President to open up the Strategic Oil Reserve, but doesn't seem to understand why it's called "Strategic."

Drill for oil? Oh no, we can’t do that say the Democrats. Consider the polar bear, the caribou, the Alaskan Loon. Fear for the migrating birds on our coasts. Consider a rare breed of crab that seagulls regard as dinner. But drill offshore? No we can’t do that. Drill in the most desolate place on the North American continent? No, we can’t do that.

Forever looking backward, the presumptive Democrat candidate for President, Barack Obama, cannot wait to impose the same failed “windfall profits” tax on the oil industry that Jimmy Carter did back in the 1980s.

The result of that has been a sixty percent reduction of exploration and drilling for oil in the United States of America.

The result of that was our dependency on foreign oil.

The result of that is the greatest transfer of money in history from the U.S. to guys who think we’re idiots. They’re right.

The rest of the Democrat platform is pretty much the same old tax-the-rich (that’s you, dummy) and redistribute the money to people who think you’re an idiot. They’re right.

All that’s left are two convention speeches by former Democrat Presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. I would stay up late to hear those two, wouldn’t you? One of them thinks Palestinians are terribly misunderstood and the other still can’t figure out how Hillary lost. (Hint: Look in the mirror!)

Apparently, we are either in a time warp or Congress and a large portion of the population of America is suffering a terrible case of the stupids. Or both.

Learning to Love Nuclear Energy

2008-07-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

For those of us who have been warning that America is going to start running out of electricity soon if the governors of our various states do not permit the construction of either or both coal-fired and nuclear plants, the news that Republican candidate, John McCain, says he wants a crash program to build nuclear plants should be greeted with joy.

So let’s at least give a hurrah to a politician who says something, anything, nice about more energy.

McCain has proposed at least 45 nuclear plants be built by 2030, twenty-two years from now. Considering how difficult it is to fund and build a single nuclear plant in the year 2008, the likelihood that anywhere near this goal will be achieved is small.

Happily, nuclear energy now produces about 20% of the electricity Americans use. In Europe, France famously gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear so maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to make fun of the French.

The U.S. got off to a start in the 1970s, but a phony scare generated by Three Mile Island, plus a history of delays and overruns combined to virtually kill the industryfor a decade or two. Today it is making a return with off-the-shelf designs for standardized reactors, along with a much more streamlined federal licensing process.

Still, you don’t put up one of these babies overnight. A 1,500 megawatt reactor used to cost $2 or $3 billion dollars not long ago, but the rising cost of everything, including concrete, steel, other construction materials, and labor now peg the price at closer to $7 billion.

When you throw in the Not-In-My-Backyard crowd, plus the usual environmental groups eager to sue for any reason, you have other factors that slow down McCain’s dream to a crawl. If a migratory bird happens to fly over the area where a plant is sited, you can be sure that the bird will get the first priority from the Greens while the rest of us get another kind of bird.

Naturally, the industry that builds such plants is not going to take on that kind of debt or lay out that kind of cash without federal guarantees that it will receive a certain amount of money per kilowatt hour of electricity and loan guarantees in order to raise the cash in the first place. So, in effect, the public will end up footing the bill and, frankly, if that is the only way to ensure sufficient electrical power, so be it.

There is, however, a much cheaper alternative. It’s coal. The U.S. has centuries’ worth of coal and, since coal-fired plants provide just over half of all the electrical power we use, the obvious question is why not build more?

The answer, in part, is that Greens like Friends of the Earth are waging a huge propaganda campaign against “dirty fuels” and, for several years now, state governors have been resistant to giving their blessing to this common sense answer.

The less obvious answer is that these politicians have thrown in their lot with the Greens and McCain is one of them, a true believer in a global warming that isn’t happening. It is to his credit, however, that he has begun to talk about drilling for oil in the U.S. continental shelf and even that he is proposing nuclear energy.

Unless more politicians begin to respond to America’s growing need for electrical power at some point their refusal to do anything is going to leave you in the dark.

Optimists vs. Pessimists

2008-07-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

We all know someone who is either an optimist or a pessimist. In general, optimists are more fun to be around. They are the ones with the most enthusiasm, the risk-takers, and the ones who pick themselves up after encountering a problem and consider it a learning experience.

Pessimists tend to see setbacks as a signal of more to come around the corner. They are rarely happy with anything or anybody. They assume a gloomy outcome. As such, they are more likely to be a pain in the asterisk than not.

Perhaps the most identifiable national characteristic of Americans is that they have been, as a group, optimists. Their belief that science and technology can solve any problem comes out of a long history of innovation and invention. They are proud of their history, but tend to be more focused on the future.

When President John F. Kennedy said that America would put a man on the moon few doubted that we could or would. The optimists saw an end to the Soviet Union. The pessimists were astounded when it fell apart. You don’t win military or ideological conflicts by assuming defeat.

Since the 1970s, however, America has been beset by the biggest, best funded, and more ideologically dedicated group we have seen in the modern era. They are the environmentalists who, back in the 1970s, were predicting an ice age and a decade later were predicting “global warming.” In both cases they said that we had to drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and abandon our lifestyle of consumption.

Instead, what we have witnessed since those days is a world where nations with huge populations like China and India have lifted themselves out of a Third World status and are emerging into dynamic economies, producing goods, using energy, improving the living standards of their citizens.

While all nations talk the environmental game, few if any commit totally to it because they understand that people need to eat every day, can see how others in the world live, want success for themselves and their children, and in general there is the lingering suspicion that environmentalism is just a different name for communism.

It’s not that we don’t want clean air and clean water. We do. It is instructive that the most advanced nations like the United States have not hesitated to spend the money to achieve this. Poorer nations must allocate their money to more immediate needs.

In a Rasmussen telephone poll taken just before July Fourth, voters were asked whether America’s best days were ahead or behind us. It should be kept in mind that almost from week to week the mood of the voters changes with various events and news. It was instructive, though, that just 32% of those polled thought that the nation’s best days were yet to come. A whopping 50% thought America’s best days were in the past.

These people are probably too young or too lacking in the knowledge of America’s history to know that the America of the past included decades of slavery, a huge and bloody Civil War to end it, a population that was mostly agrarian until the Industrial Revolution kicked in, a huge push to open the doors to immigrants to man the factories and build the nation’s infrastructure, leading to the creation of unions to oppose the widespread exploitation of workers. There were epidemics of influenza that killed thousands and polio that crippled or killed as well. Along the way the nation fought a number of wars including two in Europe and three in the far East, and a couple in the Middle East.

The past was a place of widespread disease and turmoil in addition to one of great achievement in the creation of goods and services that were and are the hallmark of a dynamic, optimistic society.

The last thing America needs right now is half the voters thinking that America is in decline and the future is bleak.

The survey revealed that 39% of Republicans think the best days lay ahead as opposed to 28% of Democrats and 30% of unaffiliated voters.

The November election may not reflect the mood of the nation in July 2008. One candidate is running on nothing more than vague promises about the future, but the future is always unknown while his experience and qualifications are slim at best, thoroughly inadequate at worst. The other candidate is a known quantity, tested in war, with a long career in public service.

So the question is whether the optimists will prevail or the pessimists?

Loony Harry Reid

2008-07-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

This nation is in serious trouble because it has people in very powerful elected positions that say crazy things.

Take, for example, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) who is the Senate Majority Leader:
“The one thing we fail to talk about is those costs that you don’t see on the bottom line. That is coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick; it’s global warming. It’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world. We’ve got to stop using fossil fuel.”

Where does one begin to dissect this totally idiotic statement? Well, fortunately, my friend Ron Arnold, Executive Vice President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, has a response.

“The one thing we fail to talk about is how much America needs fossil fuel. Coal powers 22%, oil 40%, natural gas 22%, nuclear and hydropower 11%. Biofuels, wind and solar less than 5%. Junking fossil fuels for non-existent substitutes is sick. We’ve got to get rid of infected politicians.”

Arnold is probably citing overall national percentages, but I can tell you that just over 50% of all the electricity in the nation comes from coal-fired plants. In a nation of more than 300 million people and growing, we need more coal-fired and nuclear plants for electricity. As for transportation, oil in the form of gasoline and diesel represents virtually every car and truck on the highway today. We have nearly as many cars and trucks as people, about one per person in use.

Since Sen. Reid is not even vaguely concerned with reality, the actual percentages are superfluous.

Where did this loony Senator come up with the notion that coal and oil make people sick? I suspect he’s been reading too much of the “dirty fuel” propaganda that the environmental organizations have been publishing of late.

It’s all a part of the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) is such a threat to the Earth’s atmosphere and climate that it must be drastically reduced. The fact that energy use generates CO2 might just have something to do with this lie. Here, though, is a bit of truth as tiny as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 constitutes 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere. The rest is mostly water vapor (H2O). CO2 plays virtually no role whatever in terms of the Earth’s climate.

And part of the Big Lie is the intention to impose “carbon taxes” on every single activity of mankind, thus generating billions for governments around the world to waste and corrupt officials to steal. Others, like Al Gore, will engage in the buying and selling of utterly worthless “carbon credits” that will make them as wealthy as the oil sheiks.

Why actually have to produce a commodity like oil when all you have to do is print up some certificates that say it’s okay for you to bake bread or make candles or do anything else that requires energy?

The other crazy thing I keep hearing from people like the Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is, “You can’t drill yourself out of an energy crisis.” Oh yes, you can! It is just about the only way the price of oil can be reduced. It is called supply and demand, but apparently the members of Congress think that this immutable law can be or should be suspended. That’s crazy too.

Signs of the Times

2008-07-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

The headlines and stories of failing newspapers are beginning to gain momentum. In my home state of New Jersey, the venerable northern daily, The Record, is abandoning its office in Hackensack and the reporters it retains will simply function “in the field” via laptops and cell phones. In Tampa the Tribune will cut its workforce and the same is happening to the Los Angeles Times.

When big city or regional newspapers begin to fail for lack of advertising, it tells you that new technology is chasing out old technology. Fewer horses and buggies and more of those newfangled automobiles. Fewer steam wheelers on the Mississippi because of the railroads crossing the nation. It’s called progress by most and ruin for those finding their way of life passing from the scene.

I don’t know how many people increasingly turn to the Internet for their news, but I will tip my hat to Matt Drudge for literally driving the daily news stream through his unique ability to spot stories in sources the mainstream press probably never read or knew existed. What’s the news today? Click on Drudge. His interest in the agonies of today’s daily newspapers has much to tell the rest of us onlookers.

As someone who came of age in weekly and daily newsrooms, I think the passing of the newsroom where reporters had their desks and the place crackled with an undeniable excitement as editors interacted with them is a loss.

There was something special about being one of the men or women who went to the town hall meetings, who covered the fires, and wrote features about local folks who had earned recognition. And it was important to be able to convey the event or personality one-on-one, face to face with an editor.

But time and the Times is moving on and, for lack of advertising, getting thinner.

There is another factor contributing to the slow death of newspapers as something more than a place to check the local obituaries and movie listings, and it has everything to do with the primary content, the news.

The editorial and Op Ed (opposite-the-editorial or opinion) pages of most of the nation’s dailies are relentlessly liberal in their view of the nation and its issues. This is in contradiction of the fact that 62% percent of Americans define themselves these days as “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative” according to a recent bipartisan Battleground Poll in May. Fully 28% said they were “very conservative.”

Only 8% said they were “very liberal.” In the view of liberals, conservatives are deluded by their religious faith, are mostly bigoted, prefer small or less government, and are openly patriotic, et cetera.

Almost by definition, newsrooms are filled with liberals and it is reflected in the editorial cartoons, the daily editorials, and what appears on the Op Ed page. It a small, liberal world and it is arrogant to the point of thinking the readers are too dumb to figure out things for themselves.

The problem for the editors (and publishers) of newspapers, however, is that the majority of the people who might want to read their newspaper are offended by what they are offered as “news” because they know it is inaccurate and/or slanted. People instinctively resent it. And they can now get their news elsewhere.

Can America Survive?

2008-07-03T14:53:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

With the advent of the Fourth of July, I know the expectation is that some patriotic prose is expected. I also know there have been many previous Fourths when Americans could have legitimately asked whether the United States of America would survive.

Why now? We date the Fourth from 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was published by representatives of the Colonies who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

However, the nation we celebrate began in earnest on May 25, 1787 with a quorum of representatives from seven states met in Philadelphia to draft a Constitution. They met in secret. They were all Christian. They were all white. They were the best and the brightest of their generation and, arguably, of many generations since.

By September 17, 1787 all twelve of the delegations had approved the Constitution. Out of the 42 members present, 39 delegates signed it.

When New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it, the Constitution went into effect on June 21, 1788. The first Congress convened in New York City on March 4, 1789. On September 25, 1789, Congress approved twelve Amendments, including those known today as our Bill of Rights and sent them to the states for ratification. On December 15, 1791, Virginia ratified ten of the twelve and they became part of the Constitution.

By a single vote of a single Justice of the Supreme Court, we managed to hold onto the Second Amendment just days ago. That is frightening. If Sen. Obama becomes President Obama, the appointment of new members of the Court could do extraordinary damage to the Constitution.

That is why on July 4, 2008, it is legitimate to ask if the United States of America can survive.

There are other reasons to raise the question. Specifically, they are the 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 members of the Senate of whom only a minority wants to stop the illegal invasion of America across our southern border or begin to drill for the vast amounts of oil and natural gas known to exist in our nation.

When you have a Senate Majority Leader saying, as Harry Reid did, that “oil makes us sick. Coal makes us sick,” and the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, saying we cannot and should not drill our way to a decent level of energy sufficiency, you have a leadership that is certifiably insane or too stupid to be allowed to ride a bus unattended.

There is the Islamic Revolution that is alive and well among at least a hundred million Muslims of the more than one billion in the world. Pretending that we are not at war with them is suicidal.

When you have a $14 trillion economy and the only thing the mainstream media can write about is a Recession that is not in effect or a Depression they predict is just around the corner, something is very wrong with what passes for journalism in America.

Is the deficit too high? Yes. Is our money supply too cheap? Yes. These things can be fixed if we can just elect a Congress that will not repeat the spending frenzy of the passed eight years.

So, yes, it is proper and necessary to ask if America can survive. It’s not the 300-million plus Americans I worry about. It is the steady flow of illegal aliens that worries me. It is a government that is not supporting American industry, entrepreneurs, and small businesses that worries me.

It is a bloated and wasteful federal government that worries me.

It is the people in elected offices from the Congress to the local governments who worry me. A lot!

Brainwashed Masses

2008-07-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

This is pure conjecture, but I am beginning to think that the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain, while appearing to be completely detached from reality, i.e., the real lives of Americans, are actually some kind of political alchemy, a potion brewed to influence our rational minds in ways that will cause us to vote for one or the other candidate.

It makes no sense for both candidates to promise to rethink the immigration issue in any other way than to recall the massive outcry that occurred when Congress tried to slip an amnesty by us that would have added a lot of people to the rolls who lacked a decent education, could not speak the language, and were already receiving various forms of welfare.

That, however, is clearly what both candidates intend to do.

It makes no sense for both candidates to continue to blather about alternative fuels or forms of energy like giant fuel cells when the problem we have right here and right now is the insanely rising cost of oil that is draining off billions from our economy. They are not talking about anything sensible like the oil on which our nation is totally dependent. McCain has made some mention of offshore oil, but doesn't appear enthusiastic about any oil. Obama doesn't appear to know what oil is, where it is found, what one does with it.

Like a poison fog adrift in the land, the political madness is exemplified in the statements by Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, saying that oil and coal “make us sick” and should be abandoned. This is the same man who told us that the war in Iraq was “lost” despite ample evidence it is beginning to look like we have actually won. What parallel universe does he live in? Why should we want to go there?

In a nation that has as many cars, trucks, and other gasoline and diesel fueled vehicles as there are citizens, it would be easily 15 to 20 years before an “alternative” means of getting around would be able to replace them—if in fact we wanted to replace them. The problem is the price of gas at the pump today.

Visit either candidate’s website and you get the equivalent of a visit to the late Madam Marie on the boardwalk of Asbury Park. She would read tarot cards and tell you the future. Even famous people visited, but the likelihood that anyone who had their fortune told could ever attribute the outcome to Madam Marie is small.

What is missing in the candidate’s messages is the vital element of reality. What is missing is a pragmatic choice of actions to deal with a future rife with a host of nasty scenarios ranging from a nuclear-armed Iran to a severely challenged national economy.

The only thing missing from the candidate’s message is soothing music and a touch of incense in the air. It’s all about seduction and it’s exceedingly strange to observe.

What is John McCain doing in Colombia? That nation is in South America! I half expect to see Obama hugging Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. At least they both have communism in common.

What is Obama saying lately about anything other than patriotism, his spiritual beliefs, and other ephemeral notions?

Somewhere, I am convinced, are two dark, cavernous rooms filled with evil gnomes all sitting in front of computer screens, all plotting and scheming to say just the right thing, to avoid saying just the wrong thing, staging events in just the right place, avoiding being seen in just the wrong place.

These political demons, employed by both parties, never venture out to breathe the air of our beaches, our parks, our backyard barbeques with friends and family. Instead, they labor day to day to find just the right imagery and rhetoric to so befuddle our brains that we will vote for one or the other candidate despite the fearful prospect that neither is suited to the job, to the times, to the menace that is always waiting to devour the weak.

McCain's Green Babble

2008-06-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

A lot of us are going to figuratively hold our noses and vote for John McCain because the notion of Barack Obama as President is too awful to contemplate, but if you go to JohnMcCain.com, you will find some of the worst Green babble posted on his “Issues” page and bodes ill for ridding us of a lot of bad science and worse “solutions” to solve so-called environmental problems that do not even exist.

Here’s what passes for McCain’s “Principles for Climate Policy”

# Climate policy should be built on scientifically-sound, mandatory emission reduction targets and timetables.

#Climate policy should utilize a market-based cap and trade system.

#Climate policy must spur the development and deployment of advanced technology.

#Climate policy must facilitate International efforts to solve the problem.

Given these “principles”, I recommend that McCain choose Al Gore as his vice presidential running mate, because they could have been written by Gore.

They are so wrong for so many reasons, but the most obvious is that we do not have to reduce emissions, i.e. carbon dioxide, because (1) it constitutes 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere, (2) it has virtually no role as regards the Earth’s climate, and (3) it is the second most essential gas other than oxygen because every bit of vegetation on Earth requires it.

Beyond that, mandatory emission reductions will only manage to impose large and very unnecessary expenses on all manner of human activity from manufacturing to transportation to agriculture, et cetera.

This brings us to McCain’s advocacy of a cap and trade system. This is the bogus buying and selling of “carbon credits” to create a whole new market for something that will simply drive up the cost of doing business for no good reason. The costs will be passed along to consumers and those running the exchanges for these credits will make any money from this scheme along with, of course, charlatans like Gore who run companies that sell these specious “credits.”

You might as well be buying credits for promising not to eat cotton candy or marshmallows.

As to spurring the development of advanced technology, what does McCain think American corporations and entrepreneurs do for a living? Our $14 trillion economy is built on research and development. The U.S. government has already wasted $50 billion on so-called “climate research” and none of it points to any global warming.

Finally, seeking “international” efforts to solve the problem will only prolong the history of the United Nations’ lies about global warming at a time when the Earth is a decade into what is likely to be a very long cooling period. In short, there is no warming and hasn’t been since 1998.

McCain’s climate policy is ignorance squared, especially if you pause just one moment and ask yourself what exactly can humankind do with regard to changing, altering, slowing or improving the climate in any way? The answer is nothing.

The Earth has been around 4.5 billion years, undergoing all kinds of climate from ice ages to long periods in which the CO2 levels were far higher than they are today.

These principles need to be scrapped, but they won’t be because they are a blatant attempt to skim off some votes from so-called environmentalists who have no more clue about the Earth than McCain.

He Kept Us Safe

2008-06-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

By Alan Caruba

I know any number of people who truly hate George W. Bush. The mainstream media are always telling us that John McCain will lose because the Democrats have hung “George Bush’s third term” around his neck and is counting on the rather widespread disaffection for the President, whether it be Democrat or Republican.

I am not convinced of that. Though when I read the environmental balderdash on McCain’s website these days, I just want to puke.

Sometimes, however, you need to look beyond our shores to know that some people “get it” when it comes to the most particular role that George W. Bush has played in the last nearly eight years in office.

Take, for example, a column in the Guardian, a very liberal British newspaper and one not known for being fond of the U.S. Imagine my surprise to read on June 17, “Bush made the world a safer place” by Oliver Kamm.

“The postwar history of our continent would be different and less benign if the United States had heeded that message (to go home). His office, and the system of collective security from which we benefit, would be justification enough to welcome President Bush’s visit to London last week. But there is an additional reason peculiar to the Bush presidency. For all Bush’s verbal infelicity, diplomatic brusqueness, negligence in planning for post-Saddam Iraq, and insouciance regarding standards of due process when prosecuting the war on terror, the world is a safer place for the influence he has exercised.”

Well, bravo! Well said!

At long last it has taken an Englishman to note that Bush decided to kill jihadists in their backyard instead of waiting for them to show up here again after 9/11. Given the courage, discipline, training, and superior firepower of our military, we have done a splendid job. This explains why Iraqis are beginning to show signs of figuring out how to run Iraq without the need for a war-mongering pathological sadist and his two sons.

Depending on who succeeds Bush, the U.S. will either pull out, laying waste to the sacrifices of our soldiers or we shall be there for McCain’s metaphorical hundred years. American military bases have been in England and Europe since 1945.

At this point, one can rather confidently conclude that Barack Hussein Obama has no stomach for a war with the Islamists who cut off the heads of those they take prisoner and thus can be said to share an “insouciance regarding standards of due process.”

I have had no end of complaint about George W. Bush over the years, but I will grant him that not one, single act of terrorism has occurred in the United States under his watch. No one in 2001 would have bet $2 that the U.S. would have enjoyed such remarkable security. Instead, the Islamists attacked London and Glasgow, Madrid and Bali.

Historians will judge Bush’s two terms in the light of hindsight, but Americans, always impatient, always reluctant to wage war or address the need to fix the things we broke in the process, worried about $4 a gallon gasoline and the rising price of avocadoes, need to keep in mind that the war in Afghanistan and Iraq has maintained the peace here at home.