By Alan CarubaThere is so much news coming at us from all directions that it is easy to let some important aspects of it slide by. Here are some bits and pieces of recent news items.
Associated Press: “Last week’s Iraqi elections appear to have been a rousing success—a major step toward a stable democracy that will hasten the day when U.S. troops can leave.” That was the first paragraph of a Feb. 4 story, but in my daily newspaper the headline read: “One peaceful election hardly testifies to stability in Iraq.” Give me a break! President Bush said it was vital to the Middle East that more democracy be encouraged there and, guess what, in addition to Turkey and Israel, it’s called IRAQ!
EnergyTribune.com: “Ethanol Bankruptcies Continue, 14 Studies Have Exposed the High Cost of Ethanol and Biofuels.” That’s the Feb 4 headline. It turns out that “about nine percent of all the ethanol plants in the U.S. have now filed for bankruptcy and some analysts believe the numbers could reach as high as twenty percent.” That’s because the whole ethanol thing is a scam. It has driven up the costs of corn so high even the producers can’t afford it any more. And ethanol does nothing to reduce dependency on imported oil. Producing and using it puts more, not less, greenhouse gas emissions into the environment.
The Middle East Media Research Institute: Reporting on “The Reality of Oil Import by the United States”, it turns out that we are not sending billions entirely to the Middle East as is commonly reported. Figures for 2007 reveal that, although Saudi Arabia remains second among the nations from which the U.S. imports oil, Canada was number one, Mexico was number three, and Venezuela was number four. We imported oil from England as well and, with the exception of Iraq and Kuwait, the rest were either African or South American nations.
Numbers USA: They sent a notice on Feb 2 that addressed some statistics the mainstream (or is that lamestream?) press have neglected to report. Among the figures cited was the fact that 2.5 million Americans lost jobs in 2008 at the same time the federal government was permitting the immigration of 1.5 million new foreign workers! To put it another way, 138,000 new foreign workers continue to arrive each month while Americans are filing for unemployment benefits!
Agence France Presse: Would you believe that the forthcoming Durban II United Nations racism conference has Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya chairing the planning committee and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran as the vice-chair? You can’t make up stuff like this. UN Watch, an independent group, said, “it’s heart-wrenching though not surprising that Durban II is hijacking the noble cause of human rights and anti-racism, with the aim of legitimizing an agenda of hate and extremism that targets innocents in Mumbai, Madrid, Israel, and elsewhere.” The UN is a place where totalitarian governments get together to undermine the most fundamental tenets of Western civilization.
Star-Ledger (NJ): The headline on a Feb 6 four-paragraph story read “Activist gets 22 years for Michigan State fire.” The real story however is that she was a member of the Earth Liberation Front, never mentioned at all in the report, and had caused a million dollars damage and destroyed years of valuable research on New Year’s Eve 1990. She also admitted to a dozen other acts of property destruction. Describing her as an activist is comparable to saying that Osama bin Laden is an “activist.”
All Media: The big news is, of course, the impending breakdown of the national and international financial system. If calmer heads prevail, we may just avoid it, but with President Obama bad-mouthing the economy and breaking out in a public sweat, there isn’t much hope of a happy outcome.
Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Obama’s new theme is “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Algore made a BIG deal of Bush's "talking down the economy" in the 2000 election. Remember that? That was just an election. We now have a president who's doing his best to not only talk it down, he wants to launch missiles against it to ensure that it comes down.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly is "change," but I had "hoped" for something a lot better. It's hard to believe that people voted for a simpleton like this.
Yup, we are on a toboggan ride to the wonderful world of Changey-Hopey, a place where they just print money and give it away, and you don't even have to work or be a citizen to get it.
ReplyDeleteWhen even the far-left blogs and sites are saying bad stuff about Obama two weeks into his first month in office, you have to know he is stepping into some bad stuff every single day.
There needs to be a simple check box on all voter ballots.
ReplyDeleteOne would select- yes or no
This would follow a simple question.
This provision would serve as a reminder, to both the candidate and the voters, on how serious our duty is to pay attention to who is representing whom.
Currently we have a group in power that intends to use that power to:
a. keep that power
b.use their power to control the people using any and all known tricks in the book!
The simple question is this:
Do you trust government to plan and run your life? Yes or No
This result would be tallied along with the numbers for the candidates.
I doubt if this result would never fall below 75% (as a conservative estimate) and the answer would be No!
A candidate would than be a fool to claim they had any sort of mandate to be your new parents!
Unfortunately the "terrible trio" ruining our country now, had no such check box on their ballots!
Nice collection of short commentaries!
ReplyDeleteAll the government spending/waste will certainly lead to disastrous inflation - as certainly as the mushrooms follow the spring rain. Inflation is a stealthy way to tax everyone, particularly folks with money. So take steps to be ready for it or see your savings melt away.
FDR's famous statement may be true, but I have one of my own ....
ReplyDelete"We have nothing to fear, but government itself ..."
While watching the ad nauseum coverage of the debate over this so-called stimulus package Friday evening, I found myself thinking "gee, I'll bet they will come to some sort of a miraculous agreement on this thing over the weekend, and vote it into law sometime late Sunday night...." It wasn't twenty minutes later, I heard the news that they had reached a tentative agreement. So now, how much would you like to bet that the vote will happen sometime late Sunday evening, when 90% of the American public is either asleep, getting ready for their work week, or otherwise distracted? Is it just my imagination, or have these criminals voted on every stinking significant issue in the last two years over a weekend or late in the evening when nobody is around to notice? Ever since I've been alive, nobody could get either congress or the senate to hang around ten seconds past quitting time to do anything that even resembled work, even if it was a matter of national security. Now all of a sudden, every damn piece of crappy legislation they come up with is an emergency, and has to be slipped through on a weekend or evening.
Folks, we're being treated like imbeciles. Everyone in government knows this bill is wrong. Everyone knows it's nothing but pork. Everyone knows it isn't going to do anything but accelerate the financial meltdown in this country. In the face of all the historical evidence to the contrary, anyone who says they believe in this bill has GOT to be lying. They're screwing the American public for personal gain, and they think we're so stupid we won't figure it out. Meanwhile, our new Atty General is busy fast-tracking a sweeping piece of gun control legislation. It's time we did something to prove they aren't fooling anyone, before it's too late.
While it may be true that we have a lot of other things to fear nowadays, our very own government is on the top of MY list...
"They're screwing the American public for personal gain, and they think we're so stupid we won't figure it out."
ReplyDeleteThis is an age-old mistake that all politicians make until they push the public too far and discover they're out of a job.
In the meantime, we have to keep the protest level high.