GE's Really Big, Bad Ideas

By Alan Caruba

Why would General Electric abandon the incandescent light bulb? In 1890 Thomas Edison established General Electric after having achieved fame with it and other inventions. Not only will this iconic invention no longer be manufactured in the United States by next year, but the government has ruled that it cannot even be purchased here.

That is a level of stupidity that defines much of U.S. manufacturing and energy policy these days and explains why so many jobs have been out-sourced to other nations. It demonstrates what harm can be done by a government that has interfered so much in the industrial and financial marketplace that the nation totters on economic ruin.

It goes without saying that you don’t become the chief executive of GE without having demonstrated a lot of smarts and managerial ability, but a recent Wall Street Journal article, “GE Chief Slams U.S. on Energy” made me wonder if Jeff Immelt shares the same nation with me, if not the same planet.

Immelt is all about new sources of energy like wind and solar even though, combined, they produce about three percent of the electricity Americans use every day and, without government subsidies and other government-granted credits, they would barely exist. The reason is obvious. The wind does not blow all the time and the sun is often either behind clouds or it is night time.

In a speech to the Gridwise Global Forum on September 23, Immelt got a lot of facts backward. For example, he reportedly “praised China’s approach to energy and criticized what he called a stalled effort to revamp U.S. energy policy.”

China is building a new coal-fired plant almost weekly in order to ramp up its ability to compete internationally. It is no accident that the nations that use the most energy are also the most successful. It has been U.S. energy policy to slow the building of coal-fired plants even though the U.S. is estimated to have several hundred years of coal with which to supply their needs and ours.

Immelt worried that GE was facing tougher competition around the world selling “equipment to produce renewable (wind and solar) and nuclear energy. GE believes its rivals receive more help from their governments.”

He neglected to mention an effort in the U.S. Senate that would “impose a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) that would force electric utilities to generate a large and increasing percentage of their power from wind and solar—rising to 15% by 2021”, according to Dr. S. Fred Singer of the Science & Environmental Policy Project.

The RES would give so-called renewable or “clean” energy producers an economic advantage that ignores the obvious. Coal, gas, and nuclear energy are cheaper and more plentiful. Consumers will see their energy bills soar if the RES becomes law.

Immelt noted that the electric grid system in America needs an upgrade and in this he is right. Left unsaid is that both solar and wind require heavy investment to transmit the energy generated, usually in places far from urban or suburban centers, to the grid. Also left unsaid is that most of the wind turbines and solar panels in use today in America are made in China.

Immelt was correct, too, in noting the failure to get behind the production of nuclear energy in the U.S. Most of the plants operating today were built in the 1970s and, for reasons I have never understood, a multi-billion dollar repository for nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, has been closed to use. Meanwhile, nations like India have embarked on an aggressive program to increase and integrate nuclear power for electricity production.

Jack Welch was famous for instilling new life and vitality into GE before his retirement and replacement by Jeff Immelt. In April, Businessweek magazine devoted its cover to a story, “Can GE Gets Its Juice Back? A company renowned for innovation and talent development has lost its way. Inside Jeff Immelt’s quest to find the light.”

GE’s earnings from continuing operations were described as “ho-hum”, having sunk 38% in 2009” and expected to stay flat this year. In an annual shareholder letter, Immelt spoke of a “decade from hell.” You won’t find many corporate leaders or financial analysts that have much good to say of GE these days.

And perhaps that might have something to do with GE’s failure to support the best, proven ways to generate electricity? Or to have failed to protect the American consumer from a government-imposed ban on incandescent light bulbs?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Dogs Know

Have you ever heard that a dog 'knows' when an earthquake is about to hit?

Have you ever heard that a dog can 'sense' when a tornado is stirring up, even 20 miles away?

Do you remember hearing that before the December tsunami struck Southeast

Asia , dogs started running frantically away from the seashore, at breakneck speed?

Do you know that dogs can detect cancer and other serious illnesses and danger of fire?

Somehow they always know when they can 'go for a ride' before you even ask. How do those dogs and cats get home from hundreds of miles away?

I'm a firm believer that animals - and especially cats anddogs - have keen insights into the Truth.

And you can't tell me that dogs can't sense a potentially terrible disaster well in advance.

Simply said, a dog just KNOWS when something isn't right... when impending doom is upon us.

They'll always try to warn us!

We should have listened.

h/t to a friend who shared this with me.

No to the Cape Cod Wind Farm. Yes to Whaling Ships!

By Alan Caruba

The opposition from residents of Cape Cod to the proposed wind farm off their coast line to generate electricity has been vociferous, but they are up against a juggernaut of well-funded special interests that are indifferent to the destruction of the natural beauty of the area, its sailing lanes, the dangers to migratory bird species, and the endless noise that the dozens of blades will impose on the area.

If the producers of these turbines are so keen on wind power, I propose that they change their business plan and begin building wind-driven sailing ships instead. It would be a boon to the economy employing hundreds of craftsman and all the others who would be needed to cut down the trees from Massachusetts’ forests and transport them to the timber mills that would be needed to create the various wooden elements of these great ships.

New Bedford, Massachusetts and other coastal towns were famous throughout New England at the height of the days of the whaling industry. Whale oil kept the lamps of citizens glowing until the invention of electricity introduced the miracle of incandescent light bulbs. Since these bulbs’ manufacture and sale have been banned by the federal government, it seems obvious to me that a renewed whaling industry is just around the corner.

Hundreds of large trees of several types were needed to build an average-sized whale ship. White cedar was in particular demand. Clear-cutting portions of the State’s forests would make room for more housing in newly created suburban areas, thus contributing to its economic growth. Trees from other parts of the nation could be put on barges and brought to the newly resuscitated ship building sites.

Even if whale oil didn’t make a comeback, locals and tourists could be treated to a variety of whale meat and blubber recipes, thus reducing the need for the raising of cattle which contribute to global warming with their ceaseless emissions of methane and other trace gases in the atmosphere.

Thus, New Bedford could return to its historic roots while at the same time the ocean area off Cape Cod’s coasts could be kept in the pristine way that Nature has provided for millions of years before the invention of wind turbines.

Imagine the pride that locals could take in the new whale ships. Four types were commonly built in New Bedford. The largest had three masts with huge sails to capture the wind and often carried four or five whaleboats used to pursue the whales. They had crews that numbered thirty or more. Here again, in these times of widespread unemployment, one can see the advantage this offers.

Artisans would be employed to sculpt the fanciful figureheads that adorned earlier whale ships, as well as stern carvings for the two-and-three mast ships that were the pride of New England.

If all this sounds fanciful or even idiotic, it is. Environmentalists will protest the cutting down of any trees. Animal rights advocates will protest the killing of whales.

As John Droz. Jr., an authority on wind power points out, “Wind energy was abandoned well over a hundred years ago, as it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning more modern needs of power, even in the late 1800s.”

IF there was any need for wind power, why is it necessary for the government to mandate, i.e. require its use?

If there is no global warming, why are we told wind power doesn’t generate the carbon dioxide that is supposed to be causing it?

Why are Americans being literally forced to accept a form of energy abandoned more than a century ago?

I hope this little exercise also demonstrates how idiotic it would be to put row upon row of wind turbines in place to provide less electrical energy than a single coal-fired or nuclear plant would produce far more economically and efficiently.

Too many environmental proposals like wind power have no more basis in reality than my proposal to reinstitute wooden ships for a long gone whaling industry.

I hope the Cape Cod wind farm proposal is ultimately defeated because it makes no sense, would prove far too costly insofar as it would not provide any savings in energy costs to consumers who would, in fact, see their electricity bills increase.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that the turbines will be built, not in America, but in China, a nation that is building an average of one new coal-fired plant every week to provide the energy it requires.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Simple Slogans for Simpletons

Why Are Climategate Charlatans Still Free?

By Alan Caruba

If I had engaged in activities that involved fleecing the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom of billions in public funds in the name of “climate research”, and it was found that I had manipulated the data to advance the “global warming” hoax, wouldn’t I be facing charges of fraud?

Or if the universities for which I worked had benefited from receiving those public funds had conducted hearings that exonerated me, wouldn’t those institutions be considered accessories to the alleged crime?

This is the case today for the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England and Pennsylvania State University in America. If the CRU is above suspicion, why did the U.S. Department of Energy suspend funds for it in July citing scientific doubts raised by the Climategate revelations last November?

Leaked emails between the principal players, CRU’s Phil Jones and Penn State’s Michael Mann, documented their dismay over the fact that the overall temperatures of the Earth were not increasing and colluded to suppress any expression of global warming skepticism in respected science journals.

Indeed, one of Mr. Jones emails admitted that he had “deleted loads of emails” to avoid being exposed lest someone bring a Freedom of Information Act request. In July a Wall Street Journal commentary by Patrick J. Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, noted that at the heart of the yet unresolved issues are “professional misconduct, data manipulation, and the jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data.”

A newspaper serving the area where Penn State is located published an article on July 12, 2010 by Louis Lombardi reporting that it had “cleared Mann of any wrongdoing” but that “the university was in no position to investigate one of its own or, stated differently, to investigate itself. Over the years, Mann had brought in millions of dollars for the university through his research. For the university to come to any other conclusion than that he acted appropriately would be an admission that the university has been fleecing those who gave the money.”

A similar whitewash occurred in England when Phil Jones and the CRU was investigated by a supposedly independent review, but one of the four members of the panel was Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, a member of the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Science for 18 years. A previous internal investigation by the university was similar to Penn State’s, clearing Jones of any charges.

Under any other circumstances, Michael Mann and Phil Jones, to name just two participants, would be subject to trials to determine whether they had, in fact, deceived their respective governments and other donors in order to receive the funding that was at the core of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel (IPCC) reports asserting that the Earth was heating up and that carbon dioxide emissions had to be limited to avoid it.

As this is being written the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to assert authority to control carbon dioxide emissions despite evidence of a global fraud and mountains of scientific data that indicate CO2 plays no role in a fraudulent “global warming.” All utilities, industries and businesses in America generate CO2 in the normal course of producing or using electricity for manufacturing and countless other uses.

The prospect of Republicans gaining control of Congress, likely in the House of Representatives, if not the Senate, suggests that, despite having been cleared by Penn State, Michael Mann will face an investigation. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has made it known that a probe of the Climategate scandal will be at the top of his environmental agenda.

The funding at issue was public funding, the taxes paid by Americans and in England by its citizens. It will never be repaid, but the public has a right to know if its taxes underwrote a global hoax, a fraud primarily perpetrated by the United Nations and countless other parties seeking to create a market for “carbon credits” to be bought and sold on various exchanges.

Justice is not likely to be served in the case of Al Gore who has testified under oath before Congress asserting that “the planet has a fever” lied under oath. A long line of scientists and others have similarly misled Congress. The result in the House was the passage of the Cap-and-Trade bill that awaits a vote in the Senate.

We routinely put people like Bernard Madoff in jail for Ponzi schemes that defrauded people of billions. There is no reason why those who provided the data underwriting the fraud of Climategate should not face justice.

That may not occur, but the truth will be a form of justice despite the loss and waste of billions in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

And they called Bush a Moron

The Obama Scenarios

By Alan Caruba

Are we there yet? Living in Obama’s America is like some horrid, seemingly endless road trip with no bathroom breaks.

I have heard a variety of scenarios regarding the months and days that Barack Hussein Obama remains in office. There are countdown clocks available on the Internet for those who have to know how much more horror we must endure.

I have long since stopped watching or listening to the man for the same reason I don’t pay all that much attention to Mamoud Ahmadinejad. Both lie all the time. Both are ideologues who are immune to reality. Both are destined to come to a bad end. I favor seeing Obama live to a ripe old age like Jimmy Carter, getting up every day knowing how despised he has become.

I leave the job of trying to deduce his day to day machinations to those whose job it is to figure out what he’s up to. To them, I recommend some magical chicken bones and shiny pebbles that can be tossed on a piece of black velvet in order to extract a hint of the future from the patterns they make.

I do not maintain a daily Obama Watch. I ignore him. The last time I did this was somewhere beyond the midpoint of Bill Clinton’s first term. As all the stories of his uniformly loathsome behavior toward women spilled into the gutter of American journalism I was long gone into a protective cone of silence not unlike the one in “Get Smart.” After the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that the Republic was safe.

Oddly, George W. Bush never bored me. Any President who will say “Bring it on” is my kind of guy. So, okay, it took longer than expected to get Iraq on track, but things improved measurably once Donald H. Rumsfeld was sent packing. There is something to be said for leaving the conduct of war to the generals.

I’m not bragging because I had Obama’s number before he took the oath of office. Dr. Jerome R. Corsi’s book, “Obamanation”, was and is a masterful piece of research that spelled out what we could expect from him. Since then, books about Obama have become a cottage industry with the latest by Bob Woodward confirming that he always wanted to get the hell out of Afghanistan even when he was saying he didn’t.

All this has spawned another industry of sorts; predictions about how the remaining time until January 20, 2013 will play out for him. These scenarios mostly reflect the wishful thinking of those putting them forth, but they are interesting if for that alone.

There is the assassination theory. This was advanced early on in the belief that some likely KKK member would kill him for sleeping on the white sheets in the White House.

There hasn’t been a presidential assassination since John F. Kennedy in 1963 so these events are rare. There was Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley; four out of forty-four.

There is the impeachment theory. Here again, history does not favor this option. Impeachment has been rarely tried and never successful. The effort to impeach Clinton only served to make him some kind of counterculture hero. Having learned that lesson, a Congress controlled by the GOP should simply do everything it can to thwart any further Obama legislative initiatives, appointments, et cetera.

There is the birth certificate theory in which the courts by some miracle actually allow challenges to Obama’s eligibility to proceed to a point what he is required to produce his long form birth certificate currently in a vault in Honolulu. Was he born there? At this point, it hardly seems to matter. For all we know, he’s still a bona fide citizen of Indonesia. Or Kenya.

There is the resignation theory. This is the thinnest of hopes because being President of the United States is such a cool job that Obama would never give it up. Just consider all the perks. Just consider all the ways he can screw all of us colonialist, imperialist, capitalist Americans? He has surrounded himself with people who can barely conceal their contempt for the nation.

There is the election theory. This postulates that he is a one-term president and, for my money, this is the only one that holds up. His popularity, even among those who voted for him, continues to tank. He has embarrassed the nation with all that bowing to kings, emperors, and union leaders. Not unless the Republican Party nominates a convicted child molester will their candidate lose against Obama.

Not all the Tele-Prompters and speeches between now and Election Day 2012 will help Obama get re-elected. The only exception, possibly, would be World War Three and even then Americans would vote for anyone else because, if there is one thing we know about Obama, it is that he is a coward.

Like Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama will simply have to be endured while the Republican Party, re-energized by the Tea Party movement, plays defense until a new quarterback can be brought into the game.

© Alan Caruba, 2010



Your Insane U.S. Energy Department

By Alan Caruba

In mid-September, Cathy Zoi, an Assistant Secretary of Energy, said that the U.S. Department of Energy has a “mandate” to issue regulations about what household appliances should be available to Americans in the future.

A CNSnews story reported that while speaking at the inaugural meeting of the recently reestablished Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, Ms. Zoi “pointed to four tactics the Obama administration intended to use to advance the ‘deployment of clean energy.’ The first three were government subsidies, special tax incentives, and low-interest government-backed loans for green energy projects.”

The likelihood that any of these “green energy” projects will yield any electrical power comparable to a single coal-fired or nuclear plant is negligible. Two recent huge wastes of taxpayer money involve a $57 million program that includes $11 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—the failed “stimulus” plan—to support clean energy technology commercialization projects for 33 small businesses across the country.

Among the projects is “harvesting/dewatering technology for algal biofuels”, money devoted to algae as a source of power. Other projects include organic light-emitting diodes, and advanced materials and bio-fueled oxide fuel cells. Meanwhile, the moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico restricts the provision of an energy source on which the nation is dependent.

In September the DOE also awarded $37 million for “marine and hydrokinetic energy technology development.” The object of this is to “accelerate the technologies and commercial readiness of technologies “to generate renewable electricity from the nation’s oceans and free-flowing rivers and streams.” Meanwhile the nation already generates six percent of its electricity from hydroelectric systems among which the Hoover Dam is one of the best known.

The Department of Energy was created in the wake of the oil crisis of the 1970s and was signed into existence by President Jimmy Carter on August 4, 1977. Its responsibilities were the nation’s nuclear weapons program, a nuclear reactor for the U.S. Navy, energy conservation, energy-related research, radioactive waste disposal, and domestic energy production.

It currently employs 16,000 federal workers and, in 2009, had an annual budget of $24.1 billion. President Obama appointed Dr. Steven Chu as its Secretary. Dr. Chu is perhaps best known for recommending that global warming can be avoided by painting the roofs and highways white in order to reflect back the sun’s radiation. Will someone please get a net and throw it over Dr. Chu?

One might think that the DOE would have taken an active role in the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but that responsibility was handed over to the U.S. Coast Guard while the Department of the Interior was a key player as well.

Meanwhile, over at the DOE, Ms. Zoi was gloating that the fourth tactic “which the Secretary and I love is where we have a mandate. Where we can actually just issue regulations and do market transformation.”

Where is it written in the U.S. Constitution that the government should play an active role in “market transformation”? The DOE intends to “set efficiency standards for energy-consuming products.”

These will include commercial clothes washers, small electric motors, water heaters, direct heating equipment and pool heaters, among the countless products consumers use on a daily basis.

Instead of encouraging the building of more coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants to generate the electricity a population in excess of 300 million use daily, the DOE wants to get between consumers and manufacturers to “mandate” how much electricity products can use!

“We’re going to make people save money for themselves,” said Ms. Zoi.

I have a great idea how to save billions. Shut down the Department of Energy.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Weekend Cartoon Round Up

Hillary for President in 2012!

By Alan Caruba
No, I haven’t lost my mind. I just want to offer some unsolicited advice to the Democrat Party that I am sure will result in their complete rout and defeat in the 2012 elections. I am doing so because I cannot imagine the Democrats being so suicidal that they would re-nominate Barack Hussein Obama. That said, they probably will!

There are the usual rumors that Hillary is carefully distancing herself from Obama in anticipation of mounting another campaign, but it doesn’t really matter because, as his Secretary of State she is indelibly marked by her association with him and his failed foreign policies. Assuming, of course, he has any policy other than bowing low to Iran, China, Russia and other nations that hold the U.S. in contempt.

In Hillary’s case, the question is what has she done as Secretary of State? I doubt anyone can cite any initiative or action that rises above the level of boring speeches and photo ops.

The Israel-Palestinian peace discussions are doomed to failure. Hamas, in control of Gaza (the PLO resides in the West Bank) murdered an Israeli family just before the talks began and has been rocketing Israel since then. Though Israelis fear that PM Netanyahu might go “wobbly” in the words of Margaret Thatcher, it is doubtful he will sign off on another land-for-peace initiative.

I have not been a fan of Hillary for a very long time, but most specifically since the launch of Hillarycare in 1992. It was a massive healthcare entitlement that ultimately died in 1994, setting in motion the transfer of power in Congress to Republicans after forty years in the political desert.

In her book, “The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton”, Bay Buchanan noted that Hillarycare was “a 1,342-page plan that would have cut the number of doctors in the country by 25 percent and the number of specialists in half.” Everything about the plan was kept secret, something that was illegal. No doubt she learned from that debacle.

At this point, Republicans—and mainly independents—have begun to clean house of the RINOs and are set to recapture Congress once again in November. Given the low approval ratings of the Democrat-controlled Congress and of President Obama, it seems obvious Republicans will capture the House and might even pull off the miracle of taking the Senate as well.

I am not saying this to be unkind, but the job of Secretary of State seems to be taking a real physical toll on Hillary. Increasingly she looks haggard with dark circles under her eyes. I recall a similar look as she campaigned in 2008 to become the first woman president.

In the end, it would was Obama's campaign that defeated her. She is, domestically, Obama-light, flogging all the bad socialist ideas that he has come to embody.

Hillary’s nomination would come with a lot of baggage, not the least of which would be Bill. Aside from that, he has been increasingly flat-footed about picking winners in the primaries. A classic insider, he has lost his mojo.

Then there’s the way the Clinton’s departed the White House after Bill’s last term. Together, “they transferred $360,000 worth of White House property, including art objects, books, furniture, china, and more clothes for herself. The public outcry was deafening and the Clintons were forced to return some of the spoils.”

More damning in the eyes of stalwart Democrats was her vote on the invasion of Iraq while serving in the Senate. She voted for it. Two years later, she felt just as George W. Bush did, saying that the U.S. must “stay the course.”

Like any good Democrat, Hillary never met an illegal alien to whom she wouldn’t grant U.S. citizenship. In 2004, she co-sponsored legislation introduced by Sen. Ted Kennedy to that effect.

No less a believer in “redistributing” people’s personal wealth, in June 2004 she was at a Democrat fund-raiser in San Francisco, but could not resist telling the high-rollers that “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

Like Barack Obama, Hillary is a big spender. Bay Buchanan noted that “During her first two years in office (as a Senator), she sponsored or cosponsored 169 bills that would have increased spending by $124 billion, and not a one that would have reduced it.”

I knew an editor at an Arkansas newspaper who, writing of Bill Clinton, said “His word is dirt.” Bay Buchanan wrote that “The most frightening aspect of this woman is that she lies. She lies about everything and she lies about anything. There is no other way to say it. Her word means nothing.”

So, hell yes! If the Democrats don’t re-nominate Obama, the nomination of Hillary would be a disaster. I’m all for it!

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Is Ahmadinejad Looking for a Fight or Running Scared?

By Alan Caruba

The only thing we know for sure about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, is that he lies about everything. In that regard, he may not be that much different from other world leaders for whom lying is almost a requirement for the job.

Only international law keeps the United States from seizing Mahmoud as an exchange for the return of two of the American hostages we know are being held by his regime. In a nice suburban CIA safe house, we might even convince him to cough up some state secrets about where the secret nuclear weapons facilities are, but we are far too civilized to do anything like that.

In discussing Mahmoud, we have to separate him from the Iranian people who live in a prison nation. A recent Wall Street Journal article by Karim Sadjapour noted that “nearly three million people, according to the mayor of Tehran, took to the streets to protest the election results.”

At the time, President Obama demurred from commenting on this astonishing outpouring of the Iranian people's anger, preferring not to “interfere.” This is in line with his general policy of getting out of the Middle East under any and all circumstances. Having already betrayed the American people, using thuggish methods to impose unwanted “reforms”, he saw no reason to not betray Iranians as well.

What was Obama’s reward? Reports of Mahmoud’s arrival in New York to attend an annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly were replete with his threats if a possible U.S.-supported Israeli air strike should occur. Given Obama’s antipathy toward Israel, that seems unlikely.

Still, that did not deter Mahmoud from threatening a war with the U.S. that “would know no boundaries”, adding “War is not just bombs.” Since he said this in New York City where the ninth anniversary of 9/11 just occurred, neither New Yorkers nor the rest of America needs any reminder that we and the West are engaged in a war with Islam that is without boundaries.

Reportedly Mahmoud even had the audacity to claim that Iran has no plans to make a nuclear weapon. Perhaps this explains why they recently told International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors familiar with such matters to leave Iran on the next plane. Even the normally tolerant IAEA expressed its annoyance with such behavior.

Three former Iranian diplomats recently defected in Europe, denouncing the regime’s legitimacy, and very likely in danger for their lives because the Islamic Republic is well known for assassinating dissidents living overseas. One must assume that, since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has demanded that all Muslims obey him as the earthly deputy of Muhammad and the Twelfth Iman, he believes he can murder whomever he wants.

I have a theory that Israel will not attack Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities until Obama is out of office. He has proven to be the most anti-Israel President to have ever held the office. The Israelis know that the latest round of White House-sponsored peace talks are the same bad joke they have always been. The Palestinian Liberation Authority has far less to fear from Israel than from Hamas, an Iranian puppet.

Moreover, since the Iranian regime expects an attack any day now, the Israelis will patiently wait until some time has gone by. They have destroyed such facilities in Iraq and Syria and there is no reason to believe they will not rid the region of Iran’s; very likely with the grateful assistance of other Middle Eastern nations that cordially despise the current Iranian regime.

Mahmoud’s bluster and threats sound a lot to me like a line from a Shakespearean play, “Methinks he doth protest too much.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Cassandra Says It Will Get Very Cold

By Alan Caruba

In the Greek myth about Cassandra, she could foresee the future, but no one believed her warnings. Her name is believed to be derived from the words for beauty and the sun.

Any number of solar scientists and others are warning that the Earth is on the brink of a new Ice Age at worst, a mini ice age at best. Dr. Achim Brauer of the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam has concluded that the next Ice Age will come on so swiftly that in barely a year much of the northern hemisphere will be incased in ice and snow.

The Little Ice Age from around 1300 to 1850 lasted long enough to transform European society and have a profound affect on the histories of America and France. In England, they went from growing grapes to skating on a completely frozen Thames.

All the signs are in place and throughout the northern hemisphere nations, their leaders prattle on about global warming, clean energy, endangered species, and all the other environmental foolishness without once casting an eye toward the source of all climate on Earth, the Sun!

While the warmists were trying to stir up hysteria over an Earth whose temperature was suppose to rise dramatically, Nature had other plans. For the past decade the magnetic field that triggers sunspots, magnetic storms on the face of the Sun, has been steadily declining and, with it, so has the overall temperature of planet Earth.

No matter what august figure blathers about climate change these days, they are either an ignorant fool or a charlatan seeking to enrich himself by one scheme or another. The situation for the warmists has become so dire that even the science advisor to the President, Dr. John Holdren, wants to change the terminology of global warming to “global climate disruption”, admitting the former is “a dangerous misnomer.”

It’s worse than that. It is a huge fraud, a hoax, a crime intended to deceive millions.

Okay, let’s all forget the millions of words and millions of dollars spent to convince us that “global warming” was such a sure thing that any scientist or reasonably intelligent person disputing it was labeled a denier, but the truth was that the data generated by the computer models to justify the claim was rigged!

My friend, Robert Felix, author of “Not by Fire, but by Ice”, and editor of IceAgeNow.com, probably knows more about ice ages than anyone on the planet. In his book, he says “Ice ages begin and end abruptly every 11,500 years.” Guess what? We are now 11,500 years since the last Ice Age ended!

While idiots run about claiming that humans actually have any affect whatever on the climate and thus the fate of the Earth, Felix reminds us that “the Earth is a violent and dangerous place to live. We’re beginning to realize that mass extinctions have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on this planet.”

On June 14 in an article published in the New Scientist by Stuart Clark, he raised the question of why and where the sunspots of gone. Noting that they ebb and flow in cycles lasting about eleven years, Stuart said, “But for the last two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged in nearly 100 years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise.”

Not everyone, though. Felix believes we are on the cusp of the next Ice Age and, frankly, so do I. “This is not the calm before the storm,” says Felix. “This is the storm.”

If we’re lucky, it may just be a new Little Ice Age, but it could be a new Ice Age and, if that’s the case, a lot of life on planet Earth is going to be severely disrupted for a very long, long time.

Even a brief ice age of several hundred years will increase the demand for the generation of energy to keep us warm. All of a sudden everyone including the environmentalist liars will be crying out for more coal, more oil, and more natural gas.

Cassandra is saying bundle up!

© Alan Caruba, 2010

A Mosque is Not a Synagogue, Church or Hindu Temple

By Alan Caruba

Despite the fact that former President G.W. Bush said we are at war with “terrorism” and Obama says the U.S. is “not at war with Islam,” it is more than apparent to anyone paying attention that Islam is at war with America and has been for several decades.

Take, for example, Obama’s endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque—formerly called the Cordoba mosque to honor the Muslim conquest of Spain for seven centuries and then renamed Park 51 to mask its true intent.

During his most recent press conference, Obama compared a mosque to a synagogue, a church, or a Hindu temple. In doing so he ignored fourteen centuries of Muslim history in which, wherever they conquered, they went out of their way to build their mosques where former churches or temples existed. In India alone, they did this more than two thousand times to obliterate Hindu temples or shrines.

The Muslim conquest of what was then known as Palestine resulted in the Al Aqsa mosque on arguably the most holy site in Jewish history. Its gleaming golden dome dominates the skyline of Jerusalem to this day.

There is an important reason why the proposed mosque should not be built near Ground Zero and that is because mosques around the world are often places where hatred of unbelievers is preached and where attacks are planned.

Obama counts on American’s general ignorance of Islam and on the nation’s long tradition of tolerance. By contrast, in practice Islam has no tolerance of religions other than Islam.

A case in point is the way "Cordoba House" changed its name to Park 51 which is odd since the address of the location is 45–47 Park Place, but look to the Koran, the battle plan for Islamic conquest, to understand the new name for this project. Koran chapter 51, verses 45-47 suggests the real story:

51:45 And they were unable to arise, nor could they defend themselves.
51:46 And [We destroyed] the people of Noah before; indeed, they were a people defiantly disobedient.
51:47 And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander.

Obama, a former student of Islam when he was a boy living in Indonesia, has never made a secret of his affinity for Islam and, as his first actions following his inauguration revealed, he was intent on “building bridges” to Islam in the Middle East.

His first television interview was with Al Arabia and his first major international speech was in Cairo. Recently we learned that the director of NASA was given a new priority that has nothing to do with the exploration of space, but rather as “outreach” to Muslim nations.

Little wonder, then, that many Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, especially since his first endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque occurred in a speech given at a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan.

There have been more terrorist attacks and attempted attacks in the United States during Obama’s first year and a half in office than in the preceding Bush administration.

The Ground Zero mosque is intended to be a demonstration to Muslims throughout the world that they achieved a great victory with the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Does New York City and its boroughs need another mosque given the fact that over a hundred already exist? More to the point should New York sanction a mosque near ground regarded as hallowed by the deaths of the Twin Towers victims and first responders?

So, to repeat myself, a mosque is not a synagogue, is not a church, and is not a Hindu temple. Those places are devoted to faiths that do not preach that unbelievers should be slain or enslaved. Those places do not represent an international campaign of terrorism.

If Obama does not know that, someone should explain it to him.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Tea Party Power

By Alan Caruba

America is chockablock with some very smart people, if only the ones in charge would pay them some attention. One of them is Peggy Noonan who writes a weekly commentary for The Wall Street Journal. She came to public attention as a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush, coining his “thousand points of light” phrase.

Unlike the vast majority of political pundits, Noonan “gets” what the Tea Party movement is all about. Writing in the September 18 edition, she examined the tug of war between conservative and liberal legislators in Congress, with the liberal side always gaining more when the rest of us on the sidelines have wanted both Democrats and Republicans to STOP spending money and start reducing the size of a government run amuck.

The other factor is the increasing urgency of the times in which we live. She wrote, “Here’s the great virtue of the tea party; They know what time it is. It’s getting late. If we don’t get the size and cost of government in line now, we won’t be able to. We’re teetering on the brink of some vast, dark, new world—states and cities on the brink of bankruptcy, the federal government too.”

“The issue isn’t ‘big spending’ anymore. It’s ruinous spending that they fear will end America as we know it, as they promised it to their children.”

In short, the Tea Party movement is us!

That’s “us” as in conservatives, people who go to church; small business owners; people who love both college and professional football, NASCAR and other sports; people who think abortion is murder; gun owners; people who worked all their lives and can’t get by on Social Security and who know, even with Medicare, any serious illness will financially destroy them; people raising children today who wonder if there will be any Social Security when they retire—if they can retire; people worried about what their kids are learning in school and what they are not being taught about U.S. history and civics.

In my state, New Jersey, Democrat to the core, these people, despite their party affiliation, put Chris Christie into office as Governor. Last week he addressed a conference of firefighters, greeted initially by some boos, but in the end, they crowded around him like he was a rock star, all eager to shake his hand. He hadn’t backed down an inch from his demand that government service union members begin to contribute more to their pension and healthcare funds. He bluntly told them, “we’re doing this now so there will be a pension fund ten years from now.” They knew he was right.

After a misstep or two, the Republican National Party got the primary elections message. They back Miller in Alaska, O’Donnell in Delaware, and Angle in Nevada. The inside-the-beltway crowd have, excuse the pun, read the tea leaves!

Ultimately, this leads political wonks and onlookers to ask whether Sarah Palin will take a run at the GOP nomination for president. There is no question that she has confounded a lot of people, myself included, who were ready to write her off as an anomaly, an unknown Governor of Alaska selected to be, of all things, the GOP candidate for Vice President.

I think that, once the midterm elections determine how much power in Congress shifts to from the Democrat to the Republican Party and how well the GOP puts into action the expectations and demands of the Tea Party movement, neither Palin, nor anyone else will know what her decision will be.

This nation has already experimented with electing a charismatic candidate for President, a man about whom little was actually known, and who has demonstrated how spectacularly ill-prepared and unprepared he was for the job.

I am inclined to think that, consciously or not, when it comes to a presidential candidate the Tea Party voters are going to be looking for substantial experience and, perhaps more importantly, a proven record of belief and action that reflect traditional conservative values.

First, though, a Republican Congress will need to do some immediate heavy-lifting, repealing or at least defunding Obamacare, making it clear that Cap-and-Trade is dead, cracking down on a rogue EPA, stopping amnesty proposals, and letting it be known that any unspent billions in bailout programs should be returned to the national treasury to reduce the debt.

After that, the 2012 national elections will take care of themselves and the Tea Party movement may have reinvigorated the GOP, creating a coalition of independents and even disaffected Democrats that may yet save this nation from ruin. The last time that happened Ronald Reagan got elected.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

No Science, Fake Science, and the Destruction of the Nation

By Alan Caruba

Any scientist who has not sold his soul to the environmental movement will tell you that the reason that greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), do not cause any warming is due to the fact that they have to conform to the laws of thermodynamics. The first law states that “energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only change form.”

Energy produced by coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear is energy that has changed from one form of matter to another. The attack on these sources of energy is a direct attack on the economic success of America and it is one that is at a dangerous peak of activity generated by the Obama administration, primarily through the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is simply no such thing as “dirty energy.” The push for so-called clean or renewable energy is a fiction to advance the use of the two worst, most unpredictable and unreliable forms of energy, solar and wind. They exist solely because of government subsidies and mandates. They produce little over three percent of the energy used nationwide every day.

The September 12 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek addressed this in an article, “Lisa Jackson’s High-Wire Act on Carbon Controls.” What the article did not say was that, if the EPA gains the authority to control carbon dioxide, it will literally control all business and industrial activity in the nation as well as the lives of all Americans.

What the article did not say is that there is no scientific justification for controlling CO2 because it plays no role in the so-called “climate change”, the new language being used to avoid saying “global warming.” It should be evident to a kindergartner that humans not only do not affect the climate, but have no control over it.

The environmental movement that has devoted decades and millions to perpetrate the greatest science fraud in the history of mankind has backed away from “global warming” for the obvious reason that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the past decade, the result of a reduction in solar activity, a dormant period that has a long history of preceding periods of cooling.

One of President Obama’s goals has been to secure legislation, known as “Cap-and-Trade” that would authorize a scheme by which “carbon credits” would be bought and sold by utilities and industry for the right to produce and use energy. It is part of the global warming fraud and its sole purpose is political power while enriching a few insiders betting on the expansion of alternative energy sources.

As the Business Week article noted, the EPA has been attempting to exert authority over CO2, but has been doing so "cautiously" to avoid evoking a public outcry against it. Thus, Lisa Jackson has offered a “tailored” approach “that exempts mom-and-pop dry cleaners and pizza parlors and initially regulates only power plants and oil refineries.”

The effect on oil refineries would drive up the cost of gasoline and every other oil derivatives.

Under the Clean Air Act, however, the EPA does not have this authority as CO2 is exempt from such action. Moreover, as noted, there is zero need to control CO2 as a threat to the environment because, without it, all life on Earth would not exist. It is CO2 that is the plant life equivalent of oxygen that maintains all animal life. The two are symbiotic and have been for billions of years.

Americans and people worldwide have been deluged with fake science based entirely on computer models whose results have been deliberately skewed to produce results that affirm CO2 as a primarily factor affecting the Earth’s climate. It is not.

As Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser has noted in his book, “Convenient Myths”, and in articles on the subject, “The atmosphere contains currently a bit less than 0.04% CO2. The rest is mainly oxygen (20%) and nitrogen (79%).” This represents an increase since the Industrial Age when the amount was an infinitesimal 0.03%.

If all the CO2 produced by power plants and the use of coal, oil, and natural gas was reduced to levels the EPA and environmental groups deem “safe” it would have zero affect on the atmosphere.

As Dr. Klaus noted, “Nearly all life on earth depends on the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. Without any CO2, the Earth would be a barren place like the moon, or our neighboring planets, Venus and Mars.”

The EPA is lying to Americans using fake science. On July 29, 2010 it refused to “reconsider its greenhouse gas endangerment finding.” It avoided citing any of the scientists in its employ, instead it quoted the chief scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization that is entirely devoted to the global warming fraud. That so-called scientist, Dr. Steven Hamburg, said “The science behind EPA’s finding is strong. Now America needs to forge clean energy solutions that reduce the vast pollution discharged into our air.”

That is a lie. Indeed, more CO2 in the atmosphere would be extremely beneficial, aiding larger crop yields to feed Americans and others worldwide. It would improve the health and vitality of the planet’s forests. Ads on television touting “carbon sequestration” are part of the lie.

To sum up, Cap-and-Trade and any control of CO2 is in its simplest terms, a vehicle to destroy the nation’s economy.

You won’t read that in the BusinessWeek article, but it is a truth that cannot be denied and it is a battle for the future of the nation that must be won against this administration, against the EPA, and against the environmental organizations that have devoted themselves to this purpose.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Cartoon Round-Up

Constitution Day 2010

By Alan Caruba

I never read the United States Constitution without being astonished at the sheer beauty of this instrument of our government. Even so, the original text has been amended twenty-six times over the years since it became effective on June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify it.

On June 7, 1789, James Madison introduced the proposed Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives and, on December 15, 1791, Virginia ratified them, permitting ten of the twelve to become part of the U.S. Constitution.

On Friday, September 17, the nation will celebrate Constitution Day, but I suspect it will pass without much notice. Most Americans tend to take little notice of the Constitution most of the time.

A recent survey by the Center for the Constitution at Montpelier, James Madison’s home, reveals that, of those who responded to the survey, only 28% said they had read the entire Constitution; 14% said they had read most of it; and 33% said they had read some of it.

P.J. O’Rouke, an author and wit, has noted that “The U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner’s manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world’s most unruly, passionate and energetic people safe, prosperous and free.”

In addition to the nation’s current financial difficulties, we are passing through a period of significant unrest, not the least of all the result of having elected a President who gives every evidence of disliking the nation and Americans. He has very little good to say of us when addressing other nations.

As to the Constitution, President Obama has disparaged it saying it is merely "a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal govenment or state government must do on your behalf."

The framers, though, deliberately built in limits as to what Presidents and members of Congress can do because the founding fathers shared a deep concern regarding what occurs when power over people is put in the hands of anyone.

John Adams warned that “a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” He thought, too, that “Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”

The motto on Thomas Jefferson’s personal seal was “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

There are no sweeter words than “We the People of the United States…” and they say everything you need to know about the Constitution.

It is the oldest living Constitution of any modern nation. It is fretted about with the means to slow down the process of legislation, to thwart bad ideas and passions, to limit the power of the central government and devolve as much power as possible to the States, each of which is itself a sovereign republic.

Constitution Day is an especially good day to recall that the framers of the Constitution were intensely practical men. They lived in an era of monarchies and were intent on ensuring that they would leave a legacy of power to the People through a transparent process of national and bi-elections.

When George Washington made it known he would not stand for a third term, it established a pattern of presidential power that was only broken in the last century when Franklin Delano Roosevelt retained the office from 1933 to 1945. Only death removed him from it. Thereafter, the 22nd Amendment ensured that would not occur again.

Americans have been suffering from a legislative tyranny since President Obama, the leader of the majority party, the Democrats, took office. Vast majorities of Americans oppose Obamacare and other initiatives.

They have not been suffering passively. They have marched in the nation’s capitol. They organized Tea Parties. They are waiting for November 2nd to alter the face of Congress, electing people who think the federal government is too big and not to be trusted.

The framers of the Constitution would be proud of them and all other Americans who are patiently and passionately resisting those whom they deem enemies of the People.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Iranian Hostage-Taking is Old News and that's the Problem

By Alan Caruba

Am I the only one who thinks it is absolutely bizarre that America, Great Britain, and the rest of the world views the Islamic Republic of Iran’s history of hostage-taking as just another problem to be dealt with by diplomats?

Kidnapping is one of the worst crimes committed in any society, but the Iranians do it with impunity. The latest news concerns the release of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans along with Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, who we’re told strayed too close to the Iranian border while hiking. The two men are still being held.

Still unaccounted for is Robert Levinson, an American who disappeared in Iran in 2007. In the September 14 edition of The Wall Street Journal, his daughter had a letter published. “My father was in Kish Island, Iran, on private business when he disappeared without a trace on March 9, 2007.” She noted that Press TV, an Iranian media outlet reported that he was “in the hands of Iranian security forces.” Sarah Lawrence is planning her wedding and her letter pled with the government of Iran “to do everything possible to find my father and send him home to me, my mother, and my six brothers and sisters.”

American relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran were determined on November 4, 1979 when 66 of our diplomats and embassy personnel were taken hostage. They were held for 444 days until the hour that Ronald Reagan took the oath of office for the first time.

Name a nation other than North Korea that routinely takes foreigners hostage. There simply could not be any comity between nations if hostage-taking was the rule instead of the exception. The taking of U.S. diplomats in 1979 broke centuries of tradition in which even ancient cultures understood that diplomats are engaged in missions determining issues too important to permit them to be imprisoned or killed.

The expression, “Do not kill the messenger” comes from this tradition.

What does this tell us about the ayatollahs running Iran? It brands them as little more than common gangsters, blackmailers, and thugs.

It was not for nothing that former President George W. Bush included Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea in his “Axis of Evil.” Such bold, clear identification of criminal nations was refreshing at the time and remains so today.

It comes as no surprise that Iran’s Intelligence Minister, Heydar Moslehi, recently told reporters that the three U.S. hostages are spies even though no charges have been brought against them since last July. Instead, Moslehi and other Iranian officials have let it be known that that there are eleven Iranians in custody in the United States and other nations that they want released.

Last September, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly suggested that the three Americans could be released for Iranians currently held in Iraq, members of the Revolutionary Guards who were captured while posing as “diplomats.”
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 579 was adopted unanimously on December 18, 1985, in a meeting called by the United States. The Council expressed its deep concern at the prevalance in incidents of hostage-taking, primarily by Iran, knowing that this thuggish behavior has grave consequences for the international community and relations between states.

Except for the formalities, Iran has been at war with the United States since the day it took our diplomats hostage in 1979.

The UN Security Council resolution asked member states that were not party to the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages to participate. The resolution identified hostage-taking as "manifestations of international terrorism."
Iran is the epicenter of international terrorism these days and has been for years. It is the sponsor of two internationally recognized terror organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas, and has had its hand covertly involved in countless acts of terror. It is widely believe that Iran is playing host to Osama bin Laden as it is known his family has been given sanctuary there.

And now Iran moves relentlessly toward acquiring nuclear weapons. There can be no good end to this scenario and it must be one that initiates the destruction of the leadership of Iran and its nuclear potential.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

When you're in a hole, stop digging

Imam Rauf, Ground Zero Huckster

By Alan Caruba

Why do we love the hucksters so much? Put a smooth talker in front of us and we are entranced. The latest in a long line of these charlatans is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the face of the Ground Zero mosque project.

Soft-spoken, seemingly erudite, Imam Rauf moves in the power circles that even had the U.S. Department of State picking up the tab for his tour of the Middle East---presumably to promote greater understanding of U.S. policy as it affects that part of the world. No doubt this was a reflection of President Barack Hussein Obama’s directive to the head of NASA to make Middle East outreach a top priority. Forget about that space exploration stuff!

At a conference in Australia in 2005, the same Imam Rauf, said “We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.” He then went on to cite “documentation” by the United Nations that “a half million Iraqi children” died as the result of U.S. led sanctions against Iraq. Those sanctions, the "Oil For Food" program, also became a huge U.N. scandal that enriched many of its top executives, including the then Secretary General, Kofi Annan’s son.

People who trust the United Nations will quite naturally trust the likes of Imam Rauf.

Thanks to a group called the Investigative Project, we now know that one of Imam Rauf’s close associates on the Ground Zero mosque is Faiz Khan, a physician who serves on the advisory board of Muslims for 9/11 Truth.

To hear Dr. Khan discuss 9/11 is to be told that the destruction of the Twin Towers had nothing to do with al Qaeda and was all an inside job by the U.S. government that set up the Islamic militants who perpetrated it as scapegoats.

Aside from the absurdity of the so-called 9/11 “Truthers”, the notion that people would politely listen to Imam Rauf discuss tolerance and a huge multi-story mosque within sight of Ground Zero goes way beyond a lack of judgment or naiveté. That kind of malevolence cannot be excused as insensitivity.

The Imam has been gaming U.S. law for a very long time. A 1998 tax filing called a 1023 form, an application for tax exempt status from the American Sufi Muslim Association (ASMA) claimed that the group had established a place of worship in New York that was, in truth, an apartment on West 85th Street. The form claimed that up to 500 people congregants would gather there when there wasn’t a room large enough in the entire 17-floor building to accommodate that many. There were no public spaces. Period.

Real estate properties he owns in New Jersey are home to some very unhappy residents and there are problems regarding his financial and management responsibilities for them.

Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere look at the United States and all they see is an enemy of Islam. They conveniently forget all the attacks on U.S. embassies, the U.S. Marine peacekeeping force in Lebanon, the USS Cole, and, of course, the attacks on 9/11. As Imam Rauf put it, the U.S. was an “accessory” to those crimes.

The big secret no Muslim will reveal is that Islam is at war with the United States, the West, and anywhere else in the world where it does not control the government of various nations.

The largest and most powerful collective in the United Nations is the Middle Eastern bloc of nations. And the greatest collection of abusers of human rights can be found among Muslim nations.

It was the sheer audacity of suggesting that a mosque be built near Ground Zero that caught the public’s attention that has waxed and waned since the news first broke.

It has become a vortex sucking politicians into a dark place where they are forced to say that Imam Rauf and his largely unknown associates have a First Amendment right to build, BUT it’s a bad idea. A few hardier politicians have had the good grace and good sense to oppose it.

Filmmaker, Michael Moore, that bell weather of liberal idiocy, actually opined that a mosque should be built as part of the 9/11 memorial site. This is six degrees of separation to the far Left of Mayor Michael Bloomberg who thought the recent Times Square terror attack was probably perpetrated by someone who didn’t like Obamacare.

Americans in their quest for hope and change have already embraced one Muslim who claims to be a Christian, Barack Hussein Obama. Under the concept of “taqiyya” this deception is permitted by Islam. It’s time to get over the illusion that Muslims mean us anything other than dhimmitude, a second class status in our own nation. Or death.

The bottom line is that no one with any good sense should believe a word that Feisal Abdul Rauf has to say on the subject of “tolerance” or the mosque. He is a Muslim stalking horse for interests that seek to impose Sharia law on America and the rest of the world. That is always the end game for alleged Muslim “moderates.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Billions and Billions and Billions

Too Much Obama

By Alan Caruba

The more we see and hear him, the more President Obama’s popularity falters and falls. In recent days, as he was in the beginning of his term, he is everywhere, all the time again.

The one place he was not on 9/11 was Ground Zero. He chose the Pentagon instead; a curious choice for a man who criticized Bush’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but then followed every one of them.

He is in full campaign mode these days, addressing friendly labor groups and spouting the usual communist clap-trap about the “rich” and, in diametric opposition to almost every economist in the nation, intent on letting the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year.

He has turned from actual issues to an obsessive attack on a relatively obscure Republican Congressman, John Boehner (OH), who is the designated spokesperson for the party and likely to be the next Speaker after the midterm elections. For the President, Boehner has become the despised opponent and, as we all know by now, the Republican Party has migrated from being the “culture of corruption” during the last administration to “the party of no” in the present one.

Pay no attention, please, to the ethics charges levied against Reps. Charlie Rangel or Maxine Waters, two stalwart Democrats, or Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson was busy steering scholarships to family members.

It is rarely mentioned in the mainstream press that the Republican Party has so few votes in Congress that its ability to block any legislation depends on disaffected Democrats, many of whom now realize that the President’s policies have jeopardized their ability to remain in office. Some Democrats are actually running against Obamacare, if not Obama himself.

Obama’s endorsement is the political kiss of death. It only took him a year and a half to achieve this status. George W. Bush wasn’t this disdained until well into his second term when it was apparent even to Republicans that he never met a spending bill he would not sign.

Perhaps we should have known that Obama was in trouble when he showed up on “The View”, a gabfest of ladies, all but one of whom are hardcore liberals. It was an odd venue for a President, but then so were his appearances on late night talk shows. I fully expect to see him on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” any day now. When Vice President Biden appeared there recently, he took the opportunity to praise George W. Bush.

Aside from the expected campaign function of his appearances, there is a faint tinge of desperation to all this exposure and it was noticed when he departed from his prepared text to say “They talk about me like a dog.” This is a curious complaint from a man who has described himself as “a mutt” and “a mongrel”, referring to his mixed-race parentage.

About the only media that still have what media critic Bernie Goldberg calls “a slobbering love affair” with Obama are the misnamed news magazines, Time and Newsweek. They have long since abandoned any pretence at either news or objectivity, two fundamental requirements of journalism. Add in MSNBC and it’s not exactly the kind of numbers that change the outcome of elections.

Obama knows he is a one-term President and, after the midterm elections, he will have to rely on his cabinet members and the dozens of other appointees to deter economic growth, ignore national security issues, and impose mindless environmental regulations.

Obama is already looking more and more pathetic in so many different ways. Don’t expect this to change much after he is dismissed from office by the voters in 2012.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Turning Off the (Incandescent) Light of Liberty

By Alan Caruba

What if the government banned air conditioning? What if flat-screen televisions were determined to use too much electricity and were ordered phased out of production? What if the use of all plastic grocery bags were banned? What if the incandescent light bulb, one of the greatest inventions of Thomas Edison in the 1870s was banned? Oh wait, it has been banned!

In a nation where the Medicare “reform” requires Americans to purchase health insurance they may not want and may not be able to afford, was rammed through Congress, what can stop the government from dictating just about any choice you have regarding any purchase you make? The answer? Nothing.

Only it would no longer be a Constitutional government, a nation of laws that reflect anything resembling the truth. The ban on incandescent light bulbs turns off the light of liberty throughout America.

Here are some truths to keep in mind. (1) Carbon dioxide (CO2) along with other “greenhouse gas emissions” does not cause global warming. (2) There is no global warming. (3) The Earth has gone through known warming and cooling cycles for millions of years. (4) The Earth is in a cooling cycle.

(5) Beginning January 1, 2012, government rules will make it impossible to purchase a 100-watt incandescent light bulb. After that, in time, all such light bulbs will be phased out leaving Americans with only dim, over-priced, mercury-filled light bulbs. And (6) they will be made overseas, primarily in China.

By 2012, by order of the government, Americans will no longer be able to purchase any incandescent light bulbs. Why? Because Congress banned them, citing the need to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” to reduce global warming that isn’t happening.

It’s the same Congress that had already determined how much water your toilet can use to flush. It’s the same Congress that determined “cafe” rules that determine how many miles per gallon your automobile must achieve. It’s the same government that requires ethanol be added to gasoline, thus reducing the mileage a gallon of adulterated gasoline can produce, while also driving up the cost of gasoline as well as of corn, a food product, used to produce ethanol.

It’s the same Congress that has blessed a Renewable Electricity Standard that requires utilities to use electricity produced by wind and solar power even though both sources also require 24/7 backup by traditional coal-fired, natural gas, or nuclear plants because they cannot be relied upon to generate electricity in a predictable fashion or during periods of peak capacity.

It’s the same Congress that initiated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two “government entities” that purchased the sub-prime mortgage loans that banks and mortgage loan firms were required to make to people who clearly could not afford to repay them. The result is the financial crisis that occurred when those “bundled” mortgages turned out to be “toxic”, worthless paper sold to investment firms and banks as assets.

In early September, The Washington Post, published an article, “Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas.” It reported that “The last major General Electric factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month…the remaining 200 workers at the plant here (Winchester, Virginia) will lose their jobs.”

In June, The Washington Times reported that the Federal Trade Commission earlier this month (released) 91 pages of regulations that will force manufacturers to revise their packaging and make costly compact fluorescent bulbs appear more appealing to consumers,” that they have refused to willingly purchase them. “Congress wants to force the pale, cold fluorescent curlicue fixtures on everyone because it makes members feel that they are doing their part to ‘save the planet’.”

While the ban was initiated in 2007 before the Obama administration took power, it has not gone unnoticed that the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, “sits on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.” And recovery is no where in sight while GE closes its factory making incandescent light bulbs.

There’s more. GE was the recipient of bailout funds and, according to an article on FrontPagemag.com, “stands to benefit from current and future contracts with the U.S. government.” Connect the dots. GE owns MSNBC, a cable news channel famous for its adulation of Obama before and since his election.

The issue, however, is far less about GE than it is about the vast global warming fraud, the equally vast matrix of U.S. laws and regulations that is based on it, and most importantly, the way they are being used to undermine and destroy the U.S. economy along with the freedoms that Americans take for granted.

One of the many tasks facing a Congress in which Republicans are expected to regain control in November is to repeal the ban on incandescent light bulbs. After that, the mountain of other laws and regulations strangling consumer freedom and even threatening the health of Americans must also be repealed.

All nations must evolve, but America is moving toward less freedom of choice; more control over the choices that a free market requires. It is rejecting its founding principles and it is doing so based on environmental lies.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Obama takes a pass on Ground Zero

By Alan Caruba

Did it escape anyone's notice that Obama decided to give his 9/11 speech at the Pentagon rather than Ground Zero?

Over the course of the last year and a half, his policy of "reaching out" to the Muslim world has produced a very Muslim response, contempt and ridicule.

Meanwhile, there have more terrorist attempts and acts on his watch than George W. Bush's.

It's hard to be friends with Muslim nations, especially since they have considerable difficulty being friends with one another. And, for over sixty years, zero inclination to accept Israel as a sovereign Middle Eastern nation.

This is Ground Zero 2010

This open pit represents a level of incompetance that defies the imagination. It has been nine years since the Twin Towers were destroyed.

Never Forget, Never Forgive

The Lessons of 9/11

They Destroyed My Towers!

By Alan Caruba

Whenever I drove into New York via the Lincoln Tunnel, I would join the other cars on the long, graceful curve leading to its entrance and, looking to my left, I could see across the Hudson River. At the tip of Manhattan, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood as symbols of our economic power.

On occasion, I had dined in Windows on the World, a restaurant located on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower and marveled at the panorama of New Jersey on one side, the outer boroughs on the other, and the dazzling view of Manhattan.

Whenever I think about September 11, 2001, I have only one emotion and that is a deep, unrelenting anger that a group of murderous, suicidal Islamists destroyed “my towers.”

They killed some 3,000 people when you factor in the attack on the Pentagon along with the passengers of the four commercial airliners used to perpetrate the destruction.

It is a wonder to me that Americans then and since exercised such restraint, such tolerance that the nation’s small population of Muslims not only did not suffer attacks, but today continue to build mosques for worship.

The effort to build one so close to Ground Zero demonstrates how obtuse and out of touch the political leadership is with mainstream Americans. The odious behavior of New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is beyond comprehension. The President tipped his hand at a White House dinner held to celebrate Ramadan, backing away slightly the following day enough to deflect criticism.

Those proposing the Ground Zero mosque demonstrate the arrogance and contempt for Americans and for all “unbelievers” that lies at the core of Islam, but American leaders of varying religions have fallen over one another to excuse this exercise in triumphalism.

The Crusades from 1095 to 1291 were an effort to recapture the Judeo-Christian holy land from Muslim conquest. Having invaded Spain in 711, Muslims would rule for seven centuries until driven out of their last stronghold, Grenada, in 1492. In 1683, Muslims were decisively defeated near Vienna. How different Europe would have otherwise been.

Islam is a religion of the sword despite its widespread acceptance. Its barbarity is on display on a daily basis whether killing Christian missionaries in Afghanistan or Israeli civilians, a pregnant mother, her husband and their two children a week ago.

A sane society would have cleared away the rubble of 9/11 and rebuilt the Twin Towers, but Ground Zero, in terms of new structures nine years after the attack, remains barely begun

Al Qaeda and all those who subscribe to its intent to destroy the West, the civilization developed in the West, and the freedoms championed by the West, remain to be defeated, while they continue to threaten India and even Europe once again.

The further we get from 9/11, the dimmer the embers of anger become for those with short memories or no grasp of history.

The irony is that 9/11 reflects the long memories of many Islamists whose religion demands that all lands formerly conquered in the name of Islam be regained and that all people who follow a faith other than Islam be reduced to dhimmi, second-class citizens ruled by Muslims.

The World Trade Center belonged to the world. They were my towers and your towers. They represented a world bound together in trade, a world that set a value on all manner of goods and commodities, a world in which jobs and wealth were being created.

The World Trade Center represented a rational world.

Today, nine years later, the dispatches from the Middle East, from Afghanistan, the Palestinian enclaves, from Pakistan, from Yemen, and from an Iran bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, are filled with news of an irrational, dysfunctional society; an Islamist rat’s nest, still seeking to destroy Israel, and still testing our borders and defenses in order to destroy America.

It is a good day to get angry once more, to resolve that we and the West shall not be defeated.

© Alan Caruba, 2010