Boring Bridges and Roads

By Alan Caruba

In November 2010, Business Week, noting the $72 billion set aside in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the “stimulus”, cited a 2009 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers on the state of the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges, solid waste and water treatment processing facilities, the aviation system, and energy needs.

Known as the ASCE “report card” and issued every four years, the Society gave America a grade of D regarding the nation’s crumbling and outdating infrastructure. The estimated cost of what needs to be spent through 2014 was estimated to be $2.2 trillion.

The stimulus allocation of $72 billion falls considerably short, but any money directed to infrastructure maintenance and upgrading is money well spent. However, as President Obama discovered, “not all shovel ready projects were shovel ready.” Any civil engineer or town mayor could have told him that.

Essentially, today’s politicians find infrastructure projects boring. They lack the razzle-dazzle of programs devoted to “renewable energy”, high speed trains, and countless electric cars speeding down the potholed highways of the future.

It took a very long time to create the network of bridges, roads, air and seaports, and other essential elements of the infrastructure and, thanks to time, wear and tear, and general indifference they are all deteriorating at an increasing rate.

This means your children and grandchildren face the possibility of living in a Third World nation of disasters such as the Minneapolis bridge collapse in 2007 and the New Orleans’ levee failures when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

The national highway system we love was built in the 1950s. “More than 26% of U.S. bridges are either structurally deficient or obsolete,” says the ASCE. “The average bridge is now 43 years old.” Auto traffic between 1980 and 2005 increased 94% and truck traffic doubled!

Most Americans are blissfully unaware or just plain ignorant about the role of infrastructure and, worse, at a time of financial crisis the prospect of spending millions or trillions on it is slim. There is, of course, a price to neglecting such things. It goes up every year repair and replacement is put off.

Fortunately, there are people sufficiently concerned about this to come up with a plan to address it in a fiscally prudent, but long term way. There’s a website, http://whataretherealcosts.org/ representing “a campaign to implement life-cycle budgeting at the federal, state, and local levels.” It was initiated on June 22.

The site offers a white paper titled “Delivering Taxpayer Value: Three Tools That Can Help Ensure a More Efficient Cost-Effective Infrastructure” written by John W. Fischer, a transportation consultant who spent more than three decades with the Congressional Research Service.

The white paper should be read by the staffs of every Senator and Representative in Congress. White House staff should read it, too. Then it needs to be read by the staffs of every state governor and, of course, all transportation officials.

Boring as this may seem, when the recommendations cited in the report were implemented in Louisiana, it saved an estimated 25% on the costs of materials purchased by its department of transportation for road projects. In Indiana, an estimated $10.3 million was saved and, in Missouri, over a three-year period, paving projects came in between 5.1 and 8.6% below cost.

At least one politician is trying to do something to change the usual approach to budgeting for major infrastructure costs. In March Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced the Fiscal Accountability and Transparency in Infrastructure Spending Act of 2011.

How serious is it? Well, serious enough for publications from Business Week to Scientific American, among others, to issue warnings, usually based on the ASCE “report card.” Anyone who has ever had to endure a loss of electricity knows the helpless feeling when a part of the infrastructure doesn’t perform. Now add to that water treatment plants to ensure you get clean water when you turn on the faucet. You get the point.

Potholes are not big vote-getters. Rusting bridges may not collapse. Landfills are, well, Landfills. You don’t have to be a civil engineer to know how much serious trouble we’re in. It will only get worse if the politicians from D.C. to the town hall do nothing about it.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Epicenter of Anti-Semitism

By Alan Caruba

Anti-Semitism has a very long history.

In June, Dr. Rivka Shpak Lissak, a Jewish historian, posted a section of her forthcoming book, noting that “The Roman Empire committed a genocide of the Jewish people under its occupation (63 BCE – 324 CE) of the land of Israel. From about 3,000,000 Jews in the first century CE (Common Era), about 200,000 survived until the 7th century, most of them killed or enslaved.”

How does this differ from the Arab agenda that has existed since the day that the modern state of Israel was resurrected and was immediately attacked by five Arab nations in 1948?

Islam’s exponents in Hamas and Hezbollah have always made it clear that the purpose of their existence is the destruction of Israel and both are instruments of Iran’s expressed intention to “wipe Israel from the map.”

The United Nations, despite its role in the recognition of Israel, is the epicenter of modern anti-Semitism and a facilitator of Jew-hatred.

It has provided a shameless platform for every virulent call for the destruction of Israel and the Jews. If for no other reason, the UN has no right to exist. The United States should not be a participant or party to this obscenity.

The UN’s role in the furtherance of global anti-Semitism is so manifest it is impossible to ignore. Its sponsorship of the Durban conferences, allegedly to oppose racism, has fostered the most egregious anti-Semitism. In September 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the conference and repeated every tired lie about Judaism and Jews. Out of 192 UN members, only eleven got up and left. The United States and Israel had chosen not to attend.

In September 2010 Ahmadinejad used his UN invitation to New York to claim that that “segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the (9/11) attack” on behalf of “the Zionist regime”; only seven nations including the U.S. departed the General Assembly.

Simply not attending these events without a strong, vocal denunciation is a weak response.

The “tilt” of the Obama administration against Israel has only encouraged Arab states. In the two and a half years Obama has been in office, he has expressed support for a mosque within sight of Ground Zero, has openly insulted the Israeli Prime Minister on his first trip to Washington, and backed a UN investigation into the Turkish flotilla to Gaza, among other overt acts.

Most recently, the UN leadership endorsed the Iranian-sponsored “World Without Terrorism” conference on June 25-26. It was a confab attended by some of the leading actors when it comes to terrorism including Sudan and Pakistan, both of which were hosts to the late Osama bin Laden. By far the leading facilitator for terrorism is, of course, Iran. This Alice-in-Wonderland approach to the truth is typical of Arab and Persian Islamic deception and incitement.

In June, the UN General Assembly elected Iran as one of its vice presidents and Qatar as its president. Each will begin a year-long term in September. Durban III is scheduled for September 22, 2011.

The Palestinians will push for recognition as a nation-state in the General Assembly where the U.S. has no veto. Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, noted that “General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, and that body has no authority to recognize states, although its actions can be politically powerful, as the 1975 ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution demonstrated.”

Bolton is urging Congress to make it clear that any resolution to recognize Palestinian statehood will result in a cutoff of funds to the UN, but not to separate agencies such as the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and others.

From the days of ancient Rome, to the last century’s Holocaust, to the present existence of the United Nations, anti-Semitism remains an evil component in the affairs of the world

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Sleeper Agent

As visitors to this blog know, I never post anyone else's writings here. I am going to break that rule to share an unsourced piece of writing that came my way from a fellow blogger. Why? Because it says what needs to be said!

Obama: Where are his girl friends?????

Where are his girl friends? Strange that none have popped up!!!!

Strange to the point of being down right WEIRD!

OK.. this is past the ‘birthers’ questions…this is just plain old common sense, no political agendas for either side.

Just common knowledge for citizens of a country, especially American citizens, who even know that Andrew Jackson’s wife smoked a corn cob pipe and was accused of adultery, or that Lincoln never went to school or Kennedy wore a back brace or Truman played the piano.

We are Americans! We are known for our humanitarian interests and caring for our ‘fellow man.’ We care, but none of us know one single humanizing fact about the history of our own president.

Honestly, and this is a personal thing…but it’s niggled at me for ages that no one who ever dated him ever showed up. The simple fact of his charisma, which caused the women to be drawn to him so obviously during his campaign, looks like some lady would not have missed the opportunity….

We all know about JFK’s magnetism, McCain was no monk, Palin’s courtship and even her athletic prowess were probed. Biden’s aneurysms are no secret. Look at Cheney and Clinton…we all know about their heart problems. How could I have left out Wild Bill before or during the White House?

Nope…not one lady has stepped up and said, “He was so shy,” or “What a great dancer!” Now look at the rest of this…no classmates, not even the recorder for the Columbia class notes ever heard of him.

I just don’t know about this fellow.

Who was the best man at his wedding? Start there. Then check groomsmen. Then get the footage of the graduation ceremony.

Has anyone talked to the professors? It is odd that no one is bragging that they knew him or taught him or lived with him.

When did he meet Michele and how? Are there photos? Every president gives to the public all their photos, etc. for their library.

What has he released?

And who in hell voted for him to be the most popular man in the world?

Does this make you wonder?

Ever wonder why no one ever came forward from Obama’s past, saying they knew him, attended school with him, was his friend, etc.? Not one person has ever come forward from his past.

VERY, VERY STRANGE. This should really be a cause for great concern. To those who voted for him, you may have elected an unqualified, inexperienced *shadow man*.

Did you see a picture called The Manchurian Candidate?

Let’s face it; as insignificant as we all are…someone whom we went to school with remembers our name or face…someone remembers we were the clown or the dork or the brain or the quiet one or the bully or something about us.

George Stephanopoulos of ABC News said the same thing during the 2008 campaign. He questions why no one has acknowledged the president was in their classroom or ate in the same cafeteria or made impromptu speeches on campus. Stephanopoulos also was a classmate of Obama at Columbia — the class of 1984. He says he never had a single class with him.

While he is such a great orator, why doesn’t anyone in Obama’s college class remember him? And, why won’t he allow Columbia to release his records?

NOBODY REMEMBERS OBAMA AT COLUMBIA

Looking for evidence of Obama’s past, Fox News contacted 400 Columbia University students from the period when Obama claims to have been there, but none remembered him.

For example, Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a political science major at Columbia, who also graduated in 1983. In 2008, Root says of Obama, “I don’t know a single person at Columbia that knew him, and they all know me. I don’t have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia …EVER!

Nobody recalls him. Root adds that he was also, like Obama, “Class of ’83 political science, pre-law” and says, “You don’t get more exact or closer than that. Never met him in my life, don’t know anyone who ever met him.”

At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! And five years ago, nobody even knew who he was. The guy who writes the class notes, who’s kind of the, as we say in New York, ‘the macha’ who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him.”

Obama’s photograph does not appear in the school’s yearbook, and Obama consistently declines requests to talk about his years at Columbia, provide school records, or provide the name of any former classmates or friends while at Columbia.

NOTE: Root graduated as valedictorian from his high school, Thornton-Donovan School, then graduated from Columbia University in 1983 as a political science major in the same class in which Barack Hussein Obama states he was.

Some other interesting questions.

Why was Obama’s law license inactivated in 2002?

Why was Michelle’s law license inactivated by court order?

It is circulating that according to the U.S. Census, there is only one Barack Obama but 27 Social Security numbers and over 80 aliases.

WHAT!?

The Social Security number he uses now originated in Connecticut where he is never reported to have lived.

No wonder all his records are sealed!

h/t http://texasfred.net/

President Babe

By Alan Caruba

There’s a lot I don’t know about Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Representative who just announced that she wants to be the next President of the United States of America, but I do know she is great eye candy and, given the present occupier of the office, I would much rather look at her in the Oval Office than him.

She is—and I say this with all due respect—a babe.

Mitt Romney, with whom she is currently a “front runner” in the nomination sweepstakes, looks classically presidential. He is a handsome fellow with a winning smile. My guess, though, is that if Texas Governor Rick Perry gets in the GOP race, all bets are off or, more accurately, all bets will be on him. Gov. Perry has a certain John Wayne cragginess about him and a track record of success in the Lone Star State.

I would like to say that the presidency is not a beauty contest, but to some degree it is.

Put side-by-side on a stage with Obama during the 2008 campaign, John McCain looked like one of the dwarfs that hung out with Snow White. However, confounding everyone during the campaign was the former beauty contest contestant and Governor of the Great State of Alaska, Sarah Palin and she, too, is an attractive gal. Plus she can skin a moose. Can you????

In a society that is conditioned by scads of celebrity silliness to prefer handsome men and beautiful women, it is no secret that we prefer our candidates to meet Hollywood casting standards. Anyone old enough to remember John F. Kennedy can verify that. Rumor is that the ladies loved him and he returned the favor. Jackie Kennedy was quite a beauty in her own right and a great asset for him.

By Hollywood standards, who would not vote for George Clooney or Robert Redford in a heartbeat? By comparison, Newt Gingrich more resembles the Pillsbury Doughboy. Until he opens his mouth and then he has the tendency to make a lot of sense along with the occasionally egregious gaff such as teaming with Nancy Pelosi to spout global warming fairy tales.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. According to a recent Rasmussen survey, 73% say they expect the United States will have a woman President sometime in the next ten years. “Voters are more willing than ever to elect a woman president” said the survey results and the national telephone survey found that “82% of likely U.S. voters say they are willing to vote for a woman president.”

So a President Bachmann, while unlikely in the short run, is not unlikely in the decade ahead unless, of course, we elect a President Palin before that. Some political pundits are saying that Rep. Bachmann might end up on the GOP ticket as the vice president candidate and would thus be one heart attack away from the presidency.

Rep. Bachmann is a Tea Party conservative and that has been gaining traction. I would vote for her just because she wants to repeal Obamacare and there’s much in her stated political positions with which I would agree. In politics as in life, good timing is always helpful and Rep. Bachmann brings an impressive personal and political resume to a race that is actually beginning to look and sound interesting.

Given the savage treatment accorded Gov. Palin, we shall soon know how much Rep. Bachmann scares the Left by how quickly they begin to photoshop her head on photos of porn star bodies. Their dementia knows no bounds.

Americans should recall that Ronald Reagan’s counterpart in Great Britain was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and England has not had a PM to match her judgment and toughness since.

Let us keep our eye on the prize which in this case is to send Barack Hussein Obama packing; back to his beloved Chicago where he can pig out on fast food with Rahm Emanuel, Bill Ayers, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

First Ignored, Then Attacked: 6th International Climate Change Conference

By Alan Caruba

In the words of Gandhi, “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Thursday, June 30, will mark the beginning of the Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by The Heartland Institute, a free market policy center headquartered in Chicago. The conference will be held in Washington, D.C., an appropriate location considering how much hot air emanates from Congress and the White House.

I attended the first conferences that took place in New York City, just across the river from where I live, so I was “there at the beginning” for conferences that were, in the words of Gandhi, largely ignored by the mainstream media and subsequently mentioned but only as the object of mockery.

When, in 2009, emails exchanged between a handful of scientists who provided the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with the most specious, deliberately duplicitous “data” to prop up the “global warming" hoax were revealed, the whole house of cards began to collapse.

It has since been propped up by a bunch of media, political, and science dead-enders who had stacked their reputations on pulling off the great hoax of the modern era; that an infinitesimal amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—0.038 percent—was causing the Earth to heat up, the seas to rise, and Minnie Mouse to announce she was pregnant.

The success of the forthcoming conference, however, has been blessed by the modern form of respect, a preemptory news release attacking it. The Center for American Progress issued a “press call advisory” titled “Climate Deniers Congregate in the Nation’s Capital.”

It began, “The Heartland Institute, a conservative group funded by Exxon Mobil and Charles Koch…” Whoa! Mr. Chairman, we rise to question why the Center for American Progress would engage in an outright lie? Answer: That’s what progressives do because they are immune to the truth.

For the record, neither Exxon Mobil, nor Mr. Koch, has contributed to the cost of the conference. The former has not contributed to the Institute since 2006 and the Kochs have not sent any money in more than a decade.

But let’s finish the Center’s opening sentence that characterized the conference as “boasting a full agenda of notable climate deniers.” The term climate deniers has long been attached to any scientist, academic, politician, or commentator such as myself who had the temerity to point out that every single claim made on behalf of “global warming” was pure horse-hockey.

Since 1998 we have been discussing the new climate cycle, a COOLING one!

The Center for American Progress sought to make light of the conferences’ theme, “Restoring the Scientific Method.” And a damn fine theme it is considering the damage to the entire scientific community that, prior to the global warming hoax, was not famous for deciding what the truth was by “consensus.”

Real science still depends on peer review and the thorough testing of a hypothesis until it can no longer be disputed because it is reproducible. You can say the Earth is flat until you are blue in the face, but it is still round. The “warmists”, however, did everything they could to short-circuit this rigorous process.

The Center for American Progress is concerned that the forthcoming conference asserts that “global warming is not a crisis” and it will be devoted to “ending global warming alarmism” and “disputing that global warming is man-made.”

Would someone please tell the Center that the Earth is now more than a decade into a perfectly natural cooling cycle and that mankind does not control the sun, the oceans, the clouds, the volcanoes, or any climate event? Whenever a tsunami, blizzard, or tornado occurs, Mother Nature’s advice to mankind is “Get out of the way!”

Since I am loath to travel further these days than the Bagel Chateau one town over from where I reside, I shall be watching the conference on streaming video, June 30 to July 1. It should be noted that, in addition to a roster of some of the world’s most respected climate scientists who will make presentations, the Institute has routinely invited some of the most prominent alarmists—warmists—to participate.

A recent Forbes article noted that “a virtual Who’s Who of global warming media hounds” had been invited to participate in the conferences over the years. Conference coordinator, James Taylor, the Institute’s senior fellow for environment policy, said that Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann and others “all seem to have some sort of scheduling conflict whenever they have to share the stage with a scientist who will be challenging their evidence.”

Meanwhile, the egregiously misnamed Center for American Progress will hold a conference call on Wednesday to launch an attack on the conference. No longer ignored or mocked, the Heartland Institute and its conference are clearly on the winning side.

Funeral ceremonies for “global warming” will follow with the mourners all wearing green.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Liberals Exit Stage Left

By Alan Caruba

Granted that reading anything in the liberal media can be daunting for the sheer volume of infantile content it represents, but it can be instructive, particularly as regards the emergence of trends in Leftist opinions.

I am sure that liberals were delighted to read all the criticism conservatives directed at George W. Bush, but they seemed unaware that Bush43 was more frequently than not on their team. As the debate over modifying Medicare rages on, they forget that he expanded the program by adding prescription benefits to it. W never saw a spending bill he would not sign.

Now, however, liberals have their man in the Oval Office and have had two and a half years to assess his performance. They are increasingly unhappy.

Sunday’s Rasmussen daily presidential tracking poll found that 24% of the nation’s voters “strongly approve” of Obama’s performance, but short of changing his party affiliation that is a near-constant level of approval. It just means that nearly one-in-four voters are too dumb to be allowed to use sharp instruments. I call it the Food Stamp Vote.

By contrast, “Nearly half of U.S. voters give President Obama poor marks for his handling of the economy,” noted Rasmussen and it is the economy that will dominate the 2012 elections even if he totally emptied the Strategic Oil Reserves.

I have long regarded Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, as a barometer of what liberals are saying to each other. She’s the Ann Coulter of liberalism and almost as entertaining.

Her Sunday column was titled “Why Is He Bi? (Sigh)” and notes that Obama is “binary” and “likes to be on both sides at once.” After that she was off and running, citing how “In Afghanistan, he wants to go but he wants to stay” while “On Libya, President Obama wants to lead from behind. He’s engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi while telling Congress he’s not engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi.”

“On the budget, he wants to cut spending and increase spending.” Her column is well worth reading because, essentially, she skewers Obama in a fashion that only a former true believer could.

“With each equivocation, the man in the Oval Office shields his identity and cloaks who the real Barack Obama is,” chiding that “On some of the most important issues facing this nation, it is time for the president to come out of the closet.”

Conservatives know who the “real” Obama is. He’s a Marxist. He’s possibly a Muslim. He is incompetent, arrogant, and was ineligible to run for the presidency or hold the office.

If it was just Maureen Dowd voicing her doubts, it would not be a trend, but over at the Huffington Post, Arianna was having her own doubts about recent Obama decisions, noting that “This week brought two high-profile examples of what has become the president’s trademark approach to leadership—‘the fierce urgency of something later’—as he kicked the proverbial can down the road on Afghanistan and gay marriage.”

An apparent memory lapse regarding Libya caused Arianna to write “We know that it’s easier to start a war than to finish one…” It was Bush who first ventured into Afghanistan to drive out al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11 and then got distracted by Iraq. Even so, he was elected twice. Obama has taken to openly expressing doubt he will be a two-term president.

Meanwhile, over at the reliably liberal Washington Post, the lead story was “Obama’s focus on visiting clean-tech companies raises questions.” Well, yes, it does and it was nice of the Post to notice. By now we all know that Obama is besotted by solar panels, electric cars, and high-speed trains where none are needed.

All those “green jobs” he promised have failed to materialize, but neither have all the other jobs he promised two trillion dollars ago.

Could we be witnessing a slow inching off the stage by the Left? Having lost three governorships and power in the House to Republicans, liberals/Democrats may be having second thoughts about the Obamessiah. This is surely a trend worth watching.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Spending Insanely While the Economy Collapses

By Alan Caruba

America is a sovereign nation, a constitutional Republic that will celebrate the 235th anniversary of its declaration of independence in 1776 and the 223rd anniversary of its Constitution which became effective when the State of New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify it in 1788.

By most indications it is a nation in its death throes. Its original values and virtues are being jettisoned and that is always a sign of internal rot. The passage of a law legalizing gay, same-sex marriage in New York State is just one example. It becomes the sixth State to do so.

Families are regarded as the keystone to a healthy society. When they begin to disintegrate or are redefined as same-sex, most observers conclude that a range of social problems will ensue.

The Census Bureau recently announced that married couples no longer head a majority of families in the United States. They now represent only 48% of households, based on data from the 2010 census. It is the first time this has ever occurred.

The 2008-2009 financial crisis was a wake-up call. The nation has been through such crises in the past including the Great Depression from 1929 until the start of World War Two in 1941. The present administration, Congress, and Federal Reserve has responded in much the same way it did in the past and, not surprisingly, the economy has not responded to a flood of “quantitative easing”, governmental make-work programs, and similar efforts.

As Ronald Reagan told us, government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Let me share just a few examples of what is so terribly wrong.

The U.S. Department of Transportation cancelled a $1.2 million federal highway program that would have sent employees on a 17-day globe-trotting journey “to photograph different billboards” after ABC News told the Department it planned to air a report on it. The program has been around for a decade, allegedly to study how other countries handle their major highway networks, motorcycle safety, managing pavement, and “adapting to climate change.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced the awarding of $26.7 million in “sweat equity” grants to produce at least 1,500 affordable homes for low-income individuals and families. Grants were made at a time when there is an abundance of homes in the marketplace that have been emptied by foreclosure or the decision to walk away from them because the mortgage costs more than the decreased value of the home. A total of four cities received these grants. This same department handed out more than $31 million in grants to public housing authorities, resident associations, and non-profit organizations. It appears to be a lame effort to keep people on payrolls at a time of growing unemployment.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is giving $60 million in the form of $20 million each to three public universities in Florida, Iowa, and Idaho (the first two States have political importance in the forthcoming election) as a “major scientific investment in studying the effects of climate change on agriculture and forest production.”

Climate change is the new way of describing “global warming.” At a time when an estimated 14 million Americans are out of work, the USDA is enriching professors of tree physiology and claiming that climate change will increase levels of food contamination “from chemicals” such as the ones used to actually grow crops and protect them against weeds and insect depredation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its Forest Service Awards, has also given away nearly $3 million for “renewable energy projects” at the same time the administration has tapped the Strategic Oil Reserve—intended for use only for emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina—in a lame effort to lower prices at the gas pump. Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed that “Biomass is a vital part of America’s clean energy future” while Congress was voting to discontinue subsidies to ethanol producers that were costing Americans billions.

These are just three government departments that are giving away millions for useless, politically-motivated, grants and programs that drain the public treasury. The news, however, gets worse.

Wayne Crews, a vice president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, is an expert on the impact of federal government regulation of business and industry. He recently noted that the federal government “is on track to spend more than $3.5 trillion this year. What most people don’t know is that government costs about fifty percent more than what it spends. That’s because complying with federal regulations costs an addition $1.75 trillion—nearly an eighth of GDP. And almost none of that cost appears on the budget.”

“At the end of 2009, the Code of Federal Regulations was 157,974 pages long. In 2010, 3,752 new rules hit the books—equivalent to a new regulation coming into effect every 2 hours and 20 minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

While Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke was telling reporters he had no idea why the economy was stalled, growing at an appalling rate of just over 1 percent annually, the government was continuing to throw money away in the name of climate change, a green economy, and countless other giveaway programs labeled “discretionary spending.”

The author, Ayn Rand, warned that, “When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Cartoon Round Up

The Queering of America

By Alan Caruba

Queer, an adjective
1. strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular: a queer notion of justice.

2. of a questionable nature or character; suspicious; shady: Something queer about the language of the prospectus kept investors away.

3. not feeling physically right or well; giddy, faint, or qualmish: to feel queer.

Also slang for a male homosexual.

The Obama visit to New York on June 23 included a demonstration by GetEQUAL, a national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) “civil rights organization” and Queer Rising, a New York based grassroots “queer equality organization” at a time when New York State is just one vote away from enacting a law to legalize “gay marriage.”

For millennia marriage has been recognized solely as the union of a man and a woman. No society has ever sanctioned “gay marriage” because to do so would be to undermine the keystone of society, the family.

For the first time in the nation’s history, we have a President who has lent his office to the advancement of the homosexual agenda, though it should be noted that former President Clinton attempted to do that when he tried to alter the military to the open acceptance of homosexuals in its ranks in 1993. After an outcry, this was modified into a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that Congress has since repealed.

Among the “czars” that President Obama appointed was Kevin Jennings, given the title of “Safe Schools Czar” overseeing elements of policy in the Department of Education. Jennings was and is a homosexual activist who will leave his office in July and return to Massachusetts. He has specialized in targeting children with the “gay rights” message through indoctrination in the nation’s schools that is intended to advance acceptance of homosexuality and its permutations as an acceptable lifestyle choice.

Let me pause to say that I have long regarded homosexuality as an abnormality that appears to occur in some people from birth. It is, in that regard, not a choice. Neither, however, is one’s race. I do not discriminate against homosexuals, but I do not accept the destruction of societal norms because some homosexuals demand it.

It is difficult at best to determine how much of the U.S. population is homosexual. As best as I can determine it ranges from one to three percent, with the latter being on the high side of such estimates. For years homosexuals encountered laws that conferred a criminal status on homosexuality. They also encountered many forms of rejection by the greater society.

Those laws have been repealed, but the rejection they encounter represents an increasing backlash as homosexuals have “gone public” to initiate the legalization of “gay marriage” and the introduction of “hate crimes” legislation that conflict with freedoms granted by our Bill of Rights. It has mutated as well into an alleged “anti-bullying” campaign in schools as if bullying has not been a part of every child’s introduction to the fact that bullies exist everywhere in one form or another.

Last year, Jennings helped introduce Bill 4530 in Congress that would require the normalization of homosexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing, and other practices in the curriculums of our nation’s schools. His office received $410 million in FY 2011.

In California there is a bill moving forward to actively portray homosexuality in a positive fashion including a provision that textbooks must include figures and events in gay history. Former Governor Schwartzenegger vetoed the bill but Gov. Jerry Brown has indicated he would sign it if it passes this year. I am pretty sure this is not what the majority of Californians want their children to learn, nor is it a fit topic to teach.

On top of national initiatives, the United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a resolution condemning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Given that homosexuality is a crime in 76 nations this seems a reasonable step toward protecting those who, as I have noted, have no choice in the matter of their sexual orientation. It is, however, just a resolution, not a law.

I can speak only for myself, but I find all this activity to legalize “gay marriage” and to introduce a gay agenda into the curriculums in the nation’s schools a distinct threat to the fabric of a society based on the undisputed normality of heterosexuality. I am pretty sure the “straight” citizens of Boston and elsewhere find it offensive to host a gay parade.

I believe the greater society has a right to protect itself, its children and its military forces against these legislative intrusions, mandates and coercions to force acceptance upon it. If it continues, it will become one more factor in the destruction of America, a signal that its moral foundations continue to be eroded.

Candidates for elected office and those holding such offices should be challenged and removed when they advocate and vote for the queering of America.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Why the End is Always Near, but Never Arrives

By Alan Caruba

If you were to depend on the Huffington Post for your knowledge of the world, you would remain appallingly ignorant. As a leading website for liberal news and views, it is a platform for sheer nonsense and the wonder of it all is that so much is produced on a daily basis.

Take, for example, the June 20 post “State of the Ocean: ‘Shocking’ Report Warns of Mass Extinction from Current Rate of Marine Distress.” I doubt that most HP readers have a clue how vast the oceans of the world are. They compose the majority of the Earth’s surface, some 70 percent, and contain 97 percent of the world’s water.

According to its website, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) gathered at the University of Oxford, for “A high-level international workshop”, described as “the first inter-disciplinary international meeting of marine scientists of its kind… designed to consider the cumulative impact of multiple stressors on the ocean, including warming, acidification, and over-fishing.”

“The 27 participants from 18 organizations in 6 countries produced a grave assessment of current threats - and a stark conclusion about future risks to marine and human life if the current trajectory of damage continues: that the world's ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.”

Please, someone, please tell me the last time an international group of scientists did not get together and then announce to the world that some horrid future awaited everyone?

According to the IPSO geniuses, “We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime, and worse, our children’s and generations beyond that.” The scientific panel concluded “that the degeneration in the oceans is happening much faster than has been predicted” and, therefore, all the coral reefs “could be gone by 2050.”

Why is it that every one of these apocalyptic groups always predict something “could be”, “might be”, “is expected to”, and a whole raft of wishy-washy terms that add up to “We don’t know, but we want to scare the crap out of you just the same”?

Implicit in this latest prediction is that human actions are responsible for whatever they claim is happening to the oceans. Never mind all the other creatures on Earth, gazillions of insects, millions of birds and all manner of mammals, not to mention all the fish, it is always humans despoiling the Earth.

Have we not lived with this tiresome nonsense since the early days of the environmental movement and, in particular, the creation of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? A recent editorial in The Washington Times exposed the way the latest IPCC pronouncement that “the entire world will soon depend on renewable energy” was lifted from a paper whose primary authors were from Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council!

The IPCC has managed to destroy the integrity and the trust in science that has taken centuries to be built. Its constant flogging of the bogus global warming fraud has caused everyone except the Green Kool-Aid drinkers to conclude that scientists cannot be trusted.

Many can’t. Over the years, they have been seduced by billions in government funds for research that always seems to confirm whatever the political agenda is at the time. Galileo was put under house arrest by the Vatican because his findings conflicted with the teaching of the Church at that time. Now governments just buy scientists by the boatload. In addition, the scientists working for government agencies such as NASA know where their paycheck comes from.

A caveat, please. I am privileged to know quite a few scientists as the result of spending the last thirty years debunking global warming. A relative handful of very brave men and women risked their academic and professional careers to dispute the IPCC and other charlatans. From June 30-to-July 1, the Heartland Institute will convene its sixth international conference devoted to the truth about "global warming", i.e., that it is a massive lie. So, yes, there are many good scientists and interested parties who fought the good fight.

Compounding the problem here in the U.S., the nation’s schools have been totally co-opted by the Green agenda and whatever passes for science is mostly some version of the Gaia religion spoon-fed to the kiddies in pre-school, kindergarten, and up to graduation. The process continues at most colleges and university. The result is a generation or two of enviro-robots for whom science is little more than propaganda.

So, like the marine prognosticators, be polite, listen to their ravings, and ignore them. Be serene and secure in the knowledge that the sun, the oceans, the clouds, the volcanoes, and other factors affecting the Earth are immune to any but the ancient cycles that were known by Chinese, Mayan and druid astronomers long, long ago.

That is why the end is always near, but thankfully never seems to arrive.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Banning BPA Will Kill People - The BPA File, Part Six

By Alan Caruba

The lies being told about Bisphenol-A, BPA, via the print and broadcast media, and via the Internet are a destructive tsunami intended to ban its use. If successful, people will die.

In previous parts of this series on BPA, I have identified environmental organizations and public relations firms that have worked as sponsors and/or purveyors of systematic falsehoods about BPA.

The inescapable conclusion is that there is an intricate matrix of comparable groups behind a global fraud that reeks of the same pathology and methodology as the disgraced and debunked “global warming” hoax. But the results of a successful BPA hoax could have deadly consequences.

BPA has been in use for more than a half century and as such, it is among the most tested substances in use today. It is used to line the insides of metal containers and to make shatterproof safety plastics. Unlike what the junk science merchants would have us believe, BPA is not a carcinogen, it is not mutagenic and it’s not an ‘endocrine disruptor.’

Stated simply, BPA improves human health and safety.

Dr. Angela Logomasini, PhD, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, authored the report “Anti-BPA Packaging Laws Jeopardize Public health,” and concluded, in reference to efforts at the state level to restrict BPA, that “these policies threaten to undermine food safety because BPA is used to make resins that line metal cans and other packaging to prevent the development of dangerous pathogens and other contamination.”

The safety characteristics provided by BPA in making shatterproof plastic are no less valuable. Consider this simple and common scenario: a new mother trying to care for her infant while literally juggling a telephone, a cooking utensil and a glass baby bottle. This is actually one of the reasons that bottles made of hardened, shatterproof plastic became so popular so quickly; they were safe to use and spared mothers the risk of shards of shattered glass in homes with infants and toddlers.

We take for granted that we eat all manner of food packaged in cans as well as food and drink in plastic bottles. Imagine if you could not be sure that it was safe to eat or drink? Imagine if you had to fear the contents of a metal can of soup every time it was opened? Or feared what might happen if you drank soda from a plastic bottle?

Banning the use of BPA would put the contents of billions of cans and bottles at risk of contamination, a function that BPA protects against every day and everywhere around the planet. The risk of a BPA ban is clear; there are no alternatives to BPA that have a similarly tested safety profile.

Thousands of studies have been conducted on BPA and not a single one of them has ever shown any harm to human health from BPA in normal consumer use.

This truth was illustrated in an April article by author Jon Entine who reported “A comprehensive review by the German Society of Toxicology of thousands of studies on BPA concluded, ‘(BPA) exposure represents no noteworthy risk to the health of the human population, including newborns and babies.’” During June 2011 in Europe more people died from eating organic vegetables than ever exhibited so much as a symptom of illness due to BPA over the past half century.

While activists clamor for bans on BPA, they’re largely mute when asked what the alternative might be. A report in FoodQualitynews.com noted that Dr. John Rost, chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, stated “There is a great deal of research underway at this time, but the fact remains there is no readily available alternative to BPA for all the types of metal food and beverage packaging currently in use.” The likelihood of finding a substitute is literally “years away.”

Opponents of BPA seek to intimidate and marginalize credible researchers by condemning their ‘links’ to industry – accusations that are as specious as the non-existent ‘links’ of BPA to physical ailments – yet Rost’s safety concerns were underscored in a May 12 opinion piece in the New York Times which stated what scientists have been saying all along; “Swapping out BPA-free bottles, teething rings and sippy cups for substitutes whose dangers are unknown isn’t keeping our children safe."

Banning BPA would not only constitute a health threat, it would have a catastrophic economic impact on the provision of all food and drink packaged in metal or plastic containers. The assault on BPA is an assault on the vast bulk of humanity that depends on safe, protected containers.

The anti-BPA propaganda, all of which use the vague phrases that BPA “may” pose this threat, “might” pose that threat, “could” have some affect, “has been linked”, is baseless. It plays to the fears of those also read and hear an endless range of specious claims about chemicals of every description. That fear has a name, chemophobia.

Just as the anti-PBA propaganda continues, so do the alleged “studies” that link it to “possible”, “potential” hazards. Time and again, they prove to be an insult to the scientific method.

The sensible consumer knows that mere “exposure” does not constitute a threat or hazard. Every day we are “exposed” to all manner of things we safely eat and drink simply because the exposure is so small—parts per billion—as to constitute no hazard and because the body naturally excretes substances such as BPA on a daily basis.

This pernicious assault on the use of Bisphenol-A must be stopped.

Editor’s Note: The complete series can be accessed at http://thebpafile.blogspot.com/ and at http://www.anxietycenter.com/bpa.htm.

.© Alan Caruba, 2011

The New "Consensus" Predicts an Ice Age

By Alan Caruba

Since the late 1980s a “consensus” of scientists, we were told, agreed that the Earth was in a period of “global warming” and anybody who disputed that was a “skeptic” or a “denier.”

Then, in 1998, the Earth began to cool. The handful of scientists at the heart of the global warming hoax began to sweat and not from the heat, but because they knew their scheme, created and blessed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would soon be revealed. Frantic emails went back and forth as they tried to come up with some way of keeping the lie alive.

Literally thousands of scientists had climbed on the global warming bandwagon, scooping up billions in research grants that were all intended to “prove” that global warming was real. Nations, including ours, were making investments and controlling people’s lives based on the hoax. By 2009, the game was up. A huge blizzard concluded the 2009 IPCC Copenhagen climate change conference. The next one was held in Acapulco.

On June 30-July 1, the Heartland Institute, headquartered in Chicago, a free-market policy center, will hold what may likely be the last of its six climate change conferences, all of which debunked global warming by bringing together some very brave scientists to present seminars based on real, not fraudulent, science. It will be held in Washington, D.C. You will be able to “attend” by watching it on streaming video.

In 1997 Robert W. Felix published a book, “Not by Fire, but by Ice”, a softcover. It’s second edition, can be purchased from his website, IceAgeNow.com. For anyone interested in knowing the truth about the Earth’s many cycles of warming and cooling, and especially about its ice ages, I recommend it. While there, pick up his other book, “Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps.”

Fourteen years ago Felix pointed out that ice ages occur in a “dependable, predictable, natural cycle that returns like clockwork every 11,500 years.” Then he noted that the Earth is at the end of the current interglacial period!

The human species, homo sapiens, that had been evolving from an ape-like state really hit its stride around 500,000 years ago while modern humans showed up around 200,000 years ago. It took a while to learn how to use fire, make tools, develop language, and spread around. It wasn’t until about 5,000 years ago that what we call civilization began.

In addition to developing agriculture, building pyramids, and such, our ancestors spent their time making war on each other. With each passing century we developed new weapons of war, plundering, looting, raping and pillaging. Religions were invented, discarded, refined, but the wars have continued unabated. Now we are so “advanced” we can kill thousands of people with a single bomb.

Civilization was greatly facilitated by an interglacial period that provided increasing crop yields to feed armies and populations clustered in cities, virtually all of which were surrounded by large walls.

Since the weather was critical to agriculture and the waging of war, humans began to pay greater attention to what the sun was doing and keeping records. It was noticed that lots of sunspot activity was an indicator of warmer climate.

From 1645 to 1715, virtually no sunspots appeared and this phenomenon called the Maunder Minimum coincided with the Little Ice Age. Rivers froze over in Europe and America. Crops failed. Revolutions occurred.

Now, instead of “global warming”, scientists are agog over a new slowing of sunspot activity—enormous magnetic storms—something that occurs every 11 years, half of the 22-year sunspot cycle. Now the U.S. National Solar Observatory and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory are suggesting that a new Little Ice Age is on its way.

Robert W. Felix told them that back in 1997 while most U.S. climate agencies were still blathering away with global warming predictions. This time, though, based on cycles known to the ancient Chinese and others, they have gotten it right.

What is not being said, however, is that this predicted Little Ice Age could very well turn into a very Big Ice Age. It’s due. It could start tomorrow. Bundle up!

© Alan Caruba, 2011

America's Decline Follows a Familiar Pattern

By Alan Caruba

History is a relentless process and one that does repeat itself. Empires emerge, hold power, grow wealthy, and then find ways to commit suicide while new ones push them aside.

I was thinking of this while listening to outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ speech on NATO’s future. He virtually spelled out why the United States is in decline and why Great Britain and Europe, once the seat of great empires, have been in decline since the end of World War Two.

The Second World War so sapped the energy of Europe and the United Kingdom that neither were able to retain the sources of their former wealth, their colonial empires composed of nations in the Middle East and Asia. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was formed after World War Two out of fear of an aggressive Soviet Union.

The United Nations was also created at that time and it too has long been sustained by U.S. financial support.

Gates made no secret of the fact that he thought the European members had been getting a free ride from NATO as U.S. funding had risen from “roughly 50 percent of all NATO spending” to “more than 75 percent in the twenty years since the collapse (1989) of the Berlin Wall”. The USSR ceased in 1991 and became the Russian Federation.

The generations that lived through the Cold War from the end of World War Two in 1945 until 1991 are now senior citizens. For nearly fifty years it was the focus of American concern and wars from Korea to Vietnam were fought to restrain Communist expansion whether it was motivated by Russia or China. Those wars, however, left those generations, their children and grandchildren, with a distinct distaste for combat in far-off places.

The 9/11 attack was unique in that it was not perpetrated by a nation-state, but by a stateless organization calling itself al Qaeda. It took a decade to find and kill its leader, Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, the United States had become mired in Afghanistan for over a decade. The invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 to rid the Middle East of Saddam Hussein was presumably taken to rid the region of a constant threat.

It’s not that the United States wasn’t joined by a coalition of NATO and other nations. It was, but it was also understood that the U.S. would contribute the bulk of the forces and machinery of war.

There is considerable irony in the way the Iraq war has since led to the instability of Middle Eastern nations whose dictators have been forced to flee or fight. If Saddam Hussein could be brought to justice, Arabs concluded that any dictator could be overthrown if they united against them. It did not escape notice that even longtime U.S. allies like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarack would be abandoned.

The result is that the U.S. and NATO have stumbled into a conflict in Libya that has demonstrated their present state of weakness. Moreover, the mission in Afghanistan is jeopardized by the need for access routes through Pakistan!

As Secretary Gates noted, “It is no secret that for too long, the international military effort in Afghanistan suffered from a lack of focus, resources, and attention, a situation exacerbated by America’s primary focus on Iraq for most of the past decade.” He warned against NATO nations pulling out “on their own timeline in a way that undermines the mission and increases risks to other allies.”

“Turning to the NATO operation over Libya,” said Gates, “it has become painfully clear that similar shortcomings—in capability and will—have the potential to jeopardize the alliance’s ability” to conduct a successful mission. The key word here is “will.” When a coalition lacks the will to win, it will not.

This applies as well to the United States. Said Gates, “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress and in the American body politic writ large to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”

Just as the NATO nations lost the will to defend themselves, preferring to let the U.S. pick up the bill, it is America’s turn to examine its own financial situation and likely have to reduce its own defense expenditures.

For some time now, it has been reducing its naval capabilities in terms of warships. It has aircraft that are wonders of technology, but much of the fleet is aging and in need of replacement. Its warriors have been in fields of combat for twice as long as it took to fight and win World War Two in two separate theatres, Europe and the Pacific.

As the U.S. appetite for combat diminishes and its financial stability remains uncertain, it is experiencing much the same kind of events that ended the British Empire. At one time it was so vast it was said that the sun never set upon it.

The juggernaut that was U.S. military power is being hollowed out. The value of the U.S. dollar, the default currency for the world, is declining. The empire that was Great Britain is no more and the influence that the U.S. has had and the power it could once project is fading.

Some very hard decisions must be made—and soon—or the United States of America will join the ranks of empires that exhausted themselves.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama will Resign and for Good Reason

By Alan Caruba

I always thought it was creepy the way Barack Hussein Obama has repeatedly referred to the likelihood of his being a one-term President. It is as if he knew, even as he campaigned in 2008, that all the loose ends and unanswered questions about his life would eventually disqualify him.

It is now widely acknowledged that the mainstream media ran interference for him, ignoring or disparaging those who questioned his eligibility. After two and a half years in office, however, his arrogance and incompetence is so manifest that even they can no longer cover for him.

Obama has single handedly generated a mass political movement called the Tea Party and election results for governors and members of Congress have put opposition candidates into office.

On March 31, 1968, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection, responding to the massive opposition to the war in Vietnam. On August 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal to avoid impeachment.

I predict that Barack Hussein Obama will resign before the end of his first term. He may well do so prior to the September 2012 Democratic Party convention.

Obama was never eligible to run for the office. In his book, “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President”, Dr. Jerome R. Corsi, Phd, devotes 387 pages, complete with appendices and endnotes, to irrefutably make that case.

Anyone who reads Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution, however, can make that case in less than a minute. Only a “natural born” individual whose both parents were American citizens can be President. Obama’s father was a citizen of Kenya. There is no dispute regarding what the Founders meant when they said “natural born.” Further clouding Obama’s eligibility is the time he spent in his youth in Indonesia as the adopted son of that nation’s nationality.

Corsi’s book explores all the other mysteries including a highly suspicious Social Security number, passports, and other documentation that any candidate for office would normally submit to public disclosure. A massive cover up that includes the national press corps, the Democratic Party, Congress and even the U.S. courts, permitted Obama to gain and hold the office.

Indeed, Corsi’s book is not the first to reveal the deceptions. At least three other books have meticulously examined the issue. They include “The Manchurian President” by Aaron Klein with Brenda J. Elliot, “The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency” by Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, and “The Post-American Presidency” by Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer.

Corsi, however, has the benefit of timing. As the nation enters the period following Obama’s announcement he is running for reelection and during the process of selecting a Republican opponent, the issue of his eligibility is gathering momentum.

The polling data is all against him. The failure of his policies, combined with the massive increase in the national debt, rising unemployment, the implosion of the housing market, and a growing perception of incompetence, are coalescing to give weight to the demand that he end his candidacy or resign.

“History has not been kind to U.S. Presidents that have attempted to hide behind a lie,” says Corsi.

When republics begin to ignore their founding documents, they are literally committing suicide and, in Obama’s case, it is an assisted suicide.

The recognized definition of a “natural born citizen”, a requirement to be President, does not require much more than common sense. In a May article published by Canada Free Press, Lawrence B. Solum, the John E. Cribbett Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, is quoted as having written in September 2008, “Anyone born on American soil whose parents are citizens of the United States is a natural born citizen.”

Ironically, in 2008, his political opponent, Sen. John McCain, whose both parents were Americans when he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, was the subject of a Senate Resolution confirming his eligibility to run. The then-Democrat controlled Senate took up no such action regarding Obama. If they had, they would have had to hold a convention to pick a new candidate!

Lawrence Sellin, the author of the Canada Free Press article cited above, warned “Whether through cowardice or arrogance, both Republican and Democrats fail to appreciate the fact that ordinary Americans are reaching a tipping point. Imagine a Tea Party on steroids.”

“If the Constitutional crisis is not soon addressed, the present political polarization will inevitably lead to political fragmentation. Erosion of the Constitution will inevitably lead to the collapse of the rule of law.”

There is no documentation to support the myths about his life that Obama has carefully devised. Indeed, the President has reportedly spent millions to deny public access to his birth certificate and all other records.

If he resigns, he may be able to assert the legitimacy of every piece of legislation, every executive order, signed into law, but if he is found to have been ineligible, every one of them would become null and void.

The nation can be put right again as a Constitutional Republic. Obama has led an unlawful regime. America has been drunk on socialism since the 1930s. It’s time to sober up.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Cartoon Round Up

The Terrorist Next Door

By Alan Caruba

The June 16 news from NBC was headlined “Possible Al-Qaeda Hit List Targets Specific Americans.”

The list included the names and photos of “U.S. officials and business leaders” and the call was to kill them in their homes, all the better to spread their stock-in-trade, terror. The individuals have been notified by the FBI. The list includes Wall Street firms, political leaders, think tank influentials, and contractors who do business with the military.

While the U.S. government is now using its drone fleet to whack al-Qaeda folk in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen these days, according to Catherine Herridge, a Fox News correspondent, al-Qaeda has morphed from being a top-down organization to a more generalized movement and these days it is busy recruiting American-born Muslims to continue the jihad.

In her new book, “The Next Wave: On the Hunt for Al Qaeda’s American Recruits”, Herridge spells out a chilling scenario. To understand the next phase of terror, it should be the next book on your summer reading list.

Herridge knows the terrorism scene courtesy of reporting on it for years and having an extraordinary number of contacts within the U.S. counterterrorism network that was put together after al Qaeda’s wake-up call on 9/11. The flaws in the system that existed before then were exposed and steps were taken to get better coordination among the FBI, CIA, NSA, and its other elements.

These days the National Counterterrorism Center must process a daily volume of information “between eight thousand and ten thousand reports.” The threat made “sharing data a matter of survival,” says Herridge. They include “at least forty threats and distinct plots.”

Perhaps the worst part of what an army of intelligence analysts determined was that the jihad and the terrorist’s mind set was that “it’s not a generational issue, it’s a forever issue.”

What too many Americans have yet to come to grips with is that the inherent message and duty of Islam is a never-ending war on “infidels”—and in particular the West—is jihad. While Christianity seeks to convert by the power of its message, Islam seeks to convert by virtue of its ability to apply terror to populations that resist it. It seeks out those who feel alienated from American and Western values, recruiting them in the greater jihad—war—to dominate whole nations and peoples.

It is the antithesis of its claim that it is “a religion of peace.”

As one old CIA hand put it, jihad is “not a personal struggle for someone’s soul, but (is) a global movement.” Its primary target these days is America and its success is increasingly the use of the Internet to spread its message.

Constantly learning from its mistakes and constantly evolving, it should come as no surprise that one of its leading figures these days is Anwar al-Awlaki, American born and bred, and currently said to be hiding out in Yemen. With the elimination of Osama bin Laden his mastery of the Internet and his insider’s knowledge of American culture has elevated him.

He has been a major recruiter and one of his most famous was Major Nidal Halik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. If there is one thing that will get Americans killed it is the political correctness that permitted Major Hasan to remain in the Army despite clear, obvious indications that he was drifting into the jihadist’s orbit. His exchange of emails with al-Awlaki should have put him on a short list for interrogation and further action to sever him from military service.

Herridge rarely strays from straight reporting in her book, but it is also clear that she regards the Obama administration as a virtual facilitator of homeland terrorism, noting at one point that “It took the Obama administration nine weeks to publicly acknowledge the Fort Hood massacre as an act of terrorism.”

Her warning is clear. “In a growing number of cases, al Qaeda’s followers are just like us. They are educated here, sometimes born here. The radicalization process is compressed, An offbeat loner can reach out and become a dedicated killer in a matter of months.”

As one former weapons inspector put it, “Terrorism is like water. It takes the path of least resistance. You move one way and it moves another. It is a thinking enemy.”

It is inherent on everyone to be especially watchful and, sadly, to be less attached to traditional legal protections that prohibit law enforcement and counterterrorism personnel from infiltrating the many mosques throughout the nation until this cancer can be isolated and eradicated.

Americans have got to come to a fundamental conclusion and understanding that Islam is a religion of people who want to kill as many Americans as possible by way of destroying the nation and spreading this murderous cult worldwide.

One need only look at the way Muslim nations today are engaged in insurrections and conflicts that, as often as not, kill other Muslims. It is a very different “religion” than Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism.

And now it has a list of American leaders it specifically wants to kill before it gets to you.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

An Inaugural Fail

By Alan Caruba

We are all now so accustomed to Barack Obama’s delivery of a speech and have heard so many Tele-Prompter recitations that his habit of raising his chin, of gazing off into some future only he perceives, and his now-annoying way of breaking a sentence into small chunks that render it a monotony is taken for granted.

After all the campaign speeches he delivered in 2008, the carefully-staged events, by January 20, 2009 the nation was ready to hear what the then-new President, the 44th, had to say. With the exception of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech and one or both of Lincoln’s, few such speeches are long remembered.

President Obama’s was no exception and, as he begins his campaign to be reelected, it seemed to me a good time to revisit it.

Believe it or not, he began by saying “I stand here today humbled by the task before us…” and I daresay there are few who would apply the word ‘humble’ to Barack Hussein Obama, then or now.

Here was a man who had already written two memoirs about a life without any of the touchstones of achievement we normally look for. He had never run a business or met a payroll. As a legislator, he was either absent or voted for liberal programs without fail.

He had leaped swiftly from being an obscure Illinois state legislator to being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. By February 10, 2007 he announced he was a candidate for President.

By November 2008 he was elected. It is a cliché to note that virtually the whole of the nation’s mainstream media did everything in its power to secure that outcome.

As he continued with his inaugural speech, Obama acknowledged that “Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred”, but we would learn in the months that followed that Obama would never put a name to it, never identify it as an Islamic terrorism network and, following the Fort Hood shooting, it would take weeks before the words “Islamic extremism” were even applied to it.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the inaugural speech was its rather mundane enumeration of the huge economic problems that faced the nation at the time. “We will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.”

Based on his words, that speech was a huge fail. Based on the actions taken or not taken by his administration, jobs by the millions disappeared. The housing market is one of foreclosures from coast to coast. Consumer spending and consumer confidence remains stagnant.

We were, said Obama, to ask “not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…where the answer is no, programs will end.” Instead, his administration embarked on huge spending programs dubbed “stimulus” that vastly increased the national debt and, by common agreement, achieved little or nothing to get the economy moving.

As this is written, the Obama administration adamantly refuses to agree to any spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The waste continues as various elements of the government pour millions into obscenely stupid programs and grants. The government continues to grow larger.

Rather than concentrate on the economic problems of the nation by cutting taxes and eliminating regulations, the Obama administration literally forced a 2,000-page piece of legislation dubbed Obamacare on Americans who largely opposed it. It is currently wending its way through the courts as 26 states have joined in rejecting it.

Obama’s inaugural outreach now seems infantile and naïve. “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” Both were and are scarce, but Obama has ensured that the U.S. remains dependent on imported Middle East oil by thwarting every effort to explore and extract our domestic reserves.

His Libyan military adventure just adds to his list of failures, save one. Based on his predecessor’s groundwork, Osama bin Laden was delivered to justice.

Guantanamo remains open for business and 9/11’s terrorists will not be granted the protection of constitutional rights that belong solely to Americans.

In sum, present and future historians will conclude that Obama’s inaugural speech on January 20, 2009 was just so much blather and significantly devoid of any substance. That’s a pretty good description of the 44th President of the United States.

It is also a very good reason to ensure that Barack Hussein Obama does not get to deliver another inaugural speech in 2013.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama's War on Oil, Coal, and America

By Alan Caruba

If there is a single reason for defeating Barack Obama’s bid for reelection, it would be his energy policies, all of which have been aimed at denying Americans access to their domestic oil as well as our huge reserves of coal.

Both energy sources would generate thousands of jobs at a time when unemployment figures rival those of the Great Depression. At the same time, domestic oil production would reduce our obscene dependency on foreign oil while coal production would ensure that we can all enjoy the most affordable electricity insofar as coal is responsible for just over half of all electricity generated.

Fortunately for Americans, Exxon has not abandoned the search for new sources of domestic oil, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars this requires. In early June it announced large discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico, the first in decades. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the company “unveiled three discoveries that are likely to turn it into one of the biggest producers of oil and gas in the region.”

On the same day, Seldon B. Graham, Jr., an oil engineer and attorney, had a letter in The Wall Street Journal in which he noted that “the actual price of U.S. oil is cheaper than the actual price of foreign oil” advising readers that the “the oil price” cited in the media is actually a reflection of Wall Street speculators making bets on the future, not the market price.

“U.S. consumers,” said Graham “could save some $17.7 billion annually at the current price difference if U.S. oil replaced foreign oil.”

At the same time Exxon was announcing its discoveries, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was holding a particularly acrimonious meeting involving the members of the cartel. The meeting reportedly “broke up in disarray with no decision on raising production—despite widespread fears that higher crude prices were endangering the world economy.”

The so-called Arab Spring involving turmoil in nations from Tunisia to Yemen, along with the fighting going on in Libya, an oil-producing nation, has sharpened the divisions within OPEC, but the greatest of these is between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran has played a role in the turmoil, backing the Syrian regime and warning Saudi Arabia against further support of Bahrain. Apocalyptic fears are being generated as Iran closes in on having its own nuclear weapons.

What, then, has been the Obama administration’s response to this? While slowly beginning to provide new permits for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, having declared a moratorium after the BP accident (and thus destroying countless jobs in the Gulf States region), it is now threatening a new way to shut down oil exploration and production in one of the most oil-rich areas of the nation, the Permian Basin of West Texas and Southeast New Mexico.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced it intends to declare the dunes sagebrush lizard an “endangered species” because it believes that oil production is destroying parts of the lizard’s home. Ignoring the nation’s financial crisis, its high rate of unemployment, and the rising cost of gasoline at the pump, the USFWS thinks that it is more important to protect “a unique sand dune ecosystem” for a LIZARD.

“This is the most prolific oil-production region in onshore America,” said Ben Sheppard, president of the Permian Basic Petroleum Association. That, of course, is why the Obama administration wants to attack it in the same way it has been attacking any off-shore production off the coast of Alaska and, of course, in ANWR, the site of billions of untapped barrels of oil.

At the same time Investors Business Daily took note of the Environmental Protection Agency’s drive to impose new regulations on utilities that use coal. “The rules make sense only if you want less energy, higher prices, and fewer jobs.”

“We’re being systematically starved of energy,” said IBD, “and our economy is suffering. Just don’t ask the White House to help.” It estimated that the new EPA rules would cost electric utilities $184 billion by 2030 and kill 1.4 million jobs. They would, of course, increase the cost of electricity to everyone.

Like everything else the EPA proposes, it is based on totally bogus estimates of air pollution in addition to the scientifically-debased assertion that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to save the Earth from global warming. Meanwhile, the UN Kyoto Protocol intended to reduce CO2 emissions is soon to end as most of the original nations signing onto it have abandoned it.

America has arrived at a moment in time when the enemy is now the administration in control of its ability to provide the power it needs to dig out of the current financial crisis. If a foreign government was imposing these restrictions we would go to war against it.

© Alan Caruba, 2011