It's the Lies About Beef that are the Slime

By Alan Caruba

I am subject to various enthusiasms and, in 2008, I wrote a series about beef and the vast network of phony consumer advocates, vegetarian types, animal rights groups and headline chasing media folks who love a good scare campaign, all trying to convince Americans that beef was bad for them.

Today, it is a smear campaign about a type of meat promoted in the media as “pink slime.” Typically, it is a pack of lies and it’s going to cost some folks their jobs and drive up the cost of beef if allowed to go unchallenged.

What is being demonized in this 21st century reincarnation of the 1989 Alar apple scare is finely textured, 95% lean beef. It is composed of small parts of beef that are still available for use after the cuts with which we are more accustomed, like sirloin, brisket, top round, flank, porterhouse, and some forty other selections, are taken.

This lean beef is routinely added to lower quality hamburger to increase its protein content and its production has long been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It actually improves the nutritional quality of a lot of cheaper hamburger.

While the media may not approve of this beef, plenty of others do. A March 29 article in The Wall Street Journal reported that after being hammered in the media for weeks, the lean beef, “is getting support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the governors of five states, who argue it has been unfairly labeled and is actually a safe, low-cost way to make ground beef leaner.”

Other supporters include food safety activists like Nancy Donley, who lost her son, Alex, to e.coli and now advocates for tougher food safety laws to prevent similar deaths. The founder of Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP), Donley wrote in the March 17 edition of Food Safety News about her experience learning more about the modern American meat industry and her tour of a Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) plant which produces the lean beef now under attack.

“I got to know the owners, Eldon and Regina Roth,” wrote Donley, “and was impressed by their complete commitment to the safety and wholesomeness of the meat products they produced. I was also impressed by the food safety culture they instilled throughout their company.”

The company and its owners were also the subject of a June 12, 2008 Washington Post article titled “Engineering a Safer Burger.” In profiling Eldon Roth, the Post noted that Roth, “discovered his process for separating meat from fat had the unintended effect of making the lean beef more alkaline and therefore less conducive to bacteria.

The Post further reported that Roth and his staff, “began working with ammonium hydroxide, a food additive already approved by federal regulators for use in processing cheese, chocolate and soda. It also exists naturally in beef. By increasing the level of it in beef, Roth hoped to reduce its acidity and create less hospitable conditions for bacteria.”

It worked! Exposing the meat to a tiny amount of ammonium hydroxide gas during processing elevates its pH and increases food safety. There are no reports of illness related to the consumption of the company’s finely textured lean beef.

However, if there is one thing reporters love to use to scare people it is the name of any chemical. Thus, media coverage against this beef hypes ammonium hydroxide, ignoring the fact it that exists naturally in beef. It exists in many of the fruits and vegetables one might harvest from an organic garden. Furthermore, our bodies safely produce ammonia.

That hasn’t stopped media outlets like ABC News and others from reporting scary stories about the product and smearing BPI. In a March 23 opinion posted on the Fox News Forum, Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture for the Media Research Center, summed up the latest scare campaign, writing “TV news loves a health scare. Think deadly Tylenol. Killer tomatoes. Mad Cow disease. Alar in apples, and lots more.”

Like the Alar apple scare this is a totally invented media scare. It’s the way, as Gainor wrote “Slimy journalists” use these stories as “a path to winning journalistic awards—facts be damned.” It’s also why this card-carrying member of the Society of Professional Journalists since the 1970s keeps exposing this shoddy journalism and the groups that generate it for their own selfish agendas.

Have a hamburger. Have a steak. Eat beef. Don’t run scared every time some so-called journalist exploits your lack of knowledge of where beef comes from, how it is processed, and why millions of pounds of it are eaten with pleasure and the knowledge that it is the safest found anywhere in the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

On Writers, Professional and Otherwise

By Alan Caruba

One thing the invention of the personal computer and the Internet has done has turned millions of people into writers. Millions of blogs exist so that people can express and share their views on every subject on earth. Forums provide further opportunity to share one’s thoughts, if only to comment on others’.

I do not consider the 140-word limit on Twittering to be writing. That’s more like a Post-It Note, but in contrast to that there has been an explosion of self-published books. I know about this firsthand because I have been a book reviewer for fifty years and, for the past decade, have seen far too many poorly written, but self-published books.

Over the course of those fifty years I have been a professional writer in one capacity or another. After getting out of the U.S. Army, one of my first jobs was as a reporter for a New Jersey weekly. That led swiftly to becoming its editor because there was no one else around to do the job! From there I progressed to a reporter on a daily newspaper and, from there, a series of jobs, all of which required writing and editing skills.

In the early 1970’s I joined the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (formerly the Society of Magazine Writers), the National Science Writers Association, and was a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle. I cite these affiliations because it meant that most of my friends were drawn from a relatively small community of writers for newspapers, magazines, and of books.

I rubbed elbows with the nation’s leading magazine writers and authors, and had occasion to meet and chat with literary giants like James Michener, playwright Tennessee Williams, and others. For the most part, though, my fellow writers were more akin to blue collar working stiffs, turning out magazine articles to pay the rent or writing books that barely sold enough copies to justify the small advances they received.

At one point, some writer’s organization underwrote a survey of what authors earned from their books and the average turned out to be something in the range of $5,000. You could earn more pumping gas or even mowing lawns given the months of labor involved.

In September the Wall Street Journal ran a page one story, “Authors Feel Pinch in Age of E-Books” by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg. In essence, he found that authors are getting smaller advances against the sales of their books these days and their take on an e-book is pitiful. A hardcover book sold at $28.00 will yield $14.00 for the publisher and $4.20 for the author. The same book in an electronic edition will sell for $12.99, putting $9.00 in the publisher’s pocket and a mere $2.27 for the author.

Writing for magazines is not much better. Time was a professional writer could expect $1 a word for an article as the minimum standard and often much more if one had some measure of fame. A random look at what some of the top professional writers are earning these days suggests they are lucky to be paid at that minimum level. Pay levels vary depending on the publication, but it is no secret that both newspapers and magazines are suffering losses of advertising and other income, further reducing or eliminating any payment.

Long ago I got into the public relations profession and that afforded me the opportunity to see my writing in various media, usually in the form of a news release or a feature article. As news and opinion websites proliferated on the Internet I began to contribute to them and, in 2007, I started my own blog where my posts on anything that interests me are provided to websites and other blogs at no cost.

For many of my writer friends, it is writing of the kind that lacks any fame, glamour or excitement that pays the bills. Many earn a living editing the work of other writers. There are medical conference reports or scripts for business conference moderators that pay well. Some pick up a fee as speakers or, better still, as speech writers. Many teach—usually at the college and university level.

I cannot tell you the many times I have ghost-written commentaries for people too famous and too busy to write their own.

For the vast legion of amateur writers my advice is to find something more productive to do. The world is not waiting for your memoir or autobiography. Unless you have spent years developing expertise in some area of life and work, either demand to be paid for it or refuse to give it away for free.

As the economy continues to head south, writing for a living has generally preceded the decline. For publications of all descriptions, the plethora of free material has proved a godsend.

Literally for centuries writing has always has always been a very difficult way to make a living. You know only about those authors who actually found an audience and market while the countless others sank beneath the waves of exploitation and indifference. Many famous writers famously died broke. And drunk.

The song, “Mothers don’t let your sons grow up to be cowboys” applies equally to the writing profession. And it’s good advice.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Kennedy Death Watch

By Alan Caruba

Brace yourself, when Sen. Teddy Kennedy dies—and it looks like that could be any day now—the mainstream media will launch an orgy of tributes, minute-by-minute coverage of all the hoopla that will surround the event. It may make the coverage of Michael Jackson’s recent passing seem mild by comparison.

The Kennedy’s have acquired a mythic quality despite the fact that this was and is a deeply flawed family. John F. Kennedy’s time as president was quite brief, but it was enough to engage in one of the great blunders of the post-war era, the aborted invasion of Cuba by a CIA-trained and funded group of mercenaries.

JFK was later able to redeem himself in the confrontation with the Soviet Union over the placement of missiles in Cuba. As Dean Rusk, his Secretary of State, put it, “The other side just blinked.” It was, however, Kennedy who signed off on the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Military “advisors” metastasized into more than 50,000 dead when Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency in the wake of his assassination.

Unquestionably the most liberal among his Senate brethren, we can thank Teddy for the ghastly “No Child Left Behind Bill” and all others that have advanced the interests of the National Education Association. His support for Obama critically turned the tide against Hillary Clinton’s nomination. He has worn Big Government blinders for years, eager to see it grow for any reason.

Most famously, the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne on July 18, 1969 became a scandal etched into the political history of the nation. What is not in doubt is that Kennedy was at the wheel of a car that went off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, trapping the girl, a campaign volunteer for brother Bobby, while Teddy was able to extricate himself. The details of what followed seem to confirm that he was more concerned with avoiding responsibility than for the victim.

The incident mercifully ensured he would never be able to secure the Democrat nomination for president.

His death will occasion 24/7 news coverage, endless colleagues and journalists blathering away and striving to out-do one another in lavishing praise on the old sot. It's rumored that sailors used his bulbous, glowing nose to guide themselves through the waters off Hyannisport.

His brain tumor would appear to confirm “the Kennedy curse” because almost all the prominent members of the family have fallen to some awful end; Joe Jr., the oldest son, died in World War II, John and Bobby were both assassinated, and, in 1999, John Jr. managed to nosedive his plane into the Atlantic Ocean off of Martha’s Vineyard.

Bobby Kennedy Jr. lives on as an environmental wacko who is far too comfortable shilling for Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez than any Kennedy should ever be. Caroline embarrassed herself in an aborted effort to become a Senator from New York.

The Kennedy’s always seemed to find ways to shorten their lives or to end their marriages after begetting still more kin. The women born to this family or married into it suffered greatly. Only old Joe Kennedy of infamy (he was an admirer of Hitler’s Germany and made no secret of it) managed to live to a point of antiquity. His wife, Rose, did as well.

A graceful and beautiful Jackie Kennedy Onassis alone managed to bring some real glamour and style to this ragged group of ambitious and libidinous power brokers, though her marriage to the Greek shipping magnate took some edge of the legend.

I will have to keep the television turned off for days after his passing in order to avoid the din of coverage. His casket will surely be rolled to the center of the Capitol rotunda to ensure that some final moments of worship can be lavished on him. He may be buried in Arlington in the plot where his older brothers reside in perpetuity. The cameras will follow every lugubrious moment of the ceremonies.

I am willing to bet that future historians will be less forgiving of his role and his contribution to the nation, particularly as regards his voting record. If the nation ever erects a monument to those who have benefited overly from their family connections, the name of Edward Moore Kennedy surely will be engraved on it.

Journalism Today: A Very Thin Quill

By Alan Caruba

Every month for well over twenty-five years I have received a copy of the “Quill”, a magazine by and for the members of the Society of Professional Journalists.

The April issue had only in-house SPJ advertisements; none by any vendors. And it was a very slim edition, some 35 pages devoted to things like the SPJ president’s message, an analysis of the coverage of the presidential campaign that exonerated journalists of any bias, and “Examples of Ethical Excellence.”

Back in December I penned a commentary titled, “Cheerful Thoughts at the Funeral” that took issue with comments by Dave Aeikens, the SPJ president and God knows I am not picking on him, but the opening line in his April message was, “If anything will keep the demand for news strong, it will be journalist’s ability to produce reliable, timely and accurate information while using proven ethical standards.”

There is a demand for news, but it is being met on the Internet and even more there is a demand for an interpretation of what passes for news or doesn’t get published as news in the mainstream media, in this case newspapers.

When nearly half of those polled say that global warming is the very last topic on their mind these days newspapers are still full of references to a climate event that is just not happening. The Earth has been cooling since 1998. The Sun for nearly two years is virtually without any sunspots—magnetic storms—and the real news is that the Earth is truly threatened by two outcomes of this, both of which could result in the deaths of millions through starvation as increasing cold weather deters crop growth.

Aeikens knows that newspaper circulation is shrinking and web site audiences are growing and he says so. The Society’s answer, however, is a series of town hall meetings to ask people why they no longer trust the local fish-wrap. This is just a complete waste of time. This is a willing blindness to the bias and poor reporting that have come to typify the mainstream press.

Let me take a shot at what the problem is. Could it have something to do with the appalling school girl crush that the mainstream media had on a certain Barack Hussein Obama and has now extended to his wife? Could the public resent having been convinced to vote for someone who is tripling the nation’s deficit, planning new taxes, and is so tied to a teleprompter that it’s already a joke?

Could the public be sick of endless articles on how to be “Green” or why they are to blame for not adding thousands of dollars of solar panels to the roofs of their homes? Or choose to drive traditional automobiles rather than hybrids? Or articles declaring that the primary sources of energy in America, coal, oil and natural gas, are “dirty” and the cause of a “global warming” that is not happening?

Could the public be angered to have been blindsided by a financial crisis that experts had been warning about for years, but whom the press largely ignored?

The thickest section of the daily I receive is the sports section and I never read the sports section. What is left is mostly wire service stories by the horridly biased Associated Press and some comparably silly stuff by Reuters. Everything else is feature news fluff.

My subscription runs out in mid-April. Since I get my news—and plenty of it—off of the Net, I have no need for my daily newspaper.

The SPJ is asking what their members did wrong or should try to get right. Maybe that’s what they keep asking each other in the newsrooms of the major networks and in CNN and MSNBC whose ratings are in the tank while Fox News rolls merrily along providing news that strives to be “fair and balanced.”

Fair and balanced. What a concept!

U.S. News Goes Green

By Alan Caruba

Warning! Avoid the April edition of U.S. News & World Report because it is devoted to the question, “Can America Prosper in the New Green Economy?”

What is wrong with this? For one thing, we are not in a “new Green economy” and, if the folks at U.S. News had taken time to notice, we are closing in on having no economy thanks to the stupidity of several Congresses and the deliberate effort to repeat all the errors of the successive Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations that prolonged the Great Depression for ten long years.

There is no great plethora of new Green jobs unless, perhaps, you are referring to the minimum wage jobs that involve picking up dead birds slaughtered by the wind turbines in the States that were foolish enough to think they might actually generate electricity on a scale that one good nuclear or coal-fired plant could. They can’t. They never will. They exist only because of government subsidies and the increased energy bills for consumers.

What offends me most (aside from the fact that I actually subscribed to this pathetic, knee-jerk, liberal excuse for “news”) is the way this news magazine and all of the mainstream media repeatedly fail to get the message about all things Green. It’s a SCAM.

After decades of claims that have been repeatedly debunked, these alleged news magazines are still propagating the same old Green lies. Newsweek and Time have tried to outdo one another with the scariest covers about a global warming catastrophe that never happened and never will. So, why should we expect U.S. News to step up to the plate with anything other than the same tired Green message?

The editor, Brian Kelly, revealed the real bias of the issue. “What’s changed, in a word, is Obama. The president and the tide of voters who swept him into office want a change in the way we manage energy and the environment—and to put them at the top of the country’s agenda. It looks like that will happen.”

Earth to Brian! Humans do not manage the environment! We are not in charge of the Sun, the oceans, the clouds, the volcanoes, the blizzards, the tornadoes, et cetera.

Moreover, Obama did not get elected with a huge mandate or tide of voters. The vote was separated by five percentage points, a relatively small margin. The only mandate Obama has is the one in his fevered, socialist mind.

More to the point, how can a so-called news magazine devote itself to yet another sorry Green message in the midst of the worst financial crisis this nation has experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s? Perhaps they were too busy congratulating themselves for printing “the entire magazine on what’s called ‘manufactured carbon-neutral paper.’”

Carbon-neutral paper? Considering that paper is created from trees and those trees formerly absorbed a lot of carbon dioxide, how did the paper magically transform itself into something “neutral”? And didn’t all the emissions involved in physically transporting the trees to the paper mill, processing the pulp, then transmitting the paper to the printing plant, and applying the ink, and then transporting the magazines to be mailed or sold at newsstands not involve CO2?

This is the kind of gibberish that magazines like U.S. News & World Report and the endless daily and weekly newspapers have been shoveling for decades. In case it has missed your notice, U.S. News & World Report is no longer a weekly magazine. It’s a monthly now.

The bottom line is this: Just about everything the Greens advocate, when they are not trying to stop the drilling or mining or building of anything that might provide energy, will cost you more. It will also degrade life in the U.S. because they are against building new roads, against the building of any new homes and apartment structures for our increasing population, against the use of pesticides to protect people from the diseases spread by insects and rodents, against the use of automobiles and trucks; against letting you enjoy our national parks and reserves except on their terms, against the use of plastic, against, against, against!

I am against stupid magazines offering stupid “solutions” to non-problems like global warming or what has conveniently been dubbed climate change as if the Earth’s climate hasn’t always been in a state of change for billions of years.

Disappearing Daily Newspapers

By Alan Caruba

As someone who began his career in journalism, working for weeklies, moving on to a daily, and later seeing my by-line on occasion in The New York Times, I have a nostalgic fondness for newsprint. I actually start my day reading my local daily, albeit mostly checking the obituary pages—it’s an age thing—and having a freshly brewed cup of coffee.

Then, in order to really know what is going on in the nation and the world, I surf the Net for an hour, visiting various news and opinion websites (some of which post my writings). It is virtually impossible to get a sense of reality from newspapers that continue to tell you that the Earth is in a midst of a perilous global warming that will require shutting down all the coal-fired plants in the nation.

Since new technology drives out old technology, accounting for why two percent of the population now feeds all the rest of us, it should come as no surprise that great city newspapers are dying for loss of classified and other advertising. The other reason is that most newswire and daily news reporting simply cannot be trusted any more.

Historically, American newspapers were often notorious for having their own agenda, but they were just as often the only game in town if you wanted the news. Some cities supported four, five or more newspapers depending on your own bias. The notion of the “objective” reporter was always suspect, but my generation of reporters did not feel that their job description included agreeing with their publisher on all issues.

The most egregious example is the alleged “environmental” reporting in The New York Times which has never reflected the actual science of global warming and other Green obsessions. For some twenty years or more, it has had a succession of reporters, all of whom were astonishingly indifferent to science or even the truth.

The latest is Andrew Revkin who was unable to ignore the fact that 700 or so of the world’s leading climatologists, meteorologists, physicists, economists, and others were meeting in New York this passed week to debunk global warming. His report on the event was an insult to those participating and attending.

This is how Revkin described The Heartland Institute’s second annual International Conference on Climate Change: “More than 600 self-professed climate skeptics are meeting in a Times Square hotel this week to challenge what has become a broad scientific and political consensus: that without big changes in energy choices, humans will dangerously heat up the planet.”

If you were hoping for any accurate reporting in that sentence or the rest of his article, you are still waiting for it. I was there. One of the items I brought home was a thick book filled with the names of 31,478 American scientists who signed a global warming petition, agreeing that “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, will cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” There is no “broad scientific and political consensus.”

As Jim Peden, an atmospheric physicist, noted in an email to fellow skeptics, “I think we’re all being a bit too hard on Revkin. He is, after all, only doing his job…to support and defend the liberal editorial policies of his employers. In case you haven’t noticed, the New York Times, once arguably one of the premier news sources on the planet, is slowly dying. It hasn’t had a genuinely honest journalist on its staff in more than two decades, and anyone who attempts to put the genie back in the bottle at this late stage of the game would likely find himself out of a job.”

Meanwhile, the United Press International devoted four thin paragraphs to the conference citing “signs of internal disputes and weakening support.” Nothing could have been further from the truth. Little wonder Rush Limbaugh refers to them as “the drive-by media.”

This is, I believe, an increasing component of the reason U.S. dailies such as Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and a host of cities are going to be down to having one or no daily newspaper. The news they have been delivering is not reliably true or even an effort to reflect a balanced presentation of conflicting versions of events and issues.

It must be said that publishing a newspaper is a tremendously labor-intensive undertaking requiring a phalanx of reporters and editors backed up by an advertising department, a circulation department, the men who actually print it, and those who then deliver it. There is almost no way to trim such people from the payroll without doing grave injury to the process and the product.

That is particularly evident when it comes to local reporting, the heart and soul of a newspaper. Somebody must attend the many meetings of the city council, the transportation and education boards, ad infinitum. Some newspapers will survive by becoming solely their website.

It is entirely likely that, in the future, someone will attend and will then post their reports on Internet sites specific to the topic of interest. You will bookmark a variety of such local sites to keep up to date. In the meantime, there are already countless sites that are devoted to what’s going on in hometowns everywhere.

Let me tell you a story. Once, very long ago, I was auditioning for a job with the daily newspaper serving a vast swath of my home State. The editor asked me to write a series on the local chapters of the Humane Society and American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. What I unearthed was a great deal of hypocrisy and degrees of corrupt behavior. When I turned in the assignment, the editor said to me, “I don’t think you understand. I wanted something along the lines of Jane and her pet duck, not a wholesale exposure of these people. Pet owners would be enraged.”

Well, yes, that was the point. Suffice it to say that I decided to take up public relations where, at least, I could earn a lot more than a lowly reporter. I also lost a large degree of respect for what passed for journalism then and, over the years, now.

So, yes, local dailies, some with illustrious histories, are shutting down. They will be missed, but they will be replaced by some very lively, engaged, and hopefully accurate Internet reporting that has long since been missing from what passes for daily newspapers these days.

The Shortest Honeymoon on Record

By Alan Caruba

This is likely to be the shortest “honeymoon” on record for a new administration.

The news that former Senator Tom Daschle has withdrawn his name from consideration to be the Secretary of Health is another bombshell to hit. The news that the new Secretary of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, had problems doing his own tax return just barely skated by the confirmation process. Grownups knew that he had cheated on his taxes until he was caught.

Whoever is nominated for Health and Human Services, they are going to have to convince Americans that a government that couldn’t respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina is perfectly competent to take over the nation’s health care system. Good luck with that!

Meanwhile, just below the radar screen, Nancy Killefer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, withdrew her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government.

The only comparable meltdown I can recall was Bill Clinton’s first weeks in office when he set off the “gays in the military” bomb that went so terribly wrong for him so terribly fast that he scrambled to come up with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” to get away from it.

President Obama’s decision to give his first formal interview to Al-Arabia, a major Middle Eastern television channel, did not go well. He came off as so weak that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fell all over himself to get to the nearest microphone to demand that the new administration apologize for past “crimes” against Iran. Not a good start for a man who had already been described as “a house Negro” by Osama bin Laden’s right hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Overriding everything else, however, is the astonishing $819 billion “stimulus” bill that doesn’t promise to stimulate anything except the Democrat’s penchant for “earmarks” galore. Economists have denounced it along with anyone else who could find a media outlet.

Even the European Union let it be known that its “buy American” mandate was a very bad idea in the era of globalization where every nation’s economy depends on its ability to export goods, especially to the United States of America.

Nancy Pelosi has been running around defending millions for a program about sexually transmitted diseases and, by extension, insuring that fewer new Americans are born because in her view it would put a strain on the economy. Grandma Pelosi’s pronouncements have not been well received.

Cutting the Defense Department’s budget at a time the U.S. is still engaged in two wars has struck some people as a very bad idea, too. All we need now is another announcement by Sen. Harry Reid that “The war is lost.”

Just how tone-deaf are Obama and the Democrat leadership in Congress? And just how smart are those Republicans who have finally discovered their backbones by unanimously opposing the so-called stimulus bill? We may know soon enough when the 2010 elections are held.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of these events has been the sudden collapse of Obamamania that extends even to the mainstream media who saw it as their duty to get him elected. Buyer’s remorse has set in very swiftly except among the totally brain-dead.

If the feeling spreads that Obama is simply unqualified for the job or overwhelmed by it, it is going to be one of the most difficult presidencies since that of Abraham Lincoln who wasn’t even sworn into office by the time several southern States had already met to declare they were seceding from the union.

The ultimate irony of all this is that Obama’s mastery of the Internet to raise gobs of money for his campaign is that he is only now discovering that the Internet community is equally capable of examining every aspect of every proposal he makes to “change” America into something most Americans don’t want.

The Stench of Sleaze

By Alan Caruba

I’m betting that we will all look back at the confirmation hearings, the controversy over Barack Obama’s birthplace, and the “Blago” scandal, and say “Why weren’t we paying more attention?”

The Obama administration, before it even takes office, is giving off a stench of sleaze that some in the media might want to ignore, but should be cause for genuine concern.

Overriding all other issues is the question of whether Obama qualifies under the U.S. Constitution to hold the office of President. Is he a native-born American or is his true birthplace Kenya as is being asserted in a number of court cases? Did his youth, spent partly in Indonesia as the adopted son, disqualify him if he held citizenship there? We are looking at a Constitutional crisis if the answer is yes.

Questions arising about the character of Timothy Geithner, his choice to be the next Secretary of Treasury, are another red flag that should not be ignored. If this man deliberately sought to cheat on his taxes then he is clearly the wrong man for the job. To suggest there is no one else to do the job is a slap in the face to everyone.

The controversies circling Erik Holder, the man chosen to be the next Attorney General, deliberately ignored the facts regarding the granting of a Clinton presidential pardon to a fugitive who did business with Saddam Hussein, then one must ask what other facts he might choose to ignore if confirmed? Holder also presided over the dubious and disgraceful seizure of Elian Gonzalez for return to Cuba after his mother died trying to bring him to America. Additionally he has a long record of opposition to the Second Amendment, i.e., gun ownership. No Attorney General can pick and choose which elements of the Constitution he intends to enforce.

By far the most egregious choice is Carol Browner as the new environment czar. She was recently found to have been a commissioner in Socialist International, an organization that regards capitalism as the problem and favors the nationalization of industry. In her previous Clinton administration position as head of the EPA she presided over the banning of pesticides that had long, safe, and distinguished records in the protection of health and property. We could be looking at “green” laws that increase the cost of energy for everyone and the attacks on private property everywhere.

Lisa Jackson, a Barack appointee to be the next director of the Environmental Protection Agency, has served in my home State of New Jersey under Governor Jon Corzine who has been an unceasing advocate of global warming and the many taxes and restrictions that disproved theory would impose. If Ms. Jackson is a global warming true believer, it bodes ill for the administration of draconian EPA mandates such as the Clean Air Act.

The fact that Hillary Clinton will be the next Secretary of State should give us pause as well, knowing as we do that her husband’s charity has received millions from, in many cases, unknown donors and those that are known who might be considered unfriendly to America’s best interests.

Back in Chicago, where Obama learned his politics, the Governor of Illinois is set to face a battle to impeach and remove him from office.

None of this suggests that there will be any “change” from the aroma of the former Clinton administration from whom he has selected so many of those to serve again in positions of power.

We could be looking at an administration that will be plagued by questionable actions domestically and under attack from foreign enemies sensing weakness in every area except defense, thanks to a Bush administration holdover, Robert Gates.

We will witness an orgy of excess in the millions raised for and by the inaugural balls and galas, the cost of which is twice as much as the last celebrations.

All this is occurring as the mainstream press is itself weakened by economic distress. Given the Fourth Estate’s essential role as watchdog of government, it could not come at a worse time.

The “misery index” introduced during the Carter Administration, is about to shoot through the ceiling.

How Many Dead in Galveston?

By Alan Caruba

Here’s a question for you. Given the many people who refused to leave Galveston, Texas, how many died as the result of Hurricane Ike?

If you cannot find any reports than you are not alone. There is a virtual news blackout regarding casualties and deaths from the devastation the hurricane inflicted on Galveston.

The official death toll, according to an Associated Press, September 17, report was 49 “with most of the deaths coming outside of Texas.” The same report cited nine deaths in the Houston-area, but there was no word from Galveston, a place that currently resembles the surface of the Moon.

The most recent news report about Galveston that I could find was on the MSNBC website, updated as of Sunday. It cited two cases of Texans killed by the storm without reference to Galveston. It may have been too soon to know, but by Wednesday, there still was no word.

The hurricane reportedly killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean before reaching the United States. It was huge; some 500 miles across, with a storm surge that easily topped Galveston’s seawall. And yet, despite an occasional glimpse of the devastation it left behind, there is still no word of any deaths in Galveston.

“Homes and other buildings in Galveston and homes burned unattended during the height of Ike’s fury; 17 collapsed because crews couldn’t get to them to douse the flames. There was no water or electricity on the island…” according to the Sunday MSNBC report.

It seems unlikely, given the number of residents who chose to remain despite the order to evacuate, that there are no reports of deaths or of missing persons. The mainstream news media’s lack of interest, given the ferocity of the hurricane, is curious.

It could be that many of the dead were washed out to sea and a toll may never be known, but surely some of those who remained behind were killed and initial cleanup and rescue efforts should have yielded their bodies. If this is the case, it is not being reported.

One would think that either a Texas state agency or FEMA would make some kind of announcement, but so far the silence is beyond any explanation. One finds nothing on their websites.

Are government agencies reluctant to provide such information, given the backlash that occurred in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Would a significant death toll in Galveston or anywhere affected by Hurricane Ike raise new questions about the ability of States and FEMA to respond?

Or did the evacuation and other efforts work so well that, miraculously, Galveston has few fatalities? We’re still waiting to know.

A Palin Family Problem

By Alan Caruba

Let’s face it. A lot of born-again Christians are going to have to swallow hard to find any good news in the report that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant.

This is not the kind of news that can be “spun” for much other than Bristol Palin’s intention to marry the baby’s father. It will be hard to count how many shotguns there will be at that marriage ceremony! There’s the bride’s family, possibly the groom’s, and an entire contingent of Secret Service agents.

This is such a common scenario for families around the nation that one wonders if it will be greeted with more than a shrug, depending on the mood of voters. I am old enough not to care that much, but there is a vast age group, married, raising teenage children, who might not be so inclined. No doubt many single mothers and their families will see it as a reflection of their own lives.

Reportedly, too, McCain was aware of Bristol’s forthcoming bundle of joy and signed off on Palin anyway. I can’t say why, but I rather like that. A President capable of such understanding of human failings is quite appealing. It suggests a tough, but compassionate man.

All things considered, though, I think Americans in general would prefer not to have this soap opera element added to the national campaign.

What this does, of course, is raise the issue of abortion to a new level for the campaign and the general national debate about the right to life of all unborn babies. Both GOP candidates are pro-life. Voters may conclude that a President McCain would be inclined to appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court. For many, that would be a good thing. For many others it would not.

Poor John McCain, not only did Hurricane Gustav rearrange the Republican Convention schedule, but now he will have address the private life of the teenage daughter of his choice for Vice President. Given the way religion intertwines with politics in America, it adds an unneeded element to the campaign.

Sen. Obama, to his credit, declared the story "off limits." Earlier, during the primaries, he said he would not want either of his daughter’s “punished” if they became pregnant outside of marriage.

My guess is that McCain will make a single statement and refuse to say more. The press, largely devoted to electing Obama, is probably drooling over the prospect of using this to denigrate the McCain campaign. That is likely to blow up in their faces.

There isn’t a single parent of a teenaged girl (or boy) who doesn’t lose sleep over the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy. All the church attendance in the world rarely affects the weakness of the flesh.

It is the unpredictability of politics that makes it so interesting. The baby won’t care. Maybe we shouldn’t either?

Listen to Your Gut

By Alan Caruba

I have a friend who has built an international reputation as a negotiation coach. He is the author of two bestselling books on the subject and one of the salient pieces of advice he shares with the reader is to go with their gut feeling when it comes to deciding whether to do the deal or not.

He’s not kidding! Your brain may be telling you this is the greatest deal ever, but your gut is telling you that something is just not right about it. His advice? Walk away. He also warns that most of us believe we can “read” other people pretty well and, based on his experience working with some of the most complex negotiations and the people conducting them, he says that’s wrong too.

This is why we are often surprised to discover that some politician is a hypocrite or some entertainer has acquired bad habits. In my life I have known enough politicians who turned out to be crooks to assume the worst. Along with the greed for money there is often a libidinous side to a politician’s nature because they often interpret and express power through wealth and sex.

The orgy of shocked commentary regarding former North Carolina Senator and vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, is the media’s typical response to such revelations, but to me the real story was the way the same media steered clear of the story until it was broken by a leading tabloid.

It took a semen stain on a blue dress before any of the media would admit the possibility that Bill Clinton had been lascivious in the Oval Office with an intern about the same age as his daughter. It’s that kind of willing blindness that worries me. And still the media insist on telling us Clinton has such fabulous charisma. That’s not charisma. That’s the stench of recklessness that held the fate of this nation in his hands for eight years.

Sen. Edwards, of course, is the worst kind of hypocrite, married to a woman fighting cancer, a father, and living in a huge mansion while forever blathering on about how deeply he feels about the working poor in America. This self-serving narcissist has only cared about himself.

This is why my gut feeling about Sen. Barack Obama, given the thinnest resume for the highest office in the land, his collection of politically radical friends, and his big mansion, acquired with the help of a convicted developer keeps telling me that he is not to be trusted for any reason. The term “Obama mania” bespeaks an irrational, baseless response to the man.

Obama’s only politics is socialism and if the nation drifts any further to the left in the way it governs itself, America will end up looking like any one of those lame European countries that are little more than welfare states where citizens are told what they can drive and what they can eat.

Wait a minute...isn’t that happening here already? If your gut says yes, you have a very important choice to make in November.

Not as Dumb as They Think

By Alan Caruba

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iraq Fades as News

By Alan Caruba

Five years passed an extraordinarily successful invasion of Iraq and the taking of Baghdad, followed by several years of a slow and bloody learning curve, Iraq is fading from the front pages of our newspapers and reports on television precisely because Iraq has begun to learn how to govern itself, to develop a national identity out of its warring religious groups, and perhaps most importantly to create an army and police corps to provide a real measure of security.

It has cost the United States billions to achieve this and those who would prefer to leave dictators in place in the name of stability or to wait for renewed attacks on our homeland have become silent for the most part.

We have one candidate, Barack Obama, who gained political traction by expressing his opposition to the war and our continuing military presence in Iraq. We have another who understands that war is often the only way to liberate a captive people and rearrange the geopolitical map of the world.

The study of history is, more often than not, the study of warfare, of the winners and losers. It’s why we still remember the exploits of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Washington, Grant and Lee. In the modern era, it’s why we know the names of McArthur, Nimitz, Patton, and a former General and President, Ike Eisenhower.

It’s why we re-enact Revolutionary and Civil War battles. Wars can enslave and wars can liberate. The winner gets to write the history. This is why winning is the only choice a rational person would want.

I can understand why people advocate peace. Who does not want peace? The problem is that there are far too many other people in the world for whom war makes perfectly good sense and, in Islam, war or jihad, is one of the pillars of the faith until the whole world is required to worship Allah. That makes for a very interesting comparison with Christianity whose message is love, albeit a religion with its own long history of intercine and external wars. The predecessor of both faiths, Judaism, has its own history of conquest and its own wars.

So why is the media showing so little interest in what is shaping up to be the successful outcome of our war in Iraq? I think it is because they want America to fail. The liberal media is utterly baffled by the stubborn determination of most Americans to win.

Washington’s war of Revolution against the British took some seven years to accomplish its goal of independence and then the new nation had to stumble around with the Articles of Confederation until some very smart men gathered in secret in Philadelphia to come up with the Constitution.

The initial years of our republic were hardly a smooth beginning and by 1863 we ended up fighting a horrendous Civil War over issues of states’ rights and slavery. Why should we expect the Iraqis who lived under the rule of a pathological killer for three decades be expected to learn the arts of modern democratic governance any faster than our early leaders did?

Why is war so a bad thing when, in the case of Iraq, we have killed a lot of al Qaeda jihadists and uncooperative followers of Muqtada al Sadr who is currently hiding out in Iran? Like flies to honey we created the killing fields and destroyed them. These days what’s left of al Qaeda is hiding out in the remote regions of northwest Pakistan where even the Pakistanis are reluctant to go. Keep them penned up there. Keep killing them there.

For all the criticism of George W. Bush—much of it deserved—there has not been a single major or even minor attack on the United States since 9/11. Who would have put money on that in 2001? Or 2003?

That’s why Americans have historically preferred men with some military experience when they pick a President, albeit Bush43’s resume in that regard is thin. Even so, he did serve in the Texas Air National Guard. Some military training, some experience is better than none at all. Barack Hussein Obama has none.

For my part, I am delighted that Iraq is no longer “news” in the sense of combat and casualties. You should be, too.

Russert Revisited

By Alan Caruba

Like others, on news of the death last Friday of NBC’s Tim Russert, I posted a brief tribute to the respected journalist.

It has been a long weekend of endless repetitive tributes and we are promised a week more and are likely to be offered a front-row seat at his wake and burial. This is excessive and inappropriate.

I think it reflects the inherent arrogance of news media professionals who regard what they do as a sacred calling and their most prominent members as demigods who decide what is news, what we should know, and how we should interpret it.

I say this as a former newspaper reporter, editor, and as a commentator whose views are widely posted on news and opinion Internet websites and published in a variety of publications. I know well the feeling of power that comes with calling a politician or other individual to get a quote or to grill them on some position they have taken on an issue.

Russert is being enshrined in the pantheon of journalists whose work influenced events through the print and broadcast’s coverage of it. He was instrumental in shaping our opinions of those elected or appointed to high office.

Much of the criticism directed to the mainstream media involves their deliberate effort to determine the outcome of elections, cheer the onset of a military conflict and then, when they grow weary of it, to seek an exit.

When not engaged in such decisions, they seek to influence public opinion to advance theirs and other’s agendas such as the shameful decades of lies printed and spoken about a non-existent “global warming.” Long after thousands of scientists worldwide have signed petitions to denounce those lies and a decade passed the beginning of global cooling, they continue to insist on printing those lies.

Russert’s domain was politics. The rise and fall of nations is dependent on who they choose to lead them and Russert did an excellent job of revealing the accuracy or falsehood, the changes in opinions given and revised, of national leaders. This is what journalism should do, but the now seemingly endless repetition of the memories of Russert held by his colleagues and co-workers betrays the view that they hold the future in their hands.

They do not. They report on events and personalities. They do not make the decisions that face those elected to respond to events such as an attack on the nation, a war to protect its citizens from further attacks, or the geopolitical ramifications of every decision. History judges that, but journalism is history being written on the run against tight deadlines. It is often wrong and subject to revision in hindsight that reaches back decades.

There is something very wrong about the treatment being accorded Tim Russert. It says more about the state of journalism in America today where its famed anchors are treated like celebrities while reaping large salaries, receive industry awards, honorary degrees, and the various ways we reward the rich and famous.

Journalism is not about being famous for being a journalist. It is about reporting the news as fairly, as accurately, and as impersonally as possible. I think Tim Russert knew that better than those who are inundating us with too much coverage of his untimely death.

News is not about journalists and journalism, unless, like Dan Rather, they fail in their obligation to report it properly. It is not about Barbara Walter’s former love affairs. It is not about Katie Couric’s ratings.

It is not about Tim Russert’s death days after the event when the nation faces serious economic and foreign policy challenges.

We tend to forget that journalists often get it wrong. Indeed, they often do this on a daily basis.

The Media Destruction Machine at Work

By Alan Caruba

It was entirely predictable and, as such, a perfect example of the way the mainstream media, wedded to the bad science and false pronouncements of the global warming crowd would attack the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change.

The Conference, held in New York March 2-4, and sponsored by the Heartland Institute, attracted some 500 people from around the world to listen to climatologists, meteorologists, economists, policy makers, and others with impeccable credentials. They were brought together by their disdain for the global warming hoax, based largely on the false claims of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These in turn are spread by people like Al Gore along with scores of environmental organizations.

The global warming hoax has been maintained by virtually all elements of the mainstream media (MSM). An event like the conference therefore, from their point of view had to be discredited.

Perhaps the most committed to the hoax is The New York Times. Since the early 1980s it has published some of the most astonishingly idiotic articles about global warming including the claim that the North Pole was melting.

The latest in a line of Times reporters on the subject is Andrew C. Revkin. He began his March 4 article, “Cool View of Science at Meeting on Warming”, by writing that, “Several hundred people sat in a fifth-floor ballroom at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square on Monday eating pasta and trying hard to prove that they had unraveled the established science showing that humans are warming the world in potentially disruptive ways.”

This is not journalism. This is opinion. It belongs on the opinion pages, not in the news section. Moreover, the suggestion that the speakers and attendees were “trying hard” suggests that it took anything more than a review of actual climate data to dispute the claim that the Earth has warmed dramatically and is likely to warm more. Even Meteorology 101 students know that the Earth has warmed barely one degree Fahrenheit since the end of the last mini-ice age in 1850. This is a quite natural warming and hardly attributable to human factors.

Thereafter Revkin larded his report with the kind of qualifiers intended to discredit anyone named. The famed climatologist, Patrick J. Michaels, was identified as having “a paid position at the antiregulatory Cato Institute…” Presumably, everyone attending the conference had a paid position of some sort or they could have ill-afforded to be there.

The conference sponsor, the Heartland Institute, was identified as “a Chicago group whose antiregulatory philosophy has long been embraced by, and financially supported by, various industries and conservative donors.”

Apparently, having a dim view of the economy-killing matrix of regulations is a bad thing. This kind of funding identification is never applied to Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the countless other environmental groups, some of whom have been the beneficiaries of numerous corporations. The March 3 issue of Business Week reported that, “ten of the largest U.S. corporations and four environmental groups joined forces last January to lobby for federal regulations to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions.”

These restrictions would be the result of legislation before Congress to impose a cap-and-trade scheme that would, in effect, permit emissions to continue under the umbrella of buying and selling “credits” to do so. This will enrich many industries with these bogus credits to sell.

Revkin made sure that readers lined up on the side of the IPCC reports, noting that, “The latest reports, published last year and embraced by all major nations and scientific academies, concluded that the most warming since 1950 has been caused by humans and that centuries of rising temperatures and seas and ecological disruption lay ahead if emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide were not curbed.” This is hogwash!

The IPCC reports have been protested by many of the people at the conference, some of whom are IPCC contributors whose data has been repeatedly ignored. The reports have had to be continually revised and are an object of scorn in the scientific community for their deliberate deceptions and distortions of fact. Revkin will never tell you that.

With some 500 people available to interview, Revkin ended his article by quoting “a campaigner from Greenpeace (who) sought out reporters.” I, on the other hand, had no problem talking with real scientists during the event.

Not to be left out of the effort to mock the conference, Juliet Eilperin wrote an article for the Washington Post in which she identified the Heartland Institute as a “free-market think tank funded by energy and health-care corporations as well as conservative foundations and individuals” as if this was some kind of bad thing. She described the event saying, “The meeting represented a sort of global warming doppelganger conference, where everything was reversed.”

Well, yes! This was the first international conference to confront the deluge of lies about global warming. Rather than interview an actual climatologist, Eilperin chose to quote Frank O’Donnell “who heads the watchdog group, Clean Air Watch,” who said that the conference looked to him “like the climate equivalent of Custer’s last stand. They seem to have tried to find every last skeptic on Earth and put them in one hotel off Broadway.”

Contrast this with the fawning MSM coverage of last year’s United Nation’s Bali conference to breath life into Kyoto Protocols that require nations to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Never mind that carbon dioxide constitutes a mere 0.038 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere and follows climate changes as opposed to the claim that it precedes change.

CNN ‘s coverage was even worse if that is possible. Miles O’Brien, its chief environmental correspondence, equated all of the distinguished scientists attending and participating as comparable to people who continued to believe the earth was flat after Christopher Columbus’s voyage. Suffice it to say he mocked leading skeptics that included Patrick J. Michaels, Lord Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, Dennis Avery, and others whose writings in scientific journals have yet to have been disproved.

The founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman, told the audience at the conference that the channel has become nothing more than an outlet for global warming alarmism. He openly called global warming a fraud.

Lord Monckton took an optimistic view that events such as the conference will eventually contribute to the truth replacing that “scare” of global warming. The odds are that Lord Monckton is right.

Increasingly, one can sense that the public around the world has grown weary of the idiotic claims of an unprecedented increase in heat resulting from human activities. The average hurricane makes human activity look quite puny. A volcanic eruption makes us all tremble. An earthquake makes buildings and bridges fall down.

A theory about warming to which the expansion of glaciers and major blizzards are attributed is so suspect that anyone can see through it.

For my part, I found that both the experts and others in attendance were a cheerful lot. The mood was upbeat and optimistic. What remains now is to defeat some truly horrid legislation making its way through Congress that would wreck the nation’s economy even more than the present calamities.

The Beautiful People

By Alan Caruba

Every generation selects its standard of beauty, usually from the world of show business. The fashion industry exists to herd people toward the purchase of a particular “look” that signals you have fallen in line with the majority.

In the Sixties, a whole generation of young people decided to opt out of fashion standards by letting their hair grow long and wearing clothes that looked unwashed and unwanted, but even their choices were turned into a fashion statement in the form of mini-skirts and blue jeans. I was already out of college by then and thought the circus had come to town.

Few recall that when Elvis and the Beatles first showed up they were wearing coats and ties like the perfect young gentlemen they were. You can check the re-runs of the Ed Sullivan Show if you don’t believe me.

I got to thinking about this while pausing to watch a bit of a film from the 1950s about the birth of rock’n roll when the skirts ended well below the knee. The music was great, but the fashion statement was pure geek. The dancing though had plenty of hip movement and there wasn’t a fox trot or waltz in sight.

It struck me, for no particular reason, that today’s movie stars, particularly the men, have more of an “every man” look about them. Adam Sandler or Ben Stein could be flipping hamburgers or selling insurance without generating any talk about what a “hunk” they are. Young comedians often look like they just came on stage from having pumped gas somewhere.

The look of this decade is to have no look.

The male role models of my day were handsome to a point that any young man in the audience knew he was never going to be as stunning as Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, or the young Paul Newman. We would never be as rugged as John Wayne, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, and, of course, Humphrey Bogart. You have to have a lot of machismo to get past a name like Humphrey. And Bogart had it. A very young Lauren Bacall married him when he was in his 40s.

This is not to say that there aren’t a lot of handsome men and beautiful women today from whom to choose, but too many of the woman are poor role models for their lack of moral values and too many of the men are grungy on screen and off. When you toss in stars from the music scene, it just gets worse. In fact, the problem may be that, today, there are so many “stars” it is hard to tell them apart except for those going to or getting out of prison or rehab.

I feel sorry for a younger generation that must struggle to learn proper moral values because they surely cannot find them on the movie or television screen. I think there has to be a lot of confusion for young men seeking a role model to help them define their masculinity. Girls may have it worst of all. They are led to believe that the old concepts of femininity, i.e., virginity, modesty in dress and manner, and the ambition to be a wife and mother, are hopelessly out of date.

The problem, of course, is that the old-fashioned values served society quite well and still do. Rampant divorce, single motherhood, and using drugs are just a few things that were generally unknown and always disapproved in the 1950s and earlier.

A society sees itself reflected back from the movie and television screens. A lot of what I see today makes my skin crawl.

Snow in Florida? Would I Kid You?

By Alan Caruba

Snow Flurries Possible In Central Florida During Hard Freeze -- Daytona Beach, Titusville, Palm Bay May See Snow

POSTED: 6:40 am EST January 2, 2008
UPDATED: 12:13 pm EST January 2, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A hard freeze expected in parts of Central Florida early Thursday will bring a chance of snow flurries in Daytona Beach and other areas as temperatures drop into the teens and low 20s.

"There will be clouds that are similar to the clouds that are generated in the Great Lakes states when we have lake-effect snow," Local 6 meteorologist Larry Mowry said. "I'm going to call for the possibility of snow flurries early Thursday morning near the coastline." Mowry said residents in Daytona Beach, Titusville, Palm Bay and Melbourne may see the snow flurries Thursday.

http://www.local6.com/weather/14959516/detail.html

Snow in Florida? How is that possible? After all, Al Gore says the Earth is rapidly warming and Florida is going to be under water any day now. In fact, that’s the message out of the United Nations recent climate conference—wisely held in Bali where it does not snow—yet.

In 2007 I predicted it would be the year that, looking back, historians would identify as the year the global warming hoax began to unravel. News like this at the beginning of 2008 is just one more nail in its coffin.

This report, however, is entirely consistent with the view of climatologists and others who, knowing that the Earth is at the end of an interglacial period, anticipate the beginning of a new Ice Age. My friend, Robert Felix, an author on the subject and proprietor of http://www.iceagenow.com/, has been trying to warn people, providing serious research and information on the topic.

I have no doubt that the media will cling to the global warming hoax until the snows begin to fall…and fall…and fall. Keep in mind that one inch of rain is comparable to one foot of snow. When it gets cold enough to produce snow, it will bury large portions of the northern continent.

If it does snow in Orlando, Florida, don’t assume it is just freakish weather anomaly. It is a portent of things to come.

If it doesn’t stop snowing, get in the car and head for the southern border. That would be a nice change of pace, Americans invading Mexico for a change.

Amidst the Din of Global Warming, Growing Global Skepticism

by Alan Caruba

This week an entire American network, NBC, has devoted its news programing to promoting the claims that global warming is going to destroy the world. It invited Al Gore on one of its shows and he reeled off a list of things--well, just about everything--which he attributed to man-made (anthropogenic) climate change.

Given its billions of years, the notion that mankind is dramatically and dangerously changing the climate of the earth is so idiotic as to defy belief, but a lot of people do believe it and for that we can thank the United Nations' propaganda machine called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the media that have spread its lies.

Beginning some two decades ago, the IPCC began to pump out some hot air of its own and the other so-called environmental organization climbed on board realizing that this was a great way to sabotage any kind of development worldwide. Their particular target being all of the energy industries and then moving out from there like ripples in a pond.

In a November 5 article posted on Tech Central Station Hans H.J. Labohm, a Dutch economist and co-author of "Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma", shared the good news that finally the skepticism being expressed in America is now spreading to Europe. Noting Al Gore's Nobel Prize, he pointed to the fact that it was given by five Swedish politicians, saying "So the Democrat Gore owes his prize to a constellation of Progressives, Social and Christian Democrats, and Green socialists." The Prize is not about science, it is about politics.

Nation by nation, Labohm took note of the growing skepticism being expressed within various scientific communities whether it be Italy, the Netherlands, or the efforts of Czech Republic President, Vaclav Havel.

Of most interest to me, however, are the outspoken Russians, such as astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, who has declared that the earth will experience a mini-ice age by the middle of this century. I happen to agree, given the fact that the earth is at the end of an interglacial period between ice ages, having lasted 11,500 years at this point.

As the earth, particularly in the northern hemisphere, begins to cool off, a lot of people raised to believe it was heating up, are going to ask why anyone believed Al Gore and the rest of his cohorts, but by then these liars will be long gone.

Eating Meat

By Alan Caruba

I am having a beautiful, thick steak tonight. I love meat.

It got me thinking, however, of the thousands, if not millions of studies and articles that have been published that associate meat with various cancers and a quick Google tour will impress you with the fact that there is virtually an anti-meat industry out there, forever churning out more studies about and against meat.

When you actually read what many have to say, what you discover that various things found in meat "are suspected" of having a link to colorectal, breast or prostrate cancers and that people who eat meat "may be particularly exposed."

I suspect I could commission a similar study on chocolate or asparagus and the study would find the same connections.

I also suspect that, in some families, there is a long history of genetically predesposed people who, while eating meat, fish, pork, vegetables, or the bark off of trees all encountered some kind of cancer.

Where you live, what kind of work you do, and a whole range of other factors likely play a role in whether you encounter some kind of cancer during your lifetime.

The particular animus toward meat, however, seems to take a lot of its motivation from the efforts of vegetarian groups who devote a great deal of time to advocating a vegan diet.

All this ignores the fact that humans are physically designed to eat meat, from our teeth to our digestive system, our bodies function as meat-eating machines. Red meat provides high quantities of iron as opposed to plant foods. There's phosphorus, too, and B12.

So we need to relax a bit when it comes to the torrent of anti-meat propaganda that the mainstream media loves to slap on the front page. It sells newspapers. It keeps people watching the TV or listening to the radio.

And a lot of it may be quite dubious, have a hidden agenda, and well worth ignoring.

Rates of cancer, virtually all kinds, have been falling for decades now. That's the good news.