Man Up, Republicans!

By Alan Caruba

“I’m beginning to think Obama will be reelected”, writes a friend, a conservative and a Republican who is having grave thoughts about the narrowing GOP field of candidates. He is not alone as I hear similar thoughts from others.

As he put it, “Approximately 45% of the people think this idiot is doing a good job.”

There is a solid 30% of voters (and those who do not bother to vote) who are hardcore liberals, immune to facts and the reality of the destruction of both the Constitution and the economy being perpetrated by Barack Obama.

Republicans appear to have lost the fire in their political belly, the willingness to go to war over political principles of limited government, lower taxes, national security, and greater opportunity for the upward mobility that has always marked our society.

A case in point was the selection of John McCain as the party’s candidate in 2008. Famous for reaching across the aisle to seek accommodation and agreement with Democrats, McCain—whose personal courage cannot be impugned—waged a tepid campaign against a virtually unknown Illinois Senator offering a vague promise of “hope and change” combined with the “redistribution of wealth.”

My friend is wise to worry about the reelection of Obama. A recent Rasmussen poll found that “voter confidence in President Obama’s handling of the economy is at its highest level in a year’s time. Forty percent (40%) of likely U.S. voters now rate the President’s performance in the economic area as good or excellent.”

This President presided over the first historic downgrade of the nation’s credit rating, has driven the national debt to more than $15 trillion, has seen millions of jobs disappear during his term, and squandered billions on failed “stimulus” programs and failed green energy companies all rapidly going bankrupt. And some people still think he’s doing a dandy job.

Wall Street Journal columnist, Peggy Noonan, has pointed to the low turnout of Republican voters in the Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri primary caucuses and races that gave Rick Santorum a boost when he had been all but written off, along with the bloviating Newt Gingrich.

Casting around for reason, Noonan wondered “maybe it’s the increasing negativity of the campaign, maybe it’s the widespread dissatisfaction with the field. Maybe it’s that, and more.” Perhaps she is thinking of the way the mainstream media continues to cover-up and spin Obama’s blunders starting with Obamacare, a widely unpopular bill being challenged soon in the Supreme Court.

Noonan also noted the falloff of interest in the President, citing his State of the Union speeches that, “in February 2009, drew 52 million viewers. A year later the State of the Union had an understandable falloff to about 48 million. In 2011, another fall; 43 million watched. A few weeks ago his 2012 State of the Union drew just 38 million.”

“Maybe the story is that people are tuning out altogether. Maybe they’re bored with politics, and most especially with politicians. Maybe they think our government can’t solve anything.” We're in a Depression. It's normal to be depressed!

To those who do not think Obama can and will be defeated, I would remind you that, by November, Americans will have been paying $4, maybe $5 a gallon for gasoline and much more for everything they purchase at the supermarket and everywhere else. They will be tired of talk about “fairness” and tired of his endless lies about how the economy is improving and unemployment is decreasing. They will be worried about his attack on the nation’s health care system, on freedom of religion, and his shredding of the Constitution. .

Here’s what I worry about. Not if, but when Israel launches an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, an intervention on its side by the United States would be widely applauded by the American public and it would put Obama in the position of being a President during a shooting war; an event in which voters would be reluctant to “change horses in midstream.” Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, even predicted when the conflict would occur—sometime this spring.

Obama won the 2008 election in part because of the timing of a too-convenient financial crisis that he blamed on President Bush, banks, and everyone other than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A war just prior to the November elections would be equally helpful.

Many Republicans have concluded that Mitt Romney will be the party’s nominee, but are unenthusiastic about him. Noonan lamented that he brings little passion to his campaign. He brings “maturity, serenity and a jolly spirit” but he is also being criticized for waging a strong campaign against his primary opponents. What is Romney expected to do when Rick Santorum suggests that he “rigged” the CPAC straw vote and while Newt Gingrich attacks him for “vulture capitalism” and fellow Republicans for “right-wing social engineering”?

Republicans paying attention to their party’s races are beginning to fear an Obama reelection and right now many are running scared at the prospect. Most modern elections have been won with narrow margins. All Republicans have to do is to turn out and vote!

In the Gallup and Battleline polls, for years, Americans have self-identified themselves overwhelmingly as “conservative.” They are yearning for a strong conservative voice from a strong conservative leader. Romney’s primary victories, though slim, reflect the judgment by Republicans that he can defeat Obama.

On the facts alone, Obama can and should be soundly defeated.

Republicans will field a ticket that puts an end to the regime’s reign of terror. For now, however, their spirits are flagging. The long primary process is daunting. Only the Tea Party movement and serious-minded conservatives seem to understand what is at stake.

What Republicans need now is a lot more courage and a readiness to go to war with a President who is destroying America and the future for our children.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

New Jersey's Conservative Renaissance

By Alan Caruba

It was quite a sight. The Republican Governor of New Jersey strode into the cavernous legislative chamber in the Trenton statehouse, filled mostly with Democrats, and proceeded to receive one round of applause after another.

Chris Christie is rotund in a way that suggests you wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark ally. Before becoming Governor in 2011, as the U.S. District Attorney he had amassed an impressive record of putting bribe-taking legislators in jail, along with a long list of other criminals.

Moreover, he arrived on the scene to put an end to former Governor Jon Corzine’s fiscal destruction of the State; a feat he accomplished with MF Global, the investment firm that made headlines when it collapsed with unaccounted billions in “lost” customer funds.

New Jerseyeans were sick of governors who made promises they did not keep. From 1994 to 2001, Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, had held the office until resigning to become President Bush’s director of the Environmental Protection Agency. She was quickly fired from the post.

She was followed by a series of interim governors until James E. McGreevey was elected in 2002. McGreevey, a Democrat, discovered he was a homosexual after his appointment of a boyfriend to a high paying state job was exposed. He resigned, was replaced by a congenial old “pol”, Richard Codey from 2004 to 2006, when Corzine was elected.

In the course of all this, New Jersey, thanks to massive mismanagement became a State famed for having the highest tax rates in the nation. People and businesses had began to flee, reducing its tax base. By fiscal year 2011, the State had a record deficit of $11 billion.

Gov. Christie literally taught a largely Democrat legislature conservative principles. He held town halls all over the State and became famous for his confrontational style. YouTube videos of his slap-downs were viewed by millions of people. They liked what they saw.

In his State of the State speech, delivered on Tuesday, January 17, you would think he was addressing a Republican legislature. He was interrupted with applause and got a standing ovation at the end of it.

“We had spent too much as a State. We had lived beyond our means. And, by trying to tax our way out of it, previous governors and legislators had left New Jersey in 50th place—dead last among the States—in the total tax burden it placed on our citizens. We had the highest tax rate in the nation, the highest unemployment rate in a quarter century, and the largest budget deficit per person of any State in the Union.”

How blunt is that? Little wonder he was talked of as a possible candidate for President in 2012. Gov. Christie decided to finish his first term and has since become a vocal supporter for Mitt Romney.

The real miracle was the way he worked with Democrats to turn the State’s fiscal problems around. “We cut 375 programs in that first fiscal year, saved two billion dollars for the taxpayers and brought Jon Corzine’s budget into balance.” Together, they cut spending in every department of State government.

Then, together, they put a cap on property taxes that had risen 70% in the decade that preceded his election. The legislature imposed a 2% cap on property tax increases. They did the same for arbitration awards. “We must never forget that the root cause of rising property taxes is always excessive government spending.”

His speech turned to a variety of changes he wants. He already has the results to justify them. “Since our administration came into office, New Jersey has added over 60,000 new private sector jobs. Remember, in 2009, the State had lost 117,000 jobs.”

Gov. Christie made national news when he proposed reducing the State income tax rates for every New Jerseyean. “In every tax bracket. By 10%, across the board.”

If the next two years are any indication of the last two, New Jersey’s lawmakers will institute education reforms to loosen the grip of its powerful teacher’s union while improving the quality of education and providing a financial option for parents who want to move their children to better performing or private schools.

He proposed mandatory treatment “for every non-violent offender with a drug problem in New Jersey, not just a select few.” This would empty out the jails and prisons. “We will require you to get treatment. Your life has value. Every one of God’s creations can be redeemed. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

Gov. Christie knows what ails America. “Our economy suffocated under the wet blanket of over-taxation, over-spending, over-borrowing and over-regulation.”

To this writer, a lifelong resident, born and bred in New Jersey, it was very impressive to listen to the stark opposite of the policies advocated by previous governors and the President of the United States. It was pure conservatism, presented without apologies because none were needed. The results have already demonstrated that it works.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Gov. Christie Should Not Get in the GOP Race

By Alan Caruba

Does anybody recall the frenzy surrounding the question of whether Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and Fox News host of his own show, would toss his hat in the ring and seek the GOP nomination?

That same frenzy is occurring now regarding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and, as a lifelong citizen of the Garden State, I would bet a bushel basket of its excellent tomatoes that he will not.

Why? Because he says he will not and I believe him.

There are, however, a lot of other very good reasons why he won’t plunge into the political maelstrom that is our system of selecting a presidential candidate.

If Gov. Christie were to announce as a candidate for the GOP nomination his brief record while Governor would come under intense examination and it would reveal that he is not the conservative savior that many perceive.

Putting aside his great rhetorical gifts, his no-nonsense approach to answering questions in town hall meetings and interviews, his saving sense of humor, and other attributes that have generated the appeals from some party insiders and members of the public, Christie is conservative-light.

Candidate Herman Cain, speaking on Fox News Sunday, has done his homework. According to an October 3 article in the Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest circulation daily newspaper, Cain noted that “Christie is far too liberal on gun control, climate change, same-sex unions, and immigration to satisfy Republican voters.”

Nor has his record as Governor gone unnoticed on the left. “Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland blasted Christie’s stewardship of New Jersey’s economy. He cited the state’s unemployment rate, among the highest in the country at 9.4 percent, and a series of downgrades to New Jersey’s bond ratings this year from the top credit rating agencies.”

None of these economic factors, unfairly attributed to Gov. Christie or not, bodes well for a run for the presidential candidate nomination. When one adds in the lateness of such an effort and the difficulties of raising huge sums of money for the campaign it suggests that such a move would not turn out well for him.

There is no question that Gov. Christie, a former U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey, has earned the gratitude of the state’s citizens for taking on the civil service unions that have bled it dry with cushy contracts featuring handsome pension and healthcare plans. Beyond that, however, many Garden State conservatives have winced to see his decisions in other areas of concern.

Many applauded his decision to withdraw the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that would have required that a percentage of energy serving New Jerseyeans come from “renewable” sources, wind and solar power. However, in August Gov. Christie signed an act that would facilitate offshore wind power for use in the state. Had he signed an act to permit offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, the state and the nation would have been far better served. Wind power would only increase the cost of electricity.

Moreover, Gov. Christie is on record saying that climate change is “impacting our state.” This is a position that is 180 degrees from a town hall meeting the previous year when he declared himself skeptical that climate change is the result of human activity. He was right then, but has been getting very bad advice from his science advisors since then.

As a former U.S. District Attorney, it should come as no surprise that he supports a ban on assault weapons. Despite opposing a law that limits the purchase of hand guns to one per month, his newly appointed state Attorney General took an aggressive legal position to defend the former governor’s law. Gov. Christie favors gun control, a position that will not find favor among lawful gun owners and sportsmen.

Gov. Christie is squishy on the issue of illegal immigration, hewing to the liberal line that those who enter the nation illegally are simply “undocumented.” He regards state-by-state laws regarding illegal immigrants to be “a federal problem” that needs a “federal fix…I am not really comfortable with state enforcement having a big role.” Suffice to say that New Jersey, like other states, has a big illegal immigrant population.

If the Governor were to hit the campaign trail with a record like this, the other candidates would have a field day and many conservative voters would have second thoughts.

In sum, he needs to review and reinforce his conservative credentials and the 2012 race is far too soon to do that. Selfishly, I want him to remain the Governor and to serve a second term. Realistically, I think he would be torn to shreds if he got in now.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Editor's Note: On Oct 4, Gov. Christie announced he will not get in the race.

John Wayne's Birthday

By Alan Caruba

It’s not a national holiday but, for some, it should be. On May 26, 1907 Marion Robert Morrison came into the world in Winterset, Iowa. When he left on June 11, 1979 he was John Wayne, an American icon.

Men of a certain generation or two, fortunate to grow up going to the many movies he made in a long career owe him a great debt.

By his very presence on the silver screen he taught us all what it meant to be a man. Wayne was masculine without having to prove it. He literally embodied the virtues we want in our heroes. As an actor he shared those attributes with the boys who grew up wishing to be like him and the women who no doubt found him attractive.

Though he played many heroic characters, a Marine in World War Two, a Navy Commander, and later a Green Beret in Vietnam, it was his many roles as a cowboy that made many of us yearn to ride a horse and learn to shoot a six-gun and a rifle.

In his last film, “The Shootist”, he played a man who made his living with a gun, now old and dying of cancer. In the film, John Bernard Brooks, a legend in his own time, was asked how it was he got into so many gun fights. He replied, “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same from them.” It was as classic a recasting of the Golden Rule as one could ask for and words to live by.

Wayne was one of a handful of Hollywood actors who made no secret of his patriotism and conservative political views. When one considers the endless rewriting of history, past and present, by Hollywood, Wayne was a refreshing alternative.

In a wonderful little book, “The Quotable John Wayne”, author Carol Lea Mueller gathered together many of the things Wayne had to say over the years on a range of topics. Here are a few quotes:

On liberal ideology and its affects on America’s youth, “They work against the natural loyalties and ideals of our kids, filling them with fear and doubt and hate and downgrading patriotism and all our heroes of the past.”

“This new thing of genuflecting to the downtrodden, I don’t go along with that. We ought to go back to praising the kids who get good grades, instead of making excuses for the ones who shoot the neighborhood groceryman.”

“I became a confirmed reader when I was growing up in Glendale and could read before going to school. I’ve loved reading all my life.”

“I’ve had three wives, six children, and six grandchildren, and I still don’t understand women.”

Wayne respected the epoch of the American West being opened for farming and ranching. “The West—the very words go straight to that place of the heart where Americans feel the spirit of pride in their Western heritage—the triumph of personal courage over any obstacle, whether nature or man.”

“Courage is being scared to death—and saddling up anyway.”

He was an exceptionally good actor who said, “I’ve played the kinda man I’d like to have been.” Later he said, “Nobody liked my acting but the public.”

In a long life, a long career in films, John Wayne embodied values that are being eroded on all fronts in today’s America. Whenever we need a reminder of those values, we can watch a John Wayne film.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Good Old Days

By Alan Caruba

It started with a haircut in the morning. I sat in a barber chair I had sat in initially around the age of five. In those days, the 1940s, four Italian gentlemen cut hair and it cost 25 cents for a kid and $1.25 for an adult. Same shop, but my haircut cost $16.00 not counting the tip. Except for the owner, some lovely gals cut hair there these days.

When my parents moved to an upscale suburb of Newark, New Jersey in 1942, they paid $11,000 for a three-bedroom home with a stand-alone garage. I sold it for many multiples of that and it was essentially the same house with a few improvements. I sold because, in 2000, the town had reevaluated the property and literally doubled the taxes. Ten years later, a second reevaluation was deemed worthy of an article in The Wall Street Journal.

My parents put two sons through college on the earnings of my Father, a CPA with vivid memories of the Great Depression. He was a liberal, a Democrat, and advocate of the United Nations. Starting in the 1950s Mother taught gourmet cooking in the adult schools that sprang up after the war, earning enough to purchase the family cars and otherwise contribute to the budget. They remained married for over sixty years. He never learned to drive.

After the haircut, I topped out the gas, a little under a half-tank, and paid $21 for a mixture of gasoline and ethanol, the latter mandated by the government and heavily subsidized. The cost included state and federal taxes. I can recall when gasoline in the 60s and 70s was around 60 cents a gallon. I can also remember long lines at the pumps in both 1967 and 1973-74 when the Saudis, angered by the U.S. support for Israel, implemented oil embargoes.

A visit to the supermarket these days is a carnival of sticker-shock. The price of food has been rising thanks in part to the increase of the cost of energy to produce it and the diversion of corn to produce ethanol that reduces the mileage you get from the gas you purchase and likely harms your car’s engine. Corn is a major feedstock so the cost of a steak is rising too.

During WWII, the milk was delivered to my home by a horse-drawn wagon. Before refrigeration became widely available, we kept it in an ice box that required the delivery of large blocks of ice. There was radio, but no television. If you wanted air conditioning, you had to go to the local movie theatre. Price of admission, plus popcorn cost a kid about twenty-five cents. I saw my first television program in the 1950s. Within no time, everyone had a TV.

When I attended elementary, middle and high school there was zero talk about illegal drug use because there was none and I cannot recall any mention, let alone the teaching of heterosexual or homosexual sex of any kind. The school day began with a pledge of allegiance and a prayer. We did not have a politically correct curriculum or have to listen to fantasies about the planet heating up.

We did not recycle because everyone knew it was just the garbage.

It was the rare child who came from a family that had experienced divorce or who was being raised by a single parent. There was no segregation in the north, but my high school was almost completely white. That ratio has been reversed.

The Draft ensured that every able-bodied young man would serve a minimum of two years in the military learning the arts of warfare. We had all been born early enough to have passed through World War Two as very young children. This was followed by a conflict in Korea in the 1950s when we were teens. By the time the Vietnam War came along it was a new generation of conscripts fighting it. After that, the military became entirely staffed by volunteers.

The biggest scandal of the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower involved a vicuna coat his chief of staff had accepted as a gift. It would take Watergate to stain and end Nixon’s presidency, an ugly sexual dalliance to undermine Clinton’s, and a parade of congressional felons that constitutes a non-stop perp-walk these days.

Since I was a lad the government added a Department of Education, a Department of Energy, a Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others I cannot recall. Regulation of everything has exploded. Borrowing and spending has exploded. If anybody had told me back then that the government was broke, I would have thought he was crazy, but the debt ceiling kept being raised until there is, in effect, no ceiling.

In my memory, American society began to shift from traditional values and patterns in the 1960s. The century-long failure of the South to rid itself of the aftermath of the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws, eventually found expression among blacks, but it also caused riots in U.S. cities.

In time, gays in New York would rebel against police harassment and a whole new movement would be sparked, culminating in the demand for same-sex marriage, along with an end to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the military. The lives of women changed with the advent of “the Pill” and demands for more equality.

Sex, drugs and rock’n roll became the order of the day. We have gone from Frank Sinatra to Lady Ga-Ga. Later generations than mine share a more chaotic vision of society and a far more costly one in which to live.

It has taken the emergence of the Tea Party movement to capture and focus the independent voters who have seesawed back and forth between the comfort of Eisenhower's conservatism to the free-spending of Lyndon Johnson, the conservative values of Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama’s effort to force European-style socialism on America.

In my life, we have gone from the Great Depression to an era in which whole nations have discovered that a highly centralized government inherently cannot function without bankrupting its citizens whether they live in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Portugal, Greece or in the former Soviet Union.

As international organizations have flourished, from the United Nations to the European Union, the more unwieldy, corrupt, and grasping they have become.

We live now in the Age of Terrorism. No one in authority seems to want to acknowledge the source, the threat to civilization called Islam. Few Americans knew anything about Islam before 9/11. Now you can’t get on a plane without a full body scan and search.

If your grandpa or grandma say they miss the “good old days”, keep in mind that in many fundamental ways, they really were good.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

In the Conservative Reading Room

By Alan Caruba

With Christmas around the corner, it’s probably a good idea to look at some books that conservatives would enjoy and from which they would benefit.

Decision Points by George W. Bush ($35.00, Crown) is, of course, receiving a great deal of attention as the former president gives interviews to promote it. Reportedly 4,000 people showed up at a book signing opportunity in Houston to purchase it (already heavily discounted at Amazon.com). The book is a useful insight to why W did what he did at the time he did it. What emerges is a man who is comfortable in his own skin and with his beliefs. As he says, he will be gone by the time history makes a judgment of his performance in office, but for now the book provides an understanding of what it means to live history and make history one day at a time. Intelligence analysis is not always correct. Threats to national security must be evaluated. War, says W, is always the last option on the table. The publisher has printed 1.5 million copies. It will likely be a bestseller.

Rules for Radical Conservatives by David Kahane ($25.00, Ballantine Books) is a stab at conservartive humor. Liberals assume that conservatives have no sense of humor, but that is not true. Anyone who has listened to Rush Limbaugh knows and enjoys the laughs he serves up along with pithy comment. Kahane has penned a wickedly funny expose of what actually goes on in liberal enclaves. Those who read the National Review are already familiar with him and know the name is a nom de plume. Trying to figure out who he really is has become a parlor game of sorts. His is the persona of an insufferable Hollywood liberal inadvertently spilling the beans on their intentions to “transform” the nation. This book arrives just in time to savor the retaking of the House by the Republican Party and glimpse some hope of doing the same in the Senate and White House in 2012. Until then, it will prove entertaining for the right-winger in your life.

Selling Out a Superpower: Where the US Economy Went Wrong and How We Can Turn It Around by Ronald R. Pollina ($26.00 Prometheus Books) Are you still wondering why America and its economy are in decline? Then this is the book you must read. Economics may make your eyes glaze over or even just sound boring, but this extraordinary book by a man who has worked for decades with companies seeking to relocate or find a State congenial to their growth will prove to be a shocking explanation of what is wrong with the economy. I guarantee you that it is not boring. For example, I bet you do not know that in 1968 there were 62 lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and that today there are 34,000! They outnumber member of Congress and their staffs by a margin of two to one. By 2008 they were spending approximately $8.2 million for influence every day. Few represent the majority of Americans in the middle class. And that is why the real median household income in America has stagnated for more than a decade. The farther the nation has drifted from the constraints of the Constitution, the greater the central government has grown, strangling the economy with massive regulation, rising levels of taxation, and literally driving companies and the jobs they provide offshore. No single book I have read this year comes close to explaining what has occurred and what must be done to avoid a bad, sad future for the current and next generation of Americans.

The Patriot’s Toolbox: Eighty Principles for Restoring our Freedom and Prosperity is a guide that can be had by going to http://www.teapartytoolbox.org/. Directed at members of the Tea Party, it has eight chapters, seven of them previously published by The Heartland Institute as booklets in a series called “Legislative Principles” and one written specifically for this book. I heartily recommend this guide that will bring the reader insight and information regarding areas of concern and action that include health care, energy and the environment, school reform, privatization, and much more. The Institute is a non-profit, free market advocate for reform. It has been a major factor in the demise of the global warming hoax, sponsoring a series of international conferences that brought together the world’s leading scientists and others to debunk this fraud. The book was distributed to 34,000 candidates for public office and nearly 20,000 civic and business leaders, Tea Party activists, and Heartland supporters. They book can be requested for free, but I would urge that you support the Institute with membership or a donation you can provide.

The Energy Imperative by Phil Rae and Leonard Kalfayan with Michael J. Economides ($34.99, ET Publishing, Houston, TV) should be mandatory reading for every college or university student because he reads very much like a textbook and, for that reason, I would recommend it to anyone who is confused by all the talk about “green energy”, “Big Oil”, “dirty coal”, the usual hogwash the environmental organizations and politicians put forth to hide the fact that the United States and all other nations are totally dependent on energy and that so-called fossil fuels are essential to their existence. They are “the master resource” and the nations that use the most energy are also the nations that enjoy the best economies. This book was written so that anyone can read and understand the fundamentals of energy and its use. I guarantee you will be the smartest person in the room when you read this book.

Energy and Climate Wars: How Naïve Politicians, Green Ideologues, and Media Elites are Undermining the Truth About Energy and Climate by Peter C. Glover and Michael J. Economides ($24.95, Continuum, New York and London) address the ideological social agenda that is being driven more by myth than facts. I count both authors as friends and am frankly in awe of their individual and combined knowledge and insight regarding an issue that will determine whether the U.S. continues to rank among the great powers of the world or not. Right now the Obama administration is doing everything it can to destroy the coal mining industry, has stealthily shut down exploration and drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and is spending billions of public dollars on the least effective forms of energy, solar and wind, despite the fact they represent about one percent of all the electricity the nation requires. Glover is a British writer and journalist specializing in political and energy analysis. Economides is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston. He is the editor of Energy Tribune and what he does not know on the topic is probably not worth knowing.

The False Promise of Green Energy by Andrew Morriss, William T. Bogart, Roger E. Meiners, and Andrew Dorchack ($24.95, Cato Institute) will not be available until February 2011, but it knocks the propaganda and lies about “green energy” into a cocked hat. Sold as better for the environment, less polluting, and a whole new arena of new jobs, these and other claims are examined while exposing a large, vocal alliance of special interests—corporations, politicians, and environmentalists—who expect to reap billions boosting it. One problem has emerged for these hucksters. The Chicago Climate Exchange, created to buy, sell and trade “carbon credits” just closed shop in the wake of “Climategate”, the news that the Earth is not warming and that the data about global warming was cooked up by a handful of rogue climate scientists working with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Naturally, the mainstream media that wrote many stories about its opening ignored reporting its demise. Green energy is part and parcel of the multitude of lies told about the environment to enrich those telling them.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

A Conservative Victory for Now

By Alan Caruba

The date was March 20, 1981 and Ronald Reagan who had taken the oath of office for his first term just two months earlier was addressing a joint meeting of the American Conservative Union, Young Americans for Freedom, the National Review and Human events.

It was a very different era. Many of the youth in the audience were members of Generation X, born 1965 through 1980, and Reagan would be in office as Generation Y debuted in 1981 through 1995. Spanning those generations was one that would fill out the present demographic of today’s senior citizens, a critical voting bloc; one that can recall Reagan’s values and hopes to see them restored.

The Soviet Union still loomed large as a threat to freedom, exporting communism wherever it could. The other threat of Islamic fundamentalism would begin to exert itself with a suicide bombing of Marines in Beirut, Lebanon, but Reagan was undaunted. He would see the Berlin Wall fall and with it the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union.

That evening the audience was buoyant with hope that decades of liberal governance could begin to be reversed. None suspected that the electorate would embrace a little known Arkansas Governor in 1993 and that the ills of a universal healthcare plan would be raised yet again to be signed into law by 2010. More than half of all Americans want it repealed.

Reagan said, “The conservative movement in twentieth century America held fast through hard and difficult years to its vision of the truth. And history must also say that our victory, when it was achieved, was not so much a victory of politics as it was a victory of ideas, not so much a victory for any one man or party as it was a victory for a set of principles---principles that were protected and nourished by a few unselfish Americans through many grim and heartbreaking defeats.”

Perhaps no defeat has been so heartbreaking as the public lapse of memory and judgment, the election of an avowed socialist, Barack Hussein Obama. Still, his repudiation has come quickly. Reagan is the spiritual father of the Tea Party movement because he believed in “a respect for law, an appreciation for tradition, and regard for the social consensus that gives stability to our public and private institutions.”

He added, “These civilized ideas must still motivate us even as we seek a new economic prosperity based on reducing government interference in the marketplace.”

In hindsight, we know that government interference in the marketplace, particularly the housing market, is the reason why the U.S. economy collapsed in 2008, propelling Obama into office.

Prophetically, Reagan said, “We must remove government’s smothering hand from where it does harm; we must seek to revitalize the proper functions of government, but we do these things to set loose again the energy and the ingenuity of the American people.”

The America he envisioned was a place where “a free and energetic people can work out their own destiny under God.”

Barack Obama, quoting the Declaration of Independence, cannot even bring himself to mention God. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”

For Reagan, the conservative goal was “to restore to their rightful place in our national consciousness the values of family, work, neighborhood, and religion” and he warned that it will not be achieved “by those who set people against people, class against class, or institution against institution.”

That was and is a perfect description of Barack Obama and a Democratic Party that knows no other way of governing and has no faith in the people.

Reagan never lost faith in the American people even though, for a while, they have been forgetful of the past, backsliding from the goals set by the Founding Fathers, robbed and wronged, but who are ready to rise again and restore America.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Government List of Things that Could Kill You

By Alan Caruba

With the presidential announcement that H1N1, the “swine” flu, is now officially a national emergency, plus reports out of the CDC that not enough vaccine is available, I thought it might be helpful to provide a list of things that the government says could kill you.

Right up there at the top is, of course, (1) global warming. President Obama and Al Gore says the entire planet is going to resemble a toasted marshmallow at a Boy Scout jamboree if we all don’t stop driving cars, manufacturing things, generating and using electricity, et cetera. And that goes for you, too, China and India!

Next is (2) smoking. It is an incontrovertible fact that everyone in the graveyard nearest to you who ever smoked is dead. The government, which used to make a lot of money from tobacco taxes, is dead set—no pun intended—against anyone smoking. This used to be a matter of personal choice, but now it will get you thrown out of arenas, restaurants, offices of all descriptions, and just about every other public place. Those who insist on still smoking are going to die. At some point.

Another thing that will kill you is (3) guns. It is a matter of complete consternation that the 90 million or so gun-owners in America are not all dead! The government wants to take away their guns in order to protect them from shooting themselves, their family members, and possibly someone trying to break into their home or apartment. Apparently criminals have not paid sufficient attention to government warnings and insist on using guns, whenever possible, in robberies and drug deals gone bad.

May I digress briefly to note what almost any homicide detective in America will tell you; on entering the murder scene, the first question they ask is where’s the husband or wife of the victim? Then they go down a list of nearest relatives and friends; most of the time this produces the perpetrator. Here’s a tip. If you kill someone, your family and friends will be the first to turn you in because they don’t want you killing them, too. So, essentially, if someone does end up murdering you, it’s someone you know and, if you kill someone, your mom will send you up the river faster than drinking the water in Mexico will give you the runs.

Before I go further, I need to also list (4) eating to the list of lethal activities in which you may be engaging. Eating, as is statistically demonstrated, can lead to obesity, defined as the inability to see your shoes or put them on without help. Or you may just get “fat.” And we all know that fat people are (a) jolly and (b) doomed to any early death. The food groups you are not supposed to eat are cookies, candy, and ice cream. If you eat any of these, you’re doomed, but frankly life without cookies, candy, and ice cream life is probably not worth living anyway.

A little known fact that the government is trying to suppress is that being a Republican or a conservative will, in fact, add years to your life. That’s because most of these folks have guns. Also, they have a very low level of gullibility so they are less prone to things like panic-inducing Swine flu announcements. They just deal with stress better. A lot of them love to hunt and fish. You know, clinging to their guns, et cetera.

The government really doesn’t want you to know this because it will cut into General Motors and Chrysler sales, but (5) driving a car can kill you a lot faster than most other activities. On the average, it kills about 40,000 people every year. So buckle up. Obey the traffic signals. Drive at a safe speed, and hope that the other people on the highway or street aren’t pumped full of “meth” or “coke”, so spaced out of their minds they think they’re in a space ship on the way to Planet Zeno. And, of course, there are all those drunken drivers out there, too.

I should also point out that ordinary flu kills about 36,000 people a year no matter what name it has. They are frequently the very young who lack sufficient immunity or old people with other life-threatening ailments. The H1N1, in terms of fatalities, does not appear to be anything other than a variation of ordinary flu.

There are, in truth, so many things the government thinks can or will kill you, legislators and bureaucrats are exhausted from passing laws against them, regulating them, and generally getting between you and them.

For the record, I think global warming is pure crappola; I have smoked cigars since my late teens and am now in my seventh decade of life averaging two a day; I own several guns; I eat and drive a car every day. I have an occasional drink, mostly wine. I get a “regular” flu shot every year and I get most of my exercise as a pall-bearer for friends who watched their diet, didn’t smoke, or had much fun when they were alive.

Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!

By Alan Caruba

Sarah Palin’s stunning announcement on July 3rd that she would step down as Governor of Alaska at the end of the month left all the political pundits gazing into their crystal ball desperately looking for an explanation.

The most obvious answer was the one she offered. She had done as much as she thought she could do for Alaska and now she wanted some time with her family. We are conditioned to never believe what politicians tell us and, in most cases, that is the wisest thing, but Palin breaks the mold in many ways.

The first thing everyone wants to know is whether she will run for President? She is enormously popular with many rank and file Republicans, but probably not with the power brokers within the party. She is, unlike John McCain, a true “maverick” because she actually believes in the major tenets of conservatism, limited government, strong defense, and fiscal prudence.

The GOP has long since strayed from those Reaganesque values and there is no better recent example than George W. Bush. For the life of me, I still have no idea how McCain got the nomination and things got really bizarre when he plucked Palin out of the wilds of Alaska and near total obscurity.

She was, after all, a woman. The last time a presidential candidate selected a woman as his running mate was Walter Mondale who chose Geraldine Ferraro and that turned out to be a Democrat disaster. What was McCain thinking? Of course, that’s what Republicans keep asking no matter what McCain says or does as he seems like some kind of stealth Democrat most of the time.

Palin was an instant hit; a sudden political superstar and, at the same time, also a candidate in over her head when it came to a national election. The press quickly lampooned her as a Moose-shooting rube from the only state less far away from the lower 48 than Hawaii. Even so, she was dynamite on the stump. And she still draws large, enthusiastic crowds to the consternation of Democrats and some Republicans.

Palin suffered from one of the worst political campaigns in recent memory. McCain had no central message, few new ideas, and poor delivery whether delivering a speech or in an interview. The man was painful to watch. He looked old. He sounded old. The contrast with his young running mate made some think the wrong person was on the top of the ticket running for president.

Palin was, by virtually any political standard, unique. Plain-speaking, possessed of a photogenic family and with personal, religious, and political values that rang true with a lot of people who sensed she was the real deal as a conservative.

She also did not appear to have much depth when it came to the major issues challenging the nation. She tended to speak in clichés and still does.

She brought out the very worst in Democrats/liberals. I cannot recall when a candidate was so viciously attacked. The mainstream media parachuted reporters into Wasilla, Alaska in a desperate effort to find anything bad to say about her. On Saturday Night Live, a devastating satirical portrait by Tina Fey turned her into a joke; someone who “could see Russia” from her front porch.

If the GOP could bottle whatever it is she does that drives liberals like New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd insane, we could begin to win some elections again. Citing another hit job, a profile by Todd Purdum in Vanity Fair, Dowd notes that some regard Palin as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, but clearly has not noticed any evidence of this in President Obama.

So why did she quit and what will she do now? I think the girl from Wasilla wants some time with her family while she and they are still young. She has five children and one grandchild. They are Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow and Piper. Unwed, teenage Bristol is the mother of Tripp. This is definitely not the Brady Bunch.

She probably also needs time away from the horrid attacks. I don’t think most of us give much thought to the toll such savagery takes on a public figure. She surely has done nothing to deserve it other than to become a rising star among a fairly dull Republican roster of potential presidential candidates.

Larry Kudlow, the columnist and radio host with a brilliant take on economic issues, thinks she is the new head of the Republican Party and I think he may be right.

And, finally, I keep thinking she would really like to take off the gloves and tear into Barack Hussein Obama. The Alaskan Governor’s office is not the right place to do that. Combine that will a quarter million in legal expenses to defend against spurious charges, and the reason for leaving early seems fairly obvious.

She needs a bigger platform and her new freedom gives her one.

The President becomes more vulnerable to serious criticism with every passing day and, so far, Republicans have been too quiet. Palin is likely to do politically to Obama what she has already done to a Moose.

Put him on his shield

By Alan Caruba

Paul Weyrich died early Thursday morning. I knew the man only through his writings as a columnist and I was always a bit envious of how prescient he was.

Two months before the November election he wrote that, “the loser might very well be the lucky one.” I suspect John McCain might agree as he and the rest of us gaze at the chasm of indebtedness into which the alleged “leaders” of our nation have plunged us and future generations.

Back in September, Weyrich was warning that, “The problems include a very weak American dollar; a trade deficit that will come to roughly $700 billion at year-end” along with “a ballooning Federal budget that has gone from $2.1 trillion to $3.6 trillion in just eight years—a whopping growth of 76%; a national debt of $9.6 trillion, closing fast on $10 trillion with a debt ceiling placed at $10.6 trillion and which cost the American taxpayer $230 billion in interest alone last year.”

Weyrich was a Conservative with a capital “C” in a nation whose best years occurred in the 1980s when another Conservative, Ronald Reagan, was in the White House. After that, it has been downhill on a toboggan to the poorhouse. Sadly, the Republicans who took control of Congress in 1994 and began so splendidly fell prey to whatever it is about Washington, D.C., that causes people to lose their minds.

The George W. Bush legacy will ultimately be less about 9/11 and more about the most profligate spending spree in the history of the nation.

Weyrich began his political life as a volunteer for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign and, for more than four decades, he rose to become a leader in the conservative movement as chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and as the first president of the Heritage Foundation.

Weyrich stayed true to his conservative principles and was always ready to champion them. That’s why he could write that “successful administrations over the past forty years all bear a share of the responsibility” for the present financial crisis.

“There is no free ride in this world,” wrote Weyrich. “And government at all levels, not only in Washington, has failed to understand this.” Who failed us? WE failed us because ultimately the Constitution identifies us, the People, as responsible for those whom we select and the kind of governance we accept.

Now, like an honored warrior, it is time to put him on his shield and consign him to the God in whom he believed and to history which he distinguished with his life.