Halloween Political Lesson

Ruining Halloween for Everyone

By Alan Caruba

When I was a kid, some seven decades ago, Halloween was one of the most enjoyable holidays other than Christmas.

The sixth graders in my town, in cooperation with local merchants, would paint Halloween scenes on the windows of stores and, on the great night, kids of all ages would go forth with bags and baskets to make a circuit of homes on their street to collect a bounty of candy.

Flash forward to present times and it is often the grownups who are having the most fun if the sales of Halloween costumes and the many Halloween parties are any indication. Kids? Well, they are treated like an endangered species.

Among the first signs that Halloween was being exploited was the way UNICEF decided to use the holiday to get little kids to collect money for it. Apparently it is not enough that the United States contributes over twenty percent of the UN budget or that UNICEF advocates a number of “New World Order” educational programs.

According to a news release from The Thinking C.A.P.P Foundation, based in Hollywood, California, while Halloween is “a fun time for millions of children across the country, unfortunately there are thousands that end up in the emergency room due to preventable accidents.”

Thousands? Emergency rooms over-flowing with injured children? I seriously doubt this. The foundation is devoted to “teaching children to protect their lives” and CAPP stands for Children’s Accident Prevention Program. Do we really need such a foundation? Isn’t it the job of PARENTS to teach their children what they need to know to avoid accidents?

Some of the foundation’s recommendations include:
“Pick a costume both you and your little ones can easily get in and out of”
“A little face paint versus a mask for your toddlers”
“Wear bright colors (Add a splash of neon color if your costume is black)”

As is well known all kid’s Halloween costumes tend to spontaneously burst into fire, masks cause toddlers to die from asphyxiation, and any child wearing a black costume is sure to be run over or disappear into the night and never be seen again. Do we really need such needless advice?

The foundation goes on to tell parents not to let the kids carry “wands, swords, pistols, etc.” And here I thought the whole idea of dressing up like a pirate or cowboy was to be able to wave a sword or toy pistol around. And surely all our little princesses are not going to impale themselves on a toy wand.

These days, most parents accompany the very young as they make their Halloween rounds. The foundation needlessly warns them to “ALWAYS have them within view!” and adds that “Nothing should be in your child’s hands except for their basket” and that “Everyone should have a type of light stick on them at all times.”

As for the candy kids receive, you’d think that it was some kind of poison as far as the foundation is concerned. Avoiding the “Sugar Rush” comes with life-saving instructions that include drinking a glass of water or warm milk after they’ve indulged. Then they should “brush (their) teeth immediately after eating candy.”

The whole point of Halloween is to over-indulge a bit. The foundation’s instructions to adults attending parties would probably warn them against getting diabetes or just getting too drunk to drive.

These instructions are among the first avalanche that everyone will read or hear on their local media, filling the minds of parents with sheer dread of Halloween instead of the fun of picking out costumes and watching from a careful distance as the little ones go completely out of their minds with the joy of collecting FREE CANDY from the neighbors.

Bad things happen to some kids everywhere every day. They fall off monkey bars, off of bikes, off of anything and everything. Since “if it bleeds, it leads” is the working motto of all local news television some kidnappings evoke huge coverage despite the fact that all child kidnappings and/or murders are horrible.

That doesn’t justify ruining Halloween for the hundreds of thousands of kids who will one day look back on the fun it involves and the thousands of parents who enjoy it just as much.

Here’s my advice for all the Halloween kill-joys, butt out! We all know you’re the ones who turn off the lights and pretend you’re not home.

Mr. President, Please Do NOTHING

By Alan Caruba

I had a strange epiphany the other day. If I were to write a letter to President Obama, it would say, “Please do nothing.”

It seems to me that Obama’s forte is to do nothing much of the time. Well, not “nothing.” He is giving speeches, but those incessant, self-referencing speeches do nothing to change the minds of America’s critics and enemies. They have rapidly reached a point where Americans find them an object of ridicule.

I am not concerned about his playing golf; a lot of presidents did that. The pick-up basketball game is okay, too. The man is under a lot of pressure to “do something” about problems here in America and around the world, so it is only reasonable that he relax in ways that best suit him.

The effort, however, to do something is what worries me about President Obama because he is so wrong about his top two issues, healthcare reform and his renamed cap-and-trade tax on energy use.

He is wrong about the latter because there is no “global warming” (now called “climate change”) to justify penalizing everyone for turning on a light, watching TV, using their computer, and the million other ways we all use electricity.

He is wrong about healthcare reform because all the polls demonstrate that Americans want to (1) have a choice about whether to have health insurance and (2) like the insurance plans they’re in. He’s wrong, too, because (3) the government is incapable of “cutting waste and fraud” out of Medicare and because adding thousands more to the rolls (4) will require that other thousands are denied treatments they need in a timely manner.

So, naturally, I would prefer that he “do nothing” with regard to these pieces of legislation that are guaranteed to still further bankrupt America.

Looking beyond our shores, I would prefer that he “do nothing” in Afghanistan other than to withdraw our troops from there in the same way he says he’s doing in Iraq. Since I am convinced that he will “do nothing” regarding Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, I will put my money on tiny Israel to do for us what he will not.

Of course, if the U.S. did bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities that would constitute a “preemptive” act of war and this president has made it clear to the entire world that he has no intention of being warlike anywhere and, in addition, he wants to reduce our nuclear arsenal and shrink our military. He has, however, promised to make military service safe for gays.

I suggest that he is demonstrating what he does best—other than give speeches and television interviews—doing nothing. Or doing something stupid.

This is, after all, a man who voted “present” during much of his term in the Illinois state legislature and was so bored with doing nothing in the U.S. Senate, he began running for the presidency within weeks of being sworn in for his first term.

Every time Obama gets anywhere near a serious issue affecting the lives and welfare of the American people, he finds the worst possible solution the most enticing.

It is time to rest on your laurels, Mr. President. It is time to take a break from making bad or dumb decisions. No one expects or even wants you to do anything. That’s why you received the Nobel Peace Prize.

So, please, Mr. President, do nothing.

(Hint: Check out how he's holding the phone!)

The Swine Who Live to Scare You

By Alan Caruba

For a very long time I have made my living as a business and science writer. That profession tends to make one fond of facts. It’s the reason my blog’s URL is “facts not fantasy” and why I call it “Warning Signs.”

It is the reason I founded The National Anxiety Center in 1990 as a clearinghouse for information about “scare campaigns designed to influence public opinion and policy.”

We live in a world of competing lies, all swirling around us and generated by government and what are now called “non-governmental organizations.” These NGOs suck at the government’s teat or insert themselves into larger organizations such as the United Nations in order to steer them in directions that will fatten their purses and wallets.

These are the swine who live to scare you because they know this is the way to benefit from your ignorance, gullibility or because you will not take the time to check out the “facts” they are telling you, using them like cattle prods to make you and others move in the direction they want.

All of which brings me to the Swine flu or its more politically correct name, H1N1. It is another variant of the flu that goes around the world every year. Do you remember the Bird Flu that was supposed to kill millions, but didn’t? Or what about the regular seasonal, but unnamed flu that kills an average 36,000 Americans every year?

So one is compelled to ask why the United Nation’s World Health Organization or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, along with the idiot who is our current Secretary of Health, are all doing their best to convince everyone that a worldwide “pandemic” is occurring when it clearly is not?

My friend and colleague, Michael Fumento, arguably one of the best investigative writers in America, had a commentary about the Swine Flu in the October 8th edition of the New York Post. “The real threat is panic” neatly slices and dices the lies about the Swine Flu, citing data from around the world to demonstrate that “There is no flu epidemic.”

There is the seasonal flu and I take this to be a good reason to avoid the rather hastily created vaccine for the Swine Flu in preference for the regular one that’s widely available. And, yes, I did get my annual shot.

It strikes me that scaring enough people to take the Swine Flu vaccine is very much a part, if not the whole purpose, of the whole orchestrated effort to panic people. If this is not accomplished, those spreading the misinformation about the Swine Flu would be in for some severe condemnation. This way, they can clam they were just doing their job to protect the public.

The Swine Flu panic comes out of the same box of tricks that tells people that drinking anything from a plastic bottle will eventually kill them if old age doesn’t get them first. It’s the same foolishness that warns against taking vitamins and minerals to supplement the body’s need for them.

It’s the same lies that try to get people to stop eating meat, drinking soda, or that there’s an obesity “epidemic” in America where food is not only fast, but cheap and tasty. Meanwhile, you can pick up Le Big Mac in Paris’ famed museum, the Louvre, these days or in downtown Beijing.

With a lifestyle that has extended the average life expectancy in America from age 43 in 1900 to 78 today; the government seems desperate to get people to die off at an accelerated rate before Social Security and Medicare goes broke even sooner than expected.

Naturally, in the bizarro world in which the Democrats live, they are trying to enlarge the number of Medicare recipients so that life-saving procedures can be denied to even more of them.

Only children singing the Obama song believe anything the government tells them. The rest of us would do well to assume it is mostly lies.

Saving the Earth by Hating Humanity

By Alan Caruba

As the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, bites the dust around the world, it behooves us all to contemplate why environmentalists—Greens—would attempt to hoodwink the world’s population into believing they could do anything to “control” the planet’s climate.

One singular fact stands out in all Green propaganda and permeates all the legislation and other programs they sponsor. It is a contempt and disdain for the Earth’s human population. The leaders of the movement hate humanity. Obsessed with population growth, anything that can reduce it—disease, poverty, famine, or lack of energy is pursued as part of the Green agenda.

The Green movement grew out of an earlier, more salutary one, conservation. We can surely thank Americans such as John Muir and others who sought to preserve tracts of wilderness such as Yellowstone and the nation’s forested areas from the rampant depredations of the 1800s and early 1900s. The nation owes a debt of gratitude to President Theodore Roosevelt for the initial creation of national parks and forests.

As the nation industrialized, rivers suffered pollution and the air was polluted by factories that befouled both. In 1970 President Richard M. Nixon signed into being the Environmental Protection Agency which, empowered by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, can be credited to early success.

However, like all government agencies, the EPA has steadily sought to expand its powers and, aided by other environmentally related agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Corps of Engineers, it has relentless pursued ever larger control over all the land and waters of the nation, and by extension over everyone’s life.

They pose a threat to the constitutionally protected right to private property, vital to the nation’s economy and a keystone of capitalism.

The growth of literally hundreds of “environmental” organizations has led to an endless barrage of scare campaigns, often without any basis in science, and used to undermine the industrial, agricultural, and transportation sectors of the nation’s economy.

On a global scale, the United Nations Environmental Program and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have pursued an agenda devoid of scientific merit or justification.

Greens lie and they lie all the time

The lies about Alar came close to wrecking apple growers. The lies about the spotted owl species laid waste to the northwest’s timber industry. New claims about alleged dangers from plastic bottles are based on lies.

The lie that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, has anything to do with “warming” has driven the totally deceitful “global warming” hoax and is used to create a market for worthless “carbon credits” that ultimately increase the cost of energy and everything else.

The introduction of the Endangered Species Act is one long history of near constant failure in pursuit of a foolish goal, advocating for obscure species while thwarting all manner of projects useful to the human species. It has been used to impoverish farmers in Oregon and California.

The truth is that the Earth is actually cooling, not warming. Carbon Dioxide is not a “pollutant.” The North and South Poles are not melting. Sea levels worldwide are not rising any more than they have for millennia. Polar bears are thriving. Solar and wind energy is a bust, providing barely 1% of all electricity used daily nationwide.

The truth is that pesticides protect people against insect and rodent-borne diseases and property damage. Saving “endangered species” ignores the fact that 95% of all the species that previously existed are now extinct.

The truth is that nothing humans do has any affect on the climate that is dependent on solar and ocean cycles.

The Greens are now famous for their campaigns against products from toilet paper to plastic bags, bottles, and everything else made from plastic, a petroleum derivative. Anyone who buys “environmentally” approved products is being charged a premium for their own gullibility. Every supermarket and store in America has comparable, safe products at far lower costs.

Americans are constantly harangued to adopt Green lifestyles. Generations of young Americans have suffered the child abuse of being told that the Earth is doomed despite its 4.5 billion year existence.

Corporations that advertise and promote their “Green” credentials pander to environmental hoaxes in order to avoid criticism and generate an “environmentally friendly” public image.

The real environmental message speaks to a hatred of humanity and the many technological, medical, agricultural, and other achievements that have enhanced, improved, and saved the lives of millions.

If you hate energy, join an environmental organization.

If you hate science, join an environmental organization.

If you hate jobs in America, join an environmental organization.

If you hate industrial and agricultural development and progress, join an environmental organization.

And if you hate humanity, join an environmental organization.

Miss Obama Accepts Her Crown

Nobel Prize Joke

By Alan Caruba

There was a time when the Nobel Peace Prize meant something. It went to men and women who earned their stature with lives of courage such as Andrei Sakharov who openly opposed the oppression of the former Soviet Union and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who gave his life for the cause of civil rights.

Giving the prize to Barack Hussein Obama has rendered it a joke.

In office less than a year, Obama has, in the words of a recent Saturday Night Live satirical skit, done “nothing” to deserve what once was one of the highest international accolades anyone could receive.

In addition to men and women of genuine repute, in more recent times the pathetic Norwegian committee responsible for selecting the winners of the Peace Prize has given it to the father of modern terrorism, Yassir Arafat whose Palestinian Liberation Organization continues to make war on Israel when it isn’t also defending itself against Hamas, another Palestinian group equally devoted to the annihilation of a sovereign nation and its people.

Other winners include Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations who presided over one of the worst scandals of that scandal-ridden institution, the Oil-For-Food scheme that enriched Saddam Hussein and who had previously turned a blind eye to the Rwandan intra-tribal massacres. Earlier the award had gone to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, now more famed for the rape of populations they are sent to protect and idleness while others are slaughtered.

Among the Americans who earned the prize in recent times were Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. Carter, a former U.S. President, has disgraced himself by his appalling anti-Semitism and friendship with the most scurrilous figures on the world scene.

Al Gore, a former Vice President, will be written into the history books as having been the leading voice for the greatest hoax, global warming, of the modern era.

Begun in 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize once stood for true achievement. It has long since become a pathetic instrument by a handful of men on the committee tasked with awarding it. The award to President Obama is a blatant effort to influence his decision on the conflict in Afghanistan.

The official reason for the award to Obama was “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Perhaps the committee had in mind his extraordinary world tour at the beginning of his presidency to apologize for what he perceived to be America’s failures.

In reality, the only thing his brief tenure in office has earned him is the contempt of the world’s leaders for his endless posturing, his preference for words over action, and his constant search for the world’s center stage spotlight.

Little wonder that Reuters reported that the announcement was greeted with “gasps of astonishment from journalists” in Oslo.

They aren’t the only ones who are astonished.