America, the Silly Nation ... Alan Caruba

America, the Silly Nation
By Alan Caruba
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As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, we will hear about our Founding Fathers, about those who fought our wars to preserve and safeguard our nation, and other men and women who contributed to the nation’s greatness.

It is good to look back, but future generations will look back as well and wonder how such a great nation became such a silly nation, the object of scorn and ridicule around the world, challenged by every gangster nation that shares the planet; attacked by Al Qaeda, threatened by North Korea, mocked by Venezuela, insulted by Iran, and sustained by the wealth of China and other lenders.

What other republic is governed by fools who voted without reading “climate” legislation whose 1,200 pages of rules and regulations will enrich a few and leave the rest scrambling to pay the light bill? That is, if the light turns on. If passed by the Senate, it will be the largest tax increase in the history of the nation. It exists to “save the planet” from a “global warming” that is not happening.

What other nation would systematically ensure that its vast resources of coal, enough to power plants to produce electricity for the next hundred or two hundred years, not be used because no new plants will be built? Fully fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal, but this nation is about to waste billions of dollars on wind and solar energy—so called “clean” energy—which accounts for about one percent.

If wind or solar was a sensible way to produce electricity, surely utilities would have invested in it long ago. It isn’t. It never will be. Only a very silly nation would shift billions of dollars to such “clean” and “renewable” energy when it was sitting on top of tons of coal.

Only a silly nation would ensure that its other vast, natural and national resource, oil, would be put off limits to all exploration and extraction in Alaska and along our vast coastlines, as well as huge reserves in the nation’s interior. Only a silly nation would do this while listening to its politicians talk about “energy independence.”

Only a silly nation would ignore the vast potential of nuclear power and use all manner of bureaucratic obstacles to drive up the cost of building plants to generate electricity.

Only a silly nation would ignore the security of its southern border as a virtual invasion of illegal aliens pours across, and take advantage of all manner of welfare programs, special education programs for their children, and free medical services. Our prisons, too, are filling up with illegal aliens.

Only a silly nation with twelve million or more of these illegal aliens in its midst would actually be looking for a way to magically make them citizens overnight while ignoring the fact that they having been taking jobs from natural born and naturalized citizens by working “off the books” and sending billions back to Mexico and points south. Amnesty would double or triple the existing population of formerly illegal aliens in America as family members joined them.

Only a silly nation would allow the teachers unions to totally control the quality of education and transfer power to Washington, D.C., away from the States and local communities where it rightfully belongs.

Only a silly nation would spend thousands of dollars per student and, at the same time, ignore the message they are sending with obscene drop-out rates. Only a silly nation would impose a one-size-fits-all system of testing on millions of students.

Only a silly nation would to allow the graduation, year after year, of students lacking the most basic math, science, reading, and other skills necessary to provide the workforce we require.

Only a silly nation would ensure that the costs of a college education were so high that graduates enter the workplace burdened by years of debt.

Only a silly nation would continue to seek negotiations with Iran whose leaders cry “Death to America” every day. Only a silly nation would elect a President who, when the desire for freedom and democracy broke out on the streets of Tehran, expressed respect for the “Supreme Leader” and outrage only after protesters had been shot to death and clubbed into submission.

Only a silly nation would permit itself to literally go broke, along with most of its States, and then vote billions more in a “stimulus” bill while, at the same time, giving billions to failed auto companies and taking government ownership. We own an insurance company as well. This is contrary to the Constitution. It is nationalization.

It was, however, a silly nation that caused the housing mortgage meltdown with government mandates that required banks and mortgage firms to lend money to people who would not normally qualify for them.

It is a silly nation that proposes to provide healthcare insurance to everyone at the same time Medicare is on the brink of bankruptcy. Nationalizing the healthcare system will kill a lot of Americans by rationing health services, but that’s what a silly nation does.

Only a silly nation would raise taxes in the midst of a major Recession verging on a Depression. The last Great Depression lasted ten years because of such foolish actions and ended only because the nation had to gear up for World War Two.

There was a time when mature people led the nation prudently and, when necessary, boldly. What we have now are petulant and indifferent children intent on personal enrichment.

What we have is a President that does not like America..

What we have is a silly nation.

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/ and a weekly commentary at http://www.anxietycenter.com/, the website of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, June 2009


Conservative+America+Education+government

US Government’s Climate Con-Job

US Government’s Climate Con-Job
Obama administration “report” on climate change is deceitful, scare-mongering, bogus science
By: Paul Driessen
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Suppose a company doctored data, misrepresented study findings, replaced observations with computer simulations, and hired PR flacks to promote its new “wonder drug.” News stories, congressional hearings, and subpoenas would be in overdrive. Fines and jail sentences would follow.

And rightly so.

But the standards change when “climate catastrophe” is involved.

The White House has made global warming the centerpiece of its revenue-raising and energy policies. A House of Representatives 942-page bill would tax, regulate and penalize all US hydrocarbon energy use, to “save the planet from climate disaster.” The Senate promises an August vote.

But average global temperatures peaked in 1998 and since have fallen slightly, even as carbon dioxide levels continue to climb. Thousands of scientists say CO2 has little effect on planetary temperatures, and there is no climate crisis. Few developed countries are ready to commit economic suicide, by agreeing to reduce their CO2 emissions by a fraction of what the House bill demands for the United States.

Americans are beginning to realize the legislation would cost millions of jobs and trillions of dollars for a hypothetical 0.1 degree F reduction in global temperatures. Most put global warming dead last in a Pew Research list of 20 concerns.

The government’s answer to these inconvenient truths is simple.

Issue another report by government scientists carefully selected to exclude any who don’t subscribe to climate Armageddon. Ignore contrary data and analyses. Crank out more bogus computer-generated worst-case scenarios. Hire an activist media firm that specializes in environmental scare campaigns. And spend tens of millions hyping every imaginable climate disaster:
Rising sea levels, floods in lower Manhattan, California beaches permanently submerged. Ferocious hurricanes, floods and droughts. Food shortages, epidemic diseases, a quadrupling of heat-wave deaths in Chicago. Aged sewer systems convulsing from massive storm runoff. Wildflowers disappearing from Rocky Mountain slopes and polar bears from the Arctic. Leisure time gone, as people struggle to survive.

“Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” is the “most up-to-date, authoritative, comprehensive” analysis ever done on how human-caused warming affects the United States, deadpans Obama “science” advisor John Holdren.

Actually, it’s the most flagrant attempted con-job and propaganda campaign in US history.

If it helps Congress enact cap-and-tax legislation, it will give activists, courts and bureaucrats control over virtually every aspect of our lives. It will enable them to confiscate hard-earned dollars, convert them to payoffs for activists and companies that get on the climate-crisis bandwagon, consign uncooperative companies and scientists to the ash heap of history, and conceal the exorbitant costs of restrictive energy policies – on families, industries, jobs and transportation – until long after the bill becomes law.

The bogus “report” conflates and confuses human activities and emissions with the powerful natural forces that have caused major and minor climate changes and weather anomalies since the dawn of time – from the Carboniferous Period to the Age of Dinosaurs, from the Big Ice Ages and interglacial periods to the Little Ice Age, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, Dust Bowl and countless others. It relies on conjecture, conformist thinking and conspicuous elimination of contrary, skeptical, realist scientists and studies that do not support climate cataclysm conjecture and ideology.

The authors “largely ignored” critical comments to earlier drafts and made the final version “even more alarmist” than infamous UN “summaries” of global warming “crises,” says Joseph D’Aleo, first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Weather Analysis and Forecasting Committee. The report is simply “wrong on many of its claims” and marks “an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA,” D’Aleo concludes.

University of Colorado environmental studies professor Roger Pielke, Jr. says the report “misrepresents” his own work, makes claims that are not supported by citations provided, relies heavily on analyses that were never peer reviewed, ignores peer-reviewed studies that reach opposite conclusions from those proclaimed by the report, and cites analyses that do not support conclusions rendered.

“I didn’t notice a single recognized hurricane expert in the list of authors,” says NOAA Hurricane Research Division scientist Stanley Goldenberg. The report relies heavily on surface temperature data from monitoring stations located next to parking lots and air conditioning exhaust ports – falsely skewing temperature records upward – other experts noted. It is lead-heavy on assumptions, assertions and speculation – hydrogen-light on evidence.

But the most egregious miscarriage of science in this agit-prop exercise is its near-total dependence on worst-case scenarios conjured up by computer models. That’s where it gets its litany of “Day After Tomorrow” Hollywood disasters.

These climate models have never been validated by actual observations, notes Professor Robert Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at Australia’s James Cook University. Indeed, Australia’s own climate modeling agency (CSIRO) stresses that climate change scenarios are based on computer models that “involve simplifications of [real world] processes that are not fully understood. Accordingly, no responsibility will be accepted … for the accuracy of forecasts inferred” from its reports.

“Modeling results are interesting – but worthless for setting public policy,” says Carter. But that is exactly how they’re being used.

Sure, it’s conceivable that Antarctica could melt, and cause sea levels to rise 20 feet, as Al Gore and the government con-artists suggest. Greenhouse gases would merely have to increase average annual Antarctic temperatures from their current –50 degrees F to +40 degrees for a century or two, to melt 200,000 cubic miles of South Pole icecaps. A mere 90-degree swing.

That may be as likely as having the planet overrun by raptors and T-rexes cloned from DNA in fossilized mosquitoes. But it’s conceivable. And in the realm of global warming politics, that’s all that matters. As MIT atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen observes, “global warming has developed so much momentum that it has a life of its own, quite removed from science.”

As one climate activist group put it: “The task … is not to persuade by rational argument.” It is “to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement. The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.” The strategy is to treat “climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is the route to mass behavior change.”

This is the kind of science, transparency, honesty and accountability we have come to expect over “human-caused climate chaos.”

If the congressional, administration and activist conspirators behind this massive deceit were in the private sector – peddling bogus drugs, rather than bogus science – they’d quickly become convicts. Instead of jail time, though, they’ll probably get bonus checks.
_____________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death.
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Conservative

Open Letter to the NC Delegation to the US Senate

An Open letter to the NC delegation to the US Senate from a Constituent:

Reference: The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009

AKA: The Cap and Trade Bill

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Dear Senator:



I respectfully ask that you vote against the “Cap and Trade” bill (The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) soon to come before the US Senate.

I am convinced the bill is one of the worse, if not THE worse bills to come before the Senate in its long history. The result of the bill will be higher taxes, higher prices on nearly everything the public buys, including essentials, high unemployment, and a geo-political shift in the nations of the world that would effectively remove the US from any leadership role for a very long time, if not forever. The bill is so badly disliked it is referred to, out here, as the “Destroy America Bill.”



Senator, there would never be a “good time” for this bill, but there certainly could not be a worse time in the history of our country to ram this bill through the House and the Senate.



I respectfully ask that you vote "no" on the Cap and Trade Bill when it comes before your legislative body in a few days. I can assure you, Senator; your constituents will be watching how you vote with more than casual interest. We will be watching to determine how we vote when next you stand for election. If you vote in support of the bill, Senator, my vote, and many, many, others, here in North Carolina, will not be cast for you. Your career as a US Senator may very well come to an abrupt end.



This is one of those times when an elected official is expected to act in accordance with the wishes of his constituents. Nothing less is acceptable.



I watched the US House, as it dealt with this bill, and it seemed to me the general electorate was far more aware of the contents of the bill than were the Representatives in the House. The Congresspersons in the US House give all indications of having voted for a bill they had not even read! That speaks volumes about the reliability of those national legislators and it does not reflect well upon their ability to make the right choices under pressure. Many of the members of our NC delegation, in the House of Representatives, have brought shame to their constituents here at home. We will not forget it in 2010 and beyond. I can only hope the Senators from North Carolina are far more familiar with the Cap and Trade bill than the delegation in the US House!



Senator, we are asking such a small thing. We are asking that you be true to your promises and represent your constituents wishes and desires concerning this Cap and Trade Bill.



What the US House has done in passage of this bill is already being referred to as a “Betrayal” of the people of America. The near socialist-like reform, brought about by the Democrats in charge of the Congress and government of the US, including the offices of the Obama Administration, have rocked the citizens who make up the grassroots of the electorate in America. There is an undercurrent of distrust and anger toward the current US government the likes of which I have never experienced in my nearly seven decades on this earth as an American. We are no longer becoming Balkanized - we ARE Balkanized!



Much has to change, Senator, for the US to be whole again. Those changes must begin in our national government. You can be a part of the healing process, a part of the process of bringing our nation back together again as a single people, by voting "no" on the Cap and Trade bill. Supporting the bill will only drive the wedge deeper, between the two camps, and ensure more pain for the American family as a result of higher prices on nearly everything, lost income due to lost jobs as more and more industry moves overseas in search of friendlier climes for business, and, of course, higher prices for petroleum products as we become ever more dependent on off-shore suppliers of fuel to run the engine that drives our nation’s economy. This stress will only feed the flames of distrust and anger seething just below the surface even now.



Now is the time, Senator, to represent the folks of your state who love this country and want to keep her intact.



Again, I respectfully ask that you vote "no" on the Cap and Trade bill (The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) when it comes before the Senate. However you vote, it will be remembered in the primaries and in the November election next year.

Respectfully yours,

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Conservative

FIGHT THE "DESTROY AMERIA BILL!" IN The US SENATE

America Betrayed!

J. D. Longstreet

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It gives me no joy to remind you that we told you this Congress and this President would do this to America. I refer, of course to the betrayal of America by the US House of Representatives when they passed the Cap and Trade Bill last week (June 26th, 2009 - another day that may yet live in infamy!)

The vote was 219 for and 212 against. Nevertheless, HR 2454 passed and now goes to the Senate for a vote there and then to the President for his signature.

It was a black day for Republicans because the bill could have been stopped had not the handful of Republicans who voted for the bill not done so. You need to remember their names:

Mary Bono Mack - California 45th District
Mike Castle - Delaware
Mark Kirk - Illinois 10th District
Leonard Lance - New Jersey 7th District
Frank LoBiondo - New Jersey 2nd District
John McHugh - New York 23rd District
Dave Reichert - Washington 8th District
Chris Smith - New Jersey 4th District

The primaries are coming up next year, 2010. This is far too important an issue to forget. We must not allow GOP voters to forget those from among their ranks who sold the party, and the nation, out with their support of this “Bill to Destroy America.”

In the meantime, we have to contact our US Senators and let them know, in no uncertain terms, how we feel about what the US House has done and explain, clearly, that we will not stand for them supporting this bill in the Senate. Let them know that you/we are “taking names” and we will not allow the memory of this issue to flag, or be swept under the rug when their name next shows up on our ballots.

E-mail, fax, phone, or write (altho only the Good Lord, Himself, knows when a letter will actually reach a US Senator these days!) your Senators immediately, if not sooner. You can bet the democrat’s-in-charge are going to ram this bill through the Senate just as fast as they can to try to get out ahead of our protests. You can access the phone numbers, mailing addresses, and e-mail addresses for every senator in the US Senate HERE.

As is his wont, Alan Caruba has written a piece, an important piece, I might add, that all Americans should read. You will find it HERE.

I have included it in this piece because Mr. Caruba’s insight into the rogue Congress, we currently have in Washington, DC is, in my opinion, without equal, and when he decides to share that insight with us, it is worth careful consideration. Please don’t leave this site before you read what he has written below.

The next meeting of the Tea Parties is set for Independence Day, July Fourth. It is an opportunity to rally Americans, who still care about their country, to a showdown with the US Senate, the Congress as a whole, and our socialist President. If there had been any question in your minds as to the intent of the Socialist/Democrat Congress and President toward destabilizing America, her economy, and her standing among the nations of the world, then the passage of the Cap and Trade bill should erase all doubt. Understand this: If this bill passes in the Senate - the entire worldwide geo-political alignment of nations will shift almost overnight. America will no longer be considered the world’s leader. She’ll just be another member of the pack.

Americans who care about their country cannot let this pass. We must rally and defend our country.

Please read Mr. Caruba’s commentary below.

J. D. Longstreet

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Betrayed by Congresss
By Alan Caruba
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Mark it on your calendar, June 26, 2009 was the date that the House of Representatives betrayed every American in the name of saving the nation and the Earth from global warming.

It was the day that 219 Representatives voted for the obscenely misnamed “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.” Only eight Republican members of the House voted for it and 44 Democrats voted against it.

The bill, some 1,200 pages, was not read by those men and women voting on it because they were not permitted the time to do so or have their staffs do it. The co-author of the bill, Rep. Henry Waxman, admitted that even he did not know its full contents.

The vote was not based on science, on economics, or simple common sense. It was an exercise in raw political power exercised by the Speaker of the House and her minions.

The bill puts limits on the generation of “greenhouse gases”, primarily carbon dioxide, setting up an elaborate scheme for the sale and trade of so-called carbon credits that will ultimately be the equivalent of the bundled housing mortgage securities that produced the present threat to the nation’s financial system. It is a get-rich scheme that will benefit a few while penalizing every American with higher costs for electricity.

The limits are justified by the claim that the Earth is dramatically warming due to too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The Earth has been cooling for the last ten years and is predicted to continue cooling for thirty years or more. Carbon dioxide plays no role in the warming or cooling of the Earth.

The bill is a direct attack on the nation’s coal industry. Fifty percent of all the electricity generated nationwide comes from coal-fired plants. The U.S. has deposits of coal sufficient to meet the nation’s needs for hundreds of years. It is cheap and it is abundant. No new coal-fired plants will be built in America in the foreseeable future. Coal that is not utilized here will be exported to China, a nation that is building new coal-fired plants and opening them on a weekly basis to meet its need for power.

The bill also allocates billions for the development of the two worst, most inefficient and unpredictable sources of electricity, wind and solar energy. Presently, these represent barely one percent of all the electricity generated in the nation. There is no way, nor should there be, they can replace coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy as a source of electricity. They are also the alleged source of “green” jobs.

As for “security”, a nation that cannot access its own sources of energy, coal, oil and natural gas, has no security if it must import them from other nations, some of whom are hostile to our values and system of government. The bill puts our fate in the hands of nations that support the goals of Islamic global domination. It puts the nation at the mercy of men like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and explains why President Obama made a deep bow to a Saudi prince earlier this year.

The bill must now go to the Senate where it is hoped that the upper body, though controlled by Democrats, will ensure it does not move on to the desk of the President.

If it passes in the Senate, the beginning of the actual decline of America as a great economy will be dated June 26, 2009.

Without abundant power, electricity for our homes, offices and factories; without gasoline for our cars and trucks, America will become a failed nation.

Alan Caruba
Founder

The National Anxiety Center

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cap-and-trade, coal+ Congress+ energy+ environmentalists" rel="tag">Conservative Conservative+cap-and-trade, coal+ Congress+ energy+ environmentalists

The Judas Pack?

The primaries are coming up next year, 2010. This is far too important an issue to forget. We must not allow GOP voters to forget those from among their ranks who sold the party, and the nation, out with their support of this “Bill to Destroy America.”

Socialized Medicine (ObamaCare) Can You Dig It?

ObamaCare - Socialized Medicine
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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We learned, sometime back, now, that some of this nations largest employers are telling their employees that they must stop smoking, by a date certain, or be fired. This is not smoking on the job, or even at the place of employment, but… anywhere… at anytime. Even in your own home - on your own time!

Ok, so where is that much vaunted “Right to Privacy”, we are assured the US Constitution grants each, and every, American citizen? Or, does it just cover woman who wishes to have an abortion, or the government, when it wishes to tap your telephone?

How far is too far?

The reason, they say, is to produce a healthier work force! The fact that the company’s medical costs are reduced is just a happy coincidence, right? I am told that 21 states allow this and 29 states do not. Who is right and who is wrong and when will the Supreme Court rule on this, or, have they?

Forget tobacco and cigarettes. The overriding question here is where; exactly, do we stop employers and government from encroaching on our privacy? Where? So far as I am concerned - we have allowed them both to go entirely too far, as it is.

Now, if smoking a cigarette is unhealthy activity, which cannot be condoned by your employer, then what about the consumption of alcohol? What about riding a motorcycle to work? What about over-eating? And speaking of eating, what about those extra pounds we men tend to carry around our waists, as we get older?

So, now having a few beers while watching the Super Bowl, in your own home, can get you fired? No, but smoking a cigarette can!

Eating that extra helping at Sunday dinner…can that get you fired? No, but smoking the after dinner cigarette can!

Having a couple of drinks after work, at your favorite neighborhood bar, can that get you fired? No, but lighting up while having those drinks can, or stepping outside, for a quick smoke, as required by some of our larger cities, can!

Now, lets clear away the smoke. (No pun intended.) What we have here is a flagrant attack by the “smoking nazis”! They’re doing this simply… because they can!

We are continuing to lose our privacy at an ever-increasing speed. There is hardly a place in America one can go, these days, without being seen by someone’s security cameras. I recently stood in a parking lot of one of the Big Box stores and counted 22 cameras zeroed in on the parking area, and entrances, and exits, to the store. And that was just on the OUTSIDE.

The “no smoking at home rules” are just the latest invasion of our privacy. It will get worse, if we allow it.

If you think it’s bad now, wait until we have OBAMACARE (national health insurance). Our every move will be monitored, and we will be directed, by the government, in every facet of our lives.

Weigh too much? Lose weight… or the government won’t pay for your medical bills.

Drive too fast? Slow down or the government won’t pay for your medical bills if you’re in an accident.

Smoke? The government won’t pay for your medical bills, period.

Have more than (two) kids? Your medical bills will not be paid if you exceed the allowable limit on babies.

Pregnant with a third child and the government insists that you have an abortion, but you really want this third child? Well, either have an abortion, or that third child will have no medical coverage and the cost of the pregnancy, and delivery, will not be covered, either.

Didn’t finish High School? Your medical bills will not be covered if you do not get a High School Diploma.

Take the wrong courses in college? Well, if you didn’t check before you signed up for a particular course, and you signed-up for a course the government thinks is uncalled for, or that you do not need for your chosen occupation… then your medical bills will not be picked up by the OBAMACARE (National Healthcare).

Choose the wrong career, and you are on your own! No medical help from the government.

Get the picture? Almost total control. And you, and I, will have given that power to the government! (Or your employer) After a while, there won’t be much difference, anyway.

So, next time you hear someone calling for National Healthcare, remind them of all the freedom they will give up for that cradle to the grave care.

The founders of this country wanted us to live free. Healthy, if we can manage it, but free, in any event. Today, it seems we are prepared to give our freedom up for a form of modern day Marxism. Socialized Medicine.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Socialized Medicine by any other name, would still stink!”

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+ObamaCare+Doctors+Taxes+Healthcare+US+Congress

Coming Soon: Illegal Cigarettes at a Bootlegger Near You!

Coming Soon: Illegal Cigarettes at a Bootlegger Near You!

A commentary by: J. D. Longstreet
******************************************

The one thing my family and the Kennedy family has in common is bootlegging!

Oh, yes, I am a southern boy, a piedmont (foothills of the mountains)southern boy, and I hail from a long and distinguished line of some of the finest bootleggers in the country. And – I am proud of it. Back in the days of yore - it was an honorable profession. (Whiskey making, I mean.) Even our first President made whiskey. A number of our country's Founding Fathers were smugglers. There's not that much difference between "smuggler" and "bootlegger". OK, enough semantics, already!

Why in the world do I bring up such as thing as this now? Keep reading:

The government has just done what bootleggers all over the North American continent have been praying for. They have all but outlawed smoking. Well they HAVE outlawed smoking any tobacco product worth a damn. That is to say - any tobacco product with enough nicotine in it to produce that tiny little squirt of glucose and shoot it into one’s blood stream. That little squirt then tells the brain to release endorphins, or whatever it is the brain releases to make one feel better, to calm one down, to take the edge off an appetite, and to generally make life worth living for a hour, or so, more. But our socialist friends, in our socialist government, cannot stand it when the “proletariat” feels good. Therefore, the ban on cigarettes - on ANY tobacco product with enough nicotine to calm the nerves of the masses. They had to be banished! the US government are like patents yelling at their kids: “STOP HAVING FUN!” We have told you over and over that socialist believe in everybody suffering equally! Are you beginning to get the picture?

The bootleggers, as of today, are gearing up. There will be cigarette factories in every city, every town, and every hamlet manufacturing cigarettes with enough nicotine in them to satisfy the smoker/ And - if the bootleggers are smart - they may even produce bootleg cigarettes with even more nicotine in them than "tax paid" cigarettes to REALLY get the smoker hooked. They will sell like candy! Bootleggers stand to make a fortune… tax-free. And, like the original prohibition, the general public will be pulling for the bootleggers.

My office is only a few doors from the former office of one of the largest and most successful cigarette bootleggers in the south - back a few decades ago when southerners were running bootleg cigarettes up north by the tractor trailer loads because of the outlandish taxes states like New York were placing on tobacco products. I reside in the state that produced more tobacco than any other state in the United States. So, I do know a little something about it.

The southern border of the US will be kept hot with the passage of illegal cigarettes making their way north, into the US, and they will be snapped up by smokers as fast as they can be delivered. The same holds true for bootleggers coming south across the American/Canadian border. By air, by land, by sea, the cigarettes are coming!

Soon, Obama will have to create an FDA police force (if we don’t already have one!). They will be charged with hunting down those really BAD cigarette bootleggers just like the DEA hunts down the dope dealers. Actually, I suspect the DEA may get this job added to their current job description. (Wonder how many DEA agents are smokers? HA!)

There are millions to be made on illegal cigarettes. You are kidding yourself if you do not believe there are those entrepreneurs amongst us preparing, right now, as I write this screed, to locate producers, growers, and some "good ole boys" with a few tractor trailer trucks sitting idle, to set up a money making business that would make GM and Chrysler green with envy.

Illegal cigarettes may yet turn out to be far more profitable than illegal dope! How’s that for the government screwing themselves again with “the law of unintended consequences?” Why, there is so much money to be made from illegal cigarettes it would tempt a church deacon!

Heck, I’m getting excited just writing about it. It is my heritage, I suppose. My bootlegger genes are aroused! The air around my computer is fogged-in with a blue haze from the pipe tobacco I am puffing as I write. Hey, all I have to do to grow the stuff is plant it in my backyard here in North Carolina. I can grow and cure my own, shred it, and smoke it! Hot dang! Just like the good ole days!

J. D. Longstreet
***************
Conservative

The End of America As We Know It!

For the First Time In My Life, I Fear My Government!
The End of America as We Know It!
J. D. Longstreet
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(Ed's Note: I have pulled the article scheduled to run today in favor of bringing you another far more important piece than that originally scheduled. - ED)
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Coming up Friday, June 26th, 2009, the Congress of the US will vote on a bill that will, if passed, change America forever. It will not be the America you and I currently know, as of today. It will be an America most Americans had hoped never to see. It will become an America The Founders of this nation had hoped to avoid. It will resemble more a developing nation than a “First-World” nation. In short, it will become that nation we conservatives have been warning the left would produce if given the power to do so by the American electorate. In November of last year the American electorate did just that.

Alan Caruba has written an important piece about what it all means and what it WILL ALL MEAN to us, as Americans, once this bill passes the Congress and is signed into law by the President. You need to read Alan’s commentary. He is getting reaction on it from around the world. It would seem that folks outside the US know more about what this bill will do, than Americans themselves. Altho disquieting, the fact that Americans are the least informed about their own government of any peoples on earth is not surprising. We have a “press” that is completely “in the tank” for the Obama Regime and an educational system overseen/supervised by the left side of the political spectrum in America.

For the first time in my life, I fear my government. I fear what they are going to do to my country and what they ARE DOING to my country. If you feel as I do then you must write, phone, fax, or e-mail your Congressperson and your Senators and ask them to vote NO on the Cap and Trade Bill.

Below is the important commentary, written by Alan Caruba, spelling out what we can look forward to as Americans if the Cap and Trade Bill is passed into law. Please take the time to read it and then contact your representatives in Washington and tell them to vote NO!

J. D. Longstreet

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The Cap-and-Trade Law: Villainy on a Grand Scale
By Alan Caruba

Supported by outright lies by the President about “clean” or “renewable energy”, and based on the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, on Friday Congress is reportedly going to vote on the 1,200-page Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill (H.R. 2454).

It would impose a huge tax on the provision and use of electricity in the nation.

Energy is the most vital resource America has and we have enjoyed abundant and affordable energy for our long history. That will all change if the Waxman-Markey bill becomes law.

There is no, “global warming.” The Earth is presently ten years into a cooling cycle and it is predicted to last a very long time.

Calling carbon dioxide “a pollutant” is a lie. All vegetation on Earth is dependent on carbon dioxide. Putting Limits on carbon dioxide emissions is idiocy and lunacy.

For the nearly six months since President Obama assumed office and in league with the majority Democrat Party in Congress, the actions taken to date appear to have a single purpose, the destruction of the nation’s economy.

The Waxman-Markey bill is villainy on a grand scale.

It is no accident that President Obama and his acolytes keep calling for “clean energy”, “energy independence”, and babbling endlessly about “green jobs” as the real jobs of Americans are systematically destroyed. Upon taking office, Obama rescinded the executive order to permit exploration of the nation’s offshore continental shelf for the wealth of oil and natural gas it possesses.

It is no accident that his Secretary of the Interior unilaterally cancelled 77 oil and gas leases or that, on March 25, the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 that adds two million more acres of wilderness to the 107 million acres already “protected” by the federal government.

It is estimated that 300 million barrels of oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath these “protected” acres. The government owns 607 million acres of land in a nation founded on the belief in the sanctity and power of private property, the keystone of capitalism.

Even if the bill were to become law, it totally ignores the fact that all the other nations of the Earth will continue to generate “greenhouse gases.” The United Nations Kyoto Protocol, intended to reduce these gases, purposefully exempted China, India, and all undeveloped nations. Its limits are, by definition, meaningless.

The Waxman-Markey bill will, by 2035, reduce the aggregate domestic product (GDP) by an estimated $7.4 trillion. Our present annual GDP is about $14 trillion. It is estimated to destroy 844,000 jobs on average with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 1,900,000 jobs. It will raise electricity rates 90% after adjusting for inflation. Prices for gasoline and natural gas will rise by 74% and 55% respectively.

This bill will impoverish Americans and destroy the nation.

Out of 307 million Americans, I seriously doubt that more than a relative handful know what Cap-and-Trade means or that it is even being debated, but they, their children, and their grandchildren will, by the actions of this Congress, live in a very different, very costly America.

The Democrats in Congress and the present occupant of the White House, by their actions, must hate America. They pose the greatest threat to its future that has ever existed in our history.

Call, write, fax, and email your representatives in Congress. Let them know you will not stand by idly as they destroy America.

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com and a weekly commentary at http://www.anxietycenter.com, the website of The National Anxiety Center.

June 24, 2009


LINK: http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/06/cap-and-trade-bill-villainy-on-grand.html

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Conservative

The Turmoil in the Middle East

The Turmoil in the Middle East

By Alan Caruba

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It sometimes seems like we have been reading and hearing about turmoil in the Middle East for our entire lives, but the facts are otherwise. For most of the last century and earlier, the Middle East was a backwater of age-old Islamic repression.



Things began to change with the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War One. They had backed the Germans and, already in decay, it didn’t take much of a push to end it. The winners of the war, primarily England and France, met in Versailles where they took out their maps of the region and divided it between them. Nations were created, some with ancient names like Syria and Lebanon, some with new ones like Trans-Jordan. A nation called Iraq was created.



The Saudis got very little for having cast their lot with the English. They would never trust them again and when Americans came knocking with a request to search for oil, they got the nod, not the British.



It was World War Two and its aftermath that really got the pot boiling. The Middle East had not played much of a role. Initially the war had been fought in North Africa with an eye on Libya’s oil reserves and the need to protect the Suez Canal from the Germans.



Shortly after the war’s end, India declared its independence from Great Britain and, at the same time, was partitioned to create Pakistan and Bangladesh for those of its Muslim population that did not want to live with their Hindu neighbors. By 1971, Bangladesh parted company with Pakistan and declared its own independence.



Former UK colonies became independent, but with the exception of Lebanon, nations like Syria and Iraq were controlled by despots and their cronies. Turkey opted for modernity, but sheikdoms such as Saudi Arabia remained sleepy, oil-rich backwaters of the region.



The introduction of Israel into this mix, recognized as a sovereign nation in 1947, was the catalyst for some the troubles that roil the region today. Islam’s argument with Israel is that its existence invalidates Islam’s claim to be the single religion destined to rule the world, let alone the Middle East.



If one believed the ravings of its mullahs, Iran exists for no other reason than to destroy Israel and to bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam, a mythical Shiite figure, through massive global death and destruction.



More than sixty years and several lost wars later, Hamas and Fatah in Gaza and the West Bank have no other purpose than to destroy Israel in the name of Palestine, a non-state entity that exists only as a welfare recipient of the United Nations and other donors. Hezbollah, located in Lebanon, is a client of Iran.



Even if there were no Israel, the endless dissatisfaction of Muslims with their lot in life would ensure that there would be strife. The issue is not Israel. It is modernity and the tantalizing prospect of true democracy for a people that have never experienced it.



The real problem for the Middle East, however, was and is Islam, a political as well as social and religious entity. Until the rest of the world is prepared to admit this, we shall all be forced to pretend that Pakistan has merely been having a few problems since its founding in 1947, that the so-called Palestinians have any legitimacy, that Islam is "a religion of peace."



Similarly, the genocide taking place in the Sudan is based in Islamic intolerance. Other human rights abuses, endemic to the Middle East, exist because the United Nations has been largely captured by its Islamic bloc of member states.



When Iran experienced its Islamic Revolution in 1979, it is doubtful its ruling mullahs ever expected to see Muslims by the tens of thousands in the streets of Tehran in 2009 protesting their brutal oppression.



It took a Green Revolution in Lebanon to expel Syria from the domination of its neighbor state. Afghanistan, as the former Soviet Union learned, should be left to itself, Islamic or not, because its tribes are a friend to neither each other nor intruders of any description.



With the exception of North Korea, the world’s attention has been captured by a Middle East in turmoil, not because Islam offers a better, more just and humane way of conducting political and social affairs, but because it fails on all counts.



The rest of the world has to stand with those brave Muslims in the streets of Tehran and everywhere else they demand what the West enjoys and represents, modernity, freedom, democracy, and a chance for a better life for all who embrace it.

Alan Caruba

Conservative

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Conservative

From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: A Horror Story!

From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: A Horror Story

By Alan Caruba
******************


John F. Kennedy, standing in front of the Berlin Wall, said “Ich bin en Berliner” to declare his solidarity with Western Germany, divided from its eastern half by the compromises with the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Ronald Reagan would later demand, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” as well as declare his solidarity with the Polish people seeking to free themselves from Soviet domination.

I have heard two versions of what President Obama has done in response to the Iranian uprising. One says that he was right to keep a low profile so that the United States would not be blamed for the rebellion against the tyrannical ayatollahs. This, it’s said provides “deniability” in the event the regime successfully puts down the rebellion. The other version says he should be outspoken in his support for the Iranian people.

History will decide whether President Obama has chosen the right course of action, but we know he has already made major efforts to reach out to the “Supreme Leader” and his mullah cronies. Death to the U.S. and Israel has always been the rallying call for the thirty-year-old Islamic revolution. We are the external enemies by which the mullahs assert their right to run Iran. At the same time, by distancing himself from the Israelis, President Obama has let the whole of the Middle East know he has cast his vote for Islam.

In 1979 there were crowds in the streets of Tehran that drove out the Shah. President Jimmy Carter appeared to have been caught off-guard by what happened. So were the U.S. diplomats and the CIA who apparently had no idea how deep the hatred ran for the Shah. The exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini tapped into that hatred. Soon our diplomats were to be held hostage for 444 days, released only when Ronald Reagan took the oath of office and Jimmy Carter was rendered a powerless and defeated one-term ex-President.

Jimmy Carter was incapable of demonstrating the power and the will of the American people to free our diplomats. He blamed earlier decisions regarding Iran as a buffer state against the Soviet Union and a source of oil to the West. Did the CIA “meddle” in Iran’s affairs, engineering the overthrow of a prime minister in 1953? Yes, along with the British we did and, from what I can determine, it was the right decision.

By the time Carter was elected President in 1977, the memories of the 1973 oil embargo were still fresh in the minds of Americans. The members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries used the embargo to punish the U.S. for supporting Israel, re-supplying its military during the Yom Kippur war.

Despite later negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, it is safe to conclude Carter was no friend to Israel and that animus has deepened over the years. Israel relinquished the Sinai desert, just as it would later withdraw from the Gaza in a vain hope of peace. There's a museum in Cairo devoted to the "victory" Egypt claims it secured in the war.

As Seldon B. Graham, Jr. points out in his book, “Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High”, “On January 23, 1980, President Carter announced to Congress that the U.S. would defend the Persian Gulf area by military force if necessary. Thus, the official energy policy of the United States abandoned USA oil and gave the supply to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).”

Carter had already called for a “windfall profits tax” on U.S. oil companies and Graham calls it, “a death notice for USA oil”, noting that “Many US oil and gas companies went bankrupt because of the Windfall Profits Tax.” During his campaign, President Obama called for a similar tax.

In the wake of that earlier tax, not one single new refinery has been built by U.S. oil companies because (a) they cost well over a billion to construct and (b) there is no way they can be sure another such tax would not be imposed.

Exploration for America's vast reserves of oil have been meager as well. Virtually the entire continental shelf of the nation was put off-limits to exploration and extraction. An effort by the Bush administration to lift the restriction was swiftly rescinded by the Obama administration. Congress still will not let oil companies drill in Alaska's ANWR.

Carter's actions effectively left the United States dependent to a large degree on Middle East oil, although these days the U.S. now imports much of its oil from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Denying the U.S. of its own vast energy reserves and attacking its energy producers has been a consistent theme in a straight line between President Carter and President Obama.

President Obama apparently also hates coal, vowing to “bankrupt” any company that attempted to build a coal-fired plant to provide much-need electricity to our growing population. In addition to rescinding the opening of the continental shelf to exploration, one of the first acts of the Obama administration was to cancel leases to explore for oil deposits in states where it is known to exist in large quantities.

Both the Carter and Obama administrations display the weakness liberals have for despots and despotic regimes of every description. In their hearts they see them as an appropriate way to keep people in bondage.

The leaders of many foreign nations have already taken Barack Obama’s measure.

The North Koreans hold him in such contempt they intend to fire a ballistic missile at Hawaii, probably on Independence Day. If he really wanted to show some character and a clear intent to defend the nation, he would destroy it in flight because we have the capacity to do this. He won’t.

Obama’s Democrat majority in Congress is beginning to back away from his disastrous taxing and spending proposals. It is widely rumored that the proposed “Cap-and-Trade” legislation, based on the bogus global warming hoax, will fail in Congress.

Similarly, the panic in the White House as it attempts to cope with a failing economy can be smelled a few blocks away on Capitol Hill. Obama’s constant drumbeat of one “crisis” after another is beginning to wear thin and it is likely too that his healthcare “reform” will fail as well.

Raising taxes in the midst of the worst recession since the days of the Great Depression is not likely to find much favor either.

On Independence Day, nearly 1,500 or more protest rallies, “Tea parties”, will be held in America from coast to coast. Their message will not be lost on Congress though you can be sure the slavish mainstream news media will do what they can to mislead the public into believing they were minor events.

Only they will not be minor events, nor will those that will follow. Americans will be in the streets in the weeks and months that follow. They will reflect the same determination of Iranians who want the freedom we too often take for granted.

In October 2010, Americans will have an opportunity to neuter this narcissist, this pretender in the White House. It is time to prepare for the midterm elections. It is time to take America back from the liberals that are ruining it.

Alan Caruba
************

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ObamaCare: A Symptom

ObamaCare: A Symptom
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

**************************************
A government run health Insurance company would be exactly the tool needed to shutter private insurance companies in America and drive currently insured Americans into the arms of the government owned company while at the same time demonstrating the “need” for a universal healthcare system even though the “need” was created by the government itself.

And another thing: Where, exactly, does the government expect to get the doctors for ObamaCare? Has anyone in Washingbton thought of that, yet? I mean - New medical students will only decide to enter medical schools if they know that they can make a living once the graduate and set up their practice. It cost a bundle to attend medical school and it takes years for doctors to pay off their loans plus finance their “start-up” business. It is common sense, it seems to me to ask , as a medical student, if I will be able to make a living as a medical doctor in the United States under ObamaCare.

Think about it for a moment. If you take away a doctor’s ability to make a fair and descent living in his chosen profession, then why in the world would he or she want to take on the expense of putting themselves through med school and the added expense of setting up a business, or a “practice; as we call it here in the states. It seems to me that in fairly short order, we will have a host of med schools sitting empty with no students - and very soon after that we can expect to have a huge shortage of doctors in America. I understand we already have a shortage of primary care physcians right now, somewhere n the range of 40 to 50 thousand primary care physcians we need and do not have even today. Imagine the impact on American society when our youngsters decide they are not going to be doctors when they grow up because they cannot make a living at it.

When one thinks about it, ObamaCare begins to look very much like all the many pieces of kneejerk legislation created in Washington over the years that ends up causing far more problems than it solves.

But , then, again, we have come to expect this type of "thrown together" legislation" under the Obama Regime as they rush to try to take advantage of the crisis dujour while the attention of Americans is diverted towards some problem that has been blown all out ot proportion by the media and the government. It is a con job. And not a very good con job at that.

All this prompts me to ask the obvious question: Just how dumb does Obama and his cohort in Washington think we are, anyway? Pretty dumb, I suspect. After all, Americans DID elect Obama and the other socialist in Congress to the offices they hold. That fact, alone, convinced this scribe of the extremely high ignorance factor amongst Americans in so far as politics is concerned.

Obama’s election was a huge, I MEAN HUGE, victory for ignorance in America. There is simply no other way to explain the man’s election.

Now calls for Obama’s resignation are being heard from all corners of America as the more sentient beings among the electorate have awakened from their political slumber and realized what they have done.

Much damage to America has been done in the five months or so Obama has been thrashing about bludgeoning democracy with his socialist ideas and plans. He has trashed the American economic system, raped and pillaged the US treasury, and given immeasurable hope to this nation’s enemies. He has set up a government within the government, which is answerable only to him. His aspiration to some form of dictatorship for himself has become so evident that it is troublesome even to some on the political left.

Now as America is facing a second recession in a matter of months, a recession, we might add that will make the one just ending look like a Sunday School picnic, many Americans are beginning to understand that inflation will be raising it’s ugly head within a matter of months and to make matters even worse, massive tax increases will be necessary to payback the money squandered by Obama on bailouts and buyouts of companies that should have been allowed to go belly up, file bankruptcy, reorganize, and come back for a second try at getting it right - without public funding.

At some point, this house of cards, that Obama built, is going to come crashing down. When it does, there will be much weeping, and wailing, and gnashiong of teeth as the political left is caught under the tonnage of debris. It will not be pretty. And it will do a lot of damage to America -damage that will take generations to repair.

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+ObamCare+Doctors+Taxes+Healthcare+US+Congress

More Groveling By The US Congress. ... J. D. Longstreet

More Groveling By The US Congress.
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Less than six months after Obama became President of the United States, the US Senate passed a formal apology for slavery. For what it is worth, the act is a non-binding resolution. It is said to acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery. Last year the US House of Representatives passed their own apology for slavery, as well. A number of states have passed apologies including, unfortunately, my own state. There are reports that a huge celebration is being planned for sometime next month. A pathetic gesture, I know, but, hey, these are liberals and everything with them is based on emotion and feel-good politics.

If you have read this far, you already suspect I am not happy about this affront to my southern ancestors and to me. And, just so the record is straight, as I said last year - I’ll be darned if I will apologize! I had nothing to do with it, and I refuse to be saddled with a blanket of guilt for something I had nothing to do with! I just want that to be clear! I feel NO NEED to apologize and therefore refuse to ACT as if I am sorry for something for which I am wrongly accused! Never!

Alan Caruba, a renown commentator and blogger, who happens to also be a friend, has an excellent piece on this very topic over at “Facts not Fantasy.” Mr. Caruba had this to say, last July, when The House of Representatives passed their resolution: “There are a lot of Americans, mostly liberals, who can only see what was wrong about American history. Morally it was wrong to import slaves and work them to death on plantations. Morally it was wrong to chase the native-Americans from their lands. Morally it was wrong to deprive Japanese-Americans of their rights and property during World War II. These things occurred in different eras and virtually everyone involved are dead.Why the present generation of Americans has to apologize for the actions of previous generations escapes my understanding.” You can read this insightful article HERE.

Alan was correct last year and his comments certainly are timely today - about eleven months later.

Last year I said the following: “We Dixicans know this arrow is aimed at the heart of Old Dixie. As a Dixican, I resent the heck out of that! Check your US history and you will find that SLAVERY WAS LEGAL IN THE US. It was “Northern Slavers” whose ships brought the slaves from Africa to this country. (And the ships of European slave traders). It was Northern Slavers who sold the Africans, at auction, in the New England states. Some of the richest families of the Northern states can trace their family fortunes directly back to the slave trade. And finally, for the record, the very first anti-slavery laws, in the US, were passed in the SOUTH!

Reparations, anyone? Oh, the Congress assures us there is no way, legal or otherwise, that these resolutions can possibly open the door for reparations. You believe that? If you do, I have this bridge in Brooklyn, NY, I suspect you might show some interest. If you really, REALLY, DO believe that -may we suggest you get your wallets, pocketbooks, and checkbooks out and - assume the position.

Who, exactly, will be expected to pay those reparations? Huh? As Mr. Caruba so clearly pointed out – they’re all dead! Maybe better schools, yes, and a better public education system in this country would have made it clear to American scholars the plain and simple fact that there is hardly a human being alive, of any race, who cannot trace his/her ancestry back to slavery… somewhere on this earth. We ALL come from ancestors who, at one time or another, were slaves. Heck, we even have countries, and nationalities of people, whose very names derive from the word “slave.” And, just for the heck of it, check the pigment in their skin.

Now if some folks want to press the issue of reparations shouldn't we discuss what we owe to those folks we call today “Native-Americans”?

Now, maybe I’m being overly sensitive about this but, in all honesty, it surely does seem to me that Americans would be better served if the Congress would seriously look for solutions to modern day problems such as bankrupting the nation, and our children, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren with their nationalization of America’s financial system and auto-making industry and the frightening speed with which they are tossing democracy overboard in favor of socialism, which has a proven record of failure, massive failure, everywhere it has been tried as a basis for society.

But, I suppose we shouldn’t expect too much from our current crop of “leaders.” I mean - they DID buy into the hoax of man-made global warming. Oh, yes, they bit –line, hook and sinker! And the American taxpayer is about to receive the bills for that, too.

I am of the opinion it is way past time for America to stop apologizing for doing all the things that made this nation great and much of the world green with envy, rather than as a result of recycling our trash! I am more than convinced that an American President ought not condemn the people of the country he/she represents by offering apologies to other nations on behalf of his own country while overseas – especially when a vast majority, or even a large minority, actually feels no remorse and no need to make such an apology. It is disingenuous, and it is certainly dishonest, and frankly, lacks the hallmark of “good taste.” It is, as an earlier generation of Americans would have said: “unseemly.”

J. D. Longstreet

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*Conservative+Apology+Slavery+Reparations+Congress

Are We Running Out of Oil - or NOT?

Are We Running Out of Oil… Or Not???

A commentary by J. D. Longstreet

**********************************

If one listens to the MSM one will believe that the world is going to run out of oil next week! Everything will come to a grinding halt. The economy will crash… everything will end! Typical “Chicken Little” stuff.

Well, I don’t believe it.

I haven’t gotten around to researching whether oil is a renewable resource or not. Some say yes… while others say it is not and, that the supply of oil is finite. I simply don’t know… yet. I haven’t researched it.

In the meantime I did find some interesting info over at the National Center for Policy Analysis. You can visit them and take a look at the info they have posted there which seems to bolster the fact that we are nowhere near depleting our oil supply. Visit them at:

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/index.html#c

I gleaned some interesting tidbits such as:

"Oil shales may hold another 14,000 billion barrels of crude oil -- a 500 year supply."

Did that shock you?

Well check this out from the web site of the National Center for Policy Analysis:

“Scaremongers are fond of reminding us that the total amount of oil in the Earth is finite and cannot be replaced during the span of human life. This is true; yet estimates of the world’s total oil endowment have grown faster than humanity can pump petroleum out of the ground. The Growing Endowment of Oil.Estimates of the total amount of oil resources in the world grew throughout the 20th century.

In May 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the world’s total endowment of oil amounted to 60 billion barrels.

In 1950, geologists estimated the world’s total oil endowment at around 600 billion barrels.

From 1970 through 1990, their estimates increased to between 1,500 and 2,000 billion barrels.

In 1994, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the estimate to 2,400 billion barrels, and their most recent estimate (2000) was of a 3,000-billion-barrel endowment.

By the year 2000, a total of 900 billion barrels of oil had been produced. Total world oil production in 2000 was 25 billion barrels. If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered, the world’s oil supply will not be exhausted until the year 2056.”

There is much more info on this site. For instance:

Additional Petroleum Resources: The estimates above do not include unconventional oil resources. Conventional oil refers to oil that is pumped out of the ground with minimal processing; unconventional oil resources consist largely of tar sands and oil shales that require processing to extract liquid petroleum. Unconventional oil resources are very large. In the future, new technologies that allow extraction of these unconventional resources likely will increase the world’s reserves.

Oil production from tar sands in Canada and South America would add about 600 billion barrels to the world’s supply.

Rocks found in the three western states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone contain 1,500 billion barrels of oil.

Worldwide, the oil-shale resource base could easily be as large as 14,000 billion barrels — more than 500 years of oil supply at year 2000 production rates.

Unconventional oil resources are more expensive to extract and produce, but we can expect production costs to drop with time as improved technologies increase efficiency.

(From the National Center for policy Analysis)

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/index.html#c

There is lots more info the inquiring mind can chew over on that site.

I suppose, if anything, this should give us all pause to re-think our Gas Shortage. It is being sold by the MSM as a crude oil shortage when in fact we have plenty of crude. What we don’t have in the US is refineries! We need two or three times as many as we have…. and soon. But, unless Congress steps in and forces the EPA to back off some of it’s hamstringing rules so the petroleum industry can build new refineries then we have only begun to feel the pinch at the pumps!

J. D. Longstreet

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Oil+Supply+Increasing+Decreasing+Fear+Crisis