Wednesday, December 24, 2008
The Roaring Twenties & the Roaring Nineties ... by Alan Caruba
The Roaring Twenties & the Roaring Nineties
By Alan Caruba
***********************My Mother was a “flapper”, one of the girls during the Roaring Twenties of the last century. She didn’t need a woman’s movement to assert herself. She drove a car, held down a job, but—I was assured—did not dance on table tops, nor smoke, nor anything else that today would be taken for granted. She married a Certified Public Accountant and that tells you what a level-headed a girl she was. They stayed married for over sixty years. She would live to age 98!
I was thinking of the Roaring Twenties because, in so many ways that reflect the extremes of those times, the same illusions of ceaseless growth and spending, have come to an end. For Mom, Dad and everyone else of their generation, they could tell you the precise date, October 29, 1929 when the stock market crashed.
Now, almost eighty years later, we are repeating that generation’s experience with harsh reality. The generation that survives this economic and financial mess will emerge as real adults in the true sense of the word. They will save money for their old age. They will be parsimonious in the use of credit. They will be the Wal-Mart generation.
During World War II, my parents made their greatest purchase, a home in the New Jersey suburbs, a short train ride from New York City. The house cost $11,000. Twice they would take out second mortgages to put my older brother and then myself through college, paying off both as rapidly as possible. After they passed on, I would sell the home at more than a dollar sign with six digits just a few years before the bottom fell out of the economy. Thank you, Mom and Dad.
I did not marry. Instead, after college, the Army, and a job in Florida that I quit the day JFK was assassinated, I returned home thinking I would get a place of my own. I stayed on and on. Before I knew it, the three of us had spent just slightly more than sixty happy years together. Mother was famed as an international authority on haute cuisine and wines. She wrote several cookbooks and taught for some three decades. Dad had a small, but successful accounting practice that my brother joined.
I think, in all that time, they took maybe two actual vacations. Their home was their castle and they loved entertaining friends at the dinner table. The wine flowed, the conversation flowed, and the food was superb. I just soaked it all in.
What I remember most was that these two people were adults in every sense of the word. St. Paul writes in Corinthians, when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
The Great Depression turned my parents into adults. When it was over, they took great joy in their lives and we had all the material things that gave Americans a great lifestyle in the decades that followed World War II (Dad was too young for WWI and too old to serve in WWII), but always lingering in the back of their minds was the struggle of the long decade of the 1930s and the sacrifices of the 1940s in response to the war. There was gas rationing. You needed government issued stamps to buy meat, sugar and other items. People grew vegetables in “victory gardens” in their backyards.
This present younger generation, the Millennials born between 1980 and 2000, are going to be a lot like my parents and their grandparents who had to persevere through those difficult times. Their children will be the real beneficiaries even if they won’t realize it until they too are adults with children of their own.
Americans have been through hard times before and they will come through the present difficulties. Some industries that did not or would not change will pass from the scene or be reduced in size. Others will grow in response to the times. We may well see far less business travel as communications allow people to hold virtual meetings. Vacations may take place closer to home.
In time, Americans may realize just how important their energy industries are to the nation’s economy and put aside childish notions of “clean” or “Green” energies like wind or solar. Talk of “global warming” will fade as a Little Ice Age sets in again, much as the last one did from 1300 to 1850. People will discover that electric cars are just too expensive to justify their purchase. Much disparaged family values may assert themselves.
The same exaggerated expectations of the 1920s, albeit with a new set of enemies, will be replaced with a more realistic sense of how the world really works as this new century wears on. There is much talk of “globalization”, but my parent’s world was no less connected to and impacted by nations far from our shores. Nothing happens in Beijing, in Baghdad, in Berlin, in Moscow or Mali that does not affect us all in some way.
We will still need to have a strong military. Ronald Reagan said that no nation in history was ever attacked because it was too strong. We will still need to tap our own natural resources, to repeal the massive regulatory chokehold on the economy, to return education to the states and local communities, and away from the straight jacket of federal mandates.
These are lessons that each generation must learn again and again and again. Hard times seem to be the only way they reassert themselves.
Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, http://www.anxietycenter.com/.
I was thinking of the Roaring Twenties because, in so many ways that reflect the extremes of those times, the same illusions of ceaseless growth and spending, have come to an end. For Mom, Dad and everyone else of their generation, they could tell you the precise date, October 29, 1929 when the stock market crashed.
Now, almost eighty years later, we are repeating that generation’s experience with harsh reality. The generation that survives this economic and financial mess will emerge as real adults in the true sense of the word. They will save money for their old age. They will be parsimonious in the use of credit. They will be the Wal-Mart generation.
During World War II, my parents made their greatest purchase, a home in the New Jersey suburbs, a short train ride from New York City. The house cost $11,000. Twice they would take out second mortgages to put my older brother and then myself through college, paying off both as rapidly as possible. After they passed on, I would sell the home at more than a dollar sign with six digits just a few years before the bottom fell out of the economy. Thank you, Mom and Dad.
I did not marry. Instead, after college, the Army, and a job in Florida that I quit the day JFK was assassinated, I returned home thinking I would get a place of my own. I stayed on and on. Before I knew it, the three of us had spent just slightly more than sixty happy years together. Mother was famed as an international authority on haute cuisine and wines. She wrote several cookbooks and taught for some three decades. Dad had a small, but successful accounting practice that my brother joined.
I think, in all that time, they took maybe two actual vacations. Their home was their castle and they loved entertaining friends at the dinner table. The wine flowed, the conversation flowed, and the food was superb. I just soaked it all in.
What I remember most was that these two people were adults in every sense of the word. St. Paul writes in Corinthians, when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
The Great Depression turned my parents into adults. When it was over, they took great joy in their lives and we had all the material things that gave Americans a great lifestyle in the decades that followed World War II (Dad was too young for WWI and too old to serve in WWII), but always lingering in the back of their minds was the struggle of the long decade of the 1930s and the sacrifices of the 1940s in response to the war. There was gas rationing. You needed government issued stamps to buy meat, sugar and other items. People grew vegetables in “victory gardens” in their backyards.
This present younger generation, the Millennials born between 1980 and 2000, are going to be a lot like my parents and their grandparents who had to persevere through those difficult times. Their children will be the real beneficiaries even if they won’t realize it until they too are adults with children of their own.
Americans have been through hard times before and they will come through the present difficulties. Some industries that did not or would not change will pass from the scene or be reduced in size. Others will grow in response to the times. We may well see far less business travel as communications allow people to hold virtual meetings. Vacations may take place closer to home.
In time, Americans may realize just how important their energy industries are to the nation’s economy and put aside childish notions of “clean” or “Green” energies like wind or solar. Talk of “global warming” will fade as a Little Ice Age sets in again, much as the last one did from 1300 to 1850. People will discover that electric cars are just too expensive to justify their purchase. Much disparaged family values may assert themselves.
The same exaggerated expectations of the 1920s, albeit with a new set of enemies, will be replaced with a more realistic sense of how the world really works as this new century wears on. There is much talk of “globalization”, but my parent’s world was no less connected to and impacted by nations far from our shores. Nothing happens in Beijing, in Baghdad, in Berlin, in Moscow or Mali that does not affect us all in some way.
We will still need to have a strong military. Ronald Reagan said that no nation in history was ever attacked because it was too strong. We will still need to tap our own natural resources, to repeal the massive regulatory chokehold on the economy, to return education to the states and local communities, and away from the straight jacket of federal mandates.
These are lessons that each generation must learn again and again and again. Hard times seem to be the only way they reassert themselves.
Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, http://www.anxietycenter.com/.
*************************
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
America Needs To Regain Control Of Her Congress. Here's How.
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America Needs To Regain Control Of Her Congress. Here's How.
By J. D. Longstreet
*********************
By J. D. Longstreet
*********************
If you are a US Congressperson or a US Senator, I expect you are deep into a fit of apoplexy right about now and you are unable to read the remainder of this article. However, if you are a “normal” American you are still vertical and wondering how such a thing is done.
Well, the simplicity of it is underwhelming, to say the least.
I’ve been thinking about this since my high school days when a Congressperson was introduced to the students of my school as a “Public Servant”. In the naivete of my youth I thought servant meant “one who serves.” Further, I thought a public servant was “one who served the public.” Do you see how misled I was in those oh, so innocent days?
Well, the simplicity of it is underwhelming, to say the least.
I’ve been thinking about this since my high school days when a Congressperson was introduced to the students of my school as a “Public Servant”. In the naivete of my youth I thought servant meant “one who serves.” Further, I thought a public servant was “one who served the public.” Do you see how misled I was in those oh, so innocent days?
Even then I thought it approaching corruption to actually pay someone to serve the public in such a manner as a Congressperson, a Senator, a President, and such like.
There is a way around this and it is an honorable solution to the problem. Not to mention that after the original outlay of funds, the cost to the taxpayers of financing a national legislature would be practically nothing when compared to the costs today.
First, we need to construct a Congressional Compound. A building, or complex of buildings, with four room apartments in them. Each apartment would consist of a bedroom, sitting room, kitchen, and an office. Each Congressperson and Senator would be assigned an apartment in which he, or she, would reside while in Washington on national business. When in Washington on private business. he, or she, would have to finance their own living accommodations. (Motel or hotel) The "dormitory" would only be available when the law maker was in town on business for the nation. There would be no cost to the legislator for residing in the dorm. The CC would have a cafeteria for meals and would even provide room service to the congressperson's apartment (or "suite", if you prefer) The legislator would be provided with vouchers for meals which he, or she could receive in either of the capital cafeterias. These voucher's would be used only when the legislator was in town on national business.
There would be a parking complex at the CC for those who prefer to have their personal transportation with them while in town serving the nation. A fleet of shuttle buses would be available, 24 hours a day, to transport the legislators back and forth from their dorm to the capital for business sessions of the House or the Senate or for committee meetings, hearings, and such.
Now, I understand that we cannot expect them to serve with absolutely no pay. well, we CAN expect them to, but that is not realistic. So, since the people of the several states have chosen these people to represent THEM and THEIR interests while in DC, I submit the states should be responsible for any remuneration for the duties performed for the states. In other words, leave it to the states to decide how much to pay THEIR Congresspersons and Senators... NOT the people of the United States.
The states could use any number of formulas for arriving at a figure. One simple formula
is to take the highest salary in the state and the lowest salary in the state... toss them out , them average the remainder... and the average figure would be the salary of the legislator. Of course, the formula , and the salary figure would have to be approved by the voters. There would be no cost of living increases until the state legislature proposed them and the voters approved them.
Transportation to DC from the states would be provided my the state's National Guard on that state's National Guard aircraft. Of course, the legislator would be free to choose his, or her, own mode of transportation to and from DC at his, or her, own expense. Any traveling on official business connected directly to his, or her, duties as a Congressperson, or Senator, would be on military aircraft. (Currently we the people of the US are paying the Congress somewhere in the area of 93 million dollars a year in salaries... not including all the perks.)
Now, I've just scratched the surface here, and believe me, I know this is simplistic as all get-out! But, it seems to me that we have to do something to get back to the idea that Public Service is just that: SERVICE. Career politicians are killing this country. As things stand, currently, our national legislators are riding the gravy train and they know it.
One other thing: I think the states should be allowed to decide how many terms their national legislators should be allowed to serve. That would require a constitutional amendment, I know, as would a goodly portion of what I have proposed above.
The point in all this , for me is, we the people, need to regain control of our government. The best starting point, as I see it, is to hit them in their wallets, just as they have been doing to us for lo, these many years.It's time to remind Congress who the boss is.
J. D. Longstreet
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Monday, December 22, 2008
Congress To Get Raise ! You’re Kidding, Right?
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Congress To Get Raise ! You’re Kidding, Right?By J. D. Longstreet
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If not the worst Congress this nation has ever had, certainly the current Congress ranks among the top two worst congresses in the history of the US. No matter. They are scheduled for an automatic pay raise next month. For an excellent article on this topic we recommend you read: “Congress Should Reject $4,700 Pay Raise, Taxpayers' and Seniors’ Groups Say” . You’ll find it by CLICKING HERE .
With this raise the Members of Congress will be jumping from $169, 300.00 per year to $174,000.00 dollars per year. That’s just their salary. It doesn’t include all the other little goodies they get over and above the loot in their pay envelopes.
You know, if I were a member of this Congress, I’d be ashamed to take my regular pay let alone stick my hand out for an additional $4,700.00! With an approval rating of 19 or 20% they must surely be nearing a record for disapproval ratings of any modern Congress.
Back in July of this year according to Gallop polls Congress did, in fact, set a records, of sorts, with a 14% approval rating. That was the lowest congressional job approval rating in the 34-year Gallup Poll history of asking the question. For details Click Here.
Now they want a raise? Yes, they do. And… they’ll get it thanks to a 1989 amendment allowing for automatic raises… unless they vote, specifically, reject the raise.
So, who, exactly decides how much Congress is paid? CONGRESS! Oh, yes! They tell themselves how much they are to be paid. It’s the law! Article One Section Six of the US Constitution states the following: Section 6. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. Dang! How sweet is THAT!
Up until 1969 Congress had to pass a law every time they wanted a pay raise. Well, it wasn’t a LAW, exactly. It was a piece of legislation…. or law… whichever. Whatever they set their salaries at with that piece of legislation… it stayed at that level until ANOTHER piece of legislation was passed to raise the amount again. Each time Congress desired a raise they had to go out, in front of God and everybody, and vote themselves a pay raise. Sort of humbling, don’t you know. The record shows that Congress voted itself 22 pay raises from 1789 through 1968 by passing a single piece of legislation for each pay raise. And… they can STILL do it that way, if they so choose. In fact they did so choose in 1982, 1983, 1989, and again in 1991.
There is another way Congress can raise its pay and that is through a recommendation form something called a Quadrennial Salary Commission. Never heard of them? neither had I. See, what they do is… recommend pay raises for high level federal officials. Guess what? Congress established the commission back in 1967. (How’d you guess?) Then Congress raised its pay three times, in 1969, 1977, and 1987 using this procedure. (Slick, what?)
There is yet ANOTHER way Congress can raise its pay. In 1975 Congress set up something called a comparability increase. It relies on annual adjustments in their pay when those, uh, “adjustments” are compared to pay raises that federal government employees receive. This whole thing is based on a recommendation the President makes to the Congress. The Congress can then either approve it, turn it down, or they can modify it. And… wouldn’t you just know it! Congress used this method to give themselves hefty raises in 1975, 1979, 1984, 1985 and again in 1987.
Then in 1989 comes the Ethics Reform Act of 1989. Sam Hanna, Jr. of the Ouachita Citizen writes the following: “Almost 20 years ago, Congress approved the Ethics Reform Act of 1989. The act called for adopting a formula using changes in private sector wages and salaries per the Employment Cost Index to determine the annual compensation for members of Congress and other high-level federal officials. In laymen's terms, the act provides for an annual pay raise for members of Congress based on a rise (real or not) in salaries earned by people working in the private sector. Or in other words, as Joe Six Pack works harder and harder to hopefully earn more money, Congress gets a pay raise as well.” You can read Mr. Hanna’s entire article by CLICKING HERE .
Remembering that they, the Congress, had the power to accept, modify, or reject any pay raise coming their way, the Congress accepted pay raises under the Ethics Reform Act of 1989 in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008. If my math is correct, that is twelve pay raises accepted under the Ethics Reform Act of 1989… with a tip of the hat to the Employment Cost Index, of course.
Let us remember that Congress, as Mr. Hanna points out in his exceptional article, enjoys “some of the best health care coverage and retirement compensation known to man, and those perks are not included in the annual pay check members receive.”
So. As we survey the financial mess our economy finds itself in today, and considering that the Congress must shoulder much, if not most, of the blame for the mess, should Congress even consider raising its own pay? I think not. In fact, I would support requiring them to give at least half of the last two years salaries back to the US Treasury.
If the Congress has any sensitivity, at all, to the financial plight in which the country finds itself today, they will certainly, with no hesitation, refuse to accept ANY raise in pay this coming January. But don’t hold your breath waiting for them to turn down money!
J. D. Longstreet
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Conservative+Congress+Raise+Pay+Disapproval
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Socialism In America... Looking Back
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This article ran in June of 2008. If it seems dated... that is why. ... ED
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Communism/Socialism/Democrat Party… No Difference in Their Platforms!
Does it bother you up that so many conservatives refer to the Democrat Party as Socialist? Then you are probably a Democrat/Liberal and, most likely, you have not taken the time to see if there is anything to the accusations, from the Right, that the Democrat Party has, over time, become a socialist party. Well calm yourself! We are here to help!
A few months ago, I received a “heads-up” from Alan Caruba of “The National Anxiety Center” and “Facts Not Fantasy” concerning an article written by Henry Lamb entitled: “Are the Communists Coming?” To read the article CLICK HERE
We urge you to take the few minutes to read Mr. Lamb’s enlightening article. It was posted in October of 2007. Here’s a snippet from the article:
“Should the 2008 elections go to the Democrats, as the Communist Party USA is working to accomplish, the direction of the nation will change dramatically. The direction will not be toward individual freedom, free enterprise, private property rights, and the pursuit of individual happiness. The direction will be toward the values of communism, which holds the state as the grantor of all rights, including socialized medicine through universal health care; amnesty for all illegal aliens who want to come to America; cradle-to-grave education by the state; surrender in Iraq; and acquiescence to all threats of violence; no right to own guns; and a state-assigned job for everyone.”
Mr. Lamb says the Communist Party, USA is working to get the Democrat Party elected in America. Why? Because the Communist Party’s platform and the Democrat Party’s platform are almost indistinguishable from each other! If that doesn’t scare you half to death… nothing will!
We have been preaching this for years now and it feels as though we're standing in a corner shouting at the wall. The words just bounce back with no impact on anyone else. Why is that? Simple: The American electorate has been so dumbed down by our American public education system that they simply don’t understand American politics, American law, the foundation of American freedom, namely the US Constitution, and they have not been taught the evils of Socialism and Communism, which for all intents and purposes, is the same thing. In other words, they have no fear of Communism! None! They will embrace Communism/socialism with open arms… and be crushed to death by those inviting arms of Communism and Socialism!
If the election indicators can be believed… America has just over seven months of freedom left. The Democrat candidates tell us, unashamedly; they intend to impose socialism on America. Oh, they don’t call it that, but those of us who grew up with worldwide socialism recognize it when we see it. Not to mention the 40, or so, years we actively fought it militarily and otherwise. That’s what the Cold War was about! And here… we thought we won that war!
It would seem we have, indeed, lost the Cold War from within… just as our old socialist enemies said we would. They told us over and over that they would win by taking over American from the inside! And if we maintain a democrat majority in the Congress and elect a democrat president in 2008, they will, indeed, have won… and America will be finished. Our Freedom will be lost! Why? Because we will have given it away as a direct result of our own ignorance and apathy!
Again, if you do not believe the Democrat Party and the Communist Party want the same things… then we urge you to read this article and do a tiny bit of research, on your own, and you will see the truth.
The plain truth is: the 2008 election will determine if America remains free or goes over to socialism and communism. It is as simple, and clear cut, as that!
J. D. Longstreet
**********************
Conservative+Freedom+Socialists+Speech+Constitution+Liberals
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Liar-elect and the Death of America ... By Alan Caruba
The Liar-elect and the Death of AmericaBy Alan Caruba
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Let’s understand something fundamental to everyone’s life in America and the entire economy. We are not “addicted” to oil. Like all developed, modern nations we use oil as a valuable resource for transportation, as the basis of plastics, and for a thousand uses from asphalt to Vaseline. We are not “addicted” to oil because it is essential to modern civilization everywhere.
Just because President Bush, whose family fortune was built on the oil industry, and now Barack Obama, President-elect, says we are addicted does not make that true, but Obama goes way beyond that statement to claim as he did in naming his energy and environmental team, that the world is running out of oil. That, too, is a lie.
The reason America must import oil is that, starting with President Jimmy Carter and in league with the U.S. Congress, access to our own billions of barrels have been forbidden by our lawmakers. We have the oil. Our oil industry is not allowed to explore for it or extract it.
Similarly, to suggest that somehow a nation that depends on its own abundant resources of coal for half of all the electricity generated should abandon that source of power in favor of solar or wind borders on either madness or a deliberate duplicity or both.
In all of the world, solar and wind accounts, as it does in the U.S., for barely one percent of all the electricity generated. Together or individually, they represent the single most inefficient, unpredictable, and unaffordable “energy alternatives” that exist today. They rank with ethanol as yet another bogus solution to “sustainability.”
As Obama introduced his energy and environmental team, all I saw was a lethal combination of ideologues and academics, all dedicated to a program of national suicide based on decades of lies about the actual science of climate change and energy use.
The notion that the United States should sign onto and accept the limitations on energy use incorporated in the Kyoto Protocols is yet another lie. On July 25, 1997 the U.S. Senate passed a unanimous resolution refusing to accept it and even the Clinton-Gore team, when in office, never offered it to the Senate for consideration.
But the Obama administration will send it and a Congress dominated by environmental loonies such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid, a host of California lawmakers, along with the utterly deluded John McCain and others, will ratify it.
The United Nations Kyoto Protocol is based on the global warming hoax. The fate of the United States will be tied to something that is not happening!
There is no need to limit “greenhouse gas emissions” because Carbon Dioxide plays virtually no role whatever in climate change. Fully 98% of CO2 is absorbed by the Earth.
The cost of our use of every form of energy will rise based on climate claims that are lies. A nation that is already wounded by the collapse of our financial system will be pushed further into the grave by such a measure. And Obama must surely know this.
That the President-elect could stand before Americans and claim that we are seeing increased famines, face rising oceans, and fiercer storms, and not be challenged is obscene.
And he will not be challenged by what has formerly been the bulwark of our democracy, the nation’s press. It is the nation’s press that has spread the lies of the environmental movement since the days of Rachel Carson’s screed against the use of any and all chemicals.
Those who witnessed the introduction of the Obama energy and environmental team witnessed the beginning of the most aggressive attack on the nation’s coal industry, oil and gas industry, and nuclear industry. When you control energy use, you control every other aspect of life in the nation.
As the oppression gains, there will be fewer trucks on the nation’s highways to deliver goods as restriction upon restriction piles up. It has already begun in California with literally insane restrictions on trucks using diesel. As goods become difficult to deliver, the nation’s economy will suffer further.
Life in America is going to become very grim.
The nation’s financial troubles will begin to pale as the government enacts more and more restrictions, even as it presently demands to decide what kind of cars Detroit auto manufacturers must make to receive an ill-conceived bailout. New industries and those seeking to expand will encounter obstacles. Already, multinational industries such as Foster-Wheeler, Tyco, and Transocean International, formerly with headquarters in America have left. Others will follow.
That is the “change” the Liar-elect will bring. It is the slow death of the most powerful nation, economically and militarily, on Earth and only our enemies will cheer it on.
Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
Let’s understand something fundamental to everyone’s life in America and the entire economy. We are not “addicted” to oil. Like all developed, modern nations we use oil as a valuable resource for transportation, as the basis of plastics, and for a thousand uses from asphalt to Vaseline. We are not “addicted” to oil because it is essential to modern civilization everywhere.
Just because President Bush, whose family fortune was built on the oil industry, and now Barack Obama, President-elect, says we are addicted does not make that true, but Obama goes way beyond that statement to claim as he did in naming his energy and environmental team, that the world is running out of oil. That, too, is a lie.
The reason America must import oil is that, starting with President Jimmy Carter and in league with the U.S. Congress, access to our own billions of barrels have been forbidden by our lawmakers. We have the oil. Our oil industry is not allowed to explore for it or extract it.
Similarly, to suggest that somehow a nation that depends on its own abundant resources of coal for half of all the electricity generated should abandon that source of power in favor of solar or wind borders on either madness or a deliberate duplicity or both.
In all of the world, solar and wind accounts, as it does in the U.S., for barely one percent of all the electricity generated. Together or individually, they represent the single most inefficient, unpredictable, and unaffordable “energy alternatives” that exist today. They rank with ethanol as yet another bogus solution to “sustainability.”
As Obama introduced his energy and environmental team, all I saw was a lethal combination of ideologues and academics, all dedicated to a program of national suicide based on decades of lies about the actual science of climate change and energy use.
The notion that the United States should sign onto and accept the limitations on energy use incorporated in the Kyoto Protocols is yet another lie. On July 25, 1997 the U.S. Senate passed a unanimous resolution refusing to accept it and even the Clinton-Gore team, when in office, never offered it to the Senate for consideration.
But the Obama administration will send it and a Congress dominated by environmental loonies such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid, a host of California lawmakers, along with the utterly deluded John McCain and others, will ratify it.
The United Nations Kyoto Protocol is based on the global warming hoax. The fate of the United States will be tied to something that is not happening!
There is no need to limit “greenhouse gas emissions” because Carbon Dioxide plays virtually no role whatever in climate change. Fully 98% of CO2 is absorbed by the Earth.
The cost of our use of every form of energy will rise based on climate claims that are lies. A nation that is already wounded by the collapse of our financial system will be pushed further into the grave by such a measure. And Obama must surely know this.
That the President-elect could stand before Americans and claim that we are seeing increased famines, face rising oceans, and fiercer storms, and not be challenged is obscene.
And he will not be challenged by what has formerly been the bulwark of our democracy, the nation’s press. It is the nation’s press that has spread the lies of the environmental movement since the days of Rachel Carson’s screed against the use of any and all chemicals.
Those who witnessed the introduction of the Obama energy and environmental team witnessed the beginning of the most aggressive attack on the nation’s coal industry, oil and gas industry, and nuclear industry. When you control energy use, you control every other aspect of life in the nation.
As the oppression gains, there will be fewer trucks on the nation’s highways to deliver goods as restriction upon restriction piles up. It has already begun in California with literally insane restrictions on trucks using diesel. As goods become difficult to deliver, the nation’s economy will suffer further.
Life in America is going to become very grim.
The nation’s financial troubles will begin to pale as the government enacts more and more restrictions, even as it presently demands to decide what kind of cars Detroit auto manufacturers must make to receive an ill-conceived bailout. New industries and those seeking to expand will encounter obstacles. Already, multinational industries such as Foster-Wheeler, Tyco, and Transocean International, formerly with headquarters in America have left. Others will follow.
That is the “change” the Liar-elect will bring. It is the slow death of the most powerful nation, economically and militarily, on Earth and only our enemies will cheer it on.
Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
*****************************
Friday, December 19, 2008
The Democracy Countdown
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Democracy Countdown by J.D. Longstreet
**********************
We have been ranting for some time now on the socialist takeover of the US government. If you are a regular reader of our frequent rants you know that we are convinced that the US is already committed to a socialist form of government replacing what is left of the democratic representative republic our founding fathers gave us with their blood.
We have been ranting for some time now on the socialist takeover of the US government. If you are a regular reader of our frequent rants you know that we are convinced that the US is already committed to a socialist form of government replacing what is left of the democratic representative republic our founding fathers gave us with their blood.
A while back, I wrote the following: “There has been a movement underway, in this country, which the Democratic Party adopted, way back in the fifties and sixties, to turn America into a socialist state like unto Europe. They have almost accomplished their goal.
For all intents and purposes, America is no longer a democratic republic. America has already become a socialist state. Those of us old codgers who remember when we were prepared to go to war to fight the spread of socialism cringe when we see how our country, America, has deteriorated into the black hole of socialism. We cringe when we hear today’s politicians, national leaders, as it were, spouting Marxist slogans from the floor of the national legislature. The national nightmare has become the American dream. Now we wait to see socialism suffocate the human spirit in Americans as it has already begun to do.
This was once, not very long ago, a land of unlimited possibilities…a land of new horizons everyday. No longer. We have chosen security over freedom. That’s all it took. Freedom is s fragile thing. One blow from the hammer of socialism and freedom shatters… and is no more.
For all intents and purposes, America is no longer a democratic republic. America has already become a socialist state. Those of us old codgers who remember when we were prepared to go to war to fight the spread of socialism cringe when we see how our country, America, has deteriorated into the black hole of socialism. We cringe when we hear today’s politicians, national leaders, as it were, spouting Marxist slogans from the floor of the national legislature. The national nightmare has become the American dream. Now we wait to see socialism suffocate the human spirit in Americans as it has already begun to do.
This was once, not very long ago, a land of unlimited possibilities…a land of new horizons everyday. No longer. We have chosen security over freedom. That’s all it took. Freedom is s fragile thing. One blow from the hammer of socialism and freedom shatters… and is no more.
Those of us who remember the REAL America weep for our country.”
Someone once said: “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.” I haven’t a clue as to who actually said it. Experience has taught us, however, that it IS true.
Socialism has failed, utterly, everywhere in the world it has been tried. The European nations have begun to awaken to this fact and are voting socialists out of public office. Here in America, we have just voted into office our first socialist President, if you don’t count FDR who actually iniated socialism into the American government.
Those of us in the American middle class are going to feel the brunt of Obama’s socialist policies. With a willing and compliant Congress of the same political party, and same political mind, he will get practically everything he seeks from them. Guess who will pay the bill? The middle class, that’s who.
We old veterans catch a lot of flack for our denouncement of socialism. Understand, this: My generation was trained to go to war against the socialist movement, if it became necessary. Today we are told we must stand down and accept it as the norm in America. If you think that is easy to do, then you totally misunderstand our commitment to democracy in America. You do not have inkling as to our commitment to the representative republic that was America.
Those of us who wore the military uniforms of America swore to uphold, to protect, and to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and/or domestic. Ask any of America’s military veterans and we will quickly tell you there was no expiration date on the oath we took.
One of our Founding Fathers, a fellow by the name of Thomas Jefferson said the following: “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, 'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.”
T. Coleman Andrews, a former US Commissioner of Internal Revenue, said the following back on May 25, 1956 in U.S. News & World Report: “I don't like the income tax. Every time we talk about these taxes we get around to the idea of 'from each according to his capacity and to each according to his needs'. That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him.”
And finally, a man I have admired all my life, Sir Winston Churchill, said this: “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.” I would ask you to consider Churchill's phrase ”the creed of ignorance.” It is my belief that ignorance is to blame for the United States government being in the hands of a socialist elite today and the underlying reason for the election of B.H. Obama to the Presidency of the US.
J. D. Longstreet
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