‘Alan Caruba’ Archives
Who Will Be Mitt’s VP?
BY ALAN CARUBA It’s still early in the Republican primary season and Rick Santorum has done very well in the Midwest, so it is time to ask, who will be Mitt Romney’s vice president choice? Okay, so some of you are saying Mitt will not be the GOP choice, but play along with me just the same. Newt Gingrich/Rep. Ron Paul: Neither of these [...]
Little Green Morons
BY ALAN CARUBA Michael Brune, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, holds degrees in economics and finance from West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Coming Clean—Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal”, published in 2008 by the Sierra Club. Recently, Brune bragged that he and the board had turned [...]
Taking Hostages: Tehran in 1979—Cairo in 2012
BY ALAN CARUBA As someone who vividly recalls the Iranian “students” who took our diplomats hostage in 1979 and the 444 days it took to get them back, the repeat of this by the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, putting 19 pro-democracy, non-government organization (NGO) Americans on trial on trumped up charges has an ugly repetitive feel to [...]
I’m Outta Here
BY ALAN CARUBA Those who follow politics more intently than I will no doubt be able to identify why, specifically, various incumbent Senators and Representatives have decided not to run for office in the 2012 elections, but as of this writing 43 incumbents have made it known they will not seek reelection. Among the one hundred members of the [...]
Not If, But When
BY ALAN CARUBA The Jewish sage, Hillel, said, “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.” This has been interpreted to mean that it is an obligation to stand against evil, even if other’s courage dissert them. One doesn’t have to be a historian, a military strategist, a biblical scholar or any other credentialed expert [...]
Syria: Dictatorship 101
BY ALAN CARUBA A bit of Syrian history will prove useful as the world looks on while Syrians are slaughtered in the thousands to ensure that Bashar al-Assad, the son of the late Hafez al-Assad remains that nation’s dictator. Hafez came to power in a bloodless military coup in 1970. A year later he assumed the presidency, beginning three [...]
Defending Jesus and Judaism
By Alan Caruba As a book reviewer I receive countless requests to read books and, when I received one regarding “Kosher Jesus” by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, I was intrigued by the title. In addition to fathering nine children, the rabbi has written 27 books, is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and the profile on his website is [...]
Signing Global Warming’s Certificate of Death
By Alan Caruba The sixteen names of the scientists who jointly signed the article in The Wall Street Journal, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” on January 27th are mostly unknown to the general public. Perhaps the best known would be Harrison H. Schmidt, a former Apollo 17 astronaut and U.S. Senator. Others might recognize Burt [...]
Bush Administration Warnings on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Ignored by Democrats
ALAN CARUBA, FACTS NOT FANTASY Bush Administration Warnings on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Ignored by Democrats. Watch Video here. The Moral Liberal Feature Writer, Alan Caruba, blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.
Dumb and Dumber, Watching TV
By Alan Caruba I am pretty sure that, in their heyday, the Three Stooges, were looked down upon as low comedy by some folks. To this day, I still do. The truth is, however, even chimpanzees yuck it up when one of their fellow primates falls out of the tree. Since we share a great deal of our DNA in common with them it should come as no surprise [...]
The Insanity of Protecting Rats
BY ALAN CARUBA Going back to the 1980s I have worked professionally with elements of the pest control industry providing public relations services The process of educating the public is necessary because new generations must be informed of the threats pests pose to health and property. Back when it was still known as the National Pest [...]
The New American Elite
By Alan Caruba The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the last century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans as well as of millions around the world. Let me put it [...]
Working Into the Grave
BY ALAN CARUBA Believe it or not, there was a time when, if you turned 65 and retired, you could expect to live in reasonable comfort. Social Security covered a portion of your expenses; your savings account yielded a modest amount of interest, and, if you had made investments, stock dividends provided a safety cushion. Not so [...]
Auschwitz: Ignoring History, Predicting the Future
BY ALAN CARUBA The late Israeli scholar and diplomat, Abba Eban, (1915-2002) said, “History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” Similarly, Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.” In [...]
Stupid Voters
By Alan Caruba It’s a comment I hear all the time these days. “The voters are stupid.” I am not sure that those saying it mean literally that the voters have a low level of intellect or academic achievement, but rather that they mean voters seem prone to making their choices based more on emotion than on a serious examination of the [...]
How to Listen to Obama’s State of the Union Speech
By Alan Caruba The Tuesday morning post of the Heritage Foundation’s “Morning Bell” is worth sharing in part. You can read the whole post here. “Tonight, Americans who tune in to the State of the Union will watch the work of a rhetorical master with a flair for illusion,” says Mike Brownfield. “President Barack Obama will take [...]
Liberal Lunacy
By Alan Caruba Conservative commentators read what liberals have to say if only to get a glimpse into their current memes on various topics. It is always daunting because one cannot do this without coming away convinced that they are lunatics, devoid of any sense of history or reality, both of which they routinely invent to defend their [...]
35 Reasons Why Obama Will Lose in 2012
By Alan Caruba One could make a very long list of reasons why Barack Obama will lose in the November election. Here’s a short list why Obama has already worn out his welcome among the majority of Americans, including some of those who formerly supported him. As Obama delivers his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, his theme will be [...]
Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy
By Alan Caruba It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world’s greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of [...]
Whatever Happened to…?
By Alan Caruba In the run-up to the South Carolina primary election on Saturday, it strikes me that the overwhelming coverage of the campaign process has shoved some important stories to the sidelines. There is noticeably little coverage of the nation’s obscene unemployment problem; one that is comparable to the Great Depression. With [...]
Obama’s Keystone Debacle
By Alan Caruba Future historians may conclude that President Obama’s decision to reject a permit for the building of the XL Keystone pipeline was a key factor in his defeat for a second term in 2012. One can only hope that, in the course of the campaign, Republicans will focus public attention on the deliberate “no energy” policies of [...]
Obama’s “Fairness” is Pure Communism
By Alan Caruba It is clear that Barack Obama’s main campaign theme is going to be about “fairness.” This is one of those words like “hope” and “change” that can mean many different things to different people. No one can ever accuse Obama of clarity. He is a consummate sloganeer, but the results of those slogans hardly represent [...]
The U.S. is on a Suicide Watch
By Alan Caruba In 1991, the Soviet Union, arguably the greatest experiment in Communism, collapsed. After Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors moved to shift its Communist economy to one that embraced Capitalism while retaining centralized government control. Following World War Two, the recovering nations of Europe were rescued from [...]
Obama’s “Fairness” is Pure Communism
By Alan Caruba It is clear that Barack Obama’s main campaign theme is going to be about “fairness.” This is one of those words like “hope” and “change” that can mean many different things to different people. No one can ever accuse Obama of clarity. He is a consummate sloganeer, but the results of those slogans hardly represent [...]
Obama Weakens Military
BY ALAN CARUBA “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, plan for war. The adage is attributed to the 4th or 5th century Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus’s tract De Re Militari book 3. This fundamental wisdom is being ignored by President Obama, one of two recent Commanders-in-Chief who never spent a day in uniform, let [...]
Obama Has Failed African Americans
MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY, ALAN CARUBA It is always a difficult endeavor for a White man to write about the African American—Black—population. The suspicion of prejudice always lingers, but it must also be said that many White people, particularly those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, are seriously disappointed with him and, not [...]
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — January 16
By Alan Caruba I have to marvel that it has been 44 years since I heard the news that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.had been assassinated. I met him once, briefly. It is the rare individual who changes the heart of a nation, but Dr. King did that. Here are a few quotes. You can read others. If you do, you will discover what an extraordinary [...]
Did You Know Homeland Security is Monitoring the Internet?
By Alan Caruba One of the lessons one learns in military basic training is “situational awareness”, a term that reflects the importance of watchfulness in combat. It can mean the difference between life and death. Police practice this as well, looking for people who seem out of place in a neighborhood. The average citizen blithely [...]
Election Year Reality and Insanity
By Alan Caruba There is something about an election year that seems to bring out the worst in a lot of people. Having settled on a candidate, they defame the opponents and the motives of those that support them. This is greatly aided by the charges that fly backward and forward among the primary candidates themselves. It’s not pretty, but it [...]
Ice Age “News” is Wrong–It’s Coming Sooner Than Later
By Alan Caruba When you consider the millions of words published as “news” about global warming, a massive hoax based on the theory that an increase in the Earth’s levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), a minor atmospheric gas (0.0380%), it boggles the mind that reporters for a respected newswire, Reuters, would still be writing utter rubbish [...]
Republicans! Stop Looking for a Messiah!
By Alan Caruba In 2008 the voters gave the Oval Office to a man who Rush Limbaugh and others mockingly called “the messiah” for his grandiose rhetoric and promises of change. If the first two primaries are any indication, Republican Party voters seem to be looking for their own messiah, a perfect candidate, and no such person [...]
Barack Machiavelli
By Alan Caruba The Founding Fathers, authors of the Constitution, were obsessed with any form of government that could become too powerful, too willing to use force to oppress citizens. They had cause. They had fought a long war against the greatest power of their age, ruled by a king with nearly absolute power. They fashioned an instrument [...]
They’re Determined to Scare You
By Alan Caruba In 1990 I founded The National Anxiety Center as a clearinghouse for information about scare campaigns designed to influence public opinion and policies. I have spent the time since then doing what I could to educate the public, but the lesson learned is that old scares often do not die even when debunked, and new ones are always [...]
EPA’s Killer MACT
By Alan Caruba To understand how the Environmental Protection Agency operates, one must first understand that it lies all the time. Its “estimates” are bogus. Its claims of lives saved are bogus. It thrives on scare-mongering to a public that is science-challenged, but the science remains and the EPA must be challenged to save the nation [...]
Political Analysis Paralysis
By Alan Caruba Leading up to the Iowa caucuses and following in the wake of their results, the cable news channels and every other news media engaged in a paroxysm of political analysis, interviewing the candidates incessantly from the early hours of the morning until late at night. I suspect that for many Americans this excess of analysis [...]
2012 Middle East Scenarios
By Alan Caruba A bit of history—the troubles we are seeing today in the Middle East actually began following the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War One. The 1919 Versailles Treaty that followed carved up the Middle East into colonies to be controlled by England and France, each with their figurehead monarchs. The Arabs involved had no [...]
America’s Dark Mood
By Alan Caruba It is possible for an entire nation to suffer depression? Not the financial, but the emotional kind. I have not spoken to anyone, however, that has expressed any optimism about the state of the nation and the air is full of conspiracy theories regarding what new action Barack Obama might take. The most popular of these is that [...]
Obama’s War on U.S. Energy
By Alan Caruba The Iowa caucuses tell us that the campaign season is now upon us. While we focus on the Republican candidates, there will likely only be one Democratic candidate for president. If you still need a reason to defeat Obama in 2012 consider his administration’s intense effort to deprive America of the energy it needs to function [...]
How Not to Go Crazy in 2012
By Alan Caruba Election years tend to create a level of frenzy concerning the selection of the nominees and the outcome. The media feed this in order to keep readers reading and viewers viewing. The history of American elections has always been one of vituperation between the parties, so there is nothing new about this. Indeed, since so much [...]
The Grand Panjandrum of Pundits
By Alan Caruba It’s a little known event, perhaps because its participants want it that way, but as the new year is poised to begin, the Grand Panjandrum of Pundits gathered at an undisclosed location for their annual review of all the predictions they made regarding things that did not occur, all the events that did occur—taking them by [...]
The Magical Mental Exercise Called Reading
By Alan Caruba In 1942 my parents purchased a home in a picture-postcard suburban New Jersey community and the first improvement they made was to have bookshelves installed on the rear wall of the living room along with more in one corner. They had brought a lot of books with them and anticipated reading many more. The living room was a [...]
Media Whips Up Phony Iowa Primary Frenzy
By Alan Caruba We are, once again, witnessing what the media does best, whipping up a public frenzy over an event or, in the present case, the primary elections they are seeking to influence. The most current example is the forthcoming Iowa caucuses and, as Michael Barone noted in a December 27 Wall Street Journal commentary, Iowa is hardly [...]
2012′s State of the World
By Alan Caruba "Only the Dead have seen the End of War" – Plato For myself and a lot of other Americans, the killing of Osama bin Laden was the highpoint of 2011. A decade has passed since nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. He was found in an army town in Pakistan. Meanwhile the war in Afghanistan grinds on for no [...]
The 2012 Check List for America’s Survival
By Alan Caruba Many people make resolutions to start the year, but I think a list of things that must be done to protect and preserve the Republic should be tallied. 1. President Obama must be defeated in 2012 and the obstructionist Democratic Party must lose power in the Senate to ensure both houses of Congress will be Republican and in a [...]
US Navy’s Lesbian Kiss Makes Waves
By Alan Caruba For generations of Americans, the most famous kiss between a Navy sailor and a nurse occurred during the celebration of V-J Day in New York’s Times Square on August 14, 1945. The photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt was published in Life magazine a week later. It said everything you needed to know about the joy with which the nation [...]
The UN’s Global Warming Absurdity
By Alan Caruba The 17th United Nations conference on climate change, i.e. global warming, has concluded in Durban, South Africa, coincidently the site of UN human rights conferences that were entirely devoted to attacking the right of Israel to exist. I am sure Durban is lovely place to visit, but the city fathers should consider withdrawing [...]
Running the USA into the Ground
By Alan Caruba I needed a mattress cover so I went over to the local dollar store today and discovered they have them in every size but twin. I returned home. I went online to Bed, Bath and beyond. With a few keystrokes I not only had the exact item I wanted, I also received an email confirmation of the sale and a notice that once shipped, I [...]
Pundits, Primaries and Polls
By Alan Caruba In the event you did not read about it at the time, the Prohibition Party met in June 2011 and nominated Jack Fellure as their presidential candidate. The Socialist Party USA held their convention in October, nominating Stewart Alexander. The Constitution Party will meet in April and the Libertarian party will gather in May 2012. [...]
No Newt, Now or Ever
By Alan Caruba Back in March I wrote about “The Newt-ster” and ended by saying, “I like the Newt-ster. I just don’t want him to run.” I still don’t. As Speaker of the House and since, Newt’s legislative record has been all over the political spectrum. He has long been known to have various enthusiasms that he later [...]
Leaving Iraq
By Alan Caruba War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no [...]
