Asoloele Blog

By Alan Caruba

As the Vietnam War began to lose momentum for American troops, Sen. George Aiken suggested, “Let’s just declare victory and get out.” This is the way modern wars end.

President Obama noted the 4,400 troops that died in combat over seven and a half years in Iraq. He also made mention of American valor on Iwo Jima during World War Two. What he did not mention were the 26,000 troops that died taking Iwo Jima. Later, it was even worse during the invasion of Okinawa.

Historians noted that “Okinawa was the largest amphibious invasion of the Pacific campaign and the last major campaign of the Pacific War. More ships were used, more troops put ashore, more supplies transported, more bombs dropped, more naval guns fired against shore targets than any other operation in the Pacific.

More people died during the Battle of Okinawa than all those killed during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Casualties totaled more than 38,000 Americans wounded and 12,000 killed or missing, more than 107,000 Japanese and Okinawan conscripts killed, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians who perished in the battle.”

That should put our mission in Iraq in some wider perspective as the Commander-in-Chief assured Americans on the evening of August 31, 2010 that “All U.S. troops will leave by next year.”

This is in stark contrast to the fact that U.S. combat troops remain in Europe since 1945, in South Korea since 1953, and on land, sea and in the air, can be found representing U.S. interests on bases throughout the world. We shall be in Iraq when our grandchildren and great grandchildren are born.

In 2008, a majority of Americans seeking “hope and change” elected the most reluctant Commander-in-Chief in modern history and, as he changed the focus of his speech from our military missions to the nation’s economic crisis, the most incompetent Economist-in-Chief.

The speech was intended to clear Iraq and Afghanistan off the President’s very clean desktop in the Oval Office so his campaign for reelection can focus on the economy. Obama knows he can no longer blame it on George W. Bush.

Indeed, at one point he tried to tie the costs of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the reason for the economic crisis, but they are not. The crisis was based entirely in the collapse of the U.S. housing market, preceded by a curious electronic “run on the banks” during the 2008 election campaign that led to Obama’s election.

At one point he made brief mention of “A new push for peace in the Middle East” referring obliquely to the forthcoming Israeli-Palestinian talks. They will fail. The Palestinian Authority has already offered so many unrealistic demands that these talks like all that preceded them are pure theatre.

Unknown to Americans was another White House event earlier on Tuesday, August 31st. The Islamic Society of North America had announced it in its August 27 newsletter. Long associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the ISNA was an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial.

The Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations organized leaders of twenty national Muslim groups to attend “a special workshop” presented by the White House and U.S. government agencies (Agriculture, Education, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, etc) in order to provide these groups “special access” that would “cut through red tape” to facilitate federal funding.

Founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood is a global Islamist political movement dedicated to imposing Sharia law on all nations and institutions. Their credo is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leaders. Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

So, while the President marked the end of the combat mission in Iraq, it is folly to think that the Islamists have anything else in mind than total victory over the West.

After 9/11 George W. Bush did not send troops to Afghanistan and later to Iraq in order to ensure that Muslim groups in America could receive special attention to secure federal funds, but the White House of Barack Obama was tending to this while the President was putting the finishing touches on his speech announcing the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq that evening.

It makes you wonder what Obama’s priorities really are. It makes you wonder if you can trust anything he says.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

By Alan Caruba

The headlines report the way the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been lying and some, myself included, are calling for an end to this snakes’ nest of global deception.

I keep waiting for some environmental group to announce that the Earth is running out of oxygen. It’s the kind of huge lie that environmentalists of every description engage in. There’s plenty of oxygen and, despite the latest lies about carbon dioxide (CO2), the great oceans of the world are not turning into reservoirs of acidity. Together these two gases are the basis for all life on Earth.

If you remember nothing else, remember that any reference by anyone to “greenhouse gas emissions” involves the lie that they influence the weather or the world’s climate.

Since 1988, when the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the vast global warming hoax existed for two purposes, the enrich those involved and to impose a one world government. The effort required mobilizing the leaders of nations to spread the word that the planet was dramatically warming and that carbon dioxide was the cause.

One has to marvel at the audacity of this scam. There were so many parties that had to be involved that it boggles the mind to consider that a mere handful of alleged “climate scientists” who created the computer models and provided the falsified data were able to corrupt so many real scientists into collaborating. The prospect of vast amounts of governmental and foundation funding made the process easier.

The scientists who spoke out against it were labeled “deniers”, but they were the truth-tellers and it took years of effort, culminating in four international conferences to debunk the global warming hoax. It was not, however, until November 2009 with the leak of the conspirator’s emails that the truth became widespread.

This evil scheme was supported and continues to be supported by many world leaders. President Obama traveled to Copenhagen in December 2009 to participate in a UN conference that was intended to impose one-world government and more recently the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, made mention of “climate change”, the code words that replaced global warming.

The IPCC was so successful that at its height in 2007 it shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. This prize is now so worthless that future recipients may not wish to be so honored.

Yes, there is climate change. There has, for 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s existence, always been climate change. There have been ice ages, magnetic reversals, volcanic activity, tsunamis, earthquakes and a host of other natural events.

To suggest, however, that climate change is influenced by too much carbon dioxide lacks all scientific merit. There simply isn’t enough CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere to have any impact.

The single most powerful determinant of the Earth’s climate was and is the Sun.

Putting aside the United Nations’ never-ending effort to exert authority over all the nations and all the peoples of the world, global warming was about an audacious scheme to monetize carbon dioxide; to sell “carbon credits” and, by doing so, enrich those who were behind the scheme.

Recently, Patrick Henningsen, the editor of 21st Century Wire, penned a commentary, “The Great Collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange”, an excellent analysis of how the bottom fell out of the scheme to buy, sell, and trade “carbon credits” based on the fraudulent claim that “greenhouse gas emissions” had to be reduced worldwide to avoid global warming.

Henningsen noted that Reuters had reported that the Intercontinental Exchange, Inc, the operating body of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), “will be scaling back major operations (in August), a move that includes massive layoffs. This is likely due to the complete market free-fall of their only product…carbon emissions.” In May and June 2008, the carbon credits were trading at $5.58 and $7.78 respectively” until it finally dawned on investors that they were utterly worthless.

“Unlike most real markets,” wrote Henningsen, “the carbon market was created by banks and governments so that new investment opportunities could seamlessly dovetail with specific government policies. It’s a fantasy casino based on a doctrine of pure science fiction.”

The U.S. has thrown billions at so-called “climate research” since 1988 and has passed laws intended to reduce CO2 emissions. There is no scientific merit, nor any justification for the many limits imposed on the American consumer. The quest, for example, of ever-cleaner automobile exhausts has resulted in more expensive cars and more dangerous ones as their weight had to be successively reduced to meet the mandates.

The current governmental craze for “clean” energy alternatives such as wind and solar power will only serve to drive up the cost of electricity without significantly adding any new sources capable of meeting the nation’s growing needs. Only government subsidies and mandates keep these projects alive as opposed to coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants.

The original investors such as Al Gore have long since gotten out of the carbon credits market, having known in advance about legislation and policy before the general public. What they did not anticipate, however, was the natural cooling of the Earth since 1998 as the Sun entered one of its predictable cycles of low activity.

There is no global warming. What warming occurred was entirely natural, a response to the end of a previous period of cooling that ended around 1850.

A lot of people should be sent to jail for engaging in this fraud, but they will not. The victims remain as does the drumbeat of lies about greenhouse gas emissions or claims of ocean acidification.

Every flood, hurricane, or other natural event will continue to be blamed on “climate change” until eventually even the compliant mainstream media finally stop publishing lies.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

By Alan Caruba

Every time I conclude that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot get crazier, they demonstrate they are not only crazy, but a continued threat to the health, national security, and the right of Americans to be free of incessant governmental intrusion into their lives and choices.

Mind you, they get lots of help from environmental organizations and the latest example was a petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity asking the EPA to ban lead shot and bullets under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

There is, of course, no doubt that if you take a bullet to the brainpan, it is very likely to be lethal, but under the TSCA, it is not considered or defined as toxic.

Citing the TSCA as to when the EPA can regulate “chemical substances”, the National Rifle Association, in a letter to the EPA administration noted that “Congress explicitly excluded from this definition ‘any article the sale of which is subject to the tax imposed by section 4181 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986’” or as we call them, bullets!

Not being a lawyer, but being a longtime gun owner, my question to the EPA is this: How CRAZY do you have to be to even consider banning the manufacture, sale, and use of AMMUNITION?

By 2005, three out of ten Americans were gun owners. Since the election of Barack Obama, there has been a noticeable increase in gun sales.

Among gun owners, some are hunters, some are into sport shooting, and some are homeowners or apartment dwellers who want the kind of protection a gun provides while waiting for the police to show up. There are lots of perfectly legitimate reasons to own a gun and the last time I checked the Second Amendment said you could.

In its letter to the EPA, the NRA pointed out that “This appears to be the first time since TSCA’s inception in 1976 that anyone has suggested that EPA may regulate projectiles used in firearms under the Act”, adding that it was manifestly clear that it was “congressional intent that TSCA not be a vehicle to implement gun control.”

The good news is that the EPA abandoned any further action regarding this perfectly insane effort to backdoor an effort to thwart our Second Amendment rights.

The EPA has already determined how much water can be used in your toilet bowl and wants to control how much water you use to shower. It has been instrumental in getting the incandescent light bulb banned from future sales and use. And it wants to legally define puddles after a rainstorm as navigable waters that boats and ships can sail upon.

Perhaps, however, you did not heard that the EPA is considering cracking down on DUST? Specifically farm dust.

On July 23, a number of farm state senators sent a letter to the EPA to indicate just how stupid and detrimental any additional regulation of dust would be. They called the proposal “the most stringent and unparalleled regulation of dust in our nation’s history.” Suffice it to say that livestock kick up dust, the use of combines to harvest crops on a dry day kicks up dust, or just driving a truck down a gravel road will kick up dust.

The EPA is about one thing and one thing only, CONTROL.

Toward that end they are perfectly happy to put their snout into any aspect of life in America to see if they can extend their authority. No one is arguing that America should not have clean air and clean water, but the extent to which the EPA has taken its original mandates is galactic and Orwellian.

The EPA is the very definition of BIG GOVERNMENT run amok.

I am still looking for the word “environment” in the U.S. Constitution.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

By Alan Caruba

As the nation’s children return to elementary and secondary schools, it is increasingly essential that their parents and communities coast to coast realize how poorly served they are and how their learning environment is increasingly tainted by a socialist agenda.

Our nation’s schools have long been factories of boredom, centers of academic incompetence. High school graduation rates have been in a fairly steady decline. At its peak in 1969, the rate was 77 percent. By 2007 it was 68.8 percent.

In mid-August, The Wall Street Journal reported that “New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S. high school students in the last few years.”

What caught my eye was a quote from Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, who said that “if our kids aren’t dropping out physically, they are dropping out mentally.”

The subject of education is important because they are the generation to which the future of the nation must be entrusted and “A recent study found the U.S. ranks only 12th in the percentage of adults aged 25 to 34 who hold college degrees.”

The failure of our nation’s schools, to my mind, coincides with the creation of the U.S. Department of Education in 1979, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, and which began operating on May 16, 1980.

The word “education” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution and, until the Department of Education came along, it was the responsibility of States and local communities. A government that has managed Conrail since 1976 without once making a profit should not have been trusted with the nation’s educational system.

I opposed No Child Left Behind when former President Bush proposed it and, like former President Reagan, I have long believed the Department of Education should be ended and that responsibility be returned to the States and local communities. The DOE exists today as little more than an obstacle to learning in the classroom and a giant funding machine.

The DOE is pretty much owned by the National Education Association which is not an “association”, but a powerful union, the largest with an estimated 3.2 members. The Democrat Party is heavily indebted to it for funds and campaign workers.

It is doubtful that most Americans know that, for the past several months, the NEA’s website has recommended that its members read “Rules for Radicals” by the late Saul Alinsky, a dedicated communist. If NEA members adopt its political agenda, the enemy will literally be in our nation’s classrooms.

It has not gone unnoticed that Obama’s “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”, otherwise known as the “Stimulus Act” enabled the education lobby to suck up billions more from taxpayers.

The Act allocated $5 billion to early learning programs, including the failed Head Start and Early Head Start, child care and programs for children with special needs. It also allocated $77 billion for “reforms” to allegedly strengthen elementary and secondary education, including $48.6 billion to “stabilize” state education budgets. It was a Full Employment Act for teachers and school administrators.

Apparently those billions were not enough because on August 11, President Obama signed a bill authorizing an additional $10 billion to states for education salaries. The Senate was so concerned the money might be spent for other purposes it included a provision that the money could not be used for anything else.

It apparently was not enough because in July the NEA president, Dennis Van Roekel, was calling for a complete overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act, one that is entirely test-based without any notice of the fact that individual children learn at different rates. He didn’t much like the Obama Race to the Top program where schools competed for grants if they demonstrated any improvement in learning and graduation rates. Another $3.4 billion in grants is at yet unspent. Roekel didn’t like the idea of competition.

Clearly, schools that are graduating students ill-prepared to go onto college and that continue to experience high dropout rates are doing something wrong. Putting kids into teach-to-the-test straight jackets is not working.

In a new book by Dr. Tim Elmore, “Generation iY: Our Last Change to Save Their Future”, the author who founded a non-profit organization, Growing Leaders, writes that “I have spoken to employers who told me they will never hire another new graduate. I have heard teachers say they can hardly wait for retirement since they can’t do a thing about kids today. I’ve had parents confide in me that they don’t know what to do with their kids except scream at them.”

Statistics published by UNESCO and the CIA reveal that, while American students spend twelve years in school, ranking them first out of a hundred, they rank fifteenth out of twenty-seven in terms of literacy. Their math and science scores are poor. They poll at 35%, fifth out of seventeen, for their dislike of school, and 61%, second out of seventeen, find school boring.

The schools are failing, the students are being cheated of the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to become productive adults, and the U.S. government thinks that, if it just spends a few more billions, this will change. It won’t.

The federal government must get out of the education business, must devolve responsibility back to the states and local communities, and they in turn should refuse to deal with teachers unions in order to regain control over the education of the nation’s most precious resource, its children.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

In case the mainstream media tries to tell you otherwise, here's a photo of several hundred thousand people who attended the Restore Honor rally. The "elites" who vacation on Martha's Vineyard will discover that these people and others like them are a force to contend with.

August 28, 2010, the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. The dream lives on!