Alan Caruba

Cooling Off Corzine

New Orleans and Louisiana had Hurricane Katrina that wrought much devastation, but New Jersey has Jon Corzine, a governor who has managed to do what some thought was impossible, increase the indebtedness of a State that was broke when he took office.

Pleading the Russian Cause

By August 12 former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev’s opinion piece was in The Washington Post and by the next day in my daily newspaper in New Jersey as he pled the case for Russia.

There is No Bush Third Term

Between now and November 4 you are going to hear over and over again the phrase “the Bush third term.”

Russian Pride, Russian Power

“Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has taken a giant step backwards into its Soviet past, and nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of energy politics. Modern Russian politics and energy sources, first oil and then both oil and gas, have been inextricably connected in a way unmatched by any other major power in the history of the world.”

Why John McCain Will Win - Part Duh!

On July 29, I posted “Why John McCain Will Win” and it is already time to expand on this theme with Part Two or as I will call it, Part Duh!

How NOT to Have Electricity

Electricity is so commonplace that no one gives any thought to not having access to it. Few give any consideration to how it is generated, but we are now being inundated with the most virulent nonsense about how wind or solar power is “clean” and practically “free.” Every week there’s some new proposal to cover the nation with wind farms and solar panels.

Georgia On My Mind

Considering what was happening in a secessionist part of Georgia, invaded by Russia, the sight of President Bush and Prime Minister Putin chatting amiably Friday night at the opening of the Olympic Games was fairly astonishing. Russian troops were in the process of invading Georgia and their planes were even bombing Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

Listen to Your Gut

I have a friend who has built an international reputation as a negotiation coach. He is the author of two bestselling books on the subject and one of the salient pieces of advice he shares with the reader is to go with their gut feeling when it comes to deciding whether to do the deal or not.

The Olympics: A Political Game

I am one of those people who rarely watches any sport. I was not into sports as a kid and, while I would occasionally attend a University of Miami football game as a student, I could never get into the mass hysteria that seems to afflict any crowd that watches any sport in a stadium.

Living with the Bomb

On August 6, 1945, in order to end the war with the Empire of Japan, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, thus launching the atomic age. The Japanese warlords did not respond with a notice of surrender, so the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered unconditionally.

Let Obama Be Obama

Watching the Obama campaign is akin to watching a movie about a train wreck that you know is coming because you know that there’s been a mountain slide and the tracks just around the bend are covered with huge boulders.

The August Bloodletting Has Begun

Politicians are always talking about the “October surprise” as an element of a campaign, but most of the hard work of destroying a candidate’s credibility begins in August. That was the case of the Swift Boat revelations about Sen. John Kerry’s real service in Vietnam before he came home to declare his fellow soldiers to be rapists and murderers.

US Arctic Oil May be LOST to the UN

“The Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil, more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan, and Mexico combined, and enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years.” One would have thought Joe Carroll’s Bloomberg News report would have evoked some interest by the public and other media outlets. Instead, news of the U.S. Geological Survey was greeted mostly by a giant collective yawn.

Obama is Channeling Jimmy Carter

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter set in motion the energy crisis that America is experiencing today. He was aided by a Democrat-controlled Congress that imposed a Domestic Crude Oil Windfall Profits tax on oil companies who he blamed for the crisis that had led to long lines at gas stations. It was, however, the OPEC nations, not the oil companies, that decided to force up the price of oil.

Take Your Choice. Pests or Pesticides?

I have never been able to understand why people have no problem taking drugs for medicinal purposes—frequently never reading the listing of side effects or the warning that taking too much might kill them, but seem to have fits every time some nitwit self-appointed think tank announces that a pesticide poses a threat to all life on Earth.

Apologizing for the Past

I read and re-read the news report that on Tuesday the U.S. House of Representatives had passed a resolution described as “the federal government’s first formal apology for the ‘fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity’ of slavery and the legal segregation of African-Americans.”

Why McCain Will Win

The nice thing about politics in America is that everyone can have an opinion and even the experts are often as wrong as the rest of us.

Bin Laden Morphs into Che Guevera

It’s become so commonplace as to receive only a minor mention in the news. Predator drones under the command presumably of the CIA or the Air Force find and kill some ranking member of al Qaeda in far-off Waziristan.

Are Newspapers Dinosaurs?

My local Sunday newspaper was not delivered, requiring me to drive to my local newsstand to pick up a copy. They, too, had experienced a delay in receiving a batch of them for sale.

The Greens are Going Crazy

It’s hard to ignore the fact that the Greens are going crazy, not just in the United States, but around the world. They are increasingly frantic over the opposition being voiced against global warming, one of the greatest hoaxes in modern history.