Klaus Rohrich

Whistling past the graveyard

Lately there have been an inordinate number of media reports focusing on acts of terrorism, as well as attempted or contemplated terrorism. The FBI reported arresting two men of Pakistani descent in Chicago in a plot to bomb the newspaper Jylands-Posten of Danish cartoon fame. The so-called “Toronto 18”, a group of young men accused of planning terrorist attacks in Toronto and Ottawa, are beginning to fall like dominoes, as those charged are pleading guilty in efforts to minimize their punishment. Terrorist plots are being uncovered in places as diverse as Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Iraq, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Acting boldly—and in ignorance

If the obvious foibles of the Obama administration weren’t so pathetic, they would be humorous. But laughing at the Obamites is equal to playing one’s fiddle while the country burns.

Carbon offsets to form new bubble

I am no economist, but for an amateur I have a track record in predicting economic trends at least as good as Paul Krugman’s and I didn’t bother attending an Ivy League school to be able to do that. In predicting economic bubbles there are two things to remember. One is that most bubbles deal with intangibles, such as Michael Milliken’s junk bonds and the dot com bubble that saw insane valuations for non-performing stocks simply because they had an “E” in front of their name.

It’s never been about global warming

Anyone who believes that the Kyoto Accord and all the subsequent meetings spearheaded by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is actually about global warming or climate change, would be well advised to submit a wish list to Santa Claus in care of the North Pole. Chances of having jolly St. Nick deliver what’s on that list are better than the chances of stopping global warming. That’s because global warming has already stopped with no help from Al Gore and his friends. In fact, recent scientific discoveries have found the smoking gun of global warming isn’t actually smoking when it was revealed that some of the IPCC’s data were, um, fudged. The IPCC’s lead scientist, Keith Briffa has attempted to debunk archeological and historic records about the medieval warm period, when Greenland was actually green, using as proof tree core samples taken from Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula.

Sick of the healthcare debate

For all those people wanting the United States government to provide them with “public option” healthcare, be careful what you wish for; you just might get it. America isn’t the first nation that’s been seduced by the siren call of publicly funded healthcare. In fact, the U.S. is one of the few civilized nations left on earth that doesn’t have a public healthcare system—for good reason.

Like a deer in the headlights

I’m noticing that people are a lot more nervous than they used to be, say back in the Bush days, when our greatest fear was another, possibly worse, terrorist attack that could result in scores of thousands of deaths. The pervasive nervousness these days is of the kind one might see upon entering a room where a baby is playing with half-filled bottles of nitroglycerin or maybe a loaded Glock-17.

Who would have guessed the IOC was racist?

-Satire- (Note: The following article was made possible through the generosity of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tides Foundation) The rejection of Chicago as host city for the 2016 Olympiad can only be ascribed to one ugly factor: racism. When President Obama, his beautiful wife Michelle and Oprah Winfrey, no less, took time out from their busy respective schedules to plead with the International Olympic Committee on behalf of the Windy City, most observers believed that the games would be held there. But in a stunning betrayal of our beloved President’s extended hand, the IOC chose instead to bite that hand by rejecting Chicago during the very first round.

Simultaneous sucking and blowing

In the most blatant case of attempting to suck and blow at the same time, the government of Ontario is filing a $50 billion lawsuit against the tobacco industry to recover money the province claims it has been forced to spend on smoking-related illnesses. It’s the kind of government action that’s tailor-made for really stupid people who might not realize that the government has already been paid more than that just in taxes.

Redistributing wealth?!

The Obama White House is attempting to perpetrate the biggest hoax in the nation’s history by insisting that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s was really about the redistribution of wealth. The claim is that had the Civil Rights Movement not gotten bogged down in court action, the focus would have shifted to how wealth was distributed in America. Would have, could have, should have...

Blood in the water

In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly Libyan dictator, Col. Muammar Gaddafi called for the UN to be relocated somewhere in the eastern hemisphere. Using the rationale that for the past 64 years the UN has been headquartered in New York, the heart of the Great Satan, Gaddafi insisted that it’s time to move. But that was only the beginning of his bizarre tirade.

An administration based on lies

Last night Barack Hussein Obama gave the 28th speech in support of his proposed healthcare scheme. One Republican Congressman, Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted “You Lie!” when the President assured the joint session of Congress that illegal aliens would not be covered. Wilson later conveyed apologies to the White House for the outburst, stating that he reacted emotionally and was wrong to disrespect the office the President.

Recession Part II: watch for it

Around the world pundits are breathlessly announcing that the Great Recession of 08/09 is finally over. There’s even an argument among economists whether the recession ended in May or June. Statistics Canada gleefully announced that in June the Canadian economy grew by 0.1% and predicted a “bounce” in July. Other nations are following suit, as they note a slight improvement in economic outlook and a cessation of contracting GDP.

Who’s in charge?

It seems that a lot of conservative and then some not so conservative pundits are wondering out loud “who’s in charge of the Obama administration?” It’s obviously not Barack Obama, given that the Congress is running circles around the Executive Branch with legislation so radical that most of it will have little or no chance of passing.

Light at the end of the tunnel

It is often said that the night is darkest just before the dawn, which while sounding trite also serves to remind us that nothing stays the same. And so it is with the ascension of Barack Obama to the position of Führer. Now that the short-lived honeymoon with the Anointed One is all but over and the purveyors of received wisdom have been proven wrong in their prediction that Obama would govern from the center, we can develop a game plan to bring about that “change” in Washington we all expected and which he has failed to deliver.

Ignorance is bliss

On the 64th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Quinnipiac University of Hamden Connecticut came out with an interesting poll wherein Americans supported the use of atomic weapons against Japan by a margin of nearly 4 to 1. That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part of the poll is that support for Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bomb decreases dramatically among poll respondents aged 18-34, while support increases as the ages of those polled increases. The good news is that close to 80% of Americans today support Mr. Truman’s decision. The bad news is that only 50% of those aged 18-34 lend their support.

Blue dogs turn into dirty dogs

There’s never been any doubt that the so-called “blue dog” Democrats would cave to the persuasive powers of the party leadership whose radical agenda could reshape the face of America. As long as four weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh predicted that the blue dogs would find a pretext to support all the legislation envisioned by President Obama and give that legislation the appearance of having been debated.

The Obama healthcare reality check

President Obama sounds a lot like a child abductor attempting to abduct a hapless kid by promising comic books and candy. His insistence that Americans who are happy with their current healthcare situation will not have to change it in any way sounds reassuring. But like everything else in today’s society, it’s necessary to read the small print.

Obamanomics: a bitter harvest

The admission by Vice President Joe Biden last weekend that the Obama administration “misread how bad the economy was” is nothing more than an effort on the part of that administration to position itself as inept rather than corrupt. But the only logical conclusion one could draw from observing the actions of the Obama administration, particularly in economic policy, is that the President finds it in his and his party’s best interest to prolong and worsen the current economic crisis, which in my book would make the administration corrupt.

A judicial embarrassment

The Supreme Court of the United States reversed a decision today that will prove to be a major embarrassment to the Obama Administration. The decision the Court reversed involves an appellate decision rendered by Supreme Court nominee Sonja Sotomayor against a group of New Haven, Connecticut firefighters who sued their employer, the City of New Haven, for racial discrimination. For those unfamiliar with the case, the City of New Haven tested firefighters who were interested in attaining the rank of lieutenant or captain and to its dismay found out that among those who passed the test and qualified, there were absolutely no Aftrican-Americans and only two Hispanics.

Excerpts from the Book of Moron

And lo it came to pass that in the last month of the last year of the second millennium, God sent Algor into the wilderness to receive The Word and bade Algor to write God’s Words in a tome of Truth. God gave to Algor a terrible vision of melting glaciers, of oceans rising to inundate great cities, of storms raging across the land in the expression of God’s True Wrath. “Why, O Lord, are you choosing to punish mankind with such terrible plagues, causing the land to heat, the ice caps to melt and the oceans to drown all mankind?” Algor asked God. And in the terrible silence that ensued God gave Algor a vision of the Truth. Mankind was sinning against the land, flouting the laws of God by purchasing Ichor from the Hamites and thus enriching them beyond their dreams. And taking that Ichor, which the Hamites squeezed from the bowels of Mother Gaia like so much pus from a festering boil and burning it to power their chariots. Those chariots spewed forth a multitude of blasphemous sulphur and brimstone, causing the quiet earth ague and fever.