Alan Caruba

Dumbing Down America’s Colleges

The process that began in the 1960s to transform America’s elementary, middle and high schools into places where students could literally graduate without being able to read their diploma, where the teaching of mathematics was reduced to mush without rules, and where it was more important for students to feel really good about themselves than having to measure up scholastically with millions in foreign nations, has now reached the campuses of America’s colleges and universities.

Signs of the Times

The headlines and stories of failing newspapers are beginning to gain momentum. In my home state of New Jersey, the venerable northern daily, The Record, is abandoning its office in Hackensack and the reporters it retains will simply function “in the field” via laptops and cell phones. In Tampa the Tribune will cut its workforce and the same is happening to the Los Angeles Times.

Can America Survive?

With the advent of the Fourth of July, I know the expectation is that some patriotic prose is expected. I also know there have been many previous Fourths when Americans could have legitimately asked whether the United States of America would survive.

Brainwashed Masses

This is pure conjecture, but I am beginning to think that the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain, while appearing to be completely detached from reality, i.e., the real lives of Americans, are actually some kind of political alchemy, a potion brewed to influence our rational minds in ways that will cause us to vote for one or the other candidate.

McCain’s Green Babble

A lot of us are going to figuratively hold our noses and vote for John McCain because the notion of Barack Obama as President is too awful to contemplate, but if you go to JohnMcCain.com, you will find some of the worst Green babble posted on his “Issues” page and bodes ill for ridding us of a lot of bad science and worse “solutions” to solve so-called environmental problems that do not even exist.

The Obama Fantasy

My eye was caught by an article in the Sunday paper. “Flip-flops suggest a more politically practical Obama” was the headline. It was an analysis by Margaret Taley of the McClatchy-Tribune News Service.

Real Independence Means Secure Borders

As we celebrate our nation’s independence, it is worth keeping in mind that real independence depends on having secure borders. A nation that cannot or will not protect itself from a massive and intentional invasion for the purpose of changing its population and politics is a nation that will not exist very long.

He Kept Us Safe

I know any number of people who truly hate George W. Bush. The mainstream media are always telling us that John McCain will lose because the Democrats have hung “George Bush’s third term” around his neck and is counting on the rather widespread disaffection for the President, whether it be Democrat or Republican.

Is the North Pole Melting? Forgetaboutit!

The latest story to get scientists emailing furiously among each other was the one in the Telegraph, a British newspaper, that all the ice around the North Pole would melt away this summer.

The Supreme Court Affirms the Second Amendment

Eighty million Americans breathed a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court struck down the Washington, D.C. ban on gun ownership. Had the Court not supported the Second Amendment that asserts the right of Americans to own guns, the next step would have been efforts to take their guns away and to insure that no one could purchase one for self-defense.

Election Tutorial: Immigration

Oil and more precisely the price of a gallon of gas has emerged as probably the number one issue of the forthcoming national election, but right behind it will be immigration. Other than energy, population has the most impact on a way of life American’s prefer.

Election Day Scenarios. What’s Yours?

Predicting Election Day outcomes this far in advance is a fool’s game, but it’s fun to play around with possible scenarios.

World to End. Vote Democrat

Sometimes having begun my working life as a journalist is an embarrassment. This is particularly true when I read stories like Saturday’s Associated Press garbage, “Everything Seemingly is Spinning Out of Control” by Alan Fram and Eileen Putnam.

Obama’s Hesitancy, Expediency, and Credibility

I am not a political pundit although I occasionally write about the candidates. I have a post up at [url=http://www.anxietycenter.com]http://www.anxietycenter.com[/url] right now about Sen. Obama’s distaste and disdain for America’s corporations and the clear indication that he intends to grow the government even larger.

Venezuela Goes to the Dogs

Coming just a week or so after Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) publicly said the U.S. government should nationalize the nation’s oil refineries, echoing a similar earlier threat by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) to nationalize the entire industry, it is instructive to see what has happened in Venezuela where a Communist wannabe dictator, Hugo Chavez, nationalized that nation’s oil industry.

Diplomatic Theatre

Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a lightning visit to Israel met with Mamoud Abbas of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a group purporting to represent Palestinians, but which is now confined to the West Bank, having been driven out of Gaza by Hamas, a militant group whose goal remains the destruction of Israel.

Is the Democrat Party the CPUSA in Disguise?

It’s no secret that Democrats are liberal, but when you peel away their devotion to environmental policies that have left America vulnerable to foreign nations on whom we depend for the importation of oil, what has been revealed is an intention to nationalize our nation’s oil industry. That, simply stated, is communism.

Optimists and Pessimists

One’s outlook on life depends heavily on whether you are by nature an optimist or a pessimist. That is especially true of economists of whom Harry Truman once said he wanted a one-armed one to advise him because the ones he talked to were forever saying, “On one hand and on the other”, generally from the same set of statistics!

Democrats are Forever Looking Backwards

When former Vice President, Oscar and Nobel Prize winner, Albert Gore, Jr., endorsed Barack Hussein Obama, it demonstrated why the Democrat Party is always looking backward, as opposed to the future.

Iraq Fades as News

Five years passed an extraordinarily successful invasion of Iraq and the taking of Baghdad, followed by several years of a slow and bloody learning curve, Iraq is fading from the front pages of our newspapers and reports on television precisely because Iraq has begun to learn how to govern itself, to develop a national identity out of its warring religious groups, and perhaps most importantly to create an army and police corps to provide a real measure of security.