Alan Caruba

The Groundhog Named Gore

Like the proverbial groundhog that shows up on February 2 to announce that there will be six more weeks of winter, Albert Gore shows up in Congress to announce that the world is coming to an end and that we’re all doomed because of global warming.

The New Bad Deal

In 1939, ten years after the crash on Wall Street, the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., told the House Ways and Means Committee: 

My Little Street

When I was age five back in 1942 my parents moved to the town of Maplewood, New Jersey, leaving behind a two-family dwelling in the Roseville section of Newark that was home to many Italian immigrants and Jews. Those who could do so during the perilous years of World War II left the city and this exodus accelerated in the go-go Fifties.

Electing Dumb People to do Dumb Things is Dumb

Just how close is the United States to being ruled by executive order? It’s a question worth asking given the flurry of executive orders issuing forth from the Oval Office.

Obama Motors!

What legislators at the federal and state level don’t seem to understand is a fundamental law of thermodynamics. You cannot get more mileage out of a gallon of gasoline than it possesses. Every form of energy, oil, coal, natural gas, has a specific amount of energy it can produce when used.

The Cascade Effect

Events do not occur in a vacuum. They are a combination of decisions made at the highest levels of government that are then acted upon by literally millions of Americans, whether they are the CEOs of large corporations, small business owners, parents raising children or facing the prospect of putting them through college, skilled or unskilled workers.

Hey Kids, It’s a Depression!

Here’s the difference between a recession and a depression as defined by Bloomberg Business News:

King Obama has Spoken

It has taken less than two weeks in office for Barack Obama to confirm that his delusions of grandeur, evidence of which we saw throughout his campaign, are real. I am tempted to refer to him from now on as King Obama, not President Obama.

Making the Economy Worse

Watching the former Bush administration and now the Obama administration try to deal with the worsening economy is like watching old newsreels of the Roosevelt administration announcing its many experimental programs—the New Deal—between 1933 and the start of World War II in 1941.

What’s the Hurry? Kill the Recovery Act Now!

Excuse me, but weren’t we told, just before the Bush administration folded its tent, that we had to throw billions at failing banks or the entire financial structure of the nation would self-destruct?

Desperately Green

As more and more people figure out that the Earth is cooling, the Greens grow more and more desperate to keep the global warming hoax going. They have a lot invested in this Big Lie and some of it comes in the form of proposed carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes, along with millions invested in ethanol production and so-called “sustainable” energy like solar and wind.

Coal, Glorious Coal!

I began 2009 praising carbon dioxide as the gas, along with oxygen, upon which all life on Earth depends.

Not a Word About Oil, Coal or Natural Gas!

If you visited WhiteHouse.gov on the second day of the new administration, you would find a lengthy document about “The President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” You will not find a single word about oil, coal, or natural gas in it, nor nuclear power.

Promises Made, Promises to Fear

Promises are the currency of politics and politicians have been making them from the time that people banded together in tribes for a common purpose. The purpose of the politician, however, is always the same; to gain power and to stay in power.

Oratory Versus Reality: The Obama Years Begin

Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy has this nation had a President so blessed with the gift of oratory.

High Expectations

The Endless Inauguration

I am the last person you want to invite to a party. I am almost always the first to leave. There’s something about a whole bunch of people getting together to celebrate anything that doesn’t work for me.

Infrastructure: Let’s Spend Money on It!

There is one aspect of President Obama’s proposed agenda that I like very much and it has to do with investing in the nation’s infrastructure of highways, bridges, ports and airfields

The Know-Nothings are in Charge

Briefly in the 1850’s there was a Know-Nothing movement that went by the name of the American Party. It was composed of anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant, white Anglo-Saxon morons and faded fairly quickly. It was yet another example of how dearly humans love their prejudices.

Goodbye, George W.

After eight years as President, we would probably be thinking unkind thoughts even if it was the Dalai Llama who held the job. In the case of George W. Bush, saying goodbye comes as a distinct relief. As with all modern day Presidents, we just have seen too much of him over the course of eight years.