Alan Caruba

Welcome to 2008…Again

Americans, famed now for their short attention span and memory, as well as their general lack of knowledge of their own history, would benefit if they just looked back a year to the beginning of 2008 to recall what we were thinking and what we were anticipating.

The Plain Truth about Glorious Carbon Dioxide

Okay, children, let’s all sit up straight at our desks. We are going to begin 2009 with a lesson about carbon dioxide (CO2).

Israel Attacks Gaza and Arabs Attack Each Other

One would think that the retaliatory attack on Gaza by the Israelis would unite the Arab Middle East, but you would be wrong. Arabs are not big fans of one another.

Cuba Celebrates, But Why?

The year that I graduated from the University of Miami, 1959, Fidel Castro and his guerrilla, revolutionary forces swept into Havana to replace the dictator Fulgencio Batista with a new dictator, Fidel. The New York Times hailed it as a new birth of freedom in Cuba because their reporter in Cuba never had a clue that Fidel was a communist. He was a “freedom fighter” and his target was the regime backed by the U.S. Even then, anything that bodes ill for the U.S. was considered by The Times as a good thing. Two years later, the U.S. slapped an embargo on Cuba that remains today with the exception of some agricultural products which, not surprisingly, must be paid for in advance.

A Map of Freedom or the Lack of It

Every July, Freedom House, an organization that tracks the progress or the lack of freedom around the world, releases a map that identifies those nations where freedom exists and where it does not.

Predictions for 2009

Everybody in the pundit trade likes to make predictions. If they come true, we look smarter than we really are and, if they don’t, no further mention of them is made.

People I Don’t Want to Hear About in 2009

If I had the power, there are any number of people from whom or about whom I would not want to hear, see, or read anything in 2009. Here’s a short list!

Brilliant Thoughts

In my capacity as a veteran book reviewer—nearly fifty years—I recently received some books in a series called the “Daily Dose of Knowledge.” I must confess I like these bite-sized offerings and one of the series is titled “Brilliant Thoughts.”

Barack Obama: Oratory Versus Action

Perhaps it is because I make my living with words that I am more attuned to their meaning and power, but what has struck me most forcefully during the Obama campaign and in these days leading up to his inauguration is his powerful grasp of the utterly vague phrase.

The Palestinian Answer to Everything is War

Writing in May 2008 on the occasion of Israel’s sixtieth anniversary, Fouad Ajami, a longtime observer and commentator of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, said that “The Arab imagination could never reconcile itself to the permanence of the Jewish state…stubbornly refusing to accept the verdict of what happened in 1948.”

Who Won the Iraq War?

With all the reams of news and analysis that has been written about Iraq since the United States and a few reluctant allies invaded in 2003, you would think we would know who we were fighting, whether we have “won” the war, and if not, who did?

Sunshine is Free Energy, Right?

I cringe every time I hear President-elect Obama and the group of global warming maniacs he has assembled to run the nation talk about creating millions of “green jobs” based on solar and wind energy.

No Peace in Bethlehem

Not only has there been no sense of outrage over the Islamofascist attacks in Mumbai, India that began on November 26 and lasted until the 29th; the event that took the lives of 170 people and wounded hundreds of others has quickly receded to being just one more atrocity in the name of Allah.

Into the Afghan Slaughterhouse

It seems like hardly a week goes by without news of more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. This is going to prove to be a great U.S. military blunder, made worse by the failure to consider that the former Russian regime, the Soviet Union, tried this and failed.

Several Reasons to Hate the Sierra Club

Now I know that everyone thinks the Sierra Club is all about saving the American bison or some remote forested area, but the truth is that the Sierra Club, along with a number of other major environmental groups, is all about making life as difficult and expensive for Americans as possible.

Hanukah, Miracles, and Victories

Hanukah began at sundown Sunday evening. A friend of mine points out that all Jewish holidays begin at sundown because the ancient Jews didn’t have watches or clocks; just the sun that rose reliably in the morning and set in the evening. That’s how time was told for centuries.

On Being a Republican

It has been hard to be a Republican this past year and those leading up to the last elections. If Democrats found their voice in their bitter hatred of George W. Bush, his actions over the past four and previous years in office left Republicans breathless as both he and the Republican-held Congress engaged in an orgy of bewildering spending.

The Roaring Twenties & the Roaring Nineties

My Mother was a “flapper”, one of the girls during the Roaring Twenties of the last century. She didn’t need a woman’s movement to assert herself. She drove a car, held down a job, but—I was assured—did not dance on table tops, nor smoke, nor anything else that today would be taken for granted. She married a Certified Public Accountant and that tells you what a level-headed a girl she was. They stayed married for over sixty years. She would live to age 98!

When you’re maxed out

When you’ve maxed out all your credit cards, is it really a good idea to keep on spending anyway? Will anyone lend you the money to keep spending?

Put him on his shield

Paul Weyrich died early Thursday morning. I knew the man only through his writings as a columnist and I was always a bit envious of how prescient he was.