The Sorry State of Education in America

The Sorry State of Education in America

J. D. Longstreet

I was somewhat busy yesterday, along with many other Tar Heels, dodging our second attack of tornadoes in less than a month.  As a result, I had little time to think and write a commentary suitable for publication. But, as I continue to be troubled by the state of our public education system in the US, I decided to re-submit to the editors an article written back in 2005 that addresses my concerns about the horrible state of public education in the US. 

Even though this piece was written six years ago, it could have been written today. 

A great disservice is being done our youngsters today and until the parents of our kids decide enough is enough -- and demand an overhaul of the American public education system -- that disservice will continue and we will continue to produce graduates who simply do not measure up to the graduates of education systems around the world. It places America at a distinct disadvantage in, well, everything.  It is, in fact, a matter of national security, let alone national survival.

Here now is the commentary I wrote six years ago.  I hope it will stir parents to evaluate the quality of their child’s education in the existing public education system of America and pledge to take action on the behalf of their children’s future -- and the future of America.

Please – read on.

The American Public School System Is A Failure And Should Be Trashed!
By: J. D. Longstreet
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The Public Schools system of the US has crashed and burned! No longer are our children the best educated in the world. Now our scholars rank among the LESS well educated even among a few of the third world countries. This is a shame we have brought upon ourselves by inviting the Federal Government and the Unions into our schools.

One-room schoolhouses turned out scholars of unequaled accomplishment when compared to today’s graduates. A high school education, just 50 years ago, is the equivalent of a college degree today. Our Public School teachers are barely qualified to teach. But, they have a Union to see that they are paid well, whether the can teach or not! Oh, you thought teachers unions were for the welfare of the students??? Surely you jest!

Our local school boards have gorged themselves from the federal trough at the expense of local control of the curriculum and the rules and regulations.

Pupils are not challenged by the courses they study and fall short of goals set by the federal government. So, the schools are now “teaching the tests.” Indoctrinate the students in the questions and answers on the test in hopes of attaining the sought after number of students passing the tests. A well-rounded education is lost to the efforts to make a good showing on the tests.

Students are forced to remain in school even though they have no interest in what is being taught and are a distraction to that handful of youngsters who really do want to learn.

Self-esteem is the number one course of study. Our students are dumb as fence posts but, by golly, they think highly of themselves! They can’t read their diplomas but they sure do feel good about it!

So what do we do about it?

Take back our schools for a start. Refuse federal money and all the strings that go with it. If we have to teach school, again, in one-room school buildings, then so be it.

Test the teachers. If they have no business in a classroom, see to it that they are removed.

Make school voluntary. If a student does not want to be there, then don’t make them. This will allow those students who do wish an education to get one without the continuous interruptions by the bored kids who’d rather be someplace else.

Having a small percentage of illiterate Americans is preferable to an entire population of semi-illiterates!

Discipline? Yes. Expulsion. Period. Expel troublemakers for a few days, a few weeks, or a full school year, or even forever, depending on the infraction. Make school a serious business again. We owe an environment, suitable for learning, to those students who are there for the purpose of learning and making a better life for themselves, their families, and for our society.

We can take our schools back. We have to want to do so and we have to be ready to make the sacrifices necessary to insure our children a good education, not the pitiful excuse for an education they are getting now.

One of a parent’s primary obligations, as a parent, is to see that their children have a shot at the brass ring in life. The first, and most fundamental, step in that process is a solid education.

Government vouchers were killed by the teachers unions because they rightly understood that the public school system would crumble, and collapse, as parents pulled their children out of those near useless institutions and placed them in private schools where they, the parents, had some say, and some control, over the quality of education their kids were getting.

In my opinion, the public school system is near collapse -- right now. I don’t think a collapse of the US public education system would be a bad thing, actually. When an institution is so badly damaged, that it no longer serves it’s primary purpose, it should be trashed and a new institution begun in its place. We desperately need to create an institution to educate our kids.

Parents, we owe our kids that! We owe them a chance to make the best of their talents. We owe them a shot at a good, solid, education. Get them out of the public schools and into a private, or parochial, school where there are qualified teachers who still have an incentive to teach our kids, the will to teach our kids, and the desire to teach our kids.

The public school system in America is a failure. It should be put out of its misery.

J. D. Longstreet

The Rowlett Tea Party

The Rowlett Tea Party

We had a very productive meeting last night, there’s a lot of NEW blood and energy running through The Rowlett Tea Party and we will be holding some exciting new events and sponsoring new and much needed projects in the very near future.

We have a lot of very smart people involved in this organization and we’re not going to sit back and take it easy! We are going to be hammering to get this group headed in the RIGHT direction, we’re not a social organization, our only goal is the betterment of America and the safety, security and prosperity of ALL Americans! Our goals are still the same,to educate the average American in the CORE VALUES of the TEA Party.

Core Values:
Limited Government and Individual Liberty
Fiscal Responsibility
Free Markets and Economic Freedom

We have a full board again, the members are as follows:

The Executive BoardBill Gibson – PresidentSuzan Fulton – Vice PresidentGay DeHoff – SecretaryDr. Richard Bacon – TreasurerFred Witzell – Communications DirectorBoard MembersTom FultonJeff SmithJerry BerggrenDavid Leewright

The full minutes of the meeting will be available early during the week of March 15th and will be posted on the Rowlett TEA Party Site under the Rowlett TEA Party News link!
This is all about transparency folks.

We hear a lot about transparency from the government, but with us, it’s a reality, and we will be posting ALL activities, meetings, rallies and general business of The Rowlett TEA Party for all to see!

Also, you can follow us on Twitter and join our group at LinkedIn.

The Multi-Billion Dollar Global Warming Fraud ... by Alan Caruba

The Multi-Billion Dollar Global Warming Fraud
By Alan Caruba

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As the massive global warming fraud implodes, the one aspect of it that has not been explored in depth is the equally massive waste of billions of dollars spent by the United States and nations around the world, we were told, to avoid global warming.

Whole industries such as automobile manufacture had demands and limits put on them. Some states required utilities to buy “carbon credits” to offset their use of “fossil fuels.” The list of things attributed to global warming expanded to the point of total absurdity.

The codification of the fraud into law began with the Kyoto Protocol, an element of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change whose purpose was to fight a global warming that we now know was not happening.

The data to support the fraud came out of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that specialized in distorting climate data in every way possible to emphasize a normal warming cycle and then to minimize any indication of a new cooling cycle dating to around 1998 or earlier.

The IPCC data, released periodically in reports purporting to be the work of some 2,500 scientists from around the world, were actually based the handiwork of a few academic centers such as the Climate Research Center (CRU) at East Anglia University in England, Penn State University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and climate modeling from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Other participants in the fraud were NASA’s Goddard Institute and NOAA, both of whom produced claims, predictions, and questionable data to support “global warming.”

In the U.S. alone, I have heard figures in the area of $50 billion that have been spent on “climate change” over the course of administrations dating back to Clinton. In England, between 2006 and 2008, the government spent the equivalent of nearly $14 million (U.S.) on publicity stunts to convince Brits that global warming was real.

It is legitimate to ask if global warming has not in effect been a criminal enterprise.

The Kyoto Protocol required the nation states that signed onto it to commit to a reduction of four “greenhouse” gas, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride, and two groups of gases, hydrofluorocarbons and perflourocarbons. These gases occur in minimal amounts in the Earth’s atmosphere which is composed primarily of 95% to 97% water vapor!

The cost of accepting this commitment is measured in several ways, not the least of which was the sale of “carbon credits” to utilities and to industrial enterprises that would permit them to function outside the limits imposed. The exchanges created for this purpose prospered but it increased the cost of providing electrical energy and the manufacture of all manner of products.

The limitations, however, did not apply to either China or India, both of which were exempted, as were undeveloped Third World nations.

The climate change fraud also affected major U.S. corporations, none of whom wanted to appear to be opposed to it. However, on Tuesday, February 16th, BP America, Conoco Phillips, and Caterpillar all announced they were dropping out of the Climate Action Partnership that advocated energy-rationing. Some of the millions squandered on various global warming and “environmental” projects and groups came from the bottom line of corporations across the nation.

At this point, any corporation that speaks of “climate change” in its advertising and other public statements is part of the global fraud that originated in the United Nations Environmental Program.

The carbon emissions limitations also served to justify huge public subsidies for U.S. producers of wind and solar energy, called “clean” energy. Several nations, such as Spain, Germany and Great Britain, invested heavily in these alternative energy sources only to discover that they were massively inefficient and unreliable.

At the same time, the global warming fraud in the United States limited the building of coal-fired plants to generate electricity when, in fact, coal provides 50% of the nation’s electricity needs. Combined with fears of nuclear energy dating back to the 1970s, the United States has essentially starved itself of the energy it needs.

According to a recently released study by the National Association of Utility Regulatory Commissioners, the U.S. gross domestic product would lose $2.36 trillion and American consumers will pay an additional $2.35 trillion for energy if the oil and gas on federal lands remain off-limits through 2030. This constitutes a form of energy and economic suicide!

A British newspaper, the Daily Mail in a recent interview with CRU Prof. Phil Jones, revealed he knew there had been no “statistically significant” warming for the past fifteen years. Little wonder Prof. Jones and the CRU refused to honor UK Freedom of Information requests for the data on which the IPCC claims were based. He and others who provided IPCC data are under investigation.

In essence, the IPCC reports were all fraudulent and all were used to advance the global warming fraud. That is why President Obama’s claim of “overwhelming evidence” of climate change, i.e., global warming is particularly troubling.It is essential to understand that the “Cap-and-Trade” legislation passed by the House and waiting for a vote in the Senate is based on the IPCC reports and the threat by the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions throughout the nation have no legitimate basis in science.

There are still billions at stake if global warming-related laws, projects such as wind farms or the requirement that ethanol be added to every gallon of gas purchased are permitted to proceed or continue. Global warming as an issue or basis for any law or expenditure of public funding no longer exists.

It’s long passed the time when the nation’s news media should stop referring to it as anything other than a fraud perpetrated on the people of the world.

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

The Mount Vernon Statement

The Mount Vernon Statement
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The Mount Vernon Statement is a MUST READ for Conservatives. Below is the text of the statement:

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Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century

We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.

These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.

Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The selfevident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.

Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?

The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.

The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.

A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.

A Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda.

It applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal.

It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.

It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.

It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.

It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.

If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.

We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.

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The link to the website is below. You may also sign the statement if you so desire.

http://www.themountvernonstatement.com/

Conservatives and Progressives. Huge Difference!

Conservatives and Progressives. Huge Difference!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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The difference between Conservatives and Progressives, er liberals, er, socialists… (Whatever!)… is now more obvious than ever before -- especially now that Americans have seen the Progressives in action.

Are you as sick of the Democrats claiming the Republicans are looking out for their rich friends… at the cost of the poor folk in this country? Every time one turns around it is on the TV, in the Newspapers, and on the radio. Of course, the Democrat party controls the mainstream media outlets. (That’s why FOX News Channel is such a threat to them, and, why it is burning the ratings up. People have become sick and tired of hearing the old leftist spin on the news and are rushing to Fox News, in droves, to hear the “real” news and, as they say, get it “fair and balanced.”

Here’s the thing. It really is propaganda… plain and simple. It is political pabulum fed to the media, by the DNC, and the MSM laps it up and regurgitates it onto their respective networks or print media. They have been the willing accomplices of the Democrat Party since, well, since the beginning. Nothing has changed.

One of my own regional newspapers, owned by the New York Times, is no different. Readers get the same old rotgut, left wing, propaganda. However, they have been doing this so long they have begun to believe their own propaganda. They actually believe they are unbiased! Talk about denial! Just a brief scan of their editorial page and a fair-minded person will understand immediately their approach to reporting. It carries over onto the pages of the news. The sources are well known left leaning news associations.

So, with the Democrats controlling the Mainstream Media, why is there a hue and cry when a conservative voice pops up on TV, the radio, or the print media-- because, we conservatives are a very real threat to the left. Our ideas actually work. They are not difficult for folks to understand. We don’t have all the “nuance” intertwined in our remarks. We speak plainly and to the point. Oftimes, we are not politically correct, but then most folks aren’t.

Conservatives are a mixed lot, the same as Liberals/Progressives/Socialists. But for the most part, we are a people who base our political belief in the rock solid fundamentals that built this country. We believe the founders were honorable men. Flawed, but honorable. We believe they meant what they said when they wrote the constitution -- and they said what they meant. We see no reason to change it one-way or the other. Unlike Progressives, conservatives do not believe the Constitution is “a living document” subject to radical interpretation by whim. What you see is what you get.

Most conservatives are morally grounded in the scriptures and we believe that is the root of all things good. But, even more important than all these, we believe there are absolutes, moral and otherwise. There are boundaries. We, for the most part, do not believe in moral relativity. It is either right, or it is wrong.

You can see why we lock horns with the liberals/progressives/socialists, especially the new socialists that now form the bulk of what used to be the Democratic Party. Sadly, that is exactly what has happened to the old Democratic Party. It has become a socialist/secular/humanist (and, we suspect, a sprinkling of communists.) party. The truly sad thing is… they have yet to realize the American people will have none of it. They have isolated themselves from the electorate and they are now, seemingly, bent on self-destruction.

In by-gone days, the Democrat party was a party in which Zell Miller could feel at home. It was a political party the Southern folk could align with, especially since the Lincoln administration was a Republican administration. Things have changed. The pendulum has swung and now the Republican Party is the party the Democrat Party used to be. Thus, the switching of parties by Southerners and the reason the South now leans most favorably toward the Republican.

Presidential elections cannot be won without the South (i.e. the states of the old Confederacy). It will be a cold day, in warmer climes, when the South switches back to the Democrat Party.

Many conservatives don’t feel the Republican Party is conservative enough. They feel the Republican Party has forsaken its conservative agenda and it’s conservative members. I fall in that group. As a result the Tea Party Movement was born. The Tea Party Movement may yet become a full-grown third political party in America, a conservative political party. However, caution must be exercised that Tea Party candidates for office do not harm the campaigns of GOP candidates who have clear shots at removing an incumbent democrat, or a liberal, or RINO Republican from office.

Just some thoughts today on why politics are as they are in the USA. Subject to change, of course!

J. D. Longstreet

Season's Greetings to Liberals and Conservatives

To All My Liberal Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or explicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere .

Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

To My Conservative Friends:Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

All Pain, No Gain ... by Paul Driessen

All Pain, No Gain

Restricting and taxing energy use to prevent speculative climate disasters will be disastrous
By Paul Driessen
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“Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under cap-and-trade,” President Obama has admitted. “Industry will have to retrofit its operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that cost on to consumers.” Cap-and-trade, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) eagerly observed, is “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time.”

Not one congressman even read the numbingly complex 1427-page Waxman-Markey global warming bill, before the House of Representatives voted on it. A new version of the Kerry-Boxer Senate bill provides no details about how carbon allowances would be allocated under a mandatory emissions reduction program.

The process recalls Churchill’s description of Russia: “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Here we are dealing with estimates wrapped in assumptions inside speculation – based on assertions that Earth faces a manmade climate disaster.

The only thing known with certainty is that cap-tax-and-trade will inflict intense pain for no environmental gain – on regions, states, communities, industries, companies and families. It is a complicated regulatory scheme that penalizes businesses and people who use electricity and other forms of energy derived from oil, gasoline, natural gas and coal.

Cap-tax-and-trade would place limits on how much carbon dioxide America would be allowed to generate, and the limits would decrease drastically over time. Companies and utilities would be issued permits, saying how much CO2 they can put into the air each year. If they cannot stay within that limit, they will have to switch to wind, solar, nuclear or geothermal energy (assuming those sources can be built, in the face of regulation and litigation); capture the CO2 and store it somewhere (via technologies that do not yet exist); or buy more permits from US or foreign companies that don’t need as much energy (through a new international financial, trading and carbon derivatives market).

Cap-and-trade restricts and taxes hydrocarbon energy use. Because 85% of America’s energy is hydrocarbons, prices will soar for everything we heat, cool, drive, make, grow, eat and do. The impacts will be especially painful in states that depend on coal for 50-98% of their electricity, refine petroleum for the nation’s vehicles, and manufacture products that improve, enhance and safeguard our lives.

The complex system will be administered by profit-seeking carbon management and trading firms, regulated and policed by thousands of government bureaucrats, and paid by every family, driver, business, school district, hospital, airline, traveler and farmer.

The ostensible goal is to stabilize planetary temperatures, climates and weather patterns that have never been stable, by slashing carbon dioxide emissions 83% below 2005 levels by 2050.

The last time America emitted that amount of CO2 was 1908! Once we account for the far lower population, manufacturing, transportation and electrification levels of a century ago, 2050 carbon dioxide emissions would have to equal what the United States emitted after the Civil War!

That would require monumental changes in lifestyles and living standards. It would mean politicians and unelected pressure groups, bureaucrats and judges will limit or dictate home building, heating, cooling and lighting decisions; transportation and vacation choices; how food can be grown and shipped; what kinds of products can be purchased and how they must be manufactured; and how much energy must come from subsidized, unreliable renewable sources.

Restrictions and taxes on fossil fuels will hit our manufacturing heartland especially hard, as it is heavily dependent on coal and natural gas. The American Council for Capital Formation calculated that Waxman-Markey would spike Indiana’s electricity prices nearly 60% by 2030 – increasing school and hospital energy costs 28-42% and causing numerous jobs to be exported to Asia, where there will be few restrictions on CO2 emissions. Numerous other states would be similarly hard hit, says ACCF.

Other experts have calculated that cap-and-trade would destroy millions of American jobs … raise energy costs for the average US family by $1,400 to $3,100 per year … and send overall food and living costs upward by $4,600 annually. Will you be able to afford that?

Poor families may get energy welfare. Wealthier families can absorb these costs. But cap-and-trade will severely affect middle class families. They would be forced to pay skyrocketing energy and food costs, by cutting their college, retirement and vacation budgets. Hospitals and school districts would have to raise fees and taxes, or cut services. Cities and states would have to cover rising welfare and unemployment costs, as tax revenues dwindle. Tourism-based businesses and economies would get hammered.

Switching to renewable energy does not merely increase costs and reduce reliability. It also affects the environment. Ethanol mandates would mean growing corn or switchgrass on farmland the size of Montana, and using vast amounts of water, fertilizer, diesel fuel, natural gas and insecticides.

Wind and solar power would mean covering millions of acres of scenic, habitat and farm land with huge turbines and solar panels. Hundreds of millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and “rare earth” minerals would be needed to build them and thousands of miles of new transmission lines to get the expensive renewable electricity to distant cities. Because the turbines and panels only work 30% of the time, back up natural gas generators would also be needed, meaning still more raw materials.

Even worse, all this pain would bring no benefits. Using global warming alarmists’ own computer models, climatologist Chip Knappenberger calculated that even an 83% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions would result in global temperatures rising just 0.1 degrees F less by 2050 than not cutting US carbon dioxide emissions at all.

That’s because CO2 emissions from China, India and other countries would quickly dwarf America’s job-killing reductions. These nations are building a new coal-fired power plant every week and putting millions of new cars on growing networks of highways – to modernize, reduce poverty, improve human health, and ensure that families, offices, schools and hospitals have electricity. Germany plans to build 27 new coal-fired power plants by 2020, and Italy expects to double its reliance on coal by 2015.

Moreover, the 0.1 degree temperature reduction assumes rising CO2 causes global warming – a belief that thousands of scientists vigorously challenge, because there is little actual evidence to support the thesis.

Of course, some will gain from penalizing, taxing and hyper-regulating our economy. Al Gore and others involved in emission trading stand to make billions, from trillions of dollars in cap-and-trade transactions. Coastal states and companies that don’t rely on coal will benefit, as will companies that get excess or low-cost emission permits and can sell these allowances for handsome profits. Well-paid bureaucrats will have “green jobs” – as will scientists, eco-activists and renewable energy companies, who will share $6-10 billion annually in taxpayer cash, as long as they continue to conduct climate research, issue dire warnings about global warming cataclysms, and build wind and solar projects.

Besides massive pain for no gain, cap-tax-and-trade will create an intrusive Green Nanny State that destroys jobs, reduces personal freedoms, and hobbles economic opportunities and civil rights.

Our Earth is cooling. Our economy is in the tank. Congress and the White House need to stop hyperventilating about global warming, and let the free market get our economy back on track.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. This article first appeared on World Net Daily: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=115253

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Conservative+Cap-and-Trade+Taxes

Global Warming Hoax = Global Governance

The Global Warming Hoax

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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Is it global warming or, a new ice age we should worry about? Scientist are coming at us daily with dire warnings of the end of the world due to what they decree as “global warming”. The end of the world is nigh and we’re all going to drown as a result of the melting ice packs at the poles.

Really?

No, I don’t think so. Now, you can choose to believe the propaganda these control freaks put out if you wish, for that is all it is. It’s a power grab using fear as the great motivator. They intend to scare us into giving up the life style we have worked so hard to acquire.

The Copenhagen Treaty is a farce. It has virtually nothing to do with a cleaner environment. It has everything to do with “Get America” by clearing the way for the implementation of a One-World-Government now referred to as "Global Governance."!

Here in my wing of the political spectrum we often refer to the so-called “environmentalist” as “Watermelons”… because they are green on the outside and red on the inside. We fear the world’s communist community has found a home and taken up residence in the environmentalist movement and especially the Global Warming Crowd. The Global Warming scare is their latest attack on the free world. That’s right… the FREE world.

You see … we are TOO free. They can’t stand that. A people not tightly ruled, by them, is a dangerous thing. People MUST be controlled… preferably by them. How can they do that since the communist movement has been largely rejected? They have done it simply by taking cover or, camouflaging themselves as “Greenies” not “Reds”. You see, they only want what is best for the greater good. Yeah, right!

Their web of rules and regulation have already hurt our US industries and taken a toll on the economics of the world.

Weather comes at us in cycles. Warm (Interglacial), then cold (Glacial), then warm again (Interglacial), then cold (Glacial) again. In the 1970’s it was a new Ice Age (Glacial) we were to be worrying about. Now it is global warming (Interglacial) .

If the world were, in fact, warming up, seems to me there would be benefits from that. Like longer growing seasons, less people dying from respiratory diseases such as pneumonia, less pollution due to a lessening of the use of fossil fuels to keep warm. It’s very simple stuff, really.

In the meantime, the global warming alarmist will continue to mount their soapboxes and hold firm to their position that we’re all gonna die, because the earth’s temp is skyrocketing, until that position is no longer tenable. Then, well, watch out for the glaciers, ‘cause a New Ice Age will, most assuredly, be on the way.

Oh, I nearly forgot. A new cooling period began nearly a decade ago, already!

Just remember, the Left is using naturally occurring weather changes to frighten the public and secure even more power unto themsleves. their ultimate goal is Global Governance, or, what we used to refer to as -- a One-World-Government.

So, what else is new?

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Global-Governance+Global-Warming-Hoax_Copenhagen-Treaty+Hoax

Energy ABCs: Playing Americans for Fools ... by Alan Caruba

Energy ABCs: Playing Americans for Fools
By Alan Caruba

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I have long harbored strong doubts about the knowledge that most Americans possess regarding the sources of energy they largely take for granted. We flip a switch and the lights go on. We pull up to the gas pump and drive away. We use machines that are totally dependent on having enough electricity to power entire cities as well as rural communities.

Since all successful economies depend on abundant, affordable energy, why is the Congress preparing to pass a cap-and-trade bill, renamed to suggest “clean energy” and “national security” has anything to do with a huge tax on the use of energy by all Americans?

There are some fundamental facts about energy in America you need to know. The Congressional Research Service recently released a report on U.S. energy reserves. To begin:

The U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) when combining its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves. This is oil known to exist and oil estimates in fields as yet untapped. Between Alaska and the continental offshore potential, we could literally be self-sufficient.

Keep in mind, however, oil represents less than 40% of our energy use, nor do we import most of that from the Middle East. Two-thirds of our oil consumption comes from North America with Canada and Mexico being major providers. By expanding domestic production, we could reduce dependency on the Middle East even further.

That said, since the days of Jimmy Carter, the White House and Congress has gone out of its way to make it difficult, if not impossible, to tap domestic reserves. When a windfall profits tax was imposed on November 9, 1978, it sent a message to U.S. oil companies they were not welcome here.

While ExxonMobil is the favorite target of environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth or the Sierra Club, the fact is that it is no longer in the seven top oil producers in the United States. The “big” domestic oil companies are now Aera Energy, Anadarko, and Occidental. ExxonMobil looks for oil in overseas locations.

Astonishingly, other oil producing nations whose reserves are ranked behind the U.S. are Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, and Canada. The only oil “shortage” in the U.S. is one created by Congress and the energy policies of a succession of past presidents. An estimated 87% of our oil reserves remain untouched.

When it comes to coal, the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal with 28% of all the world’s coal reserves. Russian comes in second with 19%. Coal represents more than 50% of all the electricity produced in America and the Obama administration has declared war on it.

The cap-and-trade bill before Congress puts all of its emphasis on the two worst, most expensive, and job-killing forms of energy, wind and solar. Combined they represent a pathetic 1% of electricity. They are unreliable sources, dependent on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Moreover, though never mentioned, they require backup sources of traditional energy production. You cannot have wind or solar energy without also having a coal-fired, hydroelectric, or nuclear plant to ensure a steady source.

As reported in Newsweek, “Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies to encourage wind, solar, and other renewable energy markets.”

The result, in the U.S. is a virtually army, “1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emissions permits by 2012.)”

The Newsweek article said, “It’s a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve.”

We do not have a climate policy in the United States. We have a huge scheme to enrich a small group of people who will control the exchanges for utterly bogus “carbon credits”, nothing more than the right to emit carbon dioxide as the natural result of burning fuel for energy. It is not, however, such industrial and other uses that represents the largest emitter of carbon dioxide. The Earth itself is responsible for 95% of the CO2 in the atmosphere and that CO2 represents 3.618%.

By comparison, nuclear energy does not produce CO2 emissions and yet there hasn’t been a new nuclear reactor built in the United States for some thirty years.

The same is true for the building of a single new oil refinery in America. Since it takes about a decade from start to finish on these huge engineering projects and a billion dollar investment, it would be 2020 before one was in full production if begun next year. The real question is, if you were an oil company CEO, would you invest that kind of money when the U.S. won’t let you explore or extract oil on or offshore?

What no one is telling you is that CO2 does not “cause” global warming and there is no global warming. The Earth is actually in a natural cycle of cooling that began in 1998 and is anticipated to last at least two to three decades.

Europe’s experience with “renewable” energy has been a disaster. Great Britain is facing blackouts that will make economic growth impossible and wreak havoc on the daily lives of the English. As with other European nations, it has driven up the cost of electricity.

The American energy consumer is being lied to and stolen from in the form of the cap-and-trade bill under consideration and other obstacles.

The nation as a whole is being put at risk for lack of access to our own vast energy reserves, coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power that will be needed to reverse the present recession, unemployment, and the ability to grow our way back to prosperity.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

*******************

Conservative+Global-Warming+Climate-Change+Hoax+Global-Governance

The Health Care Bill Americans Don’t Want

The Health Care Bill Americans Don’t Want
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet.
*****************************

The US House of Representatives passed a Health Care Bill over the weekend that will never see the light of day. Yes, it will go to the US Senate -- and that is as far as the House bill will go. The Senate Health Care bill will be a different animal, entirely.

Public Option must go. Public Option will not be a part of a Senate Health Care bill. That is a good thing. An even better thing would be for there to be no Health Care Bill at all!

Now, I am just an ole country boy, with limited book learning, but even I know that Americans don’t want the monstrosity the US House was congratulating itself on passing last Saturday.

I could not help but think to myself, as I watched them preen and parade their pride before America that many of the Democrats had just committed political suicide. Their façade of smiles and backslapping will crumble soon, especially when they get home for the holidays and their spurned, and burned, constituents begin to “button-hole” them and explain to them why they can expect this to be their last term in the Congress. And that, too, will be a good thing.

NEXT November the American voters will have their say officially and it is going to be a democrat massacre at the polls.

Why is it so difficult for the democrats to understand that Americans would have settled for insurance coverage for those unable to afford it? THAT we could do. It would be a strain but we could manage to pay for it. What Americans do not want is Universal Healthcare with a trillion and a half dollar price tag, which we cannot pay for!

Americans also do not want the so-called public option. Americans do not want anybody, or anything, or any entity, between them and their doctor! Period! When the government announces IT will be the gatekeeper between all Americans and their sacred relationship with their personal physician, the national ire began rising.

Allow me to give you an example of what Americans fear. Today I was experiencing a problem with my eyes. I picked up the phone and dialed my doctor’s office and explained the symptoms. I asked when I could see the doctor. The receptionist asked how long it would take me to drive to the office. I replied: “5 or 6 minutes.” The receptionist then directed me to “come on.” I was seen and treated in short order and was back home in no time. Do you really, REALLY, think Socialized Medicine will provide that sort of medical service? This relationship with one’s doctor will be destroyed by Socialized Medicine… and THAT is what Americans fear!

Today, Americans are finally paying attention to the run-away, rogue, Congress in Washington. Not just conservative Americans, either. Our congress is out of control and is in desperate need of being reined in. The way we rein in a congress is by tossing out as many offending Congresspersons and Senators as we possible can. Unfortunately, in America, we have no apparatus for a vote of “no confidence” with which we could dissolve the Congress and hold new elections. As a result we must wait until November of 2010 to clean the House AND the Senate!

Many months ago this scribe told you the problem with the democrats is -- every time they come to power they overreach. EVERY TIME. They have not disappointed. This past weekend the democrats stayed true to their history and they overreached again… BIG TIME. And it will cost them BIG TIME!

J. D. Longstreet

*****************

Conservative+ObamaCare+Congress+Democrats+Election

Muslim, but Presumed Innocent ... Alan Caruba

Muslim, but Presumed Innocent
By Alan Caruba

********************

The earliest indications are that Major Malik Nadal Hasan, the alleged killer of thirteen soldiers who wounded 30 more at Fort Hood broke under the stress of his forthcoming deployment to Iraq in his capacity as a psychiatrist. Up to the shooting on November 5, he was reportedly doing everything he could to avoid being sent to the Middle East.

Native-born and deemed a good American who enlisted in the U.S. Army, Hasan is the son of Jordanian immigrants and a Muslim. Reportedly, he had encountered some difficulties as the result of that and there are reports, unsubstantiated at this point, that he had posted some thoughts on a personal website regarding his feelings about the role of the U.S. in the Middle East.

If the early news reports are any indication, most will avoid the fact that Major Hasan is a Muslim. Neither CBS Evening News, nor NBC Nightly News in their East Coast feed made any mention of it. As the story continues to develop, it will be instructive to see how the U.S. news media deals with this obvious fact.

On Fox and Friends, Friday morning, it was reported that he shouted “Allah Akbar,” God is great, as he fired at his trapped and helpless victims. There is, in addition, the factor of premeditation.

There are some four to five million Muslims of Arab descent in America, some native born, others who have immigrated. One presumes their patriotism, but there are also too many troubling incidents of these citizens and of converts to Islam to ignore.

Still, nothing—least of all a mass shooting—happens in a vacuum. That is why the November 10th execution of John Allen Muhammad is going to be another occasion for the nation’s media to avoid the fact that he, too, is Muslim. Muhammad, along with Lee Boyd Malvo, were the Beltway snipers who, for three weeks in October 2002, randomly killed ten people and critically wounded three others.

No one is suggesting that all Muslims are killers. What is not being addressed, however, is the way Islam and its holy book, the Koran, is a call to battle.

Starting in 1972, ten members of a local mosque in New York ambushed responding officers, killing one of them. Some fifty-five incidents, including 9/11, have Islam as a component. In the 1970s, adherents of the Nation of Islam, Oakland, California, were particularly active.

As Iran celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of the hostage taking of American diplomats, one is reminded of a July 1980 killing in which a political dissident living in Bethesda, Maryland was assassinated in front of his home by an Iranian agent who was an American convert to Islam.

In the 1990s, events began to pick up. In January 1993, for example, a Pakistani with Mujahideen ties gunned down two CIA employees outside its headquarters. In 1997, a Palestinian left an anti-Semitic suicide note behind, went to the top of the Empire State Building, and shot seven people. Events continued apace in the present decade. In March 2000, a local imam gunned down a deputy sheriff in Atlanta and, in Los Angeles, in July 2002, a Muslim killed two people at the Israeli airline counter at the Los Angeles airport.

The 2001 attack on the Twin Towers was Muslim in conception and fulfillment, dependent on the wish for martyrdom by its perpetrators and over three thousand Americans lost their lives.

Honor killings became part of the news stream. In 2004, a Muslim father killed his wife and attacked his two daughters. In 2008, a Muslim father strangled his 25-year-old daughter and this year in Glendale, Arizona, on November 2nd a Muslim father ran over and killed his daughter, fearing she had become too westernized.

Earlier this year, in February, the founder of a Muslim television station beheaded his wife who was seeking a divorce. The manner of the killing is worth noting.

Terrorism experts continue to warn us that some Muslims here in America are engaged in plots to advance jihad. Curiously, the Department of Homeland Security just named two Muslims to top posts. If an American Muslim who rose to the rank of major could commit mass murder, one has to wonder about the wisdom of those choices, admitted to the inner sanctum of the agency charged with protecting the nation.

The signs were there with Major Hasan, but it is likely that the political correctness that infects common sense in America allowed his unhappiness to erupt in a brutal, senseless act.

No religion is exempt from a history of warfare or individual acts of violence, but today’s world is a reminder that of all the killings taking place in the Middle East these days, it is Muslims killing Muslims. Spread by warfare, Islam is the newest of the most populous religions of the world and is distinguished by its zeal to impose a global caliphate.

Islam is not a religion of peace. It is not even a religion of civility. It is a battle plan that divides the world between the world of Islam, Dar al-Islam, and the world of war, Dar al- Harb. Guess which part of the world that puts most of us?

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

********************

Conservative+Muslim+Army+Terrorism+Islam+War+America

Is This Recession a Huge Marxist Trick?

Is This Recession a Huge Marxist Trick?
Forcing Political Change Through Orchestrated Crisis
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

************************************

Remember that “Shadow Government” in Washington we warned about months ago? Well, ten months have now elapsed in the Obama Regime’s subjugation of America and yours truly is even more convinced now, than ever, that such a Shadow Government does, in fact, exist and is all but running the United States.

I have had the nagging feeling that this recession has been manufactured and guided, or shepherded, right from the outset. I have also come to believe that the Cloward and Piven Strategy has been employed as the vehicle to intentionally crash the US economy in order to demoralize the American people in such a way, and so deeply, that the citizens will accept the declaration which has yet to come -- but is expected, by this scribe, at some point shortly after the first of the year, stating that our current economic system, capitalism, has failed and our democratic capitalist republic form of government has, likewise, failed and it is now time for the American people to create a new political system in America. That proposed political system will be socialism/communism and the American economy will then be based on the tenants of Marxism and it will lean heavily on a redistribution of the nation’s wealth.

Now, if we are right, all this planning was made long before Obama arrived on the scene -- and since day one in the White House the Shadow Government, with Obama as their mouth piece reading the scripts that have been prepared for him, has been setting the agenda for the implementation of a Socialist/Marxist government to take the place of our democratic republic as soon next year as they are able to convince the American people that without the change over to socialism/communism America, and capitalism, is doomed.

All last summer, before the election, we warned this could happen and probably would. Now all indications are that it is ready for implementation.

I am convinced that Obama’s Shadow Government is a group of socialists and Marxists bent on bringing America to her knees and making her crawl to them begging for a new, workable form of government, They are ready! They have the long drawn-up plans in their briefcases ready to be put into action.

We have been set-up. You and I, all Americans have been given the “Mushroom Treatment. Like Mushrooms, we have been kept in the dark and fed a steady diet of horse manure.

I can’t speak for you, but like Howard Beal, of the famous movie “Network,” I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” And neither should you!

So what is the Cloward Piven Strategy? Simply put it is the strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

In an article at The American Thinker, James Simpson says the following: “Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision.” Read the entire article HERE.

The Shadow Government, comprised of all those leftist radicals with whom Obama has been associated most of his adult life, in my opinion, orchestrated the current economic crisis. They did it for one reason. That one reason was, again – in my opinion -- to cause the collapse of the democratic capitalist republic of the United States and replace it with the new Socialist States of America!

It is nearly overwhelming just to think that one’s fellow Americans would do such a thing!

With Obama in the White House, during this critical time in our history, we truly have the fox guarding the henhouse! Obama can brush aside all the inquiries concerning his association with leftist radicals if he wishes, but when one steps back, and gets a look at the big picture of Obama’s life, one begins to understand that the major influences on his life came from a long list of the crème de la crème of leftist radicals in America with whom he associated. When you make that critical observation you cannot help but be convinced that Obama, himself, is a willing participant in the campaign to bring about the collapse of America’s democratic, capitalist, republic and replace it with a socialist/marxist regime. As Obama has spent nearly his entire adult life totally immersed in the socialist, leftists, ideology, what else could one expect.

Look around you. Look at America today. Look at the financial mess our economic system is in today. Then consider the truckloads of money siphoned from the US treasury and spent on so-called bailouts that have done no good, and will do no good, and then consider the Cloward Piven Strategy again: “The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.” Could it be any clearer? The very politicians who swear they are trying to get us out of this mess are the very same politicians who got us into the mess in the first place!

I am now convinced that Obama and his henchmen intend to continue tossing one crisis after another at our financial and governmental systems until they cause a collapse of both systems. Then they intend to replace our democratic republic with a socialist/marxist regime.

It has been reported they intend to first use the power of persuasion – and -- if that doesn’t work they intend to use “the persuasion of power.” Did you get that? You had better understand what that means.

They have just begun their massive transfer of power FROM the people of the United States TO the Shadow Government. After Christmas, after the first of the year, expect the financial crisis to worsen. That will be your tip-off that the socialist troops are on the move. It will be time to man the barricades. Forewarned is forearmed.

Yes. I know how this must sound to my readers. Paranoia. OK. Let me say this: If everybody IS out to get you – then paranoia is just damn good thinking!

Look. I love this country and I do not want to see her hijacked by a socialist movement that will rot the soul of the people of America. We need to begin a SAVE AMERICA MOVEMENT right now. This once great country can be great again, but first she needs rescuing. We cannot rescue her by standing on the sidelines. We will soon learn whether we are the Home of the Brave – or not!

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Shadow-Government+Obama+Socialism+Marxism

The Triumvirate of DUMB!

The Triumvirate of DUMB!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

***********************************

Where are the “Grown-ups” IN the Obama Regime? I look around and I see emotionally immature people traipsing about in the West Wing of the White House with the blessing of the uno numero socialist in America, President Obama. Then I look up the Hill to the Congress and I see Harry Reid over in the Senate, and I see Nancy Pelosi over in the House of Representatives -- and I shudder. I fear I am looking at “Dumb” and “Dumber.” It is frightening to realize that our country is in the hands of those three people: Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. You know what is even scarier? Pelosi is third in line for the Presidency should something, God forbid, happen to the President and the Vice-President.

There is a great deal of angst in the US these days. One can almost feel the tension in the air. Each day we awaken to another day of wondering what exactly the Obama regime is going to do today to strip more of our precious freedom away.

Already we have a Cap and Trade bill hanging over our heads. That bill alone is going to cost every American family mucho deniro in the years ahead as the government attempts to fight an enemy that doesn’t even exist. I am referring to global warming, or as the “environuts” are wont to say -- “Climate Change.” The “Bailouts” have strapped a generation, or so, of Americans, even those yet unborn, with thousands of dollars of debt they must pay off in their lifetimes on this earth. I have read that the Obama Regime has saddled America with more debt in his ten months, or so, in office than all the previous US Presidents combined! Unemployment in America is now over nine percent and climbing. With fewer jobs there is less disposable income, less money in the marketplace, and that has affected Wall Street and stocks are all over the map. Investors are as nervous as a lady of ill repute in church!

Now, comes socialized medicine. The added cost to Americans is expected to be well over a trillion dollars in the first decade, and, frankly, we have serous doubts it will turn out to be that cheap. And regardless of what our esteemed senators and congresspersons are telling us it WILL affect the nations deficit and wreak even more havoc with what is left of our economy.

If there is any silver-lining, at all, to the dark clouds gathered over America these days, it is the very real possibility that in one year, if we can hang on, there is likely to be a political massacre of democrat politicians at the ballot box.

Even the liberal voters who flocked to the polls in 2008 to elect Obama are now having serious doubts about him and his policies.

I have noticed some of the more liberal journalists are bemoaning Obama’s failure to stand by his campaign promises, those promises especially favored by ultra-liberals, and, in fact, has continued a number of Bush’s policies and programs with what appears to be total disregard for the leftist dreams he has shattered along the way over the past ten months, or so.

Now, we are told, some in the White House are experiencing some trembling in the knees as Tuesday’s elections approach and their candidates are not making the “showing” they were expected to make against the more conservative candidates. In fact, The Obama Regime is admitting that at least a couple of races, they deem especially important to them, are likely to go to the opposition as their candidates go down in flames. One must ask: is this a precursor to coming attractions in 2012? Could be. But, 2012 is still a long way off and things change at a remarkable velocity in politics, especially national politics.

Dumb, dumber, and dumbest. Taking on Fox News was, probably the dumbest move yet. But, hey, that is what happens when people with power get cocky. They open themselves up to return fire.

I was in the US Army Artillery during my service in the military. One of the important lessons we learned -- and it is a lesson readily applied to one’s life -- is to always remember when the enemy is in range of your guns – YOU are in range of THEIRS! Somebody apparently forgot to tell the folks in the Obama Regime.

Americans have, at a minimum, three more years of wondering what we are going to be hit with next. Are we worried? You are “durn tootin” we’re worried -- and with good reason. We still do not see a viable presidential candidate being groomed by the Republicans to run against Obama in 2012. Oh, yes! It is truly worrisome.

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Obama-Regime+Pelosi+Reid+Dumb

If The Cause Is Great Enough, The Price Is Irrelevant.

If The Cause Is Great Enough, The Price Is Irrelevant.
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*****************************************

No one likes war. But, contrary to what the peaceniks tell us, war CAN bring change for the better. Ask the Brits, the French, the Germans the Belgium’s, the Jews…. and the list goes on.

War ABSOLUTELY changes things. The Middle East, for better or for worse, is changed forever. The US has a beachhead in the Middle East and we will be there, to one degree or another, forever. We are not going to leave. As the democracies begin to shape up, and form up, and freedom begins to spread, those who hold the dictator’s reins now will, over time, find themselves out of a job. Those who would hold the Middle East back in the 14th century will find they alone are left in the past. The people are going to move on to liberty and freedom. Once a people taste freedom, it is not possible to strip them of it again. Not for long, anyway. Take it from them and they will fight you to reclaim it.

The spark of freedom has been planted in Middle Eastern countries, ancient in origin, yet infants in the ways of democracy. It will take time to see if that spark ignites the longing for freedom, for self-determination, for liberty, and for the dignity of a free people.

Yes, there is reason to believe that within days, or weeks, or months of the US pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, they will revert to their pre-war totalitarian ways. Many of us feel that is the most likely scenario. And yet, there is the optimistic outlook, which says democracy will win out, and the newly freed people will manage to pick up the pieces and build nations able, willing, and even eager to take their place amongst the democratic peoples of the world. Honestly… I hope the optimists win this one. The US, and it’s coalition partners, have paid a dear price, in blood and treasure, to set those enslaved peoples free and give them that chance.

In the meantime, America marches on. Many of us worry that while we are busy securing freedom for nations in distant places we are in danger of relinquishing our OWN freedom as the pre-World War Two Germans did… at the ballot box. SOME of us, and we hope, enough of us, still believe that Ronald Reagan’s dream of America as a great “shining city on a hill” still perseveres. The nation Reagan pointed to as the last, best, hope of a world, that lost its way, is in serious danger of joining the lost. I ask again, if the cost of Iraqi and Afghani freedom is the loss of our OWN freedom… then, is THAT price too dear?

For our non-American readers… that is what defines Americans. We are a people willing to risk it all… to set other men free. It costs us… dearly…each time we commit ourselves to a fight for other men’s freedom. For years, and even decades afterwards, we lick our wounds and contemplate the question of the cost, over and over again. For we know, deep down inside ourselves, that freedom must be nurtured with the blood of free men for it’s continued existence. You see… we know that our own freedom depends upon the freedom of our fellowman. As testament to our commitment survey the cemeteries filled with American dead from the remote jungle islands of the Pacific to the picturesque European countryside.

Even now, America is engaged with a foe in a worldwide war to beat back the terrorists who have stated their goal as a worldwide caliphate (kingdom) ruled by a singe religion… a theocracy. They have shown they will do anything, including the cold-blooded murder of thousands, yea, millions of innocents to achieve that goal. America and a handful of brave partner nations is the only thing standing between the free world and the ravenous wolves of Islamofacism.

Yes, we worry about the cost. Yes, we worry about our own freedom. But we know that America’s dedication to freedom would be less than complete should we ever turn our backs on our fellowman struggling to join us in the sacred, priceless, state of freedom.

If the cause is great enough, the price is irrelevant.

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Freedom+War+Peace+Change+Democracy

Taking Away Your Choice ... Alan Caruba

Taking Away Your Choice
By Alan Caruba
**************************



I am always amazed at the variety of choice that exists in my local supermarket. There are other supermarkets in the area, but the one I frequent most has lower prices on most items and almost anything you want to purchase allows one to select among several brands available.


We Americans may not think much about choice when it comes to what we buy because we have so many choices. It is the mark of a free marketplace where competition determines winners and losers. It says a lot about a society that puts a high premium on freedom.


Your government, however, has decided that, in 2012, you can no longer choose to purchase and use Thomas Edison’s iconic invention, the 100 watt incandescent light bulb. By 2014, all such bulbs will be banned from sale. That’s right, they will vanish from the shelves of supermarkets and other outlets.


As this is being written, your government is debating taking away your choice to purchase health insurance. Or not. If it gets its way, everyone, old and young, healthy or ill, everyone will have to buy health insurance—most likely the brand issued by the government because it will drive most present insurance companies out of business. That is so un-American as to defy belief.


In Europe, thanks to a European Union ban on incandescent light bulbs, consumers are cleaning out the shelves to stockpile a supply when they can no longer be sold. As Jason Lomberg, the Technical Editor of Electronic Component News, a trade publication, noted recently, “The ban has proved to be massively unpopular. All across Europe its media are reporting huge increases in the sales of incandescent sales. In Germany alone, sales for 100 watt bulbs rose by 80% to 150%.

Why were the EU and U.S. bans put in place? It is the view of environmentalists who insist that incandescent bulbs are less energy “efficient” than compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and that consumers must be denied the choice between them.

They are less “efficient”, but it is equally true that CFL’s unnatural, bluish light takes time to achieve full brightness, about three minutes on the average. At least a quarter of them fall short meeting their rated service life, meaning you will have to buy more of them.

In addition to the fact that some “emit a headache-inducing buzzing sound” the worst thing about fluorescent light bulbs is that they contain mercury. As a recent issue of The DeWeese Report points out, they “contain poisonous liquid mercury over 300 times the EPA’s standard accepted safety level.”

“In addition, days after a bulb has been broken,” noted Tom DeWeese, “vacuuming or simply crawling across the carpeted floor where the bulb was broken can cause mercury vapor levels to shoot back upwards of 100 times the accepted level of safety.” Who crawls on the floor? Babies! Whose closer to the floor than you? Pets!

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection reported that a woman was quoted $2,000 for cleanup of a broken compact fluorescent bulb in her house.

The politicians in the U.S. Congress, pandering as always to the crazed environmentalists, enacted the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that put the ban in place to begin in 2012.

The Obama administration has declared war on the building of new coal-fired energy plants despite the fact that they currently provide just over half of all the electricity we use daily, nor has a new nuclear plant been built in decades. It won’t allow any offshore exploration and extraction of oil or natural gas either. So, while allegedly providing for “energy independence” the government is thwarting any new provision of electricity.

But you will be forced to buy fluorescent light bulbs to ensure “energy efficiency” while one of the greatest inventions, the incandescent light bulb, is banned from use. The result will turn all U.S. landfills into toxic dumps.

Where the government finds the justification for destroying your right of choice continues to elude my grasp.What it portends are supermarkets with far less products and food choices than currently exist because some environmentalist or vegetarian has decided that coercive laws are the best way to take away the freedom of choice that is quintessentially American.

This ban must be repealed along with so-called healthcare “reform” and the hideous “cap-and-trade” law, renamed as the “American Clean Energy and Security Act”, that will raise the cost of electricity in the name of saving the Earth from a “global warming” that is NOT happening.

As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Alan Caruba
***********************

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

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Conservative+Global+Warming+Hoax