EPA Attacks The GOP

EPA Attacks The GOP

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

The Environmental Protection Agency has begun to feel our breath on their necks and they are lashing out. 

  

An article by Lisa P. Jackson entitled “Too Dirty too Fail -- House Republicans' assault on our environmental laws must be stopped.” appeared in the L. A. Times October 21^st, 2011.  In the article, the author says the following:  “Since the beginning of this year, Republicans in the House have averaged roughly a vote every day the chamber has been in session to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency and our nation's environmental laws. They have picked up the pace recently — just last week they voted to stop the EPA's efforts to limit mercury and other hazardous pollutants from cement plants, boilers and incinerators — and it appears their campaign will continue for the foreseeable future.”  (Ms. Jackson is the administrator of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.)

 To this I say: “Hallelujah!”  If America is fortunate enough to actually have a Congress and White House controlled by Republicans, after next year’s election, one of its priorities should be the abolishment of the EPA.

 The EPA is the “Vatican” of the pagan religion “Environmentalism.”  In this century, and the last, so many have turned from the worship of a supreme being, we call God, to what we used to call “paganism”… the worship of nature, or the environment, or… more specifically… Environmentalism.

 Yes, Environmentalism HAS become a religion.  Well, actually, it always was, it has just come back into favor in the past 100 years, or so.

 I do feel it is incumbent on the Republican Party to “put down” the EPA.  After all, it was the administration of a Republican President, Richard Nixon, which established the Environmental Protection Agency in the first place.  So the GOP owes it to America to put the EPA out of its misery … or rather, relieve America’s misery by abolishing the EPA.

 The EPA is the government agency from Hell.  It has grown in size and power like an insatiable beast.  Its tentacles have spread throughout America and reached into nearly every aspect of American life.  No one in America is safe from the EPA.

 And it continues to gorge and grow.  Just last November The Wall Street Journal published an editorial entitled: “The EPA Permitorium.” In the article the WSJ said: “The scale of the EPA’s current assault is unprecedented, yet it has received almost no public scrutiny. Since Mr. Obama took office, the agency has proposed or finalized 29 major regulations and 172 major policy rules.”

 Look.  It was bad enough that the EPA declared CO2 a greenhouse gas. Many in my generation learned in their elementary school science class that CO2 is absolutely necessary for everything on earth to … LIVE. 

 Then the EPA decided to look into regulating DUST … you know … DIRT tossed into the air and carried on the wind currents.

 “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering a crackdown on farm dust, so 21 Senators signed a letter addressing their concerns on the possible regulations.

 The letter dated July 23 to the EPA states, "If approved, would establish the most stringent and unparalleled regulation of dust in our nation's history." It further states, "We respect efforts for a clean and healthy environment, but not at the expense of common sense. These identified levels will be extremely burdensome for farmers and livestock producers to attain. Whether its livestock kicking up dust, soybeans being combined on a dry day in the fall, or driving a car down the gravel road, dust is a naturally occurring event." (SOURCE.)

Consider this from an editorial in the Oil & Gas Journal: “EPA, acting under authority of a loopy decision in 2007 by the Supreme Court, started down this wayward path in part to press Congress into action on climate change. Lawmakers should consider that an institutional affront. In the face of last year's collapse of cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate, in fact, they should see EPA's persistence as the potential for a constitutional crisis.

This is an Executive Branch agency claiming control of a major dimension of the US economy in contradiction of the will of the people as expressed through Congress. Congress must stop it. Congress must set clear and permanent limits on the maverick agency's authority and behavior. Congress must act soon.” (SOURCE.)

Just reining in the EPA will not do.  It is not nearly enough.  The agency needs to be permanently put out of business. No government agency should ever have the power or the reach of the current EPA.  Shut it down, lock the doors, board-up the windows and throw away the key.

J. D. Longstreet

Global Warming: An Obituary ... Alan Caruba

Global Warming: An Obituary

By Alan Caruba

I used to write obituaries when I was a young journalist and I daresay they are one of the best read sections of any newspaper. We have arrived at a time when the obituaries for global warming (now falsely called climate change) are increasing.

The October 25th edition of The Wall Street Journal sports an editorial titled “The Post-Global Warming World” commenting on the fact that the 17th annual United Nations-sponsored climate change conference in November is likely to be an even greater flop than recent ones. Few, if any, nations will sign on to the huge hoax of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) to save the world from burning to a crisp.

Considering the long years of media-driven drivel about global warming, the hoax should have been over by now, given the exposure in 2009 of thousands of emails between the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conspirators and growing body of evidence that everything they asserted was a great steaming pile of horse manure.

If there was ever a reason for the U.S. to stop funding the U.N., this is it.

I have predicted the death of global warming several times, but like a Hollywood zombie global warming is kept alive by its massive propaganda machine and useful idiots in the media.

Since the late 1980s The New York Times has engaged in the most horrid effort to convince its readers and the world that the IPCC should be taken seriously even though its successive reports have proven to be an offense to real science and the truth. No opportunity was ignored to advance the hoax even in the face of incontrovertible facts of every description.

Global warming has become a green religion to be taken on faith, but its claim to legitimacy was the “science” it put forth. That science began to come into question when a natural cooling cycle began in 1998. Glaciers began to noticeably grow along with the ice shelves of the Arctic and Antarctica. Snow arrived earlier and in greater abundance than previous decades.

Global tropical cyclone activity has been at historic lows and the frequency of U.S. hurricanes has declined. The latest, Irene, was rapidly downgraded to a tropical depression by the time it made landfall.

So, naturally, when Elisabeth Rosenthal, a blogger on “Green” topics for The New York Times wondered out loud “Where Did Global Warming Go?” I was curious to know her answer. Turns out that, despite being heralded on the covers of Newsweek, Time, The Economist, and countless other “news” magazines, in TV documentaries, et cetera, it hasn’t gone anywhere

After lamenting that, since his visit to the 2009 Copenhagen UN conference on climate change, President Obama has failed to mention global warming every day, Rosenthal wrote “But two years later, now that nearly every other nation accepts climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned agnostic on the issue.”

No, nearly every other nation has concluded it was a massive and very expensive fraud. That is why the forthcoming UN conference is going to implode. Policy makers are trying to extricate themselves from the useless solar and wind projects to which billions were committed. As soon as Obama is out of office and the Environmental Protection Agency is scaled back to its original 1970 objectives we can begin to attend to the rebuilding of the nation’s economy.

Note Rosenthal’s use of the term “climate change” rather than “global warming.” Note, too, that the 2009 Copenhagen conference was a huge failure with none of the nations in attendance agreeing to do much more than get together again, preferably in Cancun, Mexico, 2010, where the weather, unlike Copenhagen’s was not at risk of the huge blizzard that forced Obama to leave early lest he be trapped there until the snow melted.

“Though the evidence of climate change has, if anything, solidified,” Ms. Rosenthal lamented that “Mr. Obama now talks about ‘green jobs’ mostly as a strategy for improving the economy, but not the planet.”

People who worry about “the planet” and not about real problems such as how to feed seven billion of its human inhabitants or how to provide enough electricity to keep the lights on in the world’s cities or who think “improving the economy” is a poor choice to make when more than 14 million Americans are out of work are seriously out of touch with reality.

“He did not mention climate in his last State of the Union address,” said Rosenthal, pouting over something about which neither Obama, nor anyone else on planet Earth can do anything except to clean up the mess left behind by hurricanes, floods, and other forces of nature..

The climate, measured in hundreds of years, as opposed to the weather which is unpredictable more than a week from now, is the result of the activity of the Sun, the oceans, volcanoes, clouds, and cosmic rays. It is determined by the immutable laws of physics.

“The fading of global warming from the political agenda is a mostly American phenomenon,” wrote Rosenthal, apparently unaware that the European Union is about to collapse because several of its member nations are so deeply in debt that makes the U.S. look like a paragon of prudent fiscal policy. Rosenthal appears to be unaware of the rapid political changes occurring across the northern tier of African nations called the Maghreb and elsewhere throughout the Middle East.

Like the urchins “occupying Wall Street”, Rosenthal chides Americans who “prefer bigger cars and bigger homes. We value personal freedom, are suspicious of scientists, and tend to distrust the kind of sweeping government intervention required to confront rising greenhouse gas emissions.”

Since when is valuing personal freedoms, many of which are protected by the Constitution, and being suspicious of those scientists who have been claiming we’re all going to die, or questioning sweeping government intervention anything other than a deeply embedded American tradition and a very good idea under any circumstance?

For the past six years, the Heartland Institute has sponsored International Climate Change Conferences, the last in Washington, D.C., June 30-July 1. Haven’t heard about them? Maybe that’s because the mainstream media has gone out of its way to ignore them. The conferences, however, have contributed to the growing body of knowledge disputing global warming to the point where, even in the nation’s capitol, the topic has become little more than the slow revelation of the utter mendacity of the hoax and its perpetrators.

Where has global warming gone? Onto the ash heap of the history of the last twenty-plus years of bad policies, wasted billions of the public treasure, and all of it driven by the UN’s mendacious “science.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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 Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Thou Shalt Not Covet

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Exodus 20:17 "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbor’s."

No.  I am not about to turn my collar around and climb back into my pulpit.  If this piece turns out to be a sermon, then – so be it.

The Bible verse above is, in fact, the Tenth Commandment. Those of the Judeo-Christian faith understand covetousness to mean: reprehensible acquisitiveness, excessively and culpably desirous of the possessions of another, or -- just plain envious of the possessions of another.

I can think of no better example of human beings trampling on the Tenth Commandment than the current asinine display of covetousness by those protesting Wall Street and America’s financial institutions. 

The motley, rag-tag, battalions of socialism are openly LUSTING after the wealth of others, wealth they have not earned – but -- through some warped feeling of their own inferiority, expressed by their inability to compete in the marketplace of capitalism, they feel entitled to the wealth of others.  It is wealth to which they have no right.

The founding Fathers of America saw this coming and spoke out against it.

Samuel Adams stated: "The utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of wealth], and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable as those that vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional."

Later, James Madison, author of the Constitution, wrote, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."  

What we are witnessing in the streets of the nation is only the latest attempt by sluggards in this country to take property from those who have earned it and give it to those who have NOT earned it.  No matter how you frame it -- it is out and out thievery.

It has been known for countless centuries that when a nation’s leader takes from Paul to pay Peter, he can always count on the support of Peter.  America’s current leader knows this all too well and shamelessly employs it in his campaign for another term in office.

The current protest movement is not new.  The mobs seeking to take what is not theirs are not new. They fouled the streets of Rome centuries ago.  History is replete with records of frenzied mobs seeking to steal the wealth of the prosperous.

America was founded on the idea that anyone could become prosperous by applying one’s self, working, and investing in one’s future. America offers the OPPORTUNITY.  It is up to the individual to take advantage of that opportunity to better him/herself and secure a more prosperous future for their offspring. 

The dream of pulling one’s self up by one’s bootstraps cannot be realized when one exists solely on the labor/wealth of others.  When the source of their sustenance dries up, as it is bound to do, the entire society will founder and fail.

Someone once said:  “When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.” (Author Unknown)

Coveting that which is your neighbor’s is a cancer of the soul. It will eventually consume that which makes us human.  It lies at the root of most of a society’s troubles. It has brought down, and will continue to bring down, entire nations.  It can be brought to bay only by the efforts of each solitary individual. 

The greatest exhibition of “transference” is the protesters in New York, and around the country and world, transferring their own greed onto those they are protesting against.

Our government has taken huge sums of wealth from the prosperous in America and given it to America’s less fortunate in a “hand-up” effort only to see it accepted as a “hand-out.”   The fact is, this massive transfer of wealth has gone on for so long that the government continues it out of stark fear that the moment they stop the “handouts,” there will be revolution in the streets.

Much like the “bread and circuses” of ancient Rome, the system has been turned on its head and is now, in fact, a reverse form of blackmail. The threat is implied – and the message is received, loud, and clear, in our nation’s capital.

Coveting our neighbor’s wealth is but an excuse for not expending the same energy in earning one’s own wealth. 

As I look at the writhing mobs, I am fascinated at how many Americans are willing to allow themselves to be used as a tool by ambitious men who seek to direct America’s attention away from a failed President and his administration, for a few months, until the election.  They have no idea that their impact on American history will be less significant that of a bug on the windshield of a car speeding down I-95.

Sad.

J. D. Longstreet

The Value of a Single Israeli Soldier ... Alan Caruba

The Value of a Single Israeli Soldier

By Alan Caruba

The Talmud, a record of rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, says “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed the entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved the entire world.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)

Every Israeli soldier knows that, if captured, his nation will move mountains to secure his return. It’s not just a slogan. It’s a reality.

Since 1982 Israel has engaged in eight such swaps, the latest being the release of Gilad Shalit, kidnapped five years ago and denied the most basic rights as defined by international law. Hamas even refused to permit visits by representatives of the Red Cross.

Since 1982, more than 10,000 Palestinians serving prison sentences for terrorist and other hostile actions have been released. In 1983, more than 4,500 Palestinians prisoners were swapped for six Israeli soldiers being held in southern Lebanon. In 1985, 1,150 prisoners were exchanged for three Israelis.

The value that Israeli places on its soldiers includes even casualties of war. In 2008, it released Samir Kuntar, convicted of murdering four Israelis in 1979, plus four Hezbollah fighters in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized during a cross-border raid.

The swap for Shalit, also the victim of a cross-border raid, demonstrates a fundamental difference between the Israelis and their enemies. They believe that each of their soldiers is more valuable than those who war against them.

Naturally, the most recent swap evoked a wide range of views. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum welcomed Shalit’s reunion with his family as did thousands of Israelis, but said that “joy is tempered by the bitter realities of statecraft” calling the Israeli policy “the sentimentalization of strategy.” He thought the swap “poison(ed) the future” for Israel.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu disagreed. “As a leader who sends IDF soldiers every day to defend Israeli citizens, I believe that mutual responsibility is not just a slogan, but one of the foundations of our existence here.”

Netanyahu knows that Arabs have been kidnapping and ransoming people for the whole of Islam’s 1400 years and that it was standard practice among the desert tribes where the religion first took root. Islam is based on the promise of paradise for its adherents when they die; particularly its jihadist warriors.

Hamas and Fatah indoctrinate Palestinian children to want to be suicide bombers, but Judaism is based on the premise that life is God’s greatest gift and is to be valued above all else. Former Prime Minister, Golda Meir, said, “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

Bill Levinson, writing about the swap, had perhaps the best interpretation of what occurred. He referred to the famous Chinese tract, Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, suggesting that “Hamas might have played squarely into the hands of the Mossad and/or Shin Bet”, Israel’s highly effective and feared intelligence agencies.

“Israel might have just planted 50, 100, or even more double agents among the Palestinians who will cooperate, for example, in setting up Hamas terrorists to be killed or locating Palestinian rocket batteries for destruction whenever Israel considers this necessary.”

Sun Tzu wrote, “The enemy’s spies who have come to spy upon us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.”

Had the Israelis merely released one or a few prisoners their return would evoke suspicion, but with more than a thousand such prisoners it will prove impossible for Hamas to know which among them are double agents.

No people survive more than three thousand years against the greatest of odds and a multitude of enemies without learning a few lessons along the way. Hamas will pay the price in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Gaddafi is Dead. Now What?

Gaddafi is Dead.  Now What?

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

First allow me to establish that I am glad the world is rid of Gaddafi.  He was a tyrant and a terrorist.  “Sic Semper Tyrannis!”

It cost Americans a little over a billion dollars to send Mr. Gaddafi to his eternal reward where, no doubt, he is stoking the furnaces as we write.

But this is not the end. In fact, it is the “beginning of the beginning.”

I have never been totally satisfied that a democratic form of government will actually work in an Islamic country such as Libya, or Iraq or even Afghanistan, for that matter.  They are tribal nations. Even their religion has at least two separate factions, Sunni and Shiite.  Unlike Baptists and Methodists – they don’t seem to be particularly fond of each other.

There are a number of folks complaining that the US is taking entirely too much credit for ridding the world of Gaddafi. Frankly, when one considers that Obama decided to “lead from the rear” on this operation it does leave a distinct unpleasant taste in my mouth.

However, we did learn it was a US Predator drone that attacked the Gaddafi convoy accompanied by a French warplane. And even though it was a NATO Operation, it IS interesting to note that US taxpayers foot the bill for some eighty percent of NATO’s budget. And, believe me when I declare that I am not trying to excuse Obama’s crowing about the US involvement in the Libyan operation to lend assistance to the Libyan rebels in their now successful, overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

The British and the French, I believe, should be getting a huge amount of praise and credit for their tireless efforts to bring about Gaddafi’s overthrow and eventual death.  My observation is that they are getting short shrift in the American media for their exemplary military effort, which, no doubt, saved the lives of many Libyan civilians as well as Libyan rebel fighters.

I tend to agree with a number of US Congressman and Senators that the Libyan operation could have been over much sooner had Obama released the full force of American military might on Gaddafi’s forces, thereby saving many more lives of innocent Libyans and bringing the conflict to a satisfactory conclusion much sooner with less casualties and deaths.

So now, as the dust begins to settle, we are beginning to see that we have a nation, essentially destroyed, and having never experienced Democracy clearly have no idea what to do in the weeks and months ahead.

Will the new Libya finally settle for the suffocation that will result if they choose to become an Islamic state, or, will they take the plunge and make an honest attempt at the establishment of a truly democratic government of some form for their new fledgling nation?  The latter will be the most difficult, no doubt. 

Libya has 140 tribes.  And every one of them will be seeking a share of influence in the new government.  How, exactly can that ever happen?

Libya has absolutely no experience with democracy.  They are used to kings and dictators and strongmen.  A transition to some form of democratic government will be a wild and wooly experience. It is going to cost the US a lot more money if we take it upon ourselves to go nation building again.  Frankly, Americans have had their fill of nation building in Islamic countries where the governments appear to corrupting the new government faster than the US can build it.

Many Americans feel certain that both Iraq and Afghanistan will quickly abandon democracy and revert back to some sort of dictatorship with another strongman in charge in order to pacify all the tribes.  Chances are very strong that Libya will do exactly that.

If that happens Europe will again be at the mercy of the Libyan government for the light sweet crude oil they prefer and that Libya has in abundance.

Now that practically every Libyan is armed, suppose they decide they actually liked their little war and make an effort to continue it within Libya or a neighboring country?  

How do we get their guns back?  We never will get all of them and I’d be surprised if we go anywhere near 50% of them back under lock and key in our armories.

These are extremely dangerous times in Libya.  It’s going to take a heck of a lot of American money to prop up some sort of democratic government   …   if ever.  America will have one chance to get it right.

J. D. Longstreet