Whatever Happened to...? ... Alan Caruba

Whatever Happened to...?

By Alan Caruba

In the run-up to the South Carolina primary election on Saturday, it strikes me that the overwhelming coverage of the campaign process has shoved some important stories to the sidelines.

There is noticeably little coverage of the nation’s obscene unemployment problem; one that is comparable to the Great Depression.

With ample good reason, we no longer hear anything about (a) global warming or (b) climate change. We don’t hear “renewable energy” stories in the wake of the Solyndra scandal or the demise of comparable “Green” companies, but Obama’s decision to refuse to permit the XL Keystone pipeline was a reminder that all his talk about job creation is just that—talk.

The rising price of a gallon of gasoline is never mentioned in the news, up from $1.86 when Obama took office to $3.40 now. That sort of thing used to get incumbent presidents defeated in the past.

Events beyond our shores continue whether we are in a primary season or not.

The future of the European Union is still somewhat precarious. Whether the Euro continues as the currency of the EU is an important issue affecting America’s trading partners. The U.S. Sovereign debt rating has already been reduced but now nine EU nations have been put on notice as well.

The Obama/Clinton foreign policy in the Middle East continues to erode. Egypt, a major player, is moving into Islamist—anti-American, anti-Israeli—control. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood was suppressed as a political force in Egypt and today they have emerged as the biggest player. Egypt is moving out of our orbit of influence.

Iran continues inexorably toward acquiring the capacity to make its own nuclear weapons. Its growing desperation regarding the sanctions is generating a lot of bellicose threats. The entire Middle East is silently praying that Israel attacks and disables its nuclear capabilities. Anything else is morally indefensible.

Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Iraq is in shambles once again with bombs going off in its cities and little likelihood it will be able to function as a nation despite its vast oil riches. Libya has lots of oil, too, but it is still struggling to create a functioning government in the wake of Gaddafi’s overthrow. Syria has everyone in the Middle East on edge watching to see if Assad can avoid what appears to be his inevitable overthrow. His late father, though, did just that by slaughtering thousands.

The seemingly endless political debates continue minus Jon Huntsman who is backing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry who has endorsed Newt Gingrich. Pretty soon we shall be calling Romney “Teflon Mitt” because the voters appear to be bored with all the sniping from his opponents regarding his success in the private sector. Newt Gingrich seems to have no idea what capitalism is or does.

Even the calumnies heaped on the Tea Party movement don’t get much attention these days. We have learned, however, that the current Congress has been the least productive, accomplishing less in 2011 than any other year in recent history. Records have been kept since 1947. In light of the disaster called Obamacare, that is probably a good thing.

One trend is noticeable. With the exception of the Keystone decision, any news that might harm the reelection of President Obama is hard to find in the mainstream media.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

What Debt? Obama's Insane Spending Binge! ... Alan Caruba

What Debt? Obama's Insane Spending Binge!

By Alan Caruba

There’s a reason that President Obama wants to increase taxes. His administration cannot spend your money fast enough.

A visit on Tuesday morning to the websites of various federal departments reveals that this administration can find an excuse to spend millions on anything. Here’s a quick tour.

In the wake of the Solyndra scandal in which taxpayers were, in the words of Investor Business Daily, “put on the hook for at least the first $75 million if the company should default and with “a minimum of five green firms going bankrupt” the U.S. Department of Energy, on September 13, announced a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to Mojave Solar LLC for the development of the Mojave Solar Project.

On the same day, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced a $32.5 million grant “to finalize expansion plan of Boston’s South Station” for the purpose of expanding and enhancing the historic station on the grounds that it estimates a “50 percent increase in high-speed intercity passenger rail travel in the coming years.” And we all know how accurate estimates are, eh?

Three days later, the DOT provided $22 million to the Maryland Department of Transportation for a study of replacement options for the Susquehanna River Bridge on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, D.C. Why not spend the money on actually replacing the bridge? On September 19, DOT awarded $25 million to the city of Charlotte, N.C. for a streetcar line “to improve access to jobs, housing, and schools.” Why money from other States should gift Charlotte with a streetcar line when the nation has a $14 trillion debt might have something to do with the fact that the Democratic Party National Convention will be held there in 2012.

In the midst of a recession that officially does not exist, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUD), on September 15, announced $93 million in grants to 39 local projects “to conduct a wide range of activities intended to protect children and families from potentially dangerous lead-based paint and other home health and safety hazards.” HUD estimates there are “nearly 7,000 high-risk homes” because “providing healthy and safe homes for families and children is a priority.” Keep in mind that lead-based paint was banned for residential use in 1978, more than three decades ago.

On September 15, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services announced awards totaling $10 million “to aid 129 organizations across the country that would like to become community health centers. The funds came from the Affordable Care Act, but at the same time Obamacare cuts billions from Medicare, reducing payments to hospitals and to individual physicians providing care to America’s growing population of the elderly. Go figure.

At the Department of Commerce, on August 30, they were celebrating a $2.9 million

On September 14, the Department of Agriculture announced that taxpayers are now on the hook for loans to 27 rural electric cooperative utilities. DOA made $603 million in loans to help electric utilities "upgrade, expand, maintain and replace rural America’s electric infrastructure."

This is the same administration whose Environmental Protection Agency is waging war on coal-fired utilities and mining (coal provides 50% of all electricity in America). On September 16, USDA announced funding for more than 500 projects to boost renewable energy production (wind and solar) despite the fact that this represents just over 2% of all the electricity produced and companies producing solar panels are declaring bankruptcy on a weekly basis these days.

Secretary Tom Vilsack also noted that USDA Rural Development “is providing $35 million

Not to be outdone, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced in late August that it was making more than $53 million in grants to 17 states “to support conservation planning and acquisition of vital habitat for threatened and endangered fish, wildlife, and plants.” The Endangered Species Act has been one of the greatest failures in U.S. history and responsible for thwarting billions in development. This money is intended to remove yet more landmass from development, all in the name of obscure species and plants.

On September 14 the Department of Justice announced grants totaling $118.4 million to “enhance public safety in Indian Country.” The money went to tribal governments. Apparently the Apaches are on the warpath again. Over the last two years, DOJ spent $121 million on conferences.

This doesn’t even take into consideration the money flowing from the Departments of Defense, Education, Veteran Affairs, and Homeland Security. It is in fact just a quick overview of the funding the Obama administration is spending while 14 million Americans are trying to find a job and others struggle to pay their mortgage or put their children through college.

It is a look at a government grown so large and so profligate that its credit rating was recently reduced and our President is on the campaign trail telling Americans they must pay more taxes despite the fact that 40% pay no taxes and “millionaires and billionaires” pay 70% of taxes collected. It’s the same government that wants to impose a 1% tax on all

Tea Party, anyone?

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The More Obama Speaks... ... Alan Caruba

The More Obama Speaks...

By Alan Caruba

The most interesting thing happening in the world of politics and finance today is the way Barack Hussein Obama continues to lose traction every time he gives a speech.

After the “jobs” speech, Wall Street dropped three hundred points when the market opened the following morning.

When longtime, staunch supporters of Obama such as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews look and sound betrayed, it is clear that even Obama’s liberal base is in disarray. Matthews, presumably a seasoned political observer, had poured all his faith into Obama, believed in hope and change, and Obama only delivered a huge national debt, the first downgrade of the nation’s triple-A credit rating, massive unemployment, and the sad repetition of failed solutions.

Conservative commentators were openly disdainful of Obama’s use of a joint session of Congress as a stage for a purely political speech, but it was the public as always that had the last word.

Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress in February 2009 garnered 52.4 million viewers. By January 2010, the State of the Union speech drew 48 million and the 2011 SOTU attracted only 42.8 million.

His “jobs” speech was watched by 31.5 million. On the East Coast it was 7 PM, but in California it was 4 PM. Maybe it was just the time difference? Or maybe people have decided that listening to Barack Hussein Obama is just a great waste of time, no matter what the hour may be.

I know that the conventional political wisdom is that Obama has 14 months to go and that he’s a great campaigner, but to my eye his audiences following the “jobs” speech were composed mostly of union members or the very young.

Among the military, whenever he addresses them, the silence is palpable. Recall the sullen response he got at West Point when he announced his Afghanistan strategy, if one can even call it that.

There is a hard core of perhaps 20% who love Obama to the exclusion of his record of failure to focus on the economy. Others, though, from the black and Hispanic base are beginning to look for the exit. The Black Caucus is unhappy. Hispanics are unimpressed.

The race card is being played. Class warfare is being encouraged. These are the tools of a demagogue.

Obama, though, is convinced that if he just talks enough he can change opinion; thinks he is the master salesman, the ultimate campaigner. What he does not see, nor sense, is the derision with which his message is being received.

The public has had two and a half years to take his measure and while he cannot be fired until November 2012 and will not leave until January 2013, he is pure poison to any hope of economic recovery. He has the reverse Midis touch; whatever he touches turns to poop.

It was almost comical that the solar panel company he touted as the green jobs wave the future, Solyndra, received millions from the government, filed bankruptcy, and got a visit from the FBI that seized its records and computers. When it comes to picking winners and losers, Obama always manages pick a loser and stick the public with the bill.

Meanwhile his administration seeks to block Boeing from creating new jobs and raids Gibson guitars for using the same wood as every other guitar-maker in the nation. His administration shipped guns to the drug cartels in Mexico for reasons beyond comprehension. His Attorney General pleads ignorance.

His rhythmic phrase, “Pass this bill”, repeated seventeen times in the course of his speech to Congress ignored the fact that there literally is no bill. Out on the campaign trail a day or so later he was still saying it.

Obama is intoxicated with the sound of his voice, his staccato delivery, his hand gestures, and all the other elements of oratory upon which he has depended for his rise to the top. He just hasn’t figured out that it is not what you say, nor how you say it, that matters. What matters is the result of his policies. They don’t work.

Obama matters less and less in national affairs except for the destruction he and his minions continue to wreak upon a nation struggling to come back from a major financial crisis, fearful of his flawed judgment, not hiring, not spending, and waiting impatiently for November 2012 to arrive.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

President Stupid ... Alan Caruba

President Stupid
By Alan Caruba

Remember when everyone was calling George W. Bush stupid? I do. Since then, his published memoir of his years in the White House has been on the bestseller lists following two years of Barack Obama unrelenting blunders and lies.

From the beginning of the Obama administration, there were all manner of evidence that a group of hapless, moronic ideologues had been handed the reins of power. Early nominees for key posts were jettisoned or withdrew from consideration for a variety of reasons. This was followed by a huge overlay of “czars” for everything, with undefined power over and above the Cabinet Secretaries in charge of various departments.

Two years later, the candidate who campaigned against the Iraq war decisions and implementation, against Guantanamo, and deemed Afghanistan to be the “real war” is pursuing the same Bush programs. The general credited with victory in Iraq has been put in charge of Afghanistan and not been heard from since.

When the Iranians protested in the streets of Tehran last year, Obama missed a major opportunity to throw U.S. support behind them. Instead he said he did not want to “meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs! Fast forward to Egypt and President Stupid was declaring on worldwide television that President Mubarak had to go “now.” Well, he’s gone and, thank God, the military is still in charge.

Surrounded by imbeciles and ideologues, President Stupid’s national security director declared that the MUSLIM Brotherhood was a “secular” organization. His science advisor thinks all the ice at the North Pole is melting. His EPA Director thinks that carbon dioxide, a gas vital to all life on earth, is a “pollutant” and is asserting the authority to regulate it.

In both the first and second State of the Union speeches, President Stupid rambled on about green jobs, solar and wind energy, and now the need to spend billions on a “high speed” rail system in a nation where Amtrak has been losing money from the day it opened for business. In a time of severe deficits and national debt, how dumb do you have to be to want to throw billions at an unneeded new rail system?

President Stupid’s decisions have frequently left people gasping in disbelief. He appointed “a wise Latina”, Sonia Sotomayor, to the Supreme Court even though she had never been a judge.

Obamacare is the pinnacle of President Stupid’s “achievements” thus far. It has been declared unconstitutional by two lower courts and is likely to be declared null and void by the Supreme Court before he leaves office. The House Budget Committee just released a report that estimates the loss of 800,000 jobs if it becomes law. You have to be stupid to keep handing out “waivers” to Obamacare in all directions as an admission of its failure to apply only to those who do not have friends in the White House.

You have to be stupid to keep defending “global warming” or “climate change” when this huge, global hoax was exposed in 2009 as a fraud. Meanwhile, a natural cooling cycle is caused freezing weather that just wiped out 80-100% of Mexico’s crops.

You have to be stupid to openly declare that you want to drive the coal industry out of business when it provides half of all the electricity the nation uses every day, but that is precisely what President Stupid’s administration is doing.

You have to be stupid to declare a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico after courts have twice told you to remove it.

You have to be stupid to lecture the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on how to create jobs when your economic policies have been killing them for two years. And then tell them they have to redistribute their profits to their workers. They already do that. It’s called wages!

You have to be stupid to have spent the first two years of Sundays playing golf and then expect people to believe you are deeply religious.

You have to be stupid to keep bowing to foreign leaders of nations from Saudi Arabia to Japan to China when the President of the United States must never bow to anyone. We don’t even lower our flag in the presence of foreign leaders.

You have to be stupid to believe you can get away with telling lies when even an adoring press is finding it increasingly difficult to cover up or defend this behavior.

Watch now as the press begins the run-up to the 2012 elections by emphasizing how brilliant President Stupid really is.

Already the talk is about a surefire reelection if the unemployment rates gets down to eight percent when its average over the pre-Obama years has usually been around five percent and actual unemployment is twice the official figure of 9.6 percent.

You have to be stupid to think Americans will be fooled again.

© 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.

People Have Noticed ... Alan Caruba

People Have Noticed

By Alan Caruba

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"Apres moi le deluge”, “After me, the flood” and though attributed to the French King Louis XV, historians believe it was actually said by Jeanne Poisson, Madame de Pompadour. The last members of the monarchy spent France into the poorhouse until they had their heads separated from their bodies via the guillotine.

People have noticed the same eerie disconnect from the suffering of the populace as Barack and Michelle Obama party on. There has been a succession of vacations topped off by Michelle in Spain on the U.S. dime. Keeping track of the vacations, about seventeen this year, has become a media pastime.

Twenty months into his first and last term, President Obama, has wasted a trillion dollars we didn’t have on a stimulus package that was little more than a wish list of pet projects for Democrat congressmen and bailouts of the teacher’s unions whose members would otherwise have to join the long lines at the unemployment office.

People noticed.

Obama has had notably little success in foreign affairs, failing to draw the line with the Russians on issues of defensive missiles in Europe, managing to insult the British in a dozen ways, and being mocked by the Iranian leaders as they get ready to fire up a nuclear reactor.

People noticed.

When he finally decided what to do in Afghanistan, he made the announcement at West Point, including a date when the new infusion of troops would leave. The cadets slept through the speech and the Taliban circled their calendar for 2011.

People noticed.

Barely in office a day, he was all for closing down Guantanamo until he learned there was no place for the detainees. The states did not want them in their prisons and foreign nations did not want them for any reason. When his Attorney General wanted to try the mastermind of 9/11 in New York City the outcry was deafening.

People noticed.

Many of those he wanted to appoint to his administration turned out to be tax cheats or had to withdraw due to charges of unethical behavior or corruption. Despite a pledge to drive out the lobbyists, a number of appointees were lobbyists. A whole slew of “czars” turned out to include a number of loonies who were either outright communists or who believed weird science theories.

People noticed.

Despite widespread, vocal opposition, Obamacare was forced upon an unwilling America and now we are learning it will increase costs and deny care, just as we knew it would.

People noticed.

Bush had his Katrina, but Obama had the Gulf of Mexico oil leak. His administration mismanaged it beyond belief and then he arbitrarily shut down oil production from other rigs, adding more people to the unemployment lines.

People noticed.

Obama used the occasion of a Ramadan dinner at the White House to wade into the controversy regarding a plan to build a mosque within two blocks of where 3,000 Americans died from an Islamic terrorist attack. Then he had to back off what he said.

People noticed.

Obama appointed two women to the Supreme Court, both of whom think the Constitution was written on silly putty. One had never been a judge.

People noticed.

Muslim murder at Fort Hood, a failed Christmas bomber on a commercial jet, and another failed bomber in Times Square. The response to all three incidents was slow and very, very politically correct, tip-toeing around using the word “Muslim.”

People noticed.

Rather than take dramatic action to stem the flood of illegal aliens along the southern border, the Obama administration brought a suit against Arizona at the same time twenty other states are writing and passing similar legislation to enforce immigration laws. Then they threatened Sheriff Joe Arpaio with a legal suit charging that he was anti-Hispanic!

People noticed.

Along the way the Tea Party movement occurred and Nancy Pelosi called them Nazis. Harry Reid became even creepier than anyone could imagine. The voters elected Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey, and a Republican Senator to fill Teddy Kennedy’s vacant seat.

People noticed.

On November 2nd, the voters will go to the polls for a midterm election and the odds are that many Democrats will just stay home while the independents and Republicans will turn out in huge numbers.

The power in Congress will shift, perhaps dramatically, because people noticed.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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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.