God Save America

By Alan Caruba

When The New York Times publishes a story, as it did on February 19, regarding the next step in the Obama administration’s intention to destroy the U.S. economy, it’s a very good idea to pay attention.

“E.P.A. Expected to Regulate Carbon Dioxide” was the headline of John M. Broder’s article. “The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.”

Those “top Obama administration officials” are unnamed and so too are the “scientists” claiming that the planet is “warming.” For the record, although you will never read this in The New York Times, the planet is NOT warming. It is COOLING. It has been cooling for a decade now and it is no secret to meteorologists who track the day to day temperatures or climatologists who study long term trends.

On March 8-10, more than 500 of those scientists who dispute the vast global warming hoax will meet in New York for a second international conference on climate change sponsored by The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, free market think tank.

Joining those scientists and others will be Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic and current president of the European Union. Also participating will be Jose Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain, along with American astronaut, Dr. Jack Schmitt, Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other leading scientists who have led the effort to shed the light of truth on the global warming hoax.

You can be sure of one thing. They will all continue to be attacked as crazies denying the “consensus” that Al Gore is always braying about. Science is not about “consensus”, it is about reproducible facts. All the “facts” about melting glaciers, dramatically rising sea levels, and other claims by the GW crowd have been refuted.

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By Alan Caruba

My father used to say that there was no defense against stupidity. He was a very smart man. When he entered kindergarten in the early 1900’s, he spoke his parent’s native language of Italian. The teacher seated him beside a boy who spoke both English and Italian, and he learned English. Nobody gave it any more thought than that.

Dad passed through the K-12 grades in Newark, N.J., and then worked his way through New York University to gain a degree in accounting. Then he studied some more and was among the youngest men to become a Certified Public Accountant. All that study and hard work helped him survive the Great Depression. It is a classic American story.

In his time, American education was as basic as it comes. You learned the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic..

You were taught, not just history, but something called civics, lessons about the way the nation was governed and why our republic was a leading example of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In a report by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, released in November of last year, more than twice as many people (56%) who took the test knew that Paula Abdul was one of the “American Idol” judges than where those famous words came from. Only 26% identified Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as the source.
 
Of the 2,500 Americans who took the test that included college students, elected officials and other randomly selected citizens, nearly 1,800 flunked the 33-question test on basic civics. The elected officials scored slightly lower than the public with an average score of 44% compared with 49%; less than half.

There are two great threats facing America today. One is the vast ignorance of our history and of the way we govern ourselves, and the other is the growing numbers of functionally illiterate Americans.

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By Thomas E. Brewton

Corruption can be reduced only by reducing the size of the Federal government.

Much is being written about unsavory political influence exercised by the army of Washington lobbyists, who act as conduits for large amounts of influence money from special interest groups.  Those special interest groups range from business and environmental groups, to abortion advocates, and labor unions.

Tom Daschle's exit from nomination as the commissar of a national socialized healthcare system is among the headliners.  Another is Leon Panetta, bound for the CIA, coming off large lecture earnings from groups doing millions of dollars worth of business with the CIA.  Already fading into the background is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's husband's big-bucks connections with some of the less reputable characters on the international scene, people against whom Secretary Clinton must represent the interests of the United States.

On the other hand, limiting people's opportunity to contribute money to help elect and influence representatives friendly to their interests is, apparently to most everyone outside Congress and the Supreme Court, an unconstitutional infringement of First Amendment rights. 

If we are not to invade First Amendment rights, what then are we to do? 

At the most fundamental level, the problem is what lawyers call an attractive nuisance.  If you build a swimming pool it is likely to attract small children, with potentially dire consequences.

If we continually enlarge the size and scope of the Federal government, already the largest dispenser of money in the world, it is not rocket science to forecast that every scoundrel in the world will be looking for ways to game the system or to steal money outright.  Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, is supposed to have answered, "Because that's where the money is."

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By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

MEXICO CITY, February 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A leader in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has declared that the breakdown of traditional families, far from being a “crisis,” is actually a triumph for human rights.

Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.”

"In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis," he said. "In crisis?  More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights."

"Day after day, Mexico experiences a process of this diversity and there are those who understand it as a crisis, because they only recognize one type of family," one of the speakers on the panel also told the audience.

The comments followed close on the heels of the World Meeting of Families, which was held in Mexico City in January, and which strongly reaffirmed the importance of the traditional family and its indispensible role in transmitting values to the next generation.  It was opened by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who observed that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births were contributing to the rise of violence and crime in Mexico.

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Why was a massive expansion of family planning (which inevitably includes abortion promotion) contained in a bill that is supposed to jump start the economy?

Consider that according to the Social Security Administration, in 1950 there were 16.5 workers for every retiree, while today it is 3.3 workers to 1 retiree. Within 40 years it will be 2 to 1. There will not be enough workers to pay the tab for all the government programs and benefits that the Speaker and others want to give away in return for political support.

In reality the Stimulus bill is more about pork and political payoffs than economic recovery. Billions are earmarked for groups like ACORN, that have recently been the subject of criminal investigations, and the politically connected like labor unions that supported the new administration in the recent election.

Read the whole story at The Hill's Congress Blog

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