By Alan Caruba
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” -- Thomas Jefferson
My father was a certified public accountant, as is my older brother. I not only lacked any arithmetical skills, I spent much of my early years ignoring the ups and downs of the economy, thinking that these matters were beyond my comprehension. What I failed to understand was that…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 30, 2011 at 8:19pm —
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By Alan Caruba
One hardly needs an advanced degree in psychology or be a full-fledged psychiatrist to conclude that Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass-murderer, is very likely a psychopath. Anyone who would blow up a government building and gun down children, thinking that he was going to ignite a revolution against Muslims in Europe is not dealing with a full deck.
The event initiated a torrent of news coverage and comment. Much of the initial coverage was wrong.…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 26, 2011 at 8:24pm —
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By Alan Caruba
About halfway into his fifteen minute televised address on Monday evening, it occurred to me that Obama is literally boring Americans to death. He was elected to a great degree based on his eloquence and he delivers a speech well, but last night’s speech is the one we have been hearing since January and earlier.
I really don’t give a hoot about “millionaires and billionaires.” Heck, I want to be a millionaire!
“Corporate jets”? What’s that all about?…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 26, 2011 at 8:00am —
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By Alan Caruba
The term, “magical thinking”, has been around a while to describe what individuals do to cope with the vicissitudes of life. I, for example, regularly buy a Mega Millions lottery ticket in the hope of winning when, logically, rationally, I know the odds are millions to one of that ever happening.
Magical thinking can be found in all aspects of life and it is surely magical thinking that caused America’s politicians, starting back around the turn of the last…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 25, 2011 at 3:30pm —
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By Alan Caruba
It is astonishing that Barack Obama seemingly learned nothing from the 2010 national elections in which the Republicans regained control of the House with a net total of 63 seats. For the Democrats it represented the greatest loss in the House midterm election since 1938, which occurred nearly ten years into the Great Depression.
It is the House that determines the spending and borrowing to maintain the nation, though the President traditionally sends a…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 22, 2011 at 8:03pm —
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By Alan Caruba
The television coverage of the British Parliament’s inquiry of the Murdoch’s, father and son, Rupert and James, was wall-to-wall on every news channel including Fox News, part of the Murdoch media empire. As an American, I found myself straining to understand what many of the MPs were saying as their accent often rendered them unintelligible to my ear.
The Murdoch’s were most sincerely and contritely saddened by the behavior of some News of the World…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 20, 2011 at 12:50pm —
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By Alan Caruba
As is well known, I am an expert on practically everything. This is why I am obscenely wealthy, sought after by the major media, and am an object of desire even in my early 70s. And! I have a bridge to Brooklyn to sell you!
Despite my shortcomings, I can and I will share with you a bit of economic forecasting that takes no great genius to detect. The U.S. economy is going to flatline all the way through the next election in November 2012. It’s going nowhere…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 16, 2011 at 7:45pm —
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By Alan Caruba
Is Tim Geithner the most clueless Secretary of the Treasury this nation has ever had? Is he the Eddie Haskell of national debt, so eager to please Obama that he has been a party to driving it up by trillions since his master took the oath of office?
Now, we are all forced to witness the idiotic political machinations of the White House trying desperately to put off the greatest financial debacle to face the nation in its entire history. It’s so bad that Moody’s…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 14, 2011 at 3:00pm —
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By Alan Caruba
It is inevitable that the current first and, hopefully, last term of Barack Obama will be compared to that of Jimmy Carter’s, 1977-1981. Until then, no sitting President had ever failed to have been reelected since Herbert Hoover in 1932. The stock market had crashed in 1929 and the U.S. was sliding into what would be a decade-long depression.
Carter, a holier-than-thou former Governor of Georgia captured the public’s attention after the sordid ordeal of…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 13, 2011 at 4:10pm —
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By Alan Caruba
Sometime in the 1980s I found myself on assignment at Cape Kennedy visiting the launch site for all the trips to the moon and the various shuttle voyages to the International Space Station. The shuttle was the size of a small building and the notion that it could be lifted beyond the pull of gravity, flown about in outer space, and return, staggers the imagination.
I was already in my early 30s by the time the United States of America put Neil Armstrong and…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 12, 2011 at 6:44pm —
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By Alan Caruba
Casey Anthony, the mother of a toddler whose body was stuffed into a bag and tossed into a swamp, will walk free in a day or so. A jury was unable to conclude that the abandoned body, its face covered in duck tape, was murdered. There wasn’t, they insisted, enough “proof” even though the child’s mother did not report her to be either dead or missing, and then lied to family, friends, and law enforcement authorities until the body was recovered.
The case…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 11, 2011 at 3:26pm —
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By Alan Caruba
Rasmussen Reports maintains a daily presidential tracking poll and, as of Sunday, July 10, President Obama’s Approval Index rating was minus-19. If he wasn’t such a narcissist this might bother him, but one gets the impression he is so convinced of his ability to lie his way out of any situation, that he will continue his present trajectory.
The kabuki dance regarding the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling limit provides a useful insight to the…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 10, 2011 at 4:00pm —
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By Alan Caruba
The vote to end the $6 billion in subsidies to ethanol producers reminded me how much Greens love us all. Surely only love could inspire taking corn and turning it into moonshine, and then mixing it with gasoline. The result caused food riots in far off nations while raising the cost of a gallon of gas every time we fill up at the pump. The ethanol mandates actually reduced the mileage a gallon will provide.
At some point, even the Greens grew disenchanted…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 9, 2011 at 7:05pm —
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By Alan Caruba
Any parent or teacher who has tried to hold a conversation with a self-centered, petulant child or teenager knows how frustrating it is to try to get beyond the “I want it and you won’t give it to me” stage. This is the point at which we, the Republican leadership, and others in Congress have arrived with a little boy named Barack Obama.
I know he’s going to turn fifty soon. I know he is married and the father of two girls. I know that outwardly he is an…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 7, 2011 at 4:27pm —
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By Alan Caruba
When asked why someone said something idiotic or some group is advocating something moronic, I am apt to wearily reply that there is no defense against stupidity.
There is a defense and it works over the long run. It is called the truth.
It is interesting to watch how “the truth will out” as they say in detective novels. In our society, so in thrall to the mainstream press and media, the truth circulates swiftly through that portion of the…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 5, 2011 at 4:11pm —
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By Alan Caruba
When we celebrate the Fourth of July, let’s keep in mind that the first Americans won their independence from England with the force of arms. It was, in fact, a British effort in 1775 to confiscate military arms they believed were stored in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts that sparked the war.
The Founding Fathers were so aware of the need for an armed citizenry that, after ensuring freedom of religion, speech, press and the right to peacefully assemble in…
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Added by Alan Caruba on July 2, 2011 at 5:00pm —
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