The Best of Alan Caruba

Editor's Note:  These articles aren't listed exactly as they appeared.  I posted them to follow a theme based on the cartoon below, which clearly demonstrates how a President whose IQ is supposedly "off the charts", along with those who are supposedly the "best educated" and "best informed" people on the planet are suffering from an infectious disease common in leftists - "Blitheringidiocy" - and why everything they touch is disastrous. 

An Economist's Bad Climate Advice - If I need my car repaired, I do not take it to a dentist. If I am seeking advice about the climate I check out what climatologists and meteorologists are saying, at least those who have not sold their souls to the global warming/climate change hoax.  On September 3 The Wall Street Journal published a commentary by Edward P. Lazear titled “The Climate Change Agenda Needs to Adapt to Reality: Limiting carbon emissions won’t work. Better to begin adjusting to a warming world.”

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! It’s cooling, not warming.

Apparently Mr. Lazear is unaware that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for seventeen years. A visit to www.climatedepot.com or a subscription to the Heartland Institute’s monthly Climate & Environmental News or a copy of its policy studies, “Climate Change Reconsidered”, would help him understand why he’s wrong. Check out www.climatechangedispatch.com as well for the latest commentaries.....

Shaking, Quaking, and Freezing - Have you noticed how much earthquake and volcanic activity has been occurring lately?  There was a major earthquake in Napa, California on Sunday, August 24^th as well as considerable volcanic activity from Iceland to Papua, New Guinea. August was also a month that set records for colder U.S. temperatures.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there were some 1,097 “low max” temperature records broken in the U.S. between August 1 and August 23, meaning that the maximum temperature during that time period was the lowest it has ever been. NOAA reported that summer across much of the U.S. has been colder than normal.....

Islam is the Face of Evil - "ISIS is not Islamic", said Barack Obama as he gave yet another vapid speech to say what he will or will not do next about the threat of Islam. What he said is both idiotic and a lie. ISIS calls itself the Islamic State. Obama used the word "war" only once, but ISIS is all about war---an Islamic holy war that has been waged since 632 AD.   The one person neither named, nor blamed is the so-called prophet, Mohammad, yet everything being done by the jihadists today is being done in his name.  In his memoir, “Dreams from my Father”, Obama, in the preface to its second edition, wrote: “Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day (9/11) and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another’s heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.” And therein is the problem that he, as President, and we as citizens must address. Political correctness is so dominant in the Obama White House that no one in the U.S. government dares say anything that might be deemed critical of a so-called “religion” that sanctions beheadings, amputations, stoning, kidnapping hostages, ransoms, polygamy, and slavery. To anyone deemed an infidel or unbeliever or a Muslim who questions anything about Islam, death is the only option other than dhimmitude, a second-class citizenship.......

Obama and Arabs Find a Common Enemy--the Islamic State - Given all the mutations that the Middle East has gone through thanks to the emergence of al Qaeda during the resistance to the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan, watching what is occurring now with an even more fanatical group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS) and proclaiming itself the new caliphate has proven even more lethal and more feared.

The closest thing to a caliphate has been the assertion of al Saud, the royal family that runs Saudi Arabia who has long claimed to be the protector of Islam’s two most holy sites, Mecca and Medina, and of the true form of its expression, the strict Wahhabi interpretation. Were it not for its oil, the royals would have had to live off the earnings from the hajj, the visit to Mecca that all Muslims are required to make at least once in their lifetime.  The Saudis, despite having at least 250 U.S. and British advanced fighter aircraft, have typically avoided engaging in combat; the type that will be required to destroy ISIS. Instead, it gave $100 million to the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Center, but the latest news is that al Qaeda linked Syrian rebels from the Nusra Front battled U.N. military peacekeepers encamped on the Golan Heights on August 30, forcing some to escape to Israel. The UN’s peacekeeping role and its ability to deter wars are hardly notable......

What "International Community" is Obama Talking About? - The U.S. and Iran have been adversaries since 1979 when it seized our diplomats and held them for 444 days. In the wake of the Cold War, Russia has assisted Iran develop its nuclear program and has joined its war on the Islamic State. The U.S. has joined the conflict, making Iran, Syria and Russia our allies in a world where such relationships are changing so fast it is hard to keep up with them.  A Sept 5 Debka File report regarding recent air strikes by Syria on two meetings of Islamic State officers, noted that “The twin Syrian air offensive coincided with the opening of the two-day NATO Summit…the information about the two Al Qaeda meetings at Raqqa and Abu Kamal could have come from only two sources: U.S. surveillance satellites and aircraft, or Iranian agents embedded at strategic points across Syria.”  The Israeli news agency concluded that the success of the air strikes reflected “the widening military and intelligence cooperation between the United States and Iran in Iraq and Syria.” So maybe there has been a bonus of sorts from the U.S. negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program? The other component is the fact that Iran does not want a hostile Sunni Islamic State emerging in Iraq on its borders. It is more likely this is a short-term alliance.

U.S. No Longer has Influence in the Middle East - The rise of the Sunni Islamic State (ISIS) and its barbarity may be news to the West, but it is a very old story in the Middle East.  Briefly stated, the Arabs have been at war with one another for some 1,400 years before and since the emergence of Islam and the schism that occurred between its Sunni and Shiite components. Dr, Daniel Pipes, a noted Middle East scholar, writing in an August 24 Turkish newspaper regarding the announcement of the Islamic State caliphate noted that “The classic concept of the caliphate—of a single successor to Muhammad ruling a unified Muslim state—lasted just over a century and expired with the emergence of two caliphs in 750 CE. The power of the caliphate collapsed in about the year 940 CE.” Arabs could not unite following the death of Muhammad, resulting in the two caliphs who claimed his mantle.....

Witnessing a Failed Presidency - When we elect someone—anyone—to the office of President, it is only natural that we attribute great political skills, intellect, and judgment to that man. We want to believe we have selected someone with the ability to do what must be done in a dangerous and very complex world. This may explain why Presidents who have presided in times of war are more highly regarded than those that have not. Washington brought the nation into being by patiently pursuing a war with Great Britain, Lincoln saw the Civil War to a successful conclusion, preserving the Union  The last century offered two world wars and several lesser ones, Korea and Vietnam. Voters put Franklin D. Roosevelt in office in 1933 and then kept him there until his death in 1945 just before the conclusion of World War Two. They had no wish to disrupt his conduct of the war with anyone else. It fell to Harry Truman to wrap up World War Two and to pursue the Korean War to repulse communist North Korea’s invasion......