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	<title>Speak Without Interruption &#187; Environment</title>
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	<description>An International Online Magazine where people can finish their thoughts</description>
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		<title>Wasting Time</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/07/wasting-time/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/07/wasting-time/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:08:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crumling</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Attitude]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Creative Writing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[General Topics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life Experiences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lifestyle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Motivation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nature/Wildlife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Personal Experiences]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=16058</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>I arose from my tent early and found a mess left in the camp.  The raccoons had found the cooler.  They discovered that our breakfast of eggs could be found inside.  Little hand prints were left as evidence of the burglary.  The broken egg shells and disarray were not enough.  The little marks noted [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I arose from my tent early and found a mess left in the camp.  The raccoons had found the cooler.  They discovered that our breakfast of eggs could be found inside.  Little hand prints were left as evidence of the burglary.  The broken egg shells and disarray were not enough.  The little marks noted their presence and also their prescience.  They had no doubt watched us putting things away, or just somehow knew that they could find goodies in that box.   I clean up then go about just sitting alone in my woodsy campsite.  The kids are still sleeping, and so are the rest of the adults.  You would think that I would be lonely without the company, but I am not.  The breeze blows by my ears, my hair gently moving.  The chirping of birds and bubbling of running water are comforting; downright relaxing.  It seems that you see so much more when you take the time to just sit, put away your generated thought, and watch the world go by you.  There are so many insects.  Normally, I wouldn’t want them around, but they don’t seem to bother me so much today.  Except for the flies, none are “on” me.  On a boulder in the distance, I see a cardinal.  It flits between rocks and gravel, in search of its’ daily sustenance.  The red bird seems oblivious to anything not crawling on or under the dirt.  He has identified his area of interest and actively pursues his objective.  A few little pecks at the soil, and he flies into a nearby branch.  It becomes obvious that he achieved his goal, a little breakfast du jour.  Maybe a snack of flies would appeal to him?  I suspect that he won’t get that close to me.  At least he has had breakfast…<span id="more-16058"></span></p>
<p>               A few butterflies roam by.  Their meandering flight path taking them here and there, lighting on a stump, and then onto the edge of my laptop.  You never really notice them much.  They are impossible to ignore today.  I wonder what it would be like to be a butterfly for a day.  What things would you see as a result?  A butterfly can take a merry path which we humans cannot follow.  Down over the cliff, zipping over to the trees, ah, then to the big yellow flower.  The path is not a straight line, hardly.  It is a zig and a zag, a twist and a roll, a here and a there. </p>
<p>               After what seemed like an eternity of nothing happening, I spy a fuzzy squirrel.  He is gently creeping along the edge of the camp.  He stops every few steps to…watch.  I don’t move anything but my head and eyes.  His careful but circuitous path is a marvel.  He slips by me and nearer to the card table of food and equipment.  He snakes around the rocks and then climbs up the back of the one nearest to the table.  Then he pauses.  Little beady eyes seek me out, watching for any sign of movement; any hint of danger.  After a minute or so, he spies the potatoes on the table.  These were to be the partner in that breakfast of eggs.  Ever so deftly, he slinks onto the table right next to them.  He pauses again and gives me a furtive glance.  I watched intently until he is ready to pounce.  I hissed and he jumped a foot in the air and looked at me again.  He wanted a potato though!  He stayed right there.  I hissed again when he made his second attempt.  This time he looked at me studiously.  When I stood, he scampered away.  He crept out following the same path which he had used to get in.  Poor fellow just wanted some breakfast.  I would have given him something if I had it ready.  I was surprised at his desire for a potato.  Maybe they really are that good!</p>
<p>               I hear the rustling of sleeping gear, and the zipping of tent flaps.  My quiet time will soon be over.  I will enjoy the conversation if there is any, as kids these days can’t breathe without their cell phones.  I will enjoy the time spent.  But, in the future when I need serenity, I will play a song in my mind.  “ Sittin in the morning sun, I’ll be sittin when the evening comes”  and I will think of what I have seen today… just watching the tide roll away…</p>
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		<title>Budget Cuts and Rats!</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/07/budget-cuts-and-rats/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/07/budget-cuts-and-rats/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:50:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Minnette Coleman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=15805</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>You may not be aware of this but shortly after 9/11 a movie was to be released called &#8220;Rats!&#8221;. It was about that yucky vermin taking over New York city.  Someone brightly and bravely decided that the movie should not be shown for a long time. Didn&#8217;t matter though, NYC has a ton of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>You may not be aware of this but shortly after 9/11 a movie was to be released called &#8220;Rats!&#8221;. It was about that yucky vermin taking over New York city.  Someone brightly and bravely decided that the movie should not be shown for a long time. Didn&#8217;t matter though, NYC has a ton of rats. More rats than people. But some idiot somewhere in Albany decided to cut back on extermination efforts in the city. That movie, which I never saw, may soon become a reality.<span id="more-15805"></span>Gangs of rats roam the streets and subways at nights. I use the term gang to make you aware of how dangerous these germ carrying predators seem to unsuspecting citizens. Most people in the throws of this economic mess cannot afford to take a taxi home late at night. Buses are slow and that leaves the subway. Holiday weekends, like the one that just passed, are extremely disheartening because there is no garbage pick-up. Something else that has been cut back. Late night train riders have to share the platforms with rodents looking for food. They go up and down the stairs  of the stations and in and out of locked rooms and rest rooms that no passenger would ever enter. Sometimes they even get on the train (I am not making this up). And not just one, quite a few. Once a ticket booth clerk couldn&#8217;t go inside the booth because rats were in there.</p>
<p>But they have cut back on ticket booth clerks as well.</p>
<p>If someone gets bitten by a rat in the subway I wonder is the city at fault. After all, if someone is bitten in your house it becomes a health issue and your responsibility. The only responsibility that has been shown towards this problem is more budget cuts. And note these cuts were made after those in Albany voted that they needed a pay raise because they couldn&#8217;t live on the $92,000 I believe they get for their part-time jobs in the state house. Perhaps had that not passed we would be sitting on subway benches after a night on the town instead of standing on them hoping the damn rats don&#8217;t climb up and stand next to us.</p>
<p>So now those of us with fruitful minds can begin to frighten ourselves ala Stephen King with new demented tales of what rats can do at night. Pretty soon, you won&#8217;t be able to enter a subway station after 10pm. It will be the kingdom of rats.</p>
<p>Okay that is a little overboard and I am a little paranoid but New York has a rat problem. Late night you can carry a stick to beat them away and maybe mace to fend off the robbers. With cutbacks New York has seen an increase in crime.</p>
<p>I know, why do I live here.  Every city has problems and New York has its share. If the rat thing does get worse I am out of here. But right now I avoid the subways late at night- especially the front and the rear and I pray Albany gets its act together and does the right thing.</p>
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		<title>Summer Breeze</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/06/summer-breeze/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/06/summer-breeze/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:35:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Minnette Coleman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=15698</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>So hot! That is all anyone says about this day. We have wanted summer all year long when the winter was cold, but not to cold. Just cold enough to complain about it. Now it is hot enough to complain about and no one has yet to thank Mother Nature for still working with [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>So hot! That is all anyone says about this day. We have wanted summer all year long when the winter was cold, but not to cold. Just cold enough to complain about it. Now it is hot enough to complain about and no one has yet to thank Mother Nature for still working with us as we destroy our planet.</p>
<p>Did you feel that pinch of winter blowing through here just now? So cool! Perhaps she is trying to clue us in with a little summer breeze.<span id="more-15698"></span></p>
<p>Growing up in the hothouse south I got used to long days of heat and sun. When we didn&#8217;t have air conditioners we drank lots of liquids and sat by the fans that created a breeze, even if it was slightly warmer than you wanted. Ice was always in a drink, cold water always thrown on your over heated face, and umbrellas were used to walk down the baking roads to give you shade. In New York things are slightly different. Most subway stations are like ovens, so waiting for a train means being surrounded by people sweating as much or more than you are. Sitting outside means inhaling caustic fumes. Old buildings are not always equipped to handle air conditioners. Blackouts occur sometimes, brownouts more often.</p>
<p>But whenever I see the wind in the trees I lift my head to get as much of the summer breeze as I can. Standing on a sidewalk with people wearing as little as possible I listen to Mother Nature whistle ever so subtlety as she slips in a drop or two of cool air. If I close my eyes I get a glimpse of winter and a chill runs through me thinking of boots and overcoats, hats and gloves. The breeze dances around me like a scarf and for mere seconds I am happily chilled to the bone.</p>
<p>An old lady next to me on the bus this morning said: &#8220;It&#8217;s hot. But thank God for the breeze.&#8221; Everyone else was complaining, fanning, wondering why the air conditioner on the bus was not set on Arctic Zone. These are the same people who complain in the winter about the lack of heat. There is no median for them. They want nature to play things their way.</p>
<p>But I will take the little breeze I get. I have stayed in the Caribbean in the summer with no air conditioner, just a ceiling fan and the breeze from the ocean. I ate outside every day and sat outside until late every night.  Whenever the breeze came off the ocean it smelled of salt and had only a tiny bit of cool to it. There were afternoon thunderstorms that raged almost every other day for the two weeks I lived there. It was not a sticky wet but a joyous cool one. And in the heat one was dry faster than one wanted to be. But I chose to be there and I accepted the weather, good and bad, as well as the seldom found summer breezes.</p>
<p>It will feel like 100 degrees outside today in the Baked Apple and I have to venture out shortly to get my lunch. Every now and then a breeze will come in contact with me to make me smile. This afternoon is supposed to be full of thunderstorms and bad weather. Most will complain, I will accept Mother Nature&#8217;s  gifts as they come. The temperature will drop slightly and the rest of the week should be less of an oven. But somebody somewhere in this city will always complain.</p>
<p>Maybe they should just lean back and take refuge in the tiny summer breeze. As the song says it will make you feel fine.</p>
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		<title>Obama Asks America to Commit Suicide</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/06/obama-asks-america-to-commit-suicide/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/06/obama-asks-america-to-commit-suicide/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:30:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Accountability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cap and Trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=15521</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama Asks America to Commit Suicide By Alan Caruba</p> <p>President Obama is one of the most articulate we have had in that office. His ability to deliver a speech or a short talk such as his first from the Oval Office Tuesday evening is impressive. He knows how to deliver an address.</p> <p>What he [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/06/obama-asks-america-to-commit-suicide.html">Obama Asks America to Commit Suicide</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/TBghapufMeI/AAAAAAAACPA/V63oi9VxmtY/s1600/Obama+-+Shamwow.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483169288084730338" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/TBghapufMeI/AAAAAAAACPA/V63oi9VxmtY/s200/Obama+-+Shamwow.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>President Obama is one of the most articulate we have had in that office. His ability to deliver a speech or a short talk such as his first from the Oval Office Tuesday evening is impressive. He knows how to deliver an address.</p>
<p>What he doesn’t know or doesn’t care about is the difference between the truth and a lie.</p>
<p>His fifteen-minute address was the piling on of one lie after another regarding America’s use of energy and its needs for the future.<span id="more-15521"></span></p>
<p>It is a lie to say America is “addicted” to “fossil fuels.” Oil is not a fossil fuel. It is not the result of dead dinosaurs. It is created deep in the bowels of the planet. There is an abundance of oil, but with the wealth it creates there is also massive corruption in many of the nations that possess it.</p>
<p>We are no more addicted to oil than we are addicted to oxygen. This extraordinary mineral is a part of every aspect of our lives; used to create plastic, used in pharmaceuticals, used for the asphalt that pave our highways, and used as the fuel for our cars, trucks, and for countless other applications.</p>
<p>Oil is not “finite” as the president suggested. There is no end of oil.</p>
<p>There are, however, tremendous challenges and costs to find it, drill for it, transport it, and refine it. It is an industry that requires huge amounts of money to discover new reservoirs of oil and even more to acquire it. It involves tremendous risk as well. Oil companies that hit too many dry wells are no longer in business.</p>
<p>The president cited China as a nation pursuing “clean energy”, but the president said nothing of the new coal-fired plants to generate electricity that China has been opening every week in recent years and will continue to do in the years ahead. The president did not mention that China is literally drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cuba. Like every modern nation, China needs oil.</p>
<p>America needs oil, but the policies of previous administrations from the 1970s onward have stymied production, shut down existing wells, driven oil companies to seek it anywhere but here!</p>
<p>Instead, he devoted the thrust of his address to tell Americans they must “embrace a clean energy future”, must “transition away” from so-called fossil fuels, and that the nation must, in fact, “accelerate” that effort.</p>
<p>The president is lying. There is no “clean energy future” when he talks of solar and wind energy.</p>
<p>Neither solar or wind can begin to compete with oil, coal and natural gas. If they were viable, the government would not have to plunder the national treasury to provide them with subsidies, requiring that they be included as a source by utilities.</p>
<p>Together, after many years of propaganda, they only provide about three percent of the nation’s energy requirements. They will never provide enough because the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine. Every wind and solar farm must be backed up by a traditional plant, be it coal-fired, nuclear, natural gas or hydroelectric.</p>
<p>Instead, this administration has declared war on the most abundant source of energy we have in America, coal. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal.</p>
<p>Coal provides fifty percent of our electricity and it could provide even more; a source that could last for centuries, except that the Obama administration is doing everything it can to thwart the building of new coal-fired plants, to shut down coal mining operations.</p>
<p>If Americans continue to believe this president’s lies, if we continue to believe decades of lies by environmental organizations, many of whom have been the happy recipients of oil industry largess and support, and if we abandon the very sources of energy on which our entire economy and way of life depends, this president will have led America off the cliff.</p>
<p>President Obama is asking America to commit suicide.</p>
<p>© Alan Caruba, 2010</p></div>
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		<title>Our Gulf Coast is Either Bleeding to Death or Has a Killer Case of Diarrhea</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/06/our-gulf-coast-is-either-bleeding-to-death-or-has-a-killer-case-of-diarrhea/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/06/our-gulf-coast-is-either-bleeding-to-death-or-has-a-killer-case-of-diarrhea/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:51:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kaye</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[British Petroleum]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deepwater Horizon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gulf Coast]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gulf of Mexico]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=15382</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>The United States Gulf Coast  is either bleeding to death or has a killer case of diarrhea thanks to British Petroleum. In either case, our precious Gulf Coast is dying. The animals (including humans), the plants, insects, fish and fowl are dying right along with each other and the end is no where in [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The United States Gulf Coast  is either bleeding to death or has a killer case of diarrhea thanks to British Petroleum. In either case, our precious Gulf Coast is dying. The animals (including humans), the plants, insects, fish and fowl are dying right along with each other and the end is no where in sight.</p>
<p>I will not pretend to be an expert on this subject and I will not pretend to be extremely well versed on the subject either however, I can read and I can see. The devastation happening to our part of the world because of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the inability to contain the spewing of crude oil and the loss of precious life is catastrophic. You don’t have to be an expert to see or understand that.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t blame  Obama like so many  relish in doing.  Someone ( I&#8217;m leaning towards British  Petroleum) is to blame and we  better  find the correct remedy and we better find it soon.  That  someone needs to stop trying to save face and  come clean and not just with truth but with effective ways of stopping and cleaning up the mess.</p>
<p>I’m just sayin’.</p>
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		<title>GreenSpirit: Path to a New Consciousness</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/05/greenspirit-path-to-a-new-consciousness/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/05/greenspirit-path-to-a-new-consciousness/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 May 2010 21:38:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>georgepolley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/05/greenspirit-path-to-a-new-consciousness/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>To paraphrase something Thich Nhat Hanh once said, &#8220;Everything inter-is.&#8221;</p> <p>Everything in nature is interconnected, including humans. We are a part of nature, not separate from it, set apart from and above it to do with it what we will. Like every other species, we are deeply embedded in nature and dependent on it [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>To paraphrase something Thich Nhat Hanh once said, &#8220;Everything inter-is.&#8221;</p>
<p>Everything in nature is interconnected, including humans. We are a part of nature, not separate from it, set apart from and above it to do with it what we will. Like every other species, we are deeply embedded in nature and dependent on it for our sustenance and our future. Compared with the prevailing Christian religious, political and economic traditions, this is a radical shift. It is also a tremendously important one.</p>
<p>For the past three decades there has been a growing, world wide &#8220;green&#8221; movement to counter this process by reconnecting with the planet and with each other. GreenSpirit, a movement begun in the UK, is one such movement. As its editor Marian Van Eyk McCain says in the Introduction, &#8220;GreenSpirit brings together the rigor of science, the creativity of artistic expression, the passion of social action and the core wisdom that exists within the spiritual traditions of all ages.&#8221;</p>
<p>This book is a treasure trove of resources for anyone with an interest in creating a more joyous and sustainable future and a deeper understanding of spirituality. I highly recommend it.</p>
<p>George Polley, author &#8220;Being Here&#8221;, &#8220;The Old Man and the Monkey&#8221; and &#8220;Grandfather and the Raven&#8221;.</p>
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		<title>Watching a Community Develop</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/05/watching-a-community-develop/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/05/watching-a-community-develop/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 May 2010 16:40:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Minnette Coleman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lifestyle]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Social Issues]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=14979</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>They delivered the dirt mulch before the dirt. They delivered them two days apart. It came from a city sponsored program to help the trees that line our block. Two weekends ago I attended a workshop held in the basement community room of one of the co-op apartment buildings on our street to learn [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>They delivered the dirt mulch before the dirt. They delivered them two days apart. It came from a city sponsored program to help the trees that line our block. Two weekends ago I attended a workshop held in the basement community room of one of the co-op apartment buildings on our street to learn how to care for the trees you adopt. We were taught what needed to be done to ensure the beautification of our street and the health of the trees. While most block association meetings have low attendance, this meeting had a great turnout. There were children there interested in helping the environment, people who wanted to make signs to stop pet owners from letting their dogs pee on trees (its kills them, you know) and there were adults there interested in helping the street develop into a community.<span id="more-14979"></span></p>
<p>The Broadway Amsterdam 148th Street Block Association has been around since the 1950s. When we moved into the block 26 years ago it was like a nation divided. There were blacks, who didn&#8217;t like the Colombians who didn&#8217;t like the Dominicans who really hated the Haitians. The only event ever held was a block party in the summer where the lines of demarcation were definitely drawn. Since we live in the center of the block  we were privy to all the differences during the party. The music was loud from all sides, one trying to outdo the other. If you didn&#8217;t attend the meeting before the party you were not going to get any of the food purchased for the party. My husband joined the block association and noticed that the dissenting factions were not all present at meetings. The chairwoman was an elderly black lady who still believedthat Harlem was for blacks only and never notified any of the other ethnic groups on the block to a meeting. My husband diligently worked on getting her to change her mind and after a while worked closely with her to see what could be done to improve the block and its inner relations.</p>
<p>There was one tree on the block at that time. A large deciduous tree that sat outside of an all but abandoned brownstone across the street. Drugs were sold on our street and there were hidden brothels. While people complained about gentrification it actually helped improve the block instead of turning it into totally unaffordable housing. My husband became president of the block association and over the next few years with another long time resident of the block (who is now co-chair) they got 25 five trees plants. A few of them succumbed to urban problems such as children swinging from the branches or climbing too young trees. Construction killed others but most of them survived to add shade and beauty to a block that was once barren and sad.</p>
<p>The section of 148 Street where I reside now has home owners as well as city run apartments with  tenants from a variety of backgrounds and incomes. There is  a homeless shelter where the clientele only gets to stay one night.  Recently an art gallery moved to the corner promising to involve the block in upcoming events. The association now includes blacks, whites, South Americans, West Indians, and Eastern Europeans. When the rapist attacked on the block a meeting was held to warn the community. From that meeting associations were formed with other Harlem alliances. For Christmas they got together and gave a party for the people in the homeless shelter. Since clientele changes daily this was done on more than one occasion. New toys and new coats were given to the children and families. Hot chocolate and pastries and cookies were served the morning before they had to get back on the bus to parts unknown.  Now there is the block beautification with the trees. In a few weeks the flowers will be planted in the tree beds. Later there will be a block clean up day.</p>
<p>The only thing the block association used to do was the block party. This summer there won&#8217;t be one. All efforts seem to move into the direction of real improvements on the street. Since this is my husband&#8217;s project I stay in the background and do what I am asked. As a writer I also observe and listen. This weekend while some people were out working with the trees I overheard young people talking on their cells about how good the block looked and how the people were taking care of it. It was going to be a prettier place to live. There was also the man who decided, over the cell to his girl, that he needed to get his place together inside and out before he brought her over because the street was looking so &#8216;fly&#8217;. People who seldom did anything but complain were out helping. Children put their muscles behind cleaning tree beds and removing cobblestones and rocks that were once put around the trees to make them look better. We learned at the workshop they stunt growth. They got nothing but a sense of pride for a job well done. This in a city where literally every native asks &#8220;What do I get?&#8221; when you ask them to do something.</p>
<p>One of the lawyers who lives next to me suggested that we sell the beautiful cobblestones to make money for the association. As we sat outside talking in the twilight we watched as children gathered them and put them in our courtyard where a tarp was placed over them to save them from greedy passersby. There is still extra mulch and dirt that arrived in the wrong order but was worked into the tree beds accordingly. And this morning when I left the house I noticed not one tree bed on my half block walk to the corner had dog feces or paper in it. The street is starting to take shape as the community develops. It is a development that is fueled by the energies of all races for one goal. Not just to make property values soar but to have a beautiful place to live.  From one tree to 22 isn&#8217;t bad. Ten more trees are coming I understand and flowers and signs created in bright colors by the hands of neighborhood children.</p>
<p>Too bad more of the world is not like this.</p>
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		<title>The EPA Monster</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/04/the-epa-monster/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/04/the-epa-monster/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:36:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carbon Dioxide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ethanol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US Economy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=14805</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The EPA Monster By Alan Caruba <p>Among the legacies of Richard M. Nixon, famed for the Watergate scandal that forced his resignation, it should be noted that he created the Environmental Protection Agency. There was no vote in Congress. He did it with an executive order. Today the EPA has an annual budget of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/04/epa-monster.html">The EPA Monster</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S8sFT3pOT6I/AAAAAAAAB9o/9u1vtuWrs0w/s1600/EPA+-+Stop+Breathing.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461464812029366178" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S8sFT3pOT6I/AAAAAAAAB9o/9u1vtuWrs0w/s400/EPA+-+Stop+Breathing.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</div>
<p>Among the legacies of Richard M. Nixon, famed for the Watergate scandal that forced his resignation, it should be noted that he created the Environmental Protection Agency. There was no vote in Congress. He did it with an executive order. Today the EPA has an annual budget of $9 billion and some 18,000 employees.</p>
<p>Not satisfied with the authorized powers given it to ensure clean air and water, the EPA has never ceased to seek expanded powers, culminating soon with a battle over whether it can regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) as a “pollutant.” Labeled a “greenhouse gas”, in the eyes of the EPA it is an “endangerment” to the health of humanity in general and Americans in particular.</p>
<p>CO2 is as vital to all life on planet Earth in the same way as oxygen. It is what plants consume in order to grow, much as oxygen is essential for life among living creatures that, in turn, are dependent on vegetation, crops, for their sustenance. It’s a neat little cycle that has existed since life emerged on Earth.<span id="more-14805"></span></p>
<p>If the EPA gains the power to regulate CO2, it will have the power to regulate the activities of every individual and the entire economy of the nation. Traditional sources of energy, with the exception of nuclear and hydroelectric power, involve the emission of CO2. A modern society cannot function without CO2 emissions, but they have nothing to do with global warming because there is NO global warming.</p>
<p>CO2 represents a mere 386 parts per million of the Earth’s atmosphere. Humans are responsible for 3% of its generation; Mother Nature produces the other 97%. And the EPA wants to regulate ALL of it!</p>
<p>Actual science is of no importance to the EPA. If the EPA really cared about human life, it would not have a long history of banning beneficial chemicals such as DDT and other pesticides that protect humans against a laundry list of transmittable diseases like malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, et cetera.</p>
<p>The EPA is actually seeking to limit the amount of deicing fluid used to protect commercial and other aircraft on the grounds that it might get into nearby streams and rivers. Never mind the lives of the passengers and crews on planes that would be brought down as the result of such ice. This defies common sense.</p>
<p>In truth, the EPA threatens the economy and our lives in so many ways it is difficult to know where to point first. To my mind, the way it infiltrates the nation’s education system to fill the minds of children with visions of a planet threatened with “warming” or that every species is “endangered” or that all the waters and air are “polluted” is criminal.</p>
<p>The EPA is currently accepting grant applications “to help manage the National Environmental Education Training Program over the next ten years.” Costing $10 million, it “will provide teachers and other education professionals with resources and support to enable them to teach about environmental issues more effectively.” The EPA was not created to go into our nation’s schools in this manner. This is propaganda. This is indoctrination.</p>
<p>Let us grant that, when it stuck to its original purpose, it did make the air cleaner and some of the nation’s waters. Now, however, the EPA is a massive machine designed to destroy the nation’s economy and impede growth and development in every way possible.</p>
<p>The primary tool for this are lies concerning any element of the environment it wants to control and, as a result, retard the economy. As but one example, there are the new “smog” standards the EPA recently announced. It has reduced them to a level of 60 to 70 parts per billion in the air. It released a list of counties it says are in violation of the new limits.</p>
<p>The cost of achieving the lower standard is estimated from $19 billion to $90 billion. If you took one tennis ball from an olympic-sized pool filled with them, you would achieve the same result. It’s not merely absurd; it is yet another attack on every single business and industry operating in those counties.</p>
<p>The same idiocy applies to setting mileage rules or requiring that ethanol be added to gasoline. To achieve the mileage rules, the weight of automobiles must be reduced. People inside those thinner, lighter cars will die from an accident at a rate in excess of larger vehicles. As for ethanol, it requires more energy to produce than it saves. It drives up the cost of all the food we consume. It also reduces the mileage from every gallon of gasoline while emitting more CO2!</p>
<p>The EPA is currently at war with the coal industry, responsible for providing the source of 50% of all the electricity generated in the United States of America. A recent “endangerment” finding against all surface coal mining in the Appalachian States of Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia is based on the protection of the Mayfly population, an insect that typically lives for one day!</p>
<p>The list of EPA abuses of common sense and known science could fill a shelf of books in much the same way its ever-expanding regulations do, but the worst of it is yet to come if the Cap-and-Trade Act is passed.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that CO2 has nothing to do with the non-existent “global warming” and therefore does not need to be regulated for any reason, the enactment of the bill will literally prevent a homeowner from selling their home without permission from an EPA administrator. The cost of buying or selling a home will soar.</p>
<p>The Environmental Protection Agency needs to be reduced in size and authority to its original intent. Better still, eliminate it entirely. It is a monster.</p>
<p>© Alan Caruba, 2010</p>
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		<title>Have I ever seen a pig?</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/04/have-i-ever-seen-a-pig/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/04/have-i-ever-seen-a-pig/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:54:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tim Roux</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[factory farming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[modern life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pig]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=14796</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>My son asked me this strange question in the car this morning. “Have I ever seen a pig?”</p> <p>In some moods, as a father with a lot on his mind, I would simply have dismissed the question as ridiculous, as in “Of course, you have”.</p> <p>However, he caught me in a more ruminative state today [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>My son asked me this strange question in the car this morning. “Have I ever seen a pig?”</p>
<p>In some moods, as a father with a lot on his mind, I would simply have dismissed the question as ridiculous, as in “Of course, you have”.</p>
<p>However, he caught me in a more ruminative state today and, when I had considered the question increasingly carefully and even started to rack my brains, I realised that the actual answer is probably stranger than the question. “Quite possibly not.”</p>
<p>In my childhood, I saw pigs rooting around in mud enclosures as part of the countryside environment I went to school in. I suspect that in many lesser industrialised countries they turn up and snuffle and snort right next to you.</p>
<p>However, in the industrialised West, they are usually hidden away in factory farm sheds. We have all smelled pigs from time to time, but I am trying to remember the last time I actually saw one myself.</p>
<p>A wild boar conveniently dropped dead on the beach outside our house in France a few years back, and some even wandered around our garden in another house in France, so maybe it is easier to catch a glimpse of a wild boar nowadays than that of a domestic pig.<span id="more-14796"></span></p>
<p>We have a strange relationship with pigs. Some races / religions ban eating pig meat altogether as being too toxic (most cats won’t eat it) or maybe as being too similar to the flesh of humans, which African cannibals called “long pig” (do lions ever actually eat human beings?). In other cultures, the pig provides quite possibly the greatest variety in food products there is, from roast pork through to salami, and beyond. I can see Buzz Lightyear doing a spot for the Pork Marketing Board in its ads right now – “…. to salami, and beyond!” As Ogden Nash put it:</p>
<p>The pig, if I am not mistaken,<br />
Supplies us sausage, ham and bacon,<br />
Let others say his heart is big&#8211;<br />
I call it stupid of the pig.</p>
<p>As far as I know, no religion has ever worshipped one, unlike the cow, or made it officially a proconsul, unlike the horse, although there are quite a few ‘pigs’ I know in high places.</p>
<p>Perhaps pigs simply need to get out more in the name of consumer choice. Some of us like to see what we are eating.</p>
<p>And in case you haven’t seen one ……</p>
<div id="attachment_14797" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 222px"><a rel="attachment wp-att-14797" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/04/have-i-ever-seen-a-pig/miniature-pig/"><img class="size-full wp-image-14797" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/Miniature-pig.jpg" alt="" width="212" height="164" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The miniature pig - the new pet?</p></div>
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		<title>America in Decline</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/03/america-in-decline/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/03/america-in-decline/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:09:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Accountability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Infrastructure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S. Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unemployment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=14420</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[America in Decline By Alan Caruba</p> <p>There are tipping points in people’s lives and in the life of a nation. More and more I am inclined to believe that America has hit a tipping point and that its decline has been in progress now since the end of World War II. How can that [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/03/america-in-decline.html">America in Decline</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S6eYNPJUFMI/AAAAAAAAB04/sPDAsR9Rw5c/s1600-h/Closed+Factory.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451493227126592706" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S6eYNPJUFMI/AAAAAAAAB04/sPDAsR9Rw5c/s200/Closed+Factory.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>There are tipping points in people’s lives and in the life of a nation. More and more I am inclined to believe that America has hit a tipping point and that its decline has been in progress now since the end of World War II. How can that be? We were and are a superpower.</p>
<p>While it is true that we have the greatest military power in the world, it is equally true that many of the planes being flown were brought on line in the 1950s, despite the extraordinary aircraft such as the stealth bombers. When Russia can put in a $40 billion bid to build refueling tankers after a major U.S. aircraft firm dropped out of the process, you have to ask yourself whether something is terribly wrong.</p>
<p>Militarily, we have worn out our forces, many of which are National Guard units, with six years of conflict in Iraq and renewed conflict in Afghanistan. All the hardware needed to maintain our troops in conflict zones need replacing. And the President of the United States wants to sign a treaty to reduce our nuclear arsenal. <span id="more-14420"></span></p>
<p>It goes even deeper, however, than the capacity to wage war, let alone the will to face off with our enemies. Since around the 1960s the nation’s education system has grown steadily more costly and steadily worse in its capacity to produce students with fundamental skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. American students consistently score behind students in other nations. An educated workforce is essential to maintain excellence, let alone parity with other nations.</p>
<p>At the heart of the Medicare reform battle was a very simple fact. The current Medicare program is broke. The current Social Security program is broke. Most of the States in the nation are broke. America must borrow a billion dollars a day to maintain its huge entitlement programs. The interest on treasury notes alone is daunting. Expanding Medicare under such conditions is sheer folly.</p>
<p>The nation and the States have become slaves of civil service unions and their government employees now make more than those in comparable private sector positions. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees now represent 1.6 million workers. There are two million federal workers. The benefits that have been negotiated for these workers are extraordinary, particularly in the area of pensions. Many of the services they provide, other than police and fire, could be contracted to the private sector.</p>
<p>Unemployment continues to rise and the billions in “stimulus” programs are having no effect. The Federal Reserve continues to print money that will invariably have less value.</p>
<p>The exodus from States now famed for heavy taxation, California, New York, New Jersey, continues apace. The value of the nation’s housing stock continues to decline. Other States are becoming manufacturing wastelands as this essential factor of prosperity leaves the nation for others with less taxation and friendlier regulatory environments.</p>
<p>The other problem America has not addressed or solved is that of illegal aliens. There are differing estimates of how many reside in the nation ranging from twelve to over fifteen million. They represent a drain on education systems, medical facilities, receive a variety of social services, and crowd our prisons. Previous amnesties have only served to swell the numbers of those crossing illegally into the nation in hopes of more amnesties. The Obama administration is known to want yet another amnesty enacted.</p>
<p>Increasingly, parts of the nation’s economy have been absorbed into the government, the most outstanding example being the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, and control of the financial sector through bailouts.</p>
<p>Huge tracts of land, often with significant natural resources, continue to fall under the control of the federal government while others ban any extraction of oil, coal or natural gas. In the energy sector, more than nine million jobs exist and millions more could if the government would permit further exploration and extraction. Meanwhile, offshore of Florida in Cuba, Russians and Chinese are beginning to develop oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>The Obama administration is totally devoted to the global warming fraud and the baseless assertion that human beings are influencing climate change through the generation of “greenhouse gases” such as carbon dioxide. The next major legislative initiation it proposes is the passage of Cap-and-Trade, a measure to impose the largest tax on the use of energy in the history of the nation.</p>
<p>At the same time, the electrical grid that is responsible for the distribution of energy has been aging and is in need of expansion. No new nuclear plants have been built since the 1970s and several are scheduled to be decommissioned. Nuclear represents twenty percent of the electricity used daily in the nation. The site in Nevada for the deposit of nuclear waste, built at the cost of billions, is still not open though it is ready to provide this necessary service.</p>
<p>The nation’s infrastructure of highways and bridges is in near desperate need of upgrade and continues to be neglected.</p>
<p>Nor should we ignore clear signs of moral decline as well. The abortion issue reflects the murder of millions of unborn babies. The push for same-sex marriage is a rejection of the ancient recognition that social stability depends on the marriage of a man and a woman. Pornography and violence permeate entertainment venues. Reality TV reflects the worst excesses of behavior. Illegal drugs are available anywhere in the nation.</p>
<p>The list of the indicators of decline is longer, but those cited are sufficient to suggest that an implosion is only a matter of time.</p>
<p>The truth that there is no free lunch remains in effect.</p>
<p>© Alan Caruba, 2010</p></div>
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		<title>Tapping palm oil without tapping out rainforests</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/03/tapping-palm-oil-without-tapping-out-rainforests/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/03/tapping-palm-oil-without-tapping-out-rainforests/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:01:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Muhammad Cohen</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cap and Trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Foreign Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Asia Times]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Borneo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[corporate public relations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deforestation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong On Air]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ICOPE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indonesian palm oil industry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[International Conference on Oil Palm and Environment (ICOPE)]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kalimantan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lonely Planet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Malaysia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Malaysian palm oil industry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palm oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palm oil plantations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainable development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainable palm oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tropical rainforests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US tobacco industry]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=14044</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sustainable palm oil production shouldn't be an oxymoron. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Traveling in Borneo for Lonely Planet, I&#8217;ve seen firsthand how palm oil plantations can distort and destroy rainforests. But it doesn&#8217;t have to be that way. Last month, palm oil producers and consumers, scientists, investors, environmental advocates, and development groups gathered for the <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LC04Ae01.html">International Conference on Oil Palm and Environment</a> (ICOPE) to try to better meet the challenges facing the industry as demand for palm oil and palm oil development grow. As I wrote in <a href="http://www.atimes.com">Asia Times</a>, what matters isn&#8217;t what people say at these conferences but what happens afterward. Last week produced a troubling sign: an agreement by top producers <a href="http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/business/indonesia-and-malaysia-team-up-against-palm-oil-critics/362488">Indonesia and Malaysia to jointly defend palm oil&#8217;s record</a>. Malaysia&#8217;s palm oil producers have long dismissed any criticism of their industry with the vehemence and veracity of the 20th century US tobacco industry. </p>
<p><i>Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer <b>Muhammad Cohen</b> is author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9889979977?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=muhacohe-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=9889979977">Hong Kong On Air</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=muhacohe-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=9889979977" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important;margin:0px !important" />, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.</i> </p>
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		<title>A Tease from Spring</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/03/a-tease-from-spring/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/03/a-tease-from-spring/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:50:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Minnette Coleman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Diet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=14036</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>The daffodils just phoned in a complaint. If they make an early appearance to the party they may die from the future cold. The birds sitting on my windowsill refuse to shut up. They are discussing their friends who flew south and are missing the fine weather. The trees have decided to wait to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The daffodils just phoned in a complaint. If they make an early appearance to the party they may die from the future cold. The birds sitting on my windowsill refuse to shut up. They are discussing their friends who flew south and are missing the fine weather. The trees have decided to wait to see how long this warm spell with last. Nature is being teased by a preview of spring in New York and we are all watching and waiting for the real thing.<span id="more-14036"></span></p>
<p>It has been in the 50s for the last three days and will be there for three more. It is not the time to bring out the sleeveless dresses or the open-toed shoes. There are still mounds of snow waiting for a hint of sun so they can finally melt. But it is a time to cut down on the layers we attach to ourselves in winter. I usually wear a turtleneck, a sweater or jacket and a coat. I am down to a coat and one turtleneck or sweater- depending on the early morning temperature when I leave for work. Today my legs made an appearance in the much dreaded pantyhose. They were just a little chilled as I walked to the bus stop, but I felt a ladylike elegance that I hadn&#8217;t felt in months since skirts and dresses are not part of my warm winter attire. Perhaps I am drawn to them having grown up in an era when young ladies constantly wore dress and some offices did not permit their female employees, none of whom ever rose above secretary, to wear pants or slacks. I have lots of summer dresses and only a few for special occasions in winter when I must be whisked from home to car to event to car to home.  That way I can feel elegant in exposed legs and high heels and not so much like a frozen temptress.</p>
<p>This is the type of weather that warns you that you may have overindulged on those cold days when offices and schools were closed and you ate, not only three meals, but three good sized snacks. Your excuse was you couldn&#8217;t get to the gym, you couldn&#8217; t get to run, you couldn&#8217;t get out of the house. And of course since it was cold you concluded that the more calories you eat the warmer you were. Try stepping into a spring suit when you have gorged on chips and cookies for three months. This weather is a sign that it is time to turn a new leaf and a green one at that. More salads and vegetables, less meat, less carbs, more movement. The street was filled with people who got that memo today. They were out and running or headed to the gym. Some were just taking nice walks, their faces lifted to the sun.</p>
<p>By the end of the week New York should be back on its usual weather course. It will be in the 40s with most mornings in the 30s. The people who decided to hold a family reunion on the steps of my brownstone for the past two nights will have to take their loud conversations into their tiny apartments. The young ladies who wear the tight jeans and short jackets that barely come down to their waists may have to opt for longer coats. The men who left their heavy coats and walked about in sweatshirts, the necks revealing collars of thin t-shirts,  will probably resort to putting on thermal long sleeved shirts. It will be a return to winter no matter how short its stay. But we will have to return.</p>
<p>This tease has been brought to us by Mother Nature. No matter how many heaters we have, air conditioning systems we create, means to travel we take up to escape climates we don&#8217;t like, she is still in charge. And while global warming has warned us that it is not nice to fool with Mother Nature, she has been kind enough to grant us a temporary reprieve from two feet of snow and blustering blizzards. The plants and the animals know what is up and we should take a hint. Enjoy and get ready for spring- when she decides to let it come. But it may not be soon.</p>
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		<title>Climate change &#8211; Nah!</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/climate-change-nah/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/climate-change-nah/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:09:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Prentiss Gray</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Geopolitical Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=13862</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p></p> <p>Despite shrinking ice sheets, melting glaciers and Island nations disappearing under water, many sensible people still find climate change totally unbelievable.  We&#8217;re not talking about some incomprehensible 3000 page theory here, we&#8217;re talking the disappearance of the North polar ice pack.  You know, where Santa lives?</p> <p>I&#8217;m not sure I want to limit [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13863" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/Safari-3.png" alt="" width="561" height="527" /></p>
<p>Despite shrinking ice sheets, melting glaciers and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/disappearing-world-global-warming-claims-tropical-island-429764.html">Island nations disappearing under water</a>, many sensible people still find climate change totally unbelievable.  We&#8217;re not talking about some incomprehensible 3000 page theory here, we&#8217;re talking the disappearance of the North polar ice pack.  You know, where Santa lives?<span id="more-13862"></span></p>
<p>I&#8217;m not sure I want to limit my driving because of it, but to deny something that is obvious and right in front of us is well, a little ridiculous.  Maybe we caused it, and maybe we didn&#8217;t.  The real question is what are we going to do about it?  After all, we are the first species that the planet has produced that can do something about our environment. We might want to get going sometime soon, because the clock is ticking.  At least, we could start by not denying the obvious because it might inconvenience us.  Hey guys, life is inconvenience; this is just another problem we have to deal with.  It doesn&#8217;t mean you have to go all &#8220;green&#8221; on everyone.</p>
<p>Of course, it&#8217;s not in the interests of oil and coal companies to get put out of business or have to make huge investments in cleaning up their act. That puts them firmly behind the waves of &#8220;change deniers.&#8221;  Every second we don&#8217;t invest in alternative energy sources, for whatever reason is more money for them. But face it guys, the new wave of energy sources has arrived and they&#8217;re growing.  The idea of powering our own houses and vehicles by ourselves is very appealing.  Devices like the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=57837">Bloom box</a> are cropping up all over the place.  My monthly electric bill is often over $300, and we don&#8217;t even heat with it.  I can&#8217;t wait to make my own power.</p>
<p>So, we squawk about carbon dioxide, an otherwise favorable gas (I&#8217;m a big fan of dry ice!) and loss of green space, try to paint our roofs white in the cities and really don&#8217;t do much against the problem.   What we probably should be doing is figuring out who&#8217;s going to pay for bigger seawalls in New Orleans, and other coastal cities.  Holland has done it for centuries.  We&#8217;re a little bigger than them, but it&#8217;s a good example and we have a little time.</p>
<p>Trouble is, something is coming.  As the planet warms a few degrees, and that&#8217;s really all we&#8217;re talking about here, little changes happen.  Some are not so bad, like opening up the arctic to shipping; bad for polar bears but good for container ships.  Some are a bit nastier.  After the polar ice recedes a bit, the next thing to go is the tundra.</p>
<p>Is that such a bad thing?  I&#8217;ve been on the tundra, on Alaska&#8217;s north slope.  A wheel fell off my car there, which was a bummer because there is no one around and it&#8217;s buggy as hell in the summer.  The ground is mushy in the warmer months and it&#8217;s a pain getting around.  However, about 6 inches down it&#8217;s still frozen, for now.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not going to regale my readers with a lament for the Caribou, or the various wild life that live there, I don&#8217;t really care all that much for their ecosystem; I care about ours.  You see, the tundra is made up of rotted wet plants and frozen dirt.  It&#8217;s actually nasty when you think about it, like it&#8217;s asking to be dried out and used.</p>
<p>The trouble is, when it does warm up, all that rotted plant matter starts to exude methane gas.  Methane reflects heat about 20 times as well as carbon dioxide.  It&#8217;s a great fuel and if we could capture most of it, energy could be really cheap.  But, I&#8217;m skeptical that anyone will invest the money to cover the earth&#8217;s tundra with enough plastic to capture it.  Instead that methane, generated by millions of square miles of rotting, waterlogged tundra, is going to supercharge any warming we encounter.  You should smell the tundra when the sun is shining, it&#8217;s a big wet, earthy fart.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t believe we can, or will, do anything about that, except learn to live with it.  I&#8217;m sure our children or children&#8217;s children will wonder why we didn&#8217;t prepare any better though.  My excuse is that &#8220;you had to be here&#8221; to understand.  We just aren&#8217;t ready to think on a global engineering scale.  My plan is to possibly retire north in the US, more north than is usual.  Although, climate change brings more storms and strangely, more snow to some northern climes.  It has to do with warmer oceans creating more water vapor. Good thing I like snow.</p>
<p>So, while deniers are building igloos on the statehouse lawn and claiming that the ice in their drinks is proof positive that global warming is a complete fraud, I&#8217;m looking at solar panels and dreaming of Portland Maine.</p>
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		<title>I Prefer Local to Global</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/i-prefer-local-to-global/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/i-prefer-local-to-global/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:14:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=13438</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I Prefer Local to Global By Alan Caruba</p> <p>Perhaps it is just the product of the times in which I grew up and my experience with the events of the world. Or perhaps it is the spin that has been added to the word “global”, endowing it with an almost spiritual quality.</p> <p>Mostly, though, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-prefer-local-to-global.html">I Prefer Local to Global</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S228wHw5fjI/AAAAAAAABok/8CQy_WbNfoM/s1600-h/Earth+at+Night.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435207860209942066" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S228wHw5fjI/AAAAAAAABok/8CQy_WbNfoM/s400/Earth+at+Night.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>Perhaps it is just the product of the times in which I grew up and my experience with the events of the world. Or perhaps it is the spin that has been added to the word “global”, endowing it with an almost spiritual quality.</p>
<p>Mostly, though, I think it is my utter disgust with “global warming”, having spent the better part of three decades striving to defeat this plot to enable all forms of governmental intrusion into people’s lives and choices.</p>
<p>A bit of personal history; as a child I recall riding the train to and from the Jersey shore when it was filled with young men in uniform, all destined to fight in far-off places whose names even then seemed exotic to me; Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Normandy, and Sicily. It was the harsh geography of war, but to a youngster it only meant someplace far away.</p>
<p>By the time I was a teenager, an older brother was already in Japan at the headquarters from which the Korean conflict was conducted. There were new names to deal with, Seoul, Incheon, and the Yalu River. By then the Cold War was well on its way. <span id="more-13438"></span></p>
<p>The 1950s were full of talk of A-bombs and then H-bombs, and then intercontinental missiles. In college I took scant notice of events in Cuba, but a few years later I would be in full combat gear waiting for orders to invade. Then the problem went away without ever really going away. It has since spread to Venezuela.</p>
<p>Like many Americans, I learned about the world because we were sending troops somewhere to push back against some form of aggression or some new oppressive regime. At home the streets were filled with Civil Rights marchers or anti-war marchers, both of whom would be replaced by new groups demanding to be heard. It was the era of Woodstock and Watergate.</p>
<p>And no trains filled with soldiers because the military had ceased to be every young man’s duty to serve their nation. It became a voluntary military and, we’re told, one that is superior to the former model. It would suffer casualties in Beirut, wrest Grenada from a communist takeover, invade Panama to remove yet another corrupt leader and then, in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, go there to set things right. After 9/11, in 2001 it would drive the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and then in 2003 invade Iraq to bring down Saddam Hussein.</p>
<p>Is it any wonder Americans are weary of war? Is it any wonder that the word “global” to my generation means some new place where young, dedicated Americans are battling some new despot, regime, or threat to peace anywhere and everywhere?</p>
<p>All of which brings me to the new meaning of “global” for the generations that followed mine. It is attached to “global warming”, the greatest hoax, not merely in the modern era, but in all of history! And it was initiated and implemented by an international institution that was supposed to end wars, the United Nations.</p>
<p>Some years ago, the UN published a book called “Our Global Neighborhood”, but we do not live in a global neighborhood. We live in our own, local neighborhood. The UN is all about global government with, of course, global taxes, a global army, and, as in the case of every dictatorship, a global restriction on gun ownership.</p>
<p>It is all about a vast matrix of global treaties that involve the surrender of some element of U.S. sovereignty to the UN to oversee “heritage” sites and our national parks. It is about an educational indoctrination program to turn American children into “citizens of the world.”</p>
<p>So you will have to forgive me if I look at the world and see places where Americans have continually had to sacrifice blood and treasure because someone or some nation had ambitions to impose their will on people who just wanted to be left alone.</p>
<p>If something terrible happens in America I do not expect to see one single other nation on Earth come to our aid.</p>
<p>In America today, the enemy is not always in some far-off place. It is in Washington, D.C. where an out-of-control Congress is spending and borrowing to the point where we are being warned that our dollar is at risk of being worthless. Led by a feckless new president, it has imposed huge debts on generations yet to be born.</p>
<p>The White House is trying to expand an “entitlement” program, Medicare, that is already broke for the purpose of controlling one sixth of the nation’s economy.</p>
<p>The White House is giving money to banks and then threatening to tax them after they have repaid it.</p>
<p>The White House has bought General Motors and Chrysler instead of letting them go through a bankruptcy process like any other business.</p>
<p>The White House is squandering billions on “clean energy” and “green jobs”, both of which are mere fantasies while billions of barrels of oil go untapped, billions of cubic feet of natural gas remains unavailable, and hundreds of year’s worth of coal is not mined.</p>
<p>Congress is engaged in phony, multi-billion dollar “stimulus” programs instead of cutting taxes to jump-start the economy.</p>
<p>“Think globally. Act locally” is the mantra of the environmental movement, but the movement itself is a global monster, determined to decide what you can eat, how you should deal with your garbage, what kind of car or truck you can drive, how much you should heat or cool your home.</p>
<p>It is despotism, no matter what other name you call it.</p>
<p>And then there are those insane followers of Islam who want to inflict more harm on America because they are not content with killing their fellow Muslims.</p>
<p>I wish I could ignore the world beyond my neighborhood, but it won’t let me.</p></div>
<div>
<div><img title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="148" />Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></a></div>
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		<title>The National Madhouse</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/the-national-madhouse/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/the-national-madhouse/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:33:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=13353</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The National Madhouse By Alan Caruba</p> <p>If you think that you are going mad, based on the statements out of the White House and Congress, let me assure you that you are sane, but those in charge of governing the nation appear to have lost their wits.</p> <p>The Democrat’s third-ranking House leader, Rep. James [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/02/national-madhouse.html">The National Madhouse</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S2hZ8K97Q7I/AAAAAAAABnk/Q85IOUFksjA/s1600-h/horse+pulling+car.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433691840693617586" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S2hZ8K97Q7I/AAAAAAAABnk/Q85IOUFksjA/s200/horse+pulling+car.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>If you think that you are going mad, based on the statements out of the White House and Congress, let me assure you that you are sane, but those in charge of governing the nation appear to have lost their wits.</p>
<p>The Democrat’s third-ranking House leader, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), during an appearance on Fox News asserted that “We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession.” It is his view that “We’re not going to save our way out of this recession.” So saving money is bad. Spending money we are borrowing at a rate of a billion dollars a day is good. If that sounds insane, you’re right.<span id="more-13353"></span></p>
<p>In defending his new budget, President Obama declared that “Already, we have made historic strides…to cut wasteful spending.” The problem with that is that his budget proposal, for a second year in a row, would increase federal spending as a percentage of the Gross National Product at a higher rate than any time in the past 65 years. Fully a quarter of the GNP would be sucked up and spent by the government.</p>
<p>As we all know by now, because the President keeps telling us, that everything that happened last year was the fault of the previous President, George W. Bush, but it turns out that President Obama proposes once again to spend 30% more of the GDP than Bush.</p>
<p>President Obama has also given notice to the United Nations that the U.S. would agree to the Copenhagen Climate Change Accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is reported that this means a reduction of “carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.” This would be contingent on the passage of the Cap-and-Trade bill lingering in the Senate.</p>
<p>The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is based on the now widely discredited global warming hoax that blamed carbon dioxide for the non-existent rise in the planet’s temperature.</p>
<p>Thus, the Cap-and-Trade bill is, itself, a hoax and, worse, would increase taxes on all energy use for all Americans. The reduction that President Obama calls for would require a return to the days of horse-drawn vehicles and an end to manufacturing and other activities dependent on oil, natural gas, and coal.</p>
<p>The Environmental Protection Agency has announced its intention to regulate carbon dioxide, the gas other than oxygen on which all life on Earth depends. Its justification for this is, of course, global warming. It requires a lot of gall to ignore the fact that the Earth entered a cooling cycle in 1998 that is likely to last another decade or two.</p>
<p>If the insanity emanating from the White House, Congress and the EPA is not enough, over at the United Nations last Monday the Human Rights Council met in Geneva. It was presided over by Halima Warzasi, a woman whom UN Watch notes “personally shielded the Saddam regime from international censure over the (Kurdish) gas attacks.” She was preceded in the chairmanship by Alfonso Martinez of Cuba. The Council’s principal members include China, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, none of which are famous for their attention to human rights.</p>
<p>Also last Monday, one brief moment of sanity; Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as “Chemical Ali” for having ordered the poison gas attacks on the Kurds, was hanged.</p>
<p>To Americans struggling with debt, with mortgages that cost more than the present value of their homes, and, for many, with unemployment, the notion that the nation would end the Bush tax cuts while raising taxes at the same time it is borrowing and spending money at an unsustainable rate is a good definition of madness.</p>
<p>In November, the Obama administration released a report stating that more than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted. The main culprit according to the report was Medicare, a program that the same administration via its “healthcare reform” legislation wanted to expand by adding millions more to its rolls.</p>
<p>So you may be forgiven for thinking that something is terribly wrong with the White House and Congress because it is.</p></div>
<div>
<div><img title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="148" />Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></a></div>
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		<title>Global Warming Makes the Case Against Global Government</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/global-warming-makes-the-case-against-global-government/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/global-warming-makes-the-case-against-global-government/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:21:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=13283</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Global Warming Makes the Case Against Global Government By Alan Caruba</p> <p>The utterly baseless case for “global warming” is melting a lot faster than the glaciers in India’s Himalayas which, by the way, are not melting.</p> <p>It is time for the Nobel Committee to rescind the Peace Prize given to Al Gore and the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/02/global-warming-makes-case-against.html">Global Warming Makes the Case Against Global Government</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S2cl3fPKtSI/AAAAAAAABnE/LVQY5O9kQIM/s1600-h/Climategate-UN.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433353110653941026" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S2cl3fPKtSI/AAAAAAAABnE/LVQY5O9kQIM/s200/Climategate-UN.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>The utterly baseless case for “global warming” is melting a lot faster than the glaciers in India’s Himalayas which, by the way, are not melting.</p>
<p>It is time for the Nobel Committee to rescind the Peace Prize given to Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).</p>
<p>It is time for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences committee to take back Al Gore’s Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth”, an alleged documentary that became mandatory viewing for students in the U.S. and around the world. Purporting to “prove” that the Earth was rapidly warming due to the rise in “greenhouse gases”, it is a fraud.</p>
<p>In the event the news hasn’t reached you, in mid-August 2009, after repeated requests for the Climate Research Unit’s raw data from which it calculated global temperatures, the CRU at the University of East Anglia (UK), a key element of the UN’s IPCC, announced that it had discarded the data, thereby making it impossible to determine if their assertions of rising global temperatures were accurate and true. Or not.</p>
<p>In October 2009, in the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, it was demonstrated that the IPCC’s tree ring data from Russia that showed a cooling after 1961 had been disguised in its report (AR4) that, of course, asserted the Earth was warming.<span id="more-13283"></span></p>
<p>A month later, just prior to a huge, international Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, emails from the CRU were leaked, revealing the lengths to which the CRU staff had gone to discredit and suppress any independent studies that disputed the global warming thesis.</p>
<p>In brief, the entire &#8220;scientific&#8221; basis on which the IPCC “scientists” and global warming advocates like Al Gore made their claims was a fraud. It rendered AR4 “scientifically questionable” in the polite parlance of the worldwide scientific community.</p>
<p>In January, Joe D’Aleo and E. Michael Smith released a detailed report that indicted the U.S. National Climatic Data Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies for having eliminated many meteorological stations from their data bases in recent years and, to no one’s surprise, the stations were mostly in colder climate areas. Without their data, the “warmists” could continue to claim the Earth was in a warming cycle.</p>
<p>None of this came as a surprise to the “deniers” and “skeptics”, many of them internationally renowned climatologists and meteorologists, who had attended the <a href="http://www.heartland,org/">Heartland Institute’s </a>two international conferences on climate change, participating in seminars and addressing attendees to provide the truth; the Earth has been in a cooling cycle since 1998, any prior warming was a normal and natural cycle following the Little Ice Age that ended around 1850, and the claims of the IPCC and other alleged science-based government agencies were utterly false.</p>
<p>The sheer magnitude of the deception, directed and orchestrated from within a United Nations entity, given support by United States and British agencies, and further supported by multi-national groups such as the European Union, made it difficult for the average person to believe anything other than the elements of the hoax that were constantly proclaimed and then reinforced by the media and Hollywood.</p>
<p>When the global warming dam burst, millions around the world would conclude what they had always suspected; there was no global warming and all the billions spent in the name of “reducing greenhouse gases” or “clean energy” was part of a massive fraud, a set-up to permit new forms of taxation and to enrich the participants.</p>
<p>That is the case against multinational organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union, to name just two. They are, too often, giant propaganda machines whose agenda is to eliminate fundamental concepts of individual liberty and freedom, replacing them with faceless bureaucrats with no obligation to be responsive to citizens anywhere.</p>
<p>A U.S. President, Barack Obama, who attended the UN Copenhagen Conference and would, in the course of his State of the Union speech, claim that there was “overwhelming evidence” of climate change a.k.a. global warming, is part of the cabal that would waste taxpayer’s billions on &#8220;green jobs&#8221;, “clean energy”, and “biofuels” as opposed to actually encouraging the building of nuclear and coal-fired plants, exploring and extracting offshore oil and natural gas reserves, and maintaining the nation’s vital infrastructure.</p>
<p>A rogue government agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, is brazenly warning Congress that it will regulate carbon dioxide if it does not pass the patently false “Cap-and-Trade” legislation intended to limit so-called “greenhouse gases.” The EPA must be reined in and a complete housecleaning is necessary to repeal the many regulations and laws based on the global warming fraud.</p>
<p>The U.S. needs a new Congress filled with men and women who want to protect the nation against the frauds perpetrated by its own science-related agencies, to kill legislation that would impose a massive tax on energy use, and bring the global warming advocates within the government to the bar of justice.</p>
<p>The world needs to dissolve the United Nations in the same way it shunted aside the useless League of Nations. The present institution should be broken into units that perform legitimate services, but governance is not a legitimate purpose. No global taxes. No global army. No global propaganda machine.</p>
<p>Nations, worldwide, need to reclaim their sovereignty and then work together for the mutual goal of peace and other worthwhile causes.</p></div>
<div>
<div><img title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="148" />Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></a></div>
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		<title>The SWI Question of the Day (2-1-10)</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/the-swi-question-of-the-day-2-1-10/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/02/the-swi-question-of-the-day-2-1-10/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:00:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bob Grant - Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Comments & Discussion]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=13204</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Should there be a ban on smoking &#8211; if so &#8211; in what places or areas?</p> <p>We welcome your thoughts and comments.</p> ]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Should there be a ban on smoking &#8211; if so &#8211; in what places or areas?</strong></p>
<p><strong>We welcome your thoughts and comments.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Great Green Land Grab</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/the-great-green-land-grab/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/the-great-green-land-grab/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:40:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=13242</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Great Green Land Grab By Alan Caruba</p> <p>All across America, various environmental organizations have been engaged in schemes to deter development such as housing, new energy plants, or the horror of a manufacturing facility that might actually employ people. In some states, the attack has been on farms and ranches, finding ways to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/01/great-green-land-grab.html">The Great Green Land Grab</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S2Sob6beBPI/AAAAAAAABm0/f2CvJtF2ahM/s1600-h/NJ+-+Welcome2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432652248010065138" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S2Sob6beBPI/AAAAAAAABm0/f2CvJtF2ahM/s200/NJ+-+Welcome2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>All across America, various environmental organizations have been engaged in schemes to deter development such as housing, new energy plants, or the horror of a manufacturing facility that might actually employ people. In some states, the attack has been on farms and ranches, finding ways to punish their owners for improving their land in any fashion such as digging a drainage ditch.</p>
<p>Property rights were deemed so essential, so important to the economic future of America that the Founding Fathers wrote an Amendment to the Constitution to protect those rights, ensuring that private property could not be taken for public use “without just compensation.”</p>
<p>As far as environmentalists are concerned, private property rights are an impediment to the “protection” of what they always describe as “pristine” forests, deserts, or some horrid wilderness such as the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. ANWR is unfit for human habitation, but it does have countless thousands of caribou and several billion barrels of untapped oil beneath a “pristine” surface.<span id="more-13242"></span></p>
<p>In a small State like New Jersey, land and its proper use has been a major concern from its earliest years. The State got its moniker, “the Garden State”, from the many farms in its southern half, although there are some in the north. One can drive up Route 78 through the northern portion and see horse farms and even cattle being raised.</p>
<p>Beyond its urban centers, there are large, verdant areas in which one can find small, picturesque suburbs and one of those areas is known as the Highlands. It is a 1,400- square-mile region, some 860,000 acres, extending from the northern border with New York and including land in Sussex, Warren, Passaic, Morris, and Hunterdon Counties.</p>
<p>The Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act was enacted in 2004 and signed into law by former Governor James McGreevey whose lamentable and mercifully abbreviated term in office was cut short when, in the wake of a scandal concerning a young man whom he had put on the state payroll, he announced he was a homosexual and resigned.</p>
<p>Put into motion in 2006, the State’s largest daily newspaper, The Star-Ledger, editorialized that “Development controls are so sweeping that perhaps less than 20 percent of land in the region is left available for construction, even in the half of the region lawmakers had targeted for future growth. That small amount of buildable acreage could be cut further when additional rules, such as new regulations for septic systems, are completed.”</p>
<p>The area in question is a watershed and the environmental claim was that any further construction or use of it posed a threat to water quality and that the area, home to abundant wildlife, needed to be subject to all manner of regulation and restrictions to protect it against the humans who had been living there since before the Revolution.</p>
<p>There never was a need for the Highlands Act. Existing environmental laws were and are sufficient, but the objective was to render the huge tract of land beyond any development, to reduce the value of its homes and other structures, and generally put it off limits. This kind of green gangsterism is part of the reason why, along with high taxation, and senseless spending, more people leave New Jersey than move here.</p>
<p>In 2007, northern New Jersey farmers and landowners affected by the Highlands Act made plans to contest it in court to protect their loss of equity and private property rights. Consider if you owned a home in this vast region and wanted to sell it. Who would buy it knowing that you could not add a porch, a swimming pool, or even some swings for kids to play on? If you were a farmer almost any normal act of tillage or harvest could be ruled a danger to the environment.</p>
<p>As a Star-Ledger columnist, Paul Mulshine, pointed out in July 2007, “The purpose of the plan was not to redistribute development, but to stop it entirely. And the way the law was written is positively Machiavellian. The Highlands law amounts to an ingenious effort by the state to grab as much land as possible without leaving the state open to a court challenge under the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment.”</p>
<p>I was reminded of this appalling piece of environmental chicanery when a story appeared in The Star-Ledger in late January. “A report by Gov. Chris Christie’s transition team calls the Highlands Council ‘a disaster on multiple levels’ and recommends cutting the water-protection agency’s powers over local zoning or eliminating it.”</p>
<p>It has taken six years of suffering by the many landowners of the affected area and frustration among the many local officials in towns affected by this hideous land grab to finally reach a point where something might begin to be done to repeal the act and return the legislatively stolen property rights.</p>
<p>All around America, similar actions have been occurring, spurred on by various environmental groups, and all intended to drive out farmers and ranchers, to kill any development of any kind, and to abrogate the Constitutional protection of private property in every way possible.</p>
<p>It is part of a vast matrix of efforts to destroy the nation’s economic growth and it is too often successful. Given their antipathy to all human activity, if the Greens had their way, they would put up signs everywhere that would say, “Keep Out!”</p></div>
<div>
<div><img title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="148" />Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></a></div>
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		<title>The Bill Comes Due for Socialism in America</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/the-bill-comes-due-for-socialism-in-america/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/the-bill-comes-due-for-socialism-in-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:03:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cap and Trade]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Bill Comes Due for Socialism in America By Alan Caruba</p> <p>&#8220;The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people&#8217;s money.&#8221; &#8212; Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister</p> <p>It began as a beautiful cruise to a land of “hope and change”, but it has become a nightmare in which the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/01/bill-comes-due-for-socialism.html">The Bill Comes Due for Socialism in America</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S1tqagrLdCI/AAAAAAAABlM/GvwIjB7TFas/s1600-h/Obama+-+Economy+Cartoon.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430050779405448226" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S1tqagrLdCI/AAAAAAAABlM/GvwIjB7TFas/s400/Obama+-+Economy+Cartoon.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>&#8220;The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people&#8217;s money.&#8221; &#8212; Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister</p>
<p>It began as a beautiful cruise to a land of “hope and change”, but it has become a nightmare in which the ship of state is being deliberately steered toward a whirlpool of debt from which, if Obama is successful, the nation cannot escape.</p>
<p>One of the primary reasons the U.S. economy has grown over the years has been the confidence in its innovation and productivity. It has generated investment from around the world from those who wanted to profit from our success story. There was a time when U.S. securities were the safest in the world, but that is no longer the case.</p>
<p>On December 24, 2009, the U.S. Senate voted to raise the ceiling of the government debt to $12.4 trillion, described by an Associated Press reporter as “a massive increase over the current limit and a political problem that President Barack Obama has promised to address next year.”</p>
<p>On January 20, 2010, barely a month later, Senate Democrats “proposed allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion to pay bills, a record increase that would permit the national debt to reach $14.3 trillion.” <span id="more-13044"></span></p>
<p>This is the reason, by virtue of the Massachusetts special election; the United States has dodged the bullet of a “reformed” healthcare system which would have slashed a half trillion dollars from Medicare coffers while adding millions more people to its rolls.</p>
<p>It would have turned the health insurance industry into a public utility. They would have ceased to be private enterprises of competing companies. It would have driven physicians out of practice. It would have bankrupted the nation and reduced a widely acknowledged excellent health system to that of a third world nation.</p>
<p>The proposed “Cap-and-Trade” bill, a huge tax on all energy use—the lifeblood of any economy, must be defeated. This will come most likely from a lack of votes as Senate Democrats are finally scared enough of the electorate to act with some degree of rationality.</p>
<p>In a recent commentary, Jerome R. Corsi, the author of “America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving the Global Depression, and Preserving USA Sovereignty”, wrote “With the recession and the huge stimulus package added to the beginning of the baby boomers retiring, United States debt is already at 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the Obama administration plans as they currently stand.”</p>
<p>In other words, the U.S. government is committed through various “entitlement” programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, along with other expenditures, to spend more than it takes in via taxes. The other major expense is for defense. These three factors represent half of the annual U.S. budget.</p>
<p>The situation is so grave that, on January 18, The Washington Times editorialized that “Obama is killing the economy.”</p>
<p><strong>The bill has finally come due for decades of socialism that began in the 1930s</strong>.</p>
<p>“The 2009 budget deficit tripled over 2008. The deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) went from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009. The deficit for the first month of fiscal year 2010 was $176 billion, which was greater than the $161 billion deficit for the entire 2007 fiscal year.”</p>
<p>At present rates, the public debt of the United States will reach 85 percent of GDP by 2018, just eight years from now, and 100 percent by 2022. It would be 200 percent by 2038 unless some brakes on spending are not applied before the ship of state gets sucked down beneath an ocean of debt.</p>
<p>What does President Obama propose? He wants to apply an unconstitutional special tax on banks! And not all banks, but just those banks on “Wall Street” whom he blames for the current recession.</p>
<p>His most recent proposal to regulate the banking system drove down the Dow Jones Average signaling further fears of his intention to micro-manage the economy. It is a recipe for disaster and shares of the big Wall Street banks in particular fell. He is deliberately attacking the great engine of the nation’s economy.</p>
<p><strong>Wall Street is not the problem. The government is the problem.</strong></p>
<p>Obama made no mention of the real culprits for the housing market meltdown, the reckless spending of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Community Reinvestment Act that underwrote a program that put $12 trillion of mortgage loans, half of all such loans, in the hands of the federal government!</p>
<p>As John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out, “President Obama’s proposal (would) bring back 1930s-like separation of commercial and investment banks, dubbed Glass-Steagall II or Glass-Steagall 2.0, (and) would do little to prevent the problem of financial institutions being too big to fail. What it would do is hurt economic recovery, reduce types of financing available to businesses big and small, and give European and Asian financial services firm a huge competitive advantage over their U.S. counterparts.”</p>
<p>The billions still unspent in the so-called “Stimulus” bill should be returned to the Treasury. Plans to expand Medicare and Medicaid need to be scrapped. Taxes on greenhouse gas emissions, mostly carbon dioxide, must be avoided if for no other reason that CO2 has nothing to do with a non-existent global warming.</p>
<p>The capacity of the United States to recover calls for an end or at least a cap on the mindless spending of taxpayer millions on the pet projects and crony deals of Representatives and Senators.</p>
<p>It calls for an end to the restrictions on the exploration for and extraction of the nation’s vast coal, oil and natural gas reserves, including in ANWR and aggressively in the offshore continental shelf.</p>
<p>It calls for an end to huge multi-million dollar subsidies for “renewable energy” schemes such as solar and wind power.</p>
<p>It calls for an end to the ethanol mandates that dilute the mileage of every gallon of gasoline and actually increase CO2 emissions!</p>
<p>It calls for an end to congressional mandates on the auto industry that have, in part, driven two of its largest manufacturers, General Motors and Chrysler, into bankruptcy. The U.S. must divest its ownership in both companies.</p>
<p>It calls for reining in the rogue government agency, the Environment Protection Agency that is attempting to unilaterally impose control of CO2 emissions and has long engaged in practices that impede economic growth for business, industry, and the nation’s agricultural sector.</p>
<p>There are many reasonable and rational steps that can and should be taken, but it seems clear that the President, with the support of a Democrat controlled Congress, has no intention of taking any of these steps and, indeed, is intent on bankrupting the U.S. government and its people.</p></div>
<div>
<div><img title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="148" />Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></a></div>
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		<title>A Daily Testimony of a World&#8217;s Decline</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/a-daily-testimony-of-a-worlds-decline/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/a-daily-testimony-of-a-worlds-decline/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:06:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lena</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=12911</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>My daily drive; today through pouring rain, Behind road fog snaking towards me from the truck ahead, Slowly approaching the cloud-shrouded glass and metal, Framed by downtown&#8217;s bustling highways.</p> <p>Graffiti on walls and overpasses define the city climate Testimony of a divided space and time Obscenities litter the viaducts and road signs Racial slurs [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>My daily drive; today through pouring rain,<br />
Behind road fog snaking towards me from the truck ahead,<br />
Slowly approaching the cloud-shrouded glass and metal,<br />
Framed by downtown&#8217;s bustling highways.</p>
<p>Graffiti on walls and overpasses define the city climate<br />
Testimony of a divided space and time<br />
Obscenities litter the viaducts and road signs<br />
Racial slurs and sexual innuendos graphically apparent.</p>
<p>Beggars crowd each corner light.<br />
Wheel chaired homeless; missing limbs and teeth,<br />
Huddled beneath layers of sweaters and tattered jackets,<br />
Mumbling into their private cyberspace of unreality.<span id="more-12911"></span></p>
<p>Parking lots crowded with brown skinned men,<br />
Waiting for one day&#8217;s employment to wander by,<br />
Speaking a language that is becoming the norm,<br />
Twelve deep clustered in one room flats.</p>
<p>Sirens wail as the babies cry,<br />
Crack head infants abandoned to a depleted system,<br />
Children birthing children into a burdened structure,<br />
Seams bursting in the waistcoat of mankind.</p>
<p>© 2008 Lena M. P.</p>
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		<title>Deadly Earth, Deadly Humans</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/deadly-earth-deadly-humans/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/deadly-earth-deadly-humans/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:47:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Earthquakes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pests]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Volcanos]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=12842</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Deadly Earth, Deadly Humans By Alan Caruba</p> <p>The earthquake in Haiti is a perfect example of the arrogance of environmentalists who are always running around crying “Save the Earth” or making claims that any or all forms of life are going extinct.</p> <p>For three decades we have listened to these charlatans claim that the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/01/deadly-earth-deadly-humans.html">Deadly Earth, Deadly Humans</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S1Senhu8o0I/AAAAAAAABj0/YoEgmNZ_EPo/s1600-h/Volcano+Eruption.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428137852795659074" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/S1Senhu8o0I/AAAAAAAABj0/YoEgmNZ_EPo/s400/Volcano+Eruption.bmp" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>The earthquake in Haiti is a perfect example of the arrogance of environmentalists who are always running around crying “Save the Earth” or making claims that any or all forms of life are going extinct.</p>
<p>For three decades we have listened to these charlatans claim that the Earth was heating up to a point where, if we didn’t cut back or replace all forms of energy, oil, natural gas and coal, it would become a vast desert devoid of life.</p>
<p>Then, in 1998, the Sun began yet another of its eleven year cycles of low sunspot activity, a diminution of magnetic storms on its surface, and the completely predictable result was a new, perfectly natural cooling cycle, a prelude perhaps to a predictable new ice age.</p>
<p>When I do radio, I like to remind listeners that Mother Nature has a message for humankind. It’s “Get out of the way. Here comes an earthquake, a volcano, a flood, a forest fire, a mudslide, a blizzard, a hurricane, et cetera.”</p>
<p>In an excellent book, “Devastation! The World’s Worst Natural Disasters” by Lesley Newson, she starts by noting that “The Earth is a rocky sphere nearly 8,000 miles in diameter. It is surrounded by a shroud of gases more than 60 miles deep. Sandwiched in between is a fragile layer, only a few miles thick, where humans are able to survive. It is perhaps not surprising that in this tiny zone of life there are occasional upheavals that make survival impossible.”<span id="more-12842"></span></p>
<p>Haiti is the perfect definition of devastation. As bad as the earthquake’s damage has been, the aftermath will be testimony to the way those not killed in the initial quake will fall victim to the diseases that will ravage the area as well as the difficulty to provide immediate medical care. There are an astonishing number of ways humans can die and Mother Nature is utterly indifferent.</p>
<p>What makes matters worse, however, is the indifference of environmentalists who would deny everyone access to the energy sources needed to fuel a complex, technological, global society beginning with the provision of electricity. The Earth is not running out of coal or oil, only the right to mine it and drill for it.</p>
<p>The first thing to go in Haiti was its communications system. The next was the capacity to fuel means of transportation. The lack of a government was nothing compared to the long-standing failure to provide clean water and, worse, the failure to educate Haitians to compete in a world where literacy and modern skills are vital to survival.</p>
<p>Another factor that will kill many Haitian survivors is the spread of disease by insect and rodent pests. Environmentalists have striven to deny Americans and all others access to one of the greatest developments of the modern era, pesticides with which to control the mosquitoes, the ticks, the fleas, the rats and all the other creatures that constantly threaten humanity.</p>
<p>In April 2005, I wrote a commentary, <a href="http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20050412-095320-4602r.htm">“The Black Plague and its descendants” </a>that was published in The Washington Times. It noted that the Black Death made its way from inner Asia and, in 1347, Yersina pestis arrived in Europe. What followed was the second greatest catastrophe in the human record. By the time it ended around 1352, a quarter of Europe’s population was dead.</p>
<p>Only World War II killed more people. And yet, as this is written, millions die of malaria in Africa and Asia because some bureaucrat in the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT.</p>
<p>History gives ample evidence that the Earth is a dangerous place, in addition to earthquakes, it is ringed by volcanoes and, in the U.S. the beloved Yellowstone National Park is one giant volcanic caldera which, when it explodes, will alter life as well as take it in the hundreds of thousands, if not more.</p>
<p>Scientists track the nation’s “hurricane season” and all manner of effort is made to anticipate them and warn residents, but even that was not enough when Katrina hit the Gulf States on August 29, 2005.</p>
<p>It is stupid to politicize this event, blaming former President Bush as if he either caused it or failed to respond effectively. No President and no government are prepared for a Category Five hurricane. It was just as stupid not to flee when told it was coming.</p>
<p>It is not for nothing that we call such events “an act of God”, but in reality they are an act of a huge planet, unique among all others in our galaxy because it has spawned all manner of life, including our own.</p>
<p>It is a planet subject to the action or inaction of the Sun. Nothing we do alters that simple fact. It is a planet that must hope to dodge any of the thousands of asteroids that threaten it. It is an Earth whose tectonic plates shift unpredictably. Its interior is unimaginably hot and whose circulation of molten rock carries the heat to the surface, allowing its mantle to keep the core stable.</p>
<p>What I am arguing for is a bit of humility, something that humans are not famous for.</p>
<p>There are six billion of us and the world’s intelligentsia scorns us and seeks ways to ensure as many as possible will die by thwarting the development of genetically modified crops to feed us, by stopping the building of more power generation plants, by making war in the name of a misguided belief in the superiority of a religion like Islam, or the evil desire to grow rich and powerful by ruling vast populations.</p>
<p>In Iran, ruled by certifiably insane ayatollahs, the people are in the streets to overthrow a brutal regime that is determined to create its own nuclear weapons and the world is standing by instead of uniting to destroy their means to do so. A so-called international organization, the United Nations, is shot through with corruption and both unwilling and unable to assert the sanctions to stop the inevitable outcome of doing nothing.</p>
<p>And here in the United States, we have fallen victim to a regime so dedicated to the destruction of the nation’s economy that we wait on the election process to save us from ourselves.</p></div>
<div><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="148" />Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></a></div>
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		<title>China in Transition, Where did all that Pollution come from?</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/china-in-transition-where-did-all-that-pollution-come-from/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/china-in-transition-where-did-all-that-pollution-come-from/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:47:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lloyd Lofthouse</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=12312</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[China in Transition, Where did all that Pollution come from? by Lloyd Lofthouse <p>Before anyone criticizes China for polluting the environment, learn about the history that caused today’s problems first. The First Industrial Revolution took place in England after James Watt developed the steam engine in the late 18th century. Coal and burning wood played an [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2><a title="China in Transition, Where did all that Pollution come from?" rel="bookmark" href="http://learningchina.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/china-in-transition-where-did-all-that-pollution-come-from/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-7558" title="lloyd-lofthouse-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/lloyd-lofthouse-photo.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="100" />China in Transition, Where did all that Pollution come from?</a></h2>
<div>by Lloyd Lofthouse</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Before anyone criticizes China for polluting the environment, learn about the history that caused today’s problems first. The First Industrial Revolution took place in England after James Watt developed the steam engine in the late 18th century. Coal and burning wood played an important part in this process. The result, the beginning of serious air and water pollution.</p>
<p>The second Industrial Revolution (1820-1870) was significant to the economic development of the United States, and this process increased between 1870 and 1914 leading up to World War I.</p>
<p>Pollution from industry increased to epidemic proportions after World War II in 1945, because the type of pollution changed significantly. Industries in America and Europe began manufacturing and using synthetic materials such as plastics, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and inorganic pesticides like dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT). These materials are not only toxic, they also accumulate in the environment—they are not biodegradable. This brought on increased rates of cancers, physical birth defects, and mental retardation, among other health challenges.<span id="more-12312"></span></p>
<p>Due to an increase in world trade after World War II and moving a significant percentage of the world’s manufacturing to Japan, then to China after Mao died, the pollution created by using these synthetic materials increased and with it pollution moved to a global scale. Most of the products that are manufactured in China are sold by multinational corporations like Wall Mart where 90% of what they sell in America is made in China.  If you shop at places like Wal-Mart, you are partly responsible for the pollution in China. When you hear criticisms blaming China for polluting the environment, point a finger at yourself as one of the causes. For that reason, I do not shop at Wal-Mart.</p>
<p>Another factor is that there is a lot of pressure from the people of China on their government to improve the standard of living for 1.3 billion people. Only one other country on the planet at this time has the same challenge and that is India.</p>
<p>The changes taking place in China and India today parallel the changes that already took place in America, Britain and Europe more than a century earlier. In the 1960s, about sixty percent of Chinese workers were employed in agriculture. That figure remained more or less the same throughout the 1960s into the early 1990s. In the 1990s, the labor force employed in agriculture in China had fallen to about thirty percent, and by 2000 still further.</p>
<p>By comparison, in 1870, a hundred-and-twenty years before 1990, fifty-three percent of workers in America were in agriculture. Today, that number makes up 3% of the workforce. The rest live in towns and cities with a middle-class consumer lifestyle that many in the world want and that is the cause of much of the pollution in the world today.</p>
<p>What is China doing about its pollution problems? Next week, <em>Learning China</em> will focus on answers to this question.</p>
</div>
</div>
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		<title>Nopenhagen saviors US, China deserve praise</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/nopenhagen-saviors-us-china-deserve-praise/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2010/01/nopenhagen-saviors-us-china-deserve-praise/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:34:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Muhammad Cohen</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cap and Trade]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=12307</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[China and US have taken the lead in saving earth away from the UN and fellow travelers that were bungling the job. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the fallout from last month&#8217;s failed climate change conference, the US and China emerged as villains. But the real <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LA07Ad01.html">blame for turning Copenhagen into Nopenhagen</a> rests with the UN, small developing countries, and environmental groups. Those parties had little to contribute to the negotiations and were committed a <a href="http://muhammadcohen.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/no-friends-of-the-earth/">flawed concept</a> that, even it had been adopted, would not have effectively curbed emissions. The US and China, countries that really can make a difference in emissions, came up with a plan that can actually help save the planet, and they deserve to be praised for it.</p>
<p><i>Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer <b>Muhammad Cohen</b> is author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9889979977?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=muhacohe-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=9889979977">Hong Kong On Air</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=muhacohe-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=9889979977" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important;margin:0px !important" />, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.</i> </p>
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		<title>Mother Earth Will Provide</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/12/mother-earth-will-provide/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/12/mother-earth-will-provide/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:42:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Minnette Coleman</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=12026</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Here is something that may or may not spur more debate on our site. After seeing the latest costly (500 million dollars) and entertaining blockbuster, &#8220;Avatar&#8221;, I started thinking about the true concept of deities. Mankind has always known that we could not pull off life alone. A higher power was always required. For [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Here is something that may or may not spur more debate on our site. After seeing the latest costly (500 million dollars) and entertaining blockbuster, &#8220;Avatar&#8221;, I started thinking about the true concept of deities. Mankind has always known that we could not pull off life alone. A higher power was always required. For most ancient civilizations there was a bond between humanity and nature.  Nature was usually seen as that which gives birth to everything. Where Christians believe that the lord Jesus will take care of them and all their needs those ancients and those today who understand nature believe Mother Earth will always provide.<span id="more-12026"></span></p>
<p>Year ago I was lucky enough to see a Broadway show based on a novel by Caribbean American author Rosa Guy. The musical &#8220;Once on This Island&#8221; was full of rousing colorful tunes with a lively Caribbean beat. If memory serves me, and it had been a while, several African deities were represented in the characters that helped a young girl along her way. One show stopping number sung by Broadway veteran Lillias White came to mind as I left the movie &#8220;Avatar&#8221;. The title of the song was &#8220;Mama will Provide&#8221;. Whenever I think of that song I think of the provisions made by Mother Earth for the children of this planet. Provisions we steal and squander to gain superiority over others.</p>
<p>While studying religion in college I learned the first Christians were actually communists. They shared everything they had, no one was superior to another except for the God they believed in. Must have been extremely difficult to do in the ancient Roman empire where every man was out for himself. Both Romans and Christians did have respect for Mother Earth, offering sacrifices and taking care not to destroy the land that she had given. Where we believe in the separation of church and state, they believed the responsibility of life and land was handled by different omnipotent beings.</p>
<p>But there was always Mama Earth providing a place of shelter, nourishment in the form of plant life and even ways to obtain clothing. Did we stop respecting the earth because we began to believe in a single deity so powerful he put all others to shame? When did Jesus will provide replace the job Mother Earth had been doing all along? When did people stop working with the earth and start working against her?</p>
<p>Most agree that the greed of mankind will be its downfall. That tumble from grace has already begun but it has to do less with a belief in the one true God then it does respect for the vessel from which all things are grown. Since we have made Mother Earth (and most females) a slave to our whims our deity is constantly male. There is a slight nod to the female that bore him and less of a nod to the earth that provided him sustenance. Some would say Mama Earth did not provide spiritual guidance and they would be wrong. You learn as you grow from what you grow be it a seed in the ground or an idea planted in the minds of others. A healthy respect for each other comes with a healthy attitude towards working to share the bounty Mother Nature gives, to care not to ravage her lands and to respect the river from which all life and all things flow.</p>
<p>Were men so tired of following the simple rules of the Mother that they turned to gods of greed and war? I am not sure but with male gods women deities seem to have no place in the realm of eternal power. Perhaps we are only needed in the kitchen and the bedroom. Jokes are made on this position of women but at the end of each joke the woman ends up on top. What does that tell you about the power of the female? The power of the simple?</p>
<p>As we waste the precious gifts of Mama Earth we are going to be punished for our lack of faith in her ability to provide. Raping the earth for its resources will mean Mama will close you off from her treasures. Soon she will provide you with so little you may not think you can survive.</p>
<p>But you can. We can. Perhaps Mama Earth will make a re-appearance in power when there is no more oil, when the ice caps have all melted and when the forests are bare. She will make it her business to let those who would ravage her and their progeny die off leaving behind kindred spirits ready to work with her to survive with the basics of life. In the end the powers that we pray to, the male ones be they Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha, may not be powerful enough to stop a woman scorned.</p>
<p>Remember in those lean times if all else fails that mothers love their children. They tend to punish then forgive.  And in the end, as always, Mama will provide.</p>
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		<title>Demography Decides Everything</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/12/demography-decides-everything/</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:32:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=11920</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Demography Decides Everything By Alan Caruba</p> <p>When I listen to politicians arguing the merits of some piece of legislation, I am usually 99% sure they have no idea how demography-—population—-will affect the outcome of their grand schemes.</p> <p>This is particularly true of advocates of fixed and often flawed ideas about the environment. Most “save [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/12/demography-decides-everything.html">Demography Decides Everything</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Sy1LXahHhRI/AAAAAAAABcs/LvTaE-5ujAE/s1600-h/Crowd.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417068792423875858" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 200px; cursor: hand; height: 135px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Sy1LXahHhRI/AAAAAAAABcs/LvTaE-5ujAE/s200/Crowd.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>When I listen to politicians arguing the merits of some piece of legislation, I am usually 99% sure they have no idea how demography-—population—-will affect the outcome of their grand schemes.</p>
<p>This is particularly true of advocates of fixed and often flawed ideas about the environment. Most “save the Earth” true believers want to see huge reductions in the population of the planet. They don’t much care for human beings.</p>
<p>Demography is the study of population; focusing on things like fertility rates, aging, ethnic identity, and immigration. Knowing the accurate demographics of a nation is central to its governance and this is particularly true for a democracy. It is no accident that both words have the same root, demos as in people.</p>
<p>Knowing the size and distribution of the U.S. population was a serious concern for the Founders and it is part of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution which states that &#8220;[An] Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.&#8221; Congress first met in 1789, and the first national census was held in 1790.<span id="more-11920"></span></p>
<p>For the world in general, fertility rates have been falling as more women receive education and become part of the workplace. Higher standards of living and education reduce birth rates. It makes it easier for women to be part of the workforce and households have more money for savings as well as the consumption of goods. As nations like India and China improve their economic status, their populations will stabilize and population growth will slow. The odious one-child policy in China will, in time, pass into history.</p>
<p>Thus, industrialization, the increased spread of electrical power, a global economy with fewer trade restrictions, all will favorably impact population growth by slowing it. In contrast, the objectives of the environmental movement such as the reduction of energy use based on the false assertion that it produces carbon dioxide that, in turn, will heat the Earth, are in direct conflict with population stabilization and reduction.</p>
<p>In the United States, government policies have been in direct contradiction of what native-born and naturalized citizens want. If the latter had there way, there would not have been a sharp increase in the population. Instead, the government has pursued policies that increase, largely through legal and illegal immigration, the number of people in the nation.</p>
<p>In 1970, the U.S. population was about 203 million. This followed the unprecedented “Baby Boom” years,1946-1964. Today the population has surpassed 293 million. These numbers come from the Census Bureau. At no other time in U.S. history have recent immigrants and their children dominated population growth.</p>
<p>The U.S. Census Bureau’s official estimate is that there are eight million illegal immigrants currently in the nation. Most observers of illegal immigrant believe that the actual number range from twelve to seventeen million.</p>
<p>So, since 1970, each Congress and each President has adopted policies not only allowing, but encouraging, legal, and in particular, illegal immigration far above traditional levels and setting the stage for increasing economic and social problems.</p>
<p>As reported by USA Today, the U.S. population is expected to “soar to 438 million by 2050 and the Hispanic population will triple according to projections…by the Pew Reseach Center.</p>
<p>Moreover, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that “the future age structure of the population will be older than it is now. Very nearly 40% will be senior citizens, over 65, by 2050. The last members of the Baby Boom will reach 65 by 2029. All will be eligible for Social Security and Medicare if, in fact, these two entitlement programs have not become insolvent by then.</p>
<p>Here, again, we see government policy ignoring or just ignorant of population changes as the Congress moves toward passing a healthcare reform package that 80% of the voters disapprove; one that will slash a trillion dollars from Medicare funds and institute rationing of care as the number of older Americans increase. The harm to the current healthcare system is incalculable.</p>
<p>In addition, yet another amnesty bill has been introduced in Congress at a time when it is obvious that a growth in the genera population will only exacerbate and increase the costs of educating the children of the newly enfranchised, formerly illegal immigrants, along with the cost providing medical care to those who cannot afford it, and incarcerating those who break the law. These costs will add billions at all levels of society.</p>
<p>So, demographics do matter, even if politicians and other special interests ignore them. They have local, national, and international ramifications as populations either stabilize or increase worldwide.</p>
<p>A lesson for the United States can be drawn from the decline of the Roman Empire. It was a combination of the cost of far-flung military commitments and the invasions of populations from outside of the empire that ultimately caused its collapse through an inability to impose Pax Romana or stop the depredations of northern European tribes and threats from the Huns.</p>
<p>Policies that deliberately deny the benefits of the provision of widespread energy availability and of education to increase literary; policies that deny protection against the scurge of malaria and other diseases; discourage the use of genetically modified crops to avoid deforestation and to provide ample food supplies; policies that impose foolish mandates such as ethanol or even attempt to regulate carbon dioxide with the false claim that it is a harmful gas, all contribute to the waste of the Earth’s greatest resource, its human population.</p>
<p>There are, of course, events beyond our imagination, though not necessarily our control. As the great physicist Albert Einstein warned, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”</p></div>
<div><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>Baby, It&#8217;s Cold Outside</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/12/baby-its-cold-outside/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/12/baby-its-cold-outside/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:21:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Cooling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ice Age]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=11527</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Baby, It&#8217;s Cold Outside By Alan Caruba</p> <p>One of the great ironies of the Climate Change Conference taking place in Copenhagen is that its focus is on “global warming” at a time when Planet Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the passed decade.</p> <p>That fact alone is testimony to another one; the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/12/baby-its-cold-outside.html">Baby, It&#8217;s Cold Outside</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SyBC0PoENrI/AAAAAAAABZk/6g04bkDF8MM/s1600-h/Ice+Age.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413400217414547122" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 155px; cursor: hand; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SyBC0PoENrI/AAAAAAAABZk/6g04bkDF8MM/s200/Ice+Age.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>One of the great ironies of the Climate Change Conference taking place in Copenhagen is that its focus is on “global warming” at a time when Planet Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the passed decade.</p>
<p>That fact alone is testimony to another one; the United Nations conference has nothing to do with the climate and everything to do with a binding treaty that would ultimately transfer power from the individual sovereign nations whose representatives are attending to centralized governance by unelected bureaucrats.</p>
<p>Just as Communism concentrates all power in the “State” and relegates its citizens to “property” of the state, the UN Climate Change program would subjugate entire nations in the name of “saving the Earth.” It needs saving, but not from a fraudulent “global warming”. The present greatest danger to mankind is the various power centers represented by the delegates to the conference.</p>
<p>There is, however, another danger and it is the climate; not a warming one, but one that is at the tail end of the latest interglacial period between ice ages. The last ice age ended about 11,500 years ago, though some argue it was only 10,000 years.</p>
<p>The late Dr. Theodore Landscheidt, founder of the Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity in Waldmuenchen, Germany, was a giant in the field of climatology. This science looks at climate trends in terms of millions or thousands of years. <span id="more-11527"></span></p>
<p>Before his passing in 2004, Dr. Landscheidt predicted a new Little Ice Age similar to what the northern hemisphere experienced from around 1300 to 1850. He based this on an analysis of the sun’s activity in the last two millennia and he believed it would arrive by 2030. Meteorologists are in general agreement that the current cooling cycle will continue for another two decades. Thereafter it gets really cold!</p>
<p>Meteorology is about the weather that is occurring now and predicting what that weather will be in the near future. As we know, even short range predictions of a few days are subject to variations. Modern meteorology depends on computer climate models, but none can factor in the role of clouds on the weather because they remain a mystery. Other unknown factors include countless active undersea volcanoes.</p>
<p>The Sun, however, can and is closely monitored and, since it is the primary source of warming and cooling cycles, predictions can be made. Dr. Landscheidt wrote, “The current 11-year sunspot cycle 23 with its considerably weaker activity seems to be a first indication of the new trend.”</p>
<p>Winter will grow colder and last longer. By 2030, people in the northern hemisphere will experience what occurred between 1300 and 1850. History is filled with examples from the devastation of Napoleon’s army when he invaded Russia to Valley Forge in America. In England, the Thames froze over.</p>
<p>My friend, Robert W. Felix, the author of “Not by Fire, but by Ice” and editor of the Internet site, <a href="http://www.iceagenow.com/">www.iceagenow.com</a>, has been predicting not just a Little Ice Age, but a full-fledged Ice Age like the one that occurred about a million or more years ago and did not end until about 10,000 years ago.</p>
<p>“We’re beginning to realize,” Felix wrote, “that earth is a violent and dangerous place to live. We’re beginning to realize that mass extinctions have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on this planet.”</p>
<p>Civilization as we know it is relatively new. Homo sapiens, humans, began their dominance around 10,000 years ago and the development of agriculture and other aspects of modern civilization are only about 5,000 years old. When you stack that up against vast epochs, it is a historical blip on the radar screen. Not that long ago in America, the only means of transportation were horses.</p>
<p>What is occurring in Copenhagen is an obscenity. The fact that the President of the United States and other world leaders would attend and endorse its lies calls out for a massive repudiation.</p>
<p>The “science” on which it is based has been revealed to have been deliberately falsified by the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and we may yet confirm that even NASA’s and NOAA’s data was inaccurate as well.</p>
<p>As the White House and Congress try to impose a “Cap-and-Trade” bill, a huge tax on all energy use, on Americans, what scientists have been trying to explain for years is that no evidence exists that carbon dioxide (CO2) effects global temperature.</p>
<p>This puts the lie to the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement that it intends to regulate CO2 emissions in order to avoid a global warming that is not happening or that CO2 poses a health risk. We are witnessing gangsterism masquerading as regulation.</p>
<p>There isn’t even evidence that CO2 is a so-called “greenhouse gas” or that a greenhouse effect even exists. There is no evidence that the seas are rising at an alarming rate or that glaciers and polar caps are melting.</p>
<p>The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the sponsor of the Copenhagen conference, should be disbanded for being nothing more than a political instrument intended to coordinate a massive international fraud. All U.S. legislation based on “global warming” or “greenhouse gas emissions” should be repealed.</p>
<p>The worldwide mass media’s self-inflicted damage to its credibility requires a major effort to report the actual science and prepare the Earth’s population for some ugly consequences of the cooling that is occurring and is likely to accelerate in the decades immediately ahead.</p>
<p>It’s going to get colder and all the lies flowing from a morally debased United Nations will not change that.</p></div>
<div><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>Put Mother Earth on Your Holiday Gift List</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/12/put-mother-earth-on-your-holiday-gift-list/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/12/put-mother-earth-on-your-holiday-gift-list/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:49:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Muhammad Cohen</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Asia Times]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Copenhagen climate change conference]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental business opportunities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[holiday gift ideas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong On Air]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Project Oikos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Guardian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tree planting]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=11477</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Save the planet for the holidays. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Apropos of the season and the <a HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/21/united-nations-climate-change-copenhagen">Copenhagen climate change conference</a>, think about Christmas trees. Not the usual evergreen for Yuletide (or whatever holidays you may or may not celebrate) but <a HREF="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KI26Ae02.html">giving trees as presents</a>. For example, <a HREF="http://www.projectoikos.com">Project Oikos</a> sells trees and lets recipients do the planting in selected locations. There are other organizations that will make Mother Earth part of your holiday celebration, and there&#8217;s never been a better time to support them. You&#8217;ll be helping a friend in need. </p>
<p><i>Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer <b>Muhammad Cohen</b> is author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9889979977?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=muhacohe-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=9889979977">Hong Kong On Air</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=muhacohe-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=9889979977" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important;margin:0px !important" />, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.</i> </p>
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		<title>A Vital Difference Today Between China and America</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/12/a-vital-difference-today-between-china-and-america/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:41:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cap and Trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=11428</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Vital Difference Today Between China and America By Alan Caruba</p> <p>“The joke among China hands goes like this,” says Michael Economides. “If the Americans and the Chinese start talking about a major project today, in two years the Chinese will be done and the Americans will still be talking and applying for permits.”</p> [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/12/vital-difference-today-between-china.html">A Vital Difference Today Between China and America</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Sx7AqFAVUJI/AAAAAAAABZU/UOTCqy8cXM0/s1600-h/Obama+as+Mao.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412975631276527762" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 132px; cursor: hand; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Sx7AqFAVUJI/AAAAAAAABZU/UOTCqy8cXM0/s200/Obama+as+Mao.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>“The joke among China hands goes like this,” says Michael Economides. “If the Americans and the Chinese start talking about a major project today, in two years the Chinese will be done and the Americans will still be talking and applying for permits.”</p>
<p>Economides is an internationally recognized expert on energy. The Editor-in-Chief of Energy Tribune, he is the author of “From Soviet to Putin and Back: The Dominance of Energy in Today’s Russia”, co-authored with Donna Marie D’Aleo, published in 2008. This year has seen the publication of a new book, written with Xina Xie, a Research Professor at the University of Wyoming, “Energy: China’s Choke Point.”</p>
<p>The joke, as his new book makes clear, is on us. After many disastrous decades under the leadership of Chairman Mae Zedong, China in effect retained communism as its government model, but threw it away as its economic model. In effect, it embraced capitalism and, in sharp contrast to America’s economy, its economy is growing at a rate of nine percent per year. <span id="more-11428"></span></p>
<p>It is doing this by building a new coal-fired plant for the generation of electricity and is doing so at breakneck speed. Every week to ten days, it opens a new plant. China ranks third in the world in recoverable coal reserves after the U.S. and Russia. Fully 79 percent of its electrical energy will come from coal.</p>
<p>By contrast, President Obama has declared war on coal as an energy source for America despite the fact that the U.S. is virtually the Saudi Arabia of coal in terms of its recoverable reserves. Writing in September on WorldNetDaily, Jerome Corsi noted that “President Obama declared war on oil and natural gas at the United Nations global warming summit, and he made the same pitch the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh.” At the time, Obama said, “I will work with my colleagues at the G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies so that we can better address our climate challenge.”</p>
<p>Only there is no climate challenge. Revelations beginning on November 20 have mushroomed into “Climategate”, as it became known that the data on which the claims about “global warming” is based were deliberately falsified by the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and other IPCC contributors.</p>
<p>There is only one way to explain Obama’s war on U.S. energy and that is the intention to destroy the nation’s capacity to power any new economic development and growth. One of the two major legislative initiatives of his administration has been “Cap-and-Trade”, in essence a huge tax on all energy use. The other, of course, is Obamacare, a healthcare industry takeover opposed by the vast majority of Americans.</p>
<p>Economides new book provides an excellent synopsis of China’s history in the modern era and a chilling look at the way millions died as the result of Mao’s ignorance and inability to understand how to build an economy. His “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” rendered China without the intellectual community required to teach a generation of young Chinese and played havoc on its agricultural sector.</p>
<p>It was his successor, Deng Xiaoping, who is credited with rescuing the nation and setting it on its present path. It has made amazing strides, but to understand China one must always keep firmly fixed in mind that it is hope to a huge part of the Earth’s population.</p>
<p>The most recent figures for the Peoples Republic of China put it at 1,338,612,968 as 2010 begins. Though the Han represent 92% of the population, there are many other ethnic groups and the nation, for purposes of agricultural production, are sharply divided between urban Chinese and those in its rural areas who are discouraged from leaving for better jobs and opportunities in its cities.</p>
<p>China not only has to feed more than a billion of its people, it needs to catch up with and even exceed economic giants like America. That will be greatly facilitated by current U.S. policies that discourage use of our own vast coal reserves and discourages exploration and extraction of huge oil and natural reserves off the long coastal areas of our continental shelf.</p>
<p>While America is being starved for energy—no new oil refineries or nuclear facilities have been built in three decades—China’s economy requires it to double its oil imports by 2015 from its 2009 levels. And it has some twenty nuclear facilities under construction!</p>
<p>Ironically, as Economides notes, “Even if it is rarely uttered explicitly, the American dream has served as the blueprint for the emerging Chinese lifestyle. For the Chinese, America has been the country to emulate in many ways, from its can-do attitude to its educational institutions to the apparent ebullience of its people, and of course, the lifestyle.”</p>
<p>As the American economy stagnates, “In their lives and workplaces, the Chinese today are burdened with fewer regulations than are their Western counterparts, the latter having to cope with the suffocating political correctness or moralisms that have emerged in Western societies.”</p>
<p>Economides bluntly warns that “although the much more advanced United States can afford to talk liberal flimflam about alternative energy luxuries, and can even attempt societal economic hara-kiri, it is clearly not an option for galloping China.”</p>
<p>Unless America shakes off the “liberal flimflam” denying us significant growth in our oil, coal and natural gas industries; unless we avoid the hara-kiri of Obamacare and Cap-and-Trade; unless we reduce the tax burdens on corporations and wage-earners alike, the future will belong to China.</p></div>
<div><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>Let the Great Global Warming Cover-Up Begin!</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/let-the-great-global-warming-cover-up-begin/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/let-the-great-global-warming-cover-up-begin/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:01:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[President Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=11122</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Let the Great Global Warming Cover-Up Begin! By Alan Caruba</p> <p>Now that some enterprising and possibly conscience-stricken soul has served up the emails and other data of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, revealing the deliberate efforts to hide the corrupted research that justifies the “global warming” fraud, all [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/let-great-global-warming-cover-up-begin.html">Let the Great Global Warming Cover-Up Begin!</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SxLjRD39XBI/AAAAAAAABXM/0NpVsKJJ5rw/s1600/Cartoon+-+Climate+Science.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409635984662682642" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 200px; cursor: hand; height: 152px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SxLjRD39XBI/AAAAAAAABXM/0NpVsKJJ5rw/s200/Cartoon+-+Climate+Science.png" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>Now that some enterprising and possibly conscience-stricken soul has served up the emails and other data of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, revealing the deliberate efforts to hide the corrupted research that justifies the “global warming” fraud, all the various journalists and alleged climate scientists who have been a party to it are trying desperately to cover up or minimize the scandal.</p>
<p>Others like the U.S. “Climate Czar” Carol Browner have announced their faith in the disputed data, but Browner, who served as EPA Director in the Clinton administration has never shown any interest in honest science and is not likely to have left a paper trail in her present position. No word yet from Obama’s loony “Science Czar”, John Holdren.</p>
<p>The truth is, those closely allied with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been suppressing the real science, substituting their own corrupted data, and trying to avoid the process of “peer review” by which other scientists, the real ones, can test the data for accuracy and validity.</p>
<p>Thousands of real scientists have signed petitions over the years demanding that global warming claims be submitted to rigorous examination. <span id="more-11122"></span></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.heartland.org/">Heartland Institute</a>, a non-profit, free market think tank, spent—-for them-—an enormous amount of money to put on international conferences that brought together top scientists who demonstrated how utterly false the IPCC, CRU and other data was, but the mainstream media simply mocked their effort.</p>
<p>Initially, the culprits at the CRU claimed that their computers had been “hacked”, but many others believe that the data and emails had already been culled by CRU insides for the purpose of removing it from any impending investigation.</p>
<p>In England, its Freedom of Information Act, similar to that in the U.S., had been used to demand the data supporting the global warming theory which, at one point, Phil Jones, the CRU director, claimed had been “lost.” Reportedly, Jones has attracted more than $22 million in grants to the CRU for climate research!</p>
<p>His colleague, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, became famous for concocting a “hockey stick” graph that depicted a sudden rise in the Earth’s temperature that was later revealed to have been falsified, but these concoctions have been used for decades by the IPCC to claim that global warming is real and on-going.</p>
<p>The prevailing belief now is that the emails and data were already on a disk that a conscience-stricken CRU staffer decided to make available on the Internet for all to see and examine before it too became “lost.”</p>
<p>You can be sure, however, that the global warming journalists whose careers have been based on furthering the fraud will continue to emphasize the “hacking” theory to suggest this “stolen” data lacks merit and those using it, the so-called “skeptics” and “deniers” are still not to be trusted.</p>
<p>In the U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) who has been the lone voice in the Senate debunking “global warming” has called for an investigation. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, has already filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies that, for three years, has refused to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.</p>
<p>In the United States, James E. Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute, got the “global warming” hysteria going in the 1980s when he testified before Congress that his research revealed an incipient catastrophe if the U.S. did not significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that he said were causing “global warming.” The result was that NASA has averaged more than $1 billion each year since 1995 for climate research.</p>
<p>Estimates of the amount of money the U.S. has spent on all manner of “research” and related programs peg the figure at <strong>$50 billion</strong> or more. That’s a lot of money for something that was NOT happening and in 1998 the Earth entered a natural cooling cycle; one in which we’re likely be for two decades more or longer.</p>
<p>All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the President of the United States will briefly attend the forthcoming December UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change being held in Copenhagen. He has made it clear that he believes the false data put forth by the IPCC and wants the U.S. to sign a treaty that would yield U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations.</p>
<p>President Obama has repeatedly said the United States has to reduce its CO2 emissions, the mantra of the global warming liars. It would destroy what&#8217;s left of our battered, debt-ridden economy.</p>
<p>So a major cover-up will be the objective of the U.S. news media that has pushed “global warming” for years with one scare story after another aimed at energy producers and users.</p>
<p>The battle now is to force the mainstream media to tell the truth about “global warming” and to find out just how many billions of taxpayers dollars have been squandered on junk climate science and policies detrimental to the nation.</p>
<p>As for President Obama, he should just pick up his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, give another florid speech, get on Air Force One, and come home.</p></div>
<div><strong><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at</strong> <a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>A Political Who&#8217;s Who of Global Warming Liars</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/a-political-whos-who-of-global-warming-liars/</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:43:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cap and Trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Harry Reid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nancy Pelosi]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=11032</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Political Who&#8217;s Who of Global Warming Liars By Alan Caruba</p> <p>As the global warming fraud unravels, it’s a good time to look at the politicians who have been some of the most outspoken advocates, using global warming/climate change to advance “Cap-and-Trade” legislation and other related laws and regulations.</p> <p>Top of the list is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/political-whos-who-of-global-warming.html">A Political Who&#8217;s Who of Global Warming Liars</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Sw7taVP2BfI/AAAAAAAABWU/4vohZ300BNY/s1600/Obama+and+Gore.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408521239154525682" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 200px; cursor: hand; height: 177px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Sw7taVP2BfI/AAAAAAAABWU/4vohZ300BNY/s200/Obama+and+Gore.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>As the global warming fraud unravels, it’s a good time to look at the politicians who have been some of the most outspoken advocates, using global warming/climate change to advance “Cap-and-Trade” legislation and other related laws and regulations.</p>
<p>Top of the list is President Barack Obama who has made many references to “climate change” and “global warming” to further this national and international fraud. He’ll pick up his Nobel Peace Prize in December; the same one given to Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a few years back. Further proof of his mendacity will be his attendance at the UN Climate Change Conference in Denmark.</p>
<p>Speaking on World Environment Day last June, Obama said of global warming, “We’re going to have to make some tough decisions and take concrete actions if we are going to deal with a potentially cataclysmic disaster.” This mirrors years of similar doomsday statements by former Vice President Al Gore.</p>
<p>This is the kind of drivel Americans and others around the world have heard from their supposed “leaders” for far too long.<span id="more-11032"></span></p>
<p>As we move through the congressional hierarchy, one of the biggest prevaricators about global warming/climate change has been Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-C) and her counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), manages to wheeze about it from time to time.</p>
<p>Former presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, (D-MA) has been leading the fight for “Cap-and-Trade” but after much reflection former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) concluded his support of global warming was a mistake.</p>
<p>Sen. Kerry said that failure to pass the Senate version of “Cap-and-Trade” (of greenhouse gas emission credits) would be comparable to another 9/11. He also has blamed tornadoes on global warming. The man is a complete idiot.</p>
<p>Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has uttered every global warming falsehood and has been joined by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). All three have played a critical role in advancing the “Cap-and-Trade” bill despite the fact that it is a massive tax on energy use and based on a lie.</p>
<p>Writing for the Huffington Post in October, Sen. Boxer said, “Global Warming is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. Addressing this challenge also represents enormous opportunities for economic recovery and long term prosperity.” Her commentary was titled, “Telling the Whole Story on Global Warming”!</p>
<p>Never mind that global warming has been the excuse environmental groups have used to stop the building of coal-fired plants, nuclear plants, drilling for oil offshore in our continental shelf, et cetera. There’s no economic recovery to be found in so-called “green jobs” and prosperity is a small light at the end of a very long tunnel as the result of the Obama administration’s investments in “renewable energy” and massive increase of our national debt.</p>
<p>Among the other politicians hovering around Cap-and-Trade have been Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.VA), Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont), and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Sen. Bingaman is a big fan of “renewable energy” (solar and wind) and proposed a nationwide renewable electricity standard even though it provides barely one percent of all the electricity Americans need and use every day.</p>
<p>Among the nation’s prominent governors, California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger has been vocal about environmental issues, many of which have left Californians trapped by idiotic measures ranging from restrictions on fireplaces in new homes or the purchase of large screen television sets. California’s failure to anticipate its growing need for electricity has left it dependent on importing it from other states.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, over at the Environmental Protection Agency, they are using global warming to justify securing the right to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, claiming that they “cause” a global warming. The expose of the phony “scientific” data behind this massive fraud should, if truth mattered, end this power grab. The ability to regulate CO2 is the ability to control the use of all energy in the nation. That should be stopped!</p>
<p>Alone among his colleagues, Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma (R) has been the one outstanding voice for reason and for truth about global warming. The odds are that history will not give his courageous effort to expose the massive fraud the recognition he deserves. The nation owes him a debt of gratitude.</p>
<p>The lesson we can draw from this is that the next time any U.S. Senator or Representative, let alone the President and any member of his Cabinet, says anything positive about “global warming” or refers to “climate change” to justify some action, they are lying to you.</p></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><strong><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>Global Warming Fraud: Somebody Needs to Go to Jail</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/global-warming-fraud-somebody-needs-to-go-to-jail/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:35:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10959</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Global Warming Fraud: Somebody Needs to Go to Jail By Alan Caruba</p> <p>The revelations that scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) doctored the data supporting the global warming claims of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) means that EVERYTHING attributed to or based upon “global warming” [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/global-warming-fraud-somebody-needs-to.html">Global Warming Fraud: Somebody Needs to Go to Jail</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Swvngq0K1kI/AAAAAAAABV8/drhGPxkky3s/s1600/Snow+on+palm+trees.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407670326023345730" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 200px; cursor: hand; height: 150px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Swvngq0K1kI/AAAAAAAABV8/drhGPxkky3s/s200/Snow+on+palm+trees.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>The revelations that scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) doctored the data supporting the global warming claims of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) means that EVERYTHING attributed to or based upon “global warming” is invalid.</p>
<p>It means the Kyoto Climate Protocols that nations agreed to on December 11, 1997 and which entered into force on February 16 2005, and all subsequent agreements based on “global warming” have no validity, scientifically or as the basis for public action by any nation, state, province, city or town.</p>
<p>It means that Al Gore’s pusillanimous “documentary” is a fraud along with just about every other statement uttered by any scientist, academician, or politician claiming that something, anything, should be done to avoid “global warming.”</p>
<p>There is no “global warming”, if by that discredited term, you mean a dramatic increase in the Earth’s temperature, the vast rising of ocean levels, the melting of the polar ice caps, and the thousands of other things attributed to a massive fraud orchestrated by the IPCC and a vast network of scientists and environmental groups that benefited from the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars they received in grants and other payments for their “research.”<span id="more-10959"></span></p>
<p>Global warming, allegedly the result of rising levels of “greenhouse gas emissions”, primarily carbon dioxide (C02), underwrites the sale of “carbon credits” that industries, utilities, and other entities purchased for the “right” to use energy and as further revelations about the doctoring and virtual invention of false scientific data become known, it means those sales were a complete fraud.</p>
<p>It was never really a secret. You could have read about in “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know” and a dozen other books I can put my hand on this very moment. The only thing missing was the proverbial “smoking gun” and the revelations about the CRU now confirms what the “deniers” and “skeptics” kept saying.</p>
<p>It’s worth keeping in mind that in several Northeastern States, utilities were required by law to purchase these worthless carbon credits and spend millions, not on improvements to the electric grid, not on building more capacity to serve their customers, but on what is worthless paper.</p>
<p><strong>Someone needs to go to jail.</strong></p>
<p>The release of thousands of emails and other data, now believed to be the work of a conscious-stricken CRU insider, will as they are examined in detail reveal what has long been known to those actively opposing the “global warming” fraud. As Christopher Horner, the author of “Red Hot Lies”, recently noted, the CRU and its lead scientists refused for years to release the data which they alleged proved that “global warming” was happening.</p>
<p>This data and the periodic reports of the IPCC are the basis for the existence of the IPCC, the Kyoto Protocol, and the “cap-and-trade” legislation awaiting a vote in the U.S. Congress. Horner observed “After running out of excuses, in September CRU’s Phil Jones simply claimed that he had lost the data so, sorry, no one can check it.” Horner called it “implausible beyond comprehension.”</p>
<p>And yet the United States and the representatives of many other nations will gather in Copenhagen in December for yet another UN conference on climate change, the now preferred synonym for “global warming.” Basing any international treaty on climate change or global warming is an utterly deceitful act.</p>
<p>The IPCC conference is based on the original Kyoto Protocol and, since there is no global warming, and since the science supporting it has been revealed to be false and misleading, no action should be taken other to disband the IPCC entirely.</p>
<p>All U.S. laws and regulations based on the so-called “global warming” should be reexamined and exorcised from the Congressional Register and from all state bodies of law. Most certainly, “cap-and-trade” should be withdrawn from further consideration.</p>
<p>Beyond that, school books about the environment must now be reviewed to determine how much of their content is invalid as well.</p>
<p>The undoing of this fraud must begin and begin NOW!</p></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><strong><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>Global Warming Meltdown: Climategate!</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/global-warming-meltdown-climategate/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/global-warming-meltdown-climategate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:54:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climatology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Meteorology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10925</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Global Warming Meltdown: Climategate! By Alan Caruba</p> <p>For those of us “skeptics” and “deniers” who have been jumping up and down, pointing at the Sun, and saying, “See, it’s the Sun that determines how warm or cool the Earth is. See it? Up there in the sky?” The truth about some of the scientists [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/global-warming-meltdown-climategate.html">Global Warming Meltdown: Climategate!</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Swm2CyhhHDI/AAAAAAAABVk/Hn_yNxZ5lxY/s1600/earth-and-sun.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407052986673339442" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 300px; cursor: hand; height: 290px; text-align: center;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Swm2CyhhHDI/AAAAAAAABVk/Hn_yNxZ5lxY/s400/earth-and-sun.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>For those of us “skeptics” and “deniers” who have been jumping up and down, pointing at the Sun, and saying, “See, it’s the Sun that determines how warm or cool the Earth is. See it? Up there in the sky?” The truth about some of the scientists behind the global warming hoax has finally arrived.</p>
<p>The hoax has its roots in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an instrument of the United Nations Environmental Program, for whom global warming was the open sesame to achieving a one-world-government by scaring nations into signing a treaty that would control their use of energy, the means of producing it, and require vast billions to be sent to less developed nations in exchange for “emitting” greenhouse gases.</p>
<p>Energy is called “the master resource” because, if you have lots of it, you can call your own shots. If you don’t, you are condemned to live in the dark and keeping people in the dark about the global warming hoax was essential.</p>
<p>For years the IPCC has been controlled by a handful of the worst liars in the world, utterly devoted to taking actual climate data and twisting it to confirm the assertion that the Earth was not only warming dramatically, but that humanity was in peril of rising oceans, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, more hurricanes, the die-off of countless animal species, and every other calamity that could possibly be attributed to “global warming”, including acne.<span id="more-10925"></span></p>
<p>So, around November 20, when some enterprising individual hacked into the computers of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), making off with thousands of emails and documents that demonstrate the level of collusion and deception being practiced by its scientists.</p>
<p>It’s a climate hoax expose that some are calling the revelations a “little blue dress” while others are comparing it to the Pentagon Papers. It has also been dubbed “climategate.”</p>
<p>As James Delingpole wrote in the Telegraph, one of England’s leading newspapers, “Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organized resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more” was revealed in the 61 megabites of confidential files released on the Internet for anyone to read.</p>
<p>The conspirators had a visceral hatred for scientists who challenged their phony statistics and climate data, but they also agonized over the difficulties of hiding a long established climate cycle such as the Medieval Warm Period. At one point it was left out of a graph that famously became known as “the hockey stick” because it depicted a ludicrous sudden rise in warming, ignoring the previous natural cycle.</p>
<p>At the heart of the revelations were the intense efforts to ensure that no legitimate scientist, particularly those dissenting from the various IPCC reports, would be allowed to participate in the peer review process. Peer review is an essential element in science as it permits other scientists to examine and test the data being put forth to substantiate a new interpretation or discovery.</p>
<p>The IPCC reports were the basis by which popular media such as National Geographic, Time and Newsweek magazines could spread the lies about a dramatic “global warming”, passing them off to an unsuspecting and scientifically illiterate general public. At the same time, the lies were integrated them into school curriculums and maintained by Hollywood celebrities, politicians and others, duped or deliberately ignorant.</p>
<p>To this day, otherwise legitimate news media outlets continue to trumpet and repeat absolute nonsense about “global warming” like brain-dead parrots.</p>
<p>Now that Hadley CRU and its conspirators have been exposed, there truly is no need to hold a December UN climate change conference in Copenhagen; one in which nations would be required to put limits on “greenhouse gas emissions” even though such gases, primarily carbon dioxide, have nothing to do with altering the Earth’s climate.</p>
<p>And that is why you are going to hear more about “climate change” and far less about “global warming.” Hidden in such discussions, intended to justify legislation and regulation, is that the Earth’s climate has always and will always change.</p>
<p>It is, for example, shameful and deceitful for the EPA to claim carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” that should be regulated. The same applies to “cap-and-trade” legislation with the same purpose.</p>
<p>Billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on studies of global warming and poured into agencies such as NASA that have lent credence to the global warming hoax.</p>
<p>“The U.S. taxpayer has much exposure here in the joint projects and collaborations which operated in reliance upon what the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit was doing,” says Christopher C. Horner, a longtime global warming skeptic. “There are U.S. taxpayer-funded offices and individuals involved in the machinations addressed in the emails, and in the emails themselves.”</p>
<p>Horner, the author of “Red Hot Lies”, said that the initial revelations “give the appearance of a conspiracy to defraud, by parties working in taxpayer funded agencies collaborating on ways to misrepresent material on which an awful lot of taxpayer money rides.”</p>
<p>The climate, defined as long term trends, and the weather has nothing whatever to do with human activity and suggesting it does reveals the depth of contempt that people like Al Gore and his ilk have for humanity and those fleeced by purchasing “carbon credits” or paying more for electricity when their utility does.</p>
<p>The East Anglia CRU charlatans have been exposed. Most certainly, the United Nations IPCC should be disbanded in disgrace. It belongs in a museum of hoaxes right beside the Piltdown Man and the Loch Ness Monster.</p></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><strong><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>The Global Carbon Footprint Scam</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/the-global-carbon-footprint-scam/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/the-global-carbon-footprint-scam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:19:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Global Cooling]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10884</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Global Carbon Footprint Scam By Alan Caruba</p> <p>I never cease to marvel at the environmental alarmists who create one “crisis” after another using wretchedly bad “science” to support their scams. On Tuesday, November 24, the Global Footprint Network is going to “release new data on the Ecological Footprint of 100 nations and humanity [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/global-carbon-footprint-scam.html">The Global Carbon Footprint Scam</a></h3>
<div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SwhnMNMzMGI/AAAAAAAABVc/RYVI-WJcCoo/s1600/earth-melting.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406684812057718882" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 400px; cursor: hand; height: 250px; text-align: center;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SwhnMNMzMGI/AAAAAAAABVc/RYVI-WJcCoo/s400/earth-melting.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>I never cease to marvel at the environmental alarmists who create one “crisis” after another using wretchedly bad “science” to support their scams. On Tuesday, November 24, the Global Footprint Network is going to “release new data on the Ecological Footprint of 100 nations and humanity as a whole, and the current ledgers are sobering.”</p>
<p>Well, of course, they’re sobering. Everything the Greens announce is sobering because, as you well know, the oceans are rising, the glaciers and polar caps are melting, we’re running out of oil, every animal on Earth is endangered, incandescent light bulbs and global warming will destroy all life on Earth, yada, yada, yada.</p>
<p>“The figures provide a data-driven look at some of the most pressing issues facing humanity, from climate change to equitable distribution of resources.”</p>
<p>Is the “equitable distribution of resources” the same as Barack Obama’s “redistribution of wealth”? Is this shorthand of every liberal’s wet dream, communism? Oh, yeah. Been there, seen it, don’t want any part of it. After giving communism a try for over seventy years, the Soviet Union imploded because it doesn’t work, never has, and never will.</p>
<p>After Chairman Mao Zedong introduced communism to China, his various programs managed to kill off several millions through starvation until his death allowed a revision toward capitalism that initiated the transformation that holds out vastly improved lives for its 1.3 billion citizens. <span id="more-10884"></span></p>
<p>However, according to the Global Footprint Network, “Humanity now requires the resources it would take almost one and a half planets to sustainably produce, according to figures to be released.”</p>
<p>The Greens have an established pattern. They use bogus computer modeling to conjure up scads of “data” that take years to debunk and dispute. In the meantime, billions are wasted on their schemes.</p>
<p>This new hogwash conveniently debuts just before the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December. The many delegates will wine and dine their way through tons of champagne, caviar, and other delicacies while trying to convince everyone the Earth is doomed unless virtually all industrial activity is ended</p>
<p>They will warn that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are responsible for “global warming”, but there is NO global warming beyond what the Sun provides and CO2 plays no role whatever in climate change.</p>
<p>The phony “carbon footprint” ignores the fact that carbon compounds form the basis for all known life on Earth!</p>
<p>Their bogus “carbon footprints” ignore the fact that CO2 is vital to life because it is to all vegetation what oxygen is to all animals. It is food! More CO2 is better than less because it would provide for more abundant crop yields, healthier forests, and would reduce the spread of deserts.</p>
<p>The “carbon footprint” and the mountains of phony data built around it provides the Global Footprint Network the ability to announce that “The new numbers also reveal a growing disparity between those countries with the largest Ecological Footprints per capita and those with the smallest.” This is their way of saying that nations that produce more food and more commodities have an unfair advantage over those that do not.</p>
<p>It ignores the fact that “poor” nations are famous for despotism, oppression, and corruption, none of which have anything to do with whether they have abundant resources such as oil, natural gas, and coal. It has everything to do with encouraging class or tribal warfare, religious strife, and all the ills common to humanity.</p>
<p>The key to spotting the Big Green Lie is the word “sustainability.”</p>
<p>Sustainability is a subterfuge for the destruction of property rights, a concept so essential to success in America that it is protected by the Constitution.</p>
<p>Wherever you see the word “sustainability”, you know that the Greens are emphasizing “renewable energy” (solar and wind) which cannot begin to compare with oil, natural gas, and coal. Renewable energy is responsible for a mere one percent of all electricity generated in the United States and reliance upon it will leave people in nations such as Great Britain freezing to death in the dark.</p>
<p>The Greens want to replace hydrocarbon fuels with “biofuels” such as ethanol which diverts real food like corn into a useless form of energy that reduces mileage and actually emits more CO2! The Greens want to pack humanity into crowded cities, forbidding people from living in suburbs filled with trees and lawns. They want to reduce vehicle size and encourage the use of electric vehicles.</p>
<p>There is little evidence that the Earth is running out of oil or other sources of energy. Oil not only provides for transportation, but is the basis for fertilizers and other beneficial chemicals that ensure more crop yield to feed humans and livestock. It has a thousand other uses as well. Coal is so abundant that its use is calculated in centuries.</p>
<p>In short, the Greens want to impose the most stupid and evil standards and restrictions on human life. They would drag humanity back to an age when horses and oxen were the modes of transportation and means of agriculture.</p>
<p>This is the goal of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and its treaty to impose a One World Order with its incumbent oppressive government structure to deprive its victims of privacy, dignity, and initiative. And, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, of life itself.</p>
<p>The “carbon footprint”, along with “global warming”, should be consigned to the dustbin of failed and false economic and schemes known as socialism and communism. They are a synonym for suffering and death.</p></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a></span><strong>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>If Not in Your Neighborhood Then Where?</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/if-not-in-your-neighborhood-then-where/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/if-not-in-your-neighborhood-then-where/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:32:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Minnette Coleman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lifestyle]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10765</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">There is a sewage treatment plant in Harlem located under a state park. When David Dinkins was Mayor the project was supposed to be built in a different area, somewhere downtown near West 72nd St. Those is that area got together and rallied [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">There is a sewage treatment plant in Harlem located under a state park. When David Dinkins was Mayor the project was supposed to be built in a different area, somewhere downtown near West 72<sup>nd</sup> St. Those is that area got together and rallied against putting it in their neighborhood. As if by divine intervention a few years later they got blocked from the sun and the view of the Hudson by large condo buildings by Donald Trump. The measure to get the plant in Harlem passed before most of the residents knew it even existed. Once again what the people with money didn’t want in their neighborhoods the poor got in theirs. It wasn’t enough to put people in office who would look out for your interest, you had to be able to show them all your aces. And those aces were big bucks. Those with money are learning you can’t hide everything in the ghetto. So where do we put undesirables? And when are people in the most middle class American neighborhoods going to understand they have to share the responsibility of taking care of this land?<span id="more-10765"></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">The escape to the suburbs was once part of the American Dream. Cities were rooted in too much chaos, not a good place to raise a family or be safe. The cities were where you found the drugs and the prostitution, where people went missing, where dreams unfurled. The goal was to get your family out of town as soon as possible, away from the poor and the needy. Away to better schools that would guarantee entrance to the Ivy League. Neighborhood associations worked together to demand more than clean lawns and well kempt facades. They worked to keep out those you attempted to leave behind in the city. But drugs became a popular part of the culture of relaxation for those of privilege. And there were people willing to pay a lot for sex with women they assumed were ‘clean’. Children started stealing from their parent’s wallets and medicine cabinets. The culture of the suburbs caved in on itself because those in the midst of the crisis refused to accept responsibility for what was going on around them. They blamed it on outside forces. They blamed it on the cities, especially the impoverished areas.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">Perhaps that explanation is a bit simplified but there is a growing problem of feeling unsafe and insecure in this country. People can’t believe they worked so hard to get so far from the problems that they brought with them. So when a man goes into a school and starts shooting, a student decides to kill those who have mentally offended him, a mother decides to drown her children why do people still say they can’t believe its happening to their area?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">Here’s something I have heard many times: “This never happened before they moved in”.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">If you’re wondering who ‘they’ is, I’d say it’s probably the last person to enter the area no matter what the race or religion. There is always a ‘they’ because there is always a need to blame. If you are taking prescription drugs and your kids get to them, steal them, take them or sell them, why is it not your partially your fault? Did you bother to keep them in a secure place? Did you warn them not to take them?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">If you know your child is a loner and you HOPE that he will make friends but you haven’t been in his room in a year except to get the dirty clothes, or you work all the time and don’t pay attention to him why is it not your fault when he blows away his classmates?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">If you cheat on your spouse with prostitutes but you don’t go into the city what makes you better than any other John? The fact that you kept it in your town or neighborhood? Just like the drugs you score and bring back to suburbia to share with friends, it is not the fault of the city that there are drugs in your neighborhood. You made a choice to bring them there. It is your fault.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">So when it is time to put a prison, a homeless shelter or even prisoners that caused 9/11 someplace why can’t your neighborhood be the chosen area? The area you live in suffers from as many adversities as the city but you probably have better means to combat the negative things that come from these outlets then those of less financial means. (Although right now most people in this country are of the same financial means- broke.)</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">For years the poor have labored with substandard living conditions because they did not have a voice in their own future. Parts of Louisiana are so environmentally unsound no one wants to live there- and it has nothing to with money. It has to do with what’s in the earth, in the air and in the water. Plants that emitted toxic everything survived there because the country was under the assumption that impoverished areas were out dumping grounds. We are like all the other countries in the world we chastise for their mistreatment of the poor.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">If this is a country where all men are treated equal, then show it. Stop acting as if the poor are the reasons for all America’s problems. Perhaps if you had to live with all that is dumped on them you would change your attitude. But first accept responsibility for what goes on in your home and your area. Clean up your mess before you blame someone else. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p>
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		<title>The Truth About Harlem</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/the-truth-about-harlem/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/the-truth-about-harlem/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:07:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Minnette Coleman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[African-American]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lifestyle]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10722</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">As a college student eager to explore the world outside the South I spent many winter breaks in New York City. My first was with my roommate Kaye who lived in Queens. I got to see a few of the sights and only visited Harlem once when we went [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">As a college student eager to explore the world outside the South I spent many winter breaks in New York City. My first was with my roommate Kaye who lived in Queens. I got to see a few of the sights and only visited Harlem once when we went to dinner at Copeland’s Restaurant on 145<sup>th</sup> St. The winters after that were more about expanding my horizons in the great city and making trips to Harlem, a place ravaged by poverty and violence of the turbulent ‘60s. Over the years things have changed but even with the explosion called gentrification something about Harlem remains the same.<span id="more-10722"></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">Harlem was considered the worse place to live in New York in the early 1970’s. The movies about the area featured buildings that were mere shells, people without jobs or a future and white on black cruelty that often ended in black on black violence. It was not a place to visit at night I was told by those who put together the tours and trips for the college. Yet that was the only time I got to go to Harlem for the days were full with visits to safe havens like NYC museums and plays. One evening after a lecture a few of us were invited uptown to an artist’s Harlem apartment where she served us tea and cookies in a most opulent setting. This place looked nothing like the streets and buildings below. There was a doorman, and a marble foyer and a working elevator with glass walls. Besides discussing her art we talked about black culture and history, about the changes taking place in the area. Aware that we were tourists in a foreign environment even though our skin color matched that of those controlling the streets, she sent us packing before 10 pm. The four of us would have preferred to take a cab but back then few taxis ventured north of 110<sup>th</sup> Street. So we stood huddled together on the subway platform deciding to board the first train that arrived after a drunk rolled passed us asking for change and a couple got to fighting so loudly I was sure the police would come. We got back to our hotel safe and sound and boldly decided that we should go back into the belly of the beast another night for a party the artist’s daughter invited us to. Unfortunately that night we got so lost we almost didn’t find out way back to the subway station. We encountered friendly people who gave us instructions. A long black car stopped and the driver asked us if we needed a lift. We turned him down thinking something dangerous was on his mind only to learn later that he wasn’t being fresh but trying to make a living as a gypsy cab driver.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">Over the years I learned to enjoy Harlem more as I visited then moved here. It changed but not overnight. Houses people paid a pittance for almost 25 to 30 years ago because nobody wanted to live in them or to care for them are now worth millions. The majority of the population is Latino but every ethnicity lives here. When we first moved into the neighborhood we had to leave town in order to buy good quality meats. Produce was plentiful and fresh at the local green grocers, all Korean owned. There was a fish market owned by a Greek guy who lived two hours away on Long Island. And the only neighborhood butchers were Jewish and of course closed on all Jewish holidays. You learned to put up with the inconveniences because you wanted to live in New York and Harlem was affordable back then. You shopped on 125<sup>th</sup> St. or you went downtown. You rode the trains day and night without worrying about the drunks or derelicts. You learned where to stand safely on the platform and where to walk to get home safe. It was an urban area that allowed you the privilege of the whole of New York and that’s why I moved here.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">Then came massive gentrification and with it the greed of those who bought real estate that they could now pass on for amazing prices. Homes that no one wanted before sold for phenomenal rates, people started charging full market prices for apartments (something that had never been done before in Harlem) and got them. And the rents for stores and businesses on the main thoroughfares shot up to a price that most of the shopkeepers could not pay. The fish market owner retired early, the butchers closed and all the green grocers disappeared. Grocery stores that never wanted to service Harlem before popped up. There was a time when they only carried white bread but now they have bagels and lox, Jamaica and Dominican canned goods and everything one needs for the insertion of other cultures into what was once considered an all black neighborhood.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">There are few black businesses outside of the hair saloons and barbershops. Copeland’s closed a few years back and the restaurants that have opened are mostly owned by people who live downtown. The few that are in the area that are black and Latin owned survive by the skin of their teeth. There was a time when all the neighborhood eateries were closed on Mondays but now in order to maintain a steady clientele the places are open 7 days a week.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">There is a lot of speculation outside Harlem why it became the place to live and own but being here and observing the changes I can tell you that it is still the last affordable place to live in Manhattan. College students from nearby Columbia, which literally is in Harlem, find it cheaper to live nearby in brownstones and apartment buildings where the rent is still cheaper than the tony downtown addresses. Lots of business people find the area not only affordable but easy access to work by subway and even easier to the airport than going through mid-town traffic. There are affordable places to be entertained and there is a rich history of art and music in the area.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">But one thing those moving into Harlem must be aware of is this: there is still a great amount of poverty. If you live in Harlem you must accept that there are still gangs, number runners, drug addicts, and drug sellers. The street corner men are still telling their version of the history of the neighborhood, the homeless of all cultures still prowl the streets looking for food and often shelter because Harlem has always been the friendliest of New York areas. It accepts the tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to be free because the blacks that settled here only wanted the freedom that the constitution promised them that the south would not allow.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">Living in Harlem does not mean you step over these people and ignore them. It means you live with them. You see them daily and often you give them a nod, not of approval but of awareness. You want them to be aware that you belong.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;">I no longer get lost in Harlem but I know it’s a big place and I am aware of my surroundings. Gentrification may have made it a popular place to live but it is still a neighborhood in transition. It is still the area across 110<sup>th</sup> Street that brings fear to some but now it brings wealth to others.</span></span></p>
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		<title>Solar Powered Lies</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/solar-powered-lies/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/solar-powered-lies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:44:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Issues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[electricity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Florida]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Solar Power]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10663</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Solar Powered Lies By Alan Caruba</p> <p>I lived in Florida for some five years between attending the University of Miami and returning after service in the Army for a job I left on news of JFK’s assassination. Some five years ago my older brother, a resident of Boynton Beach, urged me to relocate.</p> <p>As [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/solar-power-lies.html">Solar Powered Lies</a></h3>
<div class="post-body entry-content"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Sv3CLsidSII/AAAAAAAABTs/02VrjeUTroY/s1600-h/Solar+Farm.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403688634104498306" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 200px; cursor: hand; height: 135px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Sv3CLsidSII/AAAAAAAABTs/02VrjeUTroY/s200/Solar+Farm.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>I lived in Florida for some five years between attending the University of Miami and returning after service in the Army for a job I left on news of JFK’s assassination. Some five years ago my older brother, a resident of Boynton Beach, urged me to relocate.</p>
<p>As the exit doors of the Palm Beach Airport slid open, I was hit with a soggy blast of hot air that instantly told me I would not be taking up residence there again.</p>
<p>I returned to New Jersey which shares with Florida, California and ten other States the dubious honor of being on the brink of financial collapse and default. Like others, New Jersey requires that some part of electricity production must came from “renewable” sources such as solar or wind.</p>
<p>Other States have a similar mandate. Utilities have embraced it because the costs are heavily subsidized with taxpayer dollars. It is an enormous waste of money made worse by the unreliable aspects of both plus the need to always have a backup supplier, usually in the form of a coal-fired plant. <span id="more-10663"></span></p>
<p>To make matters worse, Congress is contemplating a national Renewable Electricity Standard that would require more use of solar and wind energy. The argument for this is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in order to avoid “global warming.” However, there is no global warming. For the past decade, there’s been a global cooling and it is anticipated to last for several more decades.</p>
<p>Finally, it must be said that there is NO connection whatever between greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and any warming that did naturally occur. Ever.</p>
<p>Thus, a national mandate would just multiply the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars required to subsidize these massively inefficient and unreliable forms of electricity production.</p>
<p>In October there was a flurry of news stories about the largest solar panel plant in the United States, located on 180 acres of land, 80 miles southeast of Tampa. Naturally, President Obama paid a visit to the Desoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center because he is a big booster of renewable energy. He keeps telling everyone that it will generate hundreds, if not thousands, of new “green” jobs.</p>
<p>What the President didn’t say during his visit was that the solar panels and other items were manufactured in nations other than the United States. The solar cells came from the Philippines. The steel mountings were made in Canada. The electric boxes were manufactured in Germany.</p>
<p>The project did generate some 400 temporary jobs, but how many full time jobs will the new Florida installation generate? The total comes to two full-time employees and six part-time groundskeepers who will work one week a month during the rainy season.</p>
<p>And here’s where it just gets totally obscene. The Desoto facilities and two other Florida Power and Light solar facilities will generate enough electricity to power just 3,000 homes of the 4,000,000-plus accounts served by Florida’s largest utility.</p>
<p>Less than 4% of Florida’s energy needs will be met by this $150 million facility. Meanwhile, proposed coal-fired and nuclear plants are fought to a standstill by environmentalists.</p>
<p>And, finally, consider this piece of news. General Electric just announced that it plans to close down its only solar-panel manufacturing facility because if found the price for panels had fallen below production costs! The 82 employees at the Newark, Delaware facility will join the other millions of Americans who are out of work.</p>
<p>America, like Great Britain, is closing in on an era of blackouts because the federal government is doing everything in its power to thwart the building of proven sources of electricity production, coal-fired and nuclear plants. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, sitting atop enough to provide power for the next three hundred or more years. No new nuclear plants have been built in three decades.</p>
<p>It’s only a matter of time before the Obama administration announces that shoveling snow has been reclassified a “green” job. Jimmy Carter’s famed “misery index” is about to shoot off the charts.</p></div>
<div class="post-body entry-content">
<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a></span><strong>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>Polar Bear Balderdash</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/polar-bear-balderdash/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/polar-bear-balderdash/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:49:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Accountability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Pundit's Corner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Artic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Polar Bears]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sierra Club]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10624</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Polar Bear Balderdash By Alan Caruba</p> <p>I received an email from the Sierra Club urging me to sign a petition to declare the polar bear an endangered species.</p> <p>The Department of the Interior is considering this and it would cover much of the Arctic, including the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean. The Sierra [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/polar-bear-balderdash.html">Polar Bear Balderdash</a></h3>
<div class="post-body entry-content"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SvxxkpRCYtI/AAAAAAAABTk/v1yJsjQQr_0/s1600-h/Polar+Bears.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403318527304295122" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 400px; cursor: hand; height: 243px; text-align: center;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SvxxkpRCYtI/AAAAAAAABTk/v1yJsjQQr_0/s400/Polar+Bears.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>I received an email from the Sierra Club urging me to sign a petition to declare the polar bear an endangered species.</p>
<p>The Department of the Interior is considering this and it would cover much of the Arctic, including the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean. The Sierra Club is worried because Shell Oil wants to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea, a part of the “critical habitat for the bear.”</p>
<p>So, for anyone who doesn’t think that thwarting all attempts to drill for oil in the Arctic isn’t the real reason to “save” the thriving polar bear population, the answer is that it has nothing to do with polar bears and everything to do with the primary goal of all environmental organization, denying energy sources to Americans and everyone else.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Sierra Club said declaring the polar bear endangered was “necessary to stop harmful activities such as oil drilling.” So I guess it doesn’t get any more plain than that.</p>
<p>The Sierra Club went on to blatantly lie about the status of polar bears, claiming that “survival rates for polar bear cubs are plunging.” It is common knowledge that male polar bears are known to kill cubs, but the survival rates have much more to do with the mother bear’s ability to catch ringed seals. <span id="more-10624"></span></p>
<p>Ironically, polar bears’ favorite delicacy is the pups of ringed seals. Mother Nature doesn’t much care who wins the survival marathon and the Sierra Club is not calling for an endangered species declaration for ringed seals.</p>
<p>The Sierra Club is lying. The Natural Resources Defense Council is lying. The World Wildlife Fund is lying. They could not care less about polar bears. Their objective is shutting off access to anywhere that has oil or natural gas reserves.</p>
<p>In a July 2006 a report, “Polar Bear Politics: Underestimating the survival capacity of one popular bear” by Jennifer Marohasy, the Director of the Food and Environmental Unit at the Australian based Institute of Public Affairs was published. The estimate of the population is “about 25,000 polar bears existing in 19 relatively discrete populations across Norway, Denmark, Russia, Alaska, Greenland, and Canada.”</p>
<p>“Forty years ago, there were only about 5,000 bears, the worldwide population depressed by hunting.” In the 1970s, nations agreed to restrict hunting, resulting in the growth of the population.</p>
<p>The BIG LIE is that the Arctic is melting because of “global warming.” The Arctic has, in fact, “warmed” over the past two decades and there has been a reduction in sea ice, but there has been no “global warming”, only a natural cycle of warming that followed a Little Ice Age that ended around 1850 after three hundred years.</p>
<p>In fact, in October 2007, NASA announced the results of an in-depth study of Arctic sea ice and concluded what melting had occurred was due “a change in wind patterns” that had “compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream, and then sped its flow out of the Arctic.” Wind patterns, not “global warming.”</p>
<p>The Earth is now into a new cooling cycle that began in 1998 and which meteorologists predict will last for several decades. What they won’t tell you is that they have their fingers crossed that it does not, in fact, signal a new Ice Age. The period between ice ages is about 11,500 years and the Earth is at the end of the interglacial period that has allowed for the rise of human civilization in the past five thousand years or so.</p>
<p>So, the fate of the polar bear is such that they are more likely to survive a new Ice Age than billions of humans in the northern hemisphere.</p>
<p>As should be obvious to everyone, the reduction of Arctic sea ice or the population of ringed seals has had no correlation whatever with the growth of the polar bear population. Indeed, if there hadn’t been a period of glaciation about 250,000 years ago and a bunch of formerly brown bears had not become isolated and had not adapted successfully, there would be no polar bears.</p>
<p>Further putting the lie to the Sierra Club and other environmental organization’s predictions is the fact that polar bears live in remote and inhospitable parts of the Arctic. In addition, they are not stationary, roaming over an area as large as two hundred square kilometers in search of tasty seals. Most of the time, humans can’t even visit or fly over the vast bulk of the Arctic to make any kind of count.</p>
<p>The Sierra Club has no idea how many polar bears actually exist in the Arctic and any claim that they are “endangered” is pure balderdash. I could use another word to describe such claims, but my Mother told me not to.</p>
<p>So, to sum up, the Sierra Club is LYING about polar bears and you would be well advised to take anything else they have to say with a grain of Arctic Sea salt.</p></div>
<div class="post-body entry-content">
<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a></span><strong>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>Wrecking America</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/wrecking-america/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/wrecking-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:21:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economic Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama Administration]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10512</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Wrecking America By Alan Caruba</p> <p>I am always wary of conspiracy theories. Most can be explained away as shared ideologies which, in the case of the current and recently past Congresses and White Houses, can be described as socialism. It did not and does not matter which Party was or is in power.</p> <p>The [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/wrecking-america.html">Wrecking America</a></h3>
<div class="post-body entry-content"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Svckg62de3I/AAAAAAAABS0/e0NwUaE15Os/s1600-h/Demolition.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401826426026294130" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 200px; cursor: hand; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Svckg62de3I/AAAAAAAABS0/e0NwUaE15Os/s200/Demolition.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>I am always wary of conspiracy theories. Most can be explained away as shared ideologies which, in the case of the current and recently past Congresses and White Houses, can be described as socialism. It did not and does not matter which Party was or is in power.</p>
<p>The other explanation for the national car wreck we’re in is just plain “stupidity.” Another way of describing this is “willful ignorance.” Both apply when the President, Senators or Representatives say things that have no basis in fact either historically or empirically.</p>
<p>We all know, for example, that it is getting colder no matter where we live, but the President has been lying about “global warming” and “greenhouse gas emissions” for some time now.</p>
<p>Similarly, Congress, going back to 1979 or so, has been doing everything in its capacity to thwart access to the tremendous reserves of energy in America, thus forcing Americans to pay more for imported oil and to subsidize the worst possible way to generate electricity, wind and solar power.</p>
<p>It has banned the manufacture or import of incandescent light bulbs starting in 2010. <span id="more-10512"></span></p>
<p>It determines how much water can be used to flush your toilet.</p>
<p>It determines the content of every gallon of gasoline, requiring that ethanol be a component even though ethanol ensures less mileage and more carbon dioxide emissions from the tailpipe. It also drives up the cost of all foods made from corn or the livestock to which it is fed.</p>
<p>What kind of nation fails the most essential element of a modern society, the maintenance of its infrastructure? America’s roads, bridges, ports and other elements of infrastructure are sorely in need of repair or replacement. It’s not happening along with the failure to build a single new nuclear plant, nor refinery in three decades.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, following a Bush “stimulus” effort and an Obama “stimulus” bill, the economy remains mired in the doldrums. Unemployment has risen above 10%, the worst since 1983. Things like this don’t happen without a cause and, as Ronald Reagan used to say, “Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem.”</p>
<p>In a similar fashion, during a 1959 interview with Mike Wallace, the author Ayn Rand said, “A free economy will not break down. All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure that is always offered…is more of the same poisons that caused the disasters.”</p>
<p>Rand was referring to the Great Depression, an economic disaster made infinitely worse and longer by all the government prescriptions applied by both President Hoover and, in particular, President Franklyn D. Roosevelt. It is now understood that FDR and his economic advisors literally stretched out the Great Depression to ten year’s duration by choking off the free flow of capital and trade.</p>
<p>There is an interesting comparison between FDR and President Obama. Neither had any experience in the world of business and commerce. Neither ever ran a business or met a payroll. A political campaign is not a business enterprise. It is a short-term fund raising effort. It produces nothing except a candidate who either wins or loses. Obama’s economic advisors have been prescribing the same awful “remedies” as FDR’s.</p>
<p>The present dilemma is that Obama is an ideologue, a “red diaper” baby raised on the socialist belief in the “redistribution of wealth” which essentially means taking money from productive wage earners and investors, and giving it to “the poor.” The problem with that is that there has always been about 14% of the population that have been and will be poor. Giving them other people’s money does not make them less poor; only more dependent on government.</p>
<p>This transfer of wealth in exchange for getting their vote comes with no guarantees. The large percentage of Blacks who voted for Obama in 2008 did not bother to return to the polls in this year’s elections. Neither did the worshipful youth who helped elect him by a slim seven points.</p>
<p>As for those youth and everyone else who has passed through the U.S. education system since the 1960s, the bad news is that you received some of the worst education available in any nation on Earth. That’s why you don’t understand much about what is happening in your life or in the world around you. The curriculum has been dumbed down to ensure your ignorance of things graduates in 1950 understood even if you do not.</p>
<p>The good news is the swift plunge in Obama’s popularity among all voters. He has proved himself to be spectacularly ill-prepared for the presidency on the basis of its ideology, his experience, and his judgment. One almost expects him to show up on “Dancing with the Stars” any day.</p>
<p>So what or who is wrecking America? A lot of very stupid people.</p>
<p>Only a Congress that openly admits it does not read the bills put before it votes on them could be so indifferent to the public will or the public good.</p>
<p>Two bills will wreck the economy beyond recognition. There is no public support for either healthcare reform or the energy cap-and-trade bill. Yet both are the keystone legislative goals of the White House.</p>
<p>Beyond stupidity, there is ideology.</p>
<p>The environmental movement, a quasi-religious cult, is fighting every form of energy production except solar or wind. It is engaged in a war on private property. It regards all chemicals as poisons despite the fact that the human body is a virtual chemical processing factory. It is the megaphone for “global warming”, the largest hoax—other than Communism—in modern history.</p>
<p>It’s just too easy to beat up the news and entertainment media, particularly the latter. What passes for entertainment is too stupid, too childish, and too vulgar for words. As for news, Americans are increasingly finding their own sources on the Internet and/or relying on sources such as The Wall Street Journal and others they trust.</p>
<p>So, if you are looking around for an answer to what or who is wrecking America, just keep looking around you. It’s Congress. It’s the White House. It’s people who believe the Democrat Party cares what they think. It’s people who think Islam is a religion of peace. It’s people who follow news of “celebrities.” It’s Nancy Pelosi. It’s Harry Reid. It’s Barney Frank. It’s Barack Hussein Obama.</p></div>
<div class="post-body entry-content">
<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a></span><strong>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>Energy ABC&#8217;s: Playing Americans for Fools</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/energy-abcs-playing-americans-for-fools/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/energy-abcs-playing-americans-for-fools/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:15:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cap and Trade]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[coal]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=10508</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Energy ABCs: Playing Americans for Fools By Alan Caruba</p> <p>I have long harbored strong doubts about the knowledge that most Americans possess regarding the sources of energy they largely take for granted. We flip a switch and the lights go on. We pull up to the gas pump and drive away. We use machines [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/energy-abcs-playing-americans-for-fools.html">Energy ABCs: Playing Americans for Fools</a></h3>
<div class="post-body entry-content"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SvYoicTqPfI/AAAAAAAABSs/uNc7BhmsCqM/s1600-h/Power+plant.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401549375256804850" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 132px; cursor: hand; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/SvYoicTqPfI/AAAAAAAABSs/uNc7BhmsCqM/s200/Power+plant.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>I have long harbored strong doubts about the knowledge that most Americans possess regarding the sources of energy they largely take for granted. We flip a switch and the lights go on. We pull up to the gas pump and drive away. We use machines that are totally dependent on having enough electricity to power entire cities as well as rural communities.</p>
<p>Since all successful economies depend on abundant, affordable energy, why is the Congress preparing to pass a cap-and-trade bill, renamed to suggest “clean energy” and “national security” has anything to do with a huge tax on the use of energy by all Americans?</p>
<p>There are some fundamental facts about energy in America you need to know. The Congressional Research Service recently released a report on U.S. energy reserves. To begin:</p>
<p>The U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) when combining its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves. This is oil known to exist and oil estimates in fields as yet untapped. Between Alaska and the continental offshore potential, we could literally be self-sufficient.<span id="more-10508"></span></p>
<p>Keep in mind, however, oil represents less than 40% of our energy use, nor do we import most of that from the Middle East. Two-thirds of our oil consumption comes from North America with Canada and Mexico being major providers. By expanding domestic production, we could reduce dependency on the Middle East even further.</p>
<p>That said, since the days of Jimmy Carter, the White House and Congress has gone out of its way to make it difficult, if not impossible, to tap domestic reserves. When a windfall profits tax was imposed on November 9, 1978, it sent a message to U.S. oil companies they were not welcome here.</p>
<p>While ExxonMobil is the favorite target of environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth or the Sierra Club, the fact is that it is no longer in the seven top oil producers in the United States. The “big” domestic oil companies are now Aera Energy, Anadarko, and Occidental. ExxonMobil looks for oil in overseas locations.</p>
<p>Astonishingly, other oil producing nations whose reserves are ranked behind the U.S. are Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, and Canada. The only oil “shortage” in the U.S. is one created by Congress and the energy policies of a succession of past presidents. An estimated 87% of our oil reserves remain untouched.</p>
<p>When it comes to coal, the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal with 28% of all the world’s coal reserves. Russian comes in second with 19%. Coal represents more than 50% of all the electricity produced in America and the Obama administration has declared war on it.</p>
<p>The cap-and-trade bill before Congress puts all of its emphasis on the two worst, most expensive, and job-killing forms of energy, wind and solar. Combined they represent a pathetic 1% of electricity. They are unreliable sources, dependent on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Moreover, though never mentioned, they require backup sources of traditional energy production. You cannot have wind or solar energy without also having a coal-fired, hydroelectric, or nuclear plant to ensure a steady source.</p>
<p>As reported in Newsweek, “Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies to encourage wind, solar, and other renewable energy markets.”</p>
<p>The result, in the U.S. is a virtually army, “1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emissions permits by 2012.)”</p>
<p>The Newsweek article said, “It’s a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve.”</p>
<p>We do not have a climate policy in the United States. We have a huge scheme to enrich a small group of people who will control the exchanges for utterly bogus “carbon credits”, nothing more than the right to emit carbon dioxide as the natural result of burning fuel for energy. It is not, however, such industrial and other uses that represents the largest emitter of carbon dioxide. The Earth itself is responsible for 95% of the CO2 in the atmosphere and that CO2 represents 3.618%.</p>
<p>By comparison, nuclear energy does not produce CO2 emissions and yet there hasn’t been a new nuclear reactor built in the United States for some thirty years.</p>
<p>The same is true for the building of a single new oil refinery in America. Since it takes about a decade from start to finish on these huge engineering projects and a billion dollar investment, it would be 2020 before one was in full production if begun next year. The real question is, if you were an oil company CEO, would you invest that kind of money when the U.S. won’t let you explore or extract oil on or offshore?</p>
<p>What no one is telling you is that CO2 does not “cause” global warming and there is no global warming. The Earth is actually in a natural cycle of cooling that began in 1998 and is anticipated to last at least two to three decades.</p>
<p>Europe’s experience with “renewable” energy has been a disaster. Great Britain is facing blackouts that will make economic growth impossible and wreak havoc on the daily lives of the English. As with other European nations, it has driven up the cost of electricity.</p>
<p>The American energy consumer is being lied to and stolen from in the form of the cap-and-trade bill under consideration and other obstacles.</p>
<p>The nation as a whole is being put at risk for lack of access to our own vast energy reserves, coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power that will be needed to reverse the present recession, unemployment, and the ability to grow our way back to prosperity.</p>
<p>Editor&#8217;s Note: To read the report, click on<br />
<a href="http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&amp;FileStore_id=f7bd7b77-ba50-48c2-a635-220d7cf8c519"><span style="color: #5588aa;">http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&amp;FileStore_id=f7bd7b77-ba50-48c2-a635-220d7cf8c519</span></a></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a></span><strong>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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		<title>The Economic Recovery Fantasy</title>
		<link>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/the-economic-recovery-fantasy/</link>
		<comments>http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/11/the-economic-recovery-fantasy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:54:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alan Caruba</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Economic Recovery Fantasy By Alan Caruba</p> <p>I freely confess that I regard it as a triumph if I can balance my checkbook. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and surely despaired of his second son (the first became a CPA!) who had no head for numbers.</p> <p>Like most Americans, though, I find [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><a href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/11/economic-recovery-fantasy.html">The Economic Recovery Fantasy</a></h3>
<div class="post-body entry-content"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Su9JeJTDXLI/AAAAAAAABRM/VOOOxekesNE/s1600-h/ben-stein.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399615260481248434" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 192px; cursor: hand; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mpd1ozuoa64/Su9JeJTDXLI/AAAAAAAABRM/VOOOxekesNE/s200/ben-stein.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />
By Alan Caruba</p>
<p>I freely confess that I regard it as a triumph if I can balance my checkbook. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and surely despaired of his second son (the first became a CPA!) who had no head for numbers.</p>
<p>Like most Americans, though, I find it laughable, if not outright mockery, when the White House and the lapdog media tell me that the nation is now recovering from the recession. The media, as just one example, is bleeding thousands of jobs that are not likely to ever return.</p>
<p>What I do know is that, as of November 1st, 115 banks have failed this year. They represented combined assets of $19.5 billion at the end of September. Most have been gobbled up by larger banks. In 1989, at the height of the savings and loan crisis, the FDIC closed 534 banks or about ten a week.</p>
<p>Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, flatly says, “A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930 when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones Industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954.”</p>
<p>It took ten years and a World War for America to dig out of the Great Depression.</p>
<p>The President’s economic team, Christina Romer, Peter Orszag, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, and Jared Bernstein scare the heck out of me.</p>
<p>I would much rather have Ben Stein running Treasury and Larry Kudlow overseeing the national economy.<span id="more-10323"></span></p>
<p>The waste of billions of taxpayer dollars in the bilious “stimulus” bill was the ultimate wet dream of legislators, the opportunity to tap the treasury for every “pork” project they had been promising the voters.</p>
<p>Far worse, however, is the healthcare “reform”, if passed. As reported recently in the Weekly Standard, Medicare fraud now costs Americans an estimated $60 billion a year. Compare that with the annual $8 billion in profits of all the private insurance companies combined!</p>
<p>The Pelosi-Reid bill is Medicare on steroids, but the yet unanswered question is this: If Congress can require you to buy insurance even if you don’t want to, what else can you be compelled to do?</p>
<p>Christiana Romer recently testified before Congress that the stimulus bill has accomplished little at this point. The abortive “Cash for Clunkers” program has been calculated to have actually cost the government six times the rebate whose effect lasted all of a month.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, when its treasury notes are not bought by foreign investors, the nation buys its own debt, a scheme that is impossible to maintain. I do not loan money to myself. I either save it or spend it.</p>
<p>Congress should be reducing taxes—the U.S. tax rate on corporations is among the highest in the world—and taking steps to relieve the tax burden on small businesses which are the heart of employment and the economy in general.</p>
<p>Congress is also getting ready to raise the cost of energy for every American family and enterprise with the hideous “cap-and-trade” bill.</p>
<p>Energy in America has long been one of the most affordable elements of the economy, but the Obama administration is throwing billions at the least productive elements called “clean energy”, solar and wind, while declaring war on coal that provides just over half of all the electricity we use every day.</p>
<p>The figures cited for unemployment are a bad joke. Officially set at 9.5 percent, it is actually likely to be closer to 14 percent, about the same amount as during the Great Depression of the 1930s.</p>
<p>Everyone is aware that the economy is not recovering. It is reflected in reduced inventories. It is reflected in continued layoffs. It is reflected in retail advertisements offering two-for-one deals. It is reflected in less consumer spending. On Halloween, my local mall already had a big Christmas tree on display.</p>
<p>I find it insulting that the government is eager to give money to people defaulting on their mortgages because they couldn’t afford them when the government was pressuring mortgage lenders to make them.</p>
<p>I find it insulting to be told about jobs “created or saved” by the White House when this is a pure fantasy. Only private enterprise creates real jobs. Government jobs add nothing to the economy except another layer of bureaucracy. What America needs is productivity.</p>
<p>I find it insulting to be told that the recession is over when it is just taking a breather before the mounting debt from White House initiatives overwhelms us all, rising unemployment continues, and senseless legislation is still in the pipeline.</p>
<p>None of this is good news, but it is, at least, the real news.</p></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-4592" href="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/04/too-much-too-deliberately-too-dangerous/alan-caruba-photo/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4592" title="alan-caruba-photo" src="http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/wp-content/uploads/alan-caruba-photo.jpg" alt="alan-caruba-photo" width="100" height="148" /></a></span><strong>Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center &#8211; he blogs daily at </strong></span><a onclick="function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { function onclick() { pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com'); } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } } }" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size: small; color: #800080; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.c</strong></span></span></a></div>
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