The war is on. The West, though fully aware that it is under attack, is hardly bothering to fight at all.

The BBC shows the nation a police video telling the populace what to do when the jihadis strike, while the British government continues to admit hordes of Muslims into the country.

Police have released a video telling people to “run, hide, tell” if they are caught up in a terrorist gun attack.

The four-minute video advises on how to evacuate a building, where to hide, and what information to tell police.

The video says people’s first reaction if they hear gunshots should be to run – as long as it will not put them in greater danger – and not to let others’ indecision “slow you down”.

The terror threat level in the UK is severe, meaning it is “highly likely”.

Security services have been on high alert since the attacks in Paris last month.

What should you do in an attack?

The public information film, released by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, tells people to react quickly, first by running for an exit.

“Insist others come with you, but don’t let their indecision slow you down,” the video says.

“Consider your route as you leave. Will it place you in the line of fire? Is it safer to wait for the attacker to move away before you continue?”

If it is not possible to move to safety, then people are advised to hide.

They should consider their exits and escape routes when choosing a hiding place, avoiding dead ends and bottlenecks and staying away from the door.

Mobile phones should be switched to silent and vibrate turned off, the video says, adding: “The best hiding place with protection from gunfire will have a substantial physical barrier between you and the attacker.”

Those able to evacuate should get as far away from the danger area as possible and call the police.

The film says: “When the police arrive they will be armed. The police may be unable to distinguish you from the attacker. They may treat you firmly. Do everything they tell you to do. Don’t make any sudden movements or gestures that may be perceived as a threat.”

Police said the advice has already been issued to thousands of people during security training sessions but it is now being rolled out more widely.

Mark Rowley, the country’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said: “Everyone’s aware of the terrorist challenges across the world and there have been some awful attacks. It’s our view that this advice should be rolled out to the public so in the tragic event that anyone gets caught up in a rolling firearms or weapons attack they are better informed and better advised to protect themselves.”

As so often, Mark Steyn writes good sense about the war between Islam and the West – a war the West is losing.

Many of the Republican candidates sound too anxious to repeat the mistakes of the past 14 years. Lindsey Graham is perhaps the most absurd exemplar: a man who favors massive military deployments around the planet, but open borders at home. And so he wound up, even as he was threatening to loose tens of thousands of soldiers upon their lands, apologizing to the Muslim world because Donald Trump is a big meanie. Perhaps Graham would be more amenable to sanity if we couched it in progressive terms: The “safe space” ought to be western civilization – which means that accelerating Muslim immigration into the west will only make our cities an ever bigger unsafe space for ISIS and others to exploit. The problem in San Bernardino is not just the “radicalized” Syed and Tashfeen, but the semi-radicalized revert neighbor and the hemi-semi-radicalized dad who told Syed to lighten up about the Jews because Israel wouldn’t be around in another two years and the wives procured through Green Card fraud and the locals cowed by political correctness into looking the other way as Muslims build pipe bombs in the garage. None of this is in the national interest of the American people. But Fieldmarshal Graham wants a blitzkrieg overseas and a home front that allows US citizens and their mail-order brides to choose what side of the war they want to be on.

By the way, what does “vetting” even mean? In a multiculti world, you can believe everything Caliph al-Baghdadi does – that infidels are unclean, that women are the property of men and should be forbidden to feel sunlight on their faces, that homosexuals should be tossed off the roofs of buildings, that apostasy should be punishable by death, that Sharia should be introduced in western nations, and that the Islamic crescent should one day fly from the White House and Buckingham Palace and the Élysée and St Peter’s. And Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have no problem with that, as long as you don’t actually build a pipe bomb or blow up an airliner.

So there is no actual way of “vetting” anybody until after you’ve left a big pile of body parts all over the floor. …

I like western civilization. I regard Common Law as superior to Sharia, so I would rather people who wish to live under Sharia remained in the many countries where it already operates, rather than adding Austria and Ireland and Denmark to the list.

A schizophrenic strategy of ineffectual war overseas and celebrating one’s tolerance of the avowedly intolerant at home will ensure we lose.

Trump brash? Shallow? What if he isn’t? What if he should say the same thing in a different style? When he says it in a “sophisticated” manner does it strike you that what he says is not false or exaggerated, but … true and apt?

For your entertainment, here he is doing just that:

Jihadis do all they can to make us afraid of Islam. Then they say that our fear is irrational – accusing us of “Islamophobia”.

Is there or is there not cause to be afraid of Islam? Of its advance by means of terrorism and indoctrination?

Irrational or not, the fear of Islam is spreading in America, as this story from CNN illustrates:

After a teacher at a Virginia school handed out a standard homework assignment on Islam, such an angry backlash flooded in that it prompted officials to close every single school in the county as a safety precaution.

“While there has been no specific threat of harm to students, schools and school offices will be closed Friday, December 18, 2015,” Augusta County Schools said. Extracurricular activities were shut down Thursday afternoon.

And social media exploded over the school lesson — a simple drawing assignment — into a caustic discussion about religion and education.

When the world geography class at Riverheads High School in Staunton rolled around to the subject of major world religions, homework on Islam asked students to copy religious calligraphy.

It read:

“Here is the shahada, the Islamic statement of faith, written in Arabic. In the space below, try copying it by hand. This should give you an idea of the artistic complexity of calligraphy.”

The illustrative classical Arabic phrase was the basic statement in Islam. It translated to: “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah.” 

When students took it home, it was like a spark hitting a powder keg. Some of their parents saw the homework as an attempt to convert their children to Islam. Calls and emails flooded the school. Some of them demanded the teacher be fired for assigning it.

[The teacher] Cheryl LaPorte had not designed the assignment herself, but took it from a standard workbook on world religions, local newspaper The News Leader reported.

The county school system reacted.

It removed the shahada from world religion instruction. “A different, non-religious sample of Arabic calligraphy will be used in the future,” it said.

And it issued a statement saying no one was trying to convert anyone to any religion.

“Neither of these lessons, nor any other lessons in the world geography course, are an attempt at indoctrination to Islam or any other religion or a request for students to renounce their own faith or profess any belief,” Augusta County schools official Eric Bond said in a statement to CNN affiliate WHSV.

But that hasn’t been enough for Kimberly Herndon, who kept her ninth-grade son home from school.“There was no trying about it. The sheet she gave out was pure doctrine in its origin,” she told WHSV.

“I will not have my children sit under a woman who indoctrinates them with the Islam religion when I am a Christian,” she said.

By Tuesday, like-minded parents and residents of the town of nearly 24,000 gathered in the sanctuary of Good Will Ministries to voice their grievances, including against the teacher.

The anger may have had an effect. LaPorte told The News Leader that now her job involves getting students through Standards of Learning tests.

At the same time, former students have taken to Facebook to defend her.

“I’m against anyone getting steamrolled by convoluted logic and I’m very pleased to see that there is so many people around me that feel the same way,” a supporter wrote.

Back at the school, the sheriff and administrators had begun worrying about security.

On Monday, Augusta County issued a letter reassuring parents that schools in the county were safe. It did not reference the homework assignment but did say that parents had become worried about security.

“All doors are locked with the exception of one front door….Faculty and staff monitor all activities inside and out of the buildings.” Standard security procedures, the letter explained.

But as the week went on, officials got more specific about the source of concern — calls and email messages — and their target — the world geography class.

“The school division began receiving voluminous phone calls and electronic mail locally and from outside the area,” the school system said. And the “tone and content” were nasty.

The sheriff deployed more officers to county schools and began monitoring the communications.

Then all the schools in the county shut down. 

Yale students want to repeal the First Amendment. They sign a petition to remove their right to petition.

It is astonishing that someone who is under criminal investigation by the FBI should be standing as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Astonishing that the Democratic Party  is letting her stand and will almost certainly nominate her as its official candidate. Astonishing that it is apparently not even taking the precaution of putting up an alternative plausible candidate. Astonishing that she carries on campaigning as if criminal charges are not hanging over her.

Hillary Clinton is a shameless scofflaw.

Here is a useful review of the charges the FBI could bring against her. (But will Obama’s corrupt “Department of Justice” consent to indict her?)

Judge Andrew Napolitano writes at Fox News Opinion:

While the country has been fixated on Donald Trump’s tormenting his Republican primary opponents and deeply concerned about the government’s efforts to identify any confederates in the San Bernardino, California, killings, a team of federal prosecutors and FBI agents continues to examine Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state in order to determine whether she committed any crimes and, if so, whether there is sufficient evidence to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

What began as an innocent Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, a D.C.-based public advocacy group promoting transparency in the executive branch, has now become a full criminal investigation, with Clinton as the likely target.

The basic facts are well-known, but the revealed nuances are important, as well. When the State Department responded to the Judicial Watch FOIA request by telling Judicial Watch that it had no emails from Clinton, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit. When the State Department made the same representation to the court – as incredible as it seemed at the time – the judge accepted that representation, and the case was dismissed.

Then The New York Times revealed that Clinton used a private email server instead of the government’s server for all of her work-related and personal emails during her four years as secretary of state. After that, the Judicial Watch FOIA case was reinstated, and then the judge in the case demanded of State that it produce Clinton’s emails.

When Judicial Watch expressed frustration to the judge about the pace at which it was getting emails, the judge ordered Clinton, “under penalty of perjury”, to certify that she had surrendered all her governmental emails to the State Department.

Eventually, Clinton did certify to the court that she did surrender all of her governmental emails to the State Department. She did so by sending paper copies of selected emails, because she had wiped clean her server. She acknowledged that she decided which emails were personal and which were selected as governmental and returned the governmental ones to the State Department.

She has denied steadfastly and consistently that she ever sent or received any materials marked “classified” while secretary of state using her private server.

All of her behavior has triggered the FBI investigation because she may have committed serious federal crimes.

For example, it is a crime to steal federal property. What did she steal? By diverting to her own venue the digital metadata that accompany all emails — metadata that, when attached to the work-related emails of a government employee, belong to the government — she stole that data. The metadata do not appear on her paper copies — hence the argument that she stole and destroyed the government-owned metadata.

This is particularly troublesome for her present political ambitions because of a federal statute that disqualifies from public office all who have stolen federal property. (She is probably already barred from public office — though this was not prominently raised when she entered the U.S. Senate or the Department of State — because of the china, silverware and furniture that she and her husband took from the White House in January 2001.)

Clinton may also have committed espionage by failing to secure the government secrets entrusted to her. She did that by diverting those secrets to an unprotected, nongovernmental venue — her own server — and again by emailing those secrets to other unprotected and nongovernmental venues.

The reason she can deny sending or receiving anything marked “classified” is that protected government secrets are not marked “classified”. 

So her statement, though technically true, is highly misleading. The governmental designations of protected secrets are “confidential,” “secret” and “top secret” – not “classified”.

State Department investigators have found 999 emails sent or received by Clinton in at least one of those three categories of protected secrets.

Back when Clinton became secretary of state, on her first day in office, she had an hourlong FBI briefing on the proper and lawfully required care of government secrets.

She signed a statement, under penalty of perjury, acknowledging that she knew the law and that it is the content of emails, not any stamped markings, that makes them secret.

Earlier this week, my Fox News colleagues confirmed the certain presence of top-secret materials among the 999 emails.

Intelligence from foreign sources or about foreign governments is always top-secret, whether designated as such or not. And she knows that.

As well, she may have committed perjury in the FOIA case. When the House Select Committee on Benghazi, in its investigation of her role in the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, gathered emails, it found emails she did not surrender to the State Department.

Last week, the State Department released emails that give the FBI more areas to investigate. These emails may show a pattern of official behavior by Clinton designed to benefit the financial interests of her family’s foundation, her husband and her son-in-law.

Moreover, the FBI knows of a treasure-trove of documents that may demonstrate that the Clinton Foundation skirted the law and illegally raised and spent contributions.

Two months ago, a group of FBI agents sat around a conference table and reviewed the evidence gathered thus far. Each agent was given the opportunity to make or detract from the case for moving forward. At the end of the meeting, it was the consensus of the group to pursue a criminal investigation.

Judge Napolitano cautiously states that “Clinton is the likely target”. Well, it’s not likely to be anyone else!

We wonder impatiently how long it will take. We would be filled with joy – okay, Schadenfreude – if she were to be charged immediately after being nominated the Democratic candidate for the presidency.

Pat Condell tells the truth about our need for the truth:

The wrecking legions of the Left marched through the institutions of the West decade after decade, until they dominated most of them: the media, trade unions, professional associations, the academy, the entertainment industry, the book publishing industry, the awards committees, the charities, the NGOs, local government, central government agencies, the parliaments; even to some extent the judiciaries; and finally the peak of power, the presidency of the United States.

Those institutions which they couldn’t take over – the police, the military – they so vilified as to bring them into almost universal disrepute.

Urgently now the Left needs to be accused, toppled, disarmed, and permanently disgraced.

Is there a chance of that happening?

There’s no chance in Europe, unless perhaps by civil war. There’s a remote chance in Britain. And what chance is there in America?

We quote from an article by Dennis Prager at Townhall:

Leftism is ruining America.

But almost no Republican ever — let alone repeatedly — says this.

The universities of this country have become a laughingstock. They have degenerated into anti-intellectual, anti-Western, anti-rational institutions with their ludicrous “safe spaces”, trigger warnings that infantilize students, and all the lies about the racism and a rape culture that allegedly pervade the campuses and American society.

What is responsible for that? Leftism.

According to Pew Research, 40 percent of millennials do not believe in the principal of freedom of speech if the speech might hurt the feelings of a member of a minority group.

What is responsible for that? Leftism.

Why did Islamic State rise in Iraq after that country had been pacified by American troops and the Sunni uprising? Because a leftist president, the left-wing Democratic Party, and the left-wing media demanded a complete American withdrawal from Iraq.

Why are race relations worse than in living memory despite the election and re-election of black president? Because of the left-wing lies about “systemic” racism. Because of the left-wing “Ferguson” lie, repeated regularly by the president of the United States, as if an innocent “unarmed black teenager” was killed by a white policeman because the teen was black and not because he was threatening the life of the officer. Because of the absurdity of “microaggressions”, those lists of often noble statements – such as “there is only one race, the human race” – that the left characterizes as racist.

Why is it harder to open and sustain a small business than at any time in American history? Because of the left and their endless regulations.

Why do we have the highest national debt in American history? Because the left keeps expanding the size of the government.

Why are more Americans on public assistance than ever before? Because left-wing policies are designed to get more and more Americans dependent on government.

Why are Americans increasingly separated into ethnic, racial and religious identities? Because of the left-wing belief in multiculturalism and the left’s neo-fascist emphasis on the importance of race.

Why are more Americans born to women without husbands than ever before? Because, ideologically, the left has determined that children do not need fathers, and because, policy-wise, the left has enabled mothers to depend on the state rather than the man who fathered her children.

Why is the American military weaker and less feared than at anytime in the last 50 years? Because the left doesn’t want America to be the strongest country in the world.

In addition to criticizing Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, Republicans need to tell the American people over and over that the only thing that can stop the further degradation of the United States of America is conservatism and the Republican Party. Because only conservatism and the Republican Party can stop the left.

Only a more conservative Republican Party can stop the left, we would say. Is there a chance of the Republican Party becoming more conservative?

Best of all would be a triumphant conservative Republican Party that keeps religion in a locked box somewhere far from the chambers of government and the corridors of power. But we regretfully accept that there’s little chance of that.

Some 40,000 believers in the science of extracting moonbeams from cucumbers (a long endeavor, first made known to the world three hundred years ago by Gulliver) and other such sages met in Paris to change the climates of the world, and have announced a great success.

Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek question their triumph.

They write at CFACT:

Paris climate talks this week descended into madcap all-night negotiations, as delegates desperately tried to salvage some kind of agreement beyond empty promises to do something sometime about what President Obama insists is the gravest threat to our planet, national security and future generations.

He gets far more energized about slashing energy use than about Islamist terrorism, even after the Paris and San Bernardino butchery. Determined for once to lead from upfront, he took a 500-person greenhouse gas-spewing entourage to the City of Light, to call for preventing increasing droughts, floods, storms, island-swallowing rising acidic ocean levels and other disasters conjured up by alarmist computer models.

Legally binding carbon dioxide emission targets were too contentious to pursue. So was modifying the concept of “differentiated responsibilities”. It holds that countries that historically caused the recent atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up must lead in cutting their emissions, while helping developing countries eventually do likewise, by pouring trillions of dollars in cash and free technology into the Green Climate Fund for supposed climate change adaptation, mitigation and compensation. Developing countries had insisted on that massive wealth redistribution as their price for signing any binding document.

Although China now emits far more CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) than the USA or EU, it refused to fast-track reducing those emissions. China and wealthy petro-states also opposed paying into the Climate Fund. Other major bones of contention were likewise never resolved.

Thus, in the end, what we apparently got out of Paris is voluntary emission caps, voluntary progress reviews, no international oversight of any voluntary progress, and voluntary contributions to the Fund.

Of course, the entire climate cataclysm mantra is based on the claim that carbon dioxide has replaced the solar and other powerful natural forces that have driven climate change throughout Earth and human history. Now, merely tweaking CO2 emissions will supposedly stabilize climate and weather systems.

President Obama fervently believes this delusion.

He will likely use the voluntary Paris gobbledygook to say America somehow has a “moral obligation” to set an example, by de-carbonizing, de-industrializing and de-developing the United States. Thankfully, Congress and the states will have something to say about that, because they know these anti-fossil fuel programs will destroy jobs and living standards, especially for poor, working class and minority families.

The impacts would be far worse than many news stories and White House press releases suggest. Those sources often say the proposed climate treaty and other actions seek GHG reductions of 80% below predicted 2050 emission levels. The real original Paris treaty target is 80% below actual 1990 levels.

That means the world would have to eliminate 96% of the greenhouse gases that all humanity would likely release if we reach world population levels, economic growth and living standards predicted for 2050. The United States would likely have to slash it CO2 and GHG reductions to zero.

Moreover, current 2050 forecasts already assume and incorporate significant energy efficiency, de-carbonization and de-industrialization over the next 35 years. … Further CO2 reductions beyond those already incorporated into the forecasts would thus be increasingly difficult, expensive, and indeed impossible to achieve.

As we explain in a MasterResource.org analysis, there is a strong positive relationship between GDP and carbon-based energy consumption. Slashing fossil energy use that far would thus require decimating economic growth, job creation and preservation, and average per-person incomes. In fact, average world per capita GDP would plummet from a projected $30,600 in 2050 to a miserable $1,200 per year. 

Average per capita GDP in 2050 would be less than what Americans had in 1830!

Many futuristic technologies would still exist, but only wealthy families and ruling elites could afford them.

That would be catastrophic for jobs, health and welfare in developed countries – and lethal to millions in poor nations, who would be denied the blessings of electricity and fossil fuels for decades to come. That is indefensible, inhumane and immoral. And for what?

Mr. Obama and the alarmists in Paris insisted that drastic GHG reductions will hold global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 F) and prevent climate and weather disasters. Now some even claim that the upper safety limit is actually 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F), which would require even more draconian energy and emission cutbacks. Otherwise, Earth could become uninhabitable, they assert. Nonsense.

EPA’s own analyses suggest that its fully implemented Clean Power Plan would bring an undetectable, irrelevant reduction of perhaps 0.02 degrees Celsius (0.05 F) in average global temperatures 85 years from now – assuming carbon dioxide actually does drive climate change.

Which is not just disputed but flatly denied even by a co-founder of Greenpeace.

(We are speaking of Patrick Moore, who has parted company with that increasingly evil organization. For the evil it does, see our posts: The evil  Greenpeace does, January 16, 2010; The blind cruelty of Greenpeace, January 20, 2010; How environmentalists are committing mass murder on a vast scale, July 6, 2014.) ).

In the Real World, climate changes regularly, and recent climate and weather trends and events are in line with historic experience. In fact, average global temperatures haven’t risen in nearly two decades; no category 3-5 hurricane has struck the USA in a record ten years; Greenland and Antarctic ice are at record levels; and still firmly alkaline sea levels (8.1 pH) are rising at barely seven inches per century.

Many scientists believe the sun and other powerful natural forces may soon usher in a new era of colder temperatures, regardless of whether atmospheric CO2 rises above 0.40% (400 ppm). That would pose much greater threats to human health, agriculture and prosperity (and wildlife) than global warming.

We must never forget: Fossil fuels facilitated successive industrial revolutions and enabled billions to live better than royalty did a century ago, helped average incomes to increase eleven-fold, and helped average global life expectancy to soar from less than 30 in 1870 to 71 today.

Carbon-based energy still provides 81% of world energy, and supports $70 trillion per year in world GDP. It will supply 75-80% of global energy for decades to come, Energy Information Administration, International Energy Agency and other studies forecast. Carbon-based energy is essential if we are to bring electricity to the 1.3 billion people who still do not have it, and end the rampant poverty and lung, intestinal and other diseases that kill millions of people in poor countries every year.

Furthermore, thousands of coal-fired power plants are built, under construction or in planning around the world. China and India will not consider reducing GHG emissions until 2030, and even then it will be voluntary and dependent on how their economies are doing. That means atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to climb, greening the planet and spurring faster crop, forest and grassland growth. …

President Obama and the 40,000 climate alarmists gathered in Paris ignored these inconvenient realities, and whitewashed the adverse consequences of anti-hydrocarbon policies. …

Even binding targets would have … horrendous adverse effects on human health and environmental quality, while doing nothing to prevent climate change or extreme weather events. What alarmists wanted in Paris would have let unelected, unaccountable activists and bureaucrats decide which industries, companies, workers, families, states and countries win the Climate Hustle game, and which ones lose.

And it’s not just President Obama, who wants to slash America’s carbon dioxide emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 – and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050! Every Democrat presidential candidate demands similar actions: Hillary Clinton wants one-third of all US electricity to come from wind and solar by 2027; Bernie Sanders wants 80% by 2050; Martin O’Malley wants 100% by 2050.

Obligating the United States to slash its fossil fuel use, and send billions of taxpayer dollars annually to dictators, bureaucrats and crony industrialists in poor countries would be disastrous. Thank goodness it did not happen. 

Not only has Obama done everything he could to help Islam advance its ideological program of world domination – even bringing Muslim Brotherhood personnel into the US government* – but he also does everything he can to weaken forces opposing it.

Western Journalism reports:

On Thursday, a whistleblower came forward. Phillip Haney, a former Department of Homeland Security investigator, says he could have likely prevented the attacks in San Bernardino if the government had let him do his job. Three years ago, Haney had developed surveillance that revealed a global network of jihadists had infiltrated the United States.

Haney, one of the founding members of Homeland Security, had been transferred to the Intelligence Review Unit and it was in that capacity that he discovered the global network of jihadists at work in the U.S. It was then that he was visited by officials from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security’s Civil Rights Division who told Haney that tracking the jihadists was “problematic” because they were Islamic groups. [Emphasis ours – ed.)

Haney said his investigation was shut down and 67 of his files were deleted.

One of the files that was deleted was an investigation into the mosque that the San Bernardino terrorists frequently attended.

Haney claims that he was targeted, reassigned, and eventually lost his security clearance, even though he had received a commendation letter for locating 300 known terrorists in the U.S.

Haney’s claim that he was prohibited from investigating the mosque that the terrorists attended is now being followed up with accusations that Obama issued a directive to downplay the terrorist attacks.

Unnamed sources have come forward and reported that the White House tried to spin the San Bernardino attack by putting pressure on officials to downplay what happened as terror, in favor of the term “gun violence”. …

A confidential source revealed, Obama held a meeting in the Oval Office with his National Security Council, the attorney general, and the directors of the DHS, FBI, and NSA, in which a directive was given to “downplay the terrorism angle”.

* See for instance here, here and here.

Ed Straker explains why ethanol production should not be subsidized.

It’s a matter on which he sides with Ted Cruz against Donald Trump.

But he agrees with Trump on how to deal with illegal immigration.

He wishes he could merge the two candidates.

He writes at American Thinker:

Donald Trump attacked Ted Cruz for not supporting ethanol subsidies.  He said in Iowa on Friday, “Oil companies give him a lot of money, so he’s for oil.”

The thing about oil and gas is, it doesn’t require big subsidies, because it’s the cheapest and most efficient form of fuel for cars. Ethanol, on the other hand, does require big government subsidies, because it is highly uneconomical.  Ethanol is much more expensive than oil and gas and, gallon for gallon, produces much less energy than gasoline.  That’s why the government has to hand over billions in subsidies to big agri-businesses to keep it going.  And that’s also why the government has to force oil companies to blend ethanol in with their fuels.  Because without government coercion, oil companies wouldn’t do it, and the price of gasoline would be substantially lower than it is now.

Additionally, ethanol actually acts as a corrosive on car engines.  It slowly degrades car parts over time.

But the worst thing about ethanol is that not only does it require taxpayer subsidies, and not only does it raise the price of blended gas, but it also raises the price of many different kinds of foods.  Ethanol is made with corn – a lot of it.  And when a lot of corn production is diverted to ethanol, there is less corn available to use for food.  Corn is heavily used as a sweetener in many food products.  By raising the price of corn, the price of many different kinds of foods are raised.

That is what subsidizing ethanol gives us.  That is what Donald Trump is for and Ted Cruz is against.  Ted Cruz is starting to lead in some Iowa polls, and he’s doing it without this kind of pandering.

I think Donald Trump is fabulous when it comes to immigration and securing our borders, even better than Ted Cruz.  But on economic issues, Donald Trump is no economic conservative.  His tax plan would not lower taxes as much as Cruz’s and would take many taxpayers off the tax rolls entirely, giving them no incentives to vote against tax hikes on the rest of us.

If only we could take the immigration part of Trump and merge it with the rest of Cruz, we’d have the ideal candidate.

We wouldn’t go as far as to say “ideal”. But we agree with Cruz about ethanol, and with Trump about immigration – in particular, closing the borders to Muslim immigration for the duration of the war with Islam.

(Hat tip to our highly valued commenter, liz)