Forgive my prejudice, but I have a special fondness for the Land of Oz - that continent down under populated by the cheeriest, heartiest people on the planet who insist on calling their country Oz-trial-yuh.

Here in the US, even though we’re freaking out over our elections a little over three weeks from now, we should take a moment to root for our Ozzie friends who themselves are having an election as I am writing this.

It was US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who once said: "You are entitled to your opinions, but not to your own facts." In the debate over shale gas - I refuse to call it the fracking debate since fracking has been happening in Britain for 50 years - the opponents do seem to be astonishingly cavalier with the facts.

Here are five things they keep saying which are just not true:

First, that shale gas production has polluted aquifers in the United States.
Second, that it releases more methane than other forms of gas production.
Third, that it uses a worryingly large amount of water.
Fourth, that it uses hundreds of toxic chemicals.
Fifth, that it causes damaging earthquakes.

Here are the facts for each:

In The Brexit and Texit this week, we learned an important word: hysteresis.  Originally a concept in physics to quantify the effects of lag time, it's now used in economics:  "If people are out of work for long enough, the damage to skills and human capital becomes a permanent loss. The underlying growth potential of the economy is damaged for years."

Under Zero, hysteresis has become a political strategy.  Damage America's economy, national security, and moral culture long enough and consistently enough to become permanent.  Part of the strategy is convincing people that resistance to it is futile, even immoral.  Thus the number of his fellow travelers and useful idiots increases.

You could not get a clearer example than, on Tuesday (1/29), 94 out of 100 Senators voted to confirm a treasonous, characterless scumbag as Secretary of State.  There are now only 3 Senators with any self-respect or decency:  John Cornyn (TX), Ted Cruz (TX), and Jim Inhofe (OK) who voted No (Kerry along with 2 others abstained).

And it could get worse. Yet for all of this, there were a number of bright spots this week.  Here we go.

Economic freedom in the US is dropping fast.

The annual Economic Freedom of the World report, including an index of country rankings, has just been released, and it should be a wake-up call. The United States was known as the bastion of economic freedom for more than two centuries, and it was because of its economic freedom that the nation became the pre-eminent economic power.

 However, in just a few short years, the U.S. has fallen from No. 3 in 2000 (behind the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore) to No. 8 in 2005 and to No. 18 in 2010, the last year for which complete statistics are available. Worse yet, the U.S. decline continues, and in next year's ranking, it is almost certain to be lower.

A few facts will help illustrate why economic freedom is so important.