Paul's Blog of Wisdom

“’Corporate tax receipts as a share of (the economy) are at levels not seen since the late 1970s,’ the Congressional Budget Office wrote in its August report."

Darn evil Bush giving those tax cuts to the rich and hurting the poor. Sheesh.

The Republicans have had a political strategy for the upcoming election dropped into their lap by North Korea. Let's see if they're smart enough to take advantage of it. Since Bush came into office, he's been pushing for a missile defense system and many Democrats have gone out of their way to try to stop it. With North Korea recently testing a nuclear bomb and saying that they might launch a nuclear-tipped missile, every Republican running for national office should make support for the missile defense system and the many Democrats' opposition to the system a major plank of their election platform.

North Korea's upcoming nuclear bomb test, if it happens, is a major test for the world. Most world leaders have been tripping over themselves not to stand up to what they themselves have said. France signed U.N. Resolution 1441, which said that Iraq would face "serious consequences" in the event of non-compliance, then instantly ran off to Iraq and told the Iraqi government that France would not support any use of force. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution over the summer saying that Iran had until August 31 to stop enriching uranium and that there would be sanctions if they didn't. Well, Iran didn't stop and no sanctions came. There were more negotiations, of course. Now, even China is saying:

I think if North Koreans do have the nuclear test, I think that they have to realize that they will face serious consequences.

If North Korea does conduct the test, the world, including South Korea and China, *have to* punish them for it. These rogue nations absolutely have to see that there are consequences for their crazy actions. This is a major, major test for the world if it happens. I personally hope that North Korea does conduct the test, so that South Korea and China will hopefully then finally take the threat from the North seriously enough to try to do something about it.

In the September 9th-15th edition of The Economist, they say that the "paleoconservative moment" of 2006 is bad news for the Republican Party. By that, they mean that if the Republican Party gives in to the apparent revolt of the anti-illegal immigration crowd, it will hurt the Republican Party. Well, apparently it will also hurt the Democratic Party, since more than half of Democratic Senators also voted for the 700 miles of fence, as I mentioned here.

They talk about Buchanan as being "nativist" and they show a picture of him with a pitchfork and signs saying "STAY AWAY" and "STAY OUT," therefore clearly saying that he is anti-immigrant. No, he's not. What he says, if The Economist bothered to listen to him, is that he thinks we should focus on bringing immigrants who meet 2 criteria: that they would be of a benefit to our society and that they are from a culture which could assimilate more easily into ours. He says that he prefers bringing immigrants from, say, Great Britain, Ireland or Italy to bringing immigrants from Mexico. That is not anti-immigrant, but The Economist, which is usually so smart in their arguments, seems completely unable to look at this issue in a fair, intelligent way.

I also love how The Economist says that "Mr. Buchanan is right to argue that the immigration system is a disaster, and that a country cannot survive if it is nothing more than a 'polyglot boarding house,'" yet they later say that "His analysis of the immigration problem is not just misguided: it is a recipe for disaster." So, which is it? Is he right that the immigration system is a disaster, or is his analysis a recipe for disaster?

The Economist says that Mexicans "come to America in pursuit of work, not reconquest." Well, it's surely true that the main purpose of coming here for the vast majority of Mexicans is not to reconquer the southwestern U.S., but that doesn't mean it won't cause huge social problems down the road or that it couldn't lead to reconquest. The majority of Mexicans believe that the southwestern U.S. belongs to them, as I've mentioned before. In 50 years, 75% of the population of the southwestern U.S. could be either Mexican or of Mexican descent if nothing is done to fix our immigration system soon. Let's run a little hypothetical experiment. If the governor of, say, California in 2050 said that he was going to pay his state's taxes to the government of Mexico and the government of Mexico started providing services to the state of California, thus making California a de facto Mexican state, would the Mexicans in California really protest? Do you really think they would? I'm not so sure. The retaking of the southwest wouldn't happen with a bang, but with creeping little bits of increasing involvement between the 2 entities like this. Each little creeping bit would seem okay in and of itself and then, before you know it, the southwest would effectively be run by Mexico and most of the Mexicans who are here would be just fine with that and wouldn't protest. That's the fear, not that every Mexican is coming with a gun in hand to attack America and retake the southwest by force.

I am absolutely stunned by this:

Among its final tasks before leaving to campaign, the Senate on Friday night passed and sent to President Bush a bill authorizing 700 new miles of fencing on the southern border...The Senate vote on it Friday night was 80-19.

When I heard that the filibuster was over and it was coming up for a vote, I was confident that it would pass, but I thought it would get somewhere in the range of 60 votes or so. But 80?! Wow! I'm very pleasantly surprised by that. Remember all those people saying that voting to crack down on illegal immigration was such bad politics? Well, apparently, not only virtually all Republicans now think that it's good politics, but the majority of Democrats think so, too. I guess the media elite were just wrong once again. I'm shocked.

This is an editorial defending Wal-Mart, which often offers better pay/benefits than the “mom and pop” stores that everyone says we need to protect from Wal-Mart (how dare a business offer products/services for prices that people like better than those of its competitors? *sheesh* The audacity. Market failure! Market failure!)

“Darn it! You see? You let these greedy capitalists corner the market and drive all their competitors out of business, and what do they do? They, um ... slash the price of life-saving drugs by 86 percent” (http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Sep-25-Mon-2006/opinion/9824692.html).

“There do seem to be competitors left, by the way. Walgreens and CVS saw their stocks slip by 7 to 8 percent on news of the Wal-Mart announcement. What ever will they do now? Struggle to drop their own prices, perhaps.”

Let’s see. I think there are 1 or 2 places to work in, say, Las Vegas. Yet, when Wal-Mart opens a new store, for some reason, they still have employees who are willing to work there. In a market economy, if you don’t like the service or prices at one store, you simply shop somewhere else. If you don’t like the pay and/or benefits at one employer, you simply work somewhere else. So, why does anyone continue to work at Wal-Mart in a place like Las Vegas with plentiful jobs around every corner? And no one can possibly say that Wal-Mart has no competitors. Every grocery store chain—and there are lots of them—is a competitor. Every retail store—and there are TONS of them—is a competitor. Every pharmacy—and there are several big national ones and lots of small, local ones—is a competitor. This is not a market failure. This is quite clearly an example of market success. If you wanted to put in a textbook something extolling the virtues of a market economy, this would be a perfect example. I contend that Wal-Mart has, through its low prices, done more to alleviate poverty than any government program in the history of the world.

"Four Canadian border crossings were shut down Sunday as about 60 of Canada's unarmed border guards walked off the job after they were warned that a person classified as 'armed and dangerous' may be headed into Canada."

Um, what? Is it me or is the word "guard" in these people's job description? What the hell is the point of having a border "guard" whose job it is to protect a border if they're completely unarmed and they just walk off the job when they're told that dangerous person is coming through? That's like having an unarmed military that just walks away when there might be a dangerous person coming. This is insane and it's all because the anti-gun Nazis in Canada are even more powerful than they are here.

I want to preface what I'm about to say by saying that it does not prove that coercion or torture should ever be used. There are some forms of coercive interrogation that I think we should use and some that I don't think we should use and I think they should be codified in law. With that said, I just watched The O'Reilly Factor and he had a guy on from ABC who said that he has talked to many interrogators from our prisons for captured terrorists. He said that some of the people that came forward to him came to him specifically because they were opposed to the interrogation techniques that they were using. He then said that the interrogators have told him that we have gained information from coercive interrogations that have stopped 14 attacks against us since 9/11, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, which I believe is only a few miles from Dan, though I could be wrong about that. That's right, 14. My father has asked me in the past "Why haven't we been attacked again since 9/11?" Well, here's your answer. At the time, I said something like, "Well, maybe John Ashcroft is doing his job effectively." To put it quite bluntly, we haven't been attacked again since 9/11 because George Bush won the last 2 elections instead of his opponents. Now, if you think it would have been worth it to have been attacked all those times in order not to have had the very small civil liberties infringements we've had, that's your prerogative, but to all of you people to whom civil liberties are the primary concern, I think that you should really support small, hopefully temporary, civil liberties infringements now so that we don't get much bigger infringements later. What do you think people would think of your civil liberties arguments if we had been attacked 15 times in the last 5 years? Just imagine saying to a bunch of Americans who have been attacked 15 times in 5 years that having a female interrogator rub her breasts on a captured terrorist is just too far to go to stop attacks. What do you think their reaction would be? Do you really think anyone would give a crap about interrogations that are mildly uncomfortable to captured terrorists if we had been attacked an average of 3 times per year or do you think that they'd be screaming for us to nuke Tehran and Mecca and Demascus? Do you think anyone would stand for the recent situation in Afghanistan where we had dozens of Taliban in our sights, but we didn't shoot them because they were in a cemetery and our rules of engagement say we can't fire on cemeteries? Do you really think we'd be trying to weaken the Patriot Act or do you think we'd be frantically passing even more restrictive legislation? I'll let you decide the answers to these. Take this into account when you're thinking of the best way to preserve your civil liberties.

Sunni Arab terrorists are taking a beating, and you can see that in how they are pulling away from other targets so they can concentrate on Baghdad. For example, in the last three months, attacks on oil facilities, long a favorite of the Sunni Arabs (‘if we can't have it, no one can’) have fallen by nearly 60 percent.

This doesn’t mean that the violence is going to end next week, but the long-term trends are in our favor if we can just stick it out.

It would take another year or so to train Iraqi troops and police sufficiently to take control of Anbar province (the Sunni Arab heartland).

Everyone was saying that being strict on illegal immigration was bad politics not too long ago. *Everyone.* The Economist said that there was a fight in the Republican party between the only logical position, which is that of the President, and the gut position, which was to build a wall and send all the illegals home, which is roughly how they put it. The Economist assured us that if the Republicans went with the strict anti-illegal immigration stance, it would be devastating for the party. Now, all of a sudden the Republicans are starting to show a little bit of spine on *gasp* enforcing our laws by, for instance, voting to build a border fence and it's starting to look increasingly possible, though I wouldn't yet say likely, that the Republicans could keep the majority in the House and the Senate. Are these 2 things related? I think so. Not only that, but last year, only something like 38 House Democrats voted for the border fence and last week, I think 64 did. Plus, more Republicans than last year voted for the fence. Why is it that both the Republicans and the Democrats are moving toward the enforcement-first position right before an election if it's such bad politics? Does everyone, including The Economist, think that both parties are politically suicidal, or is it that this is yet another case of an accepted media truth being proven wrong? I guess we'll find out in about a month and a half.