Paul's Blog of Wisdom

Corporate Tax Receipts

2006-10-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

“’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.

New Republican Strategy

2006-10-10T12:45:00.000-07:00

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.

Major Test for the World

2006-10-05T12:14:00.000-07:00

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.

The Economist On Immigration

2006-09-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

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.

Fence Passes Senate Overwhelmingly

2006-09-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

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.

I Love Wal-Mart

2006-09-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

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.

Canadian Border Guards Walk Out

2006-09-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

"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.

Coercive Interrogation Works

2006-09-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

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 Terrorists Getting Pounded

2006-09-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

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).

Politics of Illegal Immigration

2006-09-18T00:19:00.000-07:00

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.

We Don't Understand Our Enemy

2006-09-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

This is something I've said until I'm blue in the face and, unfortunately, it's still true. We simply don't understand the enemy we're fighting.

The number of dangerous mistakes we have made before and since the outbreak of the war because we do not understand the opponent with whom we are faced is appalling. It seems almost as if we did not want to understand the development which has produced totalitarianism because such an understanding might destroy some of the dearest illusions to which we are determined to cling.

That's from 1944, but every word of it is still true today about Islamic fascism. Here's more:

Since we value individual freedom and material prosperity, we assume that those are also the supreme motivating goods of Muslims. Since we privilege material causes over all others, we ignore spiritual causes or reduce them to deformed responses to unfulfilled material needs. Since we prize the transparent fulfillment of the requirements of agreements we sign, we assume other peoples will also, even if those requirements contradict a more important national interest or a spiritual goal, such as fighting the infidel until the whole world is for Allah, as the Koran puts it.

Here's the summary:

As long as we indulge this reduction of the jihadist to our own assumptions; as long as we show by our actions that we are not really sure that the ends we pursue are just and right, right enough to do things at times we’d rather not; as long as we cling to “dangerous delusions” about human nature and the primacy of the material over the spiritual, we will continue to lose the war. For our enemy has none of our hesitation, none of our doubt, none of our fear of the world’s disapproval. He knows why he kills and dies. What will it take to teach us what we should kill and die for?

A-freaking-men.

Al Qaeda Mentions France

2006-09-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

In Ayman al-Zawahiri's latest tape, he mentioned an Algerian terrorist group joining al Qaeda and he said "We pray to God that they will be a thorn in the side of the American and French crusaders and their allies."

Isn't terrorism about the Iraq war, which France opposed? Guess not. The reason that people might think that terrorism is encouraged by the Iraq war is simple and understandable: lots of terrorists cite it as what drove them to terrorism. What the people who think this fail to realize, though, is that there's always something for the Religion of Perpetual Outrage to cite as a reason for attacking us. For goodness' sake, they go all the way back to the Crusades and Andalusia for justifications to attack civilians today. It simply doesn't matter what we do, they'll find something to justify their violent tendencies, whether it's Iraq or our formerly having troops in Saudi Arabia or support for Israel or the fact that we allow women to get educated and have jobs outside of the home or the fact that we didn't kick Bill Clinton out of office for having an extramarital affair (this was actually mentioned in at least one al Qaeda tape). It's not about our policies! It's about who we are. Many Westerners think that if only we're more accepting to the "other," then maybe they won't hate us as much, but it's just the opposite. It's very specifically the fact that we are open to the "other" that makes them hate us. The West's being so accepting to "decadent" behavior is what makes them hate us. They hate that we're open to any and all religions instead of just Islam. They hate that we accept homosexuals instead of killing them. They hate that we are open to any and all speech. What so many Westerners think will make them like us is really what makes them hate us. They hate our pride in individualism. Everything that we value, they hate, and that's all there is to it.

What "Creates" Terrorists?

2006-09-15T15:15:00.000-07:00

When people try to blame the Iraq war or other foreign policies for "creating" terrorists or for encouraging terrorists, they either don't realize or disregard one thing. The biggest increase in Muslim support for al Qaeda came on September 11, 2001 and the biggest decrease in Muslim support for terrorists has come since the beginning of the Iraq war. Many people don't realize this because it's barely reported. Muslim support for al Qaeda jumped on 9/11/01 and rose again in the run up to the Iraq war. Then, after the war started, and especially after it became clear that al Qaeda was slaughtering thousands of Muslim civilians, Muslims started to realize what a catastrophe al Qaeda had unleashed on them. Remember this: the support went up on 9/11 because the attacks showed that terrorism could achieve something and it was only after they saw that there were serious consequences to be had for terrorism that Muslim support for the terrorists decreased. There's a simple lesson here: terrorists conduct attacks because they think they'll achieve some goals. If you allow them to achieve their goals in response to their attacks, support for terrorism increases. If you punish them in response to their attacks, support for terrorism decreases. This isn't rocket science, yet so many people still don't get it.

Also, take a look at this:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20060915.aspx
"Most Islamic terrorists are not happy with the September 11, 2001 attacks, and consider these particular terrorist acts as an example of poor leadership."

"Years of effort in building up local terrorist organizations, was undone in months. It became more difficult to move around, to raise money and to communicate. Osama bin Laden's decision to attack America had been a disaster for Islamic terrorists everywhere."

"But for the average Islamic terrorist, September 11, 2001 was a disaster. They gained some more media attention, but lost much more. The Islamic radicals never had a shortage of recruits. Much more scarce were trained and talented managers and technicians. Hundreds of these fellows died, or were imprisoned after 911."

"To make matters worse, Western governments often let in Islamic terrorists and gave them refugee status, and allowed them to do fund raising and organizing. All that changed after September 11, 2001. So you can imagine how angry most Islamic terrorists are at al Qaeda."

"The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was seen as yet another disaster (for Islamic terrorism) caused by al Qaeda's rash 911 attacks...And because of 911, America turned a Shia majority Arab country into a democracy. Not only did that put the Sunni Arab minority out of power, but gave all Arabs an alternative to religious or secular dictatorship. Islamic radicals consider democracy an un-Islamic invention from the West. If it catches on, as it appears to be doing in Iraq, it will cause Islamic radicals no end of trouble."

So, the next time you hear that we're less safe from terrorism now or that our attacks on Afghanistan and/or Iraq have increased the power of the terrorits, you'll know the truth. When/if it's become clear that we've won in Afghanistan and Iraq, al Qaeda is effectively done. History will prove this to be true.

My Civil Liberties Fears

2006-09-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

My biggest fear about civil liberties arguments is, and has been for a long time, that the public and the government will overreact to the small civil liberties infringements we've had over the last few years and go too far in the other direction, leaving us even more vulnerable to attack than we were before 9/11. In fact, I think this is already starting to happen a little bit and I think it will continue to happen until we get attacked again.

Most One-Sided Article Ever

2006-09-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

Oh...my...God. This is the most despicably one-sided and biased "article" I've ever seen. Disgraceful. I would think that even ultraliberals would get disgusted by this "article." Take a look at this:

"The sweep has had the unintended effect of underscoring just how vital the illegal immigrants were to the local economy."

"'When his momma brought this baby here and left him, tears rolled down her face and mine too,' Rodas said. 'She said, `Julie, will you please take care of my son because I have no money, no way of paying rent?'"

"'These people might not have American rights, but they've damn sure got human rights,' Robinson said. 'There ain't no reason to treat them like animals.'"

"'This reminds me of what I read about Nazi Germany, the Gestapo coming in and yanking people up,' Slater said."

""These people come over here to make a better way of life, not to blow us up."

There is 1 tiny, little sentence that rebuts this propaganda. Here it is:

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Marc Raimondi would not discuss details of the raids. 'We can't lose sight of the fact that these people were here illegally,' Raimondi said."

That's it. That's the other side. I challenge you to read the whole thing without feeling like you're going to puke. No, there's certainly no bias in the mainstream media. In fact, there's a conservative bias, say some liberals. Please.

Paul

Torture!

2006-09-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

Did you hear about the “torture” that we inflicted on an al Qaeda big shot which was reported in the New York Times over the weekend? The “torture” included playing Red Hot Chili Peppers music loudly. The humanity! I guess we’d better go stop parties all around this country as the party guests are all being tortured!

Left Wing On Foreign Policy

2006-09-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

According to The Economist, a recent poll showed the destruction of al Qaeda to be the #1 foreign policy goal among conservatives and the #10 foreign policy goal among “leftists.” I don’t know exactly what they mean when they use the term “leftists.” I don’t know if that’s people who are registered as Democrats or people who are self-proclaimed liberals, but the fact that destroying al Qaeda is only the #10 goal among those “leftists,” and the apparent fact that the ultra left wing holds extra sway over the Democratic party right now means that, as upset as I am with the Republicans right now, a takeover of the Congress and/or the Presidency by the Democrats absolutely scares the crap out of me at this particular stage in history. I saw Gary Hart on a political talk show recently and he actually said with a straight face that the way to win the war on terror is to get back on the good sides of our democratic “allies,” “like France,” he said, so that we can share intelligence with them. My mouth dropped open at the absolute stupidity of what he said. Never mind that I think France has more to apologize for over the pre-Iraq war diplomacy than we do—and I will defend that until the day I die—and not only are we currently sharing intelligence with our democratic allies (and French intelligence apparently has been extremely effective and helpful in the war on terror), but the fact that this was apparently the only thing he could think of when asked how to win the war on terror absolutely scares me. If this is what passes for Democratic foreign policy, I can’t imagine even fathom giving them my vote.

The Reality In Afghanistan

2006-09-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

How many times have you heard about the "Taliban resurgence" or the "growing insurgency" or the huge "increase in violence" in Afghanistan lately? These terms are so ridiculous and misleading. You hear breathless claims like "2,000 people have been killed in southern Afghanistan in the last few months!" and things like that all the time. *Sigh* The reason for the increase in violence is that NATO has been absolutely beating the crap out of the Taliban lately. Yes, destroying your enemy constitutes violence, but the way it's described is horribly misleading. And those 2,000 people killed? Well, about 1900 of them were Taliban members and probably half of the remaining people killed were civilians. Yeah, it's really difficult for crazed gunmen to kill civilians. Here's the reality:

"NATO's battle with the Taliban has turned into a massacre. NATO intelligence and air reconnaissance has come up with more targets than NATO has troops to take care of. NATO commanders want another 2,500 troops to deal with this, but they won't get them before this years campaigning season is over. While the Taliban keep turning out press releases about how they are winning, the reality on the ground is quite different. Day after day, groups of Taliban fighters are caught by NATO troops, and when these battles are over, there are 10-20 dead Taliban for each dead NATO trooper. Even by Afghan standards, this is a defeat. The old timers, on both sides of this fight, know that the tribal warriors cannot sustain these kinds of losses."

More Guantanamo Nutiness

2006-07-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

Look at the latest news from our "gulag" in Cuba:

"Three suicides at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have been part of a broader plot by detainees who were using confidential lawyer-client papers and envelopes to pass handwritten notes their guards could not intercept, according to documents that government lawyers filed yesterday in federal court" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701590.html).

In other words, the ridiculous level of civil liberties that we are granting to these non-uniformed combatants whose primary goal in life is to kill me allowed those suicides to happen the way they did. Are we serious here? We can't read notes that terrorists are writing to each other? And this is a gulag? This is the most retarded, stupid crap I've ever seen. And everyone from Human Rights Watch to the ACLU to The Economist (usually pretty sane) talks about how awful Guantanamo Bay is? Has everyone in the world gone completely and totally insane? I can't even think straight when I see things like this. Either I'm crazy or the whole Western world has lost its mind. This is just nuts.

Oh, side question: Who the %&$* cared about those suicides? Why did anyone care? The instant that I heard that those people had killed themselves, my instant reaction was: good riddance. What the hell is wrong with people? Sometimes, I really feel like I'm the only sane person living in a world of absolute and utter insanity.

My Argument for the Death Penalty

2006-06-11T01:58:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about the death penalty, but here's an argument for it that I've never heard anyone use. I personally think it's a relatively good argument. Okay, let's imagine that our society didn't punish any criminals. So, we have this imaginary society in which someone can rape and murder a 7-year-old girl and the society didn't punish this guy. Everyone would agree that a society which tolerated this behavior like this is immoral, right? How could we possibly tolerate such awful actions? Basically everyone would agree that a society which didn't punish people who raped and murdered little girls was disgustingly immoral and uncivilized. Okay, now let's imagine that this society changed their laws so that this person who raped and murdered the 7-year-old girl would go to jail for a day. This would make our society a little more moral and civilized, right? That would show that we had some lack of tolerance for this horrendous behavior, if only a little bit. So, we moved a little bit in the right direction here. Now, let's imagine that we changed the law to have this person go to jail for a month. Now, we've moved even more in the right direction. Now, we as a society tolerate this awful behavior even less. Changing this to a year of jail would show we tolerate it even less and that we've become even more moral and civilized as a society. In other words, the more we punish the most awful of behaviors, the more we show that we don't tolerate them and the more moral and civilized we become, or so I would argue. Let's carry this out to it's logical conclusion. If having stronger and stronger punishments for the most vile crimes shows the degree of morality and civilization of a society, doesn't that mean that only a society that uses the strongest of possible punishments is a moral and civilized society? Let me put that another way. If we use the strongest punishment for the most horrible crimes, we as a society are saying that we do not in any way tolerate these awful crimes, so, therefore, we are civilized and moral. If we don't use the strongest possible punishment for someone who, for instance, goes out and rapes and murders children, aren't we basically saying that we, at least to some tiny extent, tolerate the systematic rape and murder of children?

Tax Cuts "Cost" Government?

2006-06-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

This is something that has bothered me for a long time, but it was an article in The Economist that I read today that put it in the front of my mind. The article was about the idea of eliminating the estate tax. The article constantly talked about how much eliminating the estate tax would "cost." Over and over, the article said that eliminating the tax would "cost" so and so amount of money. I hate this terminology. What people so often forget is that that money isn't the government's in the first place. The Economist, and many other people, act like tax money is rightfully the government's and deciding to take less of it away is a horrible "cost" to the government. Let's think of it this way. If you're a schoolyard bully and you beat up another student and take $5 away from him every day for months, then all of a sudden you decide to start beating him up and only taking $4 away from him every day, is your new policy "costing" you $1 a day? Would it be right to deride your new policy as a horrible "cost" to you? Of course not, because the money wasn't rightfully yours in the first place. Why don't people get this? Whatever you personally think about the estate tax, I hate this terminology.

Medicare Costs Go Down

2006-06-08T07:44:00.000-07:00

“Market forces are also driving down the cost of the program. McClellan noted in the same testimony that beneficiary premiums are expected to average $25 a month--down from the $37 projected last summer. And, ‘the overall cost to taxpayers for 2006 has dropped about 20 percent since the July 2005 estimate.’ Projected costs over a 10-year period have plummeted by about $130 billion. When was the last time you heard the government ‘overestimated’ costs of a program” (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/284fbndm.asp).

Had you heard about this? I’ll bet that you hadn’t. Yet, I’ll bet that you heard when the original estimate went up from $400 billion to $500 whatever billion. No media bias? Of course not.

George Bush the Liberal?

2006-06-04T23:10:00.000-07:00

I love that so many people still call George Bush a right-wing extremist. Let's look at some of the things that he's done. Federal government spending has increased under George Bush more rapidly than under any President since Lyndon Johnson. Medicare has expanded by hundreds of billions of dollars worth of spending. Social spending is now higher than it's ever been, even when adjusted for inflation. He pushed a huge increase in federal spending and control over education. He voted for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. He nominated Harriet Myers for the Supreme Court. He barely stood up for that Christian who was going to face a possible death sentence in Afghanistan for the "crime" of converting to Christianity. He barely stood up for freedom of speech during the cartoon jihad controversy. He favors allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the country and become legal. Do these sound like the actions of a right-wing extremist? Whatever you think of these individual things that I listed here, they are clearly not the actions of a right-wing extremist?

Native Hawaiian Autonomy?

2006-06-04T23:02:00.000-07:00

It looks like a bill could pass Congress as early as this month that would give “native Hawaiians” the same legal independence as “native Americans” (the “N” was not capitalized on purpose) and “native Alaskans” (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/270hjrvh.asp). What is wrong with people? It appears that every Democratic Senator will vote for this with several Republicans also voting for it. If that’s true, only a Presidential veto would stop it and I doubt that would happen because Bush has lately been trying to pander to minority votes to “expand the Republican base.” *Sigh* This will be a great liberal triumph and will cement current liberalism as the ideology of racial separation. When will liberals realize that things like this bring us farther from, not closer to, Martin Luther King’s dream of having people be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin? Apparently, liberals want nothing more than to segregate the entire country into racial zones and to judge every single person by the color of their skin. I guess it’s not enough to judge who should get a job or who should get into college based on the color of a person’s skin. Now, we are going to have “native American” racial zones and “native Alaskan” racial zones and “native Hawaiian” racial zones. What’s next, autonomy for Mexicans? Oh, you’d better believe that many Mexicans will be pushing for this if the Hawaii thing passes. The governor of Hawaii, who is unfortunately a Republican totally betraying conservative principles, ran with this as a major part of his/her platform. How long before someone runs for governor of a state with a high Hispanic population—say, California—with giving Mexicans political autonomy as a major part of their platform? You know that it’s their land land, after all, right, or so many of them think? How long after that before Congress, in the 2 parties’ attempts to be the bigger racial panderer, passes a law giving Hispanics political autonomy in the southwestern U.S.? If this Hawaii bill passes, I predict that California will have at least 1 gubernatorial candidate this year with political autonomy for Mexicans as a major part of his/her platform. It will start out as just a fringe candidate, but it will grow over time. You just watch. When will people realize that these are the logical results of the racial separation that liberals have been practicing for the last several decades? Liberals have been working systematically to divide our country along racial lines at least my whole life. There’s no such thing as someone simply being an American anymore. There are only African-Americans or Asian-Americans or Mexican-Americans. It’s time that we stop identifying our race on census forms. It’s time that we stop putting our race on applications for college. It’s time we get rid of “native American” and “native Alaskan” autonomous political zones. It’s time we got rid of affirmative action for specific races or groups of people. Can’t people see that all these things do is perpetuate the idea that race matters and that races of people are different and deserving of different treatment? Liberals used to stand for real principles. Now all they stand for is the principle that the white man is always wrong and everyone else is always right.

Simply Remarkable

2006-05-26T22:30:00.000-07:00

Look at this:

A six-day operation has led to the arrests of 179 "immigration violators" in Clark County, federal officials announced Thursday, and most of the people arrested already have been removed from the country.

Okay, that's good, but look at this:

Vicenta Montoya, an immigration attorney who represents several illegal immigrants who were arrested during the operation...also accused immigration officials of trying to "intimidate the undocumented community."

"Intimidate the undocumented community?!" What?! Do people realize how loony tunes they are? I don't even know what to say to this. The "undocumented community" is here illegally. Enforcing our immigration laws is kinda, sorta those immigration officials' jobs. Apparently, though, that's just too much. It's intimidating, you know. Maybe our police officers should stop arresting rapists and murderers because that would be intimidating to the criminal community. Things like this just make my hair stand on end. What is wrong with people?

Minimum Wage Hurts the Poor

2006-05-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Look at this paper to see how raising the minimum wage in Washington increased the unemployment and poverty rates and decreased employment growth. You know, this is basic economics and it's really not the slightest bit surprising.

English Is the National Language

2006-05-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

The Senate has done at least one good thing during the immigration debate:

As part of the ongoing debate on immigration reform, the Senate on Thursday voted on two amendments to make English the "national language," as well as set a "common and unifying language."

Something like this should be a no-brainer, right? After all, even my wife the immigrant, for whom English is her third language, is absolutely adamant that English should be the national language and that every person who comes here should speak English. Well, apparently it's not a no-brainer for the Democrats who are tripping over themselves to sell out our country in order to get some extra Hispanic votes:

In a largely symbolic vote that took hours of deliberation, the Senate approved the English as the "national language" bill with a vote was 63-34.

Only 63-34?! This should have passed 100-0 and then had Dick Cheney come in and vote just to make the vote 101-0. Go read the article yourself and let your jaw drop over the stunning pandering for Hispanic votes. It's disgusting. Here's the most disgusting quote:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada went further. "I really believe this amendment is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish."

Yes, everyone who thinks that people who come to America should speak English is racist. *Sigh* I apologize to everyone in America for having voted for Harry Reid. That was easily the worst vote that I've ever made. I'm sorry. As disgusted as I am by the Republicans right now, I am even angrier at the Democrats. The Democrats are so pathetic it makes my skin crawl.

What Would Mohammed Do?

2006-05-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

This is disturbing and unpleasant, but I believe that it is vital to know. I have said that we can't possibly fight a war if we don't even know who the enemy is. With that in mind, Raymond Ibrahim has written an article entitled "What Would Mohammed Do?" It's obviously a play on the expression "What would Jesus do?" that many Christians use. However, the answers for Mohammed are a whole lot different from the ones for Jesus. Take a look at this:

Allah proclaims: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity [i.e. embrace Islam], then open the way for them: for Allah is oft forgiving, most merciful” (Koran 9:5).

Or this:

Islam was established by the sword. This is an historical fact, not an accusation. It’s not for nothing that Saudi Arabia, home of the Prophet and Islam, depicts a scimitar with the words “There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is His Prophet” on its national flag. Both Muslim and non-Muslim histories of Islam agree that the Warrior-Prophet personally waged war after war with the express purpose of spreading Islam.

These were wars forcing other peoples, first Arabs then non-Arabs, to embrace Islam and submit to the life-guiding Words of Allah (the Sharia), or else to pay tribute and live in humility as subjects of Islam, or else, to die by the sword.

Or how about this?:

Islam is a rigorous faith with many laudable principles and prescriptions. Many people, not only Muslims, agree that other cultures can learn from the ideas of mercy, charity, and justice that also underlie Islam. But the fact remains that establishing Islam’s supremacy itself is the first principle, according to its holiest books and history. Moreover, based on the actions of the Prophet, his Companions and first caliphs, establishing Islamic hegemony through the sword was and thus is the norm.

In other words, whereas "Do unto others as you would have done unto you" is the single most important teaching of Christianity, the spread of Islam is the single most important teaching of Islam. For this reason, I believe that the very existence of Islam will be a problem and a threat for the world as long as the religion exists. I realize that that's about as politically incorrect as one can be, but that's what I truly believe.

One of the first instincts of many in the West, including me, was to say that the terrorists don't represent Islam, that people have done horrible things in the name of Christianity before, that it's really a religion of peace but the terrorists have skewed it, yada yada yada. I personally believe that these ideas that we preach (as if Westerners who know absolutely nothing about Islam really understand Islam better than Muslims do) constitute a borderline religion of our modern liberal societies and that these ideas, which we follow with religion-like faith, will lead to our destruction if we don't wise up. So, the question remains, what would Mohammed do?

The New York Times Is Disgraceful

2006-05-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

In discussing President Bush's plan to send National Guard troops to the southern border, here is what an editorial in the New York Times said:

America must send its overtaxed troops to the border right now, they say, so a swarm of ruthless, visa-less workers cannot bury our way of life under a relentless onslaught of hard work.

Wow. I don't even know where to begin on this sentence. First of all, liberals have to stop the nonsense argument that every single illegal immigrant is here simply to work hard for the betterment of their family. That's bull and everyone knows it. Yes, that's true of most of them, but not all. Just look at the 100,000+ illegal immigrants who are in American jails for felonies, with American taxpayers paying $50,000 per year for each one of them. The argument that everyone who comes here is just going to be an honest, hardworker is just stupid, especially coming from writers who live in a city where almost 3,000 people were slaughtered less than 5 years ago. They, of all people, should realize what can happen when you don't keep track of who's coming into your country, but their ultra left-wing bias clearly clouds any semblance of logic left in their brains. But wait, there's more:

Rather than standing up for truth, Mr. Bush swiveled last night in the direction of those who see immigration, with delusional clarity, as entirely a problem of barricades and bad guys.

So, because I think that we should secure the border first before we discuss a guestworker program, I see this entirely as a problem of barricades and bad guys. What's that? You want more? Here you go:

His plan to deploy "up to 6,000" National Guard troops to free the Border Patrol to hunt illegal immigrants is a model of stark simplicity, one sure to hearten the Minuteman vigilantes, frightened conspiracy theorists, English-only Latinophobes, right-wing radio and TV personalities, and members of Congress who have no patience for sorting out the various and mixed blessings that surging immigration has given this country.

First of all, I have to point out the obvious. The National Guard is called the National Guard! Get it? As in, they're there to *guard* the *nation.* That's kind of their reason for existence. I really don't think it's outrageous to use the National Guard to guard the nation when our nation is clearly not being sufficiently guarded at the moment. Apparently, if I think that we should do something crazy like enforce our laws, I'm either a "vigilante," a "frightened conspiracy theorist" or a "Latinophobe." Nice. Demonizing your opponents on an issue as racists because you can't beat them in an intellectual argument. Very classy. Boy, the Times just sinks lower and lower every day. Not to mention that I think it's been shown pretty clearly that the Minutemen are not vigilantes. They sit in lawnchairs armed with telephones to call the Border Patrol when they see someone crossing illegally. Boy, what whacko vigilantes they are! More:

He denounced "amnesty" again, but did not speak up forcefully enough for a citizenship path for the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants who, in huge national marches in recent weeks, have made their hunger to assimilate powerfully clear.

Oh, yes, those people who were waving Mexican flags around (until the organizers realized it made Americans angry and told them to wave American flags during the later marches) and the majority of whom think that the Southwestern U.S. belongs to Mexico clearly want nothing more than to assimilate into our society. To all the people who say that we should be legalizing all the people who came here legally, I point them to all of the people who came here legally, including my wife. My wife went through years of paperwork, English tests, bureaucracy, interviews and paid lots of money to be able to come here and to stay here. How can people possibly say that after she went through all of that to come here legally that all the people who just gave our law the finger and came here illegally should be allowed to stay. That is offensive on a personal level because of all the crap my wife had to go through to come here legally. I say that they might as well come and spit in my wife's face.

Troops to the Border

2006-05-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the President is going to announce a deployment of National Guard troops to the southern border. I personally think this is a great idea, but I have 2 concerns. My first concern is that he is just going to use this Guard deployment to score points among his base in order to be able to push through an amnesty for the current illegal immigrants and a guest worker program which the government bureaucracy probably can't handle. I absolutely do not support an amnesty and I support a guest worker program in theory if it worked the way it's supposed to work, but it's already been shown that the government can't even effectively handle screening of the number of immigrants we already have coming in. Adding hundreds of thousands more per year would almost certainly be very ugly and would likely just lead to more chaos. My second concern with the Guard deployment is that it would just be short-term. I fear that the President would do this now while the public is focused on the issue, then quietly remove the troops later when the pressure is off, allowing the huge flow of illegal immigrants to continue once again. I'm hoping he'll address these issues on Monday night in his speech. We'll see. If he does address these problems, that'll will go a long way to rebuilding support among his base, including me. I've been wavering on him big time lately.

Stop the Presses!

2006-05-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, stop the presses! I have some shocking news. I know you'll be horrified. Okay, deep breath. Here I go. It appears that the NSA is doing its job! Take a moment to let that sink in. Yes yes, I know, you're shocked. You should be. It appears that the NSA is about the only federal agency actually doing its job. Am I the only one who thinks that the hysterics over USA Today's story about the NSA collecting *external* data on people's phone calls is ridiculous? Obviously, I'm not, as you can see here:

The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort.

It appears that the majority of Americans have their head screwed on right. Once again, it appears that one of the things that angers the ultra-left the most appears to be about the only thing on which the majority of Americans agree with the President. From what we've heard so far, there is no law-breaking going on here whatsoever. The NSA is not collecting *internal* data, meaning that they're not listening to people's calls. They're examining patterns of *external* phone call data to try to find any patterns that link it to terrorism. Last I checked, this was kinda, sorta the NSA's job. For the people who are against this, I ask them to be intellectually honest and simply call for the abolishment of the NSA because if you oppose this, you quite simply oppose the NSA's existence, since this is what they do. We should make sure that they don't do anything illegal and that they don't start just listening to domestic phone calls randomly (the previous hubbub about wiretapping was on international calls, remember), but at the moment, it appears that these things aren't happening.

When we were attacked on our soil and had 3,000 of our people killed, we were told that this was a war that we were fighting and that we might have to sacrifice in order to win this war. Most, if not all, Americans accepted this premise. Yet, almost 5 years later, this is the most we've been asked to sacrifice and that's just too much for the far left. Wow.

Side question: why aren't the high and mighty media who got so mad about intelligence leaks when it involved Valerie Plame getting mad about *this* leak? I thought they hated intelligence leaks. No liberal bias in the media? Sure. Can anyone still say that with a straight face?

Stop Funding the U.N.

2006-05-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a big *sigh*. Why do we continue funding the U.N. when it does things like this:

Cuba, China, Russia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia were among countries winning seats that human rights advocates say do not merit places because of their poor record of protection of freedoms.

Those countries are now on the U.N. Human Rights Council. China, with among the heaviest Internet restrictions of any country on Earth? Saudi Arabia, where you get jailed, and probably worse, simply for being a Christian? Cuba, which doesn't allow its citizens to leave, where people are jailed and beaten just for disagreeing with the government and where the children of dissidents are denied education? Sheesh. The U.S. pays something like 50% of the U.N.'s dues. Why? I think that burning the millions of dollars that we give to the U.N. to keep poor people living in the Northeast warm in the winter would provide a better use than giving it to the U.N.

We've All But Won In Iraq

2006-05-09T12:11:00.000-07:00

Are we winning in Iraq? Can we win in Iraq? Take a look at this:

A retired army general who was once called Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "most outspoken critic" over the war in Iraq now says the U.S. is achieving its objectives there. Barry McCaffrey, perhaps best known as President Clinton's drug czar, blasted the Pentagon in 2003 for invading Iraq without enough troops to keep the peace after the fall of Baghdad.

But after a week in Iraq, McCaffrey praised the morale and effectiveness of U.S. forces as "simply awe inspiring," called the Iraqi Army, "real, growing, and willing to fight," and noted that "the Iraqi police are beginning to show marked improvement in capability."

And while he called foreign fighters a "tactical menace," McCaffery reports, "the foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to the creation of an Iraqi government."

Or go here and read about the captured al Qaeda documents we've found in Iraq showing the desperation among al Qaeda in Iraq. We've basically defeated the insurgency in Iraq. They can still cause some damage, but they are simply no longer a threat to the stability of the country or the government. Soon, we're going to start disarming the various local militias, too. By the end of this year, I predict that it will be obvious to anyone who pays attention that we're obviously winning in Iraq.

Stunning Double Standard

2006-05-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

This is just amazing, yet it doesn't really surprise me. There was a pro-amnesty rally (and don't let people fool you with any other terms like "rallies for immigrant rights," these were pro-amnesty rallies, plain and simple) on Monday that shut down the Las Vegas Strip, which is one of the busiest roads in the world. In fact, the intersection of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard is the single busiest intersection in the world. The rally then went to a local park. Look at this:

Local ordinances require organizers of any event that will block a roadway to obtain a free permit, hire workers to barricade streets, and pay for police officers to route traffic. For an event like Monday morning's rally in a city park, the law requires organizers to apply for a permit and to purchase an insurance policy against park damage.

Monday's organizers neither applied for nor acquired any permits. So far as is known, they have made no attempt to pay police.

The police have no intention of citing anyone at all over this rally. As the newspaper states, one can make a strong case that these requirements are unconstitutional infringements on people's free speech rights. That's not the problem, though. Look at this:

For instance, Chris Christoff, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, says he was turned down for a permit for a similar march, intended to honor veterans, a few years back. "The reason they (the county) gave was that they couldn't close the streets off because it was a safety hazard." Mr. Christoff says he was told he would also have to come up with $25,000 for an insurance policy, pay overtime for police officers to monitor the event, and pay workers to put up barricades.

So, our military veterans were turned down for a permit, but not illegal aliens. Incredible, huh? I'm tempted to say that it's unbelievable, but that wouldn't be even close to true. In fact, it's quite believable. Our screwed up, disgustingly politically correct society apparently thinks that illegal aliens are better and more deserving than our military veterans who quite literally put their lives on the line to protect all of us. This would be funny if it weren't so disgusting. Seriously, what is wrong with us?

Prediction

2006-05-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

It's commonly accepted knowledge now that Afghanistan was the "right" war while Iraq was the "wrong" war and that Afghanistan is progressing better towards being a stable democracy than Iraq is. However, I predict that a year from now, it will be obvious and it will be commonly accepted knowledge that Iraq is actually progressing better than Afghanistan both in terms of security and in terms of the political situation.

Sigh Again

2006-05-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

Boy, I've been sighing an awful lot lately. Here's the newest reason why:

As gas prices average $2.91 nationwide, according to the Energy Department, the House approved a bill that would impose criminal penalties and fines of up to $150 million for energy companies caught price gouging. It failed to pass by the two-thirds vote needed a measure to increase refinery production by making it easier for companies to get into the business. That vote was 237-188.

I'm going to tell people a secret. There are already laws and penalties against companies for collusion, so this legislation is pointless. If there is evidence of collusion among oil companies, it should be punished according to the current laws on the books. Oil company collusion has been investigated multiple times, by Republican and Democratic Presidents and there has never been any evidence of collusion found.

This legislation naturally brings one to the next question: What constitutes price gouging? The legislation calls on the Federal Trade Commission to define what price gouging is. How does one define this? Is it simply profit above a certain level? I'll tell you, I sure as hell don't want the government saying how much profit a company in a free market can make. How do they determine this level above which a company is gouging? Yes, Exxon Mobil had $10 billion profit last quarter, but that was on $100 billion revenue. That's a relatively high profit margin, but not shockingly so. For instance, in the third quarter of 2005, Google made $381 million profit on $1.6 billion in revenue. Therefore, Google had a much higher profit margin than Exxon Mobil did, but no one is screaming about Google's "gouging." With Google's profit margin in the third quarter of 2005, if they had $100 billion in revenue, they would have had over $23 billion in profit. Obviously Google is gouging! We need to punish them! Give me a break. If there's collusion, punish it. If not, give it a rest.

As for the second part, Congress passed up the chance to do something that would actually have an effect on gas prices, namely streamlining the process to build new refineries and allowing drilling in ANWR. They're excellent at passing meaningless legislation that makes it seem like they're actually doing something, but when it comes to actually doing something, just forget about it. *Sigh*

More Reconquista

2006-05-03T12:29:00.000-07:00

Before the illegal immigration hullabaloo started, I said that over the coming years and decades there would be increasing pressure by Mexicans to take back the southwestern U.S. At the time, what I said probably sounded crazy and unduly alarmist to most people. Take a look at this:

“On NPR's ‘All Things Considered,’ Gloria Ramirez Vargas, a politician in Baja, Calif., rallied her constituents with a similar cry: ‘Many Mexicans are nourishing the ground in the U.S., but those lands were once ours. Those same lands, which now with intelligence, with love and with a lot of work, we are re-conquering again for our Mexico’” (http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin050306.php3).

This is not confined to a few extremists. This quote is by an elected politician in Mexico saying flat out that Mexicans are “re-conquering” the southwestern U.S. for Mexico! That seems to signal that the majority of her constituents believe that as well, as she probably wouldn’t say that if her constituents were totally against it. This is a huge problem. We are letting in millions upon millions of people, the majority of whom think that the southwestern U.S. belongs to a different country. If Mexicans had the desire to assimilate they would rise up nationally and scream at the top of their lungs that they disavow themselves from this politician’s remarks. Do you see that happening? Of course not, because most Mexicans agree with her. Don’t believe me? Check this out:

“The poll found that 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, ‘The territory of the United States' southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico’ Zogby said 28 percent disagreed, while another 14 percent said they weren't sure” (http://oglebay.blogspot.com/2006/04/mexican-poll-results.html#links).

Worried? Well, you should be. Letting in millions upon millions of people who resent us and who think that much of our country rightfully belongs to them would be roughly equivalent to Israel letting in millions upon millions of Palestinians. It would be suicidal for Israel to do that and it would be suicidal for us to continue on our current path. If we don’t do something about this soon, we’re going to have MAJOR social problems in the coming years and decades. French-style riots can’t happen here? Just wait.

Proof Illegal Immigration Can Be Stopped

2006-04-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this:

Rumors of immigration roundups have prompted thousands of illegal immigrants to stay home this week and are making some afraid to participate in a national immigration protest planned for Monday.

Len Mills, executive vice president of the Associated General Contractors of South Florida, said he estimated at least 50 percent of workers on construction jobs in the region hadn't shown up for work.

This proves that we can stop illegal immigration from being a big problem. How does this prove that point? The federal government performed 1 high-profile raid on illegal immigrants a week or so ago, catching about 1,000 people, and one smaller raid yesterday, catching about 100 people. Compared to the 10-20 million illegal immigrants in the country now, 1,000 people is a mere 1% of 1% of the illegal population. Yet, from the government doing only 2 raids and catching a mere .01% of the illegal population, a huge number of illegal immigrants are already scared to try to work here. That shows that the tiniest bit of enforcement of our immigration laws causes huge tremors throughout the illegal population. If people think that they can't get jobs here illegally, they simply won't try. If employers fear the consequences of hiring illegals, they won't hire illegals. If illegals can't get jobs because no one will hire them, they'll simply go home. As we can see from this story, it really doesn't take much. A high-profile raid every once in a while appears to be all it will take. We don't need to deport 12 million illegal immigrants, as people often say. If they can't get jobs, they'll simply leave. Enforcing the law is really all it takes. Wow, go figure.

Max Boot On Journalists

2006-04-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

Here's Max Boot in the L.A. Times:

"It is hard to see how media apologists can deny their political bias when no fewer than four prizes were given at least in part for Bush-bashing."

"The full repercussions of these security breaches remain unknown because, just as in 1942, intelligence officers are loath to publicly reveal the harm done to their activities. But there is no doubt that these were among the government's most tightly held secrets and that, despite personal pleas from Bush, both newspapers decided to publish them anyway — to the approbation of their peers."

"What I have found is that journalists feel more bound by their duty to their profession than to their country and that their highest professional calling, as they see it, is to preserve a halo of 'objectivity' by not choosing sides in any controversy.

"No one working for the mainstream media today would refer, as Ernie Pyle did during World War II, to 'our soldiers,' 'our offensive,' 'our predicament.' Today it's 'American soldiers,' 'the military offensive' and (most damning of all) 'the president's predicament' — as if this were Bush's war, not ours."

"An unwillingness to play favorites makes sense when reporting on most topics. Mainstream reporters shouldn't choose between Republicans and Democrats or Microsoft and its critics (though in practice they usually do). But is studied neutrality really the right posture when covering a battle against monsters who fly hijacked aircraft into office buildings?"

I believe that this is one of the big reasons that Fox News is dominating the cable news ratings. They really started to take over the ratings during the Iraq war and I think that's because the people on Fox were obviously happy when we achieved something and were obviously sad when something happened that was bad for us in the war. Other media outlets seem to delight in reporting negative things, while the people on Fox seem to delight in reporting progress and success.

Let the Pandering Begin

2006-04-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

Here comes the pandering:

Senate Republicans are unveiling a 10-point plan Thursday that offers a $100 "gas tax holiday" rebate check to millions of taxpayers. Meanwhile, Democrats are proposing a 60-day gasoline tax holiday.

*Sigh* Both of these ideas are stupid, mindless pandering. How much taxpayer money would we waste by processing and sending out $100 checks to millions of people? A gas tax holiday would just eliminate money from going to the highway trust fund, which is used to build roads, thus causing more congestion in the future, causing us to use more gas sitting in traffic, thus driving up the price of gasoline again. What's even sadder than the mindless election-year pandering going on here is the fact that this would actually sway some voters. How stupid are people? What person out there is stupid enough to think that these things are actual long-term solutions? There are only 2 useful things in Frist's legislation, and they are:

The bill also encourages expansion of existing refineries to expand production capabilities, putting more fuel online for consumers.

and

a provision on opening drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Those would actually make a difference, though not right away. Here is a real long-term energy plan. First, you dramatically streamline the process for building and expanding refineries. Second, you open up drilling virtually anywhere in American territory, whether that's in ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico, or the coast of California or in rural Nevada. Why we're not drilling all the oil that we can get from within our own country baffles the hell out of me. Third, you increase the gas tax by a lot, say $2 per gallon, and lower some other tax like the income tax or payroll tax to offset that increase. This increase will spur the market to find its own innovations. No more government subsidies for specific attempts to find alternative fuels. No more subsidies for hydrogen fuel-cell cars. No more subsidies for ethanol. This is, in effect, the government trying to pick winners, which the government doesn't have a good history of doing. If you raise the cost of gas enough, the market will find its own solutions. It could be hydrogen or it could be something else. Who knows? Ultimately, though, I have more faith in the market than the government to do this. Fourth, eliminate the ineffective and economically inefficient CAFE standard and replace it with a system that simply taxes cars based on their gas mileage. The lower the gas mileage, the higher the tax. Here you have the beginnings of a real energy policy. This haphazard, pandering nonsense is probably worse than worthless.

Liberals and Lost Rights

2006-04-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Liberals harp on and on about our supposed loss of rights and civil liberties under George Bush. Yet, the 2 biggest examples of loss of rights over the last few years are the ban on issue ads in the months leading up to elections from the McCain-Feingold bill and the voluntary giving up of the right to show anything in our media which might offend Muslims. Yet, both of these things are loved by liberals, by and large. Do they not see this?

Victor Hanson on Libya

2006-04-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

Here's my favorite historian, Victor Davis Hanson, on Libya:

"Indeed, after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the United States was supposedly disliked worldwide, its efforts at democratization stalled in the bloodshed of the Sunni Triangle. Yet here in Libya at least, people have been friendly to me and the Americans I'm traveling with — and seem ready to resume relations and surprise Westerners with their newfound access to the outside world.

"It may go mostly unspoken, but the removal of Saddam and the resulting effort to birth democracy in Iraq have sent tremors through the Middle East."

"But the Lebanese people are in a fury against their former occupiers, the Syrians. Tens of thousands of Jordanians took to the streets to protest against the terror of fundamentalist Islam. Revolutionary Hamas is already looking ridiculous, as it tries to beg or cajole enough petty cash to keep its garbage collectors on the job."

"The truth is that a huge rock was dropped in the stagnant Middle East pond by the removal of Saddam Hussein."

Gas

2006-04-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

I say, it's about time.

President Bush on Tuesday ordered a temporary suspension of environmental rules for gasoline, making it easier for refiners to meet demand and possibly dampen prices at the pump.

Easing the environment rules will allow refiners greater flexibility in providing oil supplies since they will not have to use certain additives such as ethanol to meet clean air standards.

The ethanol requirement is simply a pork barrel project for midwestern farmers anyway. I personally find this very interesting:

"What happen to Iraq oil, Mr. President? You said Iraqi oil would pay for the war. Ain't seen no money. Ain't seen no oil," Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland said.

Wow. Just wow. First, Bush was pounded for supposedly going into Iraq for the oil, which made him evil. Now, he's getting pounded for not taking Iraq's oil? What?

More Reconquista

2006-04-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

Here are some more pictures from the latest reconquista rally. These poor people just want to work hard to earn a living for their family, you know. They have no other agenda whatsoever. Right.

Democrats Support Teacher Incentive Pay

2006-04-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

This has me very excited:

Incentive pay for teachers, full-day kindergarten and more options for high schoolers -- paid for in part by a state lottery -- are the main education proposals Nevada Democrats plan to back in the state Legislature next year.

The idea of rewarding teachers for measurable improvement in student performance was something of a departure for the party, which often has criticized the batteries of tests required by President Bush's No Child Left Behind law as destructive to real, creative learning.

In announcing the new plan, Assemblyman John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas, acknowledged that it's a different direction for the party. "Democrats want to take a new approach to education," Oceguera said. "We will invest in our children and teachers, but we will expect accountability and measurable results."

This is wonderful. It appears that the Democrats are finally going to stand up to the teachers' unions and put forth intelligent proposals for education beyond the old standby of just throwing more money at it. I'm not saying that more money can't help. I'm just saying that that alone is insufficient. There are certainly more reforms that I would put forth if I were running for office, such as allowing more school choice to bring about real competition between schools and to allow people in poor areas to go to better schools, but this is definitely progress. The most interesting thing about the article is what appears to be a sublte admission that President Bush's approach to education is winning in the public debate.

"I believe the debate has evolved," Horsford said. "The bottom line is, we need accountability for our public investment in education."

I've long said that there are probably parts of the thousands-of-pages-long No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act that are not perfect and that can and should be changed. Yet, I've also long said that I believed that the general principles of progress measurement and accountability behind NCLB were the right principles. At least in Nevada, the Democratic Party seems to be agreeing with me and, in effect, subtlely saying that President Bush was largely right about education.

Proud To Be Latino?

2006-04-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

I saw an ad for a radio station--96.3--on the back of a bus in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday that said "Proud To Be Latino." What do you think the reaction would be if a radio station had an ad on a bus that said "Proud To Be White?" Do I even need to ask?

Iran the Terrorist State

2006-04-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

So, Iran has openly stated that it has 40,000 suicide bombers waiting to attack us. That means that Iran says out in the open that they are a terrorist state. A terrorist state simply can not be allowed to exist any longer. That means that our policy towards Iran must be one of regime change. We should enlarge the military as soon as possible. In the meantime, we should do whatever we can to delay Iran's nuclear plans. We should try diplomacy as much as we can. If that doesn't work, we should try sanctions. If that doesn't work, we should use limited military strikes to delay their nuclear program. Then, over the next few years, assuming we can reduce our troop levels in Iraq, we might very well have to try overthrowing the mullahs by force. No, I do not want another war. It would be ugly and horrible and most Americans, including me, are sick and tired of war. However, we simply can't allow an openly terrorist-supporting state to exist anymore, especially one that is trying to get nuclear weapons. We can't just ignore a humungous threat to us because it would be hard in the short-term. I contend that we have no other realistic long-term option besides regime change in Iran.

2006-04-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

Here's an editorial written by Radley Balko of the Cato Institute on immigration. Here's a copy of an e-mail response I sent to him:

You use the common argument that previous groups of immigrants, like the Chinese and Irish, have assimilated into our culture, therefore the fear that Mexicans won’t assimilate must be wrong this time. This is comparing apples and oranges. You simply can’t compare our current Latino, which is primarily Mexican, immigration with previous bursts of immigration. You certainly can’t compare it to Irish immigration, because the Irish had one big advantage in assimilating, namely that Irish people speak English. Wow, by the third generation, 80% of Mexicans speak primarily English. For the Irish that number was 100% during the first generation. The biggest reason, however, that you can’t compare our current Mexican immigration to previous big bursts of immigration is the sheer numbers. Hispanics are now the biggest minority in the United States. Just look at the numbers to see how quickly that has occurred. Previous bursts of immigration from one country happened for a few years, then slowed down significantly. Over time and several generations, then, their people assimilated. If Mexican immigration slowed down significantly now, then Mexicans would assimilate over time, too. The problem with this is that there is no sign that Mexican immigration is going to slow down any time soon unless we actually put forth the resources to enforce our laws. Sure, after 3 or 4 generations, Mexicans are largely assimilated into American society and culture. The problem with the implication of this statement is that the number and percentage of first- and second-generation Mexicans is ever-increasing. That means that we have a large and constantly growing unassimilated minority. The more it grows, the more it will be allowed to grow. By this I mean that as the unassimilated “Mexican” sections of America grow, their children will increasingly come in contact with unassimilated Mexicans and Mexican culture, listen primarily to Spanish-language radio stations and watch primarily Spanish-language TV channels, so, increasingly, their children will not assimilate. The previous bursts of immigration did not have the numbers and the duration of our current Mexican immigration, so you simply can’t make this comparison. There’s also one more very big thing about Mexicans that separates them from any other big group of immigrants that we’ve ever had come in and it’s something that very few people on either side of the debate seem to mention. “The poll found that 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, ‘The territory of the United States' southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.’ Zogby said 28 percent disagreed, while another 14 percent said they weren't sure” (http://oglebay.blogspot.com/2006/04/mexican-poll-results.html#links) (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27941). So, we’re importing, by the millions upon millions, people who say that a significant part of our country belongs to Mexico. If we don’t slow down immigration from Mexico, then a group of people who largely believe that much of our country is not ours will be majorities in whole states. I personally don’t want to see who they would elect into office. I don’t want them electing people who say that we should give the Southwest back to Mexico and who would work to make that happen. I’m not sure that this would happen, but I for one don’t want to find out. Therefore, I think that importing so many millions of Mexicans is crazy if only for this reason alone.

Your response to people who want to enforce our immigration laws is that “not all laws are moral.” Then you compared this to previous laws banning blacks and whites from eating at the same counter. Are you serious? Are you therefore saying that all laws controlling immigration are as immoral as a law banning blacks and whites from eating with each other? If you believe this, let me ask you a question. There are probably 5 billion people in the world that would come to the U.S. tomorrow if they could. Are you proposing that we let in all 5 billion of those people tomorrow? Do you think that would be reasonable? Of course you don’t believe that. So, that means that you support having some restrictions on immigration. If we are going to have restrictions on immigration, don’t you think that we should enforce these restrictions? This is really not a difficult concept to grasp. I would think that even you would support having restrictions and enforcing them.

You then say that a test of whether someone is anti-immigrant or merely anti-illegal immigrant is to ask them if they support a guest worker program. That’s a silly and unfair thing to say, for a few reasons. The first reason that’s silly and unfair is that I, and many people, generally support a guest worker program in theory, but we are not sure that we would support one in practice. Our government has shown itself either incapable of enforcing or unwilling to enforce our current immigration laws. If the government shows that it can enforce our immigration laws, then we can discuss having a guest worker program. Until that time, though, I will oppose a guest worker program. Also, saying that if someone doesn’t support a guest worker program—which would bring an additional several hundred thousand immigrants into the country every year on top of the million or so we already bring in each year legally—that makes that person anti-immigrant is unfair. Like I said before, basically everyone does support some restrictions on immigration. Everyone, therefore, has their own idea of what constitutes the optimal number of legal immigrants to allow in every year. Maybe this person just has a different idea of the optimal number of immigrants to bring in than you do. Maybe this person just happens to think that we already allow in a good number of legal immigrants and doesn’t want to increase that number by several hundreds of thousands per year. Maybe this person thinks we should allow in only 300,000 immigrants per year. Does that make this person anti-immigrant or does this person just have a different view of the optimal number than you do? Maybe this person thinks we should allow in only 1,000,000 immigrants a year. Again, does that make this person anti-immigrant or does this person just have a different viewpoint than you do? Maybe this person thinks that having hundreds of thousands of guest workers come in per year would create a two-tiered immigration system in which the guest workers will think “Oh, so we’re good enough to work for them, but not good enough to live with them,” which would then lead to future social tensions. I personally think that it would lead to future social tensions and I have therefore become a bit wary of the idea. Who knows why someone would oppose the guest worker program? Making your charge is like saying that if a person doesn’t agree with you 100% on the exact number of immigrants to bring in every year and the exact structure by which we will bring them in, that makes them anti-immigrant. Do you really think that’s fair?

You say that “Immigration opponents frequently claim that Mexican immigrants are crime prone, more likely to be on public assistance, and a drain on the healthcare and education systems. Some of that may be true.” You then say “But I also suspect that much of this anti-immigrant sentiment is exaggerated, or conjecture.” Well, let’s say that the problems caused by illegal immigrants are not as severe as the more extreme opponents make it out to be. Doesn’t that mean, though, that they’re still problems? Whether the problems are huge negatives are small negatives, they’re still negatives, right? Doesn’t that mean that we should try to eliminate these negatives, regardless of their size? If our society eliminates negatives, aren’t we improving our society?

You say “When it comes to family, work ethic, pride in heritage, and religious faith, it’s hard to find a more conservative ethnic group than Hispanics. Yet somehow, for many on the right, they’ve become the enemy.” Ah, good old race-baiting. Yes, people who want to crack down on illegal immigration simply hate all Hispanics, who are their “enemy.” Come on, now.

My Letter to the Economist

2006-04-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

Here's an exact copy of a letter I just sent to The Economist for your perusal:

You contend that the enforcement-first immigration reform crowd in the U.S. is only debating with its gut, rather than with its head. I, however, contend that it is The Economist, whose ideology consistently preaches the open flow of goods, services and people, who is debating primarily with its gut rather than with its head. Let’s take this one by one. First, you use the popular straw man argument asking if Americans really want to “criminalize or deport 11m people?” This simply is not necessary. The federal government punished a grand total of 4 businesses in all of 2005 for hiring illegal immigrants. If we had an interior enforcement system which actually cracked down on employers who hired illegals, we wouldn’t have to deport 11 million+ people. Many of them would simply leave on their own. As the open borders crowd always says, most of those people come here just to make an honest living for their family. Using that logic, if they can’t “make an honest living” here illegally, they’ll go back home to “make an honest living” there, right? Surveys show that most illegals in the U.S. did not leave home as unemployed people, but rather left a job in their home country to come here. That seems to show that they would be able to find a job again once they get back home. I contend that if you were debating with your head rather than with your gut, which tells you that cracking down on these poor people is mean, you would see this.

You use the silly Berlin Wall comparison. The Berlin Wall was designed to keep people in, whereas ours would be designed to keep people out. In addition to that, the Berlin Wall was meant to be impassable, whereas ours would be designed to be passable only by people who wanted to come here legally. I really don’t see what’s so outrageous about that. And, yes, I believe this would keep many people out. Anything that makes it more difficult for people to get here would have an impact. This wouldn’t stop everyone, but it would certainly reduce the number of people coming here illegally. I contend that if you were debating with your head rather than with your gut, which tells you that border walls are bad, you would realize this.

You use the example of the “collapse in Latino support for California Republicans after the race-baiting in the 1990s.” First of all, I wouldn’t call denying government benefits to illegal immigrants race-baiting. Secondly, one could use the example of Gray Davis, who lost out in his recall election, apparently at least partially because he allowed illegal immigrants to get driver licenses. This seems to contradict your charge that being tough on illegal immigrants is bad politics. I contend that if you were debating with your head rather than with your gut, you would realize this.

You ask “How else can it satisfy the ravenous demand for labour from business?” You seem to be implying that if we stop illegal immigration then all of a sudden we’ll be a country that has completely shut itself off from the rest of the world. That’s silly. We already let in more legal immigrants per year than any other country on the planet. Is that not enough for you? Plus, any Senate bill that passes is likely to have an increase in legal immigration in it, which I personally support. Your question also ignores that unemployment among teenage Americans is quite high by historical standards, largely because illegal immigrants have taken the jobs that American teenagers once did. Why don’t we once again let teenage Americans mow other people’s lawns and pick fruit in the summer? What would be so horrible about that? I contend that if you were debating with your head rather than with your gut, you would realize this.

You say that “Securing the border has been the main focus of immigration policy for the past two decades, yet the number of illegal immigrants has still swollen from 3m to 11m.” Come on, now. Maybe on paper securing the border has been the main focus of our immigration policy, but you know as well as I do that we have not put in the resources needed to secure the border. One more time, I contend that if you were debating with your head instead of with your gut, you would realize this.

This is really quite simple. What the enforcement-first crowd is saying is that the government has to show us that they can actually enforce the border and our immigration laws first before we should even consider adding another huge bureaucratic mess like a guest-worker program. There has been a mini scandal brewing in the Department of Homeland Security over immigration because there has been a lot of pressure on people there simply to rubber stamp immigrants’ papers without doing background checks on them. If our bureaucracy can’t handle the current influx of immigrants, how are we going to be able to handle hundreds of thousands of additional immigrants per year? If they show me that they can handle existing law and existing immigrants, then we can discuss a guest-worker program.

Paul Oglebay
Las Vegas, NV

Republican Strategy For November

2006-04-11T13:29:00.000-07:00

I have already said that the Democrats' best strategy from a short-term political viewpoint appears to be to shut up and just let the Republicans self destruct. Now, I will put forth my proposed strategy for the Republicans for the Congressional election this year. That strategy is to bring the impeachment issue out into the open full force. The Republicans should say over and over that the left wing of the Democratic Party would love nothing more than to take back control of Congress, to impeach President Bush and to kick him out of office. This should be made a big issue in each individual House and Senate race. The Democrat in each race will then have 3 options. One option is to agree with the charge and to say that we should impeach the President. That would instantly make that race primarily about this one issue, which would work to the Republican's advantage. While most people are not happy with the President, I don't think they want to go through all of the crap that comes with impeachment proceedings again, either. If the Democrat says that we should impeach the President, his Republican opponent can say "My Democratic opponent wants to waste all of next year, a time when our country is facing major problems, on trying to impeach the President, and all this during a time of war!" I think this would also tarnish the image of the whole Democratic party as being extremist, rather than just that one person. The second option is not really to answer the charges and try to fudge the issue. I think this would backfire, because it would still allow the Republican to paint the Democrat as someone who wants impeachment. The third option is for the Democrat to deny the charges openly. This would dishearten the Democrats' base since impeachment of the President is what they dream about every night. If the Democrats come out in big numbers publicly against impeachment, their disheartened base would likely not turn out to vote in significant numbers, giving the Republicans an advantage. In short, the Democrats' goal for the upcoming election is to turn it into a referendum on the President, which the Democrats would likely win. The Republicans' goal should be to turn it into a referendum on impeachment, which the Republicans would likely win. We'll see if they take my advice.

South Park

2006-04-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

This story is the talk of the blogosphere today and I couldn't ignore it. I watched the episode of South Park last night with a mix of awe and an almost giddy joy. I hope everyone who is reading this saw it. If not, I hope you get a chance to see it as a repeat. Michelle Malkin has the round-up. At the very least, check out her page to read all about it. I watched the whole cartoon jihad as it was happening with absolute incredulity. It was one of the most remarkably sad things that I have ever seen. I felt like a few crazies halfway around the world had completely succeeded in imposing their extremist views on the entire Western media. It was more than a little depressing for me to see. Then, last night South Park came and redeemed us. Thank you, Trey Parker and Matt Stone! You guys are truly awesome.

Hamas Endorses "Two-State" Solution

2006-04-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

In a previous post entitled "Will Political Hamas Moderate," I said:

Another principle of neoconservative ideology is that when extremists suddenly have real democratic political power, they become more moderate because of the realities of democratic power. This principle says that Hamas will be less likely to attack Israel from now on because then Israel would counterattack, Hamas would get blamed for this and they would lose seats in the next election. When Hamas wasn't elected, they didn't have to worry so much about things like that. Now they do. Also, as the majority in the Parliament, Hamas will want to gain and then maintain international credibility. They're already facing lots of pressure from the U.S., for instance, to renounce their call to destroy Israel. Time will tell if they will do it or not.

Today comes this:

Hamas is ready for a "two-state" solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a senior official said Friday, in what would appear to be a softening of Hamas' position and imply recognition of the Jewish state.

Wow. Naturally, one must take Hamas's statements with a very large grain of salt. Is Hamas just saying that to get Israel not to attack it for now so that they can rebuild their forces and attack Israel with even more ferocity later? Maybe. However, even if that's the case, this has crossed a previously uncrossable line. Hamas has never recognized Israel's right to exist in public. Even if they don't mean it, they have now effectively said publicly that Israel has a right to exist. That in and of itself shouldn't be underestimated. Nor should it be overestimated, either, of course.

Mexican Poll Results

2006-04-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

This is pretty striking, huh?:

The poll found that 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, "The territory of the United States' southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico." Zogby said 28 percent disagreed, while another 14 percent said they weren't sure.

So, tell me, why should we be importing millions upon millions of people who are more than twice as likely than not to say that a significant part of our country, including where I live, rightfully belongs to Mexico? That's just crazy. In fact, it's borderline suicidal. That would be like Israel importing millions of Palestinians every year who believe that all of Israel should belong to them. Israel wouldn't be stupid enough to do that, so why do we do it? There are probably billions of people throughout the world who would come here tomorrow if they could. Why don't we bring in people from parts of the world who don't think that a major part of our country belongs to their long-lost Aztlan? If we continue with current immigration trends, Mexicans and people descended from Mexicans will be the majority of entire states in the not too totally distant future. Who will they vote into office when this is the case? Californians were seriously considering voting in Cruz Bustamante, a former member of M.E.Ch.A. who would not publicly distance himself from some of their more extreme slogans and goals, as governor! If he hadn't made a few high-profile blunders late in the campaign, he might have won. Now, we probably won't have this future any time soon, if ever, since the immigration reforms being debated in Congress now will likely pass and will probably dramatically slow down illegal immigration over time, but this is a warning that if we don't do something soon, the future could be very, very ugly.

Is San Francisco For Real?

2006-04-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

I just saw a clip of Gerardo Sandoval, the Supervisor for District 11 in San Francisco, on Hannity & Colmes from a few months ago. In this clip, Mr. Sandoval said that the United States should get rid of our military and that we should have no military at all. Alan Colmes, the liberal co-host of the show, asked Mr. Sandoval multiple times if he really meant what he said and Mr. Sandoval said multiple times that, yes, in fact he believes that we should have no military whatsoever. Mr. Sandoval just came back on the show yesterday and he stated this more recent time, and I can't confirm this for myself, that the entire Board of Supervisors in San Francisco just voted unanimously to put forth a ballot question in the next election asking the public if San Francisco should just ignore the federal immigration bill that could pass soon if certain aspects of it pass. Yes, this is for real. San Francisco is that loony. I believe that the entire city has gone completely, totally, 100% off the deep end. This is what we in the sane world like to call a slippery slope. If you allow people to break the law without consequences, it just leads to more law-breaking. Apparently, the government and people of San Francisco simply don't care at all what the law says. First, there was Gavin Newsom who blatantly ignored the state law saying that same-gender couples can't get married. That law was passed by a huge majority of the state's population, by the way, and Mr. Newsom, like a dictator on high, simply ignored it. I personally think that same-gender couples should be allowed to get married, but I also believe that the law should be enforced. Then there was the vote by the people of San Francisco saying not to allow military recruiters in public schools even though federal law says they must if they receive federal funds. When people started saying that federal funds should then be cut off because of this, San Franciscans got angry. Now, there's this. This is why crazy, right-wing conservatives like myself think that the law should be followed. If the city of San Francisco and its top politicians simply break the law without there being any consequences whatsoever, people start to think that they can do whatever the hell they want. Gavin Newsom should be in jail for his political stunt, all federal education funding should be yanked from San Francisco if they put through that plan not to allow military recruiters on public campuses and any public official who refuses to enforce any immigration laws should also be put in jail. It's that simple. Follow the law or face the consequences. Apparently, San Francisco has simply lost its collective mind. Seriously, what is wrong with that place?

Immigration Editorial

2006-04-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

Here's an editorial, written by Ronald F. Maxwell and printed in the Washington Times, that I just had to reprint in full:

Dear President Bush, Perhaps you know me from my work. I wrote and directed the movies "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals." Walking Civil War battlefields, soaking up the letters and diaries of that generation, re-creating the world of our ancestors -- all this has given me a deep appreciation for our country. My dad was with the Army Air Corps in North Africa while your dad was in the Pacific. My French mother was liberated in Tunisia and became a lawful immigrant to the United States. For an American, my story is unique and typical at the same time.
You probably don't need to be reminded of the hostility and animus directed your way by most of the Hollywood community. Then again, I'm sure you don't take it personally. After all, they held Ronald Reagan in equal contempt. As one of the very few directors of major motion pictures who sees you in a different light, I implore you to listen seriously to what I have to say.
What is happening on the southern border is unprecedented. Not only in our own history, but in the history of the world. No country at any time anywhere has sustained the influx of tens of millions of foreigners across its borders. A wave of anti-American leftism is sweeping Latin America. A socialist radical may soon be elected as the president of Mexico, a country which officially encourages its emigrants to vote in Mexican elections, urging them to think of themselves as Mexican first and perhaps only. The eventual outcome is plain for anyone with eyes to see. This is invasion masquerading as immigration.
It may already be too late to avoid a future annexation of the Southwest by Mexico or the evolution of a Mexican-dominated satellite state. This is not to say Mexican people are better or worse than any of God's children. It is to say that millions of ethnically and culturally homogeneous people will seek self-determination in a land they will increasingly feel justified in claiming as their own. Especially when the natural weight of demographic change is accompanied by the soundtrack of radical demagoguery which seeks to legitimize and moralize this phenomenon as a "reconquista." Many pundits claim you will be remembered in history as the president who won (or lost) the war in Iraq. I see it differently. I believe you will come to be seen, in the years and decades to come, as the President who saved (or lost) the Southwest of the United States.
Mr. President, this is a time for candor. Your immigration policy is viewed as captive to the cheap labor -- big business lobby and inimical to the survival of our country. It is splitting the party and draining away support for your presidency. We who understand the vital stakes will not be placated by rhetoric or slogans. The failure to recognize this growing and deep disaffection among Republicans, conservatives, independents and, indeed, many Reagan Democrats, is, in the short run, going to lead to a monumental defeat for your party at the polls in November.
The last two years of your presidency will be plagued with impeachment hearings, with pressures to diminish the war against terrorism, with the cutting off of funds for the war of liberation in Iraq for which so many of our brothers in uniform have paid the ultimate price. The American people will once again be forced to endure a painful repetition of the humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam. We will be dedicating yet another monument to brave men who gave their lives for honor, country and a lost cause.
I understand that in your heart you want to believe that the border should be an open place where goods and people can move freely back and forth for the good of all. I do not question your integrity or the goodness and decency of your motivations. Dear Mr. President, this is a utopian creed, which must be discarded before it is too late.
When I watched the Senate Judiciary Committee's one-day public session on immigration reform (I suppose we should be grateful that Sen. Arlen Specter devoted one whole day out of his busy schedule for the public discussion of a problem regarding 20 million illegal aliens) it was remarkable for the near absence of any senator speaking on behalf of the American people or their own constituents. It seems the overriding concern of most senators of both parties is for the illegal immigrant population. Perhaps these senators should be reminded that they are supposed to represent and defend American citizens, not foreign nationals, illegal aliens or indeed anyone else. Listening to the self-serving and pandering speeches, you'd think the senators were elected in Mexico or any other country on the globe except America.

Where was the concern for American schoolchildren forced to sit in overcrowded classes, for American patients forced to wait in overcrowded hospitals, for American workers whose wages are being undercut, for American drivers forced to sit in interminable traffic jams in over-whelmed freeway systems, for the victims of organized gangs, for the American college students who are turned away from publicly funded state universities, for many African Americans who are being literally displaced from their neighborhoods while being moved figuratively, once again, to the back of the bus, for those environmentalists and conservationists who want to protect open space and slow down urban sprawl, for the American taxpayers who have had to bear the burden of billions of dollars in increased welfare costs, over-burdened prisons, extra police and security and even, adding insult to injury, for bilingual education?
Where was the concern that we as a people are compelled to deal with these "in your face" issues which have been imposed upon us by external forces, instead of focusing our time, energies and capital on our own indigenous, urgent concerns, like for instance, the medical care for our own countrymen and women. Might it be irresponsible to mislead the 20 million illegal foreigners already here and might it be immoral to encourage the yearly arrival of millions more when we cannot even take care of our own millions of poor and sick and hungry and, yes, dare I say it, our unemployed?
Working as I do in Civil War history, I have had to explore the ugly depths of the American institution of slavery, and have been privileged to work alongside civil rights leaders and specialists in African-American history. For this reason it troubles me that we appear today to be importing a second virtual slave class of low-wage workers who are hired to replace or displace less-educated or privileged Americans -- including the very descendants of American slaves.
I agree with you that "no child should be left behind." But that is precisely what immigration advocates are doing to the children of America's working class -- by flooding the market with workers from a desperately poor country, who depress the wages of high school and even college graduates.
Little in the current situation resembles the immigration we knew and cherished while growing up in America prior to the '80s. The new and radically dislocating phenomenon we are enduring is not the old, familiar immigration of yesteryear -- gradual, orderly, assimilating and lawful. The numbers alone are unprecedented. The American people have been made the victims of monumental social engineering perpetuated upon them without their consent and against their will by an arrogant governing elite. Those who try to neutralize their justifiable instincts of self-preservation as a people and a sovereign nation by constantly invoking the mantra of "a nation of immigrants" are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
The House immigration bill isn't perfect, but it is a firm and realistic place from which to build an effective policy for the survival of our country. The McCain-Kennedy bill looks like it was drafted by bureaucrats at the United Nations, not by representatives of the United States.
To do the right thing, to take the safe course for protecting our country, you will have to endure even more vilification from the left, you will have to watch large and increasingly violent rallies by those who don't want to abide by our laws or the will of the American people -- who think they are entitled -- who believe this country already belongs to them -- who believe the rest of us should just move aside, shut up and smile. To pretend this problem will go away by pandering to the illegal population, or to leave it for the next generation to solve is national suicide.
The moment has arrived. The Senate has already begun its bloviations and self-agrandizing platitudes, its morality play of good and evil wherein they the noble senators are cast as the redeemers of the entire world population seeking only to "live the American dream." We know by their coded words they will do nothing meaningful to really solve the problem or to defend America. If their actions of the past 20 years are a guide, they will only take the pose of pretending to do so. As a movie director I can see bad acting a mile away.
Today there are two Republican Parties. One is now seen correctly by most Americans as responsive first and foremost to the demands of multinational corporations, the agro-business and the Chamber of Commerce. The other, best represented by the embattled members of the House, represents grass-roots America -- we the people. In this debate you have the opportunity to make the party one and whole again, to regain its soul and return it to the service and the sovereignty of the American people.
Dear Mr. President, you must disenthrall yourself from the failed policies of the present. I implore you to rethink this issue and to change course. Millions of Americans, a great majority of your fellow citizens will be with you. Start speaking and doing the sensible, courageous and right thing. You will see your poll numbers turn dramatically around. You will save your country.

Does Fighting Create More Terrorists?

2006-04-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

One of the most common arguments you hear from people on the left who were against the Iraq war (I know there were lots of people on the right who were against the war, but they use different arguments) is that our fighting "creates more terrorists than it destroys." It's the old "violence begets violence" argument. Of course this fits with the liberal orthodoxy that says that the solution to every problem in the world is to be nicer. Hitler is stampeding across Europe? Just be nicer to him. That'll fix the problem. Crazy extremist Muslims are burning Western embassies over some stupid cartoons? Just be nicer to them. That'll fix the problem. What is the liberal obsession with being liked by everyone? But I digress. Strategy Page is made up of former military and intelligence members who still have contacts with people who are currently in the military and intelligence agencies. Here's what they have to say about that:

Fallujah was also a propaganda defeat. Although attempts were made to portray the outcome as a glorious example of courageous Moslem warriors. But most Iraqis, and Moslems in general, saw it for what it was, a quick and embarrassing defeat. It became more difficult for the terrorists to recruit new people, after details of the Fallujah fighting got out. That's the downside of so many of the defenders escaping. These guys talked, and their tales of the murderously efficient Americans were convincing, too convincing. The American troops were described as very well prepared, and relentless in their attacks.

Our vicious fighting and subsequent stomping of the terrorists in Fallujah did not "create more terrorists than it destroyed." In fact, it made it "more difficult for the terrorists to recruit new people," as Strategy Page says. This is coming both from their previous military and intelligence knowledge and from the information they get from their continuing military and intelligence contacts. I don't see why this is so hard to understand. If you want to encourage behavior, you reward it. If you want to discourage behavior, you punish it. Any parent can tell you this. If you reward a kid when she throws a hissy fit, you're just going to get more hissy fits in the future because she has realized that hissy fits get her what she wants. It's the same thing with terrorism. When we left Lebanon after being attacked, we rewarded the attackers. When we left Somalia after being attacked, we rewarded the attackers. Bin Laden himself has cited these examples of how terrorism works against the U.S. in his own propaganda. He doesn't cite us stomping them in Fallujah as a way to get people to support him. He cites us running away in Lebanon and Somalia. Us going into Iraq might very well have "created" more terrorists in the short-term by angering people, but in the long-term people will see what that terrorism has brought upon themselves. In fact, that's already started to happen. Support for bin Laden in the Muslim world is now lower than it was before 9/11, though that's been much less publicized than the increase that happened in the run-up to the Iraq war. It's obvious why that is. Before 9/11, people saw "Commit terrorist attacks against America, get reward." Now people see "Commit terrorist attacks against America, get the crap beat out of you." The liberal orthodoxy is once again wrong and history will prove it wrong even more in the coming years.

Why Care About International Law?

2006-04-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

One of the most common arguments used by opponents of the Iraq war has been that Bush broke international law to take us into Iraq. Now, I actually don't think that's true. After all, the treaty signed at the end of the first Gulf War, which was okayed by the U.N. Security Council, said that we would stop attacking Iraq if Iraq did A, B, C and D, which they didn't do. Therefore, we could have gone right back to attacking them at any point simply as a continuation of the first Gulf War. But I digress. The point of this post is to ask a hypothetical question about why we should even care about the U.N. Security Council. That sounds pompous, but here's my question: Should the unelected leader of China really have a veto over our actions? The current Security Council rules say that Britain, France, Russia and China all have an absolute veto over our actions. Should this really be the case? We have zero say over who the leader of China is, so why should they have a complete veto over our actions? I ask this question as someone who realizes that there is no perfect answer to this question. I don't think China should have a veto over our actions, but I also don't think that there should be zero international laws. It's tough, but people should at the very least acknowledge that there are major problems with the current set up.

Silly Immigration Argument

2006-04-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

There's a new argument being used by people who are against the immigration reforms being proposed in Congress. That argument runs a little something like this: America has dealt with immigration better than probably any other country ever and these proposed reforms would make our immigration laws more like France's, so if we make our immigration laws more like France's, we'll be importing France's huge immigration problems. Hooey. This is a clear case of comparing apples and oranges. What people who make this argument are saying is that our immigrants have assimilated into our society better than France's have assimilated into theirs completely because of our lax and open immigration situation. That's just silly. The real reasons that our immigration situation is better than France's are culture, economics and the immigrants themselves. First, our culture is simply more open to immigrants than France's culture is. As a culture, we welcome foreigners more than France does, so there is less isolation and alienation among immigrants here than there is in France. Second, it's no secret that our economy and labor market are stronger than France's at the moment. That does 2 things. When immigrants come here, it's easier for them to get a job, so they feel less alienated than immigrants to America do. Plus, when it's easy for Americans to find a job, they feel less angry about foreigners "taking their jobs." That makes immigration easier both for the immigrants and for the natives. I think that this stronger economy of ours eases social tension quite a bit. Lastly, our immigrants simply assimilate better into our culture than France's immigrants because of their background. Our immigrants are primarily Latin American and France's are primarily northern African. Our immigrants are primarily Christian, like most Americans. France's immigrants are primarily Muslim, unlike most French people. Our immigrants generally come from democratic countries, no matter how ineffective and corrupt those democracies are, while France's immigrants generally come from undemocratic countries. That means that our immigrants generally have a better understanding of our governmental and societal structure than France's immigrants do. Our immigrants genreally come from secular countries where religion does not run public policy. France's immigrants generally come from ultra-religious countries where religion controls everything. Because of this, France's immigrants have a very hard time fitting in with France's ultra-secular system. While there are certainly some assimilation issues with America and our immigrants, they're not nearly as difficult as the assimilation problems with France's immigrants. These are the reasons that we assimilate our immigrants better than France does, not because we have a lax border policy. So, the next time someone tries to use this fallacious argument, you can tell them why it's silly.

Krugman On Immigration

2006-03-30T08:58:00.000-08:00

Boy, I'm quoting a Paul Krugman editorial to support an argument of mine? What has the world come to? Anyway, here it goes:

"In other words, I'm instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration."

"Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent."

"Because Mexican immigrants have much less education ... they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans. The most authoritative recent study ... by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration."

"Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the benefits they receive."

Reconquista Is Here

2006-03-29T08:46:00.000-08:00

I have never used many of the most typical arguments used against illegal immigration. Most of the arguments against it are of the silly "They took our jobs" type. My reasons are mostly cultural. I have said for a long time that immigration is happening so quickly and so much from 1 country that assimilation is simply not happening for most of the Mexicans who come here. For people from non-Latin American countries, there's simply no option but to learn English, to be surrounded by people from countries other than their old home country and to assimilate, but Mexicans don't have to do this. Many of them don't speak English and they're not learning our culture and assimilating because there's simply no reason for them to. They live in overwhelmingly Mexican areas, overwhelmingly speak Spanish, watch TV shows in Spanish, hang out with only or mostly Mexicans, etc. How are they supposed to assimilate that way? We have a very large and constantly-growing subset of our population that associates itself primarily with another country, many of whom outright hate our country and dream of the day that the reconquista of the American southwest comes. I know someone who used to live in Laredo, Texas, who said that he was constantly treated differently--like a foreigner, he said--and discriminated against because he's white. I know a hispanic woman who used to live in Tucson, Arizona, who said that everyone at her school hated her and called her a gringa because she spoke English like an American and she spoke Spanish with an American accent. Or, how about this from yesterday:

Or this:

That second photo was at an American school where students had put the Mexican flag above the upside-down American flag. Got that? This happened at an American school. The first photo is of a girl getting yelled at and sneered at for having an American flag on. You know, the flag of the country where she lives! She even said that her heart was with the Mexican flag, but she thought she would wear the American flag because that's where she lives. Even the girl wearing the American flag said that her heart is with the Mexican flag! In other words, among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, it is culturally completely unacceptable to associate oneself primarily with America. There is tremendous cultural pressure among them not to assimilate. Why on God's green Earth should we possibly want millions upon millions more people who hate our country and who actively fight assimilation to come here?!

You know, all of this begs the obvious question: If these people hate the United States so much, why are they risking their lives to come here and fighting so hard to stay here?

We simply can't continue on with this the way we're going. It will be a disaster. As I said, there is a loud, vocal and ever-growing minority in this country that actively and passionately hates this country and whose allegiance is primarily with another country. We need to shut off the flow of illegal immigrants from this country and make it virtually impossible to hire them. If they can't get jobs illegally, they won't come here illegally. People say that "We can't deport 12 million people," but if we make it almost impossible for them to get illegal jobs, through huge fines and stepped-up interior enforcement, we won't need to deport them. If people who are already here illegally can't get a job, they'll simply go back home of their own will. I support a guest worker program in theory, if the government could actually administer it effectively, which I doubt. However, even if we do implement a guest worker program, we don't have to get our guest workers from Mexico, where the people who came here would likely just hate our country when they come here. There are probably 5 billion people throughout the world who would love to come to the United States and who would appreciate the tremendous freedom and opportunity it would offer them. My wife, for instance, grew up in the Soviet Union. She loves the United States with every ounce of her being and her primary allegiance is to the United States. There are plenty of people in her home country who would love to come here and who would appreciate it. It would be very easy for us to get our low-cost labor from other places in the world. Why don't we do that?

See Michelle Malkin for much more.

Questions for CAIR

2006-03-28T10:09:00.000-08:00

Finally, a somewhat mainstream media source, Investor's Business Daily, takes on our politically correct culture on the topic of Islam. As I have said in previous posts, for the past few decades, our culture has been overwhelmed by a politically correct mindset that says "Who are we to judge?" whenever there is a difference between us and anyone else. This mindset's primary concern is making sure that we don't offend the minority or the "other." This mindset simply doesn't allow us to criticize the "other," which means anyone who's not a white, Western Christian male, no matter what the circumstances, without being branded racist or sexist or xenophobic or anti-Islamic or some other similar term. This mindset says "Who are we to say that Iran can't have nuclear weapons when we're the only country ever to have used them?" and "Who are we to criticize Islam when people have done horrible things in the name of Christianity before?" It is my belief that this PC mindset is a threat to our society and this post tries to explain why. Here are some questions that Investor's Business Daily asks of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR):

Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?

Is it true that 26 chapters of the Quran deal with jihad, a fight able-bodied believers are obligated to join (Surah 2:216), and that the text orders Muslims to "instill terror into the hearts of the unbeliever" and to "smite above their necks" (8:12)?

Is the "test" of loyalty to Allah not good acts or faith in general, but martyrdom that results from fighting unbelievers (47:4) — the only assurance of salvation in Islam (4:74; 9:111)?

Are the sins of any Muslim who becomes a martyr forgiven by the very act of being slain while slaying the unbelievers (4:96)?

And is it really true that martyrs are rewarded with virgins, among other carnal delights, in Paradise (38:51, 55:56; 55:76; 56:22)?

Are those unable to do jihad — such as women or the elderly — required to give "asylum and aid" to those who do fight unbelievers in the cause of Allah (8:74)?

Does Islam advocate expansion by force? And is the final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, to conquer the world in the name of Islam (9:29)?

Is Islam the only religion that does not teach the Golden Rule (48:29)? Does the Quran instead teach violence and hatred against non-Muslims, specifically Jews and Christians (5:50)?

Our society has almost totally ignored questions like these since 9/11 because it's simply not PC to ask them. Without actually knowing a single thing about Islam (and I should state clearly now that I'm certainly no Islamic scholar, either), good PC Americans have simply gone out and preached to anyone and everyone that Islam is really a "religion of peace" that has been "hijacked by extremists" just like Torquemada hijacked Christianity. This mindset has become a sort of fetish for much of Western society ever since the civil rights movement. We have so rammed home this guilt over our societies' past imperialism/slavery/racism, that our obsession with being sensitive to the minority/other doesn't allow us to see the truth that's right in front of our faces. Our obedience to this PC ideology has trumped our obedience to the truth and I believe that this mindset is a threat to our society. How can we defeat an enemy if we refuse even to identify it or even to ask questions that might lead to us identifying the true problem? We are facing an enemy that has the will, and, in the near future, could very well have the means, to destroy us. This PC culture is a luxury that only a sleeping society that's not at war for its very existence can afford to have. Unfortunately, that description no longer describes us. We have to wake up and see the truth that's right in front of our face because if we can't even identify our enemy, how can we defeat it?

See Michelle Malkin for more.

Iraq In a Civil War?

2006-03-27T10:32:00.000-08:00

I couldn't have said this better myself:

"What was striking, following the mosque bombing, was the evidence of Iraq's underlying stability in the face of attempts to undermine it. The country's vital institutions seem to have grown strong enough to withstand even the provocation of the bombing of the golden mosque.

"In the wake of the bombing, it is true, militias took to the streets, and widespread sectarian violence occurred, killing and wounding many Iraqis. But not a single Iraqi political leader, including the volatile Moktada al-Sadr, endorsed an expansion of the violence. On the contrary, all joined to condemn it, to support government efforts to curtail it, and called on their followers to stop it. The Iraqi army and police were sent out to enforce curfews and stop traffic in many areas. Even in this crisis, they executed their orders, and shut down the great bulk of the violence within several days. Within a fortnight, Sunni leaders who had boycotted discussions aimed at forming a government reentered negotiations, and Iraqi politics--turbulent and nerve-wracking as it is--began again. This is not the performance of a society on the brink of civil war."

Pathetic Republicans

2006-03-25T14:51:00.000-08:00

The Republicans are pathetic right now. The Democrats have been pathetic for a long time, but the Republicans are certainly pathetic right now and seem to be getting more so all the time. There was a little while there when the Republicans could claim with some legitimacy that they were the party that had real ideas and that stood by their principles. Whatever truth there was to that idea before is totally gone now. The Republicans won't extend Bush's tax cuts. They are tripping over themselves to spend more and more money on everything, running away in fear from the idea of restraining spending even the tiniest bit. They were terrified even to discuss any social security reforms at all. They didn't vote to drill for oil in ANWR. These and many other examples are all being done in an attempt to buy off various constituencies for short-term political gain. However, even if this does help the Republicans in the short term for the election this year, which I kind of doubt, it will hurt them in the long-term, because people can see quite clearly now that they are no longer a party of any principles.

Russian "Allies"

2006-03-24T09:50:00.000-08:00

There are still some people out there who refer to Russia as our ally. I think that this should pretty much put that idea to rest:

Two Iraqi documents from March 2003 — on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion — and addressed to the secretary of Saddam Hussein, describe details of a U.S. plan for war. According to the documents, the plan was disclosed to the Iraqis by the Russian ambassador.

The first document (CMPC-2003-001950) is a handwritten account of a meeting with the Russian ambassador that details his description of the composition, size, location and type of U.S. military forces arrayed in the Gulf and Jordan. The document includes the exact numbers of tanks, armored vehicles, different types of aircraft, missiles, helicopters, aircraft carriers, and other forces, and also includes their exact locations. The ambassador also described the positions of two Special Forces units.

The second document (CMPC-2004-001117) is a typed account, signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Hammam Abdel Khaleq, that states that the Russian ambassador has told the Iraqis that the United States was planning to deploy its force into Iraq from Basra in the South and up the Euphrates, and would avoid entering major cities on the way to Baghdad, which is, in fact what happened.

So, the Russian government told Iraq what our war plan was, thus almost certainly causing the deaths of Americans in war? I'd say that pretty much puts Russia into the "enemy" category, doesn't it? I personally have been attacked for saying things like this before, but I'd say that this shows that Russia is still an active enemy of the United States.

Quick Terror War Analysis

2006-03-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

Here's Victor Hanson once again giving an analysis of the war on terror and our country's collective thoughts about its progress:

Even our current clinical depression is typically American. In July 1864, Lincoln was hated and McClellan and the Copperheads who wished a cessation of war and bisection of country canonized. Truman left office with the nation’s anger that he had failed in Korea. As George Bush Sr. departed, the conventional wisdom was that the budding chaos and redrawing of the map of Eastern Europe would prompt decades of instability as former Communists could not simply be spoon fed democracy and capitalism. During Afghanistan by week five we were in a quagmire; the dust storm supposedly threatened our success in Iraq — in the manner that the explosion of the dome at Samarra marked the beginning of a hopeless civil war that “lost” Iraq.

The fact is that we are close to seeing a democratically elected government emerge, backed by an increasingly competent army, pitted against a minority of a minority in Zaraqawi’s Wahhabi jihadists.

While we worry about our own losses, both human and financial, al Qaeda knows that thousands of its terrorists are dead, with its leadership dismantled or in hiding — and most of the globe turning against it. For all our depression at home, we can still win two wars — the removal of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of jihadists that followed him — and leave a legitimate government that is the antithesis of both autocracy and theocracy.

Syria is out of Lebanon — but only as long as democracy is in Iraq. Libya and Pakistan have come clean about nuclear trafficking — but only as long as the U.S. is serious about reform in the Middle East.

I often say that while being bombarded by the 24-hour news cycle sometimes we need to take a step back and remember not to miss the forest for the trees. The media get us so caught up in that day's individual events that it's very easy to forget about the big picture.

It's Official, Bush Didn't Lie #3

2006-03-20T09:23:00.000-08:00

The federal government has started to release some of its roughly 2 million unread documents that it has captured in Afghanistan and Iraq so far. They are proving to contain some very interesting information. For instance:

"SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons."

"The first of them, a series of memos from the spring of 2001, shows that the Iraqi Intelligence Service funded Abu Sayyaf, despite the reservations of some IIS officials. The second, an internal Iraqi Intelligence memo on the relationships between the IIS and Saudi opposition groups, records that Osama bin Laden requested Iraqi cooperation on terrorism and propaganda and that in January 1997 the Iraqi regime was eager to continue its relationship with bin Laden."

"An analysis of Iraqi embassy phone records by Philippine authorities showed that Hussein had been in regular contact with Abu Sayyaf leaders both before and after the attack that killed SFC Jackson. Andrea Domingo, immigration commissioner for the Philippines, said Hussein ran an 'established network' of terrorists in the country. Hussein had also met with members of the New People's Army, a Communist opposition group on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, in his office at the embassy. According to a Philippine government official, the Philippine National Police uncovered documents in a New People's Army compound that indicate the Iraqi embassy had provided funding for the group."

There are an awful lot of people out there who owe apologies for saying that there were no links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists.

No Media Bias?

2006-03-17T15:33:00.000-08:00

To those who continue to say that there's no mainstream media bias, I challenge you to look at this and then say that:

"An Iraqi intelligence service document saying that their Afghani informant, who's only identified by a number, told them that the Afghani Consul Ahmed Dahastani claimed the following in front of him:

That OBL and the Taliban are in contact with Iraq and that a group of Taliban and bin Laden group members visited Iraq.
That the U.S. has proof the Iraqi government and 'bin Laden's group' agreed to cooperate to attack targets inside America.
That in case the Taliban and bin Laden's group turn out to be involved in 'these destructive operations,' the U.S. may strike Iraq and Afghanistan.
That the Afghani consul heard about the issue of Iraq's relationship with 'bin Laden's group' while he was in Iran.

"At the end, the writer recommends informing 'the committee of intentions' about the above-mentioned items. The signature on the document is unclear.

"(Editor's Note: The controversial claim that Osama bin Laden was cooperating with Saddam Hussein is an ongoing matter of intense debate. While the assertions contained in this document clearly support the claim, the sourcing is questionable -- i.e. an unnamed Afghan 'informant' reporting on a conversation with another Afghan 'consul.' The date of the document -- four days after 9/11 -- is worth noting but without further corroboration, this document is of limited evidentiary value.)"

Take a look at that Editor's Note. Everything said in it is true, of course. However, I want you to ask yourself if you've ever seen a note like this about a similar situation that made George Bush look bad. How many stories have there been over the last few years with unnamed or questionable informants that painted Bush in a bad light? Some of them even turned out to be false or probably false, like the Guantanamo Koran flushing story and the Bush National Guard papers story. Have you ever seen anyone in the mainstream media, including CBS, put a similar Editor's Note after those stories, claiming that "without further corroboration, this document/information is of limited evidentiary value?"

Word of the Day

2006-03-17T14:27:00.000-08:00

The West has learned several new words since the war on terror really began full-force after 9/11. We've learned words like jihad, infidel and sharia that most of us didn't know before. There's one very important word, however, that we should all know that most of us don't. That word is dhimmi. Here is the definition of dhimmi in the Wikipedia:

"A dhimmi is a non-Muslim subject of a state governed in accordance with sharia — Islamic law. The word dhimmi is an adjective derived from the noun 'dhimma,' which means 'tutelage' and denotes the legal relationship between a dhimmi and the Islamic state. It applied mostly to non-polytheists who were conquered by a Muslim state and allowed to retain their religion.

Dhimmis were guaranteed their personal safety and security of property, in return for paying a special capitation tax known as the jizya and accepting various restrictions and legal disabilities. These provisions of sharia limited the ability of dhimmis to visibly practice their rituals, expand and repair places of worship. Dhimmis were not allowed to testify in cases involving a Muslim; dhimmi men were prohibited from marrying Muslim women. Some restrictions imposed on dhimmis from time to time were largely symbolic in nature and were designed to highlight the inferiority of dhimmis compared to Muslims. These regulations included, among others, requirements to wear distinctive clothing and prohibitions on riding horses and camels."

A dhimmi, therefore, is someone who is not a Muslim, but who lives by Muslim rules and who openly professes one's inferiority to Muslims by paying a literal tax--the jizya--and by submitting to rules designed by Muslims to show the dhimmi that they're inferior. We should all burn this word into our brain. When we see Muslims committing ridiculous acts of violence over silly cartoons and we then apologize for these cartoons, the rioters don't see a kind act of apology. They see the act of a dhimmi. When CNN puts a note on its web page that it won't print the cartoons out of "respect for Islam," al Qaeda doesn't see a nice, kind, loving society that they should emulate. They see weak dhimmi who won't stand up for what we supposedly believe in. They see a society that voluntarily gives up what it professes are its most cherished values in response to its weakness against the Muslim rioters. Our media's self-censorship over these cartoons was, to them, an act of dhimmis openly submitting to their rules and openly professing our inferiority to them. Remember this word and don't allow us to become dhimmis in the name of "respect" or "sensitivity."

Why China Won't Help Us

2006-03-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

It seems as if we've been counting on China to help us with respect to Iran and North Korea. It's my perception that China simply will not help us in either instance and here's why. There are different events in our 2 countries' histories that define our policies. For the U.S., the 9/11 attack is the event that guides our policies more than any other. Our biggest fear is having another terrorist attack conducted against us, especially one with WMDs. For China, however, the event that guides their policies more than any other is the protest at Tiananmen Square in 1989. China watched as "people power" brought down the Soviet Union. Top government members in China have stated that they watched the "color revolutions" of the past few years in Lebanon, Ukraine and other countries with fear. China has also been having a lot of unrest over the past few years and it has been growing. This doesn't get a lot of coverage in Western media, largely because the Chinese government keeps the media out, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. So, while the fear of terrorist attacks keeps our government leaders awake at night, it's social unrest that scares the pants off of the Chinese government. This is why China won't help us with Iran or North Korea.

China's main goal with North Korea is simply to keep the country stable enough so that it doesn't collapse. If North Korea were to collapse, that would send millions of Korean refugees spilling over the borders into China. China is more afraid of the instability and social chaos this would bring than they are of North Korea having a few nukes. For that reason, China won't get tough, because any tough action against the North Korean government would increase the likelihood that the North Korean government would collapse, which is China's biggest fear. So, China will simply keep giving North Korea what they want indefinitely and as long as North Korea knows that China will keep providing them with a lifeline, North Korea doesn't have to concede anything with regards to its nuclear program. Hence, the standoff will continue in perpetuity unless we get the idea that China might help us out of our heads and change tactics.

As for Iran, China simply wants their oil. The Chinese government knows that it is not viewed as being legitimate in the same way that an elected government is, either internationally or by its own people. Thus, they have determined that the best way to minimize the social unrest that they fear so much and to boost their legitimacy in the eyes of their own people is through rapid economic growth. This has largely worked. Certain parts of China that used to produce quite a bit of unrest have been largely quieted when the good economic times have come to that part of the country. Therefore, the Chinese government sees it as being necessary for their very survival to achieve 8-10% economic growth every year. Iran has already stated that it will use oil as a weapon if any sanctions are imposed against them. Cutting off their oil would lower China's economic growth, which, again, China fears more than Iran having a few nukes. So, because of our different fears, China is simply not going to help us here.

So, how do we remedy this situation? It seems to me that the most likely way we can get China on our side is to make our security fears and their economic fears one and the same. For instance, I think that we should say "Okay, China, either tighten the screws on Iran/North Korea or we'll put tariffs on so and so products of yours." That way, we'll turn their fear of slowed down economic growth to our advantage. Now, the problem with this is that China and the U.S. are both in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and most tariffs are thus banned. Therefore, we would have to find some way within WTO rules to punish them economically if they don't help us. Another possibility would be to say that if China doesn't help us we'll sell Taiwan certain high-tech military equipment at a discounted price. I just don't think that our current path will yield any results in either case.

I Hate Social Security

2006-03-15T13:21:00.000-08:00

I hate social security. I think it's an awful program and I would love to overhaul it. I give credit to George Bush for campaigning on changing it, even though he failed spectacularly. My biggest problem with his reforms were actually that I personally think they didn't go nearly far enough. Since I hate social security the way it is currently set up, I figured I'd explain why in an effort to do my part to shift the public's view of what I think is a horrible program.

The first reason I hate social security is that it creates a culture of dependence on the government. It leads people to think "Why should I save for my retirement when the government will give me money when I retire?" This and other programs of this sort create a culture-wide lack of individual responsibility and independence. This culture leads people to expect things of the government/taxpayer rather than expecting to go out and earn things themselves.

The second reason I hate social security is because it's a massive transfer of wealth from economically productive people to economically unproductive people. It causes a tremendous drain on the economy to take money from people who are productive and simply give it to people who are unproductive.

The third reason I hate social security is because everyone gets it, whether they need it or not. If/when Bill Gates retires, he'll get social security. I can't be the only one who thinks this is ridiculous, can I? I can't believe that liberals support this program. I have always wanted to ask a liberal, "So, as a liberal you support a program that takes money away from someone making minimum wage so that a billionaire can get a monthly government check?" How can this be? I don't want poor seniors dying on the streets because we won't help them, so I would keep some form of social security for seniors, but come on, rich people simply don't need a monthly government check.

The fourth reason I hate social security is because I have no control over it. I was shocked at the number of people who were against Bush's personal accounts idea. How could anyone be against this idea? Social security is supposedly my retirement money, right? So, why don't I have any say over what happens to it? Under Bush's program, if I wanted to invest part of my social security money, I could. If I didn't want to, I didn't have to. For the life of me, I don't understand how that didn't have 100% public support. When did it become a radical idea for people to have the option of controlling some of their retirement money? Have we become such a nanny state that this is too radical of an idea?

The fifth reason I hate social security is because I think that this is simply not the government's role. This is an ideological reason more than a practical reason and I freely admit that. I just simply don't think it's the government's job to be controlling people's retirement. I think it's individuals'/families' jobs to take care of people's retirement.

Okay, so if I hate social security so much, what would I do if I were dictator of America? I would basically treat it like a social program rather than a retirement program. I would means test people so that if they made more than a certain amount of money during their career they simply would not get any social security. Sorry, but if you made $100,000 per year, you simply don't need social security. You made enough money during your life to prepare for your retirement. If you didn't prepare, well, too bad, it's not the taxpayers' fault. If you made less than that level, whatever that level would be set to, then you could get it. I would then eliminate the ceiling on income that can be taxed for social security, so everyone would be paying the tax on every dollar of income they made. Since the total amount of social security payments would go down due to the means testing, the tax level could also go down. I would also index the retirement age to average life expectancy so that as people grow to live longer, the age at which they could receive social security would get higher.

It's Official, Bush Didn't Lie #2

2006-03-14T10:37:00.000-08:00

Having already blogged about the official confirmation that Bush didn't intentionally lie about WMDs, here's official confirmation that he didn't lie about Iraq's connections to terrorism:

"The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for 'special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan].' Preparations for 'Blessed July,' a regime-directed wave of 'martyrdom' operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion."

Once again, if the Republicans are smart, they'll run to the cameras and demand apologies from everyone who said that Iraq had no connections to terrorists, which means that he should get an apology from, let's see, basically every Democrat and at least 99% of the media.

It's Official, Bush Didn't Lie

2006-03-14T09:55:00.000-08:00

This should be the death knell for the stupid charge that Bush lied about WMDs to get us into war:

"The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense."

So, for people to keep using the charge that Bush intentionally lied about the weapons to get us into war, they would have to be saying that President Bush knew more about Iraq's weapons than even Saddam's own top military leaders did. If the Republicans are smart they will run to the TV cameras with the names of all the people who have used the "Bush lied" line and pound those people over and over until they either apologize for their slander or are shown to be the ones who really lied. And, as we all know, there are a lot of people who've used that line.

What I Want From Bush

2006-03-10T23:45:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that President Bush's popularity has gone down and that party loyalty has decreased substantially. It seems apparent that he's not going to get any more big ideas or policies through for the remainder of his Presidency. Yet, some useful things can still happen during his Presidency. Here are the things that I want from Bush considering his weakened political state:

Illegal Immigration--Here's the number 1 thing I want in domestic policy for the remainder of Bush's Presidency. I want an illegal immigration bill that will not only drastically reduce the number of illegal immigrants that will come here, but one that will also make it so much harder to get a job for illegal immigrants that they will start going back home of their own choice. The bill that the House passed will go a long way towards achieving this. Let's hope the Senate passes a bill that's similar or even tougher.

Tax Cuts--The tax cuts have stimulated the economy and I hope they're made permanent. I would also like to see some real attempt to control spending, but that appears unlikely given both Bush's and the Republicans' weakened political states right now. Republicans are going out of their way now to spend even more money than they have over the last several years in order to try to buy votes for November.

Iraq--We need to stick in Iraq until the job is done. This looks extremely likely. Bush is not going to leave early. The only thing that could stop this from happening would be for Congress to cut off funding and I don't think that'll happen.

Terrorists--I want to get Zarqawi, bin Laden and Zawahiri, for goodness' sake!

Iran--I don't know what to do about Iran, but I want their nuclear program taken care of.

These things could all be taken care of in Bush's remaining time in office and if these are all taken care of, that would be a successful last few years considering Bush's weak political situation.

Parties Change Sides Again

2006-03-10T09:36:00.000-08:00

It's interesting to look at how the 2 major American political parties seem to have switched roles in many ways over the last few decades. For instance, Democrats used to dominate the South and now Republicans do. Republicans used to be the party just of the rich, snobby elite while the Democrats were the party of the "common person." Now, the symbols of the left are rich, spoiled elitists like Howard Dean, Barbra Streisand and George Soros while the symbol of the right has increasingly become a poor, rural, "everyday" guy holding a gun and going to church. The Republicans used to be the party of smaller government and fiscal responsibility. Now, well, neither party really is that now, but the Republicans certainly aren't. Here's another example:

"'In order to win the war on terror we have got to strengthen our friendships and relationships with moderate Arab countries in the Middle East,' he said."

Ever since the run-up to the Iraq war, the left screamed that the way to win the war on terror was to be "multilateral" and to "build alliances" with "moderate Arab countries" and things like that. This interesting thing about this quote, however, is that it's from George Bush. This quote came from the man that the left screamed at for years at the top of their lungs for having destroyed all of our relationships with other countries and having alienated all the countries that might help us in the war on terror and in other matters. So, what's going on here? While it's becoming increasingly obvious that George Bush does not, in and of himself, represent his party as a whole, it appears that, on this issue at least, the 2 parties seem to have flipped again to some extent.

Affirmative Action

2006-03-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

The Economist takes a look at sectarian tensions in Iraq in the most recent issue.

"It notes, for example, how American administrators...unwittingly empowered religious factions by applying sectarian formulas to government appointments."

This holds lessons for the U.S. and affirmative action. Our policy of basing government appointments in Iraq on sectarian affiliation, which we thought would give everyone a warm and happy feeling, really made people focus on people's sectarian differences more, thus exacerbating tensions. The same thing is true of our affirmative action policies. If we base school admissions or job placement on race, rather than reducing racial tensions, this will merely make them worse, by continuing to make race an issue. People who support affirmative action often call people who are against it racist. However, in reality, people who support affirmative action are the ones who want to keep race as an issue, while people who are against it, like me, are the ones who want race not to be an issue.

Arab-American Psychologist Blasts Muslims

2006-03-07T15:29:00.000-08:00

Arab-American Psychologist Wafa Sultan absolutely blasted Islamic societies and culture on Al-Jazeera recently. Here are some quotes:

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings."

"All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking."

"The Jews have come from the tragedy [of the Holocaust], and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. Fifteen million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

Ouch! I'm sure there are fatwas being put out against her as we speak. Hopefully, though, this will lead Muslims all around the world to question themselves, their culture and their values in an intelligent way, rather than just being another excuse to kill someone who disagrees with them which is then ignored by moderate Muslims.

Patriot Act Renewal

2006-03-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

The Patriot Act was renewed by the Senate, with relatively minor changes, this time by a vote of 89-10. So, that means that out of 200 possible votes in the 2 times it has come up before the Senate for a democratic vote by the legitimately elected Senators of the United States, there have been a total of 11 votes against it. It seems to me that the democratically elected Senators of this country overwhelmingly support the Patriot Act. Yet, this has been one of the primary exhibits by ultra-liberals of the "dictatorship" that is George Bush's Presidency. Hopefully, this will end that argument, at least in reference to the Patriot Act. Now, if they still think that it does more harm than good and they want to get rid of it altogether or alter it some more, that's fine. Let them continue to make that case and try to get representatives elected who will do that. However, if one more person uses the Patriot Act as evidence of George Bush being a "dictator," I very well might scream.

Cunningham Gets 8+ Years

2006-03-03T16:07:00.000-08:00

"Former Rep. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham, who collected $2.4 million in homes, yachts, antique furnishings and other bribes on a scale unparalleled in the history of Congress, was sentenced Friday to eight years and four months in prison, the longest term meted out to a congressman in decades."

Ouch. This goes to remind us that even members of Congress aren't above the law.

"'Your honor I have ripped my life to shreds due to my actions, my actions that I did to myself,' he said."

That is correct.

Beginning of the End

2006-03-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

"An Overland High School teacher who criticized President Bush, capitalism and U.S. foreign policy during his geography class was placed on administrative leave Wednesday afternoon after a student who recorded the session went public with the tape."

I believe that this is the beginning of the end of the ultra-hippy cultural relativism dominance in our educational system and I couldn't be happier. Granted, this will not end it right away, but this accountability for political preaching disguised as teaching will likely spread and this will be seen as the event that started it. Parents will now be more aware of teachers doing this sort of thing and teachers will become a little warier about preaching politics in their classroom for fear that they could get suspended or even fired.

Here's a link to a site that has the whole recording.

Michelle Malkin has transcribed the whole thing for you if you prefer to read it.

In the post-Vietnam era, our educational system has been marked by an overwhelming dominance of a culturally relativistic mindset like this that says that the United States is always wrong and is the cause of everything bad that happens in the world. This mindset points out our flaws and always says "Who are we to judge?" Because people of this mindset think that the U.S. is so bad and so flawed, it follows that they think that any time we disagree with someone or use foreign aid to influence other countries' policies or go to war with another country, that's wrong because "Who are we to judge?" "How can we try to change another country when we've done so and so bad thing in the past? Who are we to judge?" they ask. This mindset has so totally taken over our educational system and the culture of people who were born since Vietnam that it kind of scares me. Judging by my parents' reactions when I tell them this, they don't realize the extent to which this mindset has permeated our society among younger people. Luckily, now there seems to be a backlash developing against this mindset, or at least the dominance of this mindset, and Sean Allen has fired a shot against it because teachers everywhere will be a little more careful about saying their whacko political viewpoints--whether conservative or liberal--in a public school setting to children.

Let me make it clear that I don't have any problem with an individual having these particular crazy opinions besides just thinking they're crazy. I'd be glad to let this guy speak publicly and have his opinions shot down in the court of public opinion. What bothers me is that he's pushing it down impressionable kids' throats, thus trying to create a whole new generation of whackos like him. I don't want Ann Coulter teaching classes and telling kids that all Democrats are treasonous any more than I want this loon saying the nonsense that he does in his classroom.

Check out Slapstick Politics for more.

Crazy San Francisco Is At It Again

2006-03-02T08:59:00.000-08:00

"The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is calling on the California Democratic congressional delegation to press for the impeachment of President Bush. Seven of the city's 10 supervisors agreed that the president had failed to perform his duties by leading the country into war in Iraq and eroding civil liberties."

That's the San Francisco we all know and laugh at. What impeachable offense has Bush committed? Just keep sending out that loony tunes image to the rest of the country, San Francisco. Are they even in the same country as the rest of us? At least Gavin Newsom is talking a little bit of sense:

"Mayor Gavin Newsom says he hasn't decided whether he'll sign the non-bonding resolution, but tells the San Francisco Chronicle, 'On the list of 1 to 3000, it's not even on that list of priorities for me to sign a resolution that will have no force and effect.'"

Why do they even waste their time and taxpayer money on this nonsense? Sigh.

Illegal Immigrant Lawsuits

2006-03-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

There are people in border states whose property goes right up to the Mexican border. After years of having their property stolen and littered upon and having their livestock slaughtered by people illegally crossing the border, some of them have started to fight back. Some of them have begun stopping people at gunpoint and telling them to get off their property. It's perfectly legal by American law to protect one's property this way. Well, I saw on Fox News this morning that the Mexican government is filing lawsuits on behalf of some of those illegal immigrants, charging the American landowners with harassment. One assumes that the Mexican government will lose, but this is extremely worrisome nonetheless. This is a clear intimidation tactic. The Mexican government is clearly saying "If you try to mess with these illegal immigrants, whose repatriations from your functioning economy are the lifeblood of our crappy, corrupt economy and government, then you'll have the full weight of the Mexican government coming against you." This would bother me more, but I know that the Mexican government is simply shooting themselves in the foot with things like this. It's outrageous things like this that have mobilized the public enough to pressure Congress to crack down on illegal immigration. The more the Mexican government does things like this, the more pressure will be put on Congress to fix the problem for good. So, I say, keep it up Mexico!

Presidential Propaganda Failures

2006-03-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

One of the things that just about every liberal "credits" the Bush administration with is that they have such a ruthlessly effective "propaganda" team. Liberals constantly say that the Bush administration is so good at spinning and selling their policies that this is the only reason that Bush has been elected twice and that any of his policies have gotten through. After all, to most liberals, Bush is somewhere between Hitler and the devil and for someone between Hitler and the devil to have been elected twice, it must be because of a Goebbles-like effectiveness at propaganda. This charge drives me nuts, because I say the exact opposite. I say that the Bush administration is shockingly bad at getting its message across. They have effectively outsourced their public relations to talk radio hosts and blogs. The hullabaloo over this port deal is a perfect example and should put this idea to rest, though it won't. The administration has been totally, completely incompetent at telling its side of the story over and over and over and this total incompetence affects Bush's approval rating, which affects his ability to get his policies through. Let's take this ports deal. Whether you support it or not, there is a very strong case to be made that it should go through, which I have described here. Yet, for days all anyone heard was "A country that produced 2 of the 9/11 hijackers and through which 9/11 money was transferred is taking over our port security!" A competent public relations team would have been out there on the first day saying what is now, finally, being said. Yet, Bush's public relations team isn't the slightest bit competent. It's horrendous. Let me examine a few more ways in which their public relations team is a pathetic failure:

The economy--A recent poll showed that something like 1/3 of Americans think the economy's in recession right now! A strong case can be made that the economy is not only good but great right now, yet the public as a whole simply doesn't realize this.

Social Security--For a long time, seemingly everyone, including most of the mainstream media, was either implying or saying straight out that the personal accounts in the President's proposed Social Security reform were mandatory. This got the idea in people's heads that the President's plan would force away your retirement security to place upon the whims of the stock market. If they had been on the ball, the administration would have come out and said over and over again, "These personal accounts would be 100% optional. If you want to invest part of your social security money in the stock market, you can. If you don't want to, you don't have to. How could anyone disagree with this?" Poll after poll showed that when people were told that the accounts were optional, support for his reforms jumped way up. Yet, they failed to get this message across.

Guantanamo Bay--An awful lot of people think that we should give everyone at Guantanamo Bay a civilian trial, when this simply is not feasible. Pakistani intelligence has captured hundreds of terrorists since 9/11. If they were all put to an American civilian trial, this would require putting Pakistani intelligence agents on the stand as witnesses in order to prove their guilt to the standard of a civilian trial. What are the chances of the Pakistani government allowing their intelligence agents to take the stand in an American civilian trial, thus exposing their agents and intelligence-gathering methods to the world? Zero. Therefore, if we gave them all civilian trials, basically all of them would go free because the witnesses couldn't testify. Is it really feasible simply to let almost every al Qaeda agent we have go free?

Iraq--There are a million things here that I could mention. Most people thought that it was our job to prove that Iraq had WMDs before we attacked. In reality, U.N. Resolution 1441 said that it was Iraq's job to prove that they didn't have the weapons. That sounds like a small difference, yet it makes all the difference in the world. Again, this was a pretty easy case to make, yet the administration utterly failed to make it. It has become accepted pretty much as fact, at least among most of the media, that there was no connection at all between Iraq and al Qaeda pre-9/11. That's debunked here. While Iraq clearly wasn't a state run by and for international terrorists like Afghanistan was, Iraq clearly had some connections with international terrorists, including al Qaeda, yet the story of no connection at all endures.

Allies--The rhetoric of the last few years would have you believe that George Bush has alienated the entire world against us and that since we have no friends that will hurt us in everything we try to do from now on. Yet, we're now closer allies with India, Pakistan, Israel and Japan, not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan, than we've ever been. Together, these countries have a population of well over a billion people. Given the threats and problems we're likely to face in the coming years and decades, I'll take India, Pakistan and Japan over France, Germany and Canada any day of the week. With that said, however, we might not have to make that choice. The new leaders of Canada and Germany seem to want to have better relations with the U.S. and Nicolas Sarkozy, the early front-runner to be the next President of France, is likely to be more pro-American, or at least less anti-American, than Jacques Chirac. Yes, there was an immature, almost global, temper tantrum against for a while, but as more and more people, especially Europeans, realize that they are also a target of terrorists, people are going to be cozying up to us more and more in the coming months and years. Yet people still think that everyone hates us.

This is just a smattering of the administration's PR failures, yet you get the point. The points I make are things that could very easily be made by the administration, yet they have almost completely failed. Like I said, this doesn't just affect Bush's approval rating. It affects his ability to get important legislation through. Every time I hear liberals talk about their "ruthlessly effective propaganda" team, I am just shocked.

Stand Up For Denmark

2006-02-24T09:50:00.000-08:00

It's the blogosphere's Stand Up For Denmark day, during which those who support the right of freedom of speech blog about Christopher Hitchins' call for a demonstration at the Embassy of Denmark in Washington, D.C. So, here's my little part to stand up for freedom of speech.

Expansion on Our PC Culture

2006-02-24T08:46:00.000-08:00

I want to expand on the post directly below this one by telling a little story about my trip to Moldova. While I was in Moldova, every single meal we had, I was given wine, whether I wanted it or not, and I was expected to drink it, whether I wanted it or not. I would usually act like I was drinking it and either leave it there, hoping no one would notice that I hadn't drunk it, or slide it over to my wife for her to drink it. Then, if the hosts noticed that my cup was not empty, they would generally ask me about it, pressure me to drink it and watch as I drank it. If they noticed that my cup was empty, they would refill it, then pressure me to drink even more. You see, in their culture, if someone makes a toast and you don't drink, that means that you wish bad things upon their whole family. Well, they were toasting a good 20 times per meal, every meal! So, they were expecting me to take 20 drinks of a drink that I hate and that would get me drunk against my will every single meal! This might be nice to some people who like to drink a lot, but this was absolutely awful to me. It was pure hell. I only drink maybe once per week when I'm home. Plus, I don't like wine. Since I don't speak their language, my wife would tell them over and over that I didn't want wine, but it didn't matter. I was generally able to hide it by dumping it out into the sink when they weren't looking or by sliding it to my wife, but what bothered me the most was that they were practically forcing it down my throat completely against my will.

Now, what does this have to do with our PC culture, you ask? Here's what. When I got back home, I told people about this and a common response from Americans was, "Well, that's their culture and you have to respect it." What?! Our PC culture has gotten so screwed up that Westerners don't even demand of others what we demand of ourselves. Why don't they demand that Moldovans respect me and my culture? Of course it's my fault that there was a problem here. Of course it's the American's fault. That's how we think. Okay, so these Americans who were preaching respect of other people's cultures were disagreeing with me, not with them? That makes no sense at all. The Moldovans were the ones who weren't respecting other people's cultures, not me. If they want to drink wine at every meal, I personally think that's disgusting, but I don't care. I never told them what to drink. I wasn't the one forcing them to do anything against their will. They were the ones forcing me. Why don't the PC Americans get mad at the Moldovans for not respecting my culture? The Moldovans were the ones who were expecting everyone to be exactly the same and to eat and drink the exact same thing, whether they wanted to or not. Yet, it was my fault and we're always the ones who need to submit to the other's way of doing things and accept the way the other does things because "Who are we to judge?" This culture that has pervaded the West for the last 35-40 years has actually become dangerous from a national security perspective. As the Weekly Standard and I stated in the post below, this submission to the other's way of doing things has led just about every single media outlet in the Western world to censor itself voluntarily! If they will just voluntarily give up one of our most cherished rights in order to satisfy their PC desire to be sensitive to the "other," what other rights will we voluntarily give up?

As another side note, when I would try to explain this to the PC people, they would just shrug their shoulders and say, "That's their culture and you should respect it" again, because thought and logic don't matter. Only sustaining this intellectually and morally bankrupt mindset that has been pounded into our collective brains over the last few decades matters. Well, you know what? No, I don't have to respect Moldovan culture and no I don't respect Moldovan culture. Their culture is everything we hate. Their culture is racist, corrupt, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and xenophobic in pretty much every way. If an American acted the way that Moldovan culture as a whole is, these PC people would denounce that person into the ground, and rightly so. Yet, "that's their culture and I should respect it." Ugh. The American is always wrong. I fear for our culture.

More on Free Speech

2006-02-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

Right after I wrote this post about liberals getting so incredibly mad about the Bush administration's policies on security vs. civil liberties, then voluntarily censoring themselves over the Mohammed cartoons, the Weekly Standard has written a somewhat similar article about people in the media who have fought so hard in the past to uphold free speech rights and who are now voluntarily imperiling free speech by censoring themselves.

"IN THE PAST, our most powerful news outlets spent millions on legal fees and saw reporters imprisoned on contempt charges in order to defend the publication of news that the government argued would compromise national security--the Pentagon Papers, for example. In the recent past they have printed stories that inarguably do compromise national security, such as the recent revelations about electronic eavesdropping and CIA-run rendition programs for suspected Al Qaeda terrorists."

"But when Muslims around the world rioted, torched embassies, killed dozens, and threatened others with fatwas in response to a Danish newspaper's cartoons of Mohammed, nearly all of our major press outlets refused to run the offending cartoons under the guise of 'respect' for the 'Prophet Mohammed'--whose honorific is now suddenly capitalized sans scare quotes. (Christians will have to burn down a few buildings if they want Jesus Christ referred to as the Son of God.) The New York Times, for one, was less bothered by the violence than by the cartoonists' exercise in free speech which provoked it, and to prove it the paper bravely re-ran a photo of the painting of the Virgin Mary slathered in elephant dung."

"Any parent knows that giving your child everything he wants is a guarantee that he'll never stop demanding more--and reacting more angrily when he doesn't get it. Now that blowing up and beheading innocents in the name of Islam is considered less offensive than some pen-and-ink drawings, militant Islamists can pretty much take their pick of insults to be offended by--and our press will have to again respect their "sensibilities" in order to keep them from burning down the presses. So what will offend them next time? Pornography? Caricatures of bin Laden? Reports on female circumcision in Islamic Africa? Will & Grace?"

This appears to be a battle in the West between 2 of our society's strongest values. The first is free speech and the second is the value of not offending the "other." Since the civil rights movement, one of the strongest compulsions in the West has been to make sure that we don't offend the "other," the "downtrodden" or the "minority." We have such a strong collective sense of guilt that we have pounded it into ourselves that we have to be "sensitive" and "understanding of their culture" and things of that nature. We can't ever offend anyone. This is the ultimate PC value. That's why many schools got rid of Christmas break and replaced it with Winter break. We don't want to offend the 5% (I got this number from a poll) of Americans who don't celebrate Christmas. That's why some people pushed to make children's sports not have a winner and a loser. We don't want the losers to be offended. Remember that? We have to build up their self esteem by telling them over and over and over that we value them and that everyone is valued equally. We certainly can't ever "judge" them. "Judging" someone is a big no-no in this PC world. There's certainly no right or wrong. If we disagree with someone we're obviously the ones who need to change and accept their way of life. We, the evil Westerners, especially the white Christian ones, are always the ones who are wrong. Who are we to judge when we're so obviously such a horrible, racist, sexist society that had slavery 150 years ago and that did horrible things to the Native Americans hundreds of years ago? If the "other" attacks us, clearly it's our fault because we simply weren't "sensitive" enough. After all, we supported some dictator they didn't like 50 years ago. It's enough to make me retch. Being "offensive" has become one of the worst things a Westerner could possibly be. So, which value will win out, free speech or sensitivity to the other? Unfortunately, I'm not all that confident about the outcome.

Internet Good For You?

2006-02-23T16:13:00.000-08:00

"Far from creating an individualistic and self-centered generation that shuns social interaction or community involvement, as many parents and teachers fear, chat rooms and message boards are fostering a new public spirit among young people and helping them to develop their personalities and make friends, scientists say.

"Regular users of teen chat rooms tend to be more engaged with their communities than the rest of their age group, and their online identities play an important role in the self-discovery of adolescence, researchers said."

Maybe all that net surfing is good, after all.

Something to Keep In Mind

2006-02-23T10:28:00.000-08:00

The next time you hear a global-warming alarmist talking about the coming catastrophe from global warming, just remember previous "coming catastrophes" like the population explosion, which turned out to be a dud, scarcity of natural resources from oil to nickel to iron and global cooling, which was a big worry in the 1970s. Now, also remember that the fact that these alarmists have been wrong time and time again doesn't in and of itself mean that they're wrong about global warming. It just means to be a little skeptical of their claims.

Alternative View on Ports Deal

2006-02-23T08:50:00.000-08:00

With everyone and their mother lining up to denounce the deal handing over management duties for for handling a few of our ports to a United Arab Emirates (UAE) company, I found this Wall Street Journal editorial interesting and informative, if only to hear the other side.

"So far, none of the critics have provided any evidence that the Administration hasn't done its due diligence. The deal has been blessed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multiagency panel that includes representatives from the departments of Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security."

"Besides, the notion that the Bush Administration is farming out port 'security' to hostile Arab nations is alarmist nonsense. Dubai Ports World would be managing the commercial activities of these U.S. ports, not securing them. There's a difference. Port security falls to Coast Guard and U.S. Customs officials."

"Critics also forget, or conveniently ignore, that the UAE government has been among the most helpful Arab countries in the war on terror. It was one of the first countries to join the U.S. container security initiative, which seeks to inspect cargo in foreign ports. The UAE has assisted in training security forces in Iraq, and at home it has worked hard to stem terrorist financing and WMD proliferation. UAE leaders are as much an al Qaeda target as Tony Blair."

"So the same Democrats who lecture that the war on terror is really a battle for 'hearts and minds' now apparently favor bald discrimination against even friendly Arabs investing in the U.S.? Guantanamo must be closed because it's terrible PR, wiretapping al Qaeda in the U.S. is illegal, and the U.S. needs to withdraw from Iraq, but these Democratic superhawks simply will not allow Arabs to be put in charge of American longshoremen. That's all sure to play well on al Jazeera."

I want to elaborate on the part about the UAE being our ally in the war on terror. I suspect that the UAE might even be more diligent about scrutinizing things than a British company would be because the UAE would be under the strictest of public scrutiny. The UAE is already definitely on al Qaeda's hit list. If a terrorist attack came through one of these ports, then they would be on al Qaeda's and America's hit list. To say the least, I'm sure they want to avoid that. Though, like it says, this company *would not* be providing security. As of now, I see no reason that this deal should not go through. If people would just simmer down and look at this calmly and rationally, I think they would see that it's probably not that big of a deal. Now, I'm glad that there are going to be public hearings on it. By all means, go through every layer of accountability we have. If something bad comes up during these hearings, stop the deal. That's all well and good, but this really doesn't seem like the huge deal that it's being made out to be.

Ports Deal

2006-02-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

I will wait for more information on the deal turning over port management to that company from the United Arab Emirates before I make my final judgement about it, but here are some early thoughts I have. The United Arab Emirates is arguably our closest Muslim ally in the war on terror. They have allowed us to base planes there for use in Iraq. They have also apparently been very helpful in terms of intelligence. The company would take over management of the ports, not security, which is totally separate. For these reasons, the deal doesn't bother me that much at this point. However, considering that even the President didn't know about it until a few days ago, that certainly seems to show that this decision was not taken as seriously as it should have been. If nothing else, I'm wary of it because of that.

I certainly find the hyperventilating about the deal interesting, though, especially from the left. Democrats have been fuming for years now that the way to win the war on terror was to "win hearts and minds" and to "build bridges" to Muslims and things of that nature. Now, all of a sudden, they want to stick their thumb in the eye of what is arguably our strongest Arab ally in the war on terror? That would be a major coup for the terrorists. If we don't allow this deal to go through, I can all but guarantee you that bin Laden's or Zawahiri's next tape will say "Look, the United Arab Emirates has bowed down to the imperialist crusader America's demands and what do they get? America still won't allow one of the UAE's companies to work at their ports because of America's Islamophobia." I've never been a big fan of the argument that we should base our policies on what makes people like us in the short term, so I think this argument is far less important than the national security implications of the deal, but I do find it very interesting that Democrats all seem to be totally in favor of the "racial profiling" that they've been denouncing for years. I think the deal should go through unless there is a very real risk to our national security that will come about because of it.

Food for Thought

2006-02-21T13:24:00.000-08:00

I'm sure there are people who would think I'm crazy for making such a big deal about the threat from Islamic terrorism. To counter this, I'll give you some food for thought. The Mohammed cartoons were made after a children's book about Islam was being written in Denmark and not a single illustrator in the country would illustrate it out of fear of extremists attacking them for depicting Mohammed. This book wasn't even intended to be negative. It was just a book about Islam from what I understand, yet illustrators were still too scared to do it. Seeing this, an editor of the paper was worried about the West self-censoring, so it asked if there was anyone left who would stand up for free speech by sending in cartoons about Islam. Now, with the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh no doubt firmly in mind, the author of the most famous Mohammed cartoon is in hiding for his life because of all of the threats he got to his life. So, here's the food for thought. I didn't live through most of the Cold War, but I don't recall ever hearing about the West voluntarily censoring itself over criticism of the Soviet Union out of fear. I don't remember ever hearing about cartoonists living in hiding out of fear of the commies.

Another Swedish Site Shut Down

2006-02-21T13:17:00.000-08:00

Look at this:

"On Monday Swedish Internet provider Spray shutdown the website of feminist publisher Alida for publishing those sinister Mohammad pictures. As a private company, this is, of course, their right (they claim that Säpo was in no way involved), but one cannot help thinking that such actions bode ill for the already stifled debate climate in Sweden."

That's right. Let's just keep voluntarily giving away our rights to a few psychos. This is downright scary to me.

Swedish Troops to Afghanistan

2006-02-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

This is good news:

"Sweden is sending some 400 troops to Afghanistan, to form the core of a PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team)."

This, in addition to other troop increases for Afghanistan, seems to signal an increasing realization by countries around the world, especially in Europe, that the war on terror is something that they have a stake in, too. As I wrote recently, Europe seems to be increasingly joining the war on terror and I welcome them aboard with open arms.

You Wanted It, You Got It

2006-02-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

Europeans and liberals for years have screamed at the Bush administration to be more "multilateral" and to stop being so "imperialistic." Well, the administration seems to have been doing exactly that lately. After a Dutch filmmaker was killed for filming the plight of many Islamic women, Britain was bombed, France had major riots and Europe has been the major target of violent protests throughout several Muslim countries, we have been letting the Europeans take the lead in trying to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons and we've largely stayed quiet about the Mohammed cartoon controversy, allowing Europe to get most of the ire. What did this get us? We now have a major threat of the State Department's #1 sponsor of terrorism, whose President has pledged to destroy Israel, having nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them throughout the Middle East and possibly into Europe, thus producing a major threat to Europe and a major embarrassment to them politically. We also have an awful lot of violence from the Islamic crazies now being directed at European countries, particularly Denmark, instead of just at the U.S. Well, this is what the Europeans asked for. All I can say to them now is "Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it."

Liberal Double Standard

2006-02-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

The typical liberal reaction to the Bush administration's policies regarding civil liberties vs. security is one of vitriolic denunciation. Ask a liberal about the Patriot Act or the wiretapping controversy and they'll start foaming at the mouth as if the world is going to end. Remember that these are policies enacted by an elected President who is Constitutionally barred from seeking more than 2 terms and who is subject to democratic checks and balances. The Patriot Act, for instance, is about to come up for a renewal vote in the Senate, while top leaders of Congress knew about the wiretapping. On the other hand, one common liberal reaction to the Mohammed cartoon controversy is to denounce the cartoon writers and to self-censor by refusing to print the cartoons. They say that we shouldn't "provoke" Muslims by showing the cartoons and that these cartoons "didn't do any good." I find it rather shocking that so many liberals get so stark-raving crazy in response to what are very small restrictions on our civil liberties enacted during a time of war by a democratically elected government and that can thus be changed by a future democratically elected government, yet they seem perfectly fine just voluntarily giving away one of our most cherished rights, that of freedom of speech, in response to a few psychos. This is not all liberals, of course, but it seems to me that these have been the "typical" liberal reactions.

More Fear of Islamic Radicals

2006-02-17T15:09:00.000-08:00

Check out this post at Little Green Footballs about a top woman tennis player who won't play on a doubles team with an Israeli player and the Danish soccer team not going to Israel to play soccer out of fear of extremist Muslims.

It should be obvious to everyone in the world by now that extremist Islam is a cancer that can't be lived with and that must be destroyed. There is no appeasing it. We can't apologize for a few cartoons and have the threat suddenly disappear. We can't avoid "provoking" it and hope it'll leave us alone. We have to stand up to it. Extremist Islam is attempting nothing short of taking over the entire world and by doing things like not playing soccer in Israel, we're taking small steps towards that end.

Since the hippie generation ruined the West virtually beyond repair in the 1960s, Westerners have had an idea that any problem in the world can be solved simply by being nicer. If someone dislikes us, we just need to be nicer. Unfortunately, that only works when the people you're dealing with want to live peacefully side by side with you singing koombayah in perfect harmony like you do with them. Muslim fanatics, however, don't want to live peacefully side by side with us. They want to convert us to Wahhabi Islam and dominate us or kill us. In this war against extremist Islam, it's quite literally either destroy or be destroyed. This is an all out world war on every front. This war involves military means in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. It involves political elements in places like the U.N. and the E.U. where Islamic countries and organizations are trying to change international and European law to make it illegal to "demean religion," thus trying to override all of our free speech rights in one fell swoop when it comes to Islam. This war also involves cultural elements in their attempts to test our resolve to fight for our values. Extremist Muslims say that the West is morally weak and that we simply won't stand up and fight for our values. These extremists are testing that theory right now over these cartoons and anywhere else they find a chance, from free speech to sports. They think that all they have to do is make a few threats and maybe go out and kill a few people and the entire West will just capitulate because we are simply too weak to stand up for our values. I would like to dismiss this characterization of the West out of hand, but I'm not so sure that these extremist Muslims are wrong on this point. Hopefully, the civilized world will prove my pessimism wrong.

This is a moment of truth for the civilized world. We must stand up to extremist Islam anywhere and everywhere it rears its disgusting, evil head, whether it's in Iraq killing people signing up to be police officers, in Afghanistan killing aid workers, in Denmark threatening soccer players, in Pakistan burning KFCs because of a freaking cartoon or anywhere else it exists. We must fight and we must win.

Kyoto's Anniversary

2006-02-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

This is obviously from a biased source, but it's worth looking at anyway, just to get the other side:

"As tallied up at JunkScience.com courtesy of the global warmers’ own data, Kyoto is estimated to have cost about $150 billion so far, while only hypothetically reducing the average global temperature by 0.0015 degrees Centigrade.

At that rate, it would take 667 years and cost $100 trillion to hypothetically avert just 1 degree Centigrade of global warming."

I have to state that I have not examined their estimates nor would it probably do much good since I'm not much of a scientist, so I don't know the accuracy of these charges. With that said, however, if these numbers are all true, I don't know of too many people who would agree to pay those enormously high costs for that tiny benefit.

It's pretty common to hear about glaciers receding in the latest global warming alarmism report, but why do we almost never hear about other glaciers that are growing?

"Some glaciers are receding, but others...are advancing. No one knows what causes glaciers to advance and retreat – the physics are complex and much more is involved than simply air temperature."

This type of thing just makes me angry. It's like scientists and journalists are either incapable of telling or unwilling to tell us the whole story and allow us to make up our own minds. It does appear that the Earth is warming up and that it is at least partially because of human activity, but when I see things like this, I just don't know what to believe anymore.

Why Congress Hasn't Declared War

2006-02-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

Apparently, Congress hasn't officially declared war since World War II. Here's why:

"Seems that after World War II, Congress wrote into law a lot of the wartime measures used during World War II. These included price controls, censorship and greater police powers. This was done with the possibility of nuclear war in mind, where there would be massive damage done to the U.S. in a short period of time. To deal with this, a lot of these regulations would kick in the minute Congress votes to declare war. No one wants to be the first to suggest repealing these laws and regulations, and no one wants to see them go into action. So whenever anyone in Congress starts talking about declaring war, they are pulled aside by some senior staffers and filled in on the consequences.

"Of course, the war on terror is more complicated because there is no country to declare war on. That, of course, could be easily gotten around, by crafting a declaration that names an institution (al Qaeda, et al). But it's so much easier just to pass a resolution of support for the president, and let the chief take a beating if it all goes to hell. Congress can always say, 'we didn't declare war,' without getting into the real reason why not."

France Gets Tough on Iran

2006-02-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

"France's foreign minister said Thursday that Iran's nuclear program was a cover for clandestine military activity, in an unusually direct attack on Tehran for a European diplomat."

"'No civilian nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program. It is a clandestine military nuclear program,' Douste-Blazy said on France-2 television."

Wow, that's some tough talk from a French diplomat. Let's just hope that they follow this tough talk with some tough action.

No CIA-Bin Laden Link

2006-02-15T16:10:00.000-08:00

You'll often hear radical lefties say things like "The CIA trained bin Laden in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is a CIA creation and 9/11 is, therefore, somewhat our own fault." First of all, we had 3 choices in Afghanistan in the 1980s: do nothing and allow the Soviet Union to take over Afghanistan, go to war with the Soviet Union or give money and help to the "mujahideen." The first 2 options weren't realistic. Helping the "mujahideen" was probably the only realistic option. Secondly, are these people implying that the CIA trained bin Laden and others how to hijack commercial airliners and fly them into buildings? Thirdly, "The real story is that the CIA did not know about Bin Laden until 1995. Often people say that Bin Laden was a CIA creation, but there's never been any evidence." That's from terrorism expert Peter Bergen.

Europe Center of War on Terror

2006-02-15T16:01:00.000-08:00

I kind of wish I were in Europe now so that I could see how they like suddenly being the center of the war on terror. It's obvious that Europeans' attitudes to the war on terror have changed dramatically in the last 6 months to a year. With the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh being killed by an Islamic extremist for making a movie about the conditions of Islamic women, the bombings in London, the recalcitrance of Iran over its nuclear program in the face of European negotiation attempts and now the cartoon controversy, Europeans suddenly feel like they're every bit as much under attack as we are. Do you know what? They are every bit as much under attack as we are. In fact, they have been for a long time. They just haven't realized it until recently. To this, I say "Welcome aboard the war on terror, Europe. It's good to have you finally."