A Referendum on the War?

No, not really. Here's why:

It was not a referendum on Iraq. One of the most pro-Iraq lawmakers in Congress, Sen. Joe Lieberman, ran as an independent and trounced anti-Iraq Democratic nominee Ned Lamont. Meanwhile, of the five remaining Republican members of Congress who voted against Iraq's liberation, three lost: Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), Rep. John Hostettler (Ind.) and Rep. Jim Leach (Iowa). Only two anti-Iraq Republicans will return to the 110th Congress: Reps. Jimmy Duncan (Tenn.) and Ron Paul (Texas).

The Associated Press reports that while "three-fourths of voters said corruption and scandal were important to their votes, . . . Iraq was important for just two-thirds." Both groups tended to favor Democrats. (LINK)

And as Mona Charen points out:

The war in Iraq was cited as an “extremely,” “very,” or “somewhat” important factor in the votes of 89 percent of the electorate according to exit polls. But the war on terror was cited by 92 percent voters as important to their votes. These nearly cancel each other out, as those who cited Iraq as crucial tended to vote Democrat and those who cited terror tended to vote Republican.

Meanwhile, 57 percent of voters said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” disapproved of the job George Bush was doing as president, but more (61 percent) said they disapproved of Congress. Why Congress? Other polling, conducted before Election Day, found that 75 percent of voters were concerned about political corruption.

Really, it had more to do with politicians. (and I can't really blame anyone for that. The republicans stopped being conservatives and were content being politicians)

In Jonah Goldberg's words:

In other words, just as Democrats insisted, the GOP's drubbing had more to do with incompetence and scandal than program and ideology.

Indeed, if the conservative base hadn't been disgusted with Republican management, and if so many Democrats hadn't run as social conservatives, the GOP might have done just fine in this election.

Republicans lost because they behaved like self-indulgent politicians, not purists. Conservatives care a lot about ideas, so that's where we'll try to assign blame. But the ideologues aren't to blame. The Republicans are.

So, what do the Dems want to do?

A 25 point manifesto:

1. Mandatory homosexuality

2. Drug-filled condoms in schools

3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act

4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses

5. Osama Bin Laden to be Secretary of State

6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein

7. English language banned from all Federal buildings

8. Math classes replaced by encounter groups

9. All taxes to be tripled

10. All fortunes over $250,000 to be confiscated

11. On-demand welfare

12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish

13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems

14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning

15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8

16. Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor

17. Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery

18. God to be mocked roundly

19. Dissolve Executive Branch: reassign responsibilities to UN

20. Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement

21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy

22. Texas returned to Mexico

23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore

25. Modify USA's motto to "Land of the French and the home of the brave"

Election 2006

This is pretty much what I've been mulling over all day: The ridiculous number of Democrats who ran as conservatives, in what Thomas Sowell calls a New Voter Fraud:

There is no real question that Democrats are more skilled at politics than the Republicans are. Democrats are more articulate, not to say glib, and they know how to stick together.

You don't see individual Democrats in the Senate going off to do their own thing in concert with the opposition and against the interest of their own party, as Senator John McCain has done with so-called "campaign finance reform" co-sponsored with ultra-liberal Senator Russ Feingold, and as he attempted to do on immigration with liberal icon Ted Kennedy.

Democrats know better than to betray their base of supporters — welfare state beneficiaries, the teachers' unions, environmental zealots, the ACLU and tort lawyers — the way the elder President Bush betrayed his supporters who relied on his "no new taxes" pledge and the way the current President Bush betrayed them by attempting to create amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.

Republicans have too often forgotten the old-time admonition to the girl going to a party, to always remember to "dance with the one who brung you."

Even some Republicans have said privately that the Democrats have the edge in playing the game of politics. Given the greater political shrewdness of the Democrats and the overwhelming bias of the media in their favor, it is remarkable that Republicans have had any political success at all.

That the Republicans are still a viable party is one measure of how far the Democrats' policies and values differ from those of most Americans.

Nowhere is that difference greater than when it comes to defending the American people against crime at home and against military and terrorist threats from abroad. Liberal Democrats — which is to say, most Democratic politicians and all of their leaders — are ready to try almost any "alternatives to incarceration" of criminals and almost any alternative to maintaining military strength as a deterrent to enemy nations.

More is involved than an unwillingness to face unpleasant facts of life. There is a coherent ideology behind these positions. That ideology goes back more than two centuries — and has failed in country after country over those centuries. But it is an ideology that sounds good and flatters the vanity of those who consider themselves part of a wise and compassionate elite. Republicans have too eclectic a collection of beliefs to beat the Democrats on a purely ideological basis. Moreover, the liberal vision is a more attractive vision because it assumes away many of the painful and even brutal aspects of human life, especially the fatal dangers of relying on words when dealing with people who only respect force that is backed up by a willingness to use it.

Facts are the only real antidote to a seductive vision. But facts do not "speak for themselves." Somebody has to articulate those facts and explain their implications. The liberal media will certainly not do it and too often the Republicans do it badly or not at all.

How many people are aware that the black-white income difference and the male-female income difference both narrowed during the 1980s — that is, during the Reagan administration? Democrats talked a better game on both fronts and to this day are widely regarded as the best hope, if not the only hope, for minorities and women.

How many people are aware that crime rates soared when liberal ideas became part of the criminal justice system in the 1960s and only began declining in the 1980s after more criminals were put behind bars and kept there a longer time?

Democrats have learned to avoid admitting to being liberals and this year are running a number of moderate candidates.

If these new moderate candidates are elected and give the Democrats control of Congress, that control will be exercised by senior Democrats who will hold leadership positions — and all of them are liberal extremists, whether people like Nancy Pelosi in the House or Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in the Senate.

Getting people to vote for moderates, in order to put extremists in power, may be the newest and biggest voter fraud.

I think this blog might see more regular updates....

Pre-Election Reading

There have been a ton of good articles leading up to the election. In case you need a reminder on who to vote for, check these stories out:

Eye of the beholder

The Enemy Fails in Iraq's Bloody Ramadan, the Forces of Chaos Lose

Some Dems want to Raise SS Tax

Health Insurance More Expensive? Perhaps thats by Design!

And I forgot the others...

And to put what you hear in perspective:

Study: Big Three Tilt vs. GOP

And a little humor from those poor morons in Iraq:

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

So, here are some excellent cartoons:






and because dilbert is freaking hillarious

Senate Intelligence...an Oxymoron?

Actually, that should be a statement.

In reading up on the latest rubbish to come from the dunces in the Senate in the form of a Senate Intelligence Report claiming no Saddam al Qaeda connection, I was struck by just how bad it really is. The best break down of the report I have seen is done by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard (also the best terrorism/Iraq War/etc. reporter I have come across). It can be read here. And I suggest you do. As I was reading through it, several passages really struck me. When I read some of them, I had to shake my head and smile. These people really are dolts, and the report is worthless. Here are said passages:

The Senate report concedes that the document exploitation process in Iraq is incomplete, but it cavalierly assures readers that nothing significant will be found. "While document exploitation continues, additional reviews of documents recovered in Iraq are unlikely to provide information that would contradict the Committee's findings or conclusions."

Such an assessment is at best premature according to intelligence officials familiar with the document exploitation project. "Given my past participation in this realm and my current status it would be imprudent to get into detail," writes Michael Tanji, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. "Suffice it to say that when you are counting sheets of paper by hundreds-of-millions (not to mention other forms of media that have been obtained that threaten to dwarf paper holdings) and your methodology is somewhere between inadequate and woeful, saying that you have a strong grasp on what was and wasn't going on in Iraq based on an 'initial review' is akin to saying that you don't need to read the bible because you've memorized the ten commandments . . . in pig Latin."

As of March 2006, three years after the start of the Iraq War, the document exploitation project run by the Defense Intelligence Agency had fully translated fewer than 5 percent of the documents captured in postwar Iraq. The Senate report, in an apparent effort to appear more authoritative, uses a different measurement. The authors tell us that 34 million pages out of some 120 million have been "translated and summarized to some extent." Thirty-four millions pages seems like an impressive number. But think about it. Just 28 percent of captured Iraqi documents have been "translated and summarized to some extent." That is hardly the kind of exhaustive analysis that would permit meaningful conclusions.

And, in any case, there are reasons to be skeptical of those estimates. Intelligence officials familiar with the DOCEX project say that the numbers in the report are inflated in an effort to impress congressional overseers. If just the cover sheet on a 200-page document has been read once and summarized, for example, all 200 pages are counted toward the total number of documents that have been exploited "to some extent." A translator who read only the cover sheet on the eight-page fax from Manila to Baghdad would have missed the revelation that Iraq had been providing money and arms to Abu Sayyaf. But for the purposes of the Senate report, that important document would have made the list of documents "translated and summarized to some extent." The real number of fully exploited documents, according to those familiar with the DOCEX project, remains in the single digits. The report's oracular assurances--that further exploitation is "unlikely" to change our understanding of Iraqi links to al Qaeda--is both deeply revealing and deeply troubling.

Where the report isn't tendentious, it is sloppy. Key names are misspelled; it's "Shakir" on one page, and "Shakhir" on another, which might be thought trivial. But consider: The writers of the report seem not to understand that "Shaykh Salman al-Awdah" and "Shaikh Sulayman al-Udah" is the same person and that he was an important spiritual mentor to al Qaeda and its leadership. At another point, the report claims that Saddam Hussein considered al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi an "outlaw." In the body of the report, the claim is attributed to a senior Iraqi official; in its conclusions the same information is attributed to an "al Qaeda detainee."

Where the report isn't tendentious and sloppy, it's confused. Saddam Hussein and his cronies disclaim any relationship and yet the Senate report itself cites two authenticated documents in which the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) itself discussed the "relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda. A 1992 document notes that bin Laden is "a Saudi opposition official in Afghanistan" and claims "the Syria [IIS] section has a relationship with him." An Iraqi Intelligence document describing the connections between Iraq and al Qaeda in 1997 notes that "through dialogue and agreements we will leave the door open to further develop the relationship and cooperation between both sides."

And it goes on.

The report is simply Bush-bashing ammo.

We're Not Biased...No Really, We're Not...

Get a load of these stories:

Story 1
Story 2

MSM running doctored photos.

Also, check out this remarkable series:

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine

"I'm Tired"

"I'm Tired"

Two weeks ago, as I was starting my sixth month of duty in Iraq, I wasforced to return to the USA for surgery for an injury I sustained prior to my deployment. With luck, I'll return to Iraq to finish my tour.

I left Baghdad and a war that has every indication that we are winning,to return to a demoralized country much like the one I returned to in1971 after my tour in Vietnam. Maybe it's because I'll turn 60 years old in just four months, but I'm tired:

I'm tired of spineless politicians, both Democrat and Republican who lackthe courage, fortitude, and character to see these difficult tasks through.

I'm tired of the hypocrisy of politicians who want to rewrite history when the going gets tough.

I'm tired of the disingenuous clamor from those that claim they 'Support the Troops' by wanting them to 'Cut and Run' before victory is achieved.

I'm tired of a mainstream media that can only focus on car bombs and casualty reports because they are too afraid to leave the safety of their hotels to report on the courage and success our brave men and women are having on the battlefield.

I'm tired that so many Americans think you can rebuild a dictatorship into a democracy over night.

I'm tired that so many ignore the bravery of the Iraqi people to go to the voting booth and freely elect a Constitution and soon a permanentParliament.

I'm tired of the so called 'Elite Left' that prolongs this war by giving aid and comfort to our enemy, just as they did during the Vietnam War.

I'm tired of antiwar protesters showing up at the funerals of our fallen soldiers. A family who's loved ones gave their life in a just and noble cause, only to be cruelly tormented on the funeral day by cowardly protesters is beyond shameful.

I'm tired that my generation, the Baby Boom - Vietnam generation, who have such a weak backbone that they can't stomach seeing the difficult tasks through to victory.

I'm tired that some are more concerned about the treatment of captives than they are the slaughter and beheading of our citizens and allies.

I'm tired that when we find mass graves it is seldom reported by the press, but mistreat a prisoner and it is front page news.

Mostly, I'm tired that the people of this great nation didn't learn from history that there is no substitute for Victory.

Sincerely,
Joe Repya,
Lieutenant Colonel,
U. S. Army,
101st Airborne Division

Da Link

"We're All Going to Die!" - Algore

Well, yes, that is true enough, but not in the way that climatologist Gore wants you to think.

Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe

"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."

This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.

So we have a smaller fraction.

But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."

We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.

Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."

But Karlén clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," Karlén concludes.

The Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic scenario in the foreseeable future.

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."

Karlén explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says Karlén

Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30% occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."

Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."

Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

In April sixty of the world's leading experts in the field asked Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what's at stake - either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.

The Link

Criminal Immigrant Invasion Roundup Part IV

Some people seem to hate the term "Illegal Alien" and even simply "Illegal Immigrant", so I propose a name change. Let's just call them criminal immigrants, yes? Sounds good enough to me, and much more accurate than "undocumented worker." Or I suppose we could just go the other direction and assign a bunch of euphemisms for all sorts of criminal behavior. People don't rob banks, they just make "unauthorized currency transfers." Whatever. On with the point.

First lets address the Illegal issue in general.

Let's take some lessons from Europe, shall we? I know not everyone likes the whole "learn from history or repeat it" line, but well, I'd say its a pretty good one.

Amnesty in Europe. Glowing success story? Uh, no:

As in the U.S., every amnesty is accompanied by earnest assurances that it is the very last one and by promises of a severe crackdown on illegal immigration that will solve the problem once and for all. Invariably, the argument is also made that legalizing the undocumented will bring them into the mainstream economy, providing much needed labor and a major boost in tax revenues for the state. The reality is the exact opposite.

European Union countries legalized approximately 1.75 million immigrants up through 2000, and between 3.5 and 4 million since then. Despite that, illegal immigration is increasing dramatically. Spain carried out four amnesties between 1985 and 2000, and yet, in 2003 it had 1.3 million legal immigrants and more than twice as many illegal ones. A year ago it amnestied yet another 700,000 to no visible reduction of illegal entries. In December, thousands of would-be immigrants stormed the ten-foot-tall, razorblade-wire fences surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco. Similarly, between 1986 and 2002, Italy legalized a million and a half immigrants in five separate amnesties without stemming at all the yearly inflow of well over 500,000 illegal immigrants. The same is the case in Portugal, Greece, France, and every other country that practices amnesties. And there is no reason to expect anything different if fully two-thirds of illegal entrants eventually obtain legalization, the odds of deportation are negligible, and the wait for legalization can be spent in the relative comfort of the European welfare system or its illegal economy.

The last point is worth pondering, because it is simply not the case that amnesties bring millions from the underground economy eager to pay the exorbitant taxes the nanny state collects from those working in order to nanny those that are not. The reason there is an underground economy to begin with is because neither employers nor employees are eager to cough up payroll taxes that average 36 percent in the EU. Indeed, with these kinds of confiscatory levies, the often unskilled and uneducated illegal immigrant becomes unemployable in the regular economy. The result is a huge influx of illegal workers in the now-depleted shadow economy, which is one reason it is rapidly growing both in Europe and North America. According to expert estimates, it has more than doubled in the past 20 years and currently ranges from 8.4 percent of GDP in the U.S. to 14.5 percent in France, 16.8 percent in Germany, and nearly one-third of GDP in high immigration countries like Italy.

Now, on to some of the ugly myths, yet again:

The first myth is that illegal aliens live in the shadows. The “shadows” claim then becomes an urgent reason why Congress must pass a legalization plan: so that 11 million people can come out of hiding. In fact, illegal aliens live in the full blaze of day. Only when confronted with the merest hint that immigration enforcement is even possible do they curtail their movements—and then elite thinking immediately declares such curtailment a gross injustice.

But even if it were true that illegals lived in the shadows, why is that unfair? The bargain they chose was clear: if you come here illegally, the law says that you should face deportation. It is a measure of how surreal our immigration practice has become that it is now “mean-spirited” simply to raise the possibility in an illegal’s mind that his deportation risk is real, much less actually to deport him.

The second myth is that the only way to reduce the illegal alien population is through “mass deportations”—assumed by the enlightened to be patently cruel. The fear stories make clear, however, that the illegal alien population has burgeoned precisely because illegals assume that they face no risk of enforcement. As soon as there is any move toward upholding the law, calculations change. Were enforcement actions to continue, the calculations made by illegals already here and those planning to come would change even more radically: many illegals would go home and many fewer would enter. As Jessica Vaughan points out in a recent report for the Center for Immigration Studies, after the Department of Homeland Security deported 1,500 illegal Pakistanis after 9/11, 15,000 more illegal Pakistanis left the country on their own. We have no reason to believe that illegal Hispanics and other populations would not follow a similar course.

And now moving more to the mayday marches. (No, its not just a coincidence that the rallies were held on the big Communist holiday of Mayday.) The whole purpose was to show that the economy desperately depends on illegal labor. That entire position is purely fiction. (for starters, see the other roundups) But further, consider this: Illegals are costing the government 10.4 billion

The study is called "The High Cost of Cheap Labor" and was conducted by the Center of Immigration Studies.

In 2002, households headed by undocumented workers accounted cost the federal government more than $26 billion in services. Those households paid $16 billion in taxes and created a net fiscal deficit for the government of almost $10.4 billion or about $2700 per household.

And cosider this about those "jobs Americans won't do." (which I gladly would, at this point in my life):

"The meat packers are confirming what we know," says University of Maryland economics professor Peter Morici, "and that is that this large group of illegal aliens in the United States is lowering the wage rate of semiskilled workers, people who are high school dropouts or high school graduates with minimal training."

In fact, a meat-packing job paid $19 an hour in 1980, but today that same job pays closer to $9 an hour, according to the Labor Department. That's entirely consistent with what we've been reporting -- that illegal aliens depress wages for U.S. workers by as much as $200 billion a year in addition to placing a tremendous burden on hospitals, schools and other social services.

Gee, thanks Illegals. I guess the whole refusal of Americans to do certain jobs must have someting to do with Slave Wages.

Ah yes, a day (how about 365?) without an illegal. What would this mean? Well, lets see:

Hospital emergency rooms across the southwest would have about 20-percent fewer patients, and there would be 183,000 fewer people in Colorado without health insurance.

OBGYN wards in Denver would have 24-percent fewer deliveries and Los Angeles’s maternity-ward deliveries would drop by 40 percent and maternity billings to Medi-Cal would drop by 66 percent.

Youth gangs would see their membership drop by 50 percent in many states, and in Phoenix, child-molestation cases would drop by 34 percent and auto theft by 40 percent.

In Durango, Colorado, and the Four Corners area and the surrounding Indian reservations, the methamphetamine epidemic would slow for one day, as the 90 percent of that drug now being brought in from Mexico was held in Albuquerque and Farmington a few hours longer. According to the sheriff of La Plata County, Colorado, meth is now being brought in by ordinary illegal aliens as well as professional drug dealers.

If the “Day-Without-an-Immigrant Boycott” had been held a year earlier on May 8, 2005, and illegal alien Raul Garcia-Gomez had stayed home and did not work or go to a party that day, Denver police officer Donnie Young would still be alive and Garcia-Gomez would not be sitting in a Denver jail awaiting trial.

If the boycott had been held on July 1, 2004, Justin Goodman of Thornton, Colorado, would still be riding his motorcycle and Roberto Martinez-Ruiz would not be in prison for killing him and then fleeing the scene while driving on a suspended license.

If illegal aliens stayed home—in Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, and 100 other countries—the Border Patrol would have 3,500 fewer apprehensions (of the 12,000 who try each day).

Colorado taxpayers would save almost $3,000,000 in one day if illegals do not access any public services, because illegal aliens cost the state over $1 billion annually according to the best estimates.

Colorado’s K-12 school classrooms would have 131,000 fewer students if illegal aliens and the children of illegals were to stay home, and Denver high schools’ dropout rate would once again approach the national norm.

Colorado’s jails and prisons would have 10-percent fewer inmates, and Denver and many other towns would not need to build so many new jails to accommodate the overcrowding.

Our highway patrol and county sheriffs would have about far fewer DUI arrests and there would be a dramatic decline in rollovers of vanloads of illegal aliens on I-70 and other highways.

On a Day Without an Illegal Immigrant, thousands of workers and small contractors in the construction industry across Colorado would have their jobs back, the jobs given to illegal workers because they work for lower wages and no benefits.

Well, the economy didn't grind to a halt as some seemed to actually believe, but still they "made their point", yes? Oh, I think a point has been made, but not the one they wanted. Believe it or not, the marches are actually making me feel a little better (if at the same time increasingly angry). Why? Well, as Krikorian says, Backlash. I'm seeing it all over the place right now. Maybe something will get done? One can only hope.

And on a side note, I consider it an insult on my intelligence to say that "we're taking back our ancestral homeland." That is no rationalization at all, all it does is confuse people while making a mockery of history. It's no more "your" homeland than it is ours. After all, most Mexicans today are not exactly direct decendants of the Aztec tribe. The land was "stolen" by invaders, largely Spainish, and the Aztec civilization destroyed. (not to mention all of the others, Mayans, Incas, etc, throughout the continent.) We won in war, you lost. That does not mean you are owed the land back, especially now, when no one living had anything to do with it, including illegals who are "taking it back". Just stop already. The world was founded on such territorial grabbing and struggle, including the Mexico which is merely "taking back" what "belongs to it".

That is all for now.

Stop the Insanity

I'm getting a little tired of hearing about gas prices. There must be a story every 15 minutes. Is that really necessary? I don't think its necessary to keep telling people what they probably already know. And then again and again. If only we could harness hot air for energy.

What's almost always missing, of course, is a dose of sanity. Well, let's get some, shall we?

The politicians have a lot to do with it.

Consider the "Liberal Line":

We are horribly dependent on foreign oil. But we shouldn't develop domestic oil or boost our refining capacity. We need a gas tax to wean Americans from foreign oil, but high gas prices are an outrage. We need alternative forms of energy, but we shouldn't use nuclear power. We need renewable, sustainable energy, unless it spoils the view of rich liberal icons.

Got it?

At least one politician understands this:

During an interview with Larry Kudlow earlier this week about rising gas prices, Rep. Blackburn observed, “If we're going to work toward [energy independence], we’re going to have to do some things differently. Now, I can tell you one of the things that I wish had been done differently is over the past 30 years, we have had environmental extremists driving energy policy in this country, saying no to everything.”

Certainly increased demand for oil from the growing Chinese and Indian economies and instability in the Middle East are major pressures on oil prices, but both Republicans and Democrats have added to these pressures by allowing the environmental movement to tie our energy policy in knots.

Bowing to environmentalist demands since the 1970s, Congress has blocked oil and gas drilling from areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (10.4 billion barrels of oil, according to the U.S. Geological Service) and the Outer Continental Shelf (86 billion barrels of oil, according to the Minerals Management Service).

I also really like this story today: 'Qatar: Price of oil would drop $15 if Politicians would shut up'
Seems fairly obvious to me. Nearly every politician in Washington has joined the gasbag scaremongering witchhunt against oil companies.

Some pundits sure do get it right, though. Here's Neil Cavuto talking to Durbin:

CAVUTO: "Do you know how much, out of curiosity, senator, is billed into a gallon of gasoline, profits of the oil companies, per gallon? Do you know what's the average?"

DURBIN: ExxonMobil, what did they make in three months? It was $10 billion, if I'm not mistaken, the largest corporate profits in the history of the United States.

CAVUTO: Maybe you could answer my question. It's about 9 cents. Do you know how much taxes are, senator? About 50 cents.

DURBIN: Let me tell you....

CAVUTO: So, don't you think you should be more focused on the tax- gouging than necessarily the profit-gouging?

DURBIN: How do you explain their profits -- how do you explain their profits after taxes? You're ignoring that, Neil. You don't want to talk about it.

CAVUTO: Are you ignoring the taxes? Senator, I'm asking you simply, are you ignoring the taxes?

DURBIN: No. I'm telling you...

CAVUTO: Would you roll back those taxes?

DURBIN: .. the taxes pay for the roads that we use.

CAVUTO: Would you roll back those taxes?

DURBIN: No.

CAVUTO:"So, 50 cents a gallon, those taxes are okay? The nine-cent profit, that's not okay?"

DURBIN: Oh, stop the 9 cents. Talk about ExxonMobil's record profits, my friend. Four hundred million dollars for their CEO, aren't you a little embarrassed by that?

CAVUTO: Are you worried, though, Senator, that you're mixing this argument here...

DURBIN: You didn't answer me, Neil.

CAVUTO: that, when people look at what is being paid for a gallon of gasoline, the problem, the oil companies are no saints, but you know what, Senator? I think you're a bigger sinner, because it's the tax gouging that is killing Americans, not necessarily the price of the crude.

Its economics 101. And thats all there is to it. Supply and Demand.

Modern Slave Labor Importation Roundup Part III

I'm not the only one getting a pit peeved at the demostrations. Se habla entitlement:

This could be the finest hour for the political left if we really can be convinced that illegal immigration is a right, that those here illegally are innocent victims, and that the real guilt lies with U.S. citizens who believe our laws mean something and should be enforced.

Draping these bogus claims in the garb of the civil-rights movement is particularly annoying.

The civil-rights movement was about enforcing the law, not breaking it. The Civil War amendments to the Constitution were not getting the job done in what has been a long struggle in this country to treat blacks as human beings. If Americans were kidnapping Mexicans and selling them into slavery here, I might see the equivalence. But these are free people, who chose to come here and chose to do so illegally.

Just considering Mexicans, how can we understand their taking to the streets of our country to demand rights and freedom when they seem to have little interest in doing this where they do have rights, which is in Mexico? There is no reason why Mexico, a country rich in beauty and natural resources, cannot be every bit as prosperous as the United States.

It's not happening because of a long history of mismanagement, corruption and excessive government. Although Mexico is a democracy, for some reason Mexicans seem to need to be north of the Rio Grande to get politically active and demand the benefits of a free society.

Last year the Pew Hispanic Center surveyed adults in Mexico and asked them if they would come to the United States if they had the means and opportunity to do so. Forty-six percent responded yes. Almost half of Mexican adults said they'd rather live here! When asked if they would do it illegally, more than 20 percent said yes.

Yet in the current contest for the Mexican presidency, the leading candidate is a leftist former mayor of Mexico City who is polling in the high 30s.

Maybe you can figure out why almost half of Mexican adults say they would rather live in the United States, presumably because of the opportunities our free society affords, yet vote for a leftist candidate who will continue policies in Mexico that choke off any prospect for growth, prosperity and opportunity.

So forgive me for being a little suspicious of the wholesome picture being painted of these folks who are pouring across our border allegedly just to be free, work and maintain traditional families.

What exactly is the legal basis of the claims made by the rallies? Well, none:

With last month's mass demonstrations of illegal aliens, the United States has entered the era of postmodern rights. The protesters looked like conventional rights demonstrators, with their raised fists, chants, and banners. But unlike political protesters of the past, the illegal-alien marchers invoked no legal basis for their claims. Their argument boils down to: "We are here, therefore we have a right to the immigration status we desire." Like the postmodern signifier, this legal claim refers to nothing outside of itself; it is, in the jargon of deconstruction, a presence based on an absence.

The consequences of this novel argument are not insignificant: the demise of nation-states and of the rule of law. Remember: The only basis for the illegals' demands is: "I am here." The "I am here" argument could be made by anyone anywhere — a Moroccan sneaking into Sweden could make the same demand for legal status. In one stroke, the border-breaking lobby has nullified the entire edifice of American immigration law and with it, sovereignty itself. None of the distinctions in that law matter, the advocates say. The conditions for legal entry? Null and void. The democratically chosen priorities for who may enter the country and who not? Give me a break! In other words, the United States has no right to decide who may come across its borders and what legal status an alien may obtain upon arrival. Those decisions remain solely the prerogative of the alien himself. The border no longer exists.

One of the most interesting aspects of this debate is are the calls for temporary work programs, to do jobs Americans won't do. I noted something about this a little earlier, but besides what I said before, there is a further "ridiculous" factor, you might say. As Mark Levin has pointed out most recently,

Why is it assumed that businesses, which today demand illegal labor, won't continue to demand cheap labor, skirt a guest-worker program, and evade taxes and regulations in order to keep down the price of lettuce (or whatever)?

That is, once a guest worker program is put into place, it will become irrelvant, more or less. The reason for implementing such a program would not be because Americans simply won't do those jobs (that is about as bald-faced a lie as I've heard in months) but Americans happen to work for fair pay. Illegal aliens will work for practically nothing--in some cases, employers can work it out so it ends up that way. It is not the job itself, it is the psuedo-slave labor aspect of it. Making a temporary worker program would mean paperwork for the companies, and in all likelihood, better wages. Which would just lead to the above quoted passage.

Now, it seems to me the most common objection to this is that if those jobs were taken by Americans who were payed fairly, that would lead to an increase in the cost of those goods for all of us. Our economy would trend downward. (yet again, see above quote.) Well, there is certainly a flaw to this argument, and in reality it is probably just the opposite. So what, importing Mexico's poor is going to help our economy? Do it enough and we're going to become a Third World nation. I am sorry, but in my opinion, the economic argument is one of the weakest. Various bits from The Immigration Mystique[1]:

While no one blames the immigrants for America's economic problems, nevertheless the arrival en masse of unskilled immigrants self-evidently thwarts the nation's attempts at overcoming problems in productivity, and provides a disincentive to advance toward higher technological levels. . . . The result, as Lawrence E. Harrison has written, is that the United States now emphasizes relatively cheap labor in the manner that Third World countries typically do. On the other hand, if the United States should make rapid progress in technological innovation, the ensuing reliance on robots and computers would ensure that a work force comprised significantly of uneducated and unskilled immigrants became to that extent unemployable and economically irrelevant.

In other words, this reliance on pseudo-slave labor is more of a hindrance to the advancement of this country. And after all, the same economic collapse arguments were made by the defenders of both slave and child labor. Both were obviously shown to be bankrupt.

Further,

In fact, according to Huddle, Corwin, and MacDonald, illegal aliens engaged in common labor quit their jobs with approximately the same frequence as American workers and for the same reasons (that is, those for which labroers usually quit their work) to be replaced by other aliens as cheap and docile as themselves. The truth is, citizen workers find if impossible to compete with illegal ones when the competition between them will be decided by which of them are willing to work the longer hours under the mroe unpleasnt conditions for less pay. Simon and other immigrationists are eager to take unscrupulous and hypocritical employers at their word when they complain that "Americans don't want to work at menial jobs." Vernon Briggs, though admitting that the claim remains a very difficult one for economists either to disprove or substatiated, insists that there is no evidence at all to support it. A former undersecretary of labor, Malcolm Lovell, has noted taht as of 1981 nearly 30 percent of the American labor force held the same sort of low-skilled jobs that illegal aliens typically take; while a study made by Ohio university in 1980 for the Labor Department indicated that a majority of teenagers and young people were willing to accept ill-paying jobs in such industries as the fast food business--[. . .]

------------
Endnotes
[1] The Immigration Mystique, by Chilton Williamson Jr. BasicBooks: 1996.

Poor Undocumented Day Laborers Roundup Part II

More from the illegal invaders front.

For starters, its useful to Decode Immigration Doublespeak. A couple highlights:

“Pro-Immigration Rallies.” The elite media consisted presented the protests as rallies in favor of immigration or immigrants rights. The Washington Post called the protestors “pro-immigration demonstrators.” New York Times “reporters” described a rally in Madison, Wisconsin – home to a large, left-leaning state university, naturally – as a “rally for immigrants’ rights,” burying in the second paragraph the inconvenient reality, “many of [the protestors are] undocumented immigrants who speak no English.” The sympathy of the masses would be moved in quite another way were these described by more accurate terms, like “Open Borders Rallies,” “Pro-Lawbreaking Rallies,” “Anti-Homeland Security Rallies,” or “Massive Collections of Perhaps Felonious Welfare Recipients.”

Patriotic and Pro-American. The protestors’ sudden affinity for the Stars-and-Stripes fooled no one in Middle America – and a few of the organizers were surprisingly forthright about their disingenuous motives. The L.A. Times reported Cardinal Roger Mahony told his flock to put away Mexican and Latin American flags: “They do not help us get the legislation we need.” The New York Times quoted Miami protest organizer Maria Rodriguez instructing the crowd:

This is the people bringing the flags. It seems that they heard the message: American people want flags. We'll, let's give them flags! It's really spontaneous. It's not about the flag. It's about people getting a chance.

Perhaps most outspoken in his non-pro-American rhetoric was L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who shouted:

America we've come here to work, we clean your toilets, we clean your hotels, we build your houses, we take care of your children. We want you to help us take care of our children as well. Today we say to this great America, America you were founded on the backs of immigrants.

Like reparations advocates, their cry is, “We are owed

My favorite quote from the article: "'I want things to work out in our favor, or we go back to our country.' (Finally some sense!)"

Some Talking Points:

News coverage of the illegal-immigrant demos was awash with happy-clappy cliches on the subject every one of which has a straightforward answer. Samples.

---"They're just coming here for a better life." Well, that's also the reason people rob banks. If you rob a bank and get away with it, you'll have a MUCH better life than you had before. Should we legalize bank robbery?

---"Many of them have sons & daughters in the military, fighting in Iraq." On general grounds, I think hiring illegal immigrants into the armed forces is a lousy idea. When the Romans ran out of citizens willing to fight, they hired Germans, and look what happened. Still, any illegal who has served in combat on this country's behalf ought to be given citizenship, though I'd make his relatives go through proper channels. At least we'd find out how many is that "many."

---"Deporting illegals would mean splitting up families." Only if they chose to split up. If a man is illegal, his wife legal, and their child a citizen, I'd deport the man. They'd have to decide among themselves whether to split up the family or not. The wife and child could go with the man, if they didn't want to be split up.

Time to face some rather uncomfortable facts about some of the rally organizers. Domestic Terrorist Groups are involved.
See also, Who's Behind the Immigration Rallies?

More info on the crime wave:

In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

I also suggest picking up a book by the title The Immigration Mystique

I am getting really aggravated. I am also tired of hearing the idiotic statements that we "are a nation of immigrants" and that we "need a temporary worker program." Stop already!

Iraq and Niger

Well what do ya know.

But Iraq did try to buy Uranium in Niger

Oh, and Joe Wilsom showed as much himself:

''Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the president had lied to the American people, that the vice president had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. . . . [N]ot only did he NOT 'debunk' the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true.''

And besides, Britain stands by it's assertions and the Butler commision found such asstertions to be well-founded.

Climate of Fear

This is a downright superb article from opinionjournal the other day. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are a few highlights:

To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

[ . . . ]

Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

Here is another remarkable article, this one from the Telegraph:

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

[ . . . ]

Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed.

[ . . . ]

Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.

The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown.[ . . . ]

Immigration Roundup

Well, with all the illegals marching I thought I'd put in a few words and point out a few fallacies currently popular.

For starters, my biggest peeve is the "nation of immigrants" argument. Just read this.

In reality, we are not—even in a figurative sense—a nation of immigrants or even a nation of descendants of immigrants. As Chilton Williamson pointed out in The Immigration Mystique, the 80,000 mostly English and Scots-Irish settlers of colonial times, the ancestors of America’s historic Anglo-Saxon majority, had not transplanted themselves from one nation to another (which is what defines immigration), but from Britain and its territories to British colonies. They were not immigrants, but colonists. The immigrants of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to an American nation that had already been formed by those colonists and their descendants. Therefore to call America "a nation of immigrants" is to suggest that America, prior to the late nineteenth century wave of European immigration, was not America. It is to imply that George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant (descended from the original colonists) were not "real" Americans, but that Richard Rodriguez (descended from 20th century immigrants) and the anti-American demonstrators last week in Los Angeles, are.

And now, to the proposals that "don't" give amnesty. Well, they do. And let's be clear, amnesty is not a good thing.

Reagan gave amnesty to 4 million, and we get 12 million more. What part of “If you forget history, you’re doomed to repeat it,” do they not get?

These people are breaking the law, and we just give them a free pass. And many of them continue to break the law, as shown by the fact that illegals make up a ridiculous number of criminals.

And besides, they don't "do jobs Americans won't", they just do it them for dirt, while sponging off of the government and costing us all. STOP SAYING THEY DO JOBS AMERICANS WON'T.

And I have other issues with some of the idiotic proposals being thrown around. We are told they will have to be around for 6 years or 11 years or whatever number of years, pay a fine, pay back taxes, etc, whatever for the various plans before they can become legal. Well, I would like to know how exactly we are going to know how long they have been here. They are, after all, illegal. The point is we don't know they're here. And these plans think they can somehow make things right by documenting them? I don't think so. More and more are going to come, and guess what, they aren't going to be documented. And all the while we have these illegals marching in rallies and flying the American flag upside down. These people need to be deported. What we need is a plan with teeth. No, I take that back, what we need is enforcement. We don't need more blathering from politicians, we need the laws currently to be enforced. And it's not a matter of a divided nation. It's just politicians who think they know better. Well, come election time, we'll see who knows better.

I'm a huge supporter of free-trade, but the argument from free-trade does not hold up well. Just read this.

We don't need guest workers, we don't need amnesty, we don't need illegal aliens invading the country.

UPDATE 4/10:

Try this on for size.

Enter Mexico illegally. Never mind immigration quotas, visas, international law, or any of that nonsense.

Once there, demand that the local government provide free medical care for you and your entire family.

Demand bilingual nurses and doctors.

Demand free bilingual government forms, bulletins, etc.

Keep your American identity strong. Fly Old Glory from your rooftop, or proudly display it in your front window, or on your car bumper.

Speak only English at home and in public and insist that your children do likewise.

Demand classes on American culture in the Mexican school system.

Demand a Mexican driver license. This will afford other legal rights and will go far to legitimize your unauthorized, illegal presence in Mexico.

Drive around with no liability insurance.

Insist that Mexican law enforcement teach English to all its officers.

Good luck!
Good luck is right. The Mexican authorities wouldn't put up with that kind of behavior for a second. As they shouldn't. As we shouldn't. And yet we do. In this one way, it would be nice if we were a little more like Mexico.

Don't Say We're Winning II

Michael Ledeen:

In March, 2004, nearly two hundred people were killed and hundreds more wounded in suicide attacks on the occasion of the Ashurah, the holiest day in the Shi’ite calendar. The disaster led the news. last year Karbala was relatively calm, but there were bombings in Baghdad. Again, big news. This year, millions of people filled the streets of Karbala, and there was no violence. And Baghdad was also pretty calm. You might think this was newsworthy, but of course you’d be wrong. And you know why the MSM did not compare this year's celebration with those of the recent past: the comparison would have suggested progress, and that's taboo. Better to focus on Cheney's TV preferences.

Down With Stability

Mark Steyn is brilliant as usual. This whole thing is definitely worth a read:

Three years ago, in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, it fell to the then prime minister of Canada to make the most witless public statement on the subject by any G7 leader.

"Your president has won," Jean Chretien told ABC News in early March 2003. So there was no need to have a big ol' war because, with 250,000 American and British troops on his borders, Saddam was "in a box." "He won," said Mr. Chretien of Bush. "He has created a situation where Saddam cannot do anything anymore. He has troops at the door and inspectors on the ground... You're winning it big."

That's easy for him to say, and committing other countries' armies to "contain" Iraq is easy for him to do. A quarter million soldiers cannot sit in the sands of Araby twiddling their thumbs indefinitely. "Containment" is not a strategy but the absence of strategy - and thug states understand it as such. In Saddam's case, he'd supposedly been "contained" since the first Gulf War in 1991, when Bush Sr. balked at finishing what he'd started. "Mr. President," Joe Biden, the Democrat Senator and beloved comic figure, condescendingly explained to Bush Jr. in 2002, "there is a reason your father stopped and did not go to Baghdad. The reason he stopped is he didn't want to be there for five years."

By my math, that means the Americans would have been out in spring of 1996. Instead, 12 years on, in the spring of 2003 the USAF and RAF were still policing the no-fly zone, ineffectually bombing Iraq every other week. And, in place of congratulations for their brilliant "containment" of Saddam, Washington was blamed for UN sanctions and systematically starving to death a million Iraqi kids - or two million, according to which "humanitarian" agency you believe. The few Iraqi moppets who weren't deceased suffered, according to the Nobel-winning playwright and thinker Harold Pinter, from missing genitals and/or rectums that leaked blood contaminated by depleted uranium from Anglo-American ordnance. Touring Iraq a few weeks after the war, I made a point of stopping in every hospital and enquiring about this pandemic of genital-less Iraqis: not a single doctor or nurse had heard about it. Whether or not BUSH LIED!! PEOPLE DIED!!!, it seems that THE ANTI-WAR CROWDS SQUEAK!!! BUT NO RECTUMS LEAK!!!!

A NEW study by the American Enterprise Institute suggests that, aside from the terrific press, continuing this policy would not have come cheap for America: if you object (as John Kerry did) to the $400-600 billion price tag since the war, another three years of "containment" would have cost around $300 billion - and with no end in sight, and the alleged death toll of Iraqi infants no doubt up around six million. It would also have cost more real lives of real Iraqis: Despite the mosque bombings, there's a net gain of more than 100,000 civilians alive today who would have been shoveled into unmarked graves had Ba'athist rule continued. Meanwhile, the dictator would have continued gaming the international system through the Oil-for-Food program, subverting Jordan, and supporting terrorism as far afield as the Philippines.

A Religion of Peace My Ass

Danish Cartoonists Fear for Their Lives
Danish Consulate Ablaze

Hmm....

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T SAY WE'RE WINNING

In case you don't already know it, insurgent attacks on our troops and security forces in Iraq are on the decline. In the 1st week of October of last year there were 700 such attacks. By mid-December that figure had dropped to 500. Just last week the number had dropped to 400. That's a 43% drop in about three months. At the same time our forces in Iraq are turning over more and more of the Iraqi territory to the Iraqi defense forces to handle. Just last week military control of two large provinces in Iraq were turned over to Iraqi security forces.

Yeah ... this all sounds a lot like we're losing over there, doesn't it?

(From Here.)