Category Archives: Politics

Politics, War on Terror

DHS=BS

You’re kidding me:

Claims of terrorism represented less than 0.01 percent of charges filed in recent years in immigration courts by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to a report issued Sunday by an independent research group.

This comes despite the fact the Bush administration has repeatedly asserted that fighting terrorism is the central mission of DHS.

The Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse said it analyzed millions of previously undisclosed records obtained from the immigration courts under the Freedom of Information Act.

Of the 814,073 people charged by DHS in immigration courts during the past three years, 12 faced charges of terrorism, TRAC said.

Those 12 cases represent 0.0015 percent of the total number of cases filed.

“The DHS claims it is focused on terrorism. Well that’s just not true,” said David Burnham, a TRAC spokesman. “Either there’s no terrorism, or they’re terrible at catching them. Either way it’s bad for all of us.”

First off, the group is a little off in their criticism: one of DHS’s primary duties is handling immigration. They replaced the INS in that respect. Every step Sue and I took to get her Green Card dealt with DHS, not INS.

However, they are absolutely accurate in that the Bush Administration has always represented DHS as an anti-terrorism agency. To quote from the official announcement of its formation:

The mission of the Office will be to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks. The Office will coordinate the executive branch’s efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States.

But to lift a paragraph from my immigration post:
Continue reading DHS=BS →

Politics, The Nanny State

We Like the Little Guy!

So say the liberals

Garbage.

In 1937, New York, full of liberalism’s itch to regulate everything, knew, just knew, how many taxicab permits there should be. For 70 years the number (about 12,000) has not been significantly changed, so rising prices have been powerless to create new suppliers of taxi services. Under this government-created scarcity, a permit (“medallion”) now costs about $500,000. Most people wealthy enough to buy medallions do not drive cabs, any more than plantation owners picked cotton. They lease their medallions at exorbitant rates to people such as Paucar who drive, often for less than $15 an hour, for long days.

There are examples of this all over the nation. Regulated interior designers, hairdressers, beauticians. Rent control. Price fixing. All because some elites, including many conservatives, think they know better how to run the world than the people who live in.

At least, that’s what they say.

Politics, War on Terror

What Is Acceptable

Over at Right-Thinking, I’ve gotten this in response to opposing torture:

So, there is NO WAY to get information from a prisoner. Drugs? Thats torture, because it’s against his/her will. Asking nicely? No, that’s torture, because you think of the prisoner as an idiot and it insults him/her. And as we all know insulting a prisoner (a naked women in the room with a muslim) is torture. Just having a muslim prisoner being questioned by an inferior infidel is humiliating to said muslim, and humiliation is torture. Offering a cup of coffee and not tea to a muslim prisoner is torture. An interrogator eating a ham sandwich in front of a muslim prisoner is torture. All these don’t even have to do with muslims, and can be turned around by anyone looking to be a victim.

I’m sick of this ad hominem bullshit. If I say that water-boarding and sleep deprivation are torture, I therefore think that anything is torture. I’m a namby-pamby flower-sniffing, tree-hugging liberal who just thinks we should give all terror suspects blow jobs.

Why is it so hard for people to wrap your their minds around the idea that there are acceptable and unacceptable means of interrogation? Anything that threatens or inflicts physical pain or fear of death is, by the definition listed in our treaties and our laws, torture. Anything that doesn’t is acceptable. We don’t go have to go all culture-sensitivity patrol but can still be effective.

Read this excerpt from the Army Field Manual on effective interrogation techniques. Thinks like simple questioning, “good cop bad cop”, incentives, rapid-fire questions, yellling, appeal to family, appeal to ego. None of these are considered torture. Just because you don’t waterboard someone doesn’t mean you become a wuss.

Now these techniques – which involve nothing more than a patient interrogator, sound wimpy don’t they? “Oh Mike”, you say, “You pussy! That won’t work. That’s just namby-pamby liberal bullshit. We need to beat ‘em up!”

But you know what? We found them effective for two hundred years. The Soviet Union used these techniques when they wanted information, not breaking. The Israelis use them all the time. And cops use them in our own country so effectively that the vast majority of crimes are solved by uncoerced confession.

There is a difference between interrogation and torture. And I’m sick and tired of the Orwellian Newspeak that blurs the line between the two.

Politics, War on Terror

Impeach Cheney

How repulsive is Dick Cheney? Sullivan’s been documenting his support for reckless war on Iran. Now he’s slamming Geneva at West Point.

“Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States,” the Vice President said in the Saturday morning speech. “Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.”

I am so fucking sick of this line of reasoning. “Al-Quaeda doesn’t observe Geneva, why should we?”

Why? Because we’re better than they are!. The British and Hessians were brutal in their occupation during the War of Independence; Washington insisted on humane treatment. The South had Andersonville; Lincoln had reasonable prisons. The Germans, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese tortured our people; we didn’t. Douglas MacArthur specifically instructed his soldiers to treat POW’s with honor. Because he wanted them to know that ciitizens of a Democracy were better, that their leaders were lying to them about how Americans tortured all prisoners. He defined America by a bright moral standard.

The Right is always railing against moral relativism. Liberals and Libertarians are supposed to be a threat to the very fiber of the nation because we tolerate gays, question drug prohibition and oppose abortion criminalization. But now they want us to define our morality relative to Al-Quaeda. What kind of broken is your moral compass when gay marriage is a threat to our national integrity but torture is OK?

Dick Cheney can define his moral compass by Al-Quaeda. I’ll define mine by George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Douglas MacArthur.

Politics, Science and Edumacation

Gore Again

Sullivan thinks that Gore is a man of reason and common sense.

Yeah, right. Gore is saying the seas are going to rise a meter in the next decade and it will make droughts and crop yields worse in America.

FACT 1. There is not one shred of evidence in the refereed scientific literature speaking of a three-foot increase in sea level in ten years. The best estimates from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change range from 0.8 to 1.7 INCHES.

FACT 2. There is no trend towards increasing drought area in the United States that is related to planetary warming. We have good data on drought area back to 1895. The correlation between the area of the U.S. under drought and planetary temperature is statistically ZERO.

FACT 3. As the mean planetary temperature has warmed since 1975, U.S. crop yields have INCREASED significantly, just as they did during the period of cooling from 1945 through 1975, or during the warming from 1910 to 1945.

Al Gore is what he has always been. A pseudo-intellectual trying to sound smarter than he is. He makes some good points on the stupidity of the current Administration — it’s hard not to these days. But people of reason do not engage in panic-mongering. Whether it’s the President authorizing torture or a self-opinionated would-be president hyping climate change.

Politics, War on Terror

Freak Out!

Ha! I knew people were getting too bent out of shape over the Muslim poll:

A reader writes:

What hasn’t been talked about much in the just released Pew poll is that, while 47 percent consider themselves Muslim first and American second, 42 percent consider themselves Christian first and American second.

And while 43 percent of American Muslims think mosques/churches should express views on political/social issues, 54 percent of American Christians think likewise.

I certainly hope America has enough genius to assimilate those Christians, too.

Another adds:

Clearly, there are troubling aspects to the poll, the suicide bombing response in particular. However, when it comes to issues of governance and influence there are parallels. A Pew poll from August 24, 2006 yielded the following: “(S)ix-in-ten white evangelical Protestants say that the Bible should be the guiding principle in making laws when it conflicts with the will of the people.”

From the same 2006 poll, 67 percent of those polled believe “the U.S. is a Christian nation.”

I would also add that 5% of Muslim liking Al-Quaeda is nothing to panic over. You can get 5% of people to agree to anything. And while it’s a concern that 20% of Muslims think suicide bombings are OK, I wonder what percentage of Christians think bombing abortion clinics or stoning gays is OK.

It is distressing that only 25% of Muslims accept the truth of 9/11. But then again, many Americans won’t accept the truth about JFK. What else do I have to say? People are stupid, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, idiocy is universal.

'Culture', Culture War, Politics, Science and Edumacation

Linkorama

I’m working on two big posts on immigration. In the meantime….

  • Why I’m sometimes embarassed to life in Texas.
  • Yeah, right. I call BS.

    In a recent study, sociologist Diane Felmee found only a third of women said looks were the first thing that attracted them to a man. Most preferred a sense of humour or financial and career success.

    This has never been my experience. And I mean ever. I have known precisely one woman in my life who preferred geeky men. She was also my first girlfriend (and eventually moved on to better looking ones).

    No, these are women who want to have their cake and eat it, too. When they’re young, they want to have sex with hot men. And now that they’re older, they want to settle down with the other ones. And the plain or ugly men are supposed to settle for never having a wild and crazy youth. Garbage.

  • Johns Stossel breaks out the nun-chucks on ethanol. If you’ve read my blog (cue crickets chirping), you know how I feel about this boondoggle. On this blog, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
    • Politics

    The Cost

    A lot of Right-Wing chatter will center on Heritage’s report that illegal immigrants are costing the nation $89 billion a year.

    Here’s what they’re ignorning. This has little do with illegals and everything to do with the de facto welfare state. Unless you are earning at least $50,000 in this country (and half of us aren’t), you are getting more in government services than you are paying for. It’s called the progressive tax.

    But only a fool, only an idiot, only a reactionary moron would say that the best thing to do would be to get rid of the low-wage workers. That’s the tricky thing about economics. The numbers don’t tell the story. Without all the low-wage earners, the economy ceases to function. The low-wage guys picking oranges, building houses and sweeping floors enable the millionaire farmers, home-builders and stock brokers that really pay the bills in this country.

    Remember, it wasn’t the lowest third of their economy that the Golgafrinchans disposed of.

    Update: Something else I thought of. Illegal immigration is a generational thing. The current generation of illegals are low-skill workers. But their children, better-educated, english-speaking and Americanized, are going to move up the socioeconomic ladder quickly.

    All waves of immigrants have started out poor. It’s the children they bring here — children we need to keep our Medicare and Social Security ponzi schemes afloat — that really benefit the nation.

    Politics

    PO = PU

    A good article on why the Post Office should be privatized.

    Most of the important stuff Americans buy – food, clothing, and shelter – is produced almost entirely by the private sector. The result? Nearly everyone is fed, clothed and housed.

    What’s so special about mail delivery that the government must do it? No one seems to have a good explanation. It’s in the Constitution that the federal government can create post offices – but it doesn’t say the government has to do that, and it certainly does not legalize any postal monopoly.

    The reason the Post Office can’t be privatized is that you have a gigantic overpaid group of postal service employees who would suddenly be armed, angry and out of work.

    Well, there’s also that rural mail would be more expensive. But frankly, as someone who has chosen to live in a semi-rural area, I don’t need any government subsidies.

    Politics, Socialism

    You Can’t Resist

    A post that pits breasts against government now can you?

    You have to love this. The government is paying lots of money to make poor children less healthy. Wonderful.

    I love this not just because it involves breasts but because it illustrates to me the fundamental problem of government. We have here a program that is well-intentioned. How can you argue with a program that feeds poor infants, shielding them from the bad life choices of their parents? It is well-funded, well-supported and popular.

    And it’s harming the very people it intends to help. The kids lose because they drink formula instead of breast milk. The taxpayers lose because they are forking over money for this nonsense. Mothers who are unable or unwilling to breastfeed lose because the formula is more expensive. The winners are the government employees, the formula makers and the politicians.

    Politics, War on Terror

    Another Triumph

    Oh, things are going so well in Iraq:

    Authorities in northern Iraq have arrested four people in connection with the “honor killing” last month of a Kurdish teen — a startling, morbid pummeling caught on a mobile phone video camera and broadcast around the world.

    The case portrays the tragedy and brutality of honor killings in the Muslim world. Honor killings take place when family members kill relatives, almost always female, because they feel the relatives’ actions have shamed the family.

    In this case, Dua Khalil, a 17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi, was dragged into a crowd in a headlock with police looking on and kicked, beaten and stoned to death last month. (Watch the attack, and what authorities are doing about it )

    Authorities believe she was killed for being seen with a Sunni Muslim man. She had not married him or converted, but her attackers believed she had, a top official in Nineveh province said. The Yazidis, who observe an ancient Middle Eastern religion, look down on mixing with people of another faith.

    This is Kurd Iraq, where things are going well. The police stood around and watched because she might have been associating with a non-Yazidi.