What the Heck was I Thinking!?

The Instapundit has a post up about the Powerline entry on Miss America’s fate at the Miss Universe pageant. Glenn Reynolds’ comment on this is:

It’s not a big deal, but that’s right. “We hate you — let us in!” is a poor approach. (emphasis mine)

What struck me in this post was that the phrase emphasized above sounds like the typical adolescent attitude toward his or her parents - I hate you — give me <insert some unearned luxury item here>.

Maybe it’s time we started pushing the Mexican government and citizenry to take care of themselves. Maybe we should treat the several billion dollars per year from jobs that are artificially high by Mexican standards that get pumped into their economy as an allowance that needs to be cut off.

Source: Instapundit.com -

Hugh Hewitt has an interesting post up about several additions to the immigration bill being proposed. In his first item he says:

(1) An amendment to establish a special category of illegal aliens which includes all males between the ages of 18 and 30 from countries with significant jihadist networks, with that list of countries to be determined by the DoD, the CIA and State. No probationary Z visas under Section 601(h) would issue to such illegals. A special visa could issue, but one that required special care in the background checks and special restrictions on the movement of such applicants until after their background checks were complete. (emphasis mine)

Included in this amendment should also be a stipulation that any violation of this or any other law from the point of application for the visa would disqualify the person from processing and lead to immediate deportation. Maybe a proviso in the application could be added that the applicant specifically waives any right to contest extradition between states and deportation from the country.

Too harsh? These are people who should be required to demonstrate that they will abide by our laws as citizens. It’s not too much to ask for a demonstration of that by changing their behavior to law-abiding right away.

Another provision where I think Mr Hewitt is a bit soft is number 6:

(6) The elimination of social security credits for years worked as an illegal, and the payment –perhaps over a term of years– of at least 50% of unpaid back taxes

Yes, the social security credits elimination is a good thing, but the issue of back taxes is a red flag. How much is true? How much is under reported? And what about the company that didn’t pay the person’s income or other taxes?

The underlying reason I ask those questions about the back taxes issue is that I foresee a class action case where those who’ve paid back taxes on their “illegal enterprise” will claim they should be allowed to pay and be given credit for social security and medicare “earned” during that enterprise. They should not be able to claim any government benefits for any time they’ve been here illegally.

I also heard on the radio a proposal to require that all illegals who apply for citizenship would have to be convicted of a felony in the process so that they would have that on their record. It would preclude them from a range of services and benefits as a result. That might appear harsh, but the point of this bill should be to disincentivize illegal immigration as much as possible.

Source: Hugh Hewitt

I haven’t checked the news, but this report from the Worldwide Standard should be a foundation-shaker for those who would say that Iraqis are not interested in or not capable of forming a country:

Iraqi civilians in Duluiyah in Salahadin province came to the aid of Iraqi police as they were attacked at their checkpoint in the city. “In response to the attack, 20 armed men from a nearby neighborhood assembled and quickly came to the aid of the policemen manning checkpoint,” Multinational Forces Iraq stated. “This grass roots effort contributed a significant impact in thwarting the attack… local citizens also responded according to a plan they developed for neighborhood defense. (emphasis added)

Source: World Wide Standard

and to the rationale. From the Sunday Telegraph of May 19th:

Mums with guns | The Sunday Telegraph

Monday is Ladies Night, and Lorrie McNally is a regular here. So is her 62-year-old mum. The air is thick and smoky, and the place is packed. People are forced to shout over the boom, boom, boom.

But these women aren’t clutching cocktails - they’re gripping guns. Ladies Night at the Shoot Straight gun range means women don’t pay.

McNally trains her eyes on a neon-orange target nearly six metres away. She pulls the trigger 17 times, pausing only momentarily between each shot, eyeing the spot where the slug punctures the target.

“I wouldn’t want her shooting at me,'’ her boyfriend remarks about her accuracy.

That’s the fear McNally hopes to instill.

Where the AARP (which opposes firearms) misses the point is in two places: 1) the demographics

Nationwide, the National Rifle Association’s “Women on Target'’ program has grown from 500 participants in 2000 to 6,000 this year.

“Women are the largest-growing demographic in the gun industry,'’ NRA spokeswoman Ashley Varner says.

and 2) the rationale for carrying a weapon:

“I think it’s more important for women with small children to own a gun because you can’t run when you have children,'’ she says.

While women with small children don’t make up the demographic for AARP membership, they do share a common trait - usually weaker than most criminal types, slower moving (whether because of children or infirmity), and attractive targets (whether it’s the person or the money and credit cards potentially available).

The only problem I had with the article was the math part:

The 1.7 metre, 58 kilo mortgage broker slams a magazine into her 9 mm semiautomatic and pulls the slide back, creating a ch-ch sound. She takes aim at the target and fires away, her bracelets jingling at each pull of the trigger.

That’s 5 ft 6 in., 128 lbs for us Yanks.

Source: Mums with guns | The Sunday Telegraph

Jules Crittenden links to the Cox and Forkum page for today.

Cox & Forkum: Armed Forces Day (quoting from the DoD web page)

This Saturday, May 19, is Armed Forces Day. For their dedication to protecting America, we offer our gratitude to all the men and women of the military, especially those risking their lives. From the Department of Defense. On August 31, 1949, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson announced the creation of an Armed Forces Day to replace separate Army, Navy and Air Force Days. The single-day celebration stemmed from the unification of the Armed Forces under one department — the Department of Defense. Each of the military leagues and orders was asked to drop sponsorship of its specific service day in order to celebrate the newly announced Armed Forces Day. …

The theme of the first Armed Forces Day was “Teamed for Defense.” It was chosen as a means of expressing the unification of all the military forces under a single department of the government. Although this was the theme for the day, there were several other purposes for holding Armed Forces Day. It was a type of “educational program for civilians,” one in which there would be an increased awareness of the Armed Forces. It was designed to expand public understanding of what type of job is performed and the role of the military in civilian life. It was a day for the military to show “state-of-the-art” equipment to the civilian population they were protecting. And it was a day to honor and acknowledge the people of the Armed Forces of the United States.

Source: Cox & Forkum: Armed Forces Day

It’s an important article about how we have people in the US who wish the government to fail in the war against Islamo-fascist terrorist, and yet fail to understand the broader implications of such a failure.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Our Covert Enemies

Our Covert Enemies By Michael Barone In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. Their motives are clear: They hate our society because of its freedoms and liberties, and want to make us all submit to their totalitarian form of Islam. They are busy trying to wreak harm on us in any way they can. Against them we can fight back, as we did when British authorities arrested the men and women who were plotting to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic.

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington’s) transnationalism. (emphasis added)

He goes on to show the thinking and the fallacies in that thinking:

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours — who’s to say who is right? (emphasis added)

This is often touted as not being judgement. Who would want to say that Hitler, or Moa or Stalin for that matter, was “wrong?” I would. And I think the hundreds of millions of dead and crippled people who lived through the horrors of their regimes would want to!

Mr. Barone is quick to point out the logical fallacy and intellectual blindness of these covert enemies:

Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse. (emphasis added)

Mr. Barone accurately describes the origin of this 5th column of enemies. You may recall that those politicians who spoke out the loudest against the war in Iraq are those politicians whose careers were born in Vietnam

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes.

I wonder who will remember the Pelosis, Reids, Murthas, Kennedys and Kerrys the next time Islamo-fascist terrorists attack the US or our allies in this long war. I also wonder how many people who now want to pull US forces out of Iraq, regardless of the risk, will admit they were wrong when it doesn’t bring them the peace they thought they would get.

The DaybyDay cartoon has a poignant message today:

“If there’s just one truth about global jihad… it’s that you can’t go home again.”

That’s the truth that many Americans just aren’t facing up to.

Source: RealClearPolitics - Articles - Our Covert Enemies

…after I heard they were in favor of more restrictive gun control. Now I’m even happier that I haven’t joined this unthinking group.

I won’t tell you when I received my first AARP membership card, but I can tell you it was at a time when I was acutely aware of the adverse impact of handgun and other controls that were increasing on US citizens.

None of it makes any sense to me. If I’m older and less able to protect myself, why wouldn’t I want to be allowed to carry a weapon?

As was said in the old west, “God made all men. Sam Colt made ‘em equal.” The point missed by the liberal, unthinking AARP is that the vast majority of its members need an equalizer - a personal weapon to protect themselves from predators. These poor folks just aren’t using either their brains or their life experiences to clarify their thinking.

Donald Luskin on the AARP and higher taxes on NRO Financial

If you’re of a certain age, you probably carry in your wallet the little red-and-white card of the AARP - the association for older Americans. You pay twelve and a half dollars a year for that card, and it gets you discounts on insurance, movies, and travel. It also funds political lobbying aimed at increasing taxes, expanding the size and scope of government, increasing government spending, and fighting entitlement reform.

Source: Donald Luskin on the AARP and higher taxes on NRO Financial

This seems to be the day when this issue is highlighted in a variety of blogs. Michelle Malkin points to Euphoric Reality where Kit Jarrell posts a letter from Ilario Pantano about the media war against US and coalition troops. You may recall that 2nd Lt. Pantano was accused of murder while serving in Iraq.

You may not have heard that all charges were dropped.

You may not have heard that the Marine Corps, deciding they couldn’t be wrong to blame 2nd Lt. Pantano for  misbehaving, gave him an article 32 non-judicial punishment for conduct unbecoming an officer.

Now there are others who’ve been accused of crimes during war and Mr. Pantano asks for help.

Here’s the paragraph that caught my attention about the unrealistic beliefs about war:

Euphoric Reality » Blog Archive » Ilario Pantano Asks for Help

Even if our enemies have become adept at using the all-to-willing American media as a weapon to weaken our national resolve, how can a rational person simply assume that if innocent life was lost, our men did something wrong during that March 4 incident? Illogically high expectations about pinpoint accuracy and target discrimination in a fire-fight are the fantasy of armchair-academics and videogame players.

Source: Euphoric Reality » Blog Archive » Ilario Pantano Asks for Help

Wretchard, at The Belmont Club, posts a must read on how Americans’ attitudes and beliefs about war have become distorted and fantastical.

The Belmont Club: The Way We Were

One commentator remarked that the greatest public relations mistake the US military ever made was to show video footage of smart bombs used during Desert Storm. Far from understanding it as a breakthrough in reducing the “collateral damage” endemic to previous eras of warfare, the press understood the advent of guided weapons to mean that any subsequent collateral damage was actually intentional. Accidents might happens in their thousands on the highways, but accidents of the battlefield were presumed out of existence by “smart weapons”. The term “war crime” came to be applied to any civilian deaths caused by US forces ‘because they could have avoided them had they chosen to’. On the other hand the enemy was never adjudged guilty of a war crime because he fought with supposedly makeshift weapons, never mind that they were manufactured with sophisticated electronics and triggering devices. “A suicide bomber is the poor man’s F-16″. Did they attack a nursery or demolish a mosque. That’s all right because they retaliated as only poor men can retaliate, ignoring the fact that VBIEDs or suicide backpack attacks are highly planned operations of war often conducted under covering fire. (emphasis added)

The second emphasized item above points to the source of this kind of misguided thinking - the economic and political class warfare lexicon of the socialists. Would the fact that a person is wealthy or poor make a difference in how we would judge the motives or outcome of their actions? Should it?

The result of such thinking is that more Muslims have been killed by terrorists than any other group of people. And, more have been killed by muslims than by any other group. The “Great Satan” hasn’t cause as much damage to muslims’ lives as have the Islamo-fascists.

Source: The Belmont Club: The Way We Were

Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius stepped in her own mess by claiming the war in Iraq and President Bush are impeding her state’s disaster response in the wake of the horrific tornado.

As Hot Air puts it:

When disaster strikes, Democrats increasingly turn to blaming Bush rather than leading their voters through the proverbial - or literal - storm. Blame Bush first and ask questions later.

Sen. Brownback and the Whitehouse both jumped on this one fairly quickly.

Sen Brownback:

“That’s what really got me, is her saying that,” Brownback said in an interview.

“So I asked, privately and publicly, the adjutant general, do you have the equipment you need?” he said. “Because if you don’t, we’re going to hit Fort Riley and McConnell (Air Force Base) and other places to make sure we have all the equipment we need to respond to disasters. Everybody there said no, we have the equipment we needed.”(emphasis mine)

The governor back pedaled fairly quickly after her naked partisanship was exposed.

Source: Hot Air » Blog Archive » KS Gov tries her hand at disaster chasing Video added: Dingy Harry joins in after gov is debunked