Sheeple Without a Shepherd

Call this an editorial, an opinion piece with a twist: I leave Mike Huckabee twisting in the wind of his own bloviation, as recorded in the YouTube piece below. “Mike Huckabee for Dogcatcher: the stray dog packs’ best friend!”


Well, the Republican’t sheeple of Iowa have adequately demonstrated that they are either

  1. too stupid to be out without a keeper (or, alternatively, as an old cowpoke I once knew was wont to say, too dumb to pour piss from a boot)
  2. or

  3. fully on board with the move to surrender U.S. sovereignty at the behest of The Governor from Tyson Foods

Personally, I’m going for the (kinder, gentler, more) charitable interpretation: dumber than a bag of hammers. (On that note, I will say I had a conversation with an elderly gentleman just last night who was really sold out for The Governor from Tyson Foods… until I played the following Youtube video for him… )


Trackposted to Nuke’s, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Blue Star Chronicles, Celebrity Smack, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Fred on immigration

Yesterday, I listed thirteen reasons to get on board the Fredwagon. I left it to the reader to do some reading offsite, at Fred08 , but I thought to myself, “Self, why not go ahead and just give a more detailed example of Thompson’s stance?” And what better item to select (apart from his White Paper on Federalism–which I linked to in yesterday’s post) than his…
Border Security and Immigration Reform Plan?

I’ll get you started, then you can CLICK the LINK and read the rest at Fred’s site.


Border Security and Immigration Reform Plan

In the post-9/11 world, immigration is much more of a national security issue. A government that cannot secure its borders and determine who may enter and who may not, fails in a fundamental responsibility. As we take steps to secure our borders and enforce our laws, we must also ensure that our immigration laws and policies advance our national interests in a variety of areas, and that the immigration process itself is as fair, efficient, and effective as possible.

Securing the Border and Enforcing the Law

A fundamental responsibility of the federal government is to secure the nation’s borders and enforce the law. The
following policies and initiatives will put the nation on a path to success:

  1. No Amnesty. Do not provide legal status to illegal aliens. Amnesty undermines U.S. law and policy, rewards bad behavior, and is unfair to the millions of immigrants who follow the law and are awaiting legal entry into the United States. In some cases, those law-abiding and aspiring immigrants have been waiting for several years.

  2. Attrition through Enforcement Reduce the number of illegal aliens through increased enforcement against unauthorized alien workers and their employers. Without illegal employment opportunities available, fewer illegal aliens will attempt to enter the country, and many of those illegally in the country now likely will return home. Self-deportation can also be maximized by stepping up the enforcement levels of other existing immigration laws. This course of action offers a reasonable alternative to the false choices currently proposed to deal with the 12 million or more aliens already in the U.S. illegally: either arrest and deport them all, or give them all amnesty. Attrition through enforcement is a more reasonable and achievable solution, but this approach requires additional resources for enforcement and border security:

    1. Doubling ICE agents handling interior enforcement, increasing the Border Patrol to at least 25,000 agents, and increasing detention space to incarcerate illegal aliens we arrest rather than letting them go with a promise to show up later for legal proceedings against them.
    2. Adding resources for the Department of Justice to prosecute alien smugglers, people involved in trafficking in false identification documents, and previously deported felons.
    3. Maximizing efforts to prosecute and convict members of criminal alien gangs, such as MS-13 and affiliated gangs. These gangs have brought unusual levels of violence to more than 30 U.S. states and have also become very active in drug-smuggling, gun-smuggling, and alien-smuggling.
    4. Implementing fully and making greater use of the expedited removal process already allowed under federal law.
    5. Enabling the Social Security Administration to share relevant information with immigration and law enforcement personnel in a manner that will support effective interior enforcement efforts.
  3. Enforce Existing Federal Laws. Enforce the laws Congress has already enacted to prevent illegal aliens from unlawfully benefiting from their presence in the country:

    1. End Sanctuary Cities by cutting off discretionary federal grant funds as appropriate to any community that, by law, ordinance, executive order, or other formal policy directs its public officials not to comply with the provisions of 8 USC 1373 and 8 USC 1644, which prohibit any state or local government from restricting in any way communications with the Department of Homeland Security “regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of an alien in the United States.”
    2. Deny discretionary Federal education grants as appropriate to public universities that violate federal law by offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens without also offering identical benefits to United States citizens, regardless of whether or not they live in the state, as required by 8 USC 1623.
    3. Deny discretionary Federal grants as appropriate to states and local governments that violate federal law by offering public benefits to illegal aliens, as prohibited by 8 USC 1621(a).
  4. Reduce the Jobs Incentive. Ensure employee verification by requiring that all U.S. employers use the Department of Homeland Security’s electronic database (the E-Verify system) to confirm that a prospective employee is authorized to work in the U.S. Now that the technology is proven, provide sufficient resources to make the system as thorough, fast, accurate, and easy-to-use as possible.

  5. Add to the Cost of Hiring Illegal Aliens. Deny a tax deduction to employers for the wages they pay to illegal aliens, thereby dramatically increasing the real cost of employing illegal aliens. Businesses that do not play by the rules should not be rewarded under our tax system.

  6. Bolster Border Security. Finish building the 854-mile wall along the border by 2010 as required by 8 USC 1103. Extend the wall beyond that as appropriate and deploy new technologies and additional resources to enhance detection and rapid apprehension along our borders by 2012.

  7. Increased Prosecution. Deploy the additional assets outlined above to prosecute alien smugglers (“coyotes”), alien gang members, previously deported felons, and aliens who have repeatedly violated our immigration laws much more vigorously.

  8. Rigorous Entry/Exit Tracking. Complete the implementation of a system to track visa entrants and exits, as has been required by federal law for more than ten years, and connect it to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), in order to curb visa overstays and permit more effective enforcement.

And that, folks, is just the first half of Fred’s immigration and border security plan. Read the rest!


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Trackposted to Is It Just Me?, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, The Uncooperative Blogger, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Chuck Adkins, Adeline and Hazel, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Conspiracy of dunces or…

…a conspiracy to create dunces?

But first, some housekeeping: this is an open post. Link to this post and trackback.

Now, to the topic of this post. Jerry Pournelle is no wild-eyed conspiracy nut, but he does note something interesting about America’s broken system of public education:

Of course if the goal is to see that the children of people rich enough to send their children to private schools, or to have a stay at home parent to home school, will get far ahead of everyone else regardless of intelligence or merit, we may achieve that goal.

So, what are our choices? That all the “smart” people who tell us to just do more of the same that has resulted in sub- and illiterate high school and college graduates over the past 30+ years-just spend lots more doing it-are too stupid to pound rocks and too prideful, greedy and power-hungry to admit their educratic edicts have made a ruin of public education?

Or, is it really a plot by self-designated elites to breed serfs?

Of course, Pournelle also mentions “…Vonnegut’s wonderful story Harrison Bergeron…” (IMO, one of the few really good Vonnegut works). Yep. Harrison Bergeron is definitely where the dark side of “No Child Left behind” seems to point…

Kept after school at The Uncooperative Blogger. And “writing lines” on the blackboard at Linkfest_Haven

Do you have a MICE problem?

No, not that kind. a Windows Metafile Image
Code Execution problem. Sure, Microsoft offered a patch for Windows 2000, XP and 2003, and even promised to take the offending code out of Vista, but apparently folks still running NT and those who rin WINE (a popular Windows emulator) are still vulnerable.

Get the scoop (and a FREE tool to test your system) from Steve Gibson. Lotsa other info about this vulnerability, if that sort of thing interests you, inclusing links to comments by Mar Russinovich (the Sysinternals guy—always worth listening to on Windows issues. Can’t count the number of times his help has solved thorny Win2K/XP problems).

Be careful out there…

Superstitious Glurge: a rant/OTA Day

Can anyone riddle me this? Why do otherwise normally intelligent people insist on sending out superstitious chain emails? You know, the one’s that start out with some pseudo-inspirational glurge and then promise you a blessing or a curse: a blessing if you forward the thing and a curse if you don’t.

What? Does someone, somewhere, have a voodoo doll of my email address? Ooooo. That’s scary. *yawn*

Of course, some of the participants in such chains are not otherwise normally intelligent people. You know the ones. They forward the thing as an attachment. Usually starts with AOL users doing it and they forward it to other AOL users who then keep up the assinine behavior of forwarding the thing as an attachment. Nested attachments. Do I have to recreate the filter that junks every email I get that has nested attachments? Again?

OTA Wednesday.

Open Trackback Alliance

Link to this post (http://thirdworldcounty.blogspot.com/2006/01/superstitious-glurge-rantota-day.html) and trackback (http://www.haloscan.com/tb/mnmus/113699582957838138/). “Borrowing” (open theft) from Diane’s Stuff,
“If you use blogging software that doesn’t have “trackback” ability built in, Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pingeris an excellent resource to overcome that small problem as is Kalsey’s Simpletracks.”
Or use Haloscan‘s commenting and trackback service.

Mixed Review

Disclaimer: I don’t generally like or in any way appreciate didacticism. Especially not in novels, but generally not anywhere. I also don’t appreciate being preached to most of the time. (Mainly because most of the “preachers”-both from secular and “sacred” realms are usually so bad at it that any valid points they may have are obscured by all the rubbish they lade on top.)

That said, imagine my ambivalence when I picked up Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. The thing’s just one long polemic against the stupidity marketed as “global warming” and “climate change”. Yeh, I know I deliberately loaded that comment, but I’ll stand behind it.

But about the book. After dispensing with the suspension of disbelief deal breaker in the plot (a bunch of unlikely-totally implausible-Scooby-dos save the world from eco-feak wack jobs and ecology industry conspirators. OK, the last part isn’t so far-fetched, but the Scoooby-dos are), the stick-figure characterizations, sometimes wooden dialog and all the other lame plot elements, I was left with a run-of-the-mill adventure story well suited to Hollyweird (save for its perspective on global warming/whatever the latest lame catchphrase might be) and… some moderately interesting, though hardly new to me, citations of actual-GASP!-scientific research into climate change.

And frankly, for those who have been brainwashed by Hollyweird, the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army, Cracked Ivory Tower Academia Nuts, and the whole melange of Loony Left Moonbats, eco-freaks, eco-nazis and their ilk about climate, this book (and hopefully others like it but better-written) may hold out some slim hope of sanity.

Yes, the novel does exaggerate some things and postulate a semi-plausible conspiracy to manipulate people by inducing a “state of fear”, but the basic info about the non-scientific, UNREASONING and unreasonable nature of global warming posturers is spot on, and worth injecting into the public consciousness.

I’d suggest that those who don’t particularly appreciate Crichton’s fiction style (count me as one, although he seems to have his moments of good writing in every book of his I’ve read) nevertheless read the book’s appendices and check out the bibliography. Some good reading in the biblio, much of it-or abstracts of some-available on the internet. You will have to do your own searches for the material, though, unless you have dead tree copies in your own library (like the Rachel Carson cover-to-cover lie, Silent Spring I have buried in a box) or a decent public or university library available… and there’s always interlibrary loan, you know.

Frankly, most folks won’t be bothered too much by the massive implausibilities in the plot and would enjoy the read… although most will also-sadly, cos they are surprisingly good; the best parts of the book, in fact-skip over the lil sermonettes on science vs. eco-voodoo.

Crichton does make the common mistake of many accolytes of materialistic positivism in believing scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge, but I can forgive him that blind spot for the service he does in describing in vernacular some of the differences between the voodoo that’s presented as scientific knowledge by the media, politicians *spit* and dumbasses in academia who are either just playing pseudo-scientific politics or regularly speak with assurance about things they know nothing about.

BTW, I missed noting Rachel Carson, arguably the biggest mass murderer in history via the influence of her lies, in my roundup of “Worst Americans” and only realized my faux pas when I saw her on someone else’s list. Can’t get ’em all…

Review reviewed at Stuck on Stupid, TMH’s Bacon Bits

WARNING! (Quick hit)

OK, Skippy, if you use MSN Messenger be warned. Don’t be sucked in.

Virus Poses as Leaked MSN Messenger Beta

Internet users are being warned about a new virus that poses as a leaked pre-release version of the MSN Messenger instant messenger program.

Unsuspecting Windows users who install the phony MSN Messenger Version 8 “beta” actually install an IM worm that spreads to their IM contacts, and connects their computer to a remote control “bot” network run by malicious hackers, according to F-Secure Corp., an antivirus firm based in Helsinki.

A Web site, msgr8beta.com, purports to have the leaked version of MSN Messenger. The site touts the advantages of the MSN Messenger 8…

Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. By the time you read this, the malicious little worm who came up with this sucker play for naifs will likely have set up a different website offering this sucker bait.

Update your AV software; NEVER open unasked for, unscanned email attachments and watch those phishing links, etc., yadayadayada…

ME Quiz

Nah, not “Middle English” (although I did have a bonus M.E. quiz for some 9th-graders once… heh), and not “me”. Middle Earth. BTW, this day was eaten by orcs, so I have NO idea where I saw this. If it was on your blog, please lemme know and I’ll link the post, ‘K.

*sigh*

Here goes. Answering the burning question you all have been wanting the answer to, “To which Middle Earth race does the proprietor of TWCâ„¢ belong?”

Rohirrim
Rohirrim

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
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