Thursday, March 30, 2006
Illegal Immigration
Our Citizens Want Enforcement Not Pandering to Votes
We start with the fact that illegal entry is breaking the law.
Thus those who are here illegally are lawbreakers and should be punished for crossing the border. Further entries should be punished at an ever more severe level.
Those commercial ventures that hire illegals and are caught doing so should be fined severely: on the order of $25,000 per illegal person for the first offense, and $100,000 per illegal person for the second offense. Any further offenses should result in prison for 10 years for the heads of companies. Law enforcement at every level should be empowered to capture and deport illegals and to bring charges against their employers.
We should build an air-tight fence and increase the border patrols by 100%. Posting National Guards along the borders to report and hold illegal immigrants should be employed.
There should be a fair and well-administered guest worker program that provides for both sufficient workers in our fields and industries, and for temporary residence in the US by the guest workers. A comprehensive ID should be employed to positively identify guest workers.
Is this too hard a task for the nation that sent men to the moon?
Sunday, March 26, 2006
The Intelligent Design Fiasco
Condemnations begin before the fact.
Two of the most scientifically-minded proponents of Intelligent Design, or ID, are Michael Behe and William Dembski. Each has proposed scientific puzzles that have the evolutionary theorists scrambling for answers. Unfortunately, these critics of ID begin with the title phrase “Intelligent Design” and then claim that these puzzles are beside the point. They claim that ID is flawed from the outset, in that it starts with the idea of the existence of God, and proceeds to the notion that God created the universe. Hence, the entire ID concept is merely an argument from faith in God, and nothing more.
However, if one reads either Behe or Dembski, the notion of God does not enter into the scientific puzzles they present. Rather, they posit no other explanation for their analyses than Creation, since they both show that natural evolution could not have solved their puzzles. This has the evolutionists in an uproar, and they are using every negative trick in the book to discredit and denigrate both Behe and Dembski, without rebutting their arguments.
Most of the critics rely on a few scientists, who claim that they have defeated the ID arguments decisively, but who fail to show their proofs adequately in one case, and utterly fail to demonstrate anything wrong in the other. But the critics can dump all kinds of vituperation on these IDers and their ideas, simply because in their view the theory of evolution is unassailable now, and will remain so for the foreseeable future! Thus eventually there will be an evolutionary solution to any of the shortcomings that have been highlighted by the ID’ers.
This strikes me as being dishonest and unscientific in the extreme, no matter who is right on the substance of the puzzles.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
The 2006 Election Season
An Even Dozen Issues
I see the forthcoming mid-term elections to be focused on the following issues:
1. Iraq: Seeing our participation through to a successful conclusion, and continuing support for as long as it takes.
2. Illegal Immigration: Closing borders, controlling immigrants and migrant workers, and penalizing employers that break the law.
3. Iran: What action to take to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. (This is gated by what happens in Iraq as well.)
There are a few options, none of them very pleasant. War with Iran is not out of the question.
4. Spending: How to reign in profligate spending by Congress. Giving the line-item veto to the President?
5. Judicial Legislation: Returning the Bench to interpreting the law, not legislating it. There will possibly be another opening on the Supreme Court within the next two years. We should see that yet another constitutionalist is appointed.
6. Defense: Ensuring continued training, modernization and preparation of our military for new roles in world conflicts, including further expansion of the capabilities for occupation and special operations.
7. Homeland Defense: Ensuring more rapid and effective responses to internal disasters throughout the country.
8. Comity: The public is fed up with the rancor and denigration stemming from excessive partisanship in Congress over issues vital to the public. Especially divisive is the virulent hatred of President Bush, much of which merely aids our enemies and puts our troops at a disadvantage. We should elect congressmen who vow to change the discordant climate in Washington.
9. Taxes: Tax reform is imperative if we are to regain our footing financially, and yet still have the resources needed for our commitments. A Flat Tax should be enacted, thus largely doing away with the IRS.
10. Medical Reforms: medical costs are going ever upward, and more and more citizens are becoming uninsured, while illegal immigrants are getting free care in our hospitals. Something needs to be done.
11. State Department Reform: There are too many members of the DOS that try to effect their own agendas rather than our elected President’s program. These persons should be encouraged to resign. It seems that this is underway now, sponsored by Rice. it should go to completion.
12. Intelligence Community Reform: The same holds true for the CIA and other agencies, who have in the recent past fostered differing agendas that that of the President by indirect and illegal means. Personnel that are doing this must be fired. Porter Goss was given the mandate to clean up CIA. I hope he succeeds.
There are many more needs in our intelligence system, such as a long range program for developing substantial human assets in foreign countries.
An Even Dozen Issues
I see the forthcoming mid-term elections to be focused on the following issues:
1. Iraq: Seeing our participation through to a successful conclusion, and continuing support for as long as it takes.
2. Illegal Immigration: Closing borders, controlling immigrants and migrant workers, and penalizing employers that break the law.
3. Iran: What action to take to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. (This is gated by what happens in Iraq as well.)
There are a few options, none of them very pleasant. War with Iran is not out of the question.
4. Spending: How to reign in profligate spending by Congress. Giving the line-item veto to the President?
5. Judicial Legislation: Returning the Bench to interpreting the law, not legislating it. There will possibly be another opening on the Supreme Court within the next two years. We should see that yet another constitutionalist is appointed.
6. Defense: Ensuring continued training, modernization and preparation of our military for new roles in world conflicts, including further expansion of the capabilities for occupation and special operations.
7. Homeland Defense: Ensuring more rapid and effective responses to internal disasters throughout the country.
8. Comity: The public is fed up with the rancor and denigration stemming from excessive partisanship in Congress over issues vital to the public. Especially divisive is the virulent hatred of President Bush, much of which merely aids our enemies and puts our troops at a disadvantage. We should elect congressmen who vow to change the discordant climate in Washington.
9. Taxes: Tax reform is imperative if we are to regain our footing financially, and yet still have the resources needed for our commitments. A Flat Tax should be enacted, thus largely doing away with the IRS.
10. Medical Reforms: medical costs are going ever upward, and more and more citizens are becoming uninsured, while illegal immigrants are getting free care in our hospitals. Something needs to be done.
11. State Department Reform: There are too many members of the DOS that try to effect their own agendas rather than our elected President’s program. These persons should be encouraged to resign. It seems that this is underway now, sponsored by Rice. it should go to completion.
12. Intelligence Community Reform: The same holds true for the CIA and other agencies, who have in the recent past fostered differing agendas that that of the President by indirect and illegal means. Personnel that are doing this must be fired. Porter Goss was given the mandate to clean up CIA. I hope he succeeds.
There are many more needs in our intelligence system, such as a long range program for developing substantial human assets in foreign countries.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Read the Constitution Lately?
Making Your Own Interpretations?
It has been demonstrated to me that many of our citizens have only a hazy knowledge of our Constitution, and even believe that they have the right to interpret what it says in their own way. Perhaps this comes partly because of the prediliction of many leftist Judges to either reinterpret the words or to invent new meaning into the words, and thus to legislate from the bench in total conflict with what the Constitution specifies. A list of over 30 such inventions by the Supreme Court in recent years has been posted on the web.
Let us be clear, however. The Constitution is the Law of the Land, but only as it has been interpreted by Judges over the several hundred years of its existence. There is no room for personal versions of what the Constitution means.
There are even those who support the idea that the Constitution is a "living document" capable of being changed to reflect the latest trends in attempts to "loosen society", such as allowing porn into our homes, prostitution, and same sex marriage.
There is only one proper way to change the Constitution. That is by the Amendment process specified by the Constitution itself.
Is it possible that our schools are shortchanging students by passing lightly over our founding documents?
Friday, March 10, 2006
Tempests
Just How Many Teapots Are There?
Let me see, we have had a teapot tempest about Iraq, stirred up by the leftist pacifists; we have had a tempest about Katrina response timing; a tempest about Valere Plame being outed by someone; a big tempest in a teapot about Bush's National Guard service; a tempest because Dick Cheney had a hunting accident; and a huge tempest in a teapot because the media misrepresented the Ports deal shamefully and aroused public sentiment negatively, before they knew all the facts; and I am sure someone could remind me of three or four other tempests in a teapot that the MSM and leftwing rabble-rausers have caused in the last five years. The common thread to all of these events is a hysterical MSM and a looney left taking every possible opportunity to misread, misinterpret, and cast the Administration in a bad light.
So be it. They have earned the deaf ear they are getting, the falling circulation, and the contempt of the public at large. Of course this only frustrates them more and causes them to become shriller and even more biased in their (so-called) reporting, which is really merely shilling for the leftist ideologues we have in too great an abundance.
There is at least one teapot per reporter, one teapot per biased newspaper, and one teapot per leftist intellectual or professor (which is an enormous waste of brainpower and paper).
That is far, far too many tempests in innocent little teapots that had rather not be labeled for any tempests at all.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
US/Iran: The Second Inning
Some Second-Guesses on US Steps
My first guess is that we are making the asumption that we have a year to make a move on Iran militarily, if needed. That is about the time Iran needs to manufacture their first bomb, some think. So any action would take place most likely after the November elections. That gives some time for diplomacy, if you can believe that diplomacy will have any effect at all. But world opinion expects it, despite three comically unsuccessful years of it by the Europeans. The UN must get their two cents in as well, but I do not expect them to be very harsh about Iran's nuclear facilities or sanctions that work only to make the people miserable and not the leaders.
I believe that we have already determined at high levels that Iran will not stop their progress toward nuclear weapons and delivery missiles whatever inducements they are offered. Thus we are in the process of quietly repositioning ourselves to confront Iran some time in January or Febuary, 2007, or at the latest early in 2008. There just might be a shell game with troop rotations in and out of Iraq over the next months, or a year or so, resulting in a net buildup of armored forces, especially in Kuwait, but not easy for anyone to detect and count.
Perhaps two or three full divisions will be added, on the pretext of training exercises with Iraqi forces, or some other cover story. We would need the added forces in the event that we struck Iran in any way. Their immediate reaction might be to attack us in Iraq. to hit Israel, and to call for a renewed and higher level of jihad in the US and worldwide
The obvious first attempt to stop the Iranian nuclear buildup is a thorough-going air campaign targeting suspected nuclear facilities and using conventional weapons. This might be coupled with closing off Iranian ports and thus shutting down their oil exports completely. The pipelines under construction to Russia and the 'stans would be attacked as well. There would be minimal civilian casualties in these steps, and potentially a maximum impact on Iran's weapons program and their economy.
At this point we have hit Iran hard, but we have most likely not taken out their entire nuke capability. If we stop at this point, what we have achieved, perhaps, is a few year's delay in their program. This pushes the decision-point further ahead without reducing the ultimate risk of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. In fact, I believe that such action would solidify the Iranian public against the West, and give other Islamic jihadist groups and states more ammunition in the clash of West versus Islam. We could expect substantial retaliation by embedded Iramian jihadists in the West. This, of course, would happen anyway if we take any action at all.
So, by buying a few years of delay, we have most likely unleashed ever more terrorist attacks worldwide, and have only set the Iranian nuclear capability back a bit, at some undefined cost in casualties to the attacking force, and to the Iranian public. This does not seem like a winning proposition to me.
Why do we want more time? To force Iran to realize the power lined up against it's nuclear strategy? They fully realize that now. For diplomacy to work? That hardly seems very probable after an attack. To prepare to invade Iran with a coalition? Possibly, but a realistic assessment would show that the US would have to furnish the bulk of the attack forces in any event.
The Coalition-building is a sham cover to cater to world opinion, as if the world needs to be coddled that the West is "doing the right thing". In fact, coalition forces are not a good thing. They are hard to integrate into our fighting tempo and command, control and communications capabilities, they are many times less committed to the proposition of invasion, and tend to draw back when the going gets rough. Examples of this are readliy found in the Iraqi situation.
My guess is that we do need time to resupply, refit and retrain our forces, to build up a substantial coalition-driven occupation force ready to go when we invade with our main fighting force, and to nail down the existence of nuclear weapons in Iran. Here, Iran may be very helpful if they explode a test weapon.
That would signal our attack, and provide proof positive of Iran's capability. Lacking that signal, we have only the intelligence products of the Western powers to guide us. There have been significant findings already, perhaps sufficient to be able to pick our own time for attacking, and to simply ignore "world opinion" as being uninformed, unenlightened, highly biased, and anti-US in the first place.
My conclusion is that we will invade Iran, probably no later than January 2008, with perhaps 250,000 to 350,000 troops, and we will defeat the Iranian Army in a matter of weeks. The occupation force will go in immediately behind the main force, in numbers like 500,000 to 650,000 troops from all major powers, to ensure no insurrection starts as occurred in Iraq. This will put over a million troops on the ground in Iran.
We will institute martial law, a strict curfew, and disarmament of all factions in the country. We will not pretend to be "liberators" this time, but rather occupiers until we can ensure a democratic government strong enough to persist. We will not simply disband the Iranian Army, but rather, we will use them in the process in the best way we can.
Education Ruminations V
The Power Must be With the Citizens
There must be an education association in each state that has an independent agenda and an organization for promoting better schools, curricula, and teaching environments. I intend to look for one or more to join. If I have no success in that search, I intend to look into organizing one myself.
The idea of a campaign to better the schools is certainly not new, but I have personally not seen any news on this in the papers or on TV here in Virginia. Occasionally, a politico casts some rhetoric on the subject out to the citizens, to show he or she cares, but once elected, there is little more to go on, certainly little action, unless there is a crisis of some sort.
An organization needs a purpose, and the purpose here is to return the schools to a focus on all students and a classic curriculum taught in the old-fashioned manner, but with modern teaching aids.
It is quite apparent that many new, experimental methods have not been successful, by and large, and they have left students with gaps in their learning because of this experimentation. Ambitious administrators have devised experimental programs in order to get funding from some level of government, and ultimately to get recognition within the education hierarchy. I have witnessed the failure of these amateur attempts at making a mark on my own children and others in my family and friend's families.
This cannot be a strictly local investigation into education, since much of the guidance and instruction to the schools comes from the NEA, and AFT. Thus a program is needed that addresses every level of the problem at every school in the system nationwide. This must include lobbying Congress as well.
Before marching out to battle there must a plan of action. The first thoughts I have on a plan is as follows:
1. Find out what is published so far about the schools in my area and assimilate it.
2. Visit as many schools in the area as I can, from elementary through high school. Talk to educators: principals, administrators, teachers, PTA members, School Board members and even students. Take their views into account.
3. Assess what is needed in this school system and document it, then find out what is being done in the city, counties and state about any problems.
4. Assess the curriculum being taught and compare it with an ideal curriculum devised to reflect the content of a classic education at each level. Prepare this curriculum in advance as a yardstick.
5. Formulate a program to address means to alleviate any deficiencies found.
6. Organize the effort, and try to bring in as many citizens as possible that support the idea of a "classic" education. Or, find an organization that already addresses the problems and join it.
7. Devise a promotion plan to get the message out.
That is sufficient to get started, I believe.
(to be continued)
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Education Ruminations IV
Where Can We Go From Here?
For me, the big problem is simply what we can do to clean up our education system. The entrenched powers of the rulers of this domain are truly frightening. We have on the opposing side: HEW/federal government/ education faction; the State Departments of Education; the School Boards; NEA/AFL/CIO and AFT unions with tremendous vested interests in keeping the power and money flow going (never mind the kiddies, they can fend for themselves!); the current Administrators of School systems; and the elected School Boards that have significant money power.
Then too, we have the ACLU lurking everywhere ready to sue anyone that violates their sense of right or wrong. Teachers and Students are the last to be heard, and even if heard, they are mostly ignored, because it isn’t about them at all; it is about keeping the power and money in the “right” hands, namely the current power-brokers in education.
The solution most reasonably well-off parents take is to place their children into public schools that do not have the problems we bemoan if they can, even if they must move away to do so. Or, they put their kids into private or parochial schools that ensure a good education. Some have resorted to home teaching, with good result for the most part. (However, their kids may be denied the social and sports activities that school kids have.)
Thus they sidestep the issue, and go on their way. They too, are aware of the foreboding power structures of education and the veiled problems of race and deprived backgrounds. Obviously, parents prefer to duck the fight, so long as their children are experiencing a reasonably healthy schooling.
What can the others do that cannot find a good school and cannot move to a good district? They tough it out where they are, of course, and have hopes of getting vouchers to allow their children to go elsewhere to get the education their current school is not giving the students. Vouchers may be a good thing, but they do not address the real problems directly. It is yet another form of avoidance of conflict, even as it solves the problems of a few. The families that must remain in a given school are truly out of luck, unless by some magic their school changes for the better.
It is heartening that many teachers stay on and try to make the best of it because of their love of the students and their dedication to their profession. Theirs is an often thankless task, and their inner dissatisfactions hidden from public view. We should all be thankful for them and support them where possible.
(to be continued: the education power structure.)
AK-47s and RPGs in Iraq
Anyone for Disarming the Whole Country?
Someone please tell me why the US and Iraqi forces haven't proceeded with a house-to-house search for arms everywhere in Iraq. Disarming the populace seems to be overdue, especially in those areas under the control of some Sheik with a militia, for instance Bani Sadr. Further, they should issue a "shoot-to-kill" order for anyone spotted carrying a weapon and wearing no uniform. Explosives or weapons found in the possession of anyone not authorized to have them should result in their summary execution.
While these measures may seem harsh, it would immediately make the insurgent's attacks more difficult, and would end up saving many lives. Since many of the insurgents drive cars to their points of attack, more and more checkpoints should be erected. Again, weapons found in cars should result in summary executions of the adult occupants. Then too, it would be appropriate to limit the number of people driving in a car to two, plus children. Amazing stories have come out telling of armed bands filling three or four cars roving around the streets and attacking innocent citizens. Why we are letting the populace hide tons of weapons and explosives around the country in cars and homes is quite beyond my kin.
I am certain that an effective search plan could be worked out that would not forewarn the owners of weapons and would block their escape to another sector. We would miss some weapons hiding places, I am sure, but if we only had 85% to 90% success, it would be significant.
These policies could be publicized in advance, and
citizens could be given the opportunity to turn in their weapons without penalty for a week or two. After that, weapons in homes, cars, and on the person would represent a death sentence.
