The Birther *GAG* Issue

I hate talking about this. It has been one of the biggest wastes of time the electorate has had to suffer through in the last three years, distracting us from genuinely vital issues like the economy, foreign policy, government reform, etc., etc., etc. However, those trying to kill the birther movement are blinded by their own ideological commitments and committing wholesale slander and libel, and, worse, dumping history in the sewer to try to achieve their goals.

Let's start with Wikipedia's article on the Natural Born Citizen clause of the Constitution, which, appropriately, begins with a quotation from section one article two of the US Constitution:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

An interesting discussion of various interpretations of that requirement as well as a history of US citizenship in law and a history of challenges to the citizenship of candidates follows. It includes such fascinating tidbits as the debate over whether simply birth in the US confers citizenship (jus soli), or birth in the US to American parents, or just birth to American parents (jus sanguinis).

As late as 2008, a law professor could assert that both jus soli and jus sanguinis were requirements, indicating that Obama, whose father was a British subject and not an American citizen, would not be considered a natural born citizen. He later changed his mind:

In a 2008 article published by the Michigan Law Review Lawrence Solum, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, stated that "[t]here is general agreement on the core of [the] meaning [of the Presidential Eligibility Clause]. Anyone born on American soil whose parents are citizens of the United States is a 'natural born citizen'". In April 2010 Solum republished the same article as an online draft, in which he changed his opinion on the meaning of natural born citizen to include persons born in the United States of one American citizen parent. In a footnote he explained that "[b]ased on my reading of the historical sources, there is no credible case that a person born on American soil with one American parent was clearly not a 'natural born citizen.'" He further extended natural born citizenship to all cases of jus soli as the "conventional view".

Given that the Fourteenth Amendment states that, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside", I think the jus soli plus jus sanguinis argument is clearly wrong. Jus soli is enough, and Obama's British father has no bearing on the question. Indeed, had both of his parents been British subjects, that would still be irrelevant. All the evidence indicates that he was born in Hawaii, which last I heard was an American state, and that alone is enough to make him a natural born citizen of these United States. (NB: One can quibble with the fact that the Fourteenth doesn't use the words 'natural born citizens.' I think it is a silly quibble, but apparently some scholars do not.)

Obama was not the first presidential candidate whose status as a natural born citizen was questioned. Wikipedia's list includes:

Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886), 21st president of the United States, was rumored to have been born in Canada.

Christopher Schürmann (born 1848 in New York) entered the Labor primaries during the 1896 presidential election. His eligibility was questioned in a New York Tribune article, because he was born to alien parents of German nationality.

The eligibility of Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) was questioned in an article written by Breckinridge Long, and published in the Chicago Legal News during the U.S. presidential election of 1916, in which Hughes was narrowly defeated by Woodrow Wilson. Long claimed that Hughes was ineligible because his father had not yet naturalized at the time of his birth and was still a British citizen. Observing that Hughes, although born in the United States, was also a British subject and therefore "enjoy[ed] a dual nationality and owe[d] a double allegiance", Long argued that a native born citizen was not natural born without a unity of U.S. citizenship and allegiance and stated: "Now if, by any possible construction, a person at the instant of birth, and for any period of time thereafter, owes, or may owe, allegiance to any sovereign but the United States, he is not a 'natural-born' citizen of the United States."

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) was born in Phoenix, in what was then the incorporated Arizona Territory of the United States. During his presidential campaign in 1964, there was a minor controversy over Goldwater's having been born in Arizona when it was not yet a state.

George Romney (1907–1995), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico to U.S. parents.

John McCain (born 1936), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone. McCain never released his birth certificate to the press or independent fact-checking organizations ... A lawsuit filed by Fred Hollander in 2008 alleged that McCain was actually born in a civilian hospital in Colon City, Panama.

Barack Obama (born 1961), 44th president of the United States, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a U.S. citizen mother and a British subject father from what was then the Kenya Colony of the United Kingdom (which became the independent country of Kenya in 1963).

Why is all this worth bringing up here? Because of articles like "Birtherist response highlights racial undertones of ‘debate’", by Rachel Rose Hartman, which would seem to demonstrate an incredible ideological blindness by otherwise intelligent, well-educated people.

During the 2008 campaign, questions about John McCain's birth in the Panama Canal Zone on a U.S. military base prompted some to ask whether McCain was eligible to be president, since the Constitution stipulates that anyone not born in the United States is not eligible to be president.

... When a bipartisan pair of lawyers announced the following month that McCain was indeed eligible, the issue virtually died--apart from a Senate resolution that pretty much laid the question to rest by attesting to the facts surrounding McCain's birth and citizenship.

But the winner of the 2008 election, Barack Obama, has faced a relentless campaign questioning his U.S. citizenship--and thereby the legitimacy of his presidency--that has disregarded the facts.

...


So what's fueling the dogged questioning of Obama's origins? Many critics of the birther movement say its core tenets--and its stubborn resistance to evidence disproving those beliefs--can be traced to racial hostilities. The fundamental birtherist conviction, these critics say, is that an African-American can't have legitimately won the presidency--and that his elevation to power therefore has to be the result of an elaborate subterfuge.

"There is a real deep-seated and vicious racism at work here in terms of trying to de-legitimate the president," Peniel Joseph, a professor of history at Tufts University, told The Ticket.

"This is more than just a conspiracy," Joseph added. "I think this is fundamentally connected to a conception of white supremacist democracy in this country."

The article goes on to quote Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., columnist Michael Tomasky, and Jesse Jackson as sharing this view. Hartman continues:

Birthers emphatically deny such criticism. But it's difficult to apprehend the ongoing resistance to proof of Obama's citizenship without crediting racial fear as a significant factor. At first, after all, many adherents of birtherism argued that the administration fueled speculation by failing to release the long-form version of Obama's birth certificate, but now that this version has been released to the public, the call continues to go out for other kinds of information about Obama's past to be released--a level of scrutiny that neither McCain nor Obama's 43 predecessors in the Oval Office were expected to face.

...

Trump and others have accused Obama of not authoring his memoir, while many Obama detractors continue to argue he is secretly Muslim. Both Jackson and Joseph noted that never before has a sitting president's nationality been questioned.

Meanwhile, an eye-opening recent study from the University of Delaware appears to confirm that race-minded detractors of Obama view him as "less American"--as Dan Vergano writes for USA Today.

The study, which surveyed blacks and whites on their opinions of Obama compared to Vice President Joe Biden, found that whites classified as "higher prejudice-predicted Whites" viewed Obama as "less American"--a view that, in turn, resulted in lower evaluations of the president's performance.

There are several issues missing from this article that indicate a powerful ideological blindness. In completely ignoring factors other than race, it fails to mention, for example, the fact that Obama's father was a British subject, that photos of a young Obama in Indonesian garb have made the rounds, or that Obama attended Jeremiah Wright's ("God DAMN America!") church for decades (a church which lauded Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan), or repeated charges that Obama is a socialist, all things that would at least bring up other possible reasons some Americans would have this view of Obama. There is also no analysis of birther rhetoric itself, other than to note that birthers deny the racism charge. In addition, the article ignores the lengthy history of challenging the natural born citizenship of a number of white candidates prior to the 2008 election, including two on issues of parentage.

More egregious is the complete failure to mention the sustained, hate-filled campaign by Democrats to delegitimize Bush's presidency that lasted all throughout Bush's time in office, despite actual recounts after the USSC ruling that showed Bush would have won anyway. The campaign to delegitimize Obama's presidency can be seen as a response to the dishonesty and ugliness of the Democratic war on Bush's legitimacy. Even if you disagree with my characterization of that effort, the idea that an attack by a primarily Republican demographic on the legitimacy of a sitting Democratic president is in no way related to the primarily Democratic attack on the legitimacy of the preceding Republican president seems absurd.

So here's the point: Birthers believe what they believe due to their ideological blindness. Others believe the birthers must be motivated by racism because of their own ideological blindness. These are two more examples of the bipartisan nature of the lack of intellectual curiosity that infests our nation, of the confirmation bias endemic to humanity, and of plain old stuck on stupid. Both groups are damaging this nation.

More Financial Crisis Articles

USA Today: U.S. Funding for Future Promises Lags by Trillions:

The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

Reuters: Economy at Tipping Point:

Recent housing and employment data suggests the U.S. economy is at a tipping point where a double-dip recession is possible and home prices could have much further to fall, a veteran economist said on Thursday.

Robert Shiller said the recent uptick in unemployment is not yet enough of a sign as to which way the recovery is heading. But if unemployment continues to rise in the coming months, it could suggest another recession.

Economics Blogs

Greg Mankiw's Blog

Economics One, by John B. Taylor

Limericks Economiques (yes, economic commentary in the form of limericks)

Economonomics (with haiku)

I'll probably add more in the future, but that's what I have for now.

2008 Financial Crisis Link Dump

Kenneth Anderson at The Volokh Conspiracy talks about a new book on Fannie and Freddie's role in the crisis. In the post, he links an NPR interview with Gretchen Morgenson, one of the authors, and a review at the Washington Post. Anderson's post is well worth reading in full, BTW.

The book is Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon, by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.

These reviews led me to Wikipedia's entry on George Stigler, a Nobel-winning economist and originator of the idea of 'regulatory capture,' which describes very well one aspect of my own impression of how the US government has, in large part, been corrupted.

Stigler, in turn, led me to the Mont Pelerin Society:

... an international organization composed of economists (including 8 winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences), philosophers, historians, intellectuals, business leaders, and others who favour classical liberalism. Its founders included Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler, and Milton Friedman.

The society advocates freedom of expression, free market economic policies, and the political values of an open society.

I feel like I've been admitted to a higher (lower?) circle of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ...

Anyway, interesting stuff. I look forward to reading the book.

PS On a somewhat related note, this is hilarious.

Lawrence O'Donnell Takes on Condoleezza Rice

http://moelane.com/2011/05/06/lawrence-odonnell-had-32-teeth/

This interview reinforces the idea that those on opposite sides of whether or not we should have invaded Iraq inhabit two different worlds.

Edit: Here's the same video on NewsBusters with a transcript below, and a tad bit of commentary.

N.B. I was surprised to really notice for the first time that Rice's given name has two Zs in it. According to Wikipedia, the name comes from the Italian musical term, con dolcezza, 'with sweetness.' This is quite appropriate as, in addition to her academic, business, and political achievements, she is also a concert pianist. (Self-fulfilling prophecy of a kind?) And, while she can be tenacious (as in the O'Donnell interview), she does come across with a touch of sweetness.

Here is one of her pages at Stanford. Her book, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, looks pretty interesting. Love her or hate her, Rice is a fascinating person for anyone who appreciates people as people.

Links of Interest

Lots of interesting stuff to keep track of.

David Braben created a $25 USB drive PC. Just attach a monitor and keyboard and you're ready to go.

ARE more than a billion people hungry?

David Solway, Canadian poet, dissects the lingo of the left.

James Taranto tells us (or rather confirms to us) why the left needs racism. (His earlier works on the topic are here and here.)

Writing Teachers: Still Crazy After All These Years

An interesting article by Mary Grabar. Here's the opening paragraph, and the rest is well worth the read:

After spending four depressing days this month at a meeting of 3,000 writing teachers in Atlanta, I can tell you that their parent group, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, is not really interested  in teaching students to write and communicate clearly.  The group’s agenda, clear to me after sampling as many of the meeting’s 500 panels as I could, is devoted to disparaging grammar, logic, reason, evidence and fairness as instruments of white oppression. They believe rules of grammar discriminate against “marginalized” groups and restrict self-expression.

Links of Interest

Two articles well worth reading in full. They are both about education, but from different angles.

The Management Myth:

During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions. Those who saw through my disguise assumed I made up for my youth with a fabulous education in management. They were wrong about that. I don’t have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy—nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise. Before I took a job telling managers of large corporations things that they arguably should have known already, my work experience was limited to part-time gigs tutoring surly undergraduates in the ways of Hegel and Nietzsche and to a handful of summer jobs, mostly in the less appetizing ends of the fast-food industry.

The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter. As a principal and founding partner of a consulting firm that eventually grew to 600 employees, I interviewed, hired, and worked alongside hundreds of business-school graduates, and the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.” When it came to picking teammates, I generally held out higher hopes for those individuals who had used their university years to learn about something other than business administration.

Gales of Creative Instruction:

The electron cloud is already taking us from new Oxford back to old Oxford. After all, how can the old inconvenient and expensive system survive the onslaught of free?

I can move to England, pay the non-subsidized foreigner tuition rates, rise early, go to class and take my chances on an Oxford professor. Or I can sit in my pajamas and have an Oxford prof of my choice teach me about critical thinking or the literary legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien. I can avoid the same old green gunk or socialist screeds.

Want to learn more about the Austrian School of Economics from which Dr. Schumpeter derived his doctrine of creative destruction? Here’s a free course. Want to read Adam Smith’s comments about education and virtually every other topic under the sun, here’s a free searchable e-book,  and here’s a free version for your Kindle. Feel you need some help understanding Smith? Here’s a podcast course from George Mason University’s econ talk.

Looking for a Schumpeterian take on current economic events? Try Intelligent Investing With Steve Forbes. If you like your free market economic commentary in daily doses, I find the Cato Institute’s daily podcast quite refreshing. For a little more depth, here’s their weekly video.

10 Ex-Chairs: Unsustainable Budget Deficit a Threat to US

Ten ex-Chairs of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, including those who served under Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, state:

As former chairmen and chairwomen of the Council of Economic Advisers, who have served in Republican and Democratic administrations, we urge that the Bowles-Simpson report, “The Moment of Truth,” be the starting point of an active legislative process that involves intense negotiations between both parties. 

There are many issues on which we don’t agree. Yet we find ourselves in remarkable unanimity about the long-run federal budget deficit: It is a severe threat that calls for serious and prompt attention.

While the actual deficit is likely to shrink over the next few years as the economy continues to recover, the aging of the baby-boom generation and rapidly rising health care costs are likely to create a large and growing gap between spending and revenues. These deficits will take a toll on private investment and economic growth. At some point, bond markets are likely to turn on the United States — leading to a crisis that could dwarf 2008.

“The Moment of Truth” documents that “the problem is real, and the solution will be painful.” It is tempting to act as if the long-run budget imbalance could be fixed by just cutting wasteful government spending or raising taxes on the wealthy. But the facts belie such easy answers.

...
The commission’s recommendations for slowing the growth of government health care expenditures — the central cause of our long-run deficits — are incomplete. It proposes setting spending targets and calls for a process to suggest further reforms if the targets aren’t met. But it also lays out a number of concrete steps, like increasing the scope of the new Independent Payment Advisory Board and limiting the tax deductibility of health insurance.

To be sure, we don’t all support every proposal here. ...

Yet we all strongly support prompt consideration of the commission’s proposals. The unsustainable long-run budget outlook is a growing threat to our well-being. Further stalemate and inaction would be irresponsible.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51864.html#ixzz1I2lIeDuW

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Cheers!

Links of Interest

Been sitting on these for a few days thinking I would write up something about one or the other. But, facing the truth, I have to say I don't have time to write an essay on them right now. So, I shall tuck them into this cubbyhole for future reference.

Hope. Change. Nixon. Don Surber notes some similarities, and that others are noting them as well.

The Leiter Side of Union Thuggery. James Taranto takes on unions and a pro-union philosopher.

The Limits of Common Sense. A follow up post by Taranto. (Mug tip here to Instapundit.)

Longhorns 17, Badgers 1. Iowahawk puts the funny down for a post to teach Paul Krugman about statistics and education (and why education outcomes in non-unionized educational systems are as good as or better than those in unionized systems). He follows up with answers to questions about statistics and methodology in Badgering the Witless.

And an interesting reprint of an article on cultural revolution in the art world (or, at least, a revolutionary group): Adieu to the Avant-Garde.

Will College Pay Off?

I've always been told that college graduates earn more than those who only finish high school, but after I got my BA I began to wonder. Surely, which major you pick plays a big role in how much you earn, right? There is also the issue of causation. Does earning the degree cause the rise in pay, or do the qualities that helped you earn the degree pay off?

Here's a snippet from the WSJ's Mary Pilon on the topic:

One problem he sees with the estimates: They don't take into account deductions from income taxes or breaks in employment. Nor do they factor in debt, particularly student debt loads, which have ballooned for both public and private colleges in recent years. In addition, the income data used for the Census estimates is from 1999, when total expenses for tuition and fees at the average four-year private college were $15,518 per year. For the 2009-10 school year, that number has risen to $26,273, and it continues to increase at a rate higher than inflation.

So, there's a different problem altogether. Income estimates should certainly take major into account, and unless we track some other factors, it should be noted that this data is merely correlative.

Check Your Charity

Andrea Coombes offers some useful advice for checking out charitable organizations before donating. Very timely, too. In addition to many practical tips for detecting fraud, she offers the following websites:

Whether you plan to text your donation or mail a check, make sure the charity is an established organization. Go to sites such as Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance to vet the charity.

...

File any fraud complaints with the Internet Crime Complaint Center . Known as IC3, the Center is a partnership of the FBI, National White Collar Crime Center and Bureau of Justice Assistance. Also, call the National Center for Disaster Fraud at 1-866-720-5721 to report the fraud.

Excuse Me, I Seem to Have Lost My Sense of Humor

Have you seen it around anywhere?

(bump) Hey, is this thing on?

Just checkin'.

Note to the Regulars

I'd like to get in email contact w/ you.

MJ, I emailed you this evening.

Jean, I've been through your blogs and can't find an email for you. Would you email me at pajamaclad-at-yahoo.com.au, please?

Comrade Toverich, we've exchanged email before, so I should have yours, but it may take a while to find (couldn't find it on your site). If you have a minute, could you email me at the above? If not, or you don't see this (and I understand why folks probably aren't checking this site very often), I will eventually find yours and email you.

Meta-politics 5: The Ends

Parts one, two, three and four laid out ideas on the principles, plan of action, and goals of the Meta-Party. This post, the last in the series, will focus on what kind of government we want to end up with after our reforms.

There will never be a perfect earthly government. But we can have one more responsible to the people, more comprehensible, more honest, more just than we have now. We can have less government waste, less corruption, and less obstruction. I think this is something the great majority of Americans can agree on.

The strong emotions about the Great Issues of the day won't go away. That will all still be waiting there for us, and at some point this coalition would fall apart. One faction or another would decide the reforms we've achieved will have been good enough, and we can all start back in on our political combat. But it will be with a much better government that will better represent all of us, and act more responsibly for all of us.

And maybe, having worked together on such a project, the members of the partisan sides won't forget that we all can work together to accomplish great things when it's necessary.

Meta-Politics 4: Partiers

Parts one, two, and three laid out the main points of my idea for the Meta-Party. This post will give my thoughts on who would be needed to start.

Certainly, bloggers who understood and were dedicated to the cause for Meta-Party communications and news . We would need experts, though members could become experts by doing their homework and paying attention to one area. Our experts would need to communicate what they learn to the rest, and also establish relationships with other experts who could be useful.

We would need to communicate to Congress because reform legislation will be a key tool for reform. It would probably be a good idea to have particular members strike up correspondance relationships with congresscritters. (Yeah, we could call them 'lobbyists' or something.) We would need to communicate to the public, both to recruit and to inflame them with the zeal of The Reform Issue Du Jour, so that means more bloggers, YouTube videographers, public speakers, writers of letters to the editor, etc.

And we need an informed, active membership, willing to do a little research on their own (distributed information systems are great), communicate with the group, to respond to calls for communication campaigns (mail, email, phone calls), to donate time or money to candidates as their conscience dictates, and to meet with other members in their area from time to time for fun, friendship and scheming. Or, maybe local meetings are a bad idea. Too much time and opportunity for partisan issues to crop up and cause bad feelings. Maybe separate conservative / progressive gatherings, with the leaders meeting with both groups?

Anyway, the thing is, enough people in all those categories are already wanting reform that, if a group were serious and got the word out, they'd probably have any number of people joining with many of the above skill sets in a fairly short period of time. Creating the 'buzz' to do that is something I've never done before. As you can see from my blog, I've been reduced to a multi-cellular organism in the TTLB Ecosystem. But, I don't see a reason it couldn't be done.

This almost concludes my series on meta-politics. Tomorrow's post will be a brief wrap-up of the topic.

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Update 6/8/07: Part five is here.

Meta-Politics 3: Objectives

Meta-Politics 3: Objectives

Part one of this series discussed Meta-Party principles, and then principles we would apply to reforming government.

Part two discussed the opportunity we have right now and laid out the basic methods.

In the comments to part two, adolfo velasquez asked for examples of what such a group might accomplish, outside of Porkbusters. By chance, that is tonight's topic.

Porkbusters is a good example of the type of thing the Meta-Party would concern itself with and the methods it would use. Let's add a few things: Proven reformers would be helped with research, letter writing campaigns, campaign fundraising, re-election assistance (signs, pamphleteering, etc.), and in any other way the Meta-Party could support them. Proven opponents of reform would be hounded and hindered in every legal way.

So, what else would we attempt to do?

Our four principles for government are transparency, comprehensibility, accountability, and effectiveness.

Porkbusters is a good example of an effort toward transparency. Another goal would be the elimination of secret holds, or secret anything unless it supported reform in some way¹. Another would be getting all the government records possible online. Another would be re-starting the effort to declassify classified documents more than 50 years old, which Clinton mismanaged and Bush simply ended. Yet another would be strengthening free speech. Also, simply publicizing what's already reported and making sure key information has an impact, typical reporter / blogger functions, would be part of this.

Toward comprehensibility, Clinton's initiative to require all legislation be in plain English, banning legalese, would be one effort. Another would be to require summaries of all bills to accompany their publication, including all amendments, etc., and that this be put online immediately. Another would be to require both House and Senate to wait a minimum of one day for each 20 pages of a bill before voting on it to give everyone time to read it, with an exception clause in the case of national emergency.

Efforts toward accountability are a bit more complicated to explain, so I'll put them in a list format.

1. Politicians and government employees who commit a crime in office haven't just committed a crime, they have damaged the public's trust in government. My suggestion would be to work for tacking on something like 'breach of public trust' and a mandatory two years in prison (no plea bargains, etc.) for any politician or government employee convicted of committing a felony while in office.
2. Make party leaders in Congress more accountable by flattening the heirarchy within each house of Congress. There is no reason a long-term congressman should have significantly more power than a new one, for the same reason that one set of constituents shouldn't have far more representation than another set.
3. Make bureaucrats more accountable, meaning easier to fire if they obstruct policy. Allow the President and Congress to request investigations of leaks, with leakers forfeiting all contract rights and liable to criminal prosecution. At the same time, strengthen whistleblower laws to protect government employees from abuse.
4. I would also like to make the judiciary more accountable, but I haven't looked into reasonable ideas to do this, and that's probably a dangerous area to go into.

Finally, toward effectiveness, legislation should be put in terms of effect whenever practical. For example, on securing the border, 370 miles of fencing and doubling the Border Patrol are efforts, not effects. It would be better for legislation to include something like 'reduce illegal border crossings by 90%.' This, however, is probably the hardest thing to really know. Luckily, the government itself has agencies that assess such things, and there are other organizations that do as well. Until the Meta-Party could pay for expert studies to be done, publicizing agency and other organization studies on the effects of proposed legislation would be one way to approach this.

As you can see, I'm a bit short of ideas on effectiveness, and I haven't developed any of these ideas. Obviously, a lot of research, study, and thought will have to go into this. I've just started my thoughts on the Meta-Party, but I think it has promise. Any comments?

###

¹For example, in voting for committee heads, a public vote would be nice, but would also allow Democratic and Republican party leaders to punish party members who voted against the leadership's choice. In situations like this, secret ballots would be acceptable.

Update 6/8/07: Part four is here.

Meta-Politics 2: The Opportunity and Method

Well, it's been a very long day, and it's very late. I have little time, so these ideas are very rough, but here goes.

Bill Whittle at Eject! Eject! Eject! offers a different vision for making a difference. To state it simply, it is to make America better by making Americans better. I think Whittle's vision is good and useful, but it seems like a very long term approach to me. It's one I may participate in, but I think there is another opportunity here that we shouldn't overlook.

In the first post in this series, I outlined some beginning principles. One of those principles is that the concerned group (the Meta-Party) NOT concern itself with issues government concerns itself with, but rather with how the government itself functions. This presents us with a great opportunity: A great many Americans of all political colors are dissatisfied with the way the government works. By avoiding discussions on the greatly divisive issues of the day, we can focus on fixing the government. The Meta-Party platform will appeal broadly to conservatives, progressives, libertarians, atheists, Christians, intellectuals, average people, and dogs and cats¹.

If you've never looked into it before, here is Wikipedia's list of political parties in the US. In addition to individual Democrats and Republicans, I think some of these parties (though certainly not all, and probably not most) would be natural allies for a serious reform movement. There are also a great many Americans who are unaffiliated with any political party. All of these people are unhappy in one way or another with the current political powers and are potential converts.

How does this work?

I'm not proposing another political party. I'm proposing a group of people dedicated to reform that would use whatever power it has, from simple letter-writing to fund-raising and campaigning. The members could maintain political affiliation with the political party of their choice, and if no Meta-Party issue was at stake, would vote their conscience on the issues. I see it organized and directed online, with opinion leaders guiding activities towards, for example, monitoring government activity, organizing rallies, helping get a like-minded candidate elected or a proven reformer re-elected, and always working to expand the circle of members and contributors.

The 'opinion leaders' would not direct or order members to do things. They would apply Meta-Party principles to the current political situation, collect and synthesize data, mediate member information and communication, and work to convert others. All of this could be done concurrently with other political activities.

That's it for tonight. Part 3 is coming up tomorrow.

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¹Okay, cats, and libertarians, might be a bit polyanna-ish.

Update 6/8/07: Part three is here.

Meta-Politics: A Discussion of Principles

Our current political parties have all failed, either in the abuse of power by the two major parties, or in abuse of relevance by the minor parties. Jean and others have suggested a new conservative party as an answer to this. I think that's a good idea, but I have another idea first.

The ongoing widespread dissatisfaction in both parties gives us a great opportunity to change how the government itself works. Then we can see if new parties are called for. Toward that end, I suggest we address this as meta-politics, that is, talking about the political process itself rather than the things we achieve with that process. That is the focus of this five-day series.

In doing this, I want to be clear. This is something I've been thinking about for some time, but I don't have the answers. I have ideas that I'm going to set down in a silly blog named A Guy in Pajamas, and hope some of it is actually interesting. These are live issues for me, and I hope the process of writing my ideas out and getting others' responses, thoughts, etc., will help me settle some things and get going.

A second thing I would like to note is that I am not proposing a formal organization, although that may come later. But communicating my ideas requires talking about a group of people dedicated to the same principles, and purely for the sake of convenience I will call that group the Meta-party¹.

Some key concepts for the Meta-party.

1. Borrowing from Stephen Covey's 7 Habits, we must work within our circle of influence. That is, we must work to change the things we have the power to affect right now.


2. We must also forget the idea that we are just three or five disaffected individuals. There is deep dissatisfaction across the political spectrum, and that is something we can capitalize on to expand our circle of influence further and further across our circle of concern (things we care about but currently have no / little influence over).


3. In talking meta-politics, we talk about how politics/government works, not the resulting policies. E.g., the Meta-party would have no official position on the Iraq war, or abortion, or home schooling. These are not the issues for us. How the government and people interact (voting, law enforcement, information flow, etc.), how the members of the government interact (Congressional / Presidential interaction, etc.), how policies are enacted (Senate procedure, pork, etc.), these are our kinds of issues.

Now, some principles to help us bring our goals for government into focus:

1. Transparency


2. Comprehensibility


3. Accountability


4. Effectiveness

That is where I begin, and that concludes Monday's post on meta-politics. I welcome all comments, chocolate, and beer and edamame. Part 2 tomorrow.

###

¹'Meta-party' could also be 'partying over parties,' a 'to-the-pub!' rallying cry, perhaps? (After our massive election wins here in a few years, no doubt.)

Update 6/8/07: Part two is here.

Chocolate (immigration) Chocolate, Mmmm

Yeah, we're all comprehensively sick of the immigration bill reforms, so I thought I'd candy-coat it in the title. Sorry.

[Update, June 5: I'm blogging from the hip these days, so I'd forgotten a number of immigration reforms I'd blogged about before. Oh well. I'll leave the following up anyway, but it's not my "final proposal," so to speak, or my best.]

So, here's my counterproposal for your consideration:

1. We cannot deport American citizens. Also, it is wrong to ask poor immigrants to pay a $5000 fine to remain in the country. If a currently illegal alien is the parent or legal guardian of an underage American citizen, they should be granted amnesty and legal residence status, based on filing and paying a reasonable filing fee. Any underage siblings of an underage American citizen should also be granted the same. Finally, if an underage illegal alien has spent three or more years in the US public schools, it would be harsh to force them to return to a school system in their home country where they will have language problems. If their parents and / or guardians have been, except for their illegal presence in the US, law-abiding residents, resident status should also be granted to them. Yeah yeah yeah, it's amnesty, with compassion.

2. Outside of compassion and mercy for the children of illegal aliens, the US cannot reward illegal behavior nor punish those who have gone through the legal process to be here. Illegal aliens ineligible for amnesty will be deported as they are discovered. Additionally, the following steps will be taken: a secure national ID for all, mandatory employer checks before hiring for everyone, and for current employees, within one year. Make the fines for knowingly employing illegals to something like $5000 a head. Illegal aliens must be reported by all, except emergency medical care providers, or be considered accessories. Any "sanctuary" city is denied all federal funds; "sanctuary" is defined by the existance of a law or policy preventing police from asking about legal residence status, investigating same, or taking suspected illegal aliens into custody for checking. Local and state law enforcement agencies will be reimbursed for the expense of investigating, arresting, and holding illegal aliens. All areas along the border passable by 4WD vehicle or easily passable by foot will be fenced. The Border Patrol will be given effective numbers to patrol the border & interdict illegal ingress (with funding provided to double or triple the size, or more if that's determined to be necessary).

3. The American people strongly favor legal, mutually beneficial immigration. The immigration agency should be federally funded (instead of funded by fees as it is now) and immediately double in the number of front line workers; an additional, equal number (effectively tripling the current number) should be hired the following year. For normal green cards, the priority goes to the highly educated, technically proficient, and persecuted minorities, and the immediate families of these groups. Limits on the number of green cards available each year should be drastically raised so that the actual limit is what the agency can process, and of course, they need to have found employment or be joining an employed family member, so the job market would also affect the number admitted each year.

4. A real guest worker program wherein employers state the number of guest workers they need and recruit them at US Government-sponsored recruiting fairs abroad, which would of course include criminal & counter-intelligence background checks. These new employees are given guest worker visas. The limit should be based on the number of jobs offered, possibly with a very high annual maximum (one million / year, 4 million maximum? or, 3 million / year, 12 million maximum? or ...?). The guest worker visas are good for two years and are renewable once dependent on employer satisfaction and no criminal activity. Immediate families may come after one year. After four years, the guest worker visas can be converted into green cards with two additional years needed before the immigrant can apply for citizenship (this actually means it would take six years, instead of the standard five). Only natives of the Americas, and select oppressed minorities from other areas, qualify.

5. Points of precedence: From allied nation, from democratic nation, from the Americas, non-violent oppressed minority. Each point moves the applicant up in the line.

6. Religious visas should not be exempt from FSO judgment calls. No religious visas for anti-American polemicists.

7. Reciprocity w/ Mexico and other countries that supply large numbers of immigrants. That is, we would ask Mexico, on pain of ending their participation in the guest worker program, to exempt US citizens from their draconian immigration and legal resident laws, allowing them to own land near or on the coast, own businesses, demonstrate, etc.

Hey, it's all rough, but whaddya think?

Nationalism, Blogging, and, a Poll

The former Foreign Service Officer once known as New Sisyphus has left that blog and begun a new one: New Nationalist. He is writing, among other things, a series of posts titled Nationalism 101, and one of those posts echo things I've been hearing a lot, and things I've been struggling with myself. That post is How Do We Even Start? It's a longish post, and I've excerpted just the barest essentials for quick reference. Please don't rely on this excerpt: Read the whole thing at New Nationalist, then come back. I'll wait here. Go on.

Quick excerpt:

... it becomes clearer and clearer that the scope of the problem facing Nationalists is truly astounding to behold. We are a tiny minority, outnumbered, outgunned and barely heard ... I keep considering it and considering it over and over and I keep coming up with the same answer: that nothing short of a popular movement is necessary, one that openly and honestly says, in effect, that the current USG does not speak for us and must be replaced.

...

But, you know, the time for reform has come and gone. It ain't gonna work. We need root and branch re-establishment under the watchful gaze of an energized populace led by people who get it.

...

Now, look: no amount of reform at this point is going to save the universties from the "Professor" Bakers of the world. It doesn't matter how well-intentioned the reformers are, these people, these interests are *entrenched* and it's going to take force to remove them. And I believe the moral and political justification for using such force is clear.

...

Now: Over to you. What are your thoughts? How do we even start fighting back with the odds so far against us? Do we even bother?

From next Monday, June 4, and continuing through Friday, I will blog about one issue each day that I believe such a movement would need to address. Prior to that, I may (or may not) post background or other relevant material. If the conversation gives me more thoughts, I may continue the following week as well. Let's see what happens.

Just to be clear, I'm not sure what New Nationalist means when he talks about requiring force, but I DO NOT and WILL NOT advocate or be party to violence or criminal acts. However, there is no doubt in my mind that a new movement is not only necessary, but about to begin, whether we are part of it or not. A few politicians, like Tom Coburn, have had a whiff of it, but most seem utterly unaware. And I say, that's a good time to flank and crush those who would oppose us.

Now, the poll. It's not a formal poll. I just want to know, if you were to answer New Nationalist's question, what would you say, or, what questions would you ask instead of or to enhance his. The comments are open, but certainly it would be great if others blogged about this. If you blog about it, please trackback here, or leave the permalink to your post in my comments.

Out of the Frying Pan ...

I survived the semester and am now immersed in work. This too should quiet down a bit in a couple of weeks.

Thanks to everyone who dropped by and commented. And for Veeshir, wouldn't it be more interesting if I didn't make it and commented anyway? I mean, a disembodied blogger could be kinda cool ...

Meanwhile, I'm making up slogans for a new US immigration policy. How's about this one:

Make them ALL Legal -- Annex Mexico!

I may survive the semester

We'll see.

Haiku Syllables

Haiku is often described as having 17 syllables. However, while that may be linguistically correct, it's not the same as 17 English syllables. The Japanese actually count characters, and most of their characters do indeed count as syllables. E.g., ka, ki, ku, sa, ta, etc. However, there are a number of characters that would not count as English syllables. For example, 'n,' as in, 'joudan.' In English, 'joudan' has two syllables, but in Japanese counting, it has four - jo-u-da-n. Another such is a stop: 'matte' is a good example, with the second 't' representing a stop. In English it would be something like 'ma' (pause) 'te'. Two English syllables, three Japanese characters. Because of this, Japanese haiku tend to have about one third fewer words than English haiku, and the genre in Japan has a very different feel than in the English speaking world.

To use the most famous haiku as an example:

furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

transliterates to:

old pond, a frog leaps in water's sound

Partly because of that different feel, and also partly because rhythm is important in Japanese haiku, some haikuists who write in English count accented syllables, using a 2-3-2 format. This much more closely approximates the length and feel of Japanese haiku.

This post was inspired by a post at Assistant Village Idiot, who often has interesting things to say about language.

Poster Girl on the Wrong Side of the World

Beccy Cole

A tribute to the diggers fighting alongside us in Iraq.

Mug tip to Soldier’s Dad over at Milblogs.

Siesta for your Life!

Siesta cuts risk of heart disease, says study

Does life get any better? I mean, recently we’ve found that alcohol and chocolate are both good for you, and now siestas!

Allahu Akbar!

neo-neocon

I've been spending a lot of my blog reading time over at neo-neocon lately. Neo's writings are insightful, well-written, and thought-provoking. Lately, I've enjoyed her series on the hatred of neo-cons, but her posts on Robert Frost have stirred the poet in me, and I've enjoyed just about everything of hers I've read.

Like Neo, I used to much more closely associate with the left/liberal side of the aisle. The barbarism of the 9/11 attacks initiated a series of changes that led Neo to try out neo-conservatism. Unlike her, my change in beliefs came gradually, over a period of years spent living outside the US and dealing both personally and professionally on a daily basis with an educated and international crowd, including Japanese, Europeans of various nationalities, Australians, New Zealanders, Chinese, Taiwanese, and various assorted Southeast Asians.

Having a high level of exposure to non-American media and socializing with a broad international crowd, I was well aware of the rising levels of anti-Americanism throughout the latter half of the 1990s and knew it did not originate with our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The cries of 'Bush is Hitler,' 'Bush lied, people died,' and 'No blood for oil,' were merely an outgrowth of an already well-established anti-Americanism that assumed the only reason the US does anything is for financial gain and that the US government, most particularly US presidents, are always lying and covering up for their capitalist imperialist buddies/masters in the corporate world.

One example of this was the campaign to demonize the US for its use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions in Desert Storm. This was an ongoing and increasingly important campaign even though the DOD, EU, UN, WHO and other agencies have confirmed that the only dangers from DU are pretty much the same as from any heavy metal, including lead. (DU is actually used as radiation shielding.) Nevertheless, activists intent on painting the US as a genocidal monster interviewed Iraqi doctors, took photos and video of deformed Iraqi infants and children, and spread these around the world via the Internet. The doctors, of course, claimed the deformities were clearly the result of the American use of DU in Desert Storm. Those spreading these stories never mentioned the Iraqi intelligence officials in the room, who were never photographed or otherwise noted. Desert Storm was portrayed as another Hiroshima, with the US inflicting a nuclear holocaust on innocent Iraqi civilians. Propaganda campaigns like these were a constant presence in my time outside the US. That was one factor behind my posts about anti-Americanism.

At the same time, I also watched events in the Middle East. Arafat, with the intifada, proved he had no intention of negotiating in good faith, that like the North Vietnamese his negotiations were only to get more support for his violence. And it worked. He controlled billions up until a couple of years before he died. The Arabs in general (there were exceptions), including Saddam, were clearly supporting Palestinian terrorism, not peacemaking, and seemed willing to fight to the last Palestinian rather than recognize Israel. They very successfully used the Palestinian conflict as a political tool against the US. That was its true value for them and why there would never be a negotiated settlement.

Iraq was actually quite similar. Saddam spent Oil-for-Food money on weapons, palaces, mosques, bribes, etc., rather than on food and medicine for his people. At the same time, he and many media sources blamed the US for the deaths of Iraqis who didn't have enough food or proper medical care. This was an increasing movement as well, with more and more coming out about the suffering of the Iraqi people, the blame being laid at the feet of America, and charges of genocide being hurled on a regular basis by America's more strident opponents. Saddam's unwillingness to honestly go through the disarmament process he had agreed to in the 1991 ceasefire agreement, culminating in Richard Butler's decision to leave Iraq, showed that Saddam most likely still had WMDs, or programs to build them, and that he would never give that up willingly. His well-documented ties to terrorist organizations and desire for revenge against the US made it probable that he would support future terrorism against the US. Bill Clinton and the US Congress made regime change in Iraq national policy, but did not do very much about it.

9/11 was a confirming experience for me. While abroad, I had heard over and over how much people (often put as 'everyone') hated the US, and watching the second tower get hit on CNN I saw the natural results of the propaganda campaigns, the millions in laundered funds sloshing around the Middle East, and the complicity of some government or governments.

I have never identified myself as a neo-conservative. After my experiences abroad, I stopped trying to fit myself into some movement, and have both benefitted and felt a lack from that decision. That said, I find it easy to empathize with Neo. Her writing has taught me things, clarified some issues for me, and provided an intellectual environment within which to think and discuss. Even her opponents in the comments tend to be intelligent and reasonable, a rarity it seems. If I don't seem to post much here at times, you can probably find me in the comments at her place.

Top 10 Reasons America Should Convert To Islam

10. We would become the most influential Muslim nation in the world.
9. We could attack other Muslim states with impunity.
8. As the most powerful Muslim state, we should control the Muslim holy sites. (How do you say, 'this isn't an invasion, it's a hajj with high volumes of celebratory gunfire' in Arabic?)
7. Our Muslim enemies would either become our friends, or (once again) vow to destroy us. Either way, nothing lost and possibly something gained.
6. Anti-Americanism would suddenly be Islamaphobic and untenable.
5. France would love us again.
4. We would have a wonderful chance to change Islam from the inside.
3. Our spiritual leaders could issue fatwas.
2. As the victims of aggressive cultural imperialism, we'd be entitled to all of the above.

And the number one reason America should convert to Islam: BELLY DANCERS! We'd demonstrate our commitment to deep cultural sensitivity.

Just a Question

for anyone saying that US assistance in Iraq is creating dependency, therefore we need to pull out so the Iraqis can get up and carry their own weight.

Sir or madam, given your view on our presence in Iraq, what is your position on social welfare and affirmative action?

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great one.

I visited family, which is the best thing I can think of to do. What did everyone else do?

Saw two excellent movies: The Polar Express, and Secondhand Lions. I highly recommend both of them. Interestingly, they have a similar message ...

Merry Christmas!

Have a great one!

Comedies

I'm looking for good comedies to watch this winter. Whaddya think?

Some of my favorites in the past, in no particular order, have been

• Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail


• Ferris Bueller's Day Off


• Better Off Dead


• The Princess Bride


• Time Bandits


• A Christmas Story


• Young Frankenstein


• Good Morning, Vietnam


• A Fish Called Wanda

Any others that I absolutely must see?

Fun & Games After the Election

I'm not a regular over at Treacher's, but this deserves a look. Here's a brief taste (from the comments, no less - it's all good!):

I am pretty surprised myself. I thought we were supposed to be running a highly efficient fascist regime here. And now, we can't even win an election? I mean, I've read all the research. What happened with suspending the electoral process? Why is constitution still in effect? What about our plans to declare martial law? Suspend Congress? We are doing none of it. And I was looking forward to coronation, too. :( Bummer.

Then there's A Large Regular, where we get an interview with ol' Don Rumsfeld:

Rummy: I always have time for my friends Chris. As far as feeling bitter towards the President - goodness no. I serve at the pleasure of the President and have offered my resignation a number of times. If truth be told - I'm a little bit in awe. I mean I don't think I've seen such a fine piece of political Jujitsu in my whole time in public service.

ALR: Political Jujitsu? I'm sorry Mr. Secretary but I don't follow you.

(Read the rest, as they say.)

Ace of Spades has a thread with more than 1200 comments. Amazing. Here's how it starts:

I just bought a huge solar panel. Casey/Pisslousy/Kennedy promised 2 years of sunshine. Stock up on these now people, no clouds for two years ...

Lots of funny stuff, also lots of mediocre/bad/just plain foul stuff, but a good percentage of laughs. (Really, serious foul language alert.)

This is the right attitude after a loss, folks. No conspiracy theories, immediate recognition that our guys messed up, and lots of humor. As for my experience on November 8, well, I woke up to rainbows, bunny rabbits were playing in the yard, someone left a pot o' gold on the doorstep, I won a lifetime supply of Guinness, and that cute Korean girl I've had my eye on slipped me her phone number. Thanks, Nancy!

Update: And then, of course, we have ... Ted Rall:

As ugly secrets surface, Bushists will turn desperate. Democracy has failed their grand schemes; token resignations like Rumsfeld's come too little, too late. Only tyranny can save their skins. Will the beleaguered neocons led by Cheney and Bush, cornered like rats, unleash their brand-new police state on their political opponents? Or will they tough it out and suck up the fines and prison sentences to come? The next year or two could go either way.

The nightmare is not over.

Yep, the literary version of the suicide bomber. Stand back folks, auto-parody ain't pretty.

Reality, or Alternate Reality?

In contrast to my Nov. 4 post, Iraq vet Austin Bay states we've pretty much won in Iraq:

I know, the NY Times and John Kerry have told us Iraq is a disaster. No. The US has already gotten about 90 percent of what it needed on September 12, 2001. There’s a democratically elected government in the potentially most powerful (predominantly) Arab Muslim nation, a government trying to learn to crawl under the most trying conditions. It’s a government that is learning by doing — and learning often by failure. However, as long as the US and coalition remain around to coach, train, and respond to crisis, Iraqi failures will be controlled failures.

Yup. Fostering the development of choice in the Middle East — a choice other than tyranny or terror– is a tough process.

As I see it, we can win in two ways.

The quick way, which is obliterating cities or sections of cities where resistance is high -- Yes, carpetbomb them, take out everything, man-woman-and-child, in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan. I don't advocate choice number one. We don't need to do this to win, and doing it without it being a dire necessity is mass murder.

Or, number two, the long way. Outlast them, in the same way the British outlasted the IRA. It took 30+ years for the IRA to get tired of fighting and not getting anywhere before they negotiated a real peace. Iraq will work the same way.

The wild card is WMDs -- if the j-team nukes a US city while we're trying to outlast them, what do we do?

[Note: This post was edited for clarity after its initial posting.]

Saddam Sentenced to Hang

Assuming the execution is carried out, I wonder how it will change the scene in Iraq.

Pajamas Media Roundup

What About the Iraq War Now?

This is a lo-o-ong post, but one I need to do. It is more a gathering, a juxtaposition, than it is an analysis. If you want to know what I think ... I'm in grad school, and I haven't been paying attention to much beyond that. It's strange, feeling this disconnected. Many disturbing opinions, many changes ...

Zeyad, at Healing Iraq:

Monday, October 16, 2006
Another close friend of mine has been killed in Baghdad. We had lunch together in Baghdad just days before I left.

I can't concentrate on anything any more. I should not be here in New York running around a stupid neighbourhood, asking people about their 'issues'.

I now officially regret supporting this war back in 2003. The guilt is too much for me to handle.

New Sisyphus:

As a regular reader over at The Corner, one of the darker pleasures of the past year has been to watch how the regular commentators there have approached the obvious failure of our war policy in Iraq. It seems to me the responses there have divided the Cornerites into three distinct camps.

For the first camp, led by NR editor Rich Lowry, the response has been to argue the Administration's corner more loudly, though peppered with disclaimers like "if the idea here is to [insert highly improbable "secret" policy goal here] this may have the effect of stabilizing Baghdad, an important first step towards...." This ever more desperate posing is an outgrowth of the early years in the war when 85% of conservative commentators dismissed obvious signs of Bush's weakness in war matters by referring to a "secret plan," combined with an appeal to partisanship.

...

The second camp are the Second Thoughters, led by Jonah Goldberg. These are the Cornerites who supported the war from the beginning but now realize that it is objectively a failure. Thus, they are in favor of publicly saying so. However, goes the *brilliant* analysis, since we are already in theatre in force we have no choice but to see it though, for to do otherwise would be to admit defeat.

...

The third camp are the To Hell With Them Hawks, led by John Derbyshire. This group doesn't give a goddamn about Islamic democracy; they want to win. They know who the enemy is and the only response they have to him is to put him up against a wall and shoot him, preferably in full view of the cameras.

...

What is the significance of all this?

Precisely this: That was once a minority tendency in the conservative movement is now gaining more and more adherents, as the reality we face becomes ever more clear. As it dawns on more people that the very method by which we are fighting this war is fatally wrong-headed, those people will begin to demand a change in strategy.

And Mr. Sisyphus links to an interesting article by Ralph Peters in USA Today:

Iraq is failing. No honest observer can conclude otherwise. Even six months ago, there was hope. Now the chances for a democratic, unified Iraq are dwindling fast. The country's prime minister has thrown in his lot with al-Sadr, our mortal enemy. He has his eye on the future, and he's betting that we won't last. The police are less accountable than they were under Saddam. Our extensive investment in Iraqi law enforcement only produced death squads. Government ministers loot the country to strengthen their own factions. Even Iraq's elections — a worthy experiment — further divided Iraq along confessional and ethnic lines. Iraq still exists on the maps, but in reality it's gone. Only a military coup — which might come in the next few years — could hold the artificial country together.

This chaos wasn't inevitable. While in Iraq late last winter, I remained soberly hopeful. Since then, the strength of will of our opponents — their readiness to pay any price and go to any length to win — has eclipsed our own. The valor of our enemies never surpassed that of our troops, but it far exceeded the fair-weather courage of the Bush administration.

Yet, for all our errors, we did give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy. They preferred to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption. It appears that the cynics were right: Arab societies can't support democracy as we know it. And people get the government they deserve.

Omar, at Iraq the Model:

The situation is bad in Iraq, it's bad for both Iraqis and Americans alike and looking at the way the war is being managed right now makes me extremely worried about the future of our world. I am that worried that I feel I, or the next generations of my people, won't be safe in this world even if we were born and lived elsewhere.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Iraq might turn into a second Somalia within a year if the situation is allowed to keep descending the way it's doing now.
The Islamic Sharia courts are ruling now in Somalia while in Iraq they function undercover and it's still in our hands to stop them from extending their influence and from becoming the rule instead of the exception they are today.

Let's call the battle for middle east, and I think politicians do not need anyone to explain to them what this part of the world means…the outcome of war in Iraq does not affect Iraq alone, a victory means disrupting the ring of terror and extremism the enemies are trying to establish while failure would be equal to allowing them to establish that huge ring, or should I say that gigantic octopus of terrorists and terror-supporting regimes that would extend from Afghanistan in the east to Libya in the west and from Iraq in the north to Sudan and Somalia in the south.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Not long ago, abdication — from Rwanda or Haiti, or from the Balkans for a decade — not intervention, was the supposed sin. There were dozens of Darfurs in the 1990s, when charges flew of moral indifference. The supposition then — as now — was that those who called for boots on the ground to stop a genocide would not unlikely be the first to abdicate responsibility once the coffins came home and the military was left fighting an orphaned war.

Apparently all the high-minded talk of reform — Aristotle rightly scoffed about morality being easy in one’s sleep — was predicated only on cost-free war from 30,000 feet. Now the wisdom is that Colin Powell — the supposed sole sane and moral voice of the present administration — was drowned out by shrill neocon chicken hawks. But that was not the consensus of the 1990s. In both books and journalism, he was a Hamlet-like figure who paused before striking the needed blow, and so was pilloried by the likes of a Michael Gordon or Madeline Albright for not using the full force of the American military to intervene for moral purposes. That was then, and this is now, and in-between we have a costly war in Iraq that has taken the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans.

Finally, Dan Gordon tells us about our new, vicious pet:

I know you don’t like Bush. I don’t like Bush. Nobody likes Bush. Fair enough. He lied to you. He mangles the language. You can’t trust him. He’s in hock to Haliburton. He has some weird daddy complex. Whatever you want to believe about him, believe it. Fair enough. You win. No arguments.

And you don’t like the war. You were lied to. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and the neocons made it all up. They duped us. They duped you. They duped me. They duped Hillary and Kerry. They duped us all. Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe. Done deal. Not only did they dupe us, but they dicked it up, made every mistake in the book.

Pick whatever argument you like. They should have had more troops. They should have had less troops. They should have listend to Chalabi. They shouldn’t have listened to Chalibi. Bremer was right. Bremer was wrong. Rumsfeld’s a bozo. Bozo could have done a better job. I’ll sign on to any part of it you like. They said this is a part of the war on terror, and of course that’s a lie too.

Ooops.

What do you mean, oops?

Well, what I mean is that part is actually true.

What part?

The part about Iraq being a part of the war on terror.

You’ve got to be kidding. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11! There was no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda!

Maybe not, but there is now.

Well, who’s fault is that?

Doesn’t matter.

What do you mean it doesn’t matter?

I mean, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how we got there. It doesn’t matter how you think you were lied to. It doesn’t matter if you think there was a connection between Sadam and Al-Qaeda. The only thing that matters now is that both Al-Qaeda and Iran and the terrorist groups they back and inspire believe that Iraq is their decisive battle. They have chosen it as the place where they will defeat America, and unlike the Viet Cong, they will not stay put. They will follow us home.

Shalash Al-Iraqi

Zeyad gives us some interesting stories from Shalash the Iraqi, who lives in Sadr City:

His columns first appeared on the Iraqi online opinion website Kitabat in December 2005. They were written from the perspective of an everyday Iraqi living in Sadr City - or Al-Thawra, as he calls it, using the pre-Saddam name of the district. Shalash’s style was gritty, streetwise, brutally honest but extremely humourous. He uses colloquial and slang terms in his writing, which appealed to a wide section of Iraqi readers who identified with him.

The characters of his short stories ranged from his opportunistic uncle, Haji Shnawa, who danced for both Saddam in the past and now Sadr; the former sergeant in the Iraqi army on his street who became a corrupt Sadrist cleric; Khanjar, the local troublemaker; Khadija, the young teacher that he often daydreams about her paying attention to his romantic moves; the old lady who sells groceries and campaigns for the Shi’ite electoral list; pickpockets; porters; Mahdi Army thugs; and so on.

No one is spared of his sharp criticism. He persistently jabs Iraqi governmental officials, revered clerics, insurgents, militias, Arab leaders and Americans. Even Madonna has been a subject for one of his recent stories, in which he asks her to adopt him so he can be saved from the Mahdi Army and instead become neighbours with Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz.

Translations of some of Shalash's stories follow that.

A Quick Answer To Mideast Violence

Ban caffeinated beverages and require every adult male to have two stiff drinks before leaving work, or first thing in the morning for the unemployed.

Avast!

Talk Like a Pirate Day has snuck up on me.

Wikipedia entry
Find Yer Piratin' Name
Piratese translater
Corsair Ergonomic Keyboard
Knit like a pirate!
Another knit like a pirate site!
Talk Like a German Pirate
The Talk Like A Pirate Day Blog
Yet Another Talk Like A Pirate Day Blog
Official US Pirate HQ
Official UK Pirate HQ
Official Oz Pirate HQ

Freedom Walk OKC and Luke Stricklin

Went to the Freedom Walk this evening. (Missed the entire speech at the Murrah Memorial, so can't say anything about that.) There were a guesstimated 150 troops marching, and probably two hundred or so civilians, though I'm no expert in crowd counting and wouldn't be too surprised to hear it was more or less.

The main reason I went was to see Luke Stricklin play the songs he wrote during his year in Baghdad with the Army National Guard.

Stricklin didn't give any speeches, just a little background on his own songs, and a thanks to the troops. He sang a little Merle, Waylon, and Willie, and two of his own songs written while in Iraq. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was good to see him live.

(PS His band was good, too, but seemed to be a pickup band, not a regular group.)

I guess for journalistic purposes I should mention that Great Divide, a rockin' country band, played next. They were good and played hard.

PS Photos will be forthcoming, but I'm having problems with my photo hosting service.

2006 October 18: Nope, no photos forthcoming. It seems I can't access my flicker account, and I don't have time to go through all the nonsense to get them posted right now.

Remember, or Never Forget?

Why are we not supposed to forget 9/11? Is it so that the victims will never be forgotten? And maybe a few heroes as well? A DJ on the radio today said, "It's been five years since nine eleven, but we're still proud to be Americans."

What the heck does that mean? Ya know, I was proud to be an American before it was the "in" thing, before we could classify ourselves as a victim group. But we're STILL proud. Was that pride supposed to go away? Oh, but we're still hanging on, stretching this out as lo-o-o-ng as we can! Is that the sentiment?

I got into a brief argument with a friend over seeing United 93. He refused to see it.

"Yeah, it's all about 'oh, we can't ever forget the poor victims, waaaa waaaa waaaa.' The crybabies," was his basic argument.

"No," I replied, "It's not that at all. It's 'Remember Pearl Harbor!'"

We restated our positions a few times, glared at each other, dropped it, and carried on with a pleasant evening.

So which is it? Never forget, waaa waaa waaa? Or Remember!

Good for a Few Laughs

Hatemonger's Quarterly makes nice with the Dixie Chicks.

Thanks, Kenny.

Just One More on Illegals?

We-ellllllllll, I had just about decided that Bush probably mostly knew what he was doing on this immigration thing, ya know, since Fox is the best bet we have for a Mexican president and we want him to get re-elected; we need an economically strong Mexico right now and their second-biggest source of income is remittances from the US; we need Mexican help / cooperation on a range of issues such as terrorism, illegal drugs, etc.; and 12 million illegals could do a lot of damage on their way out; when I read One More Essay on Immigration*.

Oh, heck. He's right that this isn't a crisis, and there's no need to pass legislation right now. We can afford to take our time and do it right. He may be right about the rest of it, too, which is kinda scary. Go see what you folks think.

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*I also had a conversation this afternoon that made me rethink a bit, but this essay smacked me upside the head.

(Mug tip to Consul-at-Arms.)

Michael Yon Plagiarized by SHOCK Magazine

One of his photos was used without permission for the cover of their premier issue.

SHOCK is owned by HFM, which also publishes American Photo, Boating, Car and Driver, Cycle World, ELLE, ELLE Decor, ELLEgirl, Flying, For Me, Home, Metropolitan Home, Popular Photography & Imaging, Premiere, Road & Track, Road & Track Road Gear, Road & Track Speed, Sound & Vision, Woman’s Day and Woman’s Day Special Interest Publications.

Outright theft.

Illegal Immigration Roundup

I picked these out because they bring something new and interesting to the debate. Each link is followed by a brief excerpt.

Will Mexico Turn Against the US?, Carlos Alberto Montaner

Dick Morris, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, fears that the Mexicans will elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador as their next president on July 2.

AMLO, as he is popularly known, is a left-wing neopopulist, and he leads in all the polls in his country despite his mediocre performance as governor of the Federal District. Morris is concerned that AMLO might make common cause with Hugo Chávez to bring the United States to its knees on the matter of energy. Mexico and Venezuela supply about one third the amount of crude oil the U.S. imports daily.

Mexico's Addiction to Remittances from Illegals In US, Victor Davis Hanson

It may be counterintuitive to think that checks from hard-working expatriates are pernicious. But for a developing nation, remittances can prove as problematic as the proverbial plight of the lottery winner - sudden winnings that were not earned. In short, remittances, along with oil and tourism - not agriculture, engineering, education, manufacturing or finance - prop up an otherwise ailing Mexican economy. This helps explain why half of the country's 106 million citizens still live in poverty.

Force Mexico to Face Its Failings, Froma Harrop

The border debate has spawned feverish mumbling about the "reconquista" -- the idea that Mexico plans to take back territory lost to the United States by first filling it with Mexican immigrants and their children. One can't see them going along. If any country needs reconquering, it is Mexico. Now there's a movement these immigrants might want to join.

The "L" Word, Dr. Demarche

If the President and his advisors are adamant about fixing the immigration issue here are my suggestions for several concrete steps they can take immediately:

Mexico Works to Bar Non-Natives From Jobs, Mark Stevenson

Foreign-born Mexicans can't hold seats in either house of the congress. They're also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico's Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for "native-born Mexicans."

Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.

Mexico's Interior Department _ which recommended the bans as part of "model" city statutes it distributed to local officials _ could cite no basis for extending the bans to local posts.

Mexico Threatens Lawsuits Over Guard, AP

Mexico warned Tuesday it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops detain migrants on the border and some officials said they fear the crackdown will force illegal crossers into more perilous areas to avoid detection.

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My own answer, should you be curious, was explained in Illegal Two-Steppin'

Schroedinger's Camel Spider

Doc In the Box carefully performs a scientific study.

Another Plan for Dealing With Illegal Immigrants

Consul-at-Arms presents the first part of his plan to deal with illegal immigration. Lots of good ideas.

Conservative Battle Fatigue?

Mark Tapscott talks about why it's hit and what to do about it.

Good stuff that I mostly agree with, particularly that it's the GOP in Congress that I'm tired of (except my own Senator Coburn is excellent, and my other two reps are pretty good). I'm also tired of fighting the same ideological battles over and over and over.

Any comments?

News? Well ...

Victor Davis Hanson covers WWII like much of the media is covering Iraq today. Here's a sample graph:

As we see thousands of Americans dying and our enemies still in power after four years of war, it is also legitimate to question the stewardship of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall. The Sherman tank tragedy, the daylight bombing fiasco, the absence of even minimally suitable anti-tank weapons and torpedoes — all these lapses came on his watch, and the man at the top must take full responsibility for mistakes that have now cost thousands of American lives. Indeed, it is not just that America has worse tanks and guns than our German enemies, but they are inferior even to the rockets and armor of our Soviet allies. The recent publication of “The Sherman Tank Scandal” follows other revelations published in “Asleep at the Philippines,” “The Flight of Gen. MacArthur,” “Gen. Patton and the Atrocities on Sicily,” “Do Americans Execute P.O.Ws?” “Torture on Guadalcanal,” “Incinerating Women and Children?” and “Civilian Massacres in Germany” — publications in their totality that suggest a military out of control as often as it is incompetent.

Meanwhile, Gaijin Biker reports that:

NEW YORK (Rooters) Popular political comedian Steven Colbert, who delivered a biting critique of President Bush at April's White House Correspondents Dinner, has been seized by US government agents.

According to a highly-placed State Department source, Mr. Colbert is believed to have been rendered to Uzbekistan ...

Yep.

Remember, folks, you read it here second ...

They're All Ugly, And Not

Jim Geraghty (in Turkey) let's it rip about the 'ugly American' myth.

I lived overseas for seven years; every nationality I've dealt with has its uglies, and the US is not the worst of them by far.

Part of the reason "the world" is down on Americans, instead of just our government, is the re-election of Bush. That's just the way it is, folks. Being nice isn't going to help because, frankly, most of them don't really care about Americans (we were stupid before, now we're stupid and evil), and if we were all killed by bovine flu or mad chicken disease tomorrow, there would be a collective snort and a 'well, it's a tragedy, but certainly if any nation deserved it ...' Followed, of course, by a mad scramble to see who could get what of our stuff.

Illegal Two-Steppin’

Step 1: Document the Undocumented; Stop the Inflow of Illegals

Pass legislation that:
1. Gets the wall between the US and Mexico built.

2. Makes it a felony to enter the US illegally from the date the legislation takes effect, and to be in the US illegally from 31 days after the legislation takes effect. Also makes it a felony to assist an illegal in avoiding law enforcement and immigration agencies, gives all police the jurisdiction to enforce this law, and, regardless of whether they enforce it or not, requires all law enforcement officers to report any contact with illegal aliens within 24 hours. Finally, make it prohibitively expensive, and a possible felony, to knowingly employ illegal aliens from 31 days after the law takes effect.

3. Gives all current illegal immigrants 30 days (count ‘em: three-zero) to:
a. Get the paperwork from their employer or a family member for sponsorship,
b. Get registered at their closest consulate,
c. Apply for and receive a special temporary worker visa from the US (issued automatically after a US criminal background check and two phone calls to check sponsorship and registration at their consulate).

4. Makes these special visas non-renewable (but see Step 2).

5. Requires employers to check every employee on the Social Security Administration database. The database software will be set up to issue receipts for valid matches, and those receipts must be placed in the employees’ files and copies submitted with tax documentation. Since handling all the special visas will take a huge amount of time, give employers six months to get all current employees registered, however, new employees must be checked from the date the legislation goes into effect.

6. Sets up a generous guest worker program that requires application from the country of origin, a sponsor / employer, and for which it is impossible to apply while on the special temporary worker visa (though see Step 2).

Step 2: Reciprocity and Normalization

1. Over the year after passage of the above legislation, have a congressional study group that will study immigration laws and economics in the countries that have large blocks of immigrants on these special temporary visas.

2. Make any further concession to the immigrants of these nations based on their home nation’s laws, make this policy explicit from the beginning, and take into account any change each individual nation takes towards immigration liberalization for Americans and economic improvement. For example, if, during that year, Mexico were to liberalize its immigration laws and allow Americans easy immigration, the same property and business ownership rights as Mexican citizens, and take steps to improve economic opportunities for the poor, then Mexican immigrants on special temporary visas in the US would most likely get an automatic year extension to their visas, and the restriction that they could not apply for guest worker visas while on special temporary visas would be removed. Of course, if Mexico didn’t change, well, fair’s fair. Our laws would still be more free and open than Mexico’s, and anytime anyone complained about the US deporting millions of Mexicans, we’d point that out and the great opportunity for its citizens on both sides of the border that the Mexican government chose to ignore.

In both steps, there would have to be exceptions made, for example, for refugees, or for nations with very few immigrants in the US on special visas (so threatening their deportation wouldn’t be a significant stimulus), etc.

I've left a lot out, but Dr. Demarche made some more good proposals that would complement mine well.

Update 5/17: It seems that Glenn Reynolds agrees with me.

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Previous posts on this topic:
Mexican Immigration Law
Undocumented Migrants In Mexico Brutalized
Random Illegal Thoughts
Well, Heck
Illegal Immigration 1

The Beautiful Month of May ...

... begins with sorrow, terror and injustice. Catallarchy presents his annual 'Day of Remembrance' for the victims of communism with several articles on the topic.

New Terrorist Cell Must Be Factored In

Over at Sir Humphreys we find out about the dreaded Al-Gebra organization:

At New York's Kennedy Airport today, an individual later discovered to be a NYC public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, protractor, set square, slide rule and calculator.

At a morning press conference, a White House spokesman said authorities believe the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. The man is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of maths instruction.

Go learn more about this dreaded terrorist group.

Eeeww! Every Liberal's Dream ...

Every conservative's nightmare.

Most disturbing.

Mexican Immigration Law

Pardon My English sends us to a Center for Security Policy paper (in PDF), Mexico's Glass House, which is a good rundown on Mexican immigration policy and a recommendation that we reciprocate by asking Mexico to change its immigration laws, or changing our own to reflect Mexico's.

Some of those points are:
• Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse. [I.e., no demonstrations - PJ]
• Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights. (Limitations on the type of real estate and the percentage of certain types of companies non-citizens can own.)
• Immigrants are denied equal employment rights. (Hiring preferences for citizens.)
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service. (Non-citizens can't serve in the military, police forces, and even naturalized citizens are barred from serving in the legislature, supreme court, or as president -- for president, even your parents have to be native-born Mexican.)
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
• Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants)
and hand them to the authorities.
• Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.

http://www.directory.com.mx/immigration/ is webpage, maintained by pro-Mexico individuals, that details disparities in Mexican and US immigration law, and advocates Mexico change its immigration laws. What I find most interesting are some fairly clear indications of racism enshrined in Mexican law. Here are some interesting points:

Mexicans, and people of Mexican parentage can become dual citizens of Mexico and the USA. Nevertheless, U.S. citizens who are NOT of Mexican descent are still prohibited from becoming citizens of Mexico, unless they are willing to formally ... represent that they have renounced their U.S. citizenship. ... By the way, Article 20 I c) is an example of how Mexico gives preferential treatment to folks from Latin American nations or the Spanish peninsula when awarding nationality status versus their "gringo" competitors, despite the existence of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

We are not aware that Mexico allows foreign-born citizens to hold truly significant governmental posts, especially not if they are of non-Mexican ancestry and if they want to maintain dual citizenship elsewhere. In contrast, the U.S.A. has allowed various foreigners to hold truly prominent federal and gubernatorial offices without requiring that they renounce their citizenship abroad. Among them are Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger and Arnold Schwarzenegger. ...

Wouldn't our governents' finally addressing the abovementioned legal differences help elevate Mexico's $9,000 annual GDP per capita to more closely resemble the USA's $38,000 figure? We would like nothing better for our beloved friends in the USA's neighboring trading partner of Mexico than to see them get to leave their country only when they truly want to, instead of out of economic desperation. Is Mexico's current governmental administration doing nearly enough to help Mexico's people though?

Alan Wall, an American legally living and working in Mexico, tells the story of 18 Americans deported from Mexico for participating in a demonstration:

The Americans’ offense was to participate in May Day marches in Mexico City and Guadalajara. The ones in Mexico City were college students, visiting with their professor from Washington State. They had joined a group protesting the expropriation of land near Mexico City for a new airport and were waving machetes with the other protestors. They might have gotten away with it, except that some of them were heard on the TV news shouting protest slogans in broken Spanish, which in turn caused Mexican journalists to express outrage.

The INM wasted no time. The offenses were committed on May 1st, and by the evening of May 2nd, the offending gringos were on their way back to the U.S.A., their Mexican visas revoked.

Wall then goes on to show the heavy influence the Mexican government is exerting in the US through its 47 consulates and President Fox.

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Apparently, Rush Limbaugh beat me to the punch on this one. I would link the article on his website, but it's members-only.

It seems to be going around. This is a well-written article!

'Undocumented Migrants' in Mexico Brutalized, Robbed by Officials

AP writer Mark Stevenson reports:

Undocumented Central American migrants complain much more about how they are treated by Mexican officials than about authorities on the U.S. side of the border, where migrants may resent being caught but often praise the professionalism of the agents scouring the desert for their trail. ...

Jose Ramos, 18, of
El Salvador, said the extortion occurs at every stop in Mexico, until migrants are left penniless and begging for food.

"If you're on a bus, they pull you off and search your pockets and if you have any money, they keep it and say, 'Get out of here,'" Ramos said.

Maria Elena Gonzalez, who lives near the tracks, said female migrants often complain about abusive police.

"They force them to strip, supposedly to search them, but the purpose is to sexually abuse them," she said.

Others said they had seen migrants beaten to death by police, their bodies left near the railway tracks to make it look as if they had fallen from a train.

The Mexican government acknowledges that many federal, state and local officials are on the take from the people-smugglers who move hundreds of thousands of Central Americans north, and that migrants are particularly vulnerable to abuse by corrupt police. ...

In the United States, mostly Mexican immigrants have staged rallies pressuring Congress to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants rather than making them felons and deputizing police to deport them. The Mexican government has spoken out in support of the immigrants' cause.

While Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said Monday that "Mexico is a country with a clear, defined and generous policy toward migrants," the nation of 105 million has legalized only 15,000 immigrants in the past five years, and many undocumented migrants who are detained are deported.

Although Mexico objects to U.S. authorities detaining Mexican immigrants, police and soldiers usually cause the most trouble for migrants in Mexico, even though they aren't technically authorized to enforce immigration laws.

And while Mexicans denounce the criminalization of their citizens living without papers in the United States, Mexican law classifies undocumented immigration as a felony punishable by up to two years in prison, although deportation is more common.

(Mug tip to Wizbang.)

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Related: My Mexican Immigration Law post and Some Random Illegal Thoughts.