Hugh had his book out, and RadioBlogger is running the corresponding cover contest. I submitted the designs below, but didn’t get selected for the semi-finals. Oh well. They’re from Gustave Doré, originally.
Aachen
David
Joshua & Caleb
Moses
And now, for your mocking pleasure, the horse apple line of the week:
“Illegals do jobs Americans won’t do.”
If that’s true, why do West Virginia coal miners have jobs? Surely coal mining is a job too dangerous and degrading for Americans to do. If that’s true, why doesn’t George Bush stay up at night worrying about unemployment? Surely with unemployment hovering around 5% or less – the point where economists think it can’t go lower – there are Americans who won’t fill jobs because they are not worthy of such labors.
Please. Americans have a long and proud history of working hard. This line we’re being fed this week is just that – a misleading statement intended to give those who claim it a rhetorical leg to stand on. By using it they show themselves to be rhetorical cripples.
Immigration Reform is this week’s topic du jour, and it encompasses three political minefields: National Defense, Immigration, and Social Security/Taxes. Republicans have cleared two of those three fields, Defense and Social Security, but are wary of mines they may have missed. Unfortunately, it seems the President’s mine detector has a fritzed sensor. The party doesn’t have a unified voice on fixing this problem, despite the remarkable command Republicans have of the issue’s component parts.
First and foremost, Immigration Reform is about National Defense. No border is secure unless you can control who comes across it. Mexico is adamant in their opposition to a fence. Democrats are dismissive of its effectiveness, claiming we need a “virtual” fence, a technological wizbang, to secure ourselves.
A virtual border only works virtually. It does nothing to protect its enclosure literally.
A border fence is a non-negotiable issue, and it must be off the table. Efforts to get rid of a real, wired, barbed, and supervised fence should be met by walking out of the room. Real fences keep out real terrorists. The fact that they also keep out people who want to work here is a side effect I can live with. They should have enough respect to come here legally, even if its for the benefit of them and their families. We can let them in, as they are not a threat to us. We can’t afford to let in the terrorists. Let the immigrants come in through the gate.
Tom Tancredo and carnival monkeys like him do nothing to help the rhetoric of the argument. Their heated statements about immigrants destroying America are just that – heated rhetoric. On the one side are those willing to throw open our borders and let in everyone, here’s your green card and voter ID, voto Demócratas por favor. On the other are Tancredo and the ilk, who want dem illegal furriners outta dis here cuntry, hear?
Why, please, would we reject a bunch of people who work hard and value life, family and religion? Heck, they practically are US citizens, at least as far as their values go. Let em in!
But do it legally. And make them become full-fledged citizens. They should do some things.
They should give service, either in the military or civic services. They should take a loyalty oath. They should learn the language of success – English. And above all, no dual citizenship. Pick one country or the other, not both. My ancestors chose this country, and I am better off for it. Mexicans should choose this country as well, for the sake of their progeny.
This approach works not only for legal immigrants, but illegal. Rounding them all up and sending them home is not an option. But, rounding them up as they are found and giving them the option to stay (with conditions) or leave is.
Of course, it does not help if the thing driving them here – jobs – isn’t addressed as well. Employers have to be treated with a carrot and stick approach. On the one hand, if they hire illegals, they need to be punished. Fine them, heavily. You can’t stop bad behavior unless you make it unattractive. On the other, you can’t encourage good behavior unless you make it attractive. This is where taxes and Social (in)Security come in.
Employers pay taxes for hiring people. Counterintuitive, yes, but its how the system (and the employer) have been set up. They pay Social Security contributions too – for every dollar extracted from your paycheck under the heading ‘FICA’, your employer pays a dollar as well. This means that an orchard owner who wants his produce brought in has a strong incentive to pay an illegal off the books with cash and not report the Social Security money, since they illegal can’t collect it anyway. If, however, Social Security was optional, an employer would have no reason to hire the illegal instead of the citizen, especially since the citizen would be more likely to understand when the employer said “get the ladder and go pick the oranges”. It would also enable the worker to put aside some of his paycheck voluntarily, instead of being forced to do so by the government for a return (if any) that is beaten by even the most humble savings account. Personal responsibility – providing for your own retirement – begins by taking away the chains that bind you from being responsible. After that its the worker’s fault if they don’t provide for themselves.
By combining the three component issues, Republicans can trounce Democrats on this problem. They own the security debate, especially when Democrats come out threatening to kill the Patriot Act. George Bush has been the only politician in my lifetime to dare grab the Social Security rail with both hands – Democrats whine and complain that tampering with it will destroy the country. And finally, Mexican immigrants, because of their respect for family, church, and hard work, have a natural gravitation towards the Republican party. We need to respect and welcome them, not distance ourselves from them.
We can solve this problem, but only by addressing the components all at once.
It seems the persecution of Abdul Rahman is causing some unintended consequences
Hussain Andaryas [an Afghan Christian leader in the U.S.] said the publicity surrounding the Abdul Rahman case had resulted in a surge of interest in Christianity among Afghans, strong concern for the plight of Afghanistan’s underground Christians — and an antagonistic response from Muslims.
As Nelson Muntz might say, “Hah hah!”
Hugh Hewitt has a new book out, his biennial work on the political landscape and the upcoming election. He lays out a strategery for 2006, and gives good advice for the long-term perspective. I review.
Read more…
You know what pleases me most about this story? The guys were arrested, not just the girls.
Six Busted in Wet T-Shirt Contest
Bay County sheriff’s deputies made their first lewd and lascivious arrests of spring break.
It started with a wet t-shirt contest that took place Tuesday night at Hammerhead Fred’s bar on Thomas Drive.
Investigators say the male DJs and customers used alcohol to help encourage the female participants to remove the t-shirts, expose themselves, and allow the audience to fondle them and bite their breasts.
Capt. Rickie Ramie of the BCSO Special Investigations Unit explained, “They had taken a contest and basically there were females up there performing oral sex on one another, that was the original complaint. And we sent in a couple of investigators in at the time to see what was taking place. Inside they saw, certainly things that would be classified as violations of the law.”
Deputies arrested six people. Thirty-two-year-old Charles Ray Bunch of Panama City is accused of solicitation for lewd and lascivious conduct by the contestants. Seventeen-year-old Jacqucin Strong of Orange Beach, Alabama was arrested on nudity and indecent conduct.
Also charged were: Louis Adrian Green, 34, of Essixville, Michigan, Christopher Scott, 21 of Saginaw, Michigan, Dianna Chang , 23 of Naperville, Illinois, and an Illinois man was charged with resisting an officer without violence.
… lies in being converted outside America. If we here in the United States had the same laws as Afghanistan now has, the ACLU would be the first to stand up and scream bloody murder if he was put on trial by a religious government here. They would demand he be released, citing separation of church and state, but apparently their concern for that supposed separation extends only to the citizens of the United States, and it doesn’t exist as a general principle that applies to all mankind. The fruits of relativism, I suppose. By their silence they call for his bloody murder instead of opposing it.
Their current indifference to Abdul’s plight could be attributed to any number of factors:
Of course, I can’t read their minds. But given their past behavior, is it any surprise they aren’t rising to the defense of someone oppressed by a non-secular government?
At least someone in the Administration is acting to save the man’s life.
Of course, Christians should expect this kind of behavior from non-Christians. But that doesn’t excuse us to not speak up against it. I’ve had a running discussion in my head this week about the whole issue, between sovereign nation & expect persecution on the one hand and stand up for whats right, certain standards apply universally on the other.
I’m glad to argue we need to stop this. Americans shouldn’t be sent off to fight to establish governments that result in this. The fight for Afghanistan was unavoidable, but Abdul Rahman’s execution is not.
New idea: list a bunch of articles that are too interesting to miss every morning (the must-reads, hence the title).
That’s all for now.
Meet Captain Dan Sukman, Army Officer and blogger for Fox News. He’s been in Iraq and writing for FoxNews.com since March 9th, and is worth your time. I haven’t seen him mentioned in any of the other mainstream center-right blogs, so unless you found him on your own, you probably haven’t heard of him.
Get thee hither and read.
If you’re offended by such, you aren’t Irish, that’s for sure. Saw this at Blackfive, though I’ve heard it before.
An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman each order a Guiness in a pub. Upon being served, each finds a fly in their beer. Repulsed, the Englishman sends his back. The Scotsman gently flicks the fly out of his mug and begins drinking. The Irishman, carefully lifts the fly up by its wings and screams, “Spit it out ya little bugger!”