EckerNet.Com

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Thomas Jefferson

Still want a bailout?

Now it\’s true that regardless of who won the election we were going to have a pro-amnesty President.  So this was an issue that was going to resurface no matter what.  So this storm was coming no matter what.  Time for some forecasting.

On the surface things look pretty bleak for the pro-enforcement side.  You have an President who openly supports amnesty and his party controls both houses of Congress.  Even the other parties presidential candidate, who is still in Congress, supports amnesty.  McCain could be a leader of a bi-partisan effort.  The new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Arizona Gov. Napolitano, is a clear open borders supporter.  E-Verify expires again in March, 2009.  The border fence, despite having hundreds of miles of Israeli-style fencing being mandated by Congress, is uncompleted, consisting of little more than a few hundred miles of cattle fencing.

Let all that sink in for a minute….  Sounds pretty bad right?

Well there are also some reasons to think positive here.

Republicans are in the clear minority here, but they also aren\’t going to feel pressured to support their own president.  The next four years, the first impulse of many Republicans is going to oppose anything Obama tries to do.  And Karl Rove isn\’t up there trying to convince Republicans that if we just make citizens of the entire nation of Mexico, they\’ll all vote Republican.  Conservatives were already pissed off the last time around and Republicans have done nothing to ease their anger the past few years.  Holding together a Republican caucus should be much easier this go around.

What\’s that?? McCain??  Look conservatives and Republicans were never that fond of McCain.  They supported him because they had to.  He\’s run for President twice now, he\’s lost.  He\’s a solid RINO, the Republican conservatives hate and Democrats love.  His political capital is about used up.

Democrats now have a clear majority, but with a majority comes balkanization.  The us vs them mentality starts getting lost and individual factions begin to reappear.  And let\’s face it Pelosi and Reid aren\’t exactly stellar leaders.  And many of the junior Democrats have been voted in by right-leaning districts.  Immigration is a hot-button issue that doesn\’t tend to be forgotten.  Vulnerable Democrats aren\’t going to want to be a sacrificial lamb and with a clear majority there is going to be less pressure to take one for the team.

The economy oddly enough will also help in this aspect.  The bad economy has lessened the flow across the border, or even reversed it.  With rising unemployment there is less demand for foreign workers and more resentment amongst Americans towards any holding down jobs in the US.   All in one less illegals in the US makes the problem seem less daunting, but the job market makes the problem seem more critical.

Plus the pro-enforcement lobby is one of the few conservative interest groups that hasn\’t fallen behind the Democrats in technology and sheer collaborative advocacy.  They\’ve proven they ability to raise holy hell if need be more than once.  The ability to overwhelm and shutdown the Congressional switchboard several days in a row is a feat not to be ignored.

The immigration issue is coming back this time around.  And there are lots of reasons to be worried.  But there are also lots to be optimistic about.  Either way this next session will not be boring.

[Crossposted at True North]

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Ronald Reagan

It appears the terminology has changed since Reagan\’s days….replace \”subsidizes them\” with \”bails them out\”.

The past decade or so, we\’ve been subjected to asinine claim after ludicrous claim of global warming.  These claims have been based upon either no evidence at all or contradictory out-of-context data.  But by repeatedly making the claims, people tend to start believing them.  Quantity tends to take on a quality all it\’s own.

Now the past few years, people have begun to suspect that Al Gore is full of shit.  And lately we\’ve started to see a pretty regular stream of studies indicating, this time based upon actual data, that our current temperatures are part of natural cylical climate cycles.  And many of them seem to indicate that while we have been in a warming portion of that cycle, the cooling portion either begins soon or has begun already.  The latest study indicating that we\’re entering what will be a 23-year period of cooling.

As a man who enjoys snowmobiling and ice fishing, I great this news with great enthusiasm.  But it strikes me that this is pretty much a win-win for the Al Gore drones.  If the globe continues to warm, they can claim they were right.  On the other hand, they\’ve gotten their greasy claws into so many BS programs, that if it starts cooling they can claim their policies have met with resounding success.

We seemed destined to have to put up with Al Gore and his merry band of professional con artists.  It\’s actually fairly impressive coming from a group of people whose collective IQ wouldn\’t amount to a respectable earthquake.  On the other hand they\’d probably be able to blame that earthquake on global warming too.

I want you to read through the following story.  I\’ve intentionally removed some identifying information from the story to make a point later on.

Parents of **** marching band members expressed outrage over the school\’s handling of a hazing investigation in dozens of e-mails to administrators, according to records released Monday.

The parents threatened to withhold donations, sought refunds for football tickets and even vowed to seek the firing of **** who led the probe, the e-mails show.

The parents said they were angry **** suspended the entire 300-member marching band while investigating allegations against a small minority of its members.

Several said they doubted **** sports teams would be suspended if some of their members committed misconduct and questioned why administrators allow students to yell crude chants at games but crack down on the band.

A few said they worried the publicity surrounding the investigation would damage the reputations of their children and make it harder for them to get jobs after they graduate.

\”In this case, the rush to \’make a statement\’ has trumped common sense,\” one parent wrote on Oct. 8. \”In the process, completely innocent members of the band have been branded as drunks, miscreants and sexual deviants.\”

Berquam detailed some of the allegations in a letter to the band\’s parents in early October and notified them of the school\’s investigation. The letter unleashed a torrent of angry responses from band parents to ****, who led the investigation.

Parents of one band member wrote on Oct. 7 about how proud they were of their daughter for earning a spot in the band through years of hard work.

\”Imagine our anger and disappointment in learning that this dedicated group of students has been singled out (by the ****) for immoral and illegal actions!\” they wrote. \”These many young people have obeyed the rules, and worked too hard, dedicated too much of their time, and sacrificed too much to deserve this slanderous treatment!\”

Some parents criticized **** for not releasing enough information while others said it released too much.

One parent said he was so furious he was looking into legal action against the school.

Got all that??

Now reading through that who figures this is describing a public high school somewhere?  Raise your hands.

Now that I got you raising your hands all by yourself at a computer like a moron, enough question time.

Decay of society in 3…

2…

1…

The school in question is the University of Wisconsin and the administrator is the Dean of Students.

These band members were \”adults\”….yet there is not a single cae of an outraged students.  The story is instead about how parents are outraged and pissed off and taking action.

It\’s bad enough that parents who coddle their children well into adulthood, it\’s worse that it\’s so common place that an entire article came be written featuring helicopter parents and nobody blinks.

If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

Richard M. Nixon

So the fairly well circulated rumor is that Obama will ask Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State.  A pretty predictable choice.  Obama will be President, but Hillary and Bill are still popular in Democratic circles.  Hillary has her own power base and her supporters delivered the election to Obama.  Because of this she holds power of her own far beyond her own seniority.

Obama is a new President.  He\’ll want a clean slate withou any distracting power struggles.  Plus he has an astronomically large ego, he can\’t stand someone else in his challenging his absolute authority.  So it\’s a rather obvious move for him to nominate her as Secretary of State, and make her his puppet.

Will she take the bait?? I\’d put it about even.  On one hand it increases her credentials and her experience for 2016.  On the other hand she\’s a puppet.

If she turns it down, look for Obama\’s cronies to renew their character assasination form the primaries.

Congrats to my occasional rare co-blogger Drunkguy, whose wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl a couple days ago.  The fact that the kid is cute does lead to some doubt as to the father of the child.  I suspect a modern case of immaculate conception.

Either way, congrats to Drunkguy and Mrs. Drunkguy.  In just 16 short years she\’ll be wrecking your car and dating guys you don\’t like.

While Somali pirates have existed for a long time now, they certainly have made quite a number of high profile hijackings lately.  Most notable recently was the hijacking of the Faina, and it\’s cargo of battle tanks.  Now word that they\’ve also captured a Saudi supertanker, which represents about a quarter of Saudi Arabia\’s daily output of oil.  Clearly, the status quo cannot continue.

That said, this seems like a perfect situation for Obama to warm up that smile and motivating speaking and any other skills he may have….if any.  But it\’s a chance to show what He can do on a global scale.  All the more since it\’s a relatively easy one, as global crises go.

Ships of many nations are being hijacked.  Countries and companies are losing money.  Lives are being lost.  The criminals are of no importance to….well anyone.  It\’s not likely to be difficult to generate widescale support for action given those conditions.  If The Messiah can\’t grow enough of a backbone to stand up to pirates, what chance does He have against Iran or Russia??  After all that talk, pirates can\’t have a place in the Age of Obama can they??  There has to be someone in the town of Hopenchange that can come up with a solution.

Toward that end, I\’m wondering if we necessarily need to reinvent the wheel on this one.  Seems to me that there is a solution that has worked before in a situation, which not identical, at least distantly similiar.  There are at least two methods, both created in the First Battle of the Atlantic (WWI), and later \”perfected\” in the Second Battle of the Atlantic (WWII).

The first method being a convoy situation.  The lack of a sufficient number of military ships to cover all areas off the coast of Somalia is frequently cited as one of the reasons world navies haven\’t been able to counter the pirates.  Ok, that same problem was part of the problem of battling U-boats.  As a result a convoy system was used.  Sure it\’s a big target, but you can better utilize finite resources.  And since the pirate\’s range is relatively limited (even with motherships), the convoy wouldn\’t even have to be maintained for long.

The second method is what\’s known as a \”Q-Ship\”.  Essentially it has the outward appearance of a common merchant ship, but in reality is an armed warship.  In both WWI and WWII, these Q-ships had a rather paltry success rate…partially due to the fact that the first sign of their enemy was a torpedo in the side.  In the case of a pirate attack, it seems it would be much more effective.  Especially since it\’s wouldn\’t involve camoflauging a 5-inch gun, which was frequently the case in WWII.  Here a platoon of Marines armed with a few long range weapons stationed aboard a common merchant vessel would do the trick.  End result is the pirates would be a lot less confident in their trade.

In the end, we\’ll have to await what The Almighty Obama has in store for us mortals.  For He is the giver of both Hope and Change.  Neither of which seems particularely useful against a pirate….especially since these aren\’t even the cool pirates of grog, busty wenches and cool sword fights.