So, What Is Calderon Complaining About, And Why Do The Congressional Dems Cheer For Him?

OS hates to harp on a subject, but he feels this one really matters, and that recent events have been illustrative of the character of our present political leadership.

As everyone who hasn't been in a coma for the past month knows, the State of Arizona decided enough was enough. The Federal government simultaneously claimed jurisdiction over matters involving the southern border of the the US while refusing to enforce immigration law and vigorously defend that border. Arizona has been over-run, and its citizens are being murdered and kidnapped. Arizona, within its constitutional rights, passed a law to deal with the problem.

The indignant outcry was immediate and blood-curdling from the Left, and from the Mexican government.  El Presidente addressed the US Congress, denouncing Arizona for having the temerity to insist that people residing within its borders actually be able to demonstrate that they are there legally.

The Congressional Democrats stood and cheered, declaring their solidarity with their poor victimized southern compadres.

Problem is, Arizona passed a law that in great part mirrors the immigration law of Mexico, only much less harsh in both its language and application.

From USA Today. 27 May 2010

TULTITLN, Mexico — Arizona's new law forcing local police to take a greater role in enforcing immigration law has caused a lot of criticism from Mexico, the largest single source of illegal immigrants in the United States. But in Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities, say people involved in the system.

And Mexico has a law that is no different from Arizona's that empowers local police to check the immigration documents of people suspected of not being in the country legally.

"There (in the United States), they'll deport you," Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. "In Mexico they'll probably let you go, but they'll beat you up and steal everything you've got first." 

[end quote]

Kudos to USA Today for finally standing tall and beginning to tell the truth about Mexico. Most of the mainstream media simply will not begin to tell the truth about this place.

Mexico is violent.

Mexico is breathtakingly corrupt; from the street-corner cop to the Presidency, the entire operation thrives on la Mordida, literally 'The Bite', aka 'The Bribe'.

Mexico has been run from the 1920's by a corrupt oligarchy of politicians, 'labor union leaders', bankers and industrial interests. Until recent years, only one party the PRI, ever held power.

Then, there is the drug trade... The mayor of Cancun, a major resort destination, was arrested just yesterday for trafficking.

So, why do Democrats love Mexico so? Why do they cheer for this craziness, this corruption, this unfree violent culture? Do they see the future there, a fabulously wealthy country in the thrall of an oligarchy that gets to skim that wealth for themselves, while maintaining the appearance of civilization?

Perhaps there are other explanations, but this one certainly fits. Why would they cheer for this? Why would they roll out the carpet and put on a full-Monty Head of State welcome for the President of Mexico, who wants nothing more than to ship up millions more of his illiterate population?

Why do all the Democrats (and some Republicans like McCain--until challenged for his seat) think that an unceasing flow of illegals from Mexico is actually desireable?

Why the refusal to enforce the border?

Something else is at play in all this. Some people here must be making a lot of money, or gathering a great deal of power to themselves, by allowing this chaos to continue. Likewise, some people must have the same motivation south of the border.

People always act from motivation. Without it, there is almost no action.

What is driving this tragic, stupid race over the cultural cliff? What's the motivation?

Memorial Day Greetings

OS wishes everyone a restful Memorial Day weekend.

We need a respite in confusing times, and indeed we live in confusing times. Don't have the quote at hand, but Bonhoeffer observed that the phenomenon of darkness parading as light, vice claiming to be virtue, etc/,  'only confirms the wickedness of evil'.

Now there's a turn of phrase, from a man who lived during the darkest time of the 20th Century. OS has few heroes, but Bonhoeffer is definitely one of them. In spite of it all, he remained an optimist, one reason he is on that short list of heroes.

Hug the ones you love extry-good, and enjoy these days.  The world will be waiting for us again on Tuesday morning, no doubt.

OS

I Know Where I Don't Want To Go In Life, Because I've Been There

Late-night local news in the Nashville market resembles a real-life ongoing daily Jerry Springer episode.

The ex-boyfriend who decides to 'air out' the ex-girlfriend's 'crib', and ends up shooting a child instead.

The thug who stages a home invasion and murders a twelve-year-old child who (understandably) is frightened and wants to run away.

The weird story of a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl (with her about 30-year-old mother) who is complaining of being stalked by her present-boyfriend's-ex-girlfriend in the halls of the junior high school. The segment producer dutifully assists us by providing her name, and placing the caption 'victim' under her name.  (And this is worth burning video-tape, editing suite time and airtime because?...)

A running shoot-out/car chase across county lines that kills two, including a 17-year old high school senior.  Who knows what that one's about. Lunacy. It's not like the fictional cop shows, kids: If someone gets shot, he dies a horrible death, and it takes years to clean up the tragic mess left behind.

Then one last one. OS expects more of the same, and blessedly, he is wrong.

The story of a girl graduating from high school with honors, headed to university on scholarship with the goal to be a pathologist, who lives in temporary hotel housing with her mom, because they are homeless. And even flooded out of that housing in the Great Middle Tennessee Flood, just in time for final exams to begin.  Faculty at the school stepped in, friends pitched in.

She made it to prom.

She's graduating seventh in her class.

Her quote:  I know where I don't want to go in life, 'cause I've been there.



Back to life.

Much to do, dealing with families of over-indulged children who wonder why their poor kids should have to work in order to achieve anything.

OS is weary, and increasingly lacks the emotional energy to attempt to explain it one more time.

The Newest Terrorist Weapon: Exploding Donkeys (From Jerusalem Post)

Gee, Wally, Hamas didn't get the memo from PETA!

Murder all the people you want, but if you harm a hair on a animal's head, your ass is grass!

From Jerusalem Post: 

A small Syrian-backed terrorist group in Gaza said its activists blew up a donkey cart laden with explosives close to the border with Israel on Tuesday, killing the animal but causing no human casualties.

Abu Ghassan, spokesman for the terrorist group, said more than 200 kilograms of dynamite were heaped on the animal-drawn cart. He added that the explosives were detonated 60 meters from the concrete security barrier that separates the territory from Israel.

The donkey was killed in the blast, but there were no reports of human casualties. Israeli troops routinely patrol the border, and impoverished Gazans often gather rubble in the area.

We'll await the deafening outcry from the animal activists. OS is certain they'll be mounting demonstrations outside Hamas HQ in Gaza, any day now.

Quote Of The Week: EPA Chief Lisa Jackson, "My God, It's So Thick!'

Really, we're back at the Art Buchwald/Jeff Foxworthy dilemma: No matter how outlandish a joke they can think up, reality trumps them. It's a professional challenge.  Buchwald created an entire lecture out of his quandry during the Nixon administration. Foxworthy just says laconically, 'Folks, I can't make this stuff up!'

OS heard this quote quickly in passing, and couldn't believe it either. He had to look it up, just to be certain. After all, who in that sort of position (with all those degrees) could be so stupid?

From WWL Radio, via Associated Press:

The Obama administration's environmental chief dipped a small cup into the oily mess at the mouth of the Mississippi and was surprised by what came out.

"Oh my God - it's so thick!" exclaimed Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson who toured delicate coastal wetlands that have been invaded by the black and orange crude.

She was one of several top administration officials in the Gulf Coast this week as the White House is facing increasing questions about why the government can't assert more control over the handling a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which unfolded after a BP offshore drilling rig blew up April 20.

Really. She said that.

The Editor of the Harvard Law Review and Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize appointed her to the job.

The Commander-in-Chief. The One. 

You can't make this stuff up.

The Newspaper That Stood Tall: Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, South Africa

This story as a follow-up to last week's 'Everybody Draw Mohamed Day'.

The M & G's cartoonist, Zapiro, published a mild jab at the Prophet, depicting him on the psychiatrist's couch, wondering why his followers lack a sense of humor. You'll have to hit the link above to see it.

OS isn't familiar with Zapiro's work, but a quick check at Google Images demonstrates this guy's a pro, not some one-off amateur.

The Islamists went ballistic, heading to court to have the paper pulled off the streets, and the death threats came flowing in.

The M & G stood tall, the judge stood by the law, and the cartoon was distributed.

Three cheers apiece for  Zapiro, his paper, and the judge.

'Everybody Draw Mohamed Day' was a success, 'cuz it once again showed in bold relief where the problem lies--not with Western democracies, but with an Islamic fundamentalism who would use the very liberties of the West to destroy it.

Someone out there has a problem, and it ain't us.

Broke, USA

On the way to somewhere else, OS found this excerpt of the new book Broke, USA, by Gary Rivlin.

He's still wiping tears from his eyes, reading how these people smilingly charge 391 percent interest to lend money to poor people, with credit lines supplied to their businesses by major banks.

OS once had the misfortune of knowing someone who was a financier of these operations, from a private hedge fund he now suspects was being used to launder cash for, let us say, businessmen in the 'pharmaceutical trade'. It was a frightening experience, as OS was baffled to be in the presence of a person who essentially had managed to remove any trace of conscience from his soul, while appearing totally respectable. The smell of sulfur lingers in the memory, to this day.

There must be a Hell somewhere, in some form, to accommodate the souls of these people in the afterlife. 

ObamaBob Dials Up The Vitriol Level: Remarks On Sarah Palin

(HT to Clifton at Another Black Conservative. You do read ABC, yes?)

Anyway!

OS is not the world's biggest fan of Gov. Palin. He has reservations, which can wait for another day to be stated.

However, she actually held an elected administrative office--the governorship of Alaska. The place is huge, and would have to be a handful to manage wisely, what with the long coastline, the climate, the tribes, it's physical separation from the Lower 48, and the large footprint made by the oil industry. By most accounts, she did an O.K. job in that role. This is more than our current President managed to accomplish before his election in 2008.  The lady oversaw the oil biz in Alaska during her time there. She probably forgot more about oil drilling than Obama learned about it as an Illinois state senator and Presidential candidate.

Now, we've got ourselves a leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, courtesy of British Petroleum, and she was asked about the Obama administration's response, which some think was less than energetic. (Personally, OS isn't sure that's a fair criticism, but that's for another day as well.)

But, she was asked, and when she pointed out that Himself was a 2008 recipient of major amounts of cash sourced from BP, Robert ObamaBob Gibbs just couldn't resist the temptation to denigrate Mrs. Palin on CBS yesterday morning.

"Sarah Palin was involved in that election, but I don't think, apparently, was paying a whole lot of attention," Gibbs said.

"I'm almost sure that the oil companies don't consider the Obama administration a huge ally. We proposed a windfall profits tax when they jacked their oil prices up to charge for gasoline.

"My suggestion to Sarah Palin would be to get slightly more informed as to what's going on in and around oil drilling in this country."

OS heard ObamaBob utter those words yesterday morning, and thought: 'He really screwed the pooch on this one. The last thing you want to do, at a time like this, is throw vitriolic gasoline on the fire. For openers, her proper title is Governor Palin, just as his is Mr. Gibbs.'

This moment will make the rounds of the MamaGrizzlyBear Movement, and those ladies will take umbrage. They'll conclude that if Obama and ObamaBob think Gov. Palin is just a Stupid Girl ('cuz she's pretty, and she's a mom), they think the same of the ladies who like Gov. Palin. It's sort of like poking that MamaGrizzlyBear with a sharp stick, just to see if she will react.

ObamaBob can rest assured, they'll react. And he won't like the experience come November 3, as he feels the wheels of the bus roll over his torso, after Obama personally tosses him under it.

Polite restraint of tongue and pen, at a moment like that, by a person in that position, is never a bad idea. It's ok to disagree, not ok to be disagreeable.

Just sayin'...

Illiteracy: It's Not Just For Kids From The 'Hood

From this week's Boston Globe Op-Ed page, an essay by Kara Miller, on faculty at Babson College. She's fighting the good fight to make certain her charges can write corehently in their native language, English. She doesn't seem to be winning.

...many seem to have received little writing instruction in high school. I initially noticed this as an undergraduate English major at Yale, where I helped peers revise their papers. I saw it again in graduate school at Tufts, where I taught freshman writing classes. And it has also struck me at Babson, where, for the past two years, I have instructed first-year students.

The second thing English teachers realize is that correcting students’ papers is tremendously time consuming. I constantly do battle with myself to spend less than 20 minutes on a paper. At meetings, instructors are often urged not to exceed 15 minutes, but I frequently end up spending double that. This can be a genuinely frustrating experience: 50 papers stacked on the coffee table, 10 in the finished pile, and an entire afternoon gone.

It's not just you, Professor! And OS is loathe to lay the blame totally at the feet of the schools. Families that consume good books on a regular basis produce children who can write. Families that don't, don't.

Think about it. Your high school sophomore has no memory of a culture without personal computers, internet, hip-hop music, or Miley Cyrus. Given the distractions, it's tough to insist on Shakespeare, Hemingway and Dickens. But it's gotta be done, lest we all end up with this:

“Sometimes, the word ‘voluntary’ is a little complicated...': Cass Sundstein, Obama's Minister Of Information

Daniel Hannan (you DO read Daniel Hannan, don't you?), wryly noted Cass Sundstein's latest quote:

“The site’s of one point of view agree to provide links to sites of the other point of view. So if you’re reading a conservative magazine, they would provide a link to a liberal site. And vice versa, just to make it easy for people to access to competing views.

Or maybe a popup on your screen that would show you an advertisement or maybe even a quick argument for a competing view.

If we could get voluntary arrangements in that direction, it would be great and if we can’t get voluntary arrangements maybe Congress should hold hearings about mandates.”

When queried on the word 'voluntary', his response was (wait for it!)...

“Sometimes, the word ‘voluntary’ is a little complicated…”

Here's a more complete account, to which the great Hannan refers.

Now, this, friends and neighbors is something to raise unshirted hell about.

This is something to tell your Congressman about, and your friends, and the folks at church, and the teller at the bank. I mentioned it just now to the sainted Mrs. OS, who is not overtly political, and she was stunned.

Obama and company are going after Freedom of Speech. No doubt about it.

OS notes that he has one regular reader from Washington D.C., and another from the D.C. suburbs. Given that there are a lot of people in that part of the world with computers, he hasn't paid that much attention.

But, just in case he's being monitored for political content, here's a message for that creepy person: Screw you. If you think you and yours are going to get away with it, you're deluded. There will be no place to run and hide that you won't be found, if you attempt to suppress speech.

Screw.

You.

Sunday Morning Coffee

OldSouth enjoys the quiet, the dogs passed out after the morning romp, the second cup of coffee, well before heading off to church.

The afternoon holds such excitements as the installation of six rose bushes, the final pack-up of the china collection left displaced by the Great Middle Tennessee Flood, and preparation for a ten-day business trip. He is so grateful for the small blessings of coffee, church, dogs, roses and china, and feels just how fragile life is at these moments.


An hour yesterday spent with a neighbor, only five years older, whose health fell apart without warning earlier this year was sobering.  OS will be taking his own physician's admonitions to heart. There is a prescription to fill, a diet to undertake, exercise to be done faithfully. No one is bulletproof, especially those of us who believe we are.

So, in the quiet, before the activity that must occupy the day and the next ten, a word of thanks to those who bother to read OS's ramblings. He tries not to ramble, and hopes he adds value to the lives that read his scribble. It doesn't take a shrink to recognize that this blog is in great part a therapeutic exercise, a place to make sense of the world, in a publishable form, clearly enough expressed that someone else might read and understand. 

About a year ago, the 'Wrestling Midgets' mayoral campaign in OS's little town finally put him over the edge. It had been preceded by decades of watching the culture slowly unwind and disintegrate, with the recent series of economic crises presenting as the latest symptoms of the malady--the abandonment of the moral and intellectual underpinnings that built this wonderful place. The distress had been building as he watched lives, families, and institutions fall to the avalanche of consequence that now inexorably heads down the hillside of history.

It was either write his thoughts and publish (even if not a soul read it), or become unbearable to the sainted Mrs. OS, or begin working on that first heart attack in earnest. Since he loves Mrs. OS so, and doesn't wish to spend the next twenty years with the big scar on his chest while eating cardboard food, this seemed to be the better route. For very good reasons having to do with the welfare of his family, OldSouth chooses anonymity. Nothing nefarious going on, soon enough it won't matter anyway.

In the meantime, it's been fun to speak from this 'alter-ego' voice.

It has helped to know that people the wide world ‘round read his scribble. It gives him a sense that he is not totally nutters, that he can communicate and be understood. He attempts to explain to his neighbors, in their dialect, here in this sleepy Southern town, how the outside world has come to bear upon them, hence the address 'mainstreetmattersmore'. He tries to share what better minds than his are saying, to help them make sense. He has a definite point of view, but attempts to always learn from others, 'cuz he might be wrong. 

Likewise, he attempts to give insight into small-town Southern life, and its state of mind, to anyone who cares to read. Who knows, maybe one of them will be someone who makes big decisions whose consequences rain down upon our small lives.


Maybe, OS will say some small thing that impacts what may remain of a conscience in that person.


Maybe. 

So, thank you, all ya'll out there. Whether OS has helped you or not, you certainly have helped save him.
Now, for a morning thought to share, you might wish to look at a recent posting on Baseline Scenario, entitled 'The European Road To Serfdom'. Simon Johnson, a true voice of reason, helps organize the events of the past few months in understandable form. 

Hope you find it valuable.

And, again, thank you.