How Do We Secure The Border? One Frigging Yard At A Time!

Daniel Henninger, that pooh-bah of EastCoastGroupThink, assures us poor schmoes here in Flyover America that the border with Mexico just can't POSSIBLY be secured.  It's sooooo hard!!! So, we'll just have to let illegals flood us, and let them squat and vote and live off food stamps.

And if we don't, and build the wall to secure the border, why that would be just like the East Germans building the Berlin Wall.

Wrong!!! The Berlin Wall was built to keep oppressed people captive inside East Germany, not to keep the hordes of West Germans living in freedom from immigrating to the Soviet bloc. We are being invaded by people who have no, zero, respect for the rule of law, and no intention of ever integrating into American life.

Did he sleep through that history class at Georgetown, or do facts simply not matter?

Here's his whining quote of his essay in today's Wall Street Journal:

If you were to lift the Texas end of that border, like a string, and move it northward toward the Great Lakes, the length of the border between the U.S. and Mexico, as noted on the nearby map, is about the distance from San Diego to Chicago. That "border" would cross California, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois—most of the American continent. How would we secure all of that? 

One yard at a time, Mr. Henninger. It is not a matter of engineering.

It is a matter of will.

The Bush Administration lacked the will, even though it had clear legislative instructions.

The Obama Administration can't get enough illegals across the frontier quickly enough, to help secure their hold on power for generations to come.

It is a matter of will, and integrity, both qualities sadly lacking in the deputy editorial page editor for The Wall Street Journal...

Founded By Geniuses, Run By Idiots: Foxworthy Didn't Write This, But No Matter--It Needs To Be Read And Contemplated....

The Great Foxworthy did not pen these words, but whoever did certainly caught his tone of voice beautifully. The tragedy of this list is that it does describe our situation. We have become to accustomed to the idiocy, we are becoming numb to it.

Massah Obama and Company actually count on this happening, since numb people tend to not get all uppity and stuff, you know. OS, on the other hand, has moments when he sees the world burning, and innocents slaughtered, only to find that the lead stories on the morning shows such as 'Good Morning America' breathlessly inform us of the newest exploits of the Kardashian family. The temptation to throw things at the TV does become a bit strong, tempered by the knowledge that the missile aimed at those cheerful faces has no possibility of hitting its target...

These words, on the other hand, strike to the heart:

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license,
but not for being in the country illegally — you might live in a
nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip
or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion — you
might live in a nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a
check, buy liquor, or check out a library book, but not to vote
who runs the government — you might live in a nation founded
by geniuses but run by idiots.

If the government wants to ban stable, law-abiding citizens from
owning gun magazines with more than ten rounds, but gives
twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt — you
might live in a nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If, in the nation’s largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas,
but not a 24-ounce soda because 24-ounces of a sugary drink
might make you fat — you might live in a nation founded by
geniuses but run by idiots.

If an 80-year-old woman or a three-year-old girl confined to a
wheelchair can be strip-searched by the TSA, but a woman in
a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched
— you might live in a nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions
of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more — you might live in a
nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his
teacher is “cute,” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class
in grade school is perfectly acceptable — you might live in a nation
founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If children are forcibly removed from parents who discipline them
with spankings, while children of addicts are left in filth- and drug-infested
“homes” — you might live in a nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more
government intrusion, while not working is rewarded with EBT cards,
WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and free cell phones
— you might live in a nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If the government’s plan for getting people back to work is to provide
incentives for not working through 99 weeks of unemployment checks,
without any requirement to prove they sought, but couldn’t find, work
— you might live in a nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big
screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, wall-sized plasma do-it-all
TV’s and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he
defaults on his mortgage — you might live in a nation founded by geniuses
but run by idiots.

If being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you more “safe”
according to the government — you might live in a nation founded by
geniuses but run by idiots.

John Kerry (That Great Agitator For Peace) Calling For Airstrikes In The Syrian Civil War: Winner of OS's WTF Award

Really, ya'll, just can't make this stuff up.

At a principals meeting in the White House situation room, Secretary of State John Kerry began arguing, vociferously, for immediate U.S. airstrikes against airfields under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime -- specifically, those fields it has used to launch chemical weapons raids against rebel forces. 

(Wait a second! Wasn't this the guy who tossed someone else's medals (certainly not his own!) over the White House fence in protest of the Viet Nam War, and testified to the Senate that his fellow soldiers were murderers? Wasn't this the guy who gave GW Bush unshirted grief over the chemical weapons that weren't found in Iraq--because a lot of them had been secreted to Syria!)

It was at this point that the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the usually mild-mannered Army General Martin Dempsey, spoke up, loudly. According to several sources, Dempsey threw a series of brushback pitches at Kerry, demanding to know just exactly what the post-strike plan would be and pointing out that the State Department didn’t fully grasp the complexity of such an operation.
Dempsey informed Kerry that the Air Force could not simply drop a few bombs, or fire a few missiles, at targets inside Syria: To be safe, the U.S. would have to neutralize Syria’s integrated air-defense system, an operation that would require 700 or more sorties. 

At a time when the U.S. military is exhausted, and when sequestration is ripping into the Pentagon budget, Dempsey is said to have argued that a demand by the State Department for precipitous military action in a murky civil war wasn’t welcome.

(Um, scuze me, Massah Seceretahry Uv State, but all 'dem Syrian anti-aircraft sites? Dey beez Russian anti-aircraft sites! Yew don't think the Russians are so stupid as to just ship boatloads of advanced weapons to a chaotic situation like Syria, off-load them and hand over the owners' manuals to whoever greets them on the docks? Those are complex systems, and required trained people, that means Russians, to run them. We're the ones who just drop off ordinance and wish everybody well...)

Remember Viet Nam, the tragedy that helped launch your career Massah Kerry? It happened because a trigger-happy egomaniac named Lyndon Johnson decided to get us hip-deep in a civil war on the ground in Asia!

Now here we are again, with you demanding the fleet sail and the planes fly and damn the torpedos. No real entrance strategy, no exit strategy, no real goals in mind, no contingency plan if things go pear-shaped, nothing.

And to think you almost became President!! Holy Cow!!

So, Massah Secruhterry, if'n yew wanna go make yoh'self feel bettah by shootin' off ordinance, c'mon on down South. All the fireworks stands are up and running, and you can buy yoh'self all sorts of stuff that will will go boom and flash. Just stand clear when yew light dem fuses, ok? And remember, keep the pointy end of 'dem rockets pointed up and away from people and pets.

The Very Worst Sermon Ever...Presiding Bishop Schori Blathers In Venezuela

Just when you think you've seen/heard it all, along comes Presiding Bishop Schori, the captain at the helm of the sinking Episcopal Church here in the US.

Art Buchwald, the great satirist of an earlier day, would despair of his daily task at writing something funnier than what the great-and-good of Washington political life would daily peddle as serious pronouncements. Ron Nessen, Nixon's press secretary, particularly irked him.

Malcolm Muggeridge, as editor of Punch, faced the same problem. He once described the Archbishop of Canterbury attending a performance of Jesus Christ, Superstar. The old fool stood up at the end of the show and exclaimed 'Long live God!'. Muggeridge struggled, clever as he was, to write material funnier than what he observed in real time.

The clergy are a particularly rich source of humor. They don robes, climb into pulpits, and declare the most asinine things, ideas that can't possibly pass the smell or laugh test.

Presiding Bishop Schori, however, does win this year's grand prize with this excerpt:

We live with the continuing tension between holier impulses that encourage us to see the image of God in all human beings and the reality that some of us choose not to see that glimpse of the divine, and instead use other people as means to an end.  We’re seeing something similar right now in the changing attitudes and laws about same-sex relationships, as many people come to recognize that different is not the same thing as wrong.  For many people, it can be difficult to see God at work in the world around us, particularly if God is doing something unexpected.

There are some remarkable examples of that kind of blindness in the readings we heard this morning, and slavery is wrapped up in a lot of it.  Paul is annoyed at the slave girl who keeps pursuing him, telling the world that he and his companions are slaves of God.  She is quite right.  She’s telling the same truth Paul and others claim for themselves.[1]  But Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness.  Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it.  It gets him thrown in prison.  That’s pretty much where he’s put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she, too, shares in God’s nature, just as much as he does – maybe more so!  The amazing thing is that during that long night in jail he remembers that he might find God there – so he and his cellmates spend the night praying and singing hymns.

An earthquake opens the doors and sets them free, and now Paul and his friends most definitely discern the presence of God.  The jailer doesn’t – he thinks his end is at hand.  This time, Paul remembers who he is and that all his neighbors are reflections of God, and he reaches out to his frightened captor.  This time Paul acts with compassion rather than annoyance, and as a result the company of Jesus’ friends expands to include a whole new household.  It makes me wonder what would have happened to that slave girl if Paul had seen the spirit of God in her.

On the one hand, the account seems innocent and well-meaning, until we remember the real story: The slave girl was, well, a slave girl, owned by pimps. She was at the very least severely mentally ill, in today's terminology, and St. Paul invoked Christ to free her from her bondage. She was liberated from her hell. The pimps, seeing a profit center vaporize in front of them, had Paul and Silas jailed. They stayed up the night, singing hymns in the dark, when the earthquake occurred. The terrified jailer, seeing all the cell doors open, was about to take his own life--in order to spare himself the tortures of Roman 'justice'. Paul intervened, and assured him that there had not been a jailbreak. The jailer asked the crucial question 'What must I do to be saved?'--the question a sane man asks when encountering the transcendent presence of the risen Christ.

And, what of that slave girl? The good bishop would have left her in her hell, the property of her pimps, with her claim that that mental disturbance was 'the presence of God in her'. 

Who let this woman out of seminary, much less handed her a bishopric? 

The entire sermon is here. The responses are rich...

Please, Somebody, Remind Us Why The Euro Was Anything But An Idiotic Idea: The Final Concert Of The National Orchestra And Chorus Of Greece

Yet another general strike in Greece, this time over the summary closure of Greek State Radio and Television, which means the orchestra and chorus are also shut down. 

The video below shows scenes from the final concert broadcast from the studio to the crowds outside, a performance of Elgar's 'Nimrod' followed by the Greek national anthem. The violinist in tears says it all. This is just one of the tragic outcomes of entry into the Euro, and the chaos that resulted.

As always, Greece is a mess, an ongoing tragic soap opera, with so many problems of its own creation that the list would go forever.

But nothing was helped, and so much was made so much worse, by the imposition of the Euro upon this messy corner of the world. Its economic, political and cultural woes have only been worsened by its continued participation. The well has been so poisoned, it will take decades to recover.

Some argue, 'Well, good riddance to the orchestra! Not the role of government to be funding this anyway!', and that point may be well-taken. On the other hand, even small governments like Grecce, if solvent, can easily scrape together 5-10 million dollars to run a radio orchestra, with even a chorus and small ballet on the side. They can be used to anchor arts education for the country, serve as public relations ambassadors, used to organize music festivals to draw tourism dollars.

In any case, it should be their choice, yea or nay. A solvent government in a stable society can spend a bit of discretionary money on this sort of thing with no harm done. The Eurozone has eroded and destroyed all that.

Time to exit, tell the Germans and the bankers where to stick it, and for the Greeks to take back their own country, and get to make their own choices. Who knows, they may even decide they want an orchestra that plays Elgar decently.

One Man's Crisis Is Another Man's Opportunity: Rick Perry Visits Colt Manufacturing In Connecticut

This spring, the idiot mainstream press breathlessly reported and applauded as the Connecticut legislature passed even more restrictions on gun ownership in the wake of the Newtown tragedy. Oh, the humanity, oh how noble a legislature, this we say this will fix things, by golly!

What was not well-reported were the some 400 employees of Colt who appeared at the state capitol to ask for cooler heads to prevail, all to no avail.

This week, Rick Perry came to visit, to invite Colt to relocate to Texas, a state that will never ever ever piss on them like Connecticut did.

The president of West Hartford-based Colt Manufacturing said Friday he will be pleased to host a visit by Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a state he called a loyal supporter of the gun maker.

Perry is traveling to Connecticut on Sunday for a Northeast job-poaching tour that will also take him to New York.

A number of gun makers in Connecticut have said they are looking into leaving after the state passed some of the toughest gun laws in the country, a response to last year's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in which 20 children and six educators were gunned down.

Colt president Dennis Veilleux said he welcomes Perry's visit Monday morning. 

He was careful to speak in code:

"While we have been proud to call Connecticut home for 175 years, as we look to future growth we have a responsibility to consider all options that ensure we remain competitive and meet the needs and expectations of our customers," Veilleux said.

The translation being: 'We're outta here.'

The plant leaves. The workers leave, highly trained people whose families have worked for the firm for decades and more. Their families leave, and their children never come back. The suppliers to Colt also leave, and their workers and families. The costs of maintaining roads and running schools don't go down, but the tax revenue certainly does.

And as for the firms recruited to take Colt's place? Question #1 is: 'If you will do this to Colt, what will you do to us? Besides, we've been talking to Texas, and Alabama, and Tennessee...They've got better weather, better food, lower taxes, and fewer Democrats.'

OS believes in our Federal system, with most power flowing to the states and the people. It allows a Texas to profit from the idiocy of Connecticut, and serves thereby to restrain their folly. The best reforms arrive dressed as competition.

Bebe Netanyahu Repeats His Message In Plain English: Israel Will Not Allow Another Holocaust

Lest anyone be lulled by a 15K Dow, the NBA Finals, the NHL Finals, the US Open Golf Tournament, an entertaining baseball season, or distracted by the multiple scandals now enveloping the Presidency (once again), Bebe reminds us that we are allllll up to our hips in the Middle East...

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, made the following remarks on Thursday at the dedication ceremony for the permanent pavilion at Block 27 at Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.

"The leaders of the Allies (UK, US, France) knew about the Holocaust in real time. They understood exactly what was happening in the death camps. They were asked to act, they could have acted, and they did not. To we Jews the lesson is clear. We must not be complacent in the face of threats of annihilation. We must not bury our heads in the sand or allow others to do the work for us.

From here, the place that attests to the desire to destroy us, I, the Prime Minister of Israel, the state of the Jewish People, say to all the nations of the world: The State of Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent another holocaust."

Netanyahu made the comments as other Israeli government ministers, Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski, Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Piotr Cywinski, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate and exhibition curator Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and Holocaust survivors looked on.

OS takes zero joy in the cascading scandals overtaking the US government.  Many innocent people will perish because we are not paying attention to the world around us while we sort out our own problems. There are a lot of bad actors out there, and they are very happy to use our distraction to spill oceans of innocent blood. It's who they are, it's what they do.

In the wake of Watergate, the resignation of Nixon, and the confusion and national paralysis that followed, Southeast Asia fell to the Marxists, the boatloads of desperate refugees sailed from Vietnam to Hong Kong, and Pol Pot murdered his millions. There was nothing, and no one, to stand in their way.

Given Barack Obama's weakened reputation, active encouragement of chaos in North Africa, and the general war that has enveloped Syria, moving into Lebanon, the deterioration of Iraq, the interventions of Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood in control of Egypt, Israel is essentially surrounded. Obama is, if not a closet practicing Muslim, deeply influenced by Islam, and will throw Israel under the bus when push comes to shove. 

Israel, for its part, will not go down without a fight, and Heaven only knows what that fight may entail.

It is time to watch and pray, and hope that sane heads somewhere prevail.