Saturday, April 26, 2008

Monday, April 21, 2008

John McCain Delenda Est

After reading this, this, and this, I havecome to the conclusion that I want John McCain to LOSE, LOSE, LOSE.

No, I won't vote for Hillary or Barack Junior, but I will be voting (and rallying for) a third party with the express purpose of keeping Nukem McAmnesty out of the White House.

(Links from LRC blog).

That is all.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

On Supporting the Troops

I support the troops in the sense that, if they are to stay in Iraq, I would rather that they succeed than that they fail. (By succeed I mean that they accomplish goals that protect American interests).

However, I am against the war because I believe that it is an inefficient use of our troops and will more likely fail than succeed and that leaving Iraq will protect our interests more than staying.

That being said, if the only way to "support the troops" is to tongue-kiss Bush's rectum, then screw the troops.

Moreover, if any U.S. soldier tells me (of his own volition) that he wants me to support the President, and that he doesn't feel supported if I don't kiss the President's heinie, that soldier can go to Hell.

That is all.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

An Excellent Rejoinder to Obama

Patrick Deneen (Thanx and a tip o' the hat to John Savage:

Someone should advise him to go to Latrobe and say the following instead:

“You go to these big liberal cities in California, and like a lot of cosmopolitan centers of libertarian lifestyle individualism, they have benefited from the wrenching displacements you’ve experienced. They benefited immensely from free-trade and globalizing policies of previous Administrations - Democratic and Republican alike - and they’ve been told that they have earned their status and they owe nothing to anyone.

“And it’s not surprising that they get optimistic, they believe that they can dispense with religion or borders or community as a way to remake the world in exactly their image.”


Right on.

Murray Rothbard on Malcolm X

While Rothbard is, in my opinion, a little hard on blacks in general, I like his piece on the general interpretation of Malcolm X, in part because it cuts through all of the garbage that we tend to hear the PC crowd tell us about how we need to understand muderous rage and need to acknowledge the legitimacy of the desire of many black people to externinate us.

I must admit that I am somewhat ambivalent about Malcolm X due to his apparent alteration in his racial thinking after his conversion to orthodox Islam a year or so prior to his death. And certainly some of the most militant blacks are also the most socially conservative in their ideas about how the black community should act.

However, the idea that all of the responsibility for improving race relations lies with whites, orthat we need to shut up and let the minorities dictate all of the terms of the debate - which often seems to be the mood when discussing Mr. X - or the idea that whites are intrinsically racist and htat nothing we can do is ever good enough for blacks - well, I am sick of it and I think that this piece provides a good counterpoint.

That is all.

Letter to the Boston Herald Shows Open Borders Fallacies

A woman (I presume) named Mary Hopkins recently wrote a letter that appeared in the Boston Herald:

The “long-established” process for welcoming people to this country has changed drastically in the last 20 years. We are no longer the most welcoming country.

Note that she provides no references here. I was under the impression that U.S. immigration laws were pretty welcoming compared to those of most, perhaps all, other countries. (I will try to get some statistics to publish if I can find any comparative statistics to refer to).

If you don’t have an advanced degree, capital or a relative who already has legal status, then your chances of gaining entry here as a legal immigrant are very small indeed.

And this is a problem why? Why should we let in people who are more likely to become social services parasites?

People don’t come here without documents because it’s a nuisance to fill out the paperwork. They come here that way because it’s the only way open to them

Perhaps if they cannot get in here legally they should take the hint and stay out.

Ms. Hopkins obviously suffers from the delusion that what angers people about illegal immigrants is that they have not filled out proper paperwork. No, what angers us is that they come into the country uninvited, and that they do not allow us to choose who we wish to let in and who we do not.

Ms. Hopkins' argument is akin to saying that if someone crashes a party, the host is at fault for not inviting him.

We must create an orderly, accessible and reasonable process by which people can apply to come here as immigrants.

We do. We just don't have a process that grants everyone's application.

It would also be good to create a process by which undocumented immigrants who had not committed offenses besides being here could regularize their status.

How about by going home, where their status will already be perfectly regular?

People get blamed for not doing their paperwork, but when someone offers a way to make it possible, the shriek of “amnesty” goes up.

No, people get blamed for coming into the country without being invited. And if it is suggested that we mut extend invitations to unwanted "party-crashers," that is indeed amnesty.

Under present law the great majority of the undocumented cannot clear up their status.

Sure they do. It's called "going back to where they came from."

This shows the sickness of the opne borders lobby. The U.S. people have no right to control the borders of thier country, and the interests of the immigrants ought to be the sole determining factor in our immigration policy.

That is all.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Tom Tancredo, Go to Hell

Tom Tancredo endorses John McCain*, not just because he feels that McCain is the lesser of two evils:

Tancredo... said Thursday he'll go ahead and back his longtime immigration-reform foe, McCain, because he thinks either of the Democratic alternatives would be worse.

"Sometimes I say to myself, 'Can I really do this?' " Tancredo said of supporting McCain. "And then you listen to Obama or Hillary and say, 'Yeah, I have to.' "


but also because he rejects possible alternatives for not wanting to kill Muslims badly enough:

Despite Barr's immigration stands, Tancredo said he could not support him because of his foreign policy stands, including "a blind spot on radical Islam."

As Daniel Larison points out, this generally simply means that Barr isn't supportive of the unitary executive or the gutting of civil liberties (or, I would add, that Barr isn't gung-ho enough about "killing all them ragheads over there").

He does give pragmatic reasons for opposing Barr, which again amounts to "whatever it takes to stop Obama or Clinton," which is at least an argument not based on murderous bloodthirstiness, but which is also based on the sort of gutless cowardice that is going to destroy the GOP and give the country over to the socialists if it is not jettisoned in favor of principle and courage:

He added that he believes Barr's candidacy is a serious threat to Republican chances in November, because it could siphon off conservative voters who are skeptical of McCain.

If Tancredo doesn't have any courage, he can go to Hell.

*Supporting him is endorsing him Tancredo's playing little Clinton-esque word games.

That is all.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Another Incomplete Rally to the "War on Islamic Extremism"

Henry Lamb writes an article exhorting us to continue the war in Iraq because we are the only ones who can "stop Islamic extremism."

I am not impressed for at least two reasons:

First, his understanding of World War II is off:

When Hitler set out to conquer the world, it was American blood, treasure and determination that stopped him.

No, it was mostly Soviet blood, treasure, and determination that stopped him. Something like 3/4 of German deaths were at Soviet hands.

He also doesn't seem to have any idea what to do about Islamic extremism except for "stay in Iraq and Afghanistan." What he hopes to accomplish there is not made clear.

That's a big problem with a lot of the pro-warriors. They assert the evilness of Islam (or Islamic extremism) or somesuch as the reason to stay in Iraq, but they don't exactly make clear how we are going to make vertian htat Iraq stays in moderate Muslim hands, or, if they see Islam as irredeemably destructive to our interests, how they plan to prevent Muslims from eventually ruling a Muslim country.

That is all.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

I Hate Mighty Mouse

I love my flat-screen Imac.

But Apple's obsession with single button mouses is stupid. I finally threw my mighty mouse against the wall and broke it today after the umpteenth time that it could not distinguish between a right-click and a left-click. (I am currently using the older PC mouse that I use with my older Mac). The "cool design" of having one button that you control by where you click it is functionally inferior to having a mouse with multiple buttons with definite, easy-to-see boundaries between them. I am going to see if I can get a wireless, Mac-compatible PC mouse tomorrow, Friday, or over the weekend.

That is all.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

March 2008 Constitution Party Ballot Access (2008 Presidential Race)

This is the status of the Constitution Party ballot access campaign as of late February 2008:

Mar08CP

Click on this link to be taken to ballot access maps for the major third parties.

I made these maps using photoshop, and they are based on the March issue of Ballot Access News (I received it on February 28 or 29). [Because I based the map on the hardcopy newsletter, and have not proofread it against the online version, it may not match the statistics at the link if anything has been corrected or altered prior to posting the issue online].

At some point, I will try to organize all of my previous maps so that a person can see the progress of the campaign over time.

That is all.