Category: philosophy & politics

Immigration solution — invade Mexico!

Immigration solution — invade Mexico!

While this may seem an amusing “Modest Proposal” some experts see Mexico inevitably becoming the 51st State, if Puerto Rico doesn’t beat them to it.

Here is a modest proposal for solving the illegal immigration issue once and for all: Invade and occupy Mexico and admit it into the Union as the 51st state. That way, we can put an immediate end to all of the political hand-wringing on this pressing and volatile issue. Before you dismiss this idea as reckless, consider that there’s something in this plan for every American, regardless of their political stripe.

THE LAWYERS KILLING N.Y.

THE LAWYERS KILLING N.Y. By LAWRENCE J. MCQUILLAN & HOVANNES ABRAMYAN – New York Post Online Edition: Postopinion
The lawyers. In 2002, injured claimants received only 46 cents for every dollar paid by insurance companies for tort losses.

The President's Council of Economic Advisers estimated the excessive costs of the tort system nationwide were $136 billion in 2000 – equivalent to a 2 percent tax on consumption, a 3 percent tax on wages, or a 5 percent tax on capital. The same methodology puts today's excessive costs at more than $198 billion a year – equivalent to a tax of $2,654 on a family of four.

To put that in perspective, in 1950, America's tort system cost only $93 per person (adjusted for inflation).

Leaders in other parts of the country are making common-sense reforms to repair our out-of-control tort system. Many states, for example, cap the amount a jury can award for non-economic damages, which are designed to compensate plaintiffs for hard-to-quantify costs like "pain and suffering" or "mental distress." Studies show that such caps lower insurance costs and litigation rates.

IRAN OKS ‘NAZI’ SOCIAL FABRIC

IRAN OKS 'NAZI' SOCIAL FABRIC By AMIR TAHER

The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate "the influence of the infidel" on the way Iranians, especially the young, dress.

It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct color schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to instantly recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis" (unclean).

Jewish MP denies Iran badge plan

From correspondents in Tehran

May 20, 2006

IRAN'S only Jewish MP strongly denied reports in a Canadian newspaper overnight that Iran may force non-Muslims to wear coloured badges in public so they can be identified.

"This report is a complete fabrication and is totally false," Maurice Motammed said in Tehran. "It is a lie, and the people who invented it wanted to make political gain" by doing so. (More)

Even if the badging portion of the new dress regulations are not true, here is some historical re-counting of how this would not be unusual.

An ethos of infidel-hatred, including paroxysms of annihilationist fanaticism, has pervaded Persian/Iranian society, almost without interruption (i.e., the two major exceptions being Sunni Afghan rule from 1725-1794, and Pahlavi reign, with its Pre-Islamic revivalist efforts, from 1925-1979), since the founding of the Shi’ite theocracy in 1502 under Shah Ismail, through its present Khomeini-inspired restoration, since 1979. (More)

May 23, 2006 — EDITORS' NOTE: The Associated Press and others have challenged Amir Taheri's account (published in The Post on Saturday) of the proposed new Iranian dress code, noting that the law does not specify badges for religious minorities. Below is his reply.  I STAND BY MY COLUMN

Dali Lama Interview – ‘Westerners are too self-absorbed’

Telegraph | News | ‘Westerners are too self-absorbed’

They need to discover an inner strength, he tells them. “The West is now quite weak – it can’t cope with adversity and it has little compassion for others. People are like plants – they can develop ways of countering negative forces. If people took more responsibility for their own problems, they would become more self-confident.”

The Dalai Lama’s way of life is frugal – but not punishing. He doesn’t have to squash into economy seats when he takes off on his global tours, for example. “If I fly abroad, I fly business class – or my robes engulf everyone,” he explains. “But first class is an outrageous luxury.”

His only other indulgence is watchstraps. “I love them. My glasses, my shoes, my robes are always the same. The watchstrap, I change – I collect them.”

“Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence. It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world. This new terrorism has been brewing for many years. Much of it is caused by jealousy and frustration at the West because it looks so highly developed and successful on television. Leaders in the East use religion to counter that, to bind these countries together.”

Finding spiritual world’s middle ground

USATODAY.com – Finding spiritual world’s middle ground
President Bush is a classic obligation-keeper — pro-life and pro-traditional-family, with a strong focus on moral clarity. His approach to faith goes back to God’s original covenant with Abraham, whom God promised to make fruitful if he will walk before God and be blameless (Genesis 17:1-2). Bush supports laws banning gay marriage and partial-birth abortion and uses his position to stress the importance of religious obligation and personal morality.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, is a liberation-seeker — determined to help people in need and protect freedoms such as gay rights and abortion rights. His style of religion can be traced back to Moses and the exodus from Egypt, in which God liberates his people from the oppression of Pharaoh (Exodus 3:7-8). Clinton sees the political profession as a way to answer a call from God to help people, and his focus is on freeing people from captivity, discrimination, injustice and poverty.

Why Bush doesn’t bother vetoeing

Bush challenges hundreds of laws – The Boston Globe
Throughout the past two decades, for example, each president — including the current one — has objected to provisions requiring him to get permission from a congressional committee before taking action. The Supreme Court made clear in 1983 that only the full Congress can direct the executive branch to do things, but lawmakers have continued writing laws giving congressional committees such a role.

Still, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton used the presidential veto instead of the signing statement if they had a serious problem with a bill, giving Congress a chance to override their decisions.

In just five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so long in office without issuing a veto.

The Populist Latin Revolution

While America has been fixated on fighting the Islamo-Facist Revolution, another Revolution has been going on closer to home in Latin America. A revolution that according to provocative Black scholar Shelby Steele started after WWII:

I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty. This idea had organized the entire world, divided up its resources, imposed the nation-state system across the globe, and delivered the majority of the world’s population into servitude and oppression. After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself

With the exception of Cuba, Latin America never had their Revolution to end White Supremacy. As blogger Robert Mayer points out in his response to the ” Why isn’t Socialism Dead” (posted on this blog on May 6):

Latin America, next to Africa, is one of the most in-egalitarian continents in the world. Even Eastern Europe is no comparison. Military dictatorships, billionaire oligarchs, and foreign corporations have had their run of the place. Latin America is also still very much undermined by its Spanish colonial past. Most of the very wealthy in Latin American countries tend to be of European descent — in another word, white. Compare that to the poor, who are predominantly of Indian descent.You have yourself a genuine populist witches brew. A brew where people not only no longer believe in democracy, but advocate the complete redistribution of wealth based on racial terms.

Chile has been the most successful Latin Country to make the transition to a Free Market model, but it had the advantage of a relatively small indigenous population of Mapuche Indians to assimilate. Compare that to Bolivia, where they are over half and just elected Morales, a Populist one-of-their-own, who immediately sent the Army out to seize the gas fields. Problem is their neighbors in Brazil & Argentina (Through Spain) were the investors who developed those fields. Again they are relatively successful primarily European-descendant countries with their own Populist movement histories, as portrayed in the musical “Evita” and starring Madonna in the film version. Now the indigenous populist revolt has spilled over their borders to effect their Socialist economic well-being.

Socialism Dead?

TCS Daily – Why Isn’t Socialism Dead?

The Christian’s life is transformed because he accepts the myth that Christ will one day return and usher in the end of time; the revolutionary socialist’s life is transformed because he accepts the myth that one day socialism will triumph, and justice for all will prevail.

How many times have Christians in the last two thousand years been convinced that the Second Coming was at hand, only to be bitterly disappointed — yet none of these disappointments was ever enough to keep them from holding on to their great myth. So, too, Sorel argued, the myth of socialism will continue to have power, despite the various failures of socialist experiments, so long as there are revolutionaries who are unwilling to relinquish their great myth.

Men need myths — and until capitalism can come up with a transformative myth of its own, it may well be that many men will prefer to find their myths in the same place they found them in the first part of the twentieth century — the myth of revolutionary socialism.

The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam (Hardcover) > Read an Excerpt

The first of these is that a Muslim’s relationship with his God is one of fear. A Muslim’s conception of God is absolute. Our God demands total submission. He rewards you if you follow His rules meticulously. He punishes you cruelly if you break His rules, both on earth, with illness and natural disasters, and in the hereafter, with hellfire.

The second element is that Islam knows only one moral source: the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad is infallible.

The third element is that Islam is strongly dominated by a sexual morality derived from tribal Arab values dating from the time the Prophet received his instructions from Allah, a culture in which women were the property of their fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, or guardians. The essence of a woman is reduced to her hymen. Continue reading “The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam”

Was Stephen Colbert Funny?

TIME.com Print Page: Nation — Was Stephen Colbert Funny?
This insistence on the hilarity of Colbert's routine has a bullying quality, implying that jokes which adhere to the correct ideology are hilarious and failure to find humor in the party line is a kind of thought crime. By this logic, Cindy Sheehan should be hosting the Academy Awards.