Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Post Memorial Day Post

I am posting this post memorial day as I don't think it's proper to do anything but remember on such a day.
Auster nails it on memorial day:
Memorial Day I’m sorry that nothing has occurred to me today to post in honor of Memorial Day. I will just say this. I hope that in the future, if American Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen must make the ultimate sacrifice, it will be for the sake of our country, and not for the sake of some utopian crackpot scheme. Imagine what George Washington would have said about George W. Bush’s attempt to democratize the Muslim world.

WHAT IS CARRYING CAPACITY?

WHAT IS CARRYING CAPACITY?

A common fallacy is to equate existing and seemingly open or "unused" spaces with the kind of resources and ecologically productive land needed to support human life under modern conditions. In fact, the criterion for determining whether a region is overpopulated is not land area, but carrying capacity



Economists and politician-idiots like "Chuck" Schumer are still repeating the mantra 'we must grow or die'. This is simply keeping a broken system going on our watch and passing along greater problems to future generations. As long as economists tell us new housing starts are CENTRAL to our economy our government will act in accordance as long they CHEER when we surpass 300 million - close to 100 million people added to the US in my lifetime - we will going down a road of less farmland, less open space and lower quality of life. Why when there are alternatives? Greed? lack of Imagination?

"Democracy"of Lies

Steve Sailer comments on the rigged (twenty, yes TWENTY leading questions) immigration polls:
After many years in the marketing research industry, I've had a lot of experience with bad polls. But in the breakfast cereal business, poorly designed questionnaires will eventually get you fired. In contrast, politicians and pundits are positively looking for pollaganda that can be spun as supporting their views.
Similar misleading polls were rigged for Bruce Ratner courtesy of Crains. Then the big 'news' story is that people support open borders and eminent domain abuse. With the recent Iraq war vote by the democrats, politicians have shown they don't care for voter mandates- the democrats betrayed the constituency that voted them in and both them and neocons are now claiming that republicans were voted out NOT for the Iraq war but for 'anti-immigration'. You see, according to the spinsters around the beltway, what Americans really want are open borders and all out war with Iraq AND Iran, or as Sailer says a policy of "Invite the world, fight the world."

Friday, May 25, 2007

"coolest" Workspaces

Well my place (home or office) aren't in the running but here are some ideas:

coolest-workspace-head1.png

I never would have believed it:

From InstaTravelHoteliers across Europe have given their judgments in a survey for almost 15,000, that the best tourists in the world are the Japanese, followed by Americans and the Swiss.



Japanese and Swiss I can believe...but Americans? Maybe we're extra careful these days...maybe (as people often do) people mistake courteous Canadians for American.

further the survery said:

Rude behavior, being noise and miserly tipping, put the Britons down as the fifth worst tourists. Though they were commended for their spending habits and were voted the third biggest holiday spenders after Americans and Russians.

Japanese tourists stood out for being polite and tidy, securing 35 percent more votes than the Americans who came second. However, the Americans headed the category for ‘worst-dressed tourist table’.

Now THAT I can believe. Every American male should be required to visit Brooks Brothers and JPress before they travel.

Very Interesting Op Ed In the Washington Times

my comments are in blue

Paul Belien in The Washington Times

Today’s Washington Times features the editor of Brussels Journal, Paul Belien:

Europe is in the middle of a three-way culture war, between the defenders of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, the proponents of secular hedonism and the forces of Islamic Jihadism. In Western Europe, the fight between Christians and secularists is all but over. The secularists have won. Now, the religious vacuum left by the demise of Christianity is being filled by the Muslims. Since one cannot fight something with nothing, the European secularists are no match for Islam.

Notice Mr. Belien’s emphasis on Western Europe. He points out the difference in Eastern Europe, where Poland has locked horns with the EU on a number of issues:

On April 25, the European Parliament (EP), the EU’s legislature, adopted a resolution condemning “homophobia.” With 325 votes against 124 and 150 abstentions, the EP warned Poland that it will face sanctions if it adopts a law barring the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Churches, too, were reprimanded for “fermenting hatred and violence [against homosexuals].” Poland’s prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, commented on the resolution: “Nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland. However, if we’re talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools… such propaganda should not be in schools.” Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice retorted: “There is no homophobia in the Catholic Church and it is time that all this [recrimination of Christians in the European Parliament] ended.”

Secularists in Europe think their 'religion' of abstract ideals and Reason can be a light bright enough to shed light on 'dark' religion, in reality what is has brought to Europe is near Wiemer Republic like chaos and libertinism -- which will create a vaccum for structure.. as Peter Hitchens wisely states:

Will Britain convert to Islam?

By PETER HITCHENS,
Could Islam one day become the established church of Britain? Might English women adopt the headscarves and enveloping robes of their Asian sisters, as the call to prayer rises and falls across the slate roofs of rainswept industrial cities?

The idea is not as impossible, as bizarre or distant as you might think. An astonishing Channel 4 programme last week - The Last White Kids — showed two English children who live in an entirely Muslim district becoming enthusiastic attenders at the local mosque, wrapping themselves in Islamic draperies and learning the Koran.

But this strange little story contains a warning for Britain as a whole, as it careers ever more rapidly down the path of permissiveness which began so gently in the Sixties and now slopes ever more steeply downwards towards sexual chaos, drunkenness, family breakdown and the epidemic use of stupefying drugs.

Sooner or later, as in every other era of human history, there will be a revulsion against this licence, a desire to stop the waste, cruelty and misery which these things bring, especially to children.


Further evidence is not hard to find:

Why European women are turning to Islam

| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Mary Fallot looks as unlike a terrorist suspect as one could possibly imagine: a petite and demure white Frenchwoman chatting with friends on a cell-phone, indistinguishable from any other young woman in the café where she sits sipping coffee.

And that is exactly why European antiterrorist authorities have their eyes on thousands like her across the continent.


Islam converts change face of Europe
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

As many as 100,000 French and British citizens have converted to Islam over the last decade, according to a new book by an Israeli historian.

The figures cited by Hebrew University Prof. Raphael Israeli in his upcoming book The Third Islamic Invasion of Europe are representative of the fast-changing face of Europe, which the Islamic history professor says is in danger of becoming "Eurabia" within half a century.


Since they (EU secularists) loath both nationalism and religion and do EVERYTHING to stomp it out - and make the idea of anything remotely 'European' as evil......Islam is filling the void and basic human need.

Muslims are not afraid of 'political correctness' as most Europeans are (often with good reason, because, literally jail terms often are the punishment for un-PC behavior) European secularists are as foolish and blinded as the most foolish religious 'fanatic' that they loath, and in being so blind they have no idea what's about to hit them.



Additional Note on the Brussels Journal and "Free" Secular Europe:


The Brussels Journal is a Belgian conservative blog, founded and edited by Paul Belien. It was founded in 2005, and has both an English language section with various international contributions, and a Dutch section.

The Brussels Journal has articles on the politics of Belgium and the European Union.

In April 2006 the Belgian government accused the blog of racism and forced the removal of a Dutch language article on the site, "Geef ons Wapens!" (Give us Weapons!).[1] The incident caused the site to shift to English-centric in order to be able to present future such cases to the international media. The Washington Times carried an editorial deploring the stance of the Belgian authorities on August 17, 2006 concluding 'From what we've seen of the English version of the Brussels Journal, the accusations of racism are utterly baseless. Mr. Belien is guilty only of vigorously expressing his opinion, and in many cases it would benefit Belgium -- and Europe as a whole -- to heed the advice from the Brussels Journal rather than to criminalize it.'[2]

Belien summed up the raison d'être of the European journalists and writers behind The Brussels Journal as restoring the values of freedom, the quest for Knowledge and Truth to the “consensus-culture” of contemporary Europe. He stated that the journalists 'defended freedom' and noted that the Journal was a 'coalition of individuals' who 'write with an earnest desire for the truth.' He noted that 'what binds us is our defence of liberty and the conviction that the state exists to serve man and never the other way round.'

Writing for the National Review, Stanley Kurtz wrote "A number of us here in the United States have witnessed, with growing concern, reports of the government of Belgium's harassment of the weblog, "The Brussels Journal." We consider The Brussels Journal to be an invaluable source of information and opinion on matters European. By no means are all of us necessarily in agreement with everything that appears on The Brussels Journal. Nor are all of us by any means traditional Christians. Nonetheless, Americans recognize The Brussels Journal as one of the few web-based sources of European news and opinion from a conservative and Christian point of view, and we consider it essential that all sides of political and cultural questions be permitted a place in public debate."[5]


"Free" EU particularly in Belgium have been actively trying to stomp out any conservative/nationalist/anti-EU sentiment, including declaring one political party illegal after it started to show strength in the polls (it ran on a platform of reducing immigration). This is a very convenient form of democracy - anything that is opposition you declare 'hate' and therefore make it illegal.

I would also add that this problem will accelerate in America as well. Not only do we have a well established black nationalist Muslim movement but thanks to the Iraq war we should see a steady stream of converts and 'refugees' that will increase Muslim numbers in the US, who, incidently have already surpassed Jews, Episcopalians and Presbyterians in number.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Bush Wins War Funding And Democrats Discover An Old Friend.

Pork, Bush apparently knew that Democrats would brush off the voter mandate to end the Iraq war if a little pork was waived their way:

Dems, GOP win, lose on Iraq funding bill

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Wed May 23, 5:36 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Democrats may have lost their fight with
President Bush over a timetable for ending the war in Iraq, but they won billions of dollars for farm aid, hurricane victims, veterans and health care for poor children.


Those billions are about as likely to help hurricane victims, veterans and "the poor" as the billions sent to properly arm soldiers in Iraq or building affordable housing in Ratner's Atlantic Yards.

How did they 'lose' this fight other than simply not having the will to stop it? Meanwhile they and some crazy neocon republicans are hell bent on ramming through an immigration 'reform bill' that 85% of Americans are against....this is 'democracy'?

Importing a Slave Class for Wealthy Liberals

Importing a Slave Class
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 24, 2007


Apparently, my position on immigration is that we must deport all 12 million illegal aliens immediately, inasmuch as this is billed as the only alternative to immediate amnesty. The jejune fact that we "can't deport them all" is supposed to lead ineluctably to the conclusion that we must grant amnesty to illegal aliens � and fast!

I'm astounded that debate has sunk so low that I need to type the following words, but: No law is ever enforced 100 percent.

We can't catch all rapists, so why not grant amnesty to rapists? Surely no one wants thousands of rapists living in the shadows! How about discrimination laws? Insider trading laws? Do you expect Bush to round up everyone who goes over the speed limit? Of course we can't do that. We can't even catch all murderers. What we need is "comprehensive murder reform." It's not "amnesty" � we'll ask them to pay a small fine.

...



The great bounty of cheap labor by unskilled immigrants isn't going to hardworking Americans who hang drywall or clean hotel rooms � and who are having trouble getting jobs, now that they're forced to compete with the vast influx of unskilled workers who don't pay taxes.

The people who make arguments about "jobs Americans won't do" are never in a line of work where unskilled immigrants can compete with them. Liberals love to strike generous, humanitarian poses with other people's lives.

Something tells me the immigration debate would be different if we were importing millions of politicians or Hollywood agents. You lose your job, while I keep my job at the Endeavor agency, my Senate seat, my professorship, my editorial position, or my presidency. (And I get a maid!)

The only beneficiaries of these famed hardworking immigrants � unlike you lazy Americans � are the wealthy, who want the cheap labor while making the rest of us chip in for the immigrants' schooling, food and health care.

These great lovers of the downtrodden � the downtrodden trimming their hedges � pretend to believe that their gardeners' children will be graduating from Harvard and curing cancer someday, but 1) they don't believe that; and 2) if it happened, they'd lose their gardeners.


As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, our golf fairways would suffer without illegal immigrants: "You and I both play golf; who takes care of the greens and the fairways on your golf course?"

"justice" department "rewards" FDNY

Bush, of course, is no conservative in any meaningful sense - it should be no surprise his 'justice' department is suing the NY Fire department because it doesn't have enough blacks and hispanics. The reason, they don't do as well on written examinations...THEREFORE, the examinations MUST be biased. This is one of the direct consequences of Boasian 'anthropology' -because we are all born with a blank slate all differences must be socially caused. Heather MacDonald cuts through the nonsense:

City Journal
New York to the DOJ: Hands Off Our Fire Department
Firefighting is no place for racial politics.
Heather Mac Donald
23 May 2007

The Department of Justice has just filed a discrimination suit against the New York City Fire Department, alleging that the written exam for department eligibility is biased against blacks and Hispanics, because their pass rate is lower than for whites. Several questions come to mind, namely:

Isn’t this farce getting a bit old? In the 1970s, when knowledge about the cognitive skills gap between whites and Asians, on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics, on the other, was less widespread, it may have seemed plausible that disparities in passing rates resulted from biased tests or biased test-administering institutions. Today, however, after society has spent decades and millions of dollars trying unsuccessfully to close the test score gap on the SATs, LSATs, MCATs, NAEP, and every other objective standardized test, the claim that any given test is racist simply because blacks and Hispanics don’t score as well on it as whites and Asians is absurd. The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) has twisted itself in knots for over 20 years trying to hire more blacks and Hispanics without wholly compromising standards.

—Will the Justice Department please keep its hands off of our Fire Department? The DOJ suit alleges that asking prospective firemen to show a minimal competence in basic reasoning and reading skills is an unnecessary and racist job qualification. The New York Times printed two typical questions from the New York exam; they are ridiculously simple. In one, exam takers are asked to regurgitate information just provided in the question about the procedures for subway evacuations; in another, test takers are to choose a likely suspect in an arson from descriptions of three previous arsons and their likely perpetrators. The Justice Department argues that such elementary thinking skills are superfluous in a firefighter.

Perhaps every attorney who brought this suit, from the DOJ to the Center for Constitutional Rights, can sign up for a plan whereby the firemen protecting his home and business can’t process basic written information. [that Miss MacDonald is the problem bureucrats NEVER have to pay for the direct consequences of their actions]The rest of us can have a fire-fighting force that stands a chance of being able to perform the job adequately. The idea that all you need in fire-fighting today is a pair of strong arms is fanciful (and of course even that requirement has been lifted to get women into firehouses). The memory of September 11 should remind the Justice Department that firemen need knowledge of hazardous materials and of complex evacuation procedures; not only are the technologies for fighting fires becoming more sophisticated, but emergency medical responses depend on the capacity to learn from written material.




Bush, while advocating torture and suspension of individual liberties continues liberal meddling suits like this. Even if they don't win the effect is clear - the "justice" department - that doesn't have to worry about legal fees can sue any firm, or even local office they suspect of not having the right mix of ethnicities (in reality only if it is majority white -majoriy-minority firms and departments are rarely if every sued)- which, presumably, is an indicator of their adherence to our new multicultural 'paradise'.

Hey Ratner, Would You Like Us to Pay for Your Dry Cleaning Too?

DDDB informs us that projects like Atlantic Yards will increase OUR electric bills by 17%:
AY Will Increase Your Electric Bill. Shocking.

Hey New York, Atlantic Yards is going to increase your Con Edison bill. NY1 is reporting that at a state assembly hearing on a record Con Ed rate hike, ConEd officials said that big projects such as "Atlantic Yards" are necessitating a rate hike that will be at least 17%.



As mentioned the Mayor is making no serious investment in infrastructure. The law I believe, requires that power stations be within a certain distance from NY. So who is going to pay for the overflow Atlantic Yards effect? Can we imagine the mayor or the so called power-elite's properties being taken for eminent domain to build additional power stations? or absorb the health risks associated with living nearby them? The mayor and other backward thinking 'leaders' are still under the impression we must 'grow or die' which leaves me wondering when does growth kill us? Its obviously an unsustainable pattern unless of course we want a New York City of 30 million people (hey it's GREAT for the tax base!)
But again if projects like AY are increasing power costs why isn't RATNER paying for it? Oh, I forgot he gets a tax BREAK for increasing OUR electric bills.

Gowunas Lounge on Atlantic Yards

Worth repeating in full..By way of the ever-diligent and worthy NoLandGrab:

Sharp Knives: Markowitz, Yassky and de Blasio Purge Community Board 6

The Gowanus Lounge follows up on yesterday evening's post with some thoughtful commentary:

What is interesting about the CB6 purge isn't that it happened--that's hardball politics in the big city--but that it again shines a spotlight on the awful Atlantic Yards process.

We have long felt that the process was both deeply flawed and largely undemocratic--so much so that few public officials even cared about creating an appearance of bona fide public participation. The CB6 dismissals strengthen the belief that Mr. Markowitz and other supporters were unwilling to tolerate basic legitimate questions about the project's impact on the community or an honest assessment of its public costs. CB6 did its job by raising questions and representing the community.

We understand that politics is politics. When Richard Nixon didn't like the way the Watergate investigation was going, he exercised his Presidential power and fired the investigators. The current Attorney General is in hot water for putting the screws to U.S. Attorneys. At the end of the day, one of the perks of position and power is the ability to fire those whose performance displeases you.

Yet, the CB6 Purge gets to the reasons that Atlantic Yards has had such a sadly divisive and deeply corrosive impact on Brooklyn politics and on civic discourse. One clear culprit has been the absence of real participatory democracy in a project that will impact the quality of life in surrounding communities for generations to come. Had the planning process not been handled as a top-down exercise, the outcome might still have been the same, but some of the bitterness and civic poison might have been diluted. (We remember the huge discussion session held at the Javits Center to get public input about rebuilding of the World Trade Center site. It didn't make a difference in the convoluted planning and development process, but it gave thousands of people a sense that their opinions were being heard.) A real public process would have allowed for an airing of strong feelings and led to real modifications of the proposal that reflected legitimate community concerns. It would have tempered some resentment. It might even--gasp--have led to broader support.

CB6 was one of the institutions that tried to represent community concerns. To have members that raised them symbolically taken out and shot for speaking their minds, is fair political game, we suppose. But it's indicative of the political sickness that surrounds Atlantic Yards. And it will have implications for other important work, like the Gowanus rezoning, in which CB6 is involved.

We remain convinced that a generation from now, someone will be teaching an urban planning course that uses Atlantic Yards as the case study of how not to plan a major public project. In that context, the CB6 Atlantic Yards Massacre will be an interesting footnote.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

I just discovered something really wierd about this blog...

Large parts of my paragraphs are being randomly deleted, making it look like I am even more disorganized than I actually am. Hey blogspot, honestly I don't need any help in this department, I am disorganized enough as it is!

- its really odd, I will type a sentence like "I am the very model of a modern major general" and it will publish like "I very model of a major general"

What Kind of Democracy Is This?

What Kind of
Democracy Is This
?'
A grieving father wants to know
by Justin Raimondo

The family of Andrew Bacevich, a 27-year-old first lieutenant who was recently killed in an ambush north of Baghdad, doesn't want to see its beloved son and brother turned into an impersonal symbol of a tragic and unnecessary war: they want him to be remembered as a special person, "a great-looking kid with an infectious smile," as one of his close friends put it at his funeral service.


Bacevich, a prominent conservative critic of the war who has deemed the invasion "a catastrophic failure," thought his responsibility was to voice his opposition to the war, but, he asks:

"What kind of democracy is this when the people do speak and the peoples voice is unambiguous – but nothing happens?"


Every time I see young lives wasted and fat, corrupt neoconservatives cheerleading for more war, more chaos:

Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran

May 22, 2007 6:29 PM

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

Bush_authorizes_mnThe CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.






I become not only angry, but forced to the conclusion that the current administration and congress have not only abdicated their oath to uphold the constitution but are actively dismantling it. As said earlier, I would like to see a draft reinstated - but an idealogical one - I'd like every Neocon, every cheerleader for the Iraq war no matter how old, to serve in active duty there - Even Hillary and the other female warhawks.

Since many of them would fail a basic loyalty test (whether because of loyalty to a foriegn nation or disloyalty to the Constitution), I would suggest setting up a sort of foreign legion. They are too old you say? or too infirm? Well the young children and old men and women of iraq have no choice in the matter so why should neocons?

Amu

I caught this film at the 2005 Indo-Arts festival (yes 2005, not 06)- nice to see its finally getting released in Art House cinemas - the directer and her producer husband seemed like very nice people.

Without going too much into it, it goes into the 1984 (after the assassination of Indira Gandhi) anti-Sikh riots in which thousands of Sikhs were killed, often while police literally turned and looked the other way.

Open Source Warfare

Globalisation was getting kind of tiresome anyway, wasn't it? Anyway it might all come to a crashing end and while serious, smart people are thinking about these issues, New York City politicians, too bent on greed and short term profit do not:

City Journal Home. City Journal
Open Source Warfare
John Robb’s chilling brief on postmodern terrorism
Glenn Reynolds
23 May 2007

Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, by John Robb (Wiley, 224 pp., $24.95)

Last year, I wrote a book called An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Government, Big Media, and Other Goliaths. It was a celebration of how technology empowers the little guy, though I did spend some time discussing the darker sides of this development. John Robb’s Brave New War is in a way the mirror image of my argument: it devotes a lot of space to the dark side of the technological empowerment of individuals and small groups, and much less to potential upsides.

The dark side is certainly there. In the old days, you needed many people to commit significant mayhem—something like a Roman legion, or at least a century. Nowadays, one man with an AK-47 is probably a match for a hundred Roman legionaries, and modern explosives make matters even more asymmetrical. In the foreseeable future, Robb concludes, we may even see a situation where an individual can declare war on the world—and win.

.....

All sorts of technological trends—from biotechnology to nanotechnology—work to amplify the lethality of individuals and small groups. But the biggest contemporary source of bad-guy empowerment, Robb rightly notes, comes from the vulnerability of our own modern systems and networks for electrical distribution, telecommunications, transportation, food distribution, and more, which are subject to swift disruption if critical nodes or resources are destroyed.

.....

Even without terrorists or war, things can easily go wrong in our interconnected world, as became exceedingly clear in 2003. The SARS epidemic sent shockwaves throughout the global economy, and threatened to ground air travel.

......

That puts a premium on planning, to respond effectively when things go wrong.[reminder there is NO security plan and NO security measures for the proposed Altantic Yards site] And that’s a place where there’s much room for improvement—both in our world and, to a degree, in Robb’s book. When it comes to survivability, Robb is a small-is-beautiful kind of guy.

.......

Robb is a critic of “brittle security”—the approach that produces a hard shell but a soft center. He’s right to be critical. As Robb makes clear, terrorism is a fast-moving, dispersed phenomenon that depends on the varying talents of lots of enthusiastic participants. ......

......

Nevertheless, Robb has written an important book that every policymaker should read. While brief, it is also—quite justifiably—frightening. My worry is that the paucity of constructive suggestions will cause many rightly frightened policymakers to put down Brave New War, order a stiff drink, and think about something more pleasant, surely not the result that Robb intends.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, and the publisher of InstaPundit.com.

Stupid Things People Say.

Apparently there was something "wrong" with Ireland and now its 'better' from the BBC.

Ireland's new multicultural mix
It is almost difficult to remember pre-immigration, pre-multicultural Ireland, such is extent of the change it has brought to the country.
After all, no country can be great without a diversity of people.”"

Really? Gee how did those homogeneous Florentines give us the Rennaissance without being so 'enriched'? How could Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, Donatello, and Brunelleschi be so creative..or am I just being euro-centric - a mud hut an equal accomplishment to the Duomo's dome? How did the Athenians give us the greatest architects, sculptors and philosophers the world has known? How did 18th Scotland produce Scott, Adam Smith, Hume, and something like 50% important inventions of the industrial age? And Elizabethian England - how is they produced more great poets than the US has with thirty times the population?

Now, can anyone name me an artist as great as Michaelangelo that arouse from a 'multicultural' country, if such an oxymoron exists? Or a writer as great as Shakespeare?

Lies, repeated, are still lies.

Ain't Diversity Grand?

and it enriches us as Brenda Walker lets us know:

An alarming 26% — or roughly 100,000 of younger U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings against non-Muslim “civilian targets” are cool. That’s really not any more comforting than the 35% of young Muslim Brits who told Pew the same thing after some of them bombed the London subway, killing 52 civilians and wounding another 700 or so.

A few points:

  • Of Muslims residing in America, 65 percent are foreign born (page 1 of the downloadable PDF report).
  • Only 28 percent consider themselves Americans first; 47 percent have their primary identity in being Muslim (pg 31).
  • Among those who identify as Muslims first, 13 percent believe suicide bombing is justified to protect Islam from infidels (page 32).
  • Also among the Muslim-first set, only 28 percent believe that a “group of Arabs” carried out the 9/11 attacks, while 40 percent did not accept the 9/11 perpetrators were Arabs and 32 percent declined to answer or said they didn’t know (pg 32).
  • In terms of political philosophy, 70 percent of Muslims residing in America prefer big government, and only 11 percent are or lean Republican (pg 41).

Strangely enough Neocons still think we can invite the world, fight the world. Personally I feel soooo much better with a more 'diverse' population - knowing for example there are 100,000+ young muslims walking around who think its okay for someone to walk into Grand Central Station at rush hour with a pack of explosives and blow themselves up.

Much as MSM tries to spin it:
Mostly moderate, not monolithic
Los Angeles Times - 14 hours ago
Poll finds an assimilated community, yet younger Muslims are more likely to see grounds for suicide bombings. By Rebecca Trounson, Times Staff Writer.

as much as MSM tries to spin this, they stumble....YOUNGER - in other words Muslims who should be MORE assimilated are more likely to support terrorism.

Markowitz May Be Borough President...

...but his real boss is Forest City. I knew he was a low life they day he took office - his first 'act' was a cheap political stunt. Now he's purging Community Board members for being, well, good community board members. Why? Because they didn't do what Bruce Ratner wanted. Should this be getting more coverage than it should? Should people be outraged that developers are more or less controlling the borough/city/state?

from DDDB:
Markowitz Boots Board Members

The volunteer job of Community Board members is to represent the community as best they can, not to act as an extension of Borough Hall. In the Bronx, when Community Board 4 voted against the Yankee Stadium plan, many of its members were purged by Bronx Borough President Carrion (and now CB4 is finding it difficult to even function.)

That kind of purge is now happening in Brooklyn. Our view is that the role of Community Boards is to represent the community--which is what 2, 6 and 8 did--not act as puppets for their appointers.

First the Community Boards (2,6 and 8) were marginalized and bypassed by the state's override of the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). With ULURP those three boards would have had recommendation votes on "Atlantic Yards." But the Boards were left on the sidelines like pretty much every political entity outside of the Public Authorities Control Board.

So last August the Community Boards, unlike the Borough President, held hearings outside of any formal review process, to allow their districts to express their views on the project. Then they set out to formulate a position based on the the community's sentiment. Community Board 6 passed a very well reasonsed resolution against the project. (All the Boards also submitted abundant comments on the state's Draft Environmental Impact Statement.) What did some of the Community Board 6 members get for their volunteer efforts to represent their community? As expected after weeks of rumor, some of them got the boot.

From the NY Times:

Project’s Foes Shown Door in Brooklyn

The letter arrived in Marilyn Oliva’s mailbox yesterday from the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz. It thanked her for her dedication to the community as a member of Community Board 6, but informed her that her services were no longer needed.

Ms. Oliva was disappointed. She was also not alone. Though community board members’ terms are usually renewed routinely, Mr. Markowitz on Monday replaced at least five longtime members who had sought reappointment to Community Board 6, which covers the brownstone neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.

The five members had one thing in common: they voted yes last year on a resolution denouncing Atlantic Yards, the $4 billion development project that Mr. Markowitz has spent three years and much of his political capital extolling.

Mr. Markowitz refused to comment on the reasons for his move, but there certainly seemed to be something about Community Board 6 that displeased him.
...

In the case of Atlantic Yards, Community Board 6’s resolution last September, though strongly critical, was almost purely symbolic: the project is being managed by a state agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, and is exempt from the city land-use process.

But Celia Cacace, who has been on the board since the early 1980s — long before Mr. Markowitz was elected — said that he took her aside at a community event a few months ago to criticize her and her colleagues.

“He said, ‘I’m going to get rid of everybody on the board that voted for this,’ ” according to Ms. Cacace, 71, whose term expires next year. “He says, ‘Remember, you are my appointee.’ Every time I tried to say something he totally lambasted me.”

That people are being removed from their positions because they did not carry out the wishes of a developer (and we know that marty is only a conduit for the developer) should be deeply, deeply disturbing. Now who can we expect to replace them? Pro Atlantic Yards people ...then we'll get some slick mailers informing us that our community boards approve of this big beautiful exciting project! Isn't democracy great!..oh, but never mind American Idol is on! hey, who are the Yanks playing tonight? A new macrobiotic Korean-Swedish fusion restaurant opened!

What's really disturbing here is the corruption is now out-in-the-open Latin American style - EVERYONE knows why Markowitz is doing this and he's doing it with the confidence that mainstream media (MSM) and big developers like Ratner will give him so much backing it doesn't matter. Its a 'democracy' of short term memory- developers and other corrupt officials are no doubt promising Marty if he does this they'll line up big voting blocks and give him power to grant 'favors' that he can exchange for votes.

Update: NoLandGrab adds the poignant observation:

Marginalized, then Used, then Purged

NoLandGrab adds the following to our comments on the marginalization of the Community Boards. Not only were they marginalized, but then they were used:
Missing from this account is the invitation by Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner (FCR) to the Chairpersons of Boards 2, 6, & 8 to participate in talks for the Community Benefits Agreement. This role was very limited and ended before working sessions began. Later FCR touted the Boards' participation in brochures mailed to area residents. The Communtiy Boards sent FCR a cease-and-desist letter, but the damage had been done.

Marty and FCR went around the Community Boards' official function and then un-officially used them. When the Community Boards tried to stand up for the community, Marty began the purge.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

George Borjas (harvard econ) has a blog...:

Blacks and Immigration

About a year ago, Jeff Grogger (at the University of Chicago), Gordon Hanson (at the University of California at San Diego), and I decided to write a paper examining the impact of immigration on African-Americans. The fruits of that research are now summarized in the latest issue of the NBER digest. (Click here for a copy of the--be forewarned!--very technical paper in pdf format). Here's part of the NBER summary:

Almost everybody knows that in the past 40 years, the real wages and job prospects for low-skilled men, especially low-skilled minority workers, have fallen. And there is evidence –– although no consensus –– that a rising tide of immigration is partly to blame. Now, a new NBER study suggests that immigration has more far-reaching consequences than merely depressing wages and lowering employment rates of low-skilled African-American males: its effects also appear to push some would-be workers into crime and, later, into prison.....The authors are careful to point out that even without increased immigration, most of the fall in employment and increase in jailed black men would have happened anyway. Nevertheless, the racially disproportionate effects of immigration on employment are striking.

Lies Have Consequences.

We were lied into the Iraq War. Bruce Ratner is lying about Atlantic Yards. Lying is now the modus operundi for our so called power elite.

What is curious is that is seems to be easier to get a lie known then the truth. We, opposition to Atlantic Yards have always felt that 'if the people knew' they would be outraged at the massive public outlays, the eminent domain abuse that Ratner is palming off as a 'civic' project. Likewise, leading up to Iraq war, i was bewildered that people actually believed there were "WMD" and Saddam was another 'Hitler'. Why is it so many people are willing to accept a lie instead of the truth? Is it because MSM is an 'authority'? Have they always lied, but don't realize that the internet has made it easier to expose their lies?



Giuliani repeats the 'big lie' of 9-11. Why? Obviously this lie is profitable to vested interested not because the lie is valuable, but rather because the truth is damaging.Link:
Principled Paul

By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Sunday, May 20, 2007


Sullivan contends, rightly, that Paul has been the best thing about the GOP's otherwise ideologically predictable TV debates so far -- mainly because Paul is the only one on stage who truly believes in individual liberty and actually believes everything he says.

It was Paul's exchange with Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday in South Carolina over the causes of 9/11 that enraged conservative pundits. Paul, who voted against the war in Iraq and wants troops brought home ASAP, merely said what any CIA agent or regular Time
magazine reader knows to be 96 percent true: The attacks of 9/11 were "blowback" from 50 years of America's vile interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East.

....

Giuliani's explanation for 9/11 was the familiar Father Bush fairy tale: Fundamentalist Islamist terrorists attacked us because they hate our freedoms, our wealth, our immoral culture and our failure to publicly stone Paris Hilton to death.

In part because of his tough, albeit childish, response, Giuliani was declared Tuesday night's big winner by many in the mainstream and conservative media. Paul was subsequently called a crackpot, a member of the left-wing "I hate America" crowd and a relic of 1930s isolationism.



And there you have it. A big bold faced lie. Giuliani couldn't possible think this is true...or could he? could it be that his vested interests in the lie are so great that he cannot see the truth?

Just How Unimaginative Is the Atlantic Yards Proposal? Compare to What's out there.

Not that this is the solution for Vanderbilt Yards, but it just illustrates how backdated Ratner-Bloomberg-Gehry et al are - stuck on flashy, empty "novelty architecture' while paying lip service to "green" initiatives.

A Green Environmental Tower - Dubai


The Dynamic Architecture building, which will be constantly in motion changing its shape, will be able to generate electric energy for itself as well as for other buildings. Forty-eight wind turbines fitted between each rotating floors as well as the solar panels positioned on the roof of the building will produce energy from wind and the sunlight, with no risk of pollution. The total energy produced by this inbuilt ‘powerhouse' every year will be worth approximately seven million dollars.
Each turbine can produce 0.3 megawatt of electricity, compared to 1-1.5 megawatt generated by a normal vertical turbine (windmill). Considering that Dubai gets 4,000 wind hours annually, the turbines incorporated into the building can generate 1,200,000 kilowatt-hour of energy.
As average annual power consumption of a family is estimated to be 24,000 kilowatt-hour, each turbine can supply energy for about 50 families. The Dynamic Architecture tower in Dubai will be having 200 apartments and hence four turbines can take care of their energy needs. The surplus clean energy produced by the remaining 44 turbines can light up the neighborhood of the building.
However, taking into consideration that the average wind speed in Dubai is of only 16 km/h the architects may need to double the number of turbines to light up the building to eight. Still there will be 40 free turbines, good enough to supply power for five skyscrapers of the same size.

Government For Forest City, By Forest City and Of Forest City.

Why was the MTA deciding to change a bus route on 5th? from Atlantic Yards ReportIncomplete answers

On Friday, I finally got an answer from NYCT's Seaton. "We are not changing that bus route," he told me.

The agency, he said, had been told by developer Forest City Ratner that the street was going to be closed on June 1, hence the plan for the May 27 change in the bus route. In other words, NYCT was apparently not responding to information from DOT, as he'd said previously.

So, why was NYCT taking its cues only from the developer? Why had NYCT not checked fully with DOT and ESDC before announcing the reroute? Seaton's updated information didn't cover those issues, so he couldn't say.




Well Mr. Oder, apparently the MTA is sometimes remarkably efficient and in this case, chose to go straight to the horse's mouth rather than a middleman.

Bloomberg's Pay to Play Demockcracy

From No Land Grab:

Wanna know how to get on Bloomberg's good side? And it's legal to boot!

Companies with business before the city are among those contributing to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, which has been raising millions of dollars to support some of Mayor Bloomberg’s highest priority initiatives, including anti-poverty programs, public art restoration, housing, and parks.

The list of nearly 100 organizations that donated to the city’s charitable arm between October 2006 and March 2007 shows support for Mr. Bloomberg’s projects from a cross section of industries, including television and film, banking, and telecommunications.
...
New York-based corporations and philanthropists are paying more attention to the fund than ever. And while Mr. Bloomberg often says he is not beholden to special interests because he does need campaign contributions, the fund is one way for those with business before government to attempt to get on the mayor’s good side. JPMorgan Chase, for example, is seeking tax breaks for a new headquarters. The Starr Foundation is controlled by Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, who, along with the foundation, was the target of a probe by Eliot Spitzer when Mr. Spitzer was attorney general.

Donors who have interests in the city are not hard to find. Filings going back to October 2004 show that... Forest City Ratner, the developer on the Atlantic Yards project, gave between $250,000 and $499,999.


No doubt the Mayor and Ratner assure us that is has no bearing on decisions by Bloomberg, or his curious support of Ratner's very bad project. After all Ratner at one time assured us that he didn't make political contributions to avoid the 'appearance of impropriety' (we learned of course he was concerned with the appearance not the impropriety). That of course, requires us to believe that either man has integrity or trustworthiness, a leap of faith I am not able to make.

But a small reminder: who picks up the slack for all these companies getting tax breaks? After all somebody has to pay for Bruce Ratner's subsidies, God knows his lousy projects can't make money themselves...so who is that someone? Its you and me, and the rest of us who aren't making big contributions to Bloomberg's pet causes.

Important Duffield Street Hearing

(photo from No Land Grab)

Important Duffield Street Hearing



Duffield Street, is a 'smaller' (though I am sure to the home-owners much bigger!) version of what is happening at Vanderbilt Yards, in Brooklyn, and on a larger scale - nationally - politicians and big developers are now using the 'tools' of government to not only raid the public coffers but take people's property away. In this case it is of extra importance because it also is an example of the feverish desire of the East Coast elite in particular to erase America's past and any shared sense of identity.

In the Bloomberg-Bush world the past is erased and replaced by big flashy Frank Gehry designs that are nothing more than corporate Identity logos made large. We're not supposed to think about important issues, rather Paris's jail sentance, the Yank's pitching and other bread and circus distractions. Small companies and home owners - the people that held on an built Brooklyn after central planning destroyed it, are shoved aside not by a free market, but by specific government action that favors large companies that line the pockets of politicians. Lip service is paid to being 'green' and slick press conferences are held, meanwhile, Bloomberg seeks to build more parking lots.

Nearly everything wrong with our country can summed up in what the government is trying to do to this little property on Duffield Street. But this little property both in its participation in the underground railroad and it the current fight of its homeowners, remind us that it is the seemingly small efforts of ordinary citizens that bring down the titans.

The Path to National Suicide

Pat Buchanan on WND &Vdare


Not only is the Melting Pot broken, it is rejected by our elites. Minorities are urged to hold onto their own language, customs, traditions. Identity politics is in. And the largest cohort, Mexicans, comes from a country with a historic grievance [curiously the same suicidal policy is in place in SPAIN letting north african muslims back in! Isabelle and Ferdinand must be rolling in their graves, if any country in the world has the RIGHT to reject muslims simply because they are muslim it is SPAIN. It illustrates just how insane the European elite are - apparently they have completely forgotten that the Spanish people fought for 800 years to expel the moors and that the moors (north african muslims) still look at Spain as theirs and long to turn the cathedrals like Seville's back into mosques] and a claim on the territory they are entering.
....
As we see from the election battles in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Mexico, race and ethnicity are not receding as issues, but rising. In South Central Los Angeles, black and Hispanic gangs are at war over race and turf. [underreported in the media - our borders are scenes of perpetual violence and now major cities like LA...New York is not far behind if this insanity continues]

Addressing the Knights of Columbus in 1915, Theodore Roosevelt warned, "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."



One question I always get is "i kinda of agree with you but I(or my parents or grandparents) immigrated, so I feel like a hypocrite'. don't its not about either or - there was a time for opening up immigration wide -when we were a sparsely populated country - and time for closing it when MASS immigration directly results in lower quality of life (increased population decreased wages for the poorest, strain on the environment). And if you, your parents or grandparents risked and invested so much to come here, wouldn't it be foolish to support a policy which will destroy whatever gains you made here...because there ain't no other place left to go.

Monday, May 21, 2007

The End of America's "classless' Society

though far from perfect, the prior to the 1965 immigration reform act, the US had what was considered one of the most 'classless' (and I don't mean our manners) societies in the world. Importing servitude labor as a specific underclass that is a distinct ethnic group (or groups) spells the end of that. Do the idiots profiting off this care? Of course not, in fact given their attitude, they probably want to live in such a society.... Do they care that it is damaging for the long term future of the US? No.

The end of the classless society
The immigration bill brought forward and apparently likely to pass demonstrates an unattractive new political trend in the United States: the end of the classless society for which the U.S. has been famous and the opening of yawning political as well as economic gaps between rich and poor.

Traditionally, the United States has been economically unequal, but without a sharp divide between rich and poor in the political arena. Democrats represented the South, minorities and unionized labor, while Republicans represented small business and the professional classes. The truly rich have always been more or less evenly divided between the parties. Thus, except for a brief period in 1932-46, the U.S. never had a real class-based politics.

One economic force was always likely to change this; the steady increase in inequality seen in the United States since about 1969.

by way of James Fulford

and from Lawerence Auster:
Too stupid for this earth

At the Corner:

Amnesty: An Honest Question [John Podhoretz]
What action, short of deportation or imprisonment, wouldn’t be amnesty?
05/21 11:46 AM
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 02:57 PM

[my note John Podhoretz is strong argument against the idea that intelligence is inherited. ]

Wordocracy Or Why the World Needs More Norman Oders

Some people say we're headed for an idiocracy. Still others a one world goverment...but I think we're headed for a wordocracy, Steve Sailer points out:

As I've pointed out before, the Age of Ideology—when the big questions were simple ones, such as Communism vs. Capitalism —is over. We live in the Age of the Fine Print, where the devil is in the details.

He further writes:
In reality, the MSM want the issue to be taken care of in a hurry behind closed doors, because otherwise. if public debate were encouraged, it would be "divisive." And in a republic, we aren't supposed to have political divisions over legislation determining the future of the country, now are we? We are supposed to delegate that to famously wise men like Senator Kennedy and President Bush with their long records of outstanding judgment, while we peons can worry about more important matters like Paris Hilton's jail sentence.

Atlantic Yards is another example of this. On the surface its about jobs housing and hoops...sounds good until you read the fine print - something most of us simply don't have the time to do. Then you find out that there is no affordable housing, few jobs and lots of pork.

So it goes with this immigration bill - MSM makes broad sweeping editorials about this 'ending the problem' when in the fine print no one - even the senators voting on it - have time to read - its really a floodgate towards literallly dismantling our republic.

Chertoff, Kennedy and other traitors (no other word for them, sorry if it sounds bombastic , but it's true) then, like Ratner, play the race card - oh you must be some sort of bigot if you're against this.

As one black caller to Bill O'Reliely said:

A black caller from LA told bill that in 10 to 15 years we would be driven out of our region by the Mexican invasion and the changes it would bring.

The caller wanted to know how we (white people) could be willing to lose our own country just so that we would not be called "racists"? The puzzlement in his voice was priceless.


Puzzling indeed.



Here's an example of Chertoff's attitude (keep in mind he has REFUSED to defend our borders POST 9-11 - why this puzzling behavior?!):
Most Outrageous Comment Regarding Opponents To “Comprehensive ...19 May 2007 by Joe Guzzardi
…goes to Michael Chertoff who suggested that many who oppose the Senate’s concept of immigration reform would not be satisfied with anything less than “capital punishment” for illegal aliens.

Stifling Noise? Traffic Jams, Honking Horns...Pollution?

Solution: double pane windows and an air conditioner courtesy of Forest City Ratner.

From No Land Grab:
RATNER TO BROOKLYN: BE COOL

The NY Post
By Rich Calder

Developer Bruce Ratner is not only bringing NBA basketball and skyscrapers to Brooklyn, he's bringing free air conditioners and insulated windows.

Ratner last week sent out letters to about 700 residences around - and even within - the 22-acre footprint of his planned $4 billion Atlantic Yards project for Prospect Heights, telling residents that they are eligible to receive air conditioners and double-paned windows to help minimize construction noise.



As DDDB correctly reports, its also the 'solution' to the vast environmental problems created by this project (NOT just the construction):

We've gotten word that somewhere near 700 residents along Dean Street, Flatbush and Vanderbilt Avenues have gotten or will get this certified mail letter offering the recipient resident 30 days to decide if they want to accept Forest City Ratner's State mandated "noise attenuation" measures to mitigate the noise from the arena, construction and traffic.

Wow that's all that's needed to solve all these global warming/green house gas emissions problems! and imagine all these idiots wasting time trying to design environmentally friendly buildings and urban plans that mimize traffic when all you have to do is install a few windows and air conditioning!

I have a BRILLIANT idea to solve NY's housing "crisis" lets build similar high density tower clusters on Bruce Ratner's 196 acre estate (using the power of eminent domain, of course) and in Bloomberg/Zuckerman/Ratner's Upper East Side neighborhood. We'll provide them with a similar 'solution' to the excess pollution and noise. Since they are certain it is good for us, certainly it must be good for them.

Cutty Sark Damaged in Fire


What a shame! I have seen her in person her lines are beautiful. "Cutty Sark" gets its name from a Highland Banshee who would chase male travelers at night and chop off their heads. She wore a (short) cutty (chemise) sark. Clipper ships often took their names from fast moving objects - "flying cloud" or witches since their sails 'bewitched' the wind - "Sea Witch"

Fire Damages British Clipper Cutty Sark


Monday May 21, 2007 3:46 PM

AP Photo LON802, LST101, LON805

By D'ARCY DORAN

Associated Press Writer

GREENWICH, England (AP) - A spectacular fire early Monday heavily damaged the clipper ship Cutty Sark, one of London's proudest relics of the 19th century tea trade with China designed to be the fastest ship of its day.

Great Blog I Stumbled On

one of the great things about bad things like this very bad immigration 'reform' bill is that it stirs up a hornet's nest of normally idle blogs - as this one (bold highlights mine)

Importing "Family Values"

"But it would also seem a priori likely that third-world immigrants should have stronger family values than white, middle-class, suburban Americans, while their work ethic and willingness to defer to traditional sources of authority should be greater as well."

Francis "Still Waiting for the End of History" Fukuyama


"My second argument is that the immigrants themselves are like a booster shot of traditional morality injected into the body politic. Immigrants work hard. They build community groups. They have traditional ideas about family structure, and they work heroically to make them a reality."

David Brooks


"As a Texan, I have known many immigrant families, mainly from Mexico, and I have seen what they add to our country. They bring to America the values of faith in God, love of family, hard work and self reliance -- the values that made us a great nation to begin with."

George W. Bush


The sub-species of reptilia known as neoconservatives are among the chief proponents of (altogether now) "comprehensiveimmigrationreform" because they loathe bourgeois, middle-American values and breathlessly await the birth of "The First Universal Nation."

Feel free to quibble, but any rational definition of a nation begins with a homogeneous population sharing a common identity and occupying a contiguous territory; speaking the same language; having a common religion, literature, manners, customs, literature, and mythology; governed by the same principles and traditions; and conscious of common destiny and solidarity. In short, it is an ethno-cultural entity and by definition cannot be universal in nature.

Neocons believe in the concept of a "propositional" nation, where nationhood is defined ideologically, and rather than tied together through ancestry or a shared history, a people is united by a common commitment to a set of ideas and ideals, a creed. As Lawrence Auster has argued, Neocons start with an organizing mythology about nationhood: "America was built on universal principles of human rights, equality, and open borders; therefore America, by definition, must have a virtually infinite capacity for absorbing racially and culturally diverse peoples into its national fabric; and therefore any serious concerns about what immigration is actually doing to the country are un-American and must be automatically dismissed."

Hence the American nation is reduced to a series of bumper-stickers--"The First Universal Nation," "A Melting Pot," or a "Nation of Immigrants" grounded in the principles of "Family Values."

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Non Democratic Government- First Atlantic Yards..now..

Immigration 'reform' from Steve Sailer:

Under the leadership of Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), various Senators and Bush Administration officials pulled an all-nighter on Wednesday. By noon Thursday, the bleary-eyed politicos had concocted an illegal immigrant amnesty (a.k.a., "comprehensive immigration reform") bill behind closed doors.

I presume politicians don't have Smoke-Filled Rooms anymore, so you could call this the Red Bull-Filled Room approach to deciding the fate of America.

No committee hearings are to be held on what may well be the most important legislation of the decade. Senator Chuck Grassley [R-IA] pointed out, "It's disappointing and even ironic how the deal announced today skirts the democratic processes of Congress. It was cut by a group of senators operating outside the committees of jurisdiction and without public hearings on key components."
........

Even more appallingly, Reid wants to hold the crucial "cloture" vote to shut off the possibility of a filibuster, the best chance to derail it, on Monday, May 21!

It is utterly impossible for the United States Senate to exercise the due diligence commensurate with the importance of major immigration legislation without extensive hearings.[like rushing through 5000+ page documents and giving laymen only 66 days to review them a la Atlantic Yards]

From a good government standpoint, what we are witnessing is perhaps the most irresponsible and shameless attempt to hustle a pig in a poke past the public in recent memory. Of course, that's the whole point of the exercise -- to not let us simple citizens in on the process of deciding who our fellow citizens will be.

It's only a modest exaggeration to call this an attempted coup against the American people



Note the same modus operandi as Atlantic Yards- skirt the normal processes, hustle it through before anyone's had a chance to know what hit them. The ugly question is why? who stands to gain from this and why?

Even if you were FOR amenesty - and I can't imagine anyone but an illegal or someone wanting cheap labor being for it - the idea of rushing to vote on something with more pages than the bible and giving the american public, let alone the senators no time to read it is outright deception -is this how we want our government to function? How can someone intelligently vote on something when they haven't even read it? (and remember 'little' loopholes can have big consequences as in the 1986 immigration 'reform' which was supposed to end illegal immigration but actually increased both legal and illegal immigration)

This is the 'new' way for establishment circumnavigate the process - MSM presents a 'soft' picture of the bill, ignoring its true nature, its hustled through amidst a 1000 other mindless distractions and American Idle and de facto our national sovereignty has vanished.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Unsustainable Pattern- Loss of Farmland

America, once breadbasket of the world is now a net food importer. Not only is the quality of the food questionable but its a great strain on the environment (shipping lettuce from other countries when it can be grown here) and makes America dependent on foreign sources for food...not an enviable position to be in. If the current pattern continues - more immigration, explosive population growth, sprawl, removal of farmland, we could be in a genuine crisis should there ever be a serious interruption of world trade. From NumbersUSA

Economic, cultural, demographic and political forces between 1982 and 1997 converted approximately 39,000 square miles (or 25 million acres) of rural land into subdivisions, malls, workplaces, roads, parking lots, resorts, and the like.

The rural area lost to development between 1982 and 1997 is about equal to the entire land mass of Maine and New Hampshire combined.

The rate of rural land lost to development in the 1990s was about 2.2 million acres per year. If this rate continues to the year 2050 – when today’s toddlers are middle-aged – the United States will have lost an additional 110 million acres of rural countryside. That’s about equal to the combined areas of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.

The Treason Paper


The New York Post supports this so called 'reform':
The Z-visa sure sounds like amnesty by another name. And amnesty for law-breakers, by definition, undermines respect for law in a nation that is animated by the rule of law.

But the practical impediments to packing up the estimated 12 million illegals now in America and shipping them home are so daunting that they render the notion ridiculous.


They say enforcing existing immigration laws and sending 12 million illegals home is a ridiculous notion - an odd stance from paper who supports the occupation of Iraq and control of 26 million people half a world away.

But of course on both counts they're wrong - Ike was able to clear up illegal immigration because he had the will to do so. Something our current 'elite' lack.

Ron Paul, what' s not to like?

Issues

Debt and Taxes
Working Americans like lower taxes. So do I. Lower taxes benefit all of us, creating jobs and allowing us to make more decisions for ourselves about our lives. (more...)

Issues

American Independence and Sovereignty
So called free trade deals and world governmental organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC), NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA are a threat to our independence as a nation. (more...)

Issues

War and Foreign Policy
The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them. (more...)

Issues

Border Security and Immigration Reform
The talk must stop. We must secure our borders now. A nation without secure borders is no nation at all. It makes no sense to fight terrorists abroad when our own front door is left unlocked. This is my six point plan: (more...)

Issues

Privacy and Personal Liberty
The biggest threat to your privacy is the government. We must drastically limit the ability of government to collect and store data regarding citizens’ personal matters. (more...)

Issues

Property Rights and Eminent Domain
We must stop special interests from violating property rights and literally driving families from their homes, farms and ranches. (more...)



Oh, and his voting record in Congress backs up his positions 100% UNLIKE others.

Why Ron Paul Cannot Expect a Donation from Bruce Ratner:

From the Ron Paul For President Site:
Property Rights and Eminent Domain
We must stop special interests from violating property rights and literally driving families from their homes, farms and ranches.

Our country’s founders would roll over in their graves if they saw the takings clause in the Fifth Amendment used to justify booting people out of their homes for the profit of private developers and tax-hungry local governments. The Supreme Court’s Kelo decision said government power could be used to condemn private homes and churches to benefit a huge pharmaceutical corporation and a large property developer.

Today, we face a new threat of widespread eminent domain actions as a result of powerful interests who want to build a NAFTA superhighway through the United States from Mexico to Canada.

We also face another danger in regulatory takings: Through excess regulation, governments deprive property owners of significant value and use of their properties – all without paying “just compensation.”

Property rights are the foundation of all rights in a free society. Without the right to own a printing press, for example, freedom of the press becomes meaningless. The next president must get federal agencies out of these schemes to deny property owners their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.

But Who Was Right – Rudy or Ron?

My note now that the GOP leaders have discovered, to their surprise the establishment candidates are running dead last and Ron Paul ahead, a smear campaign will be underweigh. In short there are NO big money interests that have ANY interest in seeing Paul win, and every reason to want him to lose. He would end:
a. corporate welfare - remember that most large corporations pay NO taxes, on top of getting huge subsidies and the law manipulated in such a way that hurts middle class tax payers and benefits the super wealthy.
b. the iraq war

From Pat Buchanan @ LewRockwell:

It was the decisive moment of the South Carolina debate.

Hearing Rep. Ron Paul recite the reasons for Arab and Islamic resentment of the United States, including 10 years of bombing and sanctions that brought death to thousands of Iraqis after the Gulf War, Rudy Giuliani broke format and exploded:

"That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of 9/11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I have ever heard that before, and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.

"I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that."

The applause for Rudy's rebuke was thunderous – the soundbite of the night and best moment of Rudy's campaign.

After the debate, on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," came one of those delicious moments on live television. As Michael Steele, GOP spokesman, was saying that Paul should probably be cut out of future debates, the running tally of votes by Fox News viewers was showing Ron Paul, with 30 percent, the winner of the debate.

Brother Hannity seemed startled and perplexed by the votes being text-messaged in the thousands to Fox News saying Paul won, Romney was second, Rudy third and McCain far down the track at 4 percent.

When Ron Paul said the 9/11 killers were "over here because we are over there," he was not excusing the mass murderers of 3,000 Americans. He was explaining the roots of hatred out of which the suicide-killers came.

Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden was among the mujahideen whom we, in the Reagan decade, were aiding when they were fighting to expel the Red Army from Afghanistan. We sent them Stinger missiles, Spanish mortars, sniper rifles. And they helped drive the Russians out.

What Ron Paul was addressing was the question of what turned the allies we aided into haters of the United States. Was it the fact that they discovered we have freedom of speech or separation of church and state? Do they hate us because of who we are? Or do they hate us because of what we do?

read on But PB sums it up with this great point:

Understandably, Republicans do not want him back, telling the country how the party blundered into this misbegotten war.
By all means, throw out of the debate the only man who was right from the beginning on Iraq.



Justin Ramando at antiwar reminds us that the democrats/left is of little good in opposing this war (since they won't seriously examine its causes):

"As the U.S. stumbles, or is pushed, into another unwinnable land war in Asia, the anti-war protestors of the future will come from the ranks of the Right. Buchanan, and the editors of this magazine, in alliance with other conservatives and libertarians, stood firm against the war hysteria that preceded Gulf War I. This time around, with the stakes even higher, that same alliance has the potential to expand its ranks to include the overwhelming majority of Americans. Let our rulers unleash the dogs of war to mask their own corruption: they will ignite a social and political explosion that will make the sixties seem relatively tranquil."

I wrote that in the June 1998 issue of Chronicles magazine, at the end of a piece entitled "Wagging the Dog," wherein I pointed out that the evidence of Saddam’s aggressive intent was nil, that the U.S. was starving and sickening many thousands by imposing sanctions, and that an invasion would lead to a civil war, the break-up of Iraq, the rise of Iran, and significant political turmoil in the U.S.:

"Some Republicans… bravely spoke out. Representative Steven E. Bayer, of Indiana, dared ask: ‘Why are emotions running so high at the White House? Why are the tom-toms of war sounding?’ Representative Ron Paul, of Texas, excoriated his jingoist colleagues for ‘trying to appease the military industrial complex and appear tough for campaign ads.’ He complained that ‘once hostilities begin, debating the policy which created the mess is off-limits; the thinking goes that everybody must support the troops by blindly and dumbly supporting irrational and irresponsible policies.’ The only solution, he concludes, "is a pro-American constitutional policy of nonintervention.’ But ‘unfortunately, we cannot expect such common sense to prevail in the current political climate.’"

Those were the Clinton years, when it was neither unusual nor even treasonous for a Republican to question the administration’s war moves against Iraq: as Ron Paul pointed out in the South Carolina GOP presidential debate the other day, we bombed Iraq for years before launching the present disastrous enterprise, all the while tightening deadly sanctions like a noose around the necks of ordinary Iraqis. What kind of hatred this produced was brought home to us on September 11, 2001, in a highly dramatic occurrence of a concept popularized by Chalmers Johnson in Blowback, his classic study of the socio-cultural, political and military costs of interventionism.

When Ron Paul dared to make this point at the South Carolina debates, the debate-is-off-limits dictum he foresaw all those years ago was invoked by Giuliani, the rest of the so-called frontrunners, and the MSM – although, at this point, they may have some trouble enforcing it. Giuliani’s thuggish behavior, and the efforts of his militant supporters to close down all debate about the consequences of U.S. foreign policy for the security of this country, won’t be enough to stem the rising tide of criticism, coming from the right as well as the left.