No More "Illegals"

Will Be Discussed Here For a While...

Instead, I'm going to cool my jets on illegals and immigration and just soak up this series. Looks like they will be 'must reads'.
Hat Tip: Powerline

Rabble Roused, Spanish-Language Film at 11

Or “There Oughta Be a Law ”

I have zero knowledge of this area of law, so I have to ask: Is there a clause (or something) in the requirements to have an FCC license concerning a broadcaster’s responsibilities to operate in the public good? What about a clause concerning political activism? – Any ‘equal time’ provisions for issues like those for political candidates?

I don’t believe there is a clause in either case, but surely it is illegal for broadcasters to promote subversion of federal laws? Is ‘contributing to the delinquency of a minor’ only a crime when it involves one minor? If not, what is the penalty for contributing to the delinquency of thousands of minors?

What are the broadcasters’ and schools’ civil liabilities when minors experience harm after being urged into committing truancy?

The school systems won’t support the civil disobedience after they wake up and see they’re losing their federal AIS (A** in Seat) funds every day the seats are empty. But what is the motivation for a broadcaster to stop attempting subversion?

Carrot or Stick – It doesn’t matter, but there needs to be something that requires operators to behave in a civilized manner as a condition of their broadcast license.

And if it’s not too much trouble, we obviously need to increase the minimum school requirements and budget for civics and government classes. These poor kids need help!

Immigration: Walls, Processes and Defense in Depth

I think that Arnold Kling, with whom I generally agree with and defer to on most things economic, doesn’t quite get the point, economic or otherwise, on the illegal immigration issue. Either that or he wrote his TCS Daily article yesterday in fit of passion and untypical haste. He wrote a particularly wandering paragraph (second one):

I believe that illegal immigrants bring relatively little economic benefit and cause relatively little economic harm.

Well, to the best of my research and knowledge, we don’t have any real data (only ideas , indications, extrapolations, and suspicions), so I don’t think we have a good enough handle on the true scale and/or impact of the issue to state categorically either way. After this whiff, he then quite aptly zeroes in 'right on target' in the next few sentences:

I believe that there are substitutes readily available for the work done by illegal immigrants. Legal residents could do some of the work. Other labor could be replaced by capital or by alternative production techniques.

Which is pretty consistent with my (and others) belief that ‘doing the jobs Americans won’t’ is a canard. But he then closes the paragraph way 'out there' with:

By the same token, because there are many substitutes available for unskilled labor, the salvation of American workers does not lie in immigration restrictions.

From my perspective, there’s couple of key things wrong with this statement.

First, the economic issue isn’t about ‘the salvation of American workers’ so much as extracting maximum efficiency out of the economy, AKA that ‘labor could be replaced by capital or by alternative production techniques’ thing he mentioned earlier.

Second, characterizing control of immigration as ‘immigration restrictions’ is a very negative and oversimplified caricature of the objective: to diminish or eliminate ILLEGAL and therefore UNCONTROLLED entry of aliens into this country. No sane adherents to the ‘anti-illegals’ side of the debate that I have spoken with, read about, or even heard of, wants to eliminate or restrict LEGAL immigration, so the ‘restrictions’ in Dr. Kling’s sentence can only mean ‘illegal immigration’ (man, I hate that term – immigration by definition is a process with legal and citizenship implications, otherwise you’re just ‘traveling around’).

Of course, beside the control our borders for economic security that provides us with more economic ‘certainty’, there is an equal or superior reason to do so for national security purposes at any time. In a time of war, the security aspect of controlling the borders should be paramount.

Dr. Kling presents an argument against controlling the border by hammering on the idea of a border fence:

A strong border would provide, at best, a false sense of security. We could have a perfect fence along the border with Mexico and still suffer a major terror attack, even from legal citizensI am not saying that the security benefit of a fence would be zero. However, the benefit would be very low, and a reasonable guess is that the benefit would be far below the "opportunity cost" of deploying those resources on other security measures..

If this was all that we would do: build a wall and go home, Dr. Kling and some equally wrong bloggers would be very correct: it would be a “fixed fortifications are man’s monument….” example.

But this is not the case. Since building a ‘continuous’ wall is only one option, and since building some sort of actual wall is not the only thing we would do, Dr. Kling’s ‘fence’ (in whatever form it takes) would be part of a system of measures that would control the threat in a defense in depth. Marry the physical deterrents of a fence and related measures with those Dr. Kling proposes and others, and you are talking real security.

And the Number One Reason to Increase Control of the Borders is....
Probably the nail in the coffin for any argument against controlling the illegals coming into the country that doesn’t involve increased control of the borders is this: it’s been tried for years and it hasn’t worked so far. Let’s start immigration reform by controlling the borders, we can finish it using any tool Dr. Kling suggests.

A personal nit: Dr. Kling’s statement “We could have a perfect fence along the border with Mexico and still suffer a major terror attack, even from legal citizens” is akin to saying “I won’t get accidental death insurance because I might die from a disease”. For years, I would go ‘rounds’ with people on security measures (no questions concerning what we were protecting please, they won’t be answered) that were designed to comply with various classification requirements. Some measures were put in place to protect against inadvertent disclosures to John Q. Public. Some measures were to ensure the smallest possible dissemination of minor operational details so people working ‘near’ the activity but not briefed on the activity could not learn anything meaningful about that activity over time. Some were designed to prevent an ‘adversary’ from gaining information through direct, active, means. Dilettantes would always challenge me, “Why do we do this? It doesn’t protect against that!” To which I would have to respond with ‘Yes, but this third thing over here protects against that and this protects against that other thing.

It’s amazing how many people have a hard time grasping that in security, like a lot of other things, it takes more than one tool to do the whole job.

Stated More Seriously.....

This is a fair summary of my opinion concerning immigration. I have been privileged to have known and served with many who have come “here in good faith”.

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt
3 January, 1919, in a letter just before his death

Well, We Know Where We Should Start Checking for Green Cards

HERE

Honestly, I don't care where you come from or what you look like. But I do care if you are here legally or not.

If you're here legally, WELCOME!

Now just learn and speak English, walk and drive on 'the right', set an example for the dumb natives by using your turn indicators, don't jaywalk, and accept the basic idea that everybody has a right to do whatever they want as long as they don't impose on anyone else....and we'll get along just fine!

If you're here illegally, or knowingly hire illegals: turn yourself in to the authorities! Then we can afford to increase the rate we can accept more law-abiding immigrants(the kind we need and want) into our country.

One More Reason I Avoid Flying on Airbus Aircraft

Yesterday, the NTSB issued a letter (PDF file here) recommending inspection of all Airbus A-300 series aircraft, because during an investigation into a maintenance event where a FedEx Airbus was damaged, they also "found a substantial area of disbonding between the inner skin of the composite rudder surface and the honeycomb core".

This is alarming given what happened in a precursor ‘Air Transat’ event also described in the letter. Airbus had already responded to the earlier event by issuing ‘mandatory’ (non-regulatory, but required to maintain warranty compliance) inspection requirements to all Airbus operators. After this FedEx incident, Airbus issued more of this type of inspection requirements in the form of All Operator Telexes (AOTs).

Aircraft manufacturers and regulatory agencies work very hard to keep air transportation safe, and these kind of actions that require operators to look at their fleets are quite common. What distresses me in this case is the NTSB’s unhappiness with certain aspects of Airbus’ course of action (bold emphasis mine).

Although the Safety Board concurs with the procedures outlined in AOTs A300-55A6042, A310-55A2043, A330-55A3036, and A340-55A403 dated March 2, 2006, it is concerned that allowing an undetected hydraulic-fluid-induced disbond to exist for 500 flights, without supporting analysis or tests to better understand the safety risks, is unacceptable.

The NTSB thus recommends to the FAA that they:

Require that all operators of Airbus A-300 series airplanes immediately comply, with Airbus All Operators Telexes (AOT) A300-55A6042, A310-55A2043, A330-55A3036, and A340-55A403 dated March 2, 2006. Any disbonding to the rudder skins that occurs in the presence of hydraulic fluid contamination should be repaired or the rudder should be replaced as soon as possible, well before the 2,500 flights specified in the AOTs. (A-06-27) Urgent[.]

Establish a repetitive inspection interval for Airbus premodification 8827 rudders until a terminating action is developed. The interval should be well below 2,500 flights. (A-06-28).

If this was an isolated problem, I wouldn’t be too concerned. However, Airbus' attitudes towards their history of composites failures (the ill-fated American Airlines Flight 587 is referenced anecdotally in the NTSB letter, and IMHO there are still unanswered design questions related to the vertical stabilizer shearing off), and Airbus’ PR machine minimizing the importance of last month’s load test failure of their new jumbo A380 wing, speaks volumes about their design, manufacture, and business culture.
The possibility that Airbus might not have what I would call the 'proper' commercial aircraft design culture first popped up on my radar in 1988 when, during an air show, a software vs. test pilot conflict turned an airliner into an enormous hedge clipper. There were a lot of irregularities surrounding the event including powerful evidence that cockpit recorders were tampered with by Airbus, possibly with direct government support. Events since then have only reinforced my opinion that Airbus does not have a mature commercial aviation culture that can reliably design, much less produce the kind of airplanes I want to fly in.
Bottom Line: Composites are a relatively new (compared to sheetmetal) technology that is still evolving rapidly: they require extra caution in determining safety, NOT less. And I want a Human Brain Release 1.0, with a Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeball making the final decisions in the cockpit, because that person has the same stake in the outcome as I do as a passenger. Let computers assist, not argue with the pilot.

Press Still Looking for a Quagmire!

As it has been mentioned elsewhere, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld gave the press a zinger yesterday:

"If you believe everything you read in Maureen Dowd, you better get a life."

But that wasn’t the best part of the press conference as far as I was concerned. It started when Secretary Rumsfeld had this to say about our ongoing military operations:

They're doing that. And as they continue to take on more and more responsibility, the United States will be able to reduce its troops.

No…He wasn’t talking about Iraq or Afghanistan. Here’s the comment with more meat around it:

Well, you're correct, the South Korean government has raised the question as to when might it be appropriate to transfer responsibility to the Korean command. And that is something that gets discussed. And no time has been set. Everyone agrees that 55 years after the war, it's reasonable that the South Korean forces would increasingly take on more and more responsibility. They're doing that. And as they continue to take on more and more responsibility, the United States will be able to reduce its troops. And one would hope that we -- we, the United States and the South Korean government, would do what we do at a pace and in a manner that would not inject an instability into the Korean peninsula. And I'm confident we will not inject an instability into the peninsula.

The very next exchange was (sadly) predictable:

Q: So within this year you will be able to start?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No, no. I don't at all.

Q: South Korean President Roh wants to --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't think that's correct. I could be wrong. I haven't read everything he's said. But my impression is that the discussions I've had with the Korean minister, and the cable traffic I've seen, is that they want the subject raised, which we do too; we think that's just fine, and then we'd set about a path to see that the South Korean military evolves into a position where it would be appropriate for them to have that control.

And you know, how many -- what period of time that might be is not something that's been determined, because it's partly a function of the pace at which the South Korean government is going to be able to investments and increase their capabilities in a way that they could assume that responsibility. But it's something we both agree is desirable.

So…the concept of ‘no timetable’ isn’t just a mental block that members of the press have when it comes to Iraq and the War on Terror: They are just too dense to even grasp the general concept.

Secretary Rumsfeld has the patience of Job.

Military Deaths: Ops Tempo NOT Force Size is the Driver

Visiting Instapundit after work, I came across an item that I couldn’t pass up without adding my two cents. Glenn Reynolds picked up a story at Redstate (Lies, Damn Lies, and (MSM) Statistics) that pointed out how small the differences were between total military deaths during President Bush’s first term and those that occurred during various administrations when there was relative peace. Instapundit later updated the post with a comment from a reader that pointed out the relative size of the services has changed so a direct number comparison was inappropriate.

But I submit the real driver is not either numbers or necessarily ‘war’, although war would be considered a subset of the real driver: Ops Tempo. Another subset is ‘training’ which is mentioned in the Red State piece. But there are other aspects to Ops Tempo: it is all the things that add up to the rate at which the military ‘does its job’. Just going to work for a lot of specialties is extremely hazardous, either due to the environment or the tasks required. One would be hard pressed to find a career Airman in either of my old specialties (both involving explosives and flight test) that could not cite a specific event during their service where someone died in the line of duty. Most could relate a close experience of their own when asked.

We have a smaller, leaner, and meaner military, but when used at a higher Ops Tempo we break things and wear them out faster. Those ‘things’ include people.
If I have a fleet of cars, but never drive them I’ll never get in a wreck. If I have 2000 paratroopers, but they never jump out of airplanes I’ll never lose any in a jump.If I have 20 paratroopers that jump every day, none of them could buy life insurance at any price.

All other things being equal, when one has a smaller military doing now the same amount of work as a larger military once did, one should have at least as many death-producing situations in the smaller military: it just means any single individual runs a higher probability of being one of the casualties when the pool is smaller. If we are using the new smaller military MORE than the old larger military (and we are), I would expect to see much higher raw numbers of deaths than we see in the data.

We are riding the military, both Active and Reserve, hard and putting them away wet at this necessary Ops Tempo, and for that you can thank the Clinton Administration: especially Les Aspin and his “Bottom Up Review” that drew down the military to dangerously low levels given our national security needs and commitments.

I know this sounds cold-blooded discussing the topic this way, and stats makes most people go catatonic, but somebody has to think about these things.

UPDATE..
To eliminate some confusion (my fault no doubt), please note that I stated "...war would be considered a subset of the real driver: Ops Tempo." My point is that whatever the military is engaged in, if they are operating at a high Ops Tempo, the risks are greater than those at a low Ops Tempo. Given the nature of the activities now, the relatively low casualty (killed and wounded) numbers is better than I would have expected to find. The ratio of wounded to killed is higher than in years past for a lot of reasons, the most obvious being better medical protocols and capabilities. But the total number is still remarkably low, though the MSM and professional dissenters would have you think differently.

The unspoken (so far) dynamic is the effect of the enemy's Ops Tempo. Does anyone think they wouldn't hit us harder than they have been if they could step up operations against us? They would (and will if we let them). Right now, I think if we added people to the theater, the number of non-combat deaths would go up faster than the number of combat deaths. We'd be giving the enemy more targets to select from, but they can (and do) only hit so many at a given time.

This only scratches the surface of the dynamics involved, but let's move on to happier topics. I have too many friends and loved ones still subject to getting CENTCOM assignments to dwell on this stuff for very long.

Blogging, ‘Off Line’

…..and behind the scenes as it were

I’ve been blogging light this week for two reasons. First, I’m working very long days and my Daughter’s High School Soccer Team is in the playoffs (Huzzah!) so work and family take priority. Second, I’m dissecting Cobra II (the book NOT the car) by Michael R. Gordon and retired Marine Lt Gen Bernard E. Trainor (Authors of The General’s War) and hope to provide comment on the book, the book launch at CSIS, and what may be some of the driving forces behind the publication very soon. Let’s just say that while there appeared to be no real political agenda that drove The General’s War, it looks like there’s a few characters out there that have uses for Cobra II beyond its recording of military history.

Stupid Pirate Tricks Part II

Well the Navy released the first of the photos from the USS Cape St George's and USS Gonzalez' run-in with Somali pirates. I know they're still calling them 'suspected' pirates, but tell me this: what use are these to fishermen 25 miles out from land?

Now, I favor heavy a heavy line with a medium tippet and fly when I go fishing. I wonder how far those 'fishermen' could cast using one of these? Maybe they would surround the fish in their skiffs and lob RPGs into balled schools and kind of shock them like Uncle Bubba Al-Salaam used to do in the old days with dynamite and carbide bombs?

Naw.... I don't buy into any of that 'fishermen' crap. And from the looks of things, the Navy didn't either.

Stupid Pirate Tricks

Remember the pirate attack on the Seabourn Spirit? After the event made world headlines the UN asked all navies operating near Somalia to aggressively work against piracy in the area.

According to this AP report , at about dawn today the USS Cape St. George and the USS Gonzalez intercepted a 30-foot fishing vessel towing several smaller craft about 25 miles off the coast of Somalia and attempted a ‘routine’ boarding. The ‘fishing vessel’ seemed to take exception to the effort and opened up with gunfire on the US ships. This was...a bad idea. If even the smallest of the two US warships accidentaly ran over a 30-foot boat, they might not even notice it. The graphic below illustrates the relative size of the Gonzalez and the 'fishing' boat (that little red spot).


The pirates, including several wounded, were taken into custody. There were no US casualties.

If pictures are forthcoming from the Navy, I’ll link to them in an update.

Well Done Cape St George and Gonzalez!

I would be remiss if I did not at least point out in passing that the Somalian piracy problem is just another legacy of the Clinton Administration's cut-and-run action after the 'Black Hawk Down' travesty.

A side note of interest. The Serbian propaganda machine claimed the Serbs had sunk the USS Gonzalez during the Kosovo crisis (incredibly, a link is still available here). I wonder how they explained it when the Gonzalez made port there in 1993(Update...er..2003)?

FAA Changes Improve Air Taxi Prospects

An article from yesterday includes the following:

...“WAAS-equipped commercial operators will gain access to Category 1 equivalent approach services at qualifying airports where there are no instrument landing systems. This will result in improved safety, including enhanced approach and landing operations in marginal weather.”
WAAS was originally intended to provide Cat 1 precision approach capability and a 200ft decision height. Current WAAS procedures support approaches down to 250ft

As noted in an earlier post, the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) and Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) initiatives are part of a broad effort to expand the utility of underutilized airports. This latest WAAS development is one more step to opening up those airports for future Air Taxi (and other) purposes.

Iconic Shorthand

To save time and space, and more importantly, to stop having to repeat the same dry information in front of regulars while I bring new visitors up to speed, I’m going to implement a little shorthand. I’ll be using icons at the start of each post to quickly identify which (if any) Elements of National Power are most relevant. If someone wants to question the reference in a comment, that’s OK, I just don’t want to have to go through the whys and wherefores every single time.

BTW: At this moment, I have no idea if this blog has received any browsers that are not either a friend, invited reviewer, or a relative. I’ve asked some of my friends and relatives to give me their comments offline and am tweaking my approach to ‘doing’ this site largely based upon their inputs.

Here are the Elements of Power icons:


Military: I picked the B-2 because the AK-47 with bayonet doesn’t shrink down very well at web resolutions .

Economic: Symbol of my currency of choice: the Dollar. I would have liked to also have included symbols for the Yen and British Pound, but that made the icon too busy.

Cultural: This was toughest to decide upon, because all the really good stuff doesn’t shrink down very well. But I settled on using a Celtic Knot as a good representation of a culture, and since I’m of mostly Celtic descent, I figured "why (k)not?".

Demographic: People silhouettes. Self explanatory.

Organizational: The ‘Org’ chart (What Else?)

Geographical: Easy one: a map.

UPDATE: I had to modify this post to cut down the number of graphics- Blogger seems to limit me somewhat in this area.

Debbie Stabenow: Your "Unhinged Dem o' the Day"

Dang! Tim Chapman over at Townhall.com beat me to it....


Alternative Caption: "Let's see Feingold Top This Bonehead Move!

First question that came to my mind was: Is there a viable challenger or something?

Lunatic Hunting (Camera Safari Style-no Violence)

I admit it.

I have a secret (no more) Internet hobby.

Whenever I find someone on the web that is so outrageous, so over the top, so gone over the edge...I want to know more about them. What are they like when they aren't blowing up over some perceived injustice? Are they descended from Hippies or Communists? What do they do for a living, that lets them crap out a comments area in response to posts on our favorite blogs, when most of us are at work and don't have time to screw around 9-5? Where do they live that is so far away from the corner of Reality and Rational that they can't even find it on a map?

I found another one today. You see, Power Line got a love letter from a Mr. Henry Lowe of Michigan:

You are a traitor of the highest order, and should be tried and executed.
You hate freedom and democracy, the concept of open government and a free press.

And it goes downhill from there.

Hmmmm…... Henry Lowe.....
That kind of vituperative bile isn’t built in a day AND it usually means a good spoor trail, so....Shhhh!...
Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m moonbat hunting… ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a,

Aaannnnd…my Google-powered BDS detector comes through again. Mr. Lowe appears to be a multi-faceted individual (if my forensic writing skills are holding up). This might not be the same guy...but I doubt it. What are the chances of having two like-minded self-revealing idiots with the same name and fixations in one place...even in Michigan?

1. He seems to be a 'Patriot'!

You sons-of-bitches are traitors to this country and real soldiers everywhere. John Kerry served his country in Vietnam and that bitch George w. Bush hid in Texas drinking, doping and partying yet you support him. Kiss all of my entire *** you dumb assed right wing cult members!!!

2. A Communicator!

American sign language is a foreign language," Lowe said. "You don't take the speaker's words verbatim and turn them into signals. ... It has its own system of syntax and structure."
Facial expressions and body language are an integral part.
"You want to be as visual as possible," he said.
Outside the school, Lowe has signed for musicals at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit, concerts by groups such as The Temptations and The Righteous Brothers, and speeches by Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

3. An Activist!

Fort Gratiot resident Henry Lowe, a high school instructor, told the crowd the Bush administration was "hyper-aggressive," secretive and hypocritical. He said that wasn't what the United States was about.

"Our America fights only when provoked," he said

4. and a Newspaperman!

[He seems to have been (at least until recently) part of the Port Huron TimesHerald Editorial Board.]

If one followed the Power Line link to Mr Lowe's letter, the similarities in language, tone, and obsessions between what Power Line received and some of the other links would certainly support my case that I have located my objective.

Now I usually file the knowledge away,let it go, and move on afterwards: but the post he left on the Vietnam Vets Against Kerry site compels me to issue forth some choice words for Mr Lowe:

First-From the accompanying photos at the link in #2, it is obvious there aren't any lips in the world big enough to kiss all of your "entire ***" as you request in #1. However my size 10 combat boots would be willing to dance on it upon request. Shouldn't take more than 2-3 days to get it all.

Second- As to the 'fights only when provoked' comment. How much provocation do you need? After all we were still in a state of war with Saddam. You may have heard about it, y'see there were these things called no-fly zones.....

Third-Is the school district you work for aware of your anger-management problems?