A Modest Proposal

The woman second in line of succession from the president has a brave new plan for boosting the economy: kill more infants.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic "stimulus" package, claiming "contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

In this video link, Pelosi repeatedly uses the term "reduce costs" when referring to killing off the future generation, whose lives apparently do not justify the cost necessary to raise them.

Yes, by all means. Kill off more of the future generation of workers, in order to achieve prosperity. Let us consider this for a moment.

Suppose we grant, for the sake of argument, that this could guarantee an economic upswing in the way that Pelosi describes. There is good Biblical precedent for this. In Old Testament times, the Hebrews were repeatedly commanded not to follow in the ways of the nations around them, or to worship their gods. One of these false gods was called Molech (among other similar names). A common practice of the time was to sacrifice a child by passing it through fire. Accounts differ as to whether the child was burned completely or only severely injured; some Roman accounts of similar practices indicate the children were incinerated while music was played loudly to drown out their cries. This was done for various reasons, the most common of which was to guarantee blessings of prosperity for the coming year.

Evidently, this practice is coming back into fashion.

Setting aside the unthinkable barbarity of this approach, it is simply and utterly ignorant.
Killing off your future work force does not decrease costs in the short term (the majority of educational and other costs Pelosi mentions would not come into play for a few years) and would put a damper on the economy in the future, as the population continues to age and increasingly fewer people enter the workforce. (having been murdered prenatally) Every abortion now only increases the increasingly warped ratio of nonproductive to productive citizens in the future.
Logically speaking, they should be encouraging everyone to have -more- children.

And the fact that Pelosi has 5 children of her own also introduces a staggering hypocrisy:
I've had mine, let the masses kill off their own spawn.

I have an even better idea. Since retired people have already contributed their working years to the government, why not kill them off instead? Their productive years are behind them, so you don't lose those, you eliminate the massive strain on the healthcare system as the baby boomers age, and you can take back most of the money they saved through inheritance taxes too, so really everyone wins. Well, except the people who have to die, but who are they to stand in the way of our standard of living?

God help us.

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NAFTA III - Transition Phase

Evidently, along with Pakistan, our southern neighbor is under some risk of collapse.

Of course, there has not been any specific incident named as making the collapse of the Mexican government imminent, it is even noted as less likely than that of Pakistan. Lack of a real change in situation coupled with a change in rhetoric leads me to suspect what has really changed is policy.

The report says a collapse in
Mexico seems less likely, but noted that the government infrastructure
is "under sustained assault and pressure" from drug cartels and gangs.
A collapse within the United States' southern neighbor would also
"demand an American response based on the serious implications for
homeland security alone."

Oh yes, of course. We would no doubt be obligated to step in and prop up a government that has been working so hard to cooperate in our efforts to, say, secure our border.

(Ironically, sealing off our border would make the collapse of the Mexican government nearly unavoidable, and probably several other Central American nations as well, as the cash flow of Latin American workers from the US back to their families has become a crucial segment of their home nation's economies)

There have been rumors and portents for years about the supposed plan to form a North American Union, combining the US, Canada, and Mexico into more or less a single economic entity. If those be true, this would seem to be one of the initial stages (beyond the purely economic ones). Actually stepping in to help prop up the Mexican government would be an important transitional step, but whether that happens or not remains to be seen.

Now of course, closer economic ties are certainly developing, as economic concerns increasingly trump sovereignty issues. We may indeed someday see the age authors of fiction have written about, when lines of authority are drawn along corporate, and not national, boundaries. But, that is a somewhat one-dimensional vision; many other forces are at work in the world besides the continuing economic globalization.

Still, if you had predicted back in 2000 that an emergent global financial crisis will require extraordinary measures to be taken and cause nationalization of major segments of our economy plus government economic intervention to be ramped up to unprecedented levels, it would have sounded like the introductory plot to a Tom Clancy novel.

Who could have suspected that this would be the reality we face as we slide spinning, off balance, into 2009?

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Change and a Reminder

As I recall, our president-elect was supposed to be the one to make the rest of the world love the United States again. It seems that Iranians failed to receive that message and are already treating Obama just like they did Bush.

How long is it going to take before people realize that you cannot reason with anyone who wants your nation to be utterly annihilated? This is not a war over resources. It is not a war over land. It is a war of ideas. Militant Islamic states/terrorists cannot be talked out of their hatred. Only the destruction of Israel and the West will placate them.

Israel has tried the peace route for years. They conceded the Gaza Strip after the Yom Kippur War in an effort to placate them. Instead, Hamas has used that gained territory to launch rockets into Israeli civilian areas for years[1][2][3][4][5][6][7], which has inevitably resulted in counter strikes.

We face an enemy who does now want to discuss and reach compromise. Al Qaeda itself says this outright[8]:

To those champions who avowed the truth day and night......
And wrote with their blood and sufferings these phrases...

The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostateregimes does not know Socratic debates...,Platonic ideals..., nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun.

Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils. They are established as they [always] have been
by pen and gun
by word and bullet
by tongue and teeth[9]

This is the enemy. They do not care who is in power. Their goal is to overthrow "godless regimes" and replace them with "Islamic regimes."[10] I do not think the election of Obama will change the stated goal of our enemies, nor the nations known to associate with them. Iran, under Ahmadinejad, will always villify the west. Our enemies will continue to burn our leaders in effigy. I hope Obama will take our enemies at their word. They mean what they say. It is not political speak to them. They are convinced of it. They will continue attempting to destroy us until we destroy them.

Somali Pirates -- Update

The Saudis gave in and paid the $3,000,000 ransom for the oil-toting Sirius Star. Piracy sometimes pays. Well, unless your boat doesn't capsize.

Five of the Somali pirates who released a hijacked oil-laden Saudi
supertanker drowned with their share of a reported $3 million ransom
after their small boat capsized, a pirate and a relative of one of the
dead men said Saturday.

I guess the other pirates got away with their share of the ill-gotten loot.

Big Plans

In this the age of free money, a town in south Alabama has come up with a brilliant idea: Ask for $375 million dollars. And asking for all of the proposed money to go to 'green' improvement projects. This falls right in line with President-elect Barak Obama's plans for a stimulus package. Edwardsville is lauded as an example. Every city in the US should be trying this hard to invest in renewable resources and provide jobs in these troubled financial times. The entire request is a mere .045% of the $775 billion that is planned for the next two years. So, here's to you Edwardsville, AL. Good luck!

Behold the Swarm

So evidently the newest conceivable terrorist plot we should be concerned about is the use of "insect-based" biological weapons.

Jeffrey Lockwood, professor of entomology at Wyoming University and author of Six-legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War, said such Rift Valley Fever or other diseases could be transported into a country by a terrorist with a suitcase.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think a small terrorist cell could very easily develop an insect-based weapon."

Can't you just imagine the headlines... "Flu-Roach Infestation Threatens St. Louis", or "Killer Bees actually Al Qaeda Plot"

And evidently, it's not even hard:

He said it would "probably be much easier" than developing a nuclear or chemical weapon, arguing: "The raw material is in the back yard."

He continued: "It would be a relatively easy and simple process.

"A few hundred dollars and a plane ticket and you could have a pretty good stab at it."

Of course, this requires some knowledge in a rather selective field. And also requires some pretty impressive results to actually inspire terror. (at least, to inspire more terror than the thought of being attacked by insects already accomplishes for most people)

Perhaps this is what has, for now, prevented this less obvious method thus far: terror that can be thwarted with a flyswatter or a can of raid is somehow... less terrifying.

But perhaps I will eat my words when the ravening fell-swarm of plague-bearing locusts descend upon us, devouring all crops and spreading deathly contagion. Perhaps, my words will be all that remain to be eaten.

(Note: this article may appear to be satirical in nature, but rest assured that we at MC do not underestimate any threat. Any tarantulas found bearing tiny silver biohazard capsules near a public water-storage facility should definitely be terminated with extreme prejudice.)

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An Obvious New Year

Let's start the year off with something that should be obvious, but for some inexplicable reason is not.

The California Supreme Court will hear a case on the legality of granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens attending public colleges, potentially setting a national precedent for nine other states that allow the same discount.

Okay, in-state tuition for people who, technically, don't live here. Let me ask the obvious question: How are illegal immigrants getting into colleges that require identification? Well, that's apparently just the beginning.

The states of Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Washington also provide discounted college tuition to illegal aliens.

...Discounts to illegal immigrants at public institution.

Furthermore,

On Dec. 22, the California Supreme Court announced that it would review whether the state law first enacted in 2001 that “authorizes undocumented aliens and other non-residents who attend and graduate from a California high school to pay in-state tuition for post secondary education violates” federal law.

Bypassing whatever convoluted legal argument can be crafted concerning this practice, how is it that illegal immigrants are graduating from schools intended for U.S. citizens and approved guests?

It is good that, as a nation, we have these opportunities available for students (especially those who 'pledge to seek legal residence'). But, am I missing something? Isn't it illegal (as in 'against the law') to take up residence in the U.S. if you are not a natural or naturalized citizen? It may be naive of me to continue in this, but I still think that the keyword there is 'illegal'.

I know it's not a nuanced position to take.

Illegal immigration is against the law. Immigration is not against the law.
There is a clear difference between the two previous lines. Perhaps that is too obvious.

Happy New Year, everyone.