A day without illegals

What would a day without illegal aliens be like?

Look at this guy threatening Americans...with burritos.

Here's what a day without illegals would be like ...from Tom Tancredo - Colorado (R). Bet you won't see this on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC...

No illegals = 20% fewer patients demanding free health care in emergency rooms in the Southwest

No illegals = Denver would have 24% fewer births

No illegals = gang membership drops by 50%

No illegals = child molestation cases in Phoenix drops by 34% and auto theft by 40%

No illegals = Colorado would save $3,000,000 each day due to the reduced use of public services

No illegals = Colorodo's K-12 classrooms would have 131,000 fewer students and the dropout rate would return to the national average

No illegals = the Federal penal system would have 29% fewer inmates to warehouse.

This guy should think twice before threatening Americans by demanding that he be welcomed with open arms by the country from which he no doubt receives so much already. Sure, illegal aliens pay some small amount of taxes. They pay sales taxes, maybe some occassional income taxes, probably using a fake social security ID, a crime in and of itself. Because a vast majority of them are abysmally undereducated, they pay a scant amount of income tax if any, just like regular Americans who are uneducated and therefore hold menial jobs and exist in the tax brackets which have no Federal income tax liability.

Because of the achievment-punishing, progressive income tax structure in this country, the bottom 50% of wage earners only bear 5% of the Federal income tax burdon. According to the U.S. Census Bureau the median individual income in 2006 was about $33,000. Because in general, level of education is indicative of earning potential, the uneducated illegal population falls solidly in the bottom half of wage earners. This means that the vast uneducated class in this country, Americans and illegals alike, only contribute 5% to the tax base. Illegal aliens consume huge amounts of social services from coffers into which they contributed very little if any.

If the illegals want to whine and moan about how they deserve to be citizens because they contribute so much to the American society, show me where all this contribution is. What, they pick lettuce and lay brick? They're getting paid for that...it's not a contribution to the tax base.

Threatening law abiding Americans will only result in a backlash of resentment toward illegals and a resolve to take the difficult but necessary steps to rid this country of the scourge of rampant illegal immigration.

It would not be wise to mistake the weakness of the politicians for appeasement on the part of patriotic Americans. We are more than willing to mow our own lawns, spread our own fertilizer and blow our own leaves. And Mexican food is not that hard to cook anyway.

No illegals means Americans will have to do without certain things but burritos isn't one of them.

Natural disasters happen

Tonga Given No Tsunami Warning After Quake Published: 5/3/06, 10:07 PM EDT

NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga (AP) - A powerful earthquake struck near the South Pacific nation of Tonga early Thursday, triggering tsunami warnings for as far away as Fiji and New Zealand. But word of the imminent danger never reached the tiny country closest to the epicenter.

Apparently there was a power outage at the precise time people were sending messages and tsunami warnings to the tiny island monarchy. The earthquake was 34 miles from Tonga. I've read that tidal waves travel like 500 miles per hour. This means that the residents of Tonga had approximately 4 minutes to do exactly what? The island is 286 square miles. Where would they run to?

This brings up another story which talks about the residents of the Florida Keys abandoning their houses already...the hurricane season hasn't even begun yet. Look, when you live in places that are susceptible to extreme weather phenomena, you tend to loose your stuff if not your life at some point. Sure it's great to live in Tonga or Key West most of the time but eventually a hurricane or tidal wave is going to get you or at least destroy your house and property.

These two stories remind me of the people in New Orleans before Katrina. They lived happily in a cereal bowl out of which which enormous pumps kept water that naturally wanted to flow there. Now people are moving back and setting up camp in the same places only three feet higher on stilts (for the life of me, I don't know what three feet will do when the Katrina flood waters were up to the roof gutters...that's like 12 feet). In Tonga and the Keys we have people living happily in the paths of hurricanes and earth quakes respectively and fretting about when they will get wiped out. They will get wiped out sooner or later. It's not a question of if, but when. That's the risk you run when you live in the path of nature.

What is most surprising though is that real estate prices continue to soar in these places even though the residents are leaving permanently in droves.

The man of steel

Check out the new Superman trailer...this looks pretty good.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/supermanreturns/trailer2/large.html

In the eye of the beholder...

Pablo Picasso's 'Dora Maar with cat' in an image released by Sotheby's. Picasso's 1941 portrait of his mistress sold for an astounding 51.6 million pounds at Sotheby's on Wednesday, becoming the second most expensive painting in auction history. REUTERS/Handout

51.6 million pounds...that's 95 million dollars.....for a piece of art! That just goes to show you how miserably foolish the idle rich are.

It's axiomatic in economics that something is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it. You can try to claim that your Pokemon card collection is worth $1000 dollars but if people are willing to pay only $5 for it, then its worth is $5.

By that standard, this "Dora Maar with Cat" is worth 95 million dollars. But did this buyer really see that much value in the art...or was he paying for something else entirely?

Look, I can appreciate art...most people can. It's the subjective, random nature of its value that ticks me off. It seems to me that all one needs to be a successfull artist is a tortured, eccentric existence, a tragic personal story to explain the pathology that gives rise to your art, and a cabal of do-nothing, lucky-sperm-club, socialites who fancy themselves art critics to fall for the sad, sobbing story and act as benefactor. I mean look at Picasso's stuff...my kid was cranking out better than that in kindergarten between beenie-weenies for lunch and nap-time. Picasso's popularity isn't simply due to how skillful a painter he was, or how good he was at drawing...it's about who he was, what motivated him, how eccentric and odd he was...in short, a cult of personality.

And that illustrates my point about art...it's all so subjective and arbitrary that who can say whether art is good or not? Isn't it really about a fleeting, pop-culture fad, or a cult of the artists personality, or even more cynically, about what the popular, rich benefactor tells all her rich, idiot Eurotrash friends is good art?

I enjoyed reading the story about the people at a marine aquarium who stuck a paint brush in a dolphin's mouth and trained him to drag it across a piece of canvas. Without telling anyone, they trotted these pieces out at a gallery and made up some sad tale of how miserable and tortured the artist was and people paid thousands for the pieces. Much money was raised for the aquarium and who is to say that these people didn't get their money's worth? If they were willing to part with $10,000 for some abstract oil on canvas cleverly named " Fancy White Alabcore in Oil", then on that day, it was worth $10,000. But just like the guy who paid $95 million for a Picasso, what they paid for was the story behind the art...not necessarily the art itself.

Now, I'm going home to dig up all my kids kindergarten art, frame it, make up a good story, and take it to the nearest gallery.

Happy Birthday.......I guess.

SAN AGUSTIN, El Salvador (Reuters) - Friends and relatives of Cruz Hernandez's gathered on Wednesday to celebrate her 128th birthday, a milestone that might make her the world's oldest person.

Man, there is absolutely nothing dignified about being 128 years old.

Some people just need killing!

From MSNBC:

Police: Neighbor planned to eat slain Okla. girl
Man held in 10-year-old's death allegedly fantasized about cannibalism.

Everybody's probably already heard all the details of this crime, so they won't be included in this space because they are so nauseating.

Obviously the prosecutor will seek 1st degree murder charges and the death penalty against this animal. Sadly however, as we've come to expect, it generally takes the state 10-15 years on average to actually kill these guys on death row. Opponents of the death penalty say that it does not constitute a deterrent to crime. They are probably right since the life expectancy for violent criminals on the street is probably less than 20 years anyway, but what if the State could fast-track these cases and dispose of them one way or the other within 1 year?

I will bet that if this guy, assuming he's found guilty, is very publicly put to death within a year of committing this act, it would constitute a significant deterrent to others who might be contemplating such a crime. His actual execution wouldn't have to be broadcast on air, but they could certainly make a public example of his execution being swift.

Each state which has the death penalty could set up a court consisting of a panel of 3 judges who would do nothing but hear all death penalty appeals. No whining liberals could complain that due process wasn't observed.

Here are a few of the benefits as I see it:

• The families of the victims get to see justice swiftly meted out and can get on with the closure process rather than attend appeal hearings for years, forced to relive the pain and loss over and over.
• The tax payers aren't forced to spend millions endlessly prosecuting, housing, feeding these human animals. (This benefit alone makes swift executions worthwhile to me)
• After a year or two of these sickos being put down, other would-be murderers will begin to understand that if they committ these acts, they too will be killed within the year. That has to be a deterent, at least for some of them. Others are so crazy, it won't matter but it'll cause some percetage of killers to think twice.

If there was ever a poster-boy for swift capitol punishment it is this guy.

The unexpected price of vanity

Desiring a fast tan so badly that you'll expose your skin to concentrated artificial sunlight is the epitome of vanity. Paying for artificial sunlight when the real thing is just out doors is ridiculous.

As if there weren't enough reasons to not jump into a tanning bed, we hear about this...

'Her Body Was Swollen' SkyNews
Updated: 12:20, Wednesday May 03, 2006
A faulty sunbed shocked a woman unconscious and left her with 65% burns, a court has heard.
Melanie Wraith, 35, suffered an electric shock when the canopy of a machine she was using collapsed.
She lost consciousness but woke up more than two-and-a-half hours later and raised the alarm.
Ms Wraith, from Leek, Staffordshire, stopped breathing and had to be revived in the ambulance, as she was taken to hospital.
She was later transferred to a specialist burns unit in Birmingham, where she remained for two days.

Let's see, you get an electric shock so powerful it knocks you out, then the very heavy lid to the box you're in falls on you, and you get 15 times the recommended maximum (probably life threatening) dose of artificial sunlight, and for what, like 20 euros and so you can impress all your pasty, anemic British friends? Yeah....that was worth it.

She was unconscious for two and a half hours. Was that with the tan lights on? She must have looked like an old shoe coming out of there. There's no way she doesn't eventually develop melanoma from that acute exposure. I don't know what the conversion rate is but if 12 minutes gets you noticeably darker in the tanning bed, then 2 and a half hours in the bed must be like 15 hours in the sun or something...yikes!

I realize that they're in England where it rains all the time and is rarely sunny enough to get a tan but everybody else is pale and bloodless too so why not just be content with her normal ashen, sickly, unpigmented skin?

She'll not doubt receive a substantial and deserved settlement from the tanning bed manufacturer but ironically she'll be so suitcase-unattractive from the excessive tan that nobody will want to date her and help her spend it.

Our wonderful government schools

This is as pathetic as it is embarrassing...

Young Americans Shaky on Geography smarts -- AP

WASHINGTON - Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.

Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 fared even worse with foreign locations: six in 10 couldn’t find Iraq, according to a Roper poll conducted for National Geographic.

I realize that for Americans under 24, instant messaging, Lindsay Lohan, and American Idol constitute the center of the known universe but COME ON!!!

• One-third of respondents couldn’t pinpoint Louisiana on a map and 48 percent were unable to locate Mississippi.
  
• Fewer than three in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries in the news and just 14 percent believe speaking another language is a necessary skill.
  
• Two-thirds didn’t know that the earthquake that killed 70,000 people in October 2005 occurred in Pakistan.
  
• Six in 10 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.
  
• While the outsourcing of jobs to India has been a major U.S. business story, 47 percent could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia.
  
• While Israeli-Palestinian strife has been in the news for the entire lives of the respondents, 75 percent were unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East.
• Nearly three-quarters incorrectly named English as the most widely spoken native language.
  
• Six in 10 did not know the border between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified in the world. Thirty percent thought the most heavily fortified border was between the United States and Mexico.

How does one reach the age of 24 and not be able to find Iraq and Israel on a map? How little attention must you be paying to the world around you to be two years past college and still not be able to locate India on a map of Asia?

Surely everybody has watched one episode of the national news in the last year. You can say little else complimentary about CNN but they do have good maps to go along with their miserably slanted news coverage.

And these are the self-absorbed morons who'll be electing the next 15 or so presidents...Heaven help us.

This is what happens when the Federal government takes control of local schools out of the hands of local communities. You end up with politically correct, feel-good, outcome-based education in which positive self esteem passes for actual learning. Don't think this is a coincidence. Stupid, distracted, self-involved kids grow up to be stupid, needy, easily manipulated adults. What better voting block for Liberals than a population of ignorant, emotion-driven, idiots whose attention spans fail them while reading a bumper sticker.

Informed, involved, thinking students grow up to be informed, rational, achieving adults. Liberalism cannot easily find a toe-hold in private or very good, locally controlled public schools because Liberalism depends on a critical mass of the populace being ignorant and uninformed. In schools in which actual learning takes place, where children are forced to learn things like American History, Math and Science, the King's English, and yes even World Geography (and not the politically correct versions), student's eyes are opened to how the world really is rather than how Liberals want them to think it is.

Take the Geography test found at the site below and see how you do. I got 9/10. It's not as easy as you might think but still, I would think that at least Americans in the 9th grade or so should have most if not all this information.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12594142/

Things are not always how they're portrayed

The truth about the face transplant woman

I had missed this part of the story about the French lady who had a face transplant:

Dinoire lost much of her face when she was mauled by her pet Labrador while knocked out from drugs she took to forget a trying week. Her lipless gums and teeth were permanently exposed, and most of her nose was missing.

I’m sorry but just how bad a week do you have to have to take the kind of drugs that knock you out to the point that you don’t notice a dog gnawing off your face? And where were her two kids during all this? What kind of mother self-medicates to the point of general anesthesia in order to forget a bad week? Even the most comatose frat boy would wake from his drunken stupor if an animal was eating him.

At first the story seemed tragic, like the vicious dog had attacked and mauled her. Then we discovered that she refused to stop smoking, even after the transplant…a cardinal sin in medicine apparently. Now we find out that she drugged herself…on purpose.

So she’s a drug addict, an addicted smoker, a miserably reckless parent of two, and apparently she doesn’t feed her dog very often since it decided to munch on her face to tide him over to his next meal. My sympathy level has decreased considerably for this woman.

It’s typical of the media to hide the facts about this case so as to garner as much sympathy and pity for this woman as possible. Heaven forbid anyone be judgmental about her behavior. To the liberal media, there’s no such thing as right and wrong behavior…just excuses for behavior.

Biting the Hand that Feeds Them

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pro-immigration activists say a national boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood America's streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform.
Such a massive turnout could make for the largest protests since the civil rights era of the 1960s.
"There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We're going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno," said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize earlier rallies credited with rattling Congress as it weighs the issue.

I’m just guessing here but Jorge should reconsider shutting down 6 major US cities to demand that we make legal that which is illegal. Extortion doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to getting what you want from nations (that excludes Spain which caved instantly when confronted with terrorism).

Not showing up for work, not showing up for school, impeding commerce, preventing people who want to earn a living from doing so, and distracting law enforcement from actual police work will not be viewed favorably by the citizens of the nation in which one squats.

What does it say about a people whose very first act in a new country is to break its laws? What does it say about a people who enter a country illegally and then precede to take advantage of the good will of it’s citizens by demanding food stamps, welfare, free medical care, discounted housing and education, and bilingual education among other entitlements? What does it say about a people who enter a country illegally, demand that the citizens of that country support them financially, and then indignantly refuse to adopt the language and customs of that country?
I can think of four things that define a country. I’m sure there are others but these are the important ones. They are defined borders, defined language, a common basic culture, and the rule of law recognized by everyone.

I have nothing personally against the Mexican people or country, but it seems to me that the US has no defined southern border; it allows massive populations to exist within its cities without ever learning English (dial uno for Espanol) or adopting any American customs; and while many illegal aliens observe the law once they’re here, they began as criminals the second they stepped foot in America.

In anticipation of this day-without-immigrants demonstration, my wife and others have asked, “In addition to declining to work or attend school, will these illegal immigrants also decline US citizen financed medical care, food stamps, housing, and all the other benefits that they extract from the American taxpayer?”

The answer is obviously NO.

How dare people who are criminals take to the streets to demand full citizenship! What right do they have to demand anything except their one phone call from the nearest INS deportation office?

· They fly the Mexican flag above the American flag,
· They threaten to create a Spanish speaking country out of our southwestern states,
· They tell Americans to get out of America…that this is their country,
· They refuse to learn English and demand they we educate their children in Spanish,
· They flood emergency rooms to the tune of 20million dollars annually, leading to bankruptcy resulting in scarce medical care for tax-paying Americans,
· They increase our Federal prison population by 25% (don’t tell me they’re just here for the jobs), and
· They dramatically depress wages far below what the market would otherwise bear.

Certainly I could go on all night but you get the point.

Why in the world would George Bush consider anything approaching an amnesty program? The reason is simple: George Bush is a politician and politicians always look to the next election cycle whether or not they are running. Bush and the Republican leadership see 12 million non-citizens as potential voters down the road and nobody wants to get on the bad side of that many block voters when elections in this country recently have been decided by a few idiots in Florida who can’t fill out a ballot.

Republicans and Democrats are having a goody-bag competition to see who can out-nice the other guys in order to buy the Latino vote. Bush and the Republican leadership are just a craven and disdainful of the American people as the Democrats have always been.
By every poll I’ve seen in the last year, nearly 70% of Americans, regardless of Party affiliation, are in favor of the following:

· An absolutely closed southern border
· A limited deportation program of some sort
· English as the primary language taught in schools
· Repeal of the citizenship-by-birth part of the Constitution
· A heavy tax on financial remittances sent from the US to Mexico
· Penalties for employers who hire illegals
· No free medical care except for emergencies
· No access to social programs intended for down-on-their-luck Americans
· An acceleration of the screening and admittance process for legal immigrants (you want to reward those who obey the law)
· Establishment of a guest-worker program (made of citizens of Mexico who are not already in the US) so that our industries will not suffer

If most Americans are in favor of these measures that would go a long way to solving the immigration problem, why won’t the two Parties consider them? I’m disappointed to have to say that few politicians are willing to anger a potential voting block that large. It’s as simple as that.

I’m so disappointed in Bush and the Republican leadership concerning this issue and others that I’ve almost decided to vote Libertarian in ’06 and ’08 on the national level and I don’t think I’m alone. The conservative base is very disappointed in Bush. He had so much potential and except for the tax cut, Alito and Roberts, and the war on terror, he squandered it all.

With the resident Mexican population demonstrating in the streets and disrupting commerce, the Republicans just might save themselves from disaster when the American people rise up with demands of their own. This is my prediction for the coming elections: Whatever party comes closest to satisfying the American people with regards to the immigration issue will win in ’06 and ’08.