Fun With Politics

If you remember, I was pretty darned mad about a billboard that appeared here in Southern California that declared Los Angeles to be a part of Mexico.

Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who was throwing a fit, and fuming with enough rage that I could have rammed a taco truck and sent it flying into space. KFI 640 AM, a radio station that has been broadcasting out of Los Angeles since the early 1900’s, initiated a campaign against the pro-Mexican faction that desires for California to return to Mexico. You can now see this billboard on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, the first of many to be displayed in Southern California, as a rebuttal against Noticias 62’s billboard from last week.

As most of you know, I’ve ranted and raved about illegal immigration for so long that I’m just another echo in the wind at this point. But here’s the facts of the matter: First of all, the left wing socialists in Southern California, and most parts of the United States, want an open-borders policy. They feel that it is unfair for anyone, regardless of race, creed, or intention (more about that later) to be denied entry into this country. If you point to the fact that entering this country illegally is indeed, for lack of a better term, illegal, they immediately call you a racist, such as the case of Nativo Lopez, who cares more about illegal immigrants and the rights of Mexico, than that of the United States and it’s citizens. There is nothing racist about wanting the enforce the immigration policies of a nation. In fact, using the term “racist,” or calling someone biased in one way or another [toward race] is undoubtedly the stupidest argument you can use, and not to mention a blatant show of your hand, which proves the fact that you have nothing left to argue with, and are using it as a last resort.

So you want California to return to Mexico? Fine, you can have it. As it stands, California, and some parts of the rest of the United States, are the prime sources of income for Mexico. Mexico doesn’t have any chaturbate industry, and when you combine Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and other parts of Central America, you’re left with nothing but a toilet. Those countries cannot sustain themselves beyond their own corruption, and this is despite the fact that Mexico has huge reserves of oil, but there is too much inner turmoil to make use of it.

You guys want more illegals to come in, and work that for that mighty $6.00 an hour that you believe they are entitled to, regardless of legal limitations? Fine, so be it. Just remember that these people do not have health insurance, and have no way to pay their bills. This means the payments they default on end up on the back end of your credit cards, and the county health facilities they stiff will be shut down one by one as they lack the ability to remain open.

How about education? We all love the fact that the Los Angeles Unified School District has 50-plus students per class --- why not add even more students, most of whom do not speak English, and due to the fact that the fringe minorities want exit-tests removed, have no initiative to learn the language? Sounds like a great plan to me. That way, we can make sure that street signs in Downtown Los Angeles are written only in Spanish, to ensure that the illegal immigrants know how to get from point-A to point-B, while everyone else sails by the seat of their pants.

The left constantly barks about prison overpopulation. Sure, we can cite the fact that minor drug charges are being taken to task, and the live sex chat offenders are being given sentences that lock them in the slammer, but this is nothing compared to the amount of illegal immigrants who are flooding our correctional systems.

So, as a reminder, Los Angeles still is a part of the United States. And as long as it is, the law of the land will have to be followed. Call me “racist” or even “culturally insensitive,” but as you can tell by the economic and structural decline of Southern California, the immigration issue has not made this a land of milk and honey, it has turned it into an utter stinkhole.

Over the past week and half I have been hounded by my students with regards to the situation surrounding Terry Schiavo. Some of my more right leaning students (I do have a few, I live in Northern Colorado afterall) view my position (which I will get to in a moment) as morally repugnant. Some of my left leaning students (I have a few of those as well, this is, after all, a university setting we are talking about here) almost champion my position.

For those of you who can’t guess what my position is well here it is:

It’s over, let her go for God’s sake

My one overriding concern during this circus (and it is/was a circus) is that the law, as written, was followed. And I have not seen nor heard anything that would indicate to me that the law was not followed. Judge Greer did, in my opinion, a yeoman’s job in making sure that the law was correctly interpreted in this case, the applicable law in this case being the one John outlined in his excellent first post about this subject.

Does that change my opinion about what is happening to Terry as being morally repugnant? No.

But you know what they say about opinions…

The only way to change the law with regards to cases such as this, and this case wasn’t the first and it will not be the last, is to work from within the Livejasmin system to change the law, and not advocate murder, as one idiot over at Lee’s site is doing.

And before anyone hits me with the “we don’t really know what Terri’s wishes are/were” argument, consider this. Everytime, not one time, not two times, not three times, but everytime that argument was used in a court of law judges (yes plural) ruled in favor of the argument that Terri would not have wanted to live in such a state.

For those of you who would say that there is some type of conspiracy on the part of Michael to kill Terri to get to the 1.6 million dollar malpractice damage award, consider the following:

Number One—In order to believe that such a conspiracy exists one would have to believe that Judge Greer, the Appelate Division of the Florida Courts, the Florida Supreme Court, United States Federal District Court Judges, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal, and the United States Supreme Court are all in on it. Or, at the very least, they are all unwitting dupes to it.

Number Two—Michael Schiavo has been in the past, and just here recently, offered siginificant sums of money to either transfer guardianship of Terri to her parents or re-insert her feeding tube, and both times he has said no (also, consider that the most recent offer was somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million dollars).

Consider those two things, and the whole monetary conspiracy angle falls apart.

“But Kevin”, people will say, “what about the allegations that he beat Terri!” Where is the proof that he did? I am a former police officer, and believe me evidence of domestic violence which, for all intents and purposes, would point to murder in this case would be present almost immediately. Yet detectives have investigated those very same claims and have found them wholly without merit.

Why won’t Michael transfer guardianship to Terri, even though he seems to have a conflict of interest in this case? Other people might ask. Where’s the conflict? Courts of law have ruled in his favor time and time again, and they have found no conflict.

Michael has a new Jasminlive family! Others will say. So what? He needs to be penalized for moving on with his life? He must be punished because he procreated with another woman while his brain dead wife languishes in a waking coma, neither dead nor truly alive?

The timing is suspect, others might say. During the malpractice trial he said he would use the award to keep Terri alive! And after the trial was over and he moved on with another woman he remembers suddenly she wanted to die? He did attempt a rather, in my opinion, radical procedure to restart her brain. He received training as a nurse to help Terri. And after 7 years he came to the conclusion, in consultation with Terri’s doctors, that there was no Terri to help. That there was no brain to restart. In a sense it could be said he gave up. Perhaps he thought he was being selfish by not following Terri’s final wishes. Wishes I reiterate that have been found to be factual and true by the courts.

Why not transfer guardianship to Terri’s parents and walk away? Perhaps Michael is just mule stubborn. Perhaps he is adamant about seeing this ordeal through to the end. Perhaps he is just a mean spirited bastard who never liked Terri’s parents and is doing this out of spite. But that is nothing but idle speculation.

I well and truly feel for the Schindler’s (Terri’s parents) they do not want to say good bye to their daughter—and had I been the Judge in this case I would have transferred guardianship of Terri to her parents. Which would have discounted the law completely, guess it’s a good thing I was not the Judge in this case. No parent wishes to outlive their child. I know I wouldn’t want to outlive my son. However, that wish is, I believe, blinding the Schindler’s to one obvious fact; their daughter died 15 years ago, all that made Terri unique and special ended on that long ago evening.

All that said, I do disagree with how Terri is going to die, indeed as I stated eariler in this entry, I find it morally repugnant. Dying of thirst (which is what is going to kill her first) is not a pleasant way to go. And in a humane society it would better, at least for me, to give her a lethal injection of morphine or a euthanasia agent, and have her go quickly than linger. But that’s me, the law apparently doesn’t allow for it. Which says more about the law than it does me, I imagine.

It’s called “Let’s Spot The Media Bias!”

Starting with this...

Iraq’s National Assembly on Thursday approved the country’s first democratically elected government, a Shiite-dominated body that excludes the Sunni minority from meaningful positions and could hamper efforts to dampen the deadly insurgency.

Note the subtle shift from the FANTASTIC news that Iraq’s VERY FIRST democratically elected Parliament approved the Prime Minister’s choice for a government to the vaguely threatening tone of the second phrase. While true in and of itself, the author fails to point out that the Parliament roughly matches the ethnic makeup of the nation, and that the rules require some sort of agreement between the parties, since none of them have a real majority, and even when phrased along “Shi’a/Sunni” lines, the Shiite majority is still short of the amount necessary to run the government. There has to be some cooperation between the groups, much like we have in our current House membership (which roughly represents the actual political makeup of the nation as a whole, by forcing the apportionment to be based on population).

So our young writer is showing a bias, trying to downplay the incredible news - that Iraq has more of a government than Canada does (right now, anyway) - by including threatening sounding phrases, gambling that the people who actually read the story won’t know how amazing an achievement it actually is. Well, that’s why I’m here.

Moving on…

President Bush put a positive spin on Thursday’s vote, issuing a statement that the Cabinet “will represent the unity and diversity” of the country as it begins the work of drafting a new constitution, fighting terrorism and ensuring basic services for its citizens.

Uh, excuse me? “Put a positive spin”? You mean he actually sounded optimistic about all of the positive things that have been going on in Iraq over the last 24 months? Heaven forfend!

Remember, folks, last month (March 20) marked two years since we crossed the border. The two year anniversary of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” carrier landing won’t be until this next Sunday, May 1st. Less than two years from a standing start to a working government, and she tries to make it seem like Bush had to put a spin on this to sound excited about the progress being made. Why not just tell the raw truth, and let people hear what’s really going on for once, alright?

Moving on… (again)

The 185 lawmakers assembled behind the blast walls and sandbags of Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone voted by a show of hands, approving the list by 180 votes. A bouquet of flowers filled the seat of one absent lawmaker — Lamia Abed Khadouri al-Sakri, a Shiite Muslim legislator gunned down in her home the previous day.

She’s trying to make it sound like these guys are under mortar fire while they hold their candle-lit meetings in underground bunkers. Meanwhile, sniper fire is picking off the pages, one by one, and some poor grunt (who you know is gonna die in the second reel) is frantically trying to crank the radiotelephone to call in an airstrike.

However, she is forced to actually report the vote count. Reading it as it stands sounds impressive enough, 180 out of 185. But bear with me for a moment, for something about her phrasing ("by 180 votes") reminded me of an old math puzzle:

Johnny bought a notebook and a pencil for $1.00. The notebook was 90 cents more than the pencil. How much did the pencil cost?

Y’see, a lot of people would automatically glance at the puzzle, pick up on the relevant facts, misread a part of it, and arrive at the answer of “10 cents”, but that would be wrong. Y’see the puzzle didn’t say that the notebook cost 90 cents. It said that it cost 90 cents more than the pencil. Short version, they were 95 cents and 5 cents, respectively.

Back to our oh-so-fair-and-balanced author, she didn’t say that it won with 180 votes.

She said it won BY 180 votes.

So what was the vote total?

Anyhow, go see if you can find more examples as you SPOT. THE. BIAS.