After three grueling days behind bars, Paris is out

Thinks Cubans are immigrants

President George W. Bush showed up at what the news media insists on calling Glynnco, Georgia – it’s actually the old Naval Air Station Glynnco in Brunswick.  He took time to chastise folks for not supporting his immigration policy.  Here’s part of what he had to say:

Before I do, I do want to introduce some people. I want to introduce Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez — I appreciate you coming, Mr. Secretary. (Applause.) Carlos wasn’t born here, see. He was born in another country — Cuba. And now he sits in the Cabinet of the President of the United States. There’s something great about a country that welcomes people, people who uphold our laws and realize the great blessings of America.

 

With us, as well, is Senator Mel Martinez. He wasn’t born in America. He’s a Senator from Florida. He was born in Cuba. I don’t know if you know his story, but his mother and father put him on an airplane to come to the United States of America, to be raised by total strangers because they didn’t want their son to grow up under a tyrant named Fidel Castro. He used to sit in the Cabinet of the President of the United States; now he sits in the United States Senate. What a wonderful country it is, where people can come to live in a country based upon liberty, and realize the great blessings of our country.

 

And I want to mention those two men because, to me, they represent what the immigration debate is all about: Will we be a welcoming place, a place of law, that renews our spirit by giving people a chance to succeed?

 

So, Senator, thank you for coming, as well. (Applause.)

Mr. Bush’s remarks illustrate part of the trouble with his immigration policy – he doesn’t understand current law.

Secretary Gutierrez and Senator Martinez are not immigrants – they have nothing to do with the current immigration debate.  The current debate is over people from other countries who violate US law to come to this country and live – for whatever reason.  Secretory Gutierrez and Senator Martinez came to this country from Cuba wholly within the US law – a law called the Cuban Adjustment Act signed into law by President Johnson in the 1960s.  The law recognizes folks escaping from the communist hell hole of Cuba as refugees.  Refugees come under entirely different laws than do regular immigrants.  Refugees are recognized as people escaping tyranny – as people needing the protection of the United States.

Mexicans, Saudis, Haitians, Jordanians, Somalis and others coming to the US to work, to beat their Indonesian slaves at Disney World,  or to overthrow the government and impose Sharia don’t come under the laws that were passed to benefit people such as Secretary Gutierrez and Senator Martinez.  If Mr. Bush can’t understand this, it’s no wonder he fails to understand the complexities of immigration law.

According to the unimpeachable Wikopedia, there are approximately six billion humanoids on this planet currently. Just what should this fact mean to the dedicated liberal? The empathic, caring being. It means this: at any given moment, instant by instant, a substantial number of the human population (including children) are suffering loss, deprivation, low self-esteem, pain, disease, hunger, tragedy, grief , terror, horror and every other nuance of negative emotion that can be named.

If you want to feel sorry for deprived and suffering humans, there is no end of opportunity, for truly lamentable and pitiful states are a constant factor in human existence, and, thanks to omnipresent media, today we can be right down there in the offal pit scrambling for protein nuggets with the most desperate of them.

Each of us has our favorite sufferers. Myself, I sometimes lay awake in the still of the night worrying that there are millions of children in Africa and Asia who have never known the joy of an Xbox, or have nary a Gameboy in their extended family. I can only wonder what the United States government is going to do to alleviate this racist inequity. Are you listening Senator Kennedy?

So what can a caring, yet rational, being do about all this mass suffering? If you are empathetic to an extreme degree, worrying about the plight of others’ suffering is a full time job. You hardly have time to enjoy your low-fat double latte every morning while driving your Toyota Hybrid Prius to your consciousness raising group which today is protesting George Bush’s birth. A population of six billion ensures that being a martyr to worrying is a full time endeavor: there is no time off for vacations in your Happy Place. If you do visit your Happy Place, then you are an extreme slacker, perhaps even a Republican.

The concept of how suffering relates to numbers in a population of six billion is something liberals have failed to grasp. The law of large numbers also generates other disquieting questions, for with six billion, incremental percentages suddenly loom large: what percentage of a population of six billion are homicidal maniacs? What percentage of these are in positions of political, religious, or cultural leadership? The same question goes for common murderers, child-molesters, perverts of toilet-licking caliber, practitioners of barnyard sex, hirsute cross-dressing truck drivers, United States senators, and other unsavory aspects of society. For example, if a mere half-percent (.05% ) of the world’s population are homicidal maniacs, that means (taking the more conservative figure of five billion for the world’s population) 250,000,000 dangerous lunatics – that’s about the population of the United States, give or take a few million pine-straw layers. This is a substantial number for the other side (conservatives) to worry about. Here’s an exercise for empathy freaks: if 7.85% of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every night, then (a) how many meals-on-wheels will you have to deliver every day; (b) how much gas will that use, and, (c) factoring in the International Date Line, how many of these meals will actually be breakfast before your rounds are through? Put your answers on the desk and then file out quietly.

Almost nobody likes to see starving babies. Starving Biafran children with bloated bellies seem to be typical of the type (in fact: I’ve seen so many pictures of these that I’ve casually and cruelly considered that those distended bellies may just be a genetic trait in Biafrans.) Here’s a moral/empathy exercise for you: how many pictures of starving Biafran babies to you have to be exposed to before you go through the progressive stages of sadness, outrage at cruel fate, overwhelming desire to feed these babies, feeling emotionally taxed, boredom, indifference, and just damned tired of it? Is there a limit to your caring? Is there a limit to how much you are willing to force others to do to support your astronomical sense of empathy?

The point is, if you get your kicks from feeling deep empathy for starving (or even just ‘hungry’) children, you will never be at loss for something to worry about. It’s just a matter of extending your radius wider and wider to embrace them. And if you grow bored with trying to feed all the hungry children and furnish each and every one with an Xbox, then you simply increase the scope of your empathy to include other things. The next step, naturally, is to worry not just about humans, but wildlife as well. And SNAG’s (Sensitive New Age Geeks) have already managed to get a toehold in the legal system for some creatures, like monkeys. And this makes a certain sense, for surely the anthropomorphic monkey is as worthy of as much legal protection as the average LA gang-banger. And since there are so many deep-empaths around these days, their sensitivity has branched out to embrace the earth itself, and, the ultimate thing to worry about, the weather. The Greeners believe that somehow if we all drop technology’s benefits, i.e., industry that clothes and shelters us, mechanized agrarian techniques that feed us, and medical technology which sustains us, and just go live in the jungles again, somehow we’ll all be better off. And least everyone would be suffering and starving to the same degree then. That’s called the least-common-denominator method: the only sure way to have organized equality is to reduce all humans to the same base level. Deprivation is the great equalizer. After all, you don’t want your kids having full bellies when other children are starving, do you? Why should little Susie be disease free while little Nihembah is covered with mysterious, fly-attracting, oozing third-world pustules? Hmmm?

Here’s a moral test – one rooted in real time, that I’ve asked many liberal mega-empathizers to take. It involves the very real issue of how to allocate resources for suffering: You have One million dollars at your disposal to help treat children with medical problems. You have a choice of (a) helping infants with heart valve problems, or (b) helping crack babies survive. You have to decide either (a) or (b) and cannot mix and match. For one million you can finance ten ($100,000) heart valve operations, resulting in ten kids going on to lead normal productive lives; or, for the same one million, you can extend the life of one blind and retarded crack baby for approximately a year. Is it the lady, or the tiger?

There is a type of personality that has grafted on to technological society, one that is consumed with expounding the negative to the exclusion of everything positive in the world. The media provides them with unending fodder which sustains their lamentable state, and at the same time provides them a breeding platform. From the hallowed halls of Hollywood to the habitual picket line outside the White House, these people are emotive bombs, which politicians and media aim in whatever direction they please. They operate on the principle of mob psychology, pure and simple. Get them worked up into a frenzy, as Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, the leaders of Islam or dozens of other tyrants could tell you, and you have a formidable weapon at your disposable.

For these people, who insist in wallowing in the misery of others, the modern world is an unending treat. When someone mouths a well-worn cliche that hits their G spot, their eyes roll up in ecstatic trance, they began chanting in mass, marching, then lobbing improvised missiles and engaging in mindless destruction. You cannot appease them; you can in no way satisfy them, and you cannot rationalize with them; they are the human version of the soldier ants. Get out of their way or be destroyed. Misery never ends.

Our old friends chavez and castro helping illegals reach the US

If you read anything today, read the four-part series Breaching America:  War refugees or threats – written by Todd Bensman and published in the San Antonio Express News (the series begins here).  Bensman went to Damascus, Syria to track how folks from terrorist supporting countries, as well as Iraq war refugees, are sneaking into the US.  One way is to get a visa from a country near the United States, and there pops up our old nemesis, hugo chavez:

Venezuela is another jumping-off point to the American border, according to court records of smuggling cases.

Because of its antagonistic relationship with the United States, Venezuela does not cooperate on counterterrorism measures, according to the U.S. government, and shows no concerns about issuing visas to special-interest migrants.

One day recently, the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus, its walls bedecked with large portraits of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, was packed with Syrians seeking one of nine types of visas offered.

The U.S. State Department has complained in recent years about Venezuela’s cozy relationship with Syria and Iran. Earlier this year, the first nonstop flights began from Tehran, Iran, to Caracas, Venezuela — a development that some U.S. counterterrorism specialists say opens a new avenue for potential terrorists to the American border.

Some of the government’s most senior Homeland Security officials have spoken of yet another source of terrorist infiltrators: the area where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, known as the “Tri-Border” region.

Tens of thousands of Arab immigrants there have been under scrutiny by American intelligence services since 9-11. The U.S. Treasury Department in December named people and organizations that “provided financial and logistical support to the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”

Last year, Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, commander of the U.S. Army’s Southern Command, warned the House Armed Services Committee that some of these groups “could move beyond logistical support and actually facilitate terrorist operations.”

Other countries helping illegal immigrants reach the US are Guatemala and, of course, Cuba.

Cuba’s consul in Damascus said in an interview that his country happily grants visas to any Middle Easterner who asks “because America doesn’t give anyone the opportunity to take refuge, especially after 9-11.”

“But we work another way,” said Armando Perez Suarez. “We put conditions on American people who are making war with everyone. The Arab people are the peaceful ones. We give visas to anybody who wants to visit our country.”

Suarez said he is well aware that Cuba, with its economic problems and poverty, is not anyone’s idea of a final destination.

“After that, if he wants to travel to any other country, the U.S., or Central America, this is not our problem,” Suarez said. “It’s not our burden.”

He scoffed at American concerns about terrorist infiltration.

“I’m sorry your president is from Texas,” he said. “Now you’re receiving your own medicine. The problem started in Texas and it’s finishing in Texas.”

Bensman also mentions documents showing contacts between al-Qaeda and Colombian narcotics terrorists.

Michelle Malkin interviewed Bensman on the O’Reilly Factor last night, and Hugh Hewitt interviewed him for an hour on his show last night (transcript here).  The Express-News says this about their reporting:

To document the hidden world of special-interest aliens, San Antonio Express-News reporter Todd Bensman and photographer Jerry Lara traveled to Damascus, Syria; Amman, Jordan; throughout Guatemala; the southern border state of Chiapas, Mexico; Brownsville and elsewhere along the Texas border; and Michigan. Bensman documented routes used by smugglers to move immigrants from Islamic countries, including a popular one from Syria to Texas traveled by Iraqi refugee Aamr Bahnan Boles.

The Express-News hired Arabic language interpreters in Syria, Jordan and Texas, where Boles was first interviewed extensively. Bensman obtained materials from overseas smuggling investigations and hundreds of daily intelligence summaries reflecting Texas border crossings. He interviewed U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials in both countries, and examined U.S. court records from a dozen federal smuggling prosecutions. Some dialogue and scenesdescribed in this series were reconstructed based on interviews with Boles and, when possible, others who were present.

Also interesting is Bensman’s description of Mexico’s efforts to stop terrorists.  He reports the country fears an attack against the US originating from Mexican soil, so the Mexican police make an effort to find Middle Easterners.

Read the whole thing – part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Update – The above links have now rotted, but Bensman has posted the series on his own website.  You can read it all here.