Category: Arizona

The Tucson Massacre: Paul Krugman et al. Continue to Get Pounded

And rightly so:

Roger Kimball: 

Loughner’s pistol was probably still warm when Krugman wheeled into print in an effort to make political capital out of the tragedy.  “Assassination Attempt in Arizona” should join that rogues’ gallery of disgusting Times stories that wallow in the gutter of political innuendo and mendacity even as they preen themselves on their exhibition of holier-than-thou virtue.

The folks at Powerline instantly got to the crux of the matter with The Contemptible Krugman, noting that he was among the first to “seek political advantage from mass murder.” Krugman’s column, they show, belongs to the Lillian Hellman species of utterance as described by Mary McCarthy: everything he wrote is a lie, including “and” and “the.” “We don’t have proof yet that this was political,” Krugman begins,  “but the odds are that it was.”

Charles Krauthammer:

Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.

[. . .]

. . . fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power – military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest – "campaign" – is an appropriation from warfare.

See also John Hayward, The Climate of Krugman.  And don't miss Pat Buchanan, Poisonous Politics.

 

The Arizona Shooting

Here is excellent commentary from Victor Davis Hanson to offset the leftist scumbaggery emanating from Paul Krugman and his ilk with his irresponsible and vile talk of a Climate of Hate.  How preternaturally moronic our leftist pals who cannot distinguish conservative dissent from hate!  You see, leftists think they own dissent, a bizarre conceit I thoroughly demolish in Does the Left Own Dissent?

Yes, we conservatives have targeted you leftists.  That's a metaphorical way of talking.  It is evidence of your appeal to the double standard that you have no beef with Obama's "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

And here are some observations by Jared Lee Loughner's philosophy teacher.  Apparently, logic didn't do him any good.  Loughner, I mean.  The Slate writer, by the way,  is clueless when it comes to logic.  He writes, "A syllogism is a form of argument in which a conclusion is inferred from a set of premises."

Exercise for the reader: explain why that is worthless as a definition of 'syllogism.'

 

The Giffords Assassination Attempt: Now the Blather Begins

Shooting Stuns Nation screamed the headline of this morning's Arizona Republic.  Brace yourself for the crapload of liberal-left blather that has already begun to descend upon us in the wake of this terrible event.  Perhaps later I will weigh in on this, but for now I refer you to Jack Shafer, In Defense of Inflamed Rhetoric and Byron York, Journalists Urged Caution After Ft. Hood, Now Race to Blaim Palin for Arizona Shootings.

Halcyon Arizona October

Chilly nights, good for sleeping with windows open, warm dry days of lambent desert light.  October's sad paradise passes too soon but its dying light ushers in the month of Gratitude in my personal liturgy.  The 28th already. Savor each day, each moment, each sunrise and moonset, moonrise and sunset.  Drink green tea in the gloaming with Kerouac on your knee.

Enjoy each thing as if for the first time — and the last.

Arizona Citizenship Proof Law for Voters Overturned by Court

Here. Excerpt, emphasis added:

A three-judge panel of the court, in a 2-1 decision, said the proof-of-citizenship requirement conflicted with the intent of the federal law aiming to increase voter registration by streamlining the process with a single form and removing state- imposed obstacles to registration.

The federal law requires applicants to “attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury” without requiring documentary proof, the panel said.

Copping a riff from Michelle Malkin, you could call this the Left's "No illegal alien left behind" program.  But the day of reckoning approacheth, in less than a week. 

Where Were You on 9/11/01?

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first of heard about the acts of 9/11 Islamoterrorism.  It was a cool and bright Arizona morning, dry and delightful as only the desert can be.  I had just returned from a long hard bike ride.  Preliminary to some after-ride calisthenics I switched on the TV only to see  one of the planes enter one of the Trade Towers.

I suspected correctly what was up and I remarked to my wife, "Well, two good things will come of this: Gary Condit will be out of the news forever, and finally something will be done about the porosity of the southern border."  I turned out to be right on one count.  Gary Condit, who had come to national prominence because of his adulterous affair with Chandra Levy, and who had dominated the news that summer of aught-one, dropped out of sight.  And good riddance.

But I was sadly mistaken on the second count.  So here we are, nine years later, with such abominations Obaminations as Department of Justice lawsuits against the State of Arizona for attempting to do what the Feds ought to do yet refuse to do while Mexican drug cartels control some portions of the state.

For detailed analysis, see my Arizona category.

Illegal Immigration and Liberal Irresponsibility

Peggy Noonan, America Is at Risk of Boiling Over:

To take just one example from the past 10 days, the federal government continues its standoff with the state of Arizona over how to handle illegal immigration. The point of view of our thought leaders is, in general, that borders that are essentially open are good, or not so bad. The point of view of those on the ground who are anxious about our nation's future, however, is different, more like: "We live in a welfare state and we've just expanded health care. Unemployment's up. Could we sort of calm down, stop illegal immigration, and absorb what we've got?" No is, in essence, the answer.

Exactly right.  One cannot have both an ever-expanding welfare state and a tolerant attitude toward illegal immigration. 

An irony here is that if we stopped the illegal flow and removed the sense of emergency it generates, comprehensive reform would, in time, follow. Because we're not going to send the estimated 10 million to 15 million illegals already here back. We're not going to put sobbing children on a million buses. That would not be in our nature. (Do our leaders even know what's in our nature?) As years passed, those here would be absorbed, and everyone in the country would come to see the benefit of integrating them fully into the tax system. So it's ironic that our leaders don't do what in the end would get them what they say they want, which is comprehensive reform.

Unfortunately, we cannot take at face value what our so-called leaders say they want, especially when they employ gaseous phrases like 'comprehensive immigation reform' which  mean nothing definite.  Obviously, Job One is to stop the influx of illegal aliens.  But try to get someone like Janet 'The System Works'  Napolitano to admit that.  She won't, not in a million years.  It's not in her interest, since illegal aliens are most of them 'undocumented Democrats,' i.e., potential members of her party.  Recently she dodged the fence question with the asinine response, "You can't stop 'em all."  On her JackAss (Democrat) logic, if you can't stop 'em all –which is true — then there is no point in enforcing the border so as to stop more than are being stopped now.

Once Job One is done, then we can advance to the question of how to normalize and integrate the 10-15 million whom we have allowed to enter illegally.  Noonan is absolutely right: we are not going to deport them, nor — I would argue — should we.  Conservative bomb-throwers such as Ann Coulter who call for deportation are almost as irresponsible as Obama and Co.  (To set forth my reasons why we ought not deport  millions of otherwise law-abiding illegals who contribute to our economy and have children who are U S citizens requires a separate post.)

Lest my conservative friends fear that I am turning into a squishy bien-pensant latte-sipping liberal, let me throw this into the mix: the law that allows the U.S. -born offspring of illegal aliens to gain immediate citizenship needs to be changed. 

 

Paradoxes of Illegal Immigration

Philosophers hate a contradiction, but love a paradox.  There are paradoxes everywhere, in the precincts of the most abstruse as well as in the precincts of the prosaic.  Here are eight paradoxes of illegal immigration suggested to me by Victor Davis Hanson.    The titles and formulations are my own.  For good measure, I add a ninth, of my own invention. 

The Paradox of Profiling.  Racial profiling is supposed to   be verboten.  And yet it is employed by American border guards when they nab and deport thousands of illegal border crossers.  Otherwise, how could they pick out illegals from citizens who are merely in the vicinity of the border?  How can what is permissible near the border be impermissible far from it in, say, Phoenix?  At what distance  does permissibility transmogrify into impermissibility?  If a border patrolman may profile why may not a highway patrolman? Is legal permissibility within a state indexed to spatiotemporal position and variable with variations in the latter?

The Paradox of Encroachment.  The Federal government sues the state of Arizona for upholding Federal immigration law on the ground that it is an encroachment upon Federal jurisdiction.  But sanctuary cities flout Federal law by not allowing the enforcement of Federal immigration statutes.  Clearly, impeding the enforcement of Federal laws is far worse than duplicating and perhaps interfering with Federal law enforcement efforts.  And yet the Feds go after Arizona while ignoring sanctuary cities.  Paradoxical, eh?

The Paradox of Blaming the Benefactor.  Millions flee Mexico for the U.S. because of the desirability of living and working here and the undesirability of living in a crime-ridden, corrupt, and impoverished country.  So what does Mexican president Felipe Calderon do?  Why, he criticizes the U.S. even though the U.S.  provides to his citizens what he and his government cannot! And what do many Mexicans do?  They wave the Mexican flag in a country whose laws they violate and from whose toleration they benefit.

The Paradox of Differential Sovereignty and Variable Border Violability.  Apparently, some states are more sovereign than others.  The U.S., for some reason, is less sovereign than  Mexico, which is highly intolerant of invaders from Central America.  Paradoxically, the violability of a border is a function of the countries between which the border falls.

The Paradox of Los Locos Gringos.  The gringos are crazy, and racist xenophobes to boot, inasmuch as 70% of them demand border security and support AZ SB 1070.  Why then do so many Mexicans want to live among the crazy gringos? 

The Paradox of Supporting While Stiffing the Working Stiff.  Liberals have traditionally been for the working man.  But by being soft on illegal immigration they help drive down the hourly wages of the working poor north of the Rio Grande.  (As I have said in other posts, there are liberal arguments against illegal immigration, and here are the makings of one.)

The Paradox of Penalizing the Legal while Tolerating the Illegal.   Legal immigrants face hurdles and long waits while illegals are tolerated.  But liberals are supposed to be big on fairness.  How fair is this?

The Paradox of Subsidizing a Country Whose Citizens Violate our Laws.  "America extends housing, food and education subsidies to illegal aliens in need. But Mexico receives more than $20 billion in American remittances a year — its second-highest source of foreign exchange, and almost all of it from its own nationals living in the United States."  So the U.S. takes care of illegal aliens from a failed state while subsidizing that state, making it more dependent, and less likely to clean up its act. 

The Paradox of the Reconquista.  Some Hispanics claim that the Southwest and California were 'stolen' from Mexico by the gringos.  Well, suppose that this vast chunk of real estate had not been 'stolen' and now belonged to Mexico.  Then it would be as screwed up as the rest of Mexico: as economically indigent, as politically corrupt, as crime-ridden, as drug-infested.  Illegal immigrants from southern Mexico would then, in that counterfactual scenario,  have farther to travel to get to the U.S., and there would be less of the U.S. for their use and enjoyment.  The U.S. would be able to take in fewer of them.  They would be worse off.  So if Mexico were to re-conquer the lands 'stolen' from it, then it would make itself worse off than it is now.  Gaining territory it would lose ground — if I may put paradoxically the Paradox of the Reconquista.

Exercise for the reader:  Find more paradoxes!

 

Another Strange Tale of the Superstitions

IMG_0310 The Superstition Mountains exert a strange fascination.  They attract misfits, oddballs, outcasts, outlaws, questers of various stripes, a philosopher or two, and a steady stream of  'Dutchman hunters,'  those who believe  in and search for the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. This nonexistent object has lured many a man to his death.  More men than Alexius von Meinong's golden mountain, for sure.    Adolf Ruth, for example, back in the '30s.

Such appears to be the case once again this last week.  Three Utah prospectors, their brains addled by gold fever, entered this wild and unforgiving inferno of rocks and rattlesnakes  unprepared and appear to have the paid for their foolishness  with their lives.  Here is the story.

Or at least that is the story so far.  But there has to be more.  Why July when the temperature approaches 120 degrees Fahrenheit and the monsoon humidity adds a  further blanket of discomfort?  It is not as if they haven't been here before.  A couple of them were rescued last year.

And how do you get lost, if you are not totally stupid?  The central landmark of the entire wilderness is Weaver's Needle depicted in the first shot above.  It is visible from every direction, from the Western Sups to the Eastern Sups.  To orient yourself, all you have to do is climb up to where you can see it.  And then head for it.  To the immediate west and east of it are major trails that lead to major trailheads.

And why was no trace of them found despite  intensive searching with helicopters and dogs?  It is possible to fall into an abandoned mine shaft.  But all three at once?  Their plan, supposedly, was to search by day and sleep in a motel at night.  But then they wouldn't have gotten very deep into the wilderness and the chances of finding them dead or alive would have been pretty good.

IMG_0282 Maybe it was all a scam.  Maybe they never entered the wilderness at First Water.  They left their car there and hitchhiked out in an elaborate ruse to ditch their wives and families and their pasts.  But I speculate.  (If a philosopher can't speculate, who the hell can?)

I've hiked out of First Water many times, winter and summer.  I know a trail that you don't and is not on any maps that leads to Adolf Ruth's old camp at Willow Springs.  I've got half a mind to take a look-see . . .

Is Rhode Island in Violation of the Supremacy Clause?

Rhode_island%20coin Rhode Island is already doing what Arizona is fixin' to do come the end of this month. As William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School,  reports over at Legal Insurrection, ". . . Rhode Island already has implemented the critical piece of the Arizona law [S.B. 1070], checking the immigration status of people stopped for traffic violations where there is a reasonable suspicion, and reporting all illegals to federal authorities for deportation."

Will Eric Holder and colleagues at the DOJ be going after Rhode Island?  If not, why not?  I'm not legally trained, but isn't there supposed to be something wrong with selective enforcement? Isn't there something objectionable about suing Arizona for a violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U. S. Constitution while turning a blind eye to Rhode Island, not to mention those sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles which are, because of their sanctuary laws, really in violation of the Clause in question?

One gets the impression that the reasons adduced in the complaint are just a smokescreen to hide venal and  'political' motives.  A need to curry favor with Hispanics in order to stay in office?  A desire to flood the country with potential Democrats so as to secure a permanent victory for the Left?

Actually, the latter is what this is all about to anyone astute enough to penetrate the thick veil of liberal-left mendacity.  Obama and the boys have no desire to control the border or solve the problem of illegal immigration. This is why they mouth and hide behind the vacuous phrase 'comprehensive immigation reform.'  Like 'change,' it means nothing definite.  To them, that is a virtue allowing as it does for maximal obfuscation.


Gallup Poll: Americans Oppose Federal Suit Against AZ Immigration Law

Here.  The notion that the Obama Justice Department would waste millions suing  a state for passing a law that mirrors the content of a Federal law is absurd on the face of it, especially when the same Justice Department turns a blind eye to sanctuary laws which actually do violate the Supremacy Clause; but also from a purely political standpoint the suit is idotic harming as it does the Dems' chances in the November elections and beyond.

By the way, did you see Sarah Palin on The O'Reilly Factor tonight?  Mr. Bill did a good job grilling her and exposing the shallowness of her thinking about illegal immigration. She has obviously given little thought to the problem of the 12 or so million illegals already in the country, many of whom stay out of trouble, have jobs, and have children who are U. S. citizens.

The Empty Suit Suit: U.S. vs. Arizona

The ridiculous lawsuit the DOJ is bringing against Arizona could be called the 'empty suit suit' inasmuch as  behind it are a bunch of empty suits in line behind the Empty Suit in Chief. See Lawrence Auster, The Gravamen of the DOJ's Case Against Arizona.

It is nice to know that not everything in The Arizona Republic, the local rag of record, is liberal-left buncombe.  See Chuck Coughlin, Secure Border Can Provide Big Dividends.  But the journalistic crapweasels of The AZ Republic really do deserve our contempt.  How many weeks did it take them before they began correctly reporting the content of S.B. 1070?  Like Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, and Obama, they apparently believed that one can speak responsibly about something about which one knows nothing.  But I do admit that the aforesaid journalistic crapweasels have cleaned up their act somewhat.  One wonders what goes on in the J-schools around the land.  I'm not sure I want to know.

While I'm on the illegal immigration topic, let me draw your attention to Heather Mac Donald's The Illegal Alien Crime Wave.  Here is but one of her astute observations:

But however pernicious in themselves, sanctuary rules are a symptom of a much broader disease: the nation’s near-total loss of control over immigration policy. Fifty years ago, immigration policy might have driven immigration numbers, but today the numbers drive policy. The nonstop increase of immigration is reshaping the language and the law to dissolve any distinction between legal and illegal aliens and, ultimately, the very idea of national borders.

That's certainly right: the numbers now drive the policy.  And it may be  too late to stop the illegal immigrant juggernaut which is of course aided and abetted by the intellectually irresponsible elision of the legal/illegal distinction by its  liberal-left enablers.