Say Anything Blog

This story, 7 Large Tunnels Beneath U.S.-Mexican Border Raising Security Concerns is a great example of Home Securities ineptness in dealing with border problems.

  While key entrance and exit points have been plugged in some of the biggest tunnels used to ferry people and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border, the passageways remain largely intact raising concerns smugglers reuse them, according to a published report.

According to a report in Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times, seven of the largest tunnels discovered under the U.S.-Mexico border have yet to be filled in, including the so-called Grande Tunnel found in January 2006 that extends nearly half a mile from San Diego to Tijuana.

Filling those tunnels would cost about $2.7 million, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection official

  Of course they can’t find the money but have they considered other options?  Probably not.  First option is to get the Mexicans to fill them in since they were most likely dug by Mexicans.  Second option is to get the illegals to fill them.  This should be cakewalk for illegals that do a lot of contruction (destruction) work and you’d think from an estimated 11 million illegals in this country one could form enough work parties to take care of this job.  However the option I like the best is to sprinkle anti-personal mines thoughout the tunnels while informing the likely parties on both sides (smugglers, dope dealers, illegals, etc) of their presence.  That would effectively discourage the use of these tunnels and Darwinize those too stupid to try.

From the Cato Institute is the article Ethanol Makes Gasoline Costlier, Dirtier with an extended list of

Untruths and misconceptions about ethanol

Some of them are as follows:

. Ethanol will lead to energy independence. If all the corn produced in America last year were dedicated to ethanol production (14.3 percent of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption would drop by 12 percent. For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline consumption in this country, we would need to appropriate all U.S. cropland, turn it completely over to corn-ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land for cultivation on top of that.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration believes that the practical limit for domestic ethanol production is about 700,000 barrels per day, a figure they don’t think is realistic until 2030. That translates to about 6 percent of the U.S. transportation fuels market in 2030.

. Ethanol is economically competitive now. According to a 2005 report issued by the Agriculture Department, corn ethanol costs an average of $2.53 to produce, or several times what it costs to produce a gallon of gasoline. Without the subsidies, costs would be higher still. A study last fall from the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to $1.05-$1.38 per gallon, or 42 percent to 55 percent of ethanol’s wholesale market price.

. Ethanol is a renewable fuel. According to a group of academics from UC Berkeley who published in Science magazine last year, 5 percent to 26 percent of the energy content of ethanol is “renewable.” The balance of ethanol’s energy actually comes from the staggering amount of coal, natural gas and nuclear power necessary to produce corn and process it into ethanol.

. Ethanol reduces air pollution. A review of the literature by Australian academic Robert Niven found that, when evaporative emissions are taken into account, E10 (fuel that’s 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline, the standard mix) increases emissions of total hydrocarbons, nonmethane organic compounds, and air toxics compared to conventional gasoline. The result is greater concentrations of photochemical smog and toxic compounds.

There are a lot more.  Read them all.

From a link provide by LGF to of all places Huffington Post [Wow, I didn’t know they had conservative posters there!!], Brian Gutfeld coins the phrase The Patriotic Terrorist and then explains what they have in common with real terrorists.

-Both patriotic terrorists and Al Qaeda want the US to abandon Iraq, for that reveals Bush and America to be monstrous, laughable failures. It does not matter to either group that the withdrawal from Iraq will make post-Vietnam look like an afternoon at Ikea shopping for a Hoggbo innerspring mattress.

-For patriotic terrorists and real terrorists, car bombs going off is music to their ears. It proves that you can’t offer democracy to troubled countries, as long as you’ve got terrorists standing in your way. And that’s great news for everyone who believes in checks and balances between the haves and the have nots! (Note: “haves” means the US. “Have nots” means those who hate the US)

-Patriotic terrorists and the more committed terrorists both believe that infractions at Guantanamo Bay are far worse than anything a genocidal dictator could muster, and such horrors possess far more PR potential in denigrating the US than anything involving Ed Begley Jr.

-Both patriotic terrorists and Al Qaeda terrorists believe the US desires to control the Middle East, empower evil Israel and expand it’s power base at the expense of innocent Arab lives. But both groups also realize that the US is too stupid to achieve these goals - and that makes being a patriotic terrorist loads of fun!

You think that these definitions might fit some the commentors here. Anyway read the whole thing including the comments.

What happens when you shove diversity down peoples throats..

Authorities at Tarleton State University said they plan to investigate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that mocked black stereotypes by featuring fried chicken, malt liquor and faux gang apparel.

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Never mind that this is largely a ‘white’ school and of course it is the race mongers from the NCAAP that have caused this stir.

“I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance,” said Donald Ray Elder, president of the Stephenville school’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

More than 400 students attended a university-sponsored forum Wednesday night that Elder described as “a shaky baby step” in bridging a divide between black and white students on the campus, which had about 400 black students out of 7,800 overall last semester.

Read it all.

The consumer speaks

..“Hounddog,” the simply awful movie in which 12-year-old Dakota Fanning’s character is raped, has no buyers.

“No one wants it after the terrible reviews,” one distributor told me,

That’s good news but it will not stop Hollywood from bring out more equivalent trash.

In WorldNetDaily today is this featured article SEXTRA CREDIT Sex assaults by teachers on students an ‘epidemic’

An estimated 5 million students in United States schools have been assaulted sexually by teachers, according to a congressional report

But no one seems very upset about this

But no one is calling for investigations or law enforcement crackdowns, there have been no campaigns to ban the offenders from schools, and in many states there aren’t even any requirements such predator attacks be reported to education licensing agencies.

In recent months, there have been an alarming string of dozens of cases of female teacher-on-male student sexual assaults.  In fact, in many cases, especially where the attacker is a woman and the student a male, such assaults are treated as a joke, with a hand-slap for the teacher, and some ribald locker room humor directed at the student

For those hardup guys looking for a good time, here is a list of these women teachers posted by WND.

More seriously, this epidemic or trend of what amounts to child molestation does not bode well for the school system, the children and their families and for the nation.  Of course the NEA does not take it very serious.  For my part, I see teacher sex molestation as just another reason for parents to home school.

The article is rather long but may be worth reading especially for those that have school age children.

Dallas County Records 12th DNA Case was one of the featured articles in the Dallas Morning News yesterday.  Actually there have been many convictions overturn by the results of DNA testing since it became available for criminal case analysis.  Of course there has been the usual breast beating by state representatives

‘These are appalling mistakes, and in the case of Dallas County, there have been so many,’ said Democratic state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston, who is sponsoring a bill to create Texas Innocence Commission to scrutinize the state’s criminal justice system. Ellis serves as chairman of the board of directors for the Innocence Project.

This will probably result in another level of bureaucracy which will do nothing but spend more of our tax money.

The obvious questions that are brought to my mind is how are apparently innocent people being convicted in the face of what is now negating DNA evidence, and just how accurate is the overturning DNA evidence.  On conviction side is the strong possiblity of misidentifications, falsified evidence and plea bargaining.  The first 2 of my list are evident in the Duke lacrosse player rape case where a highly tainted line-up was used to identify the alleged perpetrators and the alleged victim apparently falsified her statements.  I suspect that the pressure of plea bargaining sometimes convinces innocent suspects to accept a lessor sentence rather than risk a more severe penalty if they lose in a court case.

On the DNA side, I confess to mostly ignorance on the quality of the test results.  However, it seems to me that tests on DNA material which is several years old would be problematic at best. Some of you readers/commentors may be able to discuss the veracity of these tests.

Considering how easy it must be to be falsely charged with a sex crime, I am grateful that DNA tests are available to potentially disprove the accusation.

In a post after Michelle Malkin returned from Iraq I saw this quote from one of our soldiers ‘These people (refering to the Iraqis) love death’.  This statements appears to correlate well with the reverence muslims give to their suicide bombers who are eager to go to an early grave shouting ‘Allah Akbar’.  In general, devote followers of Islam seem to have little regard for life prefering death by alleged martyrdom [if one can consider blowing oneself up with as many others as possible a work of piety].

Another thing that is brought to my mind is the war our country fought with a different people who seem to have the similar death cult wishes.  Of course I am refering to the Japanese of WWII who would eagerly die for their cause rather than submit.  The extreme example of this was the banzai pilots who flew planes loaded with explosives into our ships killing thousands of troops.  This may have been the first large scale use of suicide bombers. I also remembered what our country thought it had to do to change this Japanese mindset, that is the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What will it take to convince the muslims to abandoned their death cult?  After 9/11 some suggested nuking Mecca and other muslim holy places.  As the muslims develop real offensive military capability especially with nuclear weapons, some drastic measure such as that may be necessary.

A recent 6 part document by Jim Rutz called The Trouble with Soy motivated me to write about it and other potentially toxic substances that have crept into our food supply despite the assurances of our governments consumer protection agencies.  Personally I’ve never liked soy products so I tend to stay away from them.  With their bland taste, I felt that it was preferable to eat cardboard.

Other substances that are in wide use in our food supply are the artificial sweeteners, aspertame and splenda both that have documented toxicity problems.  Aspertame that predated splenda by a number of years has had the greatest number of complaints which are documented at the Aspertame Toxicity Center .  I have had some negative reactions after a few swallows of a diet drink containing aspertame so I have avoided all diet drinks and all foods with artificial sweeteners.

Although not quite as dramatic as aspertame, toxicity problems with splenda appeared shortly after its release into the food supply. 

Whether it be soy, aspertame, splenda or other product with potential toxicity problems, the public in general is assured by the manufacturers and the government health agencies that these products are safe.  You must make your own decisions on this but be aware there may be substances in the processed food you purchase that can hurt you.