Parsing the (Very) Bad News

By Alan Caruba

The dictionary says “parse” means to break down into component parts of speech with an analysis of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part. The Caruba definition means to take all manner of bits of information and try to make sense of any of it, in part or in whole.

Part of the problem is that there are so many “experts” in the world, PhDs which often translates to “piled higher and deeper.” The lesser degrees are often lacking as well. A college education today is obscenely expensive and, as many employers will tell you, of dubious value when it comes to the mastery of skills that were formerly acquired by the sixth grade.

A recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek was devoted to the year in review and perhaps the most astonishing statistical data it offered was the way Americans are “stuck in the middle” when it comes to opinions on all the major issue which the nation must address, half are for and half are against. Whether it’s gun ownership, doctor-assisted suicide, how to deal with illegal immigrants, government control of healthcare, or whether President Obama is doing a good job, one is led to believe that we are totally divided pro and con.

The key phrase here is “led to believe” because the data was largely drawn from Gallup surveys, the Pew Research Center, the National Journal, and other sources. As much as I regard Gallup, Rasmussen, Zogby and other gatherers of today’s instant “truth”, I remain skeptical of all these polls. Opinion is fickle, subject to the economy, one’s religion, race, age, gender, political values, and yesterday’s events.

Most certainly, taking at face value anything “the government” has to say on any topic is the height of folly. It exists as the instrument of anyone and any political party that holds the reins of power. As such it disgorges masses of “information” that is intended to herd the public in directions that will ensure they remain in power while, at the same time, often engaging in the most appalling abuses of power, including neglect of duty.

History is testimony to the most egregious errors of judgment by presidents and congresses that arrived with their biases and ideologies intact. We want to know what principles a president adheres to. Some like Reagan believed in America’s greatness, its exceptional place and role. Others like Obama arrived with their views carefully hidden behind meaningless phrases such as “hope and change.” Obama’s first executive order was to deny access to his entire life’s paper trail of documents.

My first profession was that of journalist and from that I developed a lifelong search for factual information, historic and current, with which to make sense of events. Even when I segued into public relations, I insisted that it be fact-based, i.e. the truth!

I collect the “news” all the time and maintain vast files of data that go back years. On my desk today are stacks of items culled from all manner of sources, most of which I regard as reliable, but The New York Times is high on my list of the greatest collection of liars and fools since the glory days of Pravda, the state-controlled Soviet newspaper.

A recent Times editorial was titled “Comeback Against Malaria” citing “insecticide-treated bed nets” to protect people from mosquitoes that transmit the disease. No where does it mention the way the Environmental Protection Agency, ignoring the science, banned DDT, effective December 31, 1972, and thus condemned millions to an early, unnecessary death. If African and other nations plagued by this mosquito-borne disease could begin to spray DDT, it would drastically reduce malaria worldwide. The Times will not tell you that.

Another news item reports that Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security Secretary, has announced that her department is creating “a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operation.” This is just one example of the Obama administration’s insane devotion to the totally debunked hoax of “global warming”, now renamed “climate change.” Suffice it to say it has nothing to do with homeland security and is beyond the reach of any government on planet Earth.

Piers Corbyn of Weather Action, a London-based, independent forecasting firm, has proven infinitely more accurate than the British government’s debased weather agency. He is predicting extreme weather for December 25-31 in Britain. Much of the weather forecasts of the U.S. government are corrupted by computer models that use manipulated “global warming” data from government agencies such as NOAA and NASA. Thank God for weather satellites.

Much of the data collected worldwide is from weather stations either positioned on “heat islands” known as cities or simply non-existent. The best computers in the world cannot include data on clouds, a major indicator, because even meteorologists have no idea why they do what they do, changing from moment to moment. Similarly, it is still virtually impossible to predict earthquakes or when volcanoes will erupt.

The government consistently refuses to tell the public that the Earth has been in a natural cooling cycle since the late 1990s. Winters for decade to come will be harsher and longer. Crops will fail. Food prices will rise. The latest “compromise” that extended income tax rates also wasted billions on corn-based ethanol production mandates that even environmental organizations now oppose.

The latest Census reports that the U.S. population is up an astonishing 27 million in just ten years! Immigration, legal and illegal, accounted for three-quarters of that growth. This growth is exceeded by only two other decades in the entire history of the nation! Either we change our immigration policies, reducing this flood of humanity, and lock down our southern border or you won’t be able to recognize America in the space of a few decades.

So, parsing the news remains critical if we are to understand or make sense of anything happening in the U.S. and around the globe. One thing seems clear, like all empires based on economic and military strength, power is moving elsewhere after a half century since the end of World War II that positioned the U.S. as a “superpower.”

The nation has wasted its potential on “entitlement” programs that are trillions of dollars in debt into the foreseeable future. The national debt is owned by our grandchildren!

The government is in the process of locking up its vast natural resources from use by its own citizens. It is seizing vast tracks of the nation’s landmass. It is restricting all new offshore oil exploration and extraction, and will force coal-fired power plants to close despite the fact that coal provides half of all the electricity generated nationwide.

U.S. currency is being systematically devalued because the government failed its oversight of the financial marketplace and its central bank, the Federal Reserve.

Because the government was permitted to intrude in the housing market in the name of “social justice”, it is in a state of complete collapse.

The same will occur to our healthcare system if Obamacare is permitted to move ahead.

The news is bad. We have precious little time to reverse the process.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

How Crazy Is It?

By Alan Caruba

How crazy is it to keep telling people the economy is recovering when everyone knows the “stimulus” was a complete flop and unemployment is up?

How crazy is it to keep wanting to spend more billions on “stimulus”?

How crazy is it to let the Bush tax cuts expire when every economist in America is telling you to extend or make them permanent?

How crazy is it for the federal government to sue Arizona for passing a law that directly mirrors a federal one intended to enforce the prohibition against illegal aliens?

How crazy is it to help fund a deepwater oil drilling operation off the coast of Brazil while refusing to allow it anywhere off the East and West coasts of America?

How crazy is it to refuse to open a tiny portion of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for oil at a time when we are importing sixty percent of oil from foreign producers?

How crazy is it to “reform” Medicare by adding thousands more to its rolls while telling everyone you were cutting its costs?

How crazy is it to pass Obamacare without telling people that many would lose their insurance while others would see their premiums increase?

How crazy is it to require utilities to purchase electricity from wind and solar farms when neither could exist without taxpayer subsidies, nor produces a steady supply?

How crazy is it to try to stop the building of coal-fired plants to generate electricity when the United States is the “Saudi Arabia of coal”, having hundreds of years’ supply?

How crazy is it to continue the moratorium on U.S. oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico, throwing more people out of work, denying the oil to the marketplace, and yet give money to Mexico so it can drill in the same Gulf?

How crazy is it to try to close Guantanamo when no U.S. state prison system and no foreign nation want to take the detainees? When one third or more of those previously released returned to the battlefield?

How crazy is it to continue blaming G.W. Bush for everything when you’ve spent more time on the golf course in a year and a half than he did during eight years in office?

How crazy is it to give a speech on the war in Afghanistan at West Point and announce when the U.S. will be leaving?

How crazy is it for the federal government to ban the incandescent light bulb?

I could ask this generic question many times regarding the Obama administration and some previous congressional actions, but they add up to something less than “crazy” and more like a plan to harm the nation and all Americans when it comes to energy, healthcare, and national security.

Some may say this notion is just plain crazy, but it may be closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Faisal Shahzad Warns America

By Alan Caruba

Faisal Shahzad was sentenced to life in prison on October 6th for trying to kill a lot of innocent Americans in Times Square on May 1, 2010. He was completely unrepentant and we need to understand the funhouse-mirror mentality of Muslims who believe that Allah, through the Koran, has granted them, not just the right, but the duty to kill infidels who offer any defense against their outrages.

There is no question that the U.S. has had to be active militarily in the Middle East ever since the former Iraq dictator, Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait on President George H.W. Bush’s watch.

The former director of the CIA, ambassador to China, and then leader of the free world understood that, if no action was taken, Saddam would be into Saudi Arabia next. Saddam had previously spent eight fruitless years in a war with Iran. It is one of history’s ironies that his son, George W. Bush was president on September 11, 2001 when the homeland was attacked by Muslim terrorists.

According to Iran’s president, Mamoud Ahmadinejad, and most of the people in the Middle East, 9/11 was an “inside job”, staged by the CIA or even the White House for the sole purpose of justifying the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq. You have to be able to believe the unbelievable to be a Muslim and the more absurd the better.

That’s the background to the story of Shahzad who was born in Pakistan in 1979 and, on December 22, 1998, was issued a student visa in Islamabad to come to America. In a stunning article by Jessica Vaughan, “Faisal Shahzad: So Easy, Anyone Can Do It”, the author spells out why America, before and ever since 9/11, has been allowing Middle Easterners to come here and plot to kill us.

Vaughan, a former U.S. consulate officer who dealt with the issuance and denial of visas, spelled out why Shahzad was a poor candidate for the bounties America would bestow upon him. To begin with, he failed to demonstrate that he had the academic qualifications to study here.

“He was applying as a transfer student, and his transcript from his correspondence course with Southeastern University, a now defunct fourth-rate academic program, show a GPA of 2.78, including several D’s and an F in basic statistics.” Moreover, there has been no information released regarding how Shahzad claimed he would pay for his education, “another common deal-buster for student visa application.”

Vaughn speculates that since Shahzad’s father was “supposedly a prominent military officer” the consulate did not want to deal with his or his government’s complaints if his son was refused a visa. Oddly, the visa was for four years when two would have sufficed for him to complete his degree requirements.

What emerged was a pattern of behavior that should have gotten Shahzad on the next plane home to Pakistan, but did not. In 2001 he began working for a temporary staffing agency even though his student visa did not include permission to work. A year later he was issued a H-1B visa. This particular visa is intended to bring in the best and the brightest to work here, not some middling, ordinary worker.

For reasons unknown, in 2004, Shahzad came under the scrutiny of the local Joint Terrorism Task Force. Despite this, his U.S. born wife filed a green card petition for him and it was approved in January 2006 even though the marriage was quite sudden, a red flag as some foreigners marry to establish grounds to stay.

Vaughn notes that “the green card application process is firmly rigged in the alien’s favor, with few applications refused or challenged, especially those involving marriage to a U.S. citizen.” In October 2008, Shahzad applied for U.S. citizenship. The fact that most immigrants wait six to ten years before applying didn’t raise any suspicions seven years after 9/11. And this one was from Pakistan, a hotbed of jihadist activity.

The U.S. is in a virtual state of war with Pakistan. It is blocking a major supply route to ours and NATO troops in Afghanistan and it is harboring the Taliban. It is a nuclear state so the stakes are quite high.

On April 17, 2009 Shahzad was sworn in as a U.S. citizen. In the vast bureaucracy of the immigration process, the fact that he had earlier aroused some suspicion was lost.

After that, it gets very dicey. On June 2, 2009, Shahzad left for Pakistan and did not return until February 3, 2010. Three months later, he attempted to kill Americans in Times Square.

At his sentencing, he told the court, “Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow. We are only Muslims trying to defend our religion, people, homes and land, but if you call us terrorists, then we are proud terrorists and we will keep on terrorizing you until you leave our lands and people at peace.”

This does not, of course, explain why Muslims have been committing acts of terror worldwide in London, in Madrid, in Mumbai, in Bali, and everywhere else they seize the opportunity to use terror to advance their ultimate goal of global domination. Claiming to be victims is bizarre.

Every step of the way, the U.S. made it easy for Shahzad to betray a nation that offered him an opportunity that countless thousands around the world want; the chance to become an American.

We need to pay attention to the warning Shahzad gave us. Somewhere in the huge bureaucracy of our immigration, our homeland security, and our intelligence services, those issuing visas and those charged with protecting us need to make it far more difficult to permit anyone from the Middle East to arrive, to blend in, and to plot the next terrorist act.

We are all just that much more vulnerable because in 2008 we elected a president who has made it clear that one of his objectives is to “reach out” to the Middle East in order to convince Muslims we are their friends. They are not our friends, nor even friends to one another.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Show Your Papers!

From the Official Welcome Guide for New Immigrants provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with one very important item highlighted. Under the heading of “Your Rights and Responsibilities” is this item:

Carry proof of your permanent resident status at all times.

In other words, being asked to “show your papers” is a known requirement and the official rule!

When I renewed my driver's license, I had to show my birth certificate, my passport, and I even brought along my discharge papers from the U.S. Army.

Bits & Pieces of News

By Alan Caruba

There is so much news coming at us from all directions that it is easy to let some important aspects of it slide by. Here are some bits and pieces of recent news items.

Associated Press: “Last week’s Iraqi elections appear to have been a rousing success—a major step toward a stable democracy that will hasten the day when U.S. troops can leave.” That was the first paragraph of a Feb. 4 story, but in my daily newspaper the headline read: “One peaceful election hardly testifies to stability in Iraq.” Give me a break! President Bush said it was vital to the Middle East that more democracy be encouraged there and, guess what, in addition to Turkey and Israel, it’s called IRAQ!

EnergyTribune.com: “Ethanol Bankruptcies Continue, 14 Studies Have Exposed the High Cost of Ethanol and Biofuels.” That’s the Feb 4 headline. It turns out that “about nine percent of all the ethanol plants in the U.S. have now filed for bankruptcy and some analysts believe the numbers could reach as high as twenty percent.” That’s because the whole ethanol thing is a scam. It has driven up the costs of corn so high even the producers can’t afford it any more. And ethanol does nothing to reduce dependency on imported oil. Producing and using it puts more, not less, greenhouse gas emissions into the environment.

The Middle East Media Research Institute: Reporting on “The Reality of Oil Import by the United States”, it turns out that we are not sending billions entirely to the Middle East as is commonly reported. Figures for 2007 reveal that, although Saudi Arabia remains second among the nations from which the U.S. imports oil, Canada was number one, Mexico was number three, and Venezuela was number four. We imported oil from England as well and, with the exception of Iraq and Kuwait, the rest were either African or South American nations.

Numbers USA: They sent a notice on Feb 2 that addressed some statistics the mainstream (or is that lamestream?) press have neglected to report. Among the figures cited was the fact that 2.5 million Americans lost jobs in 2008 at the same time the federal government was permitting the immigration of 1.5 million new foreign workers! To put it another way, 138,000 new foreign workers continue to arrive each month while Americans are filing for unemployment benefits!

Agence France Presse: Would you believe that the forthcoming Durban II United Nations racism conference has Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya chairing the planning committee and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran as the vice-chair? You can’t make up stuff like this. UN Watch, an independent group, said, “it’s heart-wrenching though not surprising that Durban II is hijacking the noble cause of human rights and anti-racism, with the aim of legitimizing an agenda of hate and extremism that targets innocents in Mumbai, Madrid, Israel, and elsewhere.” The UN is a place where totalitarian governments get together to undermine the most fundamental tenets of Western civilization.

Star-Ledger (NJ): The headline on a Feb 6 four-paragraph story read “Activist gets 22 years for Michigan State fire.” The real story however is that she was a member of the Earth Liberation Front, never mentioned at all in the report, and had caused a million dollars damage and destroyed years of valuable research on New Year’s Eve 1990. She also admitted to a dozen other acts of property destruction. Describing her as an activist is comparable to saying that Osama bin Laden is an “activist.”

All Media: The big news is, of course, the impending breakdown of the national and international financial system. If calmer heads prevail, we may just avoid it, but with President Obama bad-mouthing the economy and breaking out in a public sweat, there isn’t much hope of a happy outcome.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Obama’s new theme is “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Can America Retain Its Power?

By Alan Caruba

This is when “pundits” and assorted “experts” make their predictions about the year ahead. I will spare you that.

There is no way to make predictions because the future is always a great unknown and events always overtake everyone, followed by recriminations that demand to know “Why didn’t they anticipate that?” or “Why were they so unprepared?”

Accidents are called “accidents” because few anticipate or plan for such events. The levees of New Orleans are an example.

The weather, day to day, anywhere on the face of the Earth is unpredictable because it is subject to so many factors over which no one has any “control”. The weather is the result of immense forces at work such as sunspot (magnetic storms) activity, the shift of tectonic plates, vast underwater volcanoes erupting unseen and unknown. And, of course, a massive volcanic explosion in 2008 would transform the weather for years as the result of all the dust it would spew into the atmosphere.

In the same way that the greatest meteorologists in the world cannot explain why clouds do what they do from minute to minute, we could all use a long rest from the idiots who claim to know what the climate is or will be at any time.

As to unknown human events in the world, the only predictable thing is that there will be conflict somewhere. Man is the “killer ape” that says it abhors war and cannot seem to resist its strange appeal.

The result is that we will focus our attention for however long on the Middle East as it deals with its problem of death-dealing, death-loving, and death-seeking lunatics for whom Islam is a convenient excuse to seek political power over others.

The big question on everyone’s mind is whether and when Iran will acquire nuclear weapon status. The answer is yes. At some point Iran will demonstrate that it has these weapons, joining Pakistan, India, and Israel in their region of the world, as well as its neighbor, China. The Bomb makes these nations feel safe, but its use would turn any one of them into a parking lot.

I often talk about “the tyranny of demography” which is a fancy way of saying that population, the sheer numbers of people, determines policies and actions. In 2008, the United States of America will add a new immigrant—legal and illegal—every thirty seconds. The Census Bureau says our total population will increase by one person every 13 seconds. As of January 1, the total U.S. population will be 303,146,284, a 0.9 percent increase since last New Year’s Day.

Frankly, that is too many people in a nation whose bridges are failing, whose roads need repair, whose electrical “grid” is a product of the 1950s, and which resolutely resists the construction of any new sources of electrical power, either coal-fired or nuclear. That is idiocy.

The failure to stem the flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border is an ugly problem that, if ignored, will continue to contribute to a lot of ugly problems that already exist and which the elites that run our government want to ignore. Someone has to pick up the cost of educating their children. Someone has to pick up the health care costs of tending to them. Someone has to pay for their incarceration if they commit crimes.

That someone is you, the U.S. taxpayer. These problems are causing hospitals to close, filling our jails, and contributing to a failed educational system.

Any candidate who promises to build a big wall on the southern border and to put U.S. soldiers on our side to ensure that no more illegals come across will be elected. It would also do wonders to ending the corruption and control of the Mexican drug cartels.

Where would we find those soldiers? We have some 30,000 guarding the South Korean border since the 1950s. Bring them home. We have some 79,000 in Europe. Bring them home. These nations have been getting a free ride on our dollar for two full generations.

It is the U.S. dollar that keeps the United Nations afloat. We have one vote in the General Assembly. So does Togo. We have a veto power on the Security Council. So do the other members, most of whom are leftovers from the nations that won World War Two. China is a member because China has more than a billion people, but India with a comparable population is not.

The United Nations needs to be allowed to fail. It has evolved into a poisonous conglomeration of regional cliques that engage in horrible insults to humanity as a whole. It can and would be replaced.

The first action following the demise of the UN would be to create a U.S.-led alliance of democratic nations. Nations failing to respect the rules would be frozen out of world trade and aid. An example? North Korea needs to be shut down, not negotiated with. Then make a list of African nations that require the same action. Then add to the list others that haven’t gotten the message yet.

The invasion of Iraq was a message to the world that dictators who are real threat regionally will be deposed, even if the U.S. has to spend a great deal of treasure and blood to do it. Historians will look back kindly on George W. Bush for taking this action. It immediately convinced Libya’s dictator to give up his nuclear program. It put Iran on notice. Et cetera.

What is most needed in 2008? Patience. Events in the world are not movies or television shows. They require time and consensus to evolve.

Most people in the world will trade a measure of freedom for stability, but humans inherently want freedom, so we can expect to see them in the streets as in the case of the Buddhist monks of Myanmar. As in the defeat of Hugo Chavez’s dictatorial aspirations in Venezuela. As in unexpected changes that will likely occur in Cuba when Fidel dies.

The United States needs to be far more cunning in our use of statecraft and spycraft. We need to negotiate our way to a better world and, where that is impossible, we need to use all the arts of espionage and infiltration to undermine and overthrow bad governments.

The Chinese probably have enough spies in the U.S. to populate a small city. In a generation, more Chinese will speak English than all the people in the English-speaking world today. If they can take the time to achieve hegemony, we can take the same time to retain it.

We will not achieve this if our schools continue to graduate illiterates and young people who haven’t a clue about our nation’s history, our governmental system, and the values that have made us Number One since the end of WWII. We will not achieve this if we keep electing people to Congress who spend money faster than it can be printed or pass bills banning the incandescent light bulb—which Congress has just done.

Stupid people deserve what they get and we are allowing too much stupidity to govern us and determine policies essential to our future. On that note, I shall rest.

Looking into the 2008 Crystal Ball

By Alan Caruba

Between the day after Christmas and January 1st of 2008 is a good time to get one’s affairs in order.

I visited the bank today to get some help because the bank statements and daily report via the Internet kept telling me I had more money than my own calculations told me. It turns out the bank was right and that’s a pretty good way to begin the year. Said the bank officer, “Just begin with what our balance says is in your account and go from there.”

I stepped on the scale this morning and discovered what I already knew. I am at least ten pounds overweight and that’s a modest assessment. I blame it all on family members who, every Christmas, send me FOOD. I should, of course, blame it on myself for eating all of it.

I am reading an interesting new book by an economist who specializes in health-related trends and his thesis is that America’s strong economy is a major factor explaining why so many adults and young people, children, are FAT. Not only has the supply of prepared and packaged food items increased, thanks to modern technology, but we have had the money with which to buy it. Put the two factors together and it adds up to a lot of fat Americans, but it doesn’t stop there. The Chinese and Indians are getting fat too. That’s what a strong economy will do to you.

I am no economist, but I think 2008 is going to be a difficult one for the U.S. economy and may well have repercussions worldwide. Despite a recent bailout of several major banking houses to the tune of some $33 billion, the losses from the mortgage failures are estimated at close to $100 billion. Here’s another factor worth noting. The bailout came from foreign nations that purchased interests in those banks.

They bought in with money that has been flowing out of America at an alarming rate. I read somewhere the U.S. borrows a billion a day just to keep afloat.

A worsening economy, if it occurs, will be a major factor in the 2008 elections. People who follow these things suggest it could produce a Democrat Party landslide no matter who is running for office. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Republican Party is on the ropes. A lot of Republicans want to punish the party for the spending spree it went on for the last eight years, betraying conservative values, and others are just very unhappy with George W. Bush. Will Republicans rally around the party’s choice? No one knows at this point.

Will consumers keep the economy going in 2008? Not if they get nervous about the future and, in an election year, that’s what happens. Decisions are delayed. Investments of all kinds are put off. Spending tightens up.

If voters decide they want to “return” to the 1990’s of the Clinton years, they are in for a nasty surprise. It’s not the 1990’s. It’s more like the post 9/11 first decade of the 2000’s and there’s no robust economy to inherit from Ronald Reagan’s tenure. Taking a page from the FDR years, the Democrats will want to create more programs to help everyone and that just means a larger government. Given the government’s balance sheet, it probably doesn’t matter who gets into office. Taxes will likely have to rise and if that occurs at the same time the economy begins to tank it is going to get very ugly.

There’s a reason why a million Mexicans cross the border. The Mexican economy stinks. It’s the old story of a handful of people who own everything and have all the money. At least in America, there are jobs, but there will be fewer jobs for Mexicans if Americans begin to need them as badly as they do. Americans will insist ever louder that immigration laws be enforced. The present estimate is that one in every five Mexican citizens is currently living in America.

All of us Depression Babies and kids who grew up during World War II and can remember rationing are looking at 2008 and wondering if it could happen again, i.e., wondering if the economy could tank and whether we and our weak sister NATO allies can keep the lid on the Middle East.

One thing’s for sure; wars always begin as a surprise. No one really thinks that will occur.

More than 13 Million Illegal Aliens in the U.S.

By Alan Caruba

A new report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) contains some truly frightening news as Americans celebrate Halloween.

There are now an estimated 13 million illegal aliens living in the United States. In 2000, the number was about 7 million and that’s a 60% increase. Just how long can this nation continue to do nothing about what amounts to an invasion?

Nearly 8.4 million of these illegal aliens live in just six states, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey. Other FAIR reports estimate that these people costs U.S. citizens in excess of $27 billion annually to cover K-12 education, health care needs, and the incarceration of criminals in just those states.

Dan Stein, president of FAIR, notes that, “Almost from the day the Bush Administration took office, they made it clear that their aim was to reward immigration with amnesty and assorted other benefits. As a result, we have seen record increases in illegal immigration, mounting burdens on taxpayers, and unprecedented public concern about this issue.”

At 13,175,000 people, the illegal population of the United States is now larger than the entire population of Illinois, the nation’s fifth most populous state. More than three-fifths of the states have seen their illegal alien population more than double since 2000. In all, 24 states now have illegal populations that exceed 100,000.

In a recent commentary, Terence P. Jeffrey wrote about terrorists that “swept into Cananea in a convoy of 15 vehicles. They kidnapped seven policemen and two civilians. Outside town, they shot and killed four of the policemen and dumped their bodies in a park.” He was not writing about Iraq or Afghanistan. Cananea is just across the border from Nogales, Arizona, a mere twenty miles away in the Mexican state of Sonora.

This is a major national security issue that is going to bite us big time. It is an issue that unites most Americans in their opposition to what is being allowed to occur by a federal government that continues to ignore it.

In 2008, don’t vote for anyone who will not take a strong stand on ending this invasion and encouraging illegals to return to Mexico and the other Caribbean and South American nations from which they are coming.

Amnesty is no longer even an option worth considering.

Ignoring the Constitution

By Alan Caruba

“The Senate failed to obtain cloture on the DREAM Act amnesty (S. 2205) on October 24 by a 52-44 vote, for which 60 YES votes were needed to prevent a filibuster. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) and Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill) were attempting to bring this nightmarish amnesty bill to the floor under Senate Rule XIV without it ever having been debated in committee.” (Oct 24, 2008)

This was the notice that arrived from an organization devoted to getting a handle on the immigration mess that is one part Bush administration indifference and one part the effort of Mexico to alter the population of the United States. Mexico has encouraged one tenth of its population (much of it illegal) to move to the U.S.A. instead of finding the means to build an economy whereby they might actually want to stay in Mexico.

As bad as the failure to get control over the nation’s southern border is, the notice to me bespoke Sen. Reid’s complete contempt for the U.S. Constitution. The notion that the Democrat Majority Leader would try to slip a bill through the Senate without that body having an opportunity to even debate it is obscene.

Americans of a generation or two born since the years just preceding and following World War II received an education that placed a fair amount of emphasis on American history and about the Constitution that binds us together and has afforded us becoming the most powerful financial and military nation on earth. There was a time when that honor belonged to the British Empire, but they let it slip away.

We are in very real danger of letting the requirements of the Constitution slip away as more and more power is ceded to the Executive branch, the Presidency, and while the Legislative branch, Congress, fails to engage in the primary job of democracy, compromise. The whole purpose of the Constitution was to slow down and require debate among opposing factions for the purpose of requiring them to compromise. Failing that, we end up with more bad laws than good.

We now live in a vile era of politics in which a “winner take all” philosophy exists and the warfare between Democrats and Republicans does injury to the purpose of government. The Republican majority that began when voters turned Congress over to Republicans in 1994 and then the first Bush presidency with its hair-thin victory. The lesson of that was lost on Bush and Cheney.

“The Chief Executive will on occasion feel duty bound to assert monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit him to exceed the laws,” said an obscure Representative from Wyoming back in the days when Congress was investigating an illegal operation to supply Nicaraguan anti-communists under cover of Reagan’s National Security Council. That’s what Dick Cheney thought then and he has pursued that philosophy and policy in spades since becoming the Vice President.

In the same way that Congress has not acted upon its exclusive Constitutional mandate to declare war since WWII, it has been the presidents since Truman that have controlled that process. It’s why we drifted into Iraq without much serious debate in Congress. It’s why Americans wonder out loud if (or when) Bush will get us into a war with Iran without taking the decision to Congress.

Everybody senses that something is very wrong with Congress and out of control with the White House.

If more people actually knew something about American history in general and the U.S. Constitution in particular, they would be a lot more worried.

Welcome to Facts Not Fantasy

http://www.anxietycenter.com

Welcome to Facts Not Fantasy, a blog by yours truly, Alan Caruba. This blog is intended to augment my weekly commentaries on my website for The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about "scare campaigns" intended to influence public policy and opinion.

The range of topics FNF will cover will include environmentalism, energy, education, immigration, the North American Union which is being stealthily imposed, Islam and the Middle East, natural security issues and, of course, politics.

For indepth comment on any of these topics, you should visit the Center's website. Its archives provide carefully researched and documented information, along with opinion.

This is the result of my having begun my professional life as a journalist. For most of the past years, however, I have been a public relations counselor and this has brought me into contact with many different aspects of the economy through the many people who get up every morning and set out to do the very best job they can.

Another website of mine you might want to visit is http://www.bookviews.com. Since the 1960s I have been a reviewer and am, in fact, a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle. In addition, I am a longtime member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the National Association of Science Writers.

This blog is called "Separating Fact from Fantasy" to represent my dedication to facts, to the truth as best as it can be determined.