In The News October 25

I’ll be coming to my Election Thoughts on education and immigration next. But, on those subjects, I thought I would offer this on education in America, from The Ornery American (aka Orson Scott Card, the Sci-Fi writer). I thought it was a pretty good summary of where we are, since we can’t seem to get kids out of school who have learned anything. (…maybe this is one of the reasons?...)

And, with regards to the immigration debate…HELL YEAH! BUILD THE DAMN FENCE. And, while your at it, enforce the laws (…including deportation…). You need more evidence or good reasons? How about this story from CBS:

A Congressional Homeland Security report accuses Venezuela of providing support that could help terrorists infiltrate the United States through Texas’ porous border with Mexic. The Subcommittee on Investigations of the House Homeland Security Committee found that the government of President Hugo Chavez has issued thousands of identity documents that could help terrorists elude immigration checks and illegally enter the United States. Representative Michael McCaul, a first term Republican from Austin, chaired the subcommittee that produced the findings, “The potential is certainly there for terrorists to infiltrate the U.S. through Mexico. We apprehended five Pakistanis on the U.S. Mexico border with fraudulent Venezuelan documents.”

In the video portion, it notes that people from 9 nations sponsoring terrorism have been caught entering the country illegally over the border with Mexico. All of them with forged identity documents. (…gee, I wonder why they had forged documents coming from those places?...But…surely they were here just to get a better life for themselves…) And, of course, Hugo Chavez is just a nice guy who is mis-understood. …which is why Hezbollah has offices in his country…)

On the subject of Hezbollah and the Middle East, the military hasn’t had any sense about how to maintain a PR campaign since WWII. They didn’t keep up in Vietnam—beyond fighting a losing denial campaign—and they are not keeping up in the Middle East today. Michael Fumento does a really good job of breaking this out. The sad truth is the insurgents and terrorists are dong a far better job of controlling the PR front. (…can you say “CNN sniper videos”…)

Speaking of military faux pas, Kim Il Jong is back at making threats and hating people. Maybe he’s taking lessons from Islamic as well. Of course, the Islamics got their lessons from the Vietnamese. I don’t know if this will end up in a full fledged shooting war or not. But, with live nukes on both sides (…us, the Chinese, the Russians, and at least some little dirty ones in North Korea—yeah, I would bet they exist…) I sure hope not.

I thought this report on EU and US negations on environmental cooperation was kind of odd.

They agreed to promote technologies to capture and bury greenhouse gases from coal, to boost energy efficiency and renewable fuels, to set common standards for biofuels, protect the diversity of species on Earth and help developing nations.

(...May be someone out there can enlighten me…but…how do you bury a gas?...)

And, in a continuing reference to my comments on personal privacy yesterday, CNN releases this story on hackers breaking the iPod codes. Do we really believe our information is that secure?

Finally, there was this breakdown of the Muslim worldview. Now, I know that contact with Islam helped spur on the Renaissance. But, I also know, historically, that Islam has been seeking the violent overthrow of whatever was in power at the time. Please go back and study the formative years of the religion if you doubt. And, for those who think the Catholic Church will be the “One World Religion” of the future…I think you need to reconsider.