Commercial Pimping and the Making of a Prosti-tot

American society seems a bit backwards these days. Not too long ago there was slew of articles led by Time Magazine stating that 30 was the new 40. In other words, adults were putting off adulthood in lieu of hanging on to their childhood via indulgences in toys, kids sports and other activities commonly associated with childhood. This was affirmed and even labeled in the book “Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up” by Christopher Noxon. As men and women get older, they tend to stay with their parents, put off serious responsibility like home ownership and generally enjoy the fruits of being a child with all the facets of being a legal adult.

This is not so bad. We’re not talking about dysfunctional people trying to climb back into the womb or any of that sort of nonsense. These are people like me who still have access to childish things like cartoons and heavy metal CD’s and don’t see a reason to put them away so long as they are not too big of a distraction from real life. Adults that are functional and mature but like to indulge their childhood interests are not a heavy burden on society. As a matter of fact, marketers love this crowd as they can sell them oodles and oodles of mindless crap. American capitalism at it’s finest.

However, this trend among adults runs counter to a trend among pre-teens and is infinitely more dangerous. Where marketers are trying to capture that elusive 18 – 35 year-old bracket of buyers, they have extended their reach into an even younger crowd. Junior high and even late elementary school age children not only have a great deal of expendable income (from their parents) they have the ear of their parents as well, thus double the profit. Of course the problem with this is that instead of marketing child products for children, they are marketing adult themed products to those very same children without giving a thought to how this all affects said children’s development.

The AP reported, in a story aptly titled, “10 Is the New 15 As Kids Grow Up Faster,” that, “…child development experts say that physical and behavioral changes that would have been typical of teenagers decades ago are now common among "tweens" - kids ages 8 to 12.

Some of them are going on "dates" and talking on their own cell phones. They listen to sexually charged pop music, play mature-rated video games and spend time gossiping on MySpace. And more girls are wearing makeup and clothing that some consider beyond their years.”

The article adds that, “Several published studies have found, for instance, that some tweens' bodies are developing faster, with more girls starting menstruation in elementary school - a result doctors often attribute to improved nutrition and, in some cases, obesity. While boys are still being studied, the findings about girls have caused some endocrinologists to lower the limits of early breast development to first or second grade.
Along with that, even young children are having to deal with peer pressure and other societal influences.

Beyond the drugs, sex and rock'n'roll their boomer and Gen X parents navigated, technology and consumerism have accelerated the pace of life, giving kids easy access to influences that may or may not be parent-approved. Sex, violence and foul language that used to be relegated to late-night viewing and R-rated movies are expected fixtures in everyday TV.

And many tweens model what they see, including common plot lines "where the kids are really running the house, not the dysfunctional parents," says Plante, who in addition to being Zach's dad is a psychology professor at Santa Clara University in California's Silicon Valley.

He sees the results of all these factors in his private practice frequently.
Kids look and dress older. They struggle to process the images of sex, violence and adult humor, even when their parents try to shield them. And sometimes, he says, parents end up encouraging the behavior by failing to set limits - in essence, handing over power to their kids.”

The crux of the article is that, “Advertisers have found that, increasingly, children and teens are influencing the buying decisions in their households - from cars to computers and family vacations. According to 360 Youth, an umbrella organization for various youth marketing groups, tweens represent $51 billion worth of annual spending power on their own from gifts and allowance, and also have a great deal of say about the additional $170 billion spent directly on them each year.

Toymakers also have picked up on tweens' interest in older themes and developed toy lines to meet the demand - from dolls known as Bratz to video games with more violence.”

Here we see the worst parts of commercialism merging with a relic from the sixties. Kinseyan attitudes about how it is a good thing to hyper-sexualize our children have been around forever and served the interests of selfish and sick people. Today, we see marketers assuming the role Alfred Kinsey left vacant in the name of creating another billion dollar sales base. Some would say that this is just the way capitalism works and if the parents object then the parents should expose their children to deleterious material.

First, while I’m sure there are good parents out there that are mindful of what media their children are exposed to, that kid still has to go to school with several others whose parents are complete idiots. That’s not counting those whose parents are themselves drug addicts and alcoholics. It’s also not counting those whose parents are completely dysfunctional or parents whom are among the missing and leave their children as wards of the state i.e. foster care. Anyway you slice it, the far left in this country has done a wonderful job of outsourcing the role of parent to the government, who in turn is woefully incapable of doing the job well (save for the Armed Forces).

Now some would say that I have no right to judge parents because I don’t have a kid myself. I would tell those people to bugger off because as a social worker, which I am, I have to deal with end result of bad parenting and exposure to adult themes on a daily basis. While many parents sod off to entertain their selfish hearts delights, I’m there to pick up the pieces and try to help these kids become semi-functional. My job is made all the more harder by marketing forces infinitely stronger than I pummeling my kids with stuff they should never have seen in the first place.

CAMPAIGN FOR A COMMERCIAL-FREE CHILDHOOD has some alarming stats on the effect of marketing adult material to youngsters:

There is a link between watching sexual content and adolescent’s sexual activity and beliefs about sex.

More than half of teens report getting some or most of their information about sex from television.

Teens who watch more sexual content on television are more likely to initiate intercourse and progress to more advanced noncoital sexual activities during the subsequent year.

Another study found that girls who watched more than 14 hours of rap music videos per week were more likely to have multiple sex partners and to be diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease.

Boys exposed to violent sex on television, including rape, are less likely to be sympathetic to female victims of sexual violence.

I’ve posted many sick and twisted stories this year about crimes committed 7-year-olds and such but it may take something bizarre like Michael Richards uttering the N-word for people to actually do something about it.

New Review: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton is as polarizing a political figure as any in Washington, if not the most in recent history. Many adored her husband President Bill Clinton such to the point that they were willing to forgive his sexual transgressions (rape, sexual harassment, etc.) and publicly lamented the limits of a two-term maximum presidency. While Hillary has been able to benefit somewhat from her husband’s rock star status in the political spectrum, she herself continues to affect people’s opinion of her one of two ways, blind devotion or feral hatred.

Ever since Mr. Clinton’s ascent to the governorship of Arkansas, the plan has always been the same; Hillary plays the supporting role long enough for Bill to move from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock to the White House on Capitol Hill and when he’s done then he plays the supporting role while she assumes the position of Commander-in-Chief. Two terms for Bill, two for Hillary has always been the plan and at least a hundred pundits and followers of the Clinton clan have affirmed this. As a now incumbent and moderately popular senator from the bluest of blue states, New York, she can and has commenced with her plan to become the first ever-female US president. Her candidacy is a foregone conclusion though her success is obviously (as of this writing) yet to be determined.

At this point there are so many books on just Hillary alone that one would be hard pressed to find an angle on this woman that hasn’t been explored. Journalists and insiders have written scores of books that are just straight biographies, books about her attacks on the internet, sleazy tell-alls that claim she was raped by her husband, her own autobiography, etc. To say that anyone wanting information on Hillary Clinton need only to spit inside of a bookstore and hit any number of books with plenty of said information would be an understatement. Yet Capitol Hill correspondent for Human Events, Amanda B. Carpenter has done the impossible and written an excellent book that examines the specific political reasons why Hillary shouldn’t become president without repeating ad nauseum the same information presented in previous tomes.

“The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy’s Dossier on Hillary Clinton,” is a brilliant secondary resource for all of Hillary’s recent political maneuverings, fundraising and legislating since become Senator of NY. In it explicitly and methodically presents the reader with the particulars of her career in the Senate thus far and more importantly, it details exactly why anybody in the right mind should not vote for this woman.

This is not meant to be a narrative story per se. As its rather tongue-in-cheek name implies, the point of it is to collect in one spot, documentation that shows the corruption Hillary Clinton has been responsible for in the past 6 plus years. It is chock full of citations from court documents, legal briefs, FEC filings, campaign documents and so on, with the emphasis on how she’s partnered up with Hollywood socialists in order to build up her presidential campaign war chest while simultaneously flouting the campaign finance reforms she claims to be for.

Carpenter also examines the relationship between the Clinton’s and China. Both Bill and Hillary are still doing business with the Chinese in the face of both campaign finance law and national security interests. Historians will note that it was Bill’s special relationship with the Chinese while he was president that made them the threat they are today. That threat has led recently to North Korea being able to test nuclear devices with impunity.

Carpenter does great job of keeping the book current with the latest Clintonian scams, especially those having to do with 9/11 and block grants that never were used appropriately and instead went into the pockets of Hillary’s corporate sponsors. This brings up the issue of Hillary well-fashioned image versus the actual reality. Hillary has been trying to paint herself as something of a populist because she believes that populism is what brings people to the polls. What Carpenter does rather well in this book is to systematically deconstruct that image and explain the truth about Hillary, which is that she, like her counterparts in the Republican Party is bought and paid for by corporate interests. Carpenter makes the case that if you are looking for a candidate that is relatively clean of lobby money then you should steer clear of Hillary Clinton as this woman is swimming in it alongside the Bush family as well as others.

This book is meant for those people whom are either on the fence and need solid evidence that this woman is not the right person to be Commander-in-Chief or already won’t vote for her but need the same evidence to cogently explain to others why she’s not a good choice for leader of the free world. Carpenter provides a solid case with a ton of evidence and very little editorializing. That is definitely one of the strong points of the book. Carpenter gives sparingly little of her own opinion and lets the facts, backed up with dozens of pages of photocopied documents, speak volumes for themselves. Unlike many other books closely related to this one, she stays clear of the sort of partisan hackery that fells other writers and just sticks with the facts. It is a welcome pleasure to say the least.

Given that Hillary is so hyper-vigilant about her image (because of more people knew the real Hillary Clinton she wouldn’t stand a chance at being elected President of the United States), this is definitely one of those books that Hillary Clinton will hate with a white-hot purple passion. To me, that is all the more reason why everyone with inkling to vote against this charlatan socialist should read, “The Vast Ring-Wing Conspiracy’s Dossier on Hillary Clinton,” by Amanda B. Carpenter. Once you’ve read it, at the very least you’ll have learned just how crooked financing a campaign can be these days.

Near Perfect Radio Broadcast: Third Show

New show is up and ready for play on the side bar

This was my third official show and for once I didn't have any technical issues. My phone stayed charge, there were no computer problems and I could take calls with no major delays. We ran a little longer than I expected with the shopping segment but the conversation seemed very natural so instead of trying to pound square pegs into round holes and all of that I just went with the flow. I'm a little disappointed about the call ins though. My wife suggested that maybe people whom were listening didn't feel like there was room in the conversation for them. I've said this before but in case people haven't heard me say it, I can take 5 calls at once so you don't have to wait for John to hang up to call in. As a matter of fact, when I do get a caller, John usually goes quiet so I talk to the caller myself. Anyone can call in and interrupt at any time and I'll shift the focus to the caller rather than continue from where the conversation was.

Conversation is key here though as this is still a new show. I'm trying to make it less formal and more personable but that really won't happen until I get more calls. However, if there are no calls then yes, it's a conversation between John and I for nearly an hour...but that is talk radio. Whether it's Rush Limbaugh or Air America, the tones when they are not reading from copy are very conversational. Hopefully it what my wife suggested is true then as time goes on people will feel less intimidated and feel free to join the conversation.

As for the topics, I choose what I think is interesting and timely. Lord knows I've been subjected to some pretty uninteresting radio in the last few years. Sometimes I'm glued and sometimes they lose me. That's the nature of the beast.

Overall I think it was a good show. I need to work on pacing toward the end as I start off pretty strong and end up rushing at the end. However, I think each week it gets better and easier and most importantly, I'm having fun with the show so far.

Ice Melting From Under "Happy Feet"

You have to love it when a kids movie is the focus of a poltical debate. Let me first say that I haven't seen the movie and until I saw the above news clips, said picture didn't even register in my mind. The previews that I had seen featured a tap dancing penguin and some wise-cracking animated characters; not much else. Seeing as my wife is not a big fan of animated kids films I had resigned myself to not seeing the film for no other reason than time and interest.

However, as I was surfing blogs today I found that a fair number of liberal blogs were upset that some conservatives criticized the movie for being a ham-handed commercial against BIG business and global warming. I believe they referred to it as an animated "Inconvenient Truth." So of course in these peoples minds, the conservatives are automatically wrong because you are not supposed to be against anything that shows how BIG business creates greenhouse gases and wrecks the environment.

I find it ironic how when conservatives complain about something, justified or not, there are always liberals there to say they are wrong for speaking out but when somebody is being obnoxious and vulgar, that's protected speech. Anywho, nobody was calling for the picture to removed from theaters or trying to start a boycott. They were saying that as parents they want to know if they are bringing their children to a simply kids movie or an animated political commercial. Many might go anyway or even because of it but at least they knew what they were paying for.

The other issue is that children shouldn't be learning life lessons strictly from movies. It is the parents job to teach their children right from wrong, not Hollywoods. And if Hollywood is going to lecture people then you have to show both sides of the argument or Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck and I have the right to call you a propagandist.

For the record, one my fairly liberal friends did see this picture and she is even agreed that the jump from tap dancing penguin in search of his identity to global warming commercial is a bit non-sequiter but as an adult, she could handle it. Children on the other hand should not be forcefully exposed to one persons opinion without the active consent of the parent. In closing, let me add that if the producers of this film told people ahead of time that this was a childish look at global warming for kids, I would not have written this post. However, if you try to sell me a movie about a tap dancing penguin, then that's what I should get. Not a tap dancing Al Gore in a penguin suit.

And for the liberals that think that this is an overblown issue, remind me to make a movie lamenting how abandoning the Church has destroyed civil American society in the guise of breakdancing bears and see how much you like me forcing my opinions on your children.

WKRP - Thanksgiving Turkey Drop

This being the season of giving (marked today buy the opening of the season of buying) I thought I'd give thanks to comedy by sharing the gift of laughter. Enjoy and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Mine Your Own Business

This movie represents precisely why I find it hard to stand with the environmentalists. I believe in green processes in business but these green practices need to assist in said economies expanding, not being obstructive to capital gain. The tendency among many leftists to stand in the way of progress or expansion all in the name of the little or the environment without offering substantive alternatives paints them as radicals whom are not to be taken seriously.

I came upon the advertisement for this movie and as far as documentaries go, it seems really interesting. It stood out to me because all to often when you have people who are pro-busines, it is automatically assumed that these people are purposely and callously degrading Mother Earth while eco-terrorists ride high on steady diet of self-righteous indignation. I am supposed to take the word of people who condemn progress while sacrificing nothing of their own. That appears to be the major crux of the above documentary.

The reality is that in order for their to be progress on cleaning up the environment and creating renewable energy sources, you have to have BIG business on your side and there has to be profit. You can only do so much in the vein of creating awareness before reality steps in and sets the agenda.

"kramer" on letterman: Political Apologies

Seinfeld star apologizes.

I would have been more OK with this if he had't name dropped Katrina and tried to some how tie his quasi-racist rantings in with racial tensions in the country. I'm not a mind reader but hearing what I could from the first "blow up" video, what appears to have happened is that he got heckled by black people and got so angry that his cultural caps just came off and he did what so many of us are capable of doing when we've lost our temper; he resorted to his most base feelings and emotions and reacted by sinking to the lowest comon denominator.

I realize that he had to make it seem bigger than it really was in order to take some of the sting out of it but the reality is that, though it doesn't excuse it, when you are triggered you will say the worst, most hurtful thing that comes to your mind. If you are white and you want to hurt a black person, dropping an N-bomb is a good start. If they had been fat white guys I would imagine the insults would have been just as bad and the measure of his tantrum would have equally as bad if not worse. Political Correctness in terms of race relations however demands that he create some cockamamie social explanation for his behavior.

On a side note, I seriously doubt that the David Letterman show was the best avenue for this sort of dialogue. He could have gone on Hardball or Larry King or dare I say O'Reilly and maybe his apology would have been heard without the laughter of an imbecilic audience.

I seriously doubt that Michael Richards is a racist. His buttons got pushed and he over reacted. It happens and he's human just like the rest of us. Though much like the rest of Hollywood, I would be more inclined to defend less than appropriate behavior under certain circumstances (again, $hit happens) if the stars themselves wouldn't keep trying deflect negative attention from themselves by pulling the president in front of them unnecessarily. Seriously Kramer, it's not Bush's fault you couldn't handle hecklers.

Iran makes its move: Upstages U.S. efforts to calm down Iraq

This is an interesting move here by Tehran. They may have figured out that the way to battle the US is to out maneuver us in the diplomatic arena and make us semi-irrelevant in the Middle East, as we are starting to be in China's domain of South East Asia. If Iran builds some sense of unity in the Middle East and an approximate definition of stability, ie keep the oil flowing, then they will have made a case for not needing the US in that region any further. They will have also handed the US a major defeat in not having direct control of the oil resources in that region. This will go a lot further in damaging the US than any bomb would as we care barely if at all retaliate. There's not much to say if Iran can stabilize Iraq. We'll just have to live with mud on us.

However, this could all be smoke and mirrors which some say it is. If that is the case then they are merely using another stall tactic while they hurriedly construct a nuclear weapon...second verse, same as the first.

In an apparent bid to counter U.S. influence in the region, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad invited his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts to a weekend summit in Tehran to tackle the chaos in Iraq, Iraqi lawmakers said Monday.
The Iranian move appeared designed to upstage possible American efforts to reach out to Tehran and Damascus in a wider effort to subdue runaway violence in Iraq. Both are suspected of encouraging the fighting.

The invitation was also a display of Iran's increasingly muscular role in the Middle East, where it already has established deep influence over Syria and Lebanon.


Does Iran like the chaos?

Iran is thought to benefit from a low level of chaos in Iraq to keep the U.S. bogged down -- but is wary that too much bloodshed could cause trouble across its own border, where Kurds could become restive.

A close associate of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said the summit represents an attempt by Tehran to strengthen its position in the region and prevent the U.S. from dividing Syria, a predominantly Sunni Arab country, from its ally of convenience, Shiite Iran.

The State Department reacted with skepticism about Iran's intentions.

''We have seen statements like this many times in the past,'' spokesman Tom Casey said. But Iran's statements of a desire to reduce violence in Iraq ''have not been backed up by facts.''

There is no soundtrack to this video. Just enjoy the sweet silence of idiocy.

Now there's not much to be happy about these days but a video like this always makes me smile. Kudos to my cousin-in-law Jerry for sending me this. Pratfalls = funny!

The sad part about this is that he reminds me of the kids I work with.

U.N. Report: Hizbullah Training Somalia's Islamic Forces

Does anyone seriously believe that radical Islamic fundamentalism isn't on the move and trying to establish a global empire? This doesn't sound like random terrorism. This sounds like an advancing army. Is anyone in this country even bothering to look at this kind of information when uttering words like "change of course" in Iraq. When the above headlines reads "Mexico" instead of "Somalia" then will people wake the hell up?!

Hizbullah is providing advanced training to Somalia's Islamic Forces in exchange for their military support to the Shiite group during its summer war with Israel, according to a confidential U.N. report.

The Washington post said on Wednesday that the 86-page report was prepared by a panel of U.N. weapons and financial experts.

The confidential report said Iran, Syria, Libya and Hizbullah are providing arms, training and financing to Islamic militants as they seize political and military control in the East African state of Somalia.

To shore up support for their cause, Somalia's Islamic fighters provided military support in the summer to Hizbullah, sending 720 of its most experienced fighters to help battle Israeli forces, according to the report. The fighters were promised $2,000 in payments to their families for serving, and as much as $30,000 if they fell in battle.

The report said that in exchange for their backing, Hizbullah provided advanced training to Somali fighters and sent five Hizbullah advisers to Somalia. It also allegedly solicited support for the movement from Iran and Syria.

It warned that the conflict could reignite a war between Eritrea, the chief foreign sponsor of the Islamics, and Ethiopia, which is backing Somalia's weak transitional federal government.

The report asserts that a huge inflow of outside military assistance, in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, is contributing to the emergence of an alliance of militants called the Islamic Courts Union as the first Islamic government since the United States overthrew Afghanistan's Taliban in 2002.

It warns that Somalia could become the site of insurgency tactics used in Iraq, including "suicide bombers, assassinations and other forms of terrorist and insurgent-type activities."

"The strongly sustained trend toward total military, economic and political dominance by the Islamic Courts Union in central and southern Somalia continues," according to the report by the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia. "They are currently the most powerful force in Somalia."

The Washington post said the report will be presented to the Security Council this week.

It said that the report's authors recommend that the Security Council tighten a U.N. arms embargo, impose sanctions on Somali individuals and businesses buying weapons, and launch an international diplomatic effort to dissuade states from arming the combatants.

The developments in Somalia represent a setback for the United States, which had sought to prevent the militants from taking power, according to the Washington post.

It said the report, however, provided no evidence to suggest that the United States provided clandestine support to anti-Islamic forces, as officials in Somalia's interim government have alleged.

But it did underscore the degree to which the United States' chief Middle East rivals, Iran and Syria, and its allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are prepared to challenge U.S. interests in East Africa, the paper said.

The U.N. team detailed three Iranian consignments of arms, ammunition, medical supplies and doctors to the Islamic fighters since summer. The report says one July shipment included land mines, 1,000 machine guns and M-79 rocket launchers, and 45 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.

It also says two Iranian nationals were negotiating the possibility of selling more weapons for access to Somalia's uranium deposits.

The report asserts that Syria has trained 200 Somali fighters in guerrilla warfare tactics and that Libya has provided arms and advanced military training to another 100. Libya also allegedly provided $1 million to finance future training missions and to pay salaries.

Iran and Syria denied in separate letters to the U.N. team that they had shipped weapons to Somalia or trained Somali forces. The U.N. team did not receive a response from the Libyan government.

The Washington Post said that representatives from the Islamic Courts Union said the allegations that they had received illegal arms shipments are "baseless."

The report cites a case in which Egypt agreed to train Somalia's Islamic militants. And it accuses Saudi Arabia of providing several shipments of food and medicine to Islamic combatants. Egypt denied the allegation; Saudi Arabia has yet to fully respond to the charges.

The report asserts that the most flagrant violations of the U.N. arms embargo have been committed by Eritrea and Ethiopia, which have sent dozens of weapons shipments and thousands of combat troops into Somalia on behalf of their proxies. It also charged that Uganda and Yemen had joined Ethiopia in supporting Somalia's losing Transitional Federal Government.(Naharnet filephoto shows Hizbullah fighters during a military parade).

Iran declaring 'economic warfare'

I said this was going to happen months ago. I've been beating on pots and pans yelling at the top of my lungs that we were quietly selling off our national security to make deals with devils. Though I think Pat Buchanan is a nut, this story is exactly why he promotes isolationism for the US. Bush has himself a real quandry here. He can't afford for Iran to move toward using eros as a reserve currency simply because he cannot afford for the US' economy to his the skids. By the same token, seeing as we are now the country of invertebrates that can be intimidated by knife wielding seven-year-old girls with no will no fight anybody for more than three months, we're looking to our enemies to help us out in Iraq. Bush is moving away from Olmert in Israel in trying to create dialogue with Iran in the hopes that talking to them may result in the stabilization of the Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq.

You see, while we were watching Terry Schiavo blink on camera, a crazy woman runaway from her wedding, and some communist "peace mom" make a nuisance out of herself, Iran was building coalitions and economic partnerships with Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Venezuela and other countries. In other words, while we were wasting time in pop culture isolationism, Iran was stacking the deck against us and creating a protective shell around themselves so as to quietly and diligently go about the business of building a nuclear bomb. They will have the bomb. It is just a matter of time. The US' sad, selfish, hysterical, power-mongering behavior on Capital Hill has blinded and retarded to the point of impotency in the Iran issue. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have failed us here. They've allowed Iran to rest comfortably behind Russia, China and India, where it can flout international law with gusto.

Iran may have signed a virtual "death warrant" by openly declaring a governmental decision to move away from the dollar in the country's foreign-exchange transactions, says WND columnist Jerome Corsi.

"The Bush administration will see Iran's decision as economic warfare, a move calculated to weaken the dollar in retaliation for the U.S. seeking U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran's continued uranium enrichment," Corsi told WND.

Speaking to reporters at an e-commerce conference in Tehran Tuesday, Iran's Minister of Economy and Finance Davood Danesh Jaafari presented the policy as a defensive move aimed at blocking Washington's ability to monitor and interfere with Iran's conduct of international business.

"Some U.S. banks have been disrupting our dollar transactions for a long time and Iran, in return, has been decreasing its dependence on the dollar," Jaafari explained.

The U.S. Treasury in September barred Iran's state-run Bank Saderat from having any links with U.S.-owned banks because of Iran's support of terrorism.

As a result of the increasing pressure from the Bush administration, Iranian banking authorities have complained European banks are increasingly reluctant to transact Iranian import and export sales in dollars and to extend open lines of credit for Iranians in dollars, fearing U.S. penalties. Iran also is concerned the U.S. government might soon be forced to devaluate the dollar.

Corsi previously has argued Saddam Hussein "signed his death warrant" by getting the U.N. to agree Iraq could hold foreign exchange currency in Euros resulting from "oil for food" transactions.

Iran's announcement this week will be seen by Washington as a follow-up to its intention to create an oil bourse pricing oil in Euros, Corsi believes.

"With our continuing budget and trade deficits, the Bush administration has to react strongly to any suggestion that world international markets might move away from dollar transactions or dollar holdings of foreign exchange currency," he said.

The risk also includes China, Corsi noted.

"With China now holding $1 trillion in their foreign exchange currency, the recent decision that China intends to diversify their holdings more into Euros threatens the ability of the U.S. Treasury to float our budget deficits by selling U.S. government debt into the foreign exchange currency holdings market," Corsi explained.

Corsi is concerned the Bush administration has been "de-industrializing the United States" by pursuing a free trade policy that allows China to replace U.S. manufacturers with what Corsi describes as "under-market slave labor or near slave labor."

"Now with Iran on the verge of announcing the capacity to produce highly enriched and possibly weapons-grade uranium," Corsi comments, "we are increasingly vulnerable to Iran spearheading an anti-American attack on the dollar."

Corsi points out China recently signed a multi-billion dollar deal "guaranteed to make Iran one of the major suppliers of oil and natural gas to China for decades to come."

"If China joins Iran in pressuring the dollar, we face dollar devaluation much faster that the Bush administration has allowed the U.S. public to know," Corsi said.

Little girl flashes knife as she tries to steal toys

Have you ever felt like your entire city is falling off the face of the planet? This is the second story to come out of the Tampa Bay area (where I live) in which some damaged kid perpetuates the cycle of abuse in their life. The saddest part about this story to me is that the story ends with the little girl peddling away on her bike. What happened? Did she over-power somebody? Do you mean to tell me that there wasn't security around that could disarm a LITTLE FREAKING GIRL!? This is why the Muslims think they can beat us folks. When we we're taking a lickin' from tykes on trikes, then you know it's time we stop calling ourselves the most powerful country on the planet.

Largo, Florida - Largo Police are looking for a little girl who pulled a knife on a Wal-Mart clerk as she tried to steal two boxes of Lego toy blocks.

It happened on the Missouri Avenue around 9:00 pm Tuesday night.

Police say the 7 to 8-year-old girl hid the toys under her coat and tried to walk out the door.

A store employee was watching and approached the child, asking her to turn over the Lego blocks.

Police say the little girl then opened her jacket and displayed a combo carving knife with a forked point and a 10" blade, saying she was armed for protection.

The employee talked the girl into putting down the knife and the toys.

The girl then rode away on her bicycle.

The employee was not hurt.

I'm seriously glad the employee was not hurt but for goodness sakes, the clerks pride should be mortally wounded.

PS: You can see the news story by clicking the title link

Jr. Ghetto Parenting

I had intended to write my 80 millionth story on Iran. As per usual, I was searching out a number of articles having to do with the latest collective Middle Eastern anxiety attack when, as I was searching the Drudge Report, I came across the following headline.

BACKYARD VIDEO SHOWS PARENTS HOLDING KID BRAWL [**GRAPHIC LANGUAGE]...

Mind you, right underneath that there was a link titled “Man Admits Burning Girlfriend's Kittens to Death...” but I figured I should research one insane topic at a time.

I clicked the first above link and found the following article.

Disturbing video of kids fighting on MySpace

St. Petersburg, Florida - The video is hard to watch and it's littered with profanity and racial slurs.

For nearly two minutes, adults, possibly even parents, cheer on two young boys to duke it out.

It was posted on the popular website, MySpace.com by a teen claiming to be from St. Petersburg.

Trenia Byrd Cox, President of the St. Petersburg chapter of the NAACP calls the clip shocking and disturbing. Titled "Jr. Ghetto Street Fights," the clip has gotten more than 8,000 hits. It's listed as a comedy, but Cox sees it as anything but laughable.

The clip appears to be gone now. I checked Drudge around 11:30PM and after following the trail that led back to the MySpace video section, a search of the title, “Jr. Ghetto Street Fights,” is gone leaving nothing but a few scenes from the alleged video.

Assuming the reporter over at the Tampabays10.com got this right and someone indeed captured adults cheering on a pair of elementary school age children beating the tar out of one another, there are number of issues to look at here.

First, as a mandated reporter and a social worker, frankly I’m mortified. Though I deal with parents and grandparents that routinely get their kids hooked on everything from pot to crack and heroin, I never ceased to amazed and horrified by such abject abuse and neglectful dysfunction as presented in the above story. You have to wonder just where and when society went astray that it would produce parents who encourage their children to act like craven animals and are even entertained by it.

When I was in junior high school, I practically had to sneak out of the house to fight one of peers at the nearest park. When my dad found out what I was attempting to do, he not only forbade from leaving the house that afternoon, he called the boys father. As embarrassing as that was for me (and we never did have that fight) it did show a sense of concern my father had for me as a parent. Right there he imposed a value judgment that hold to this day; fighting is wrong and one should learn to seek out another way of resolving ones conflict. If fighting can be avoided, it should be. His reasoning appeared at the time to be that if whatever problem could wait for me to come home from school, drop my books off and then head up to the park, it must not have such a pressing issue to begin with. He certainly didn’t drive me there himself while hooting, “Kick his ass Yo or you is a bitch!”

This is essentially the divide I’ve notice in today’s family society. On the one hand, you have parents invested in their children, and therefore said parents are around to instill values and perspective when their children make the mistakes that all children are bound to make. Then you have the profoundly damaged people out there who unfortunately have their own children, whom they are not invested in and therefore profoundly damage them, continuing the cycle of abuse and devolution. And though this particular story centers on black folks, you can be assured that damaged psyches are expansive and racially non-particular.

I believe that horrible and abusive parenting begins with selfishness. The rule is that you put off your own needs for the sake and safety of your children until they are old enough to fend for themselves. When this happens you can start to focus on yourself again. Somewhere along the line, I would say the 60’s but probably even before that, the belief that your own self was more important than any other being on the planet became the philosophy du jour and average adults shirked their collective responsibilities in favor of regression and an inflated sense of self-importance. In their own imitable fashion, an entire generation of people reverted to a childlike state and acted out that way with gusto.

Add to this mix a concerted effort to disarm and disenfranchise many generations of fathers with means tested welfare (among other well intentioned but ultimately flawed programs) and you begin to see the formation of the world we are living in now.

Narcissism rules the day. Narcissistic people do not view children as cherished beings to be molded into productive adults but rather little extensions of their own flawed egos. This is why you see so much sexualization of children from the lessons they are taught in schools to parents buying their daughters the latest prosti-tot fashion. Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d be demanding Child Protective Services interventions for any mother who bought their elementary school age daughter sweats that read “juicy” on the butt.

A friend of mine brought her 6-year-old boy over to the house last week because we were headed to local Catholic fair. Her son was wearing a T-shirt that read, “Homework is My Enemy.” I spent the rest of the night gently making fun of her because of this and her defense was that it was Friday and thus, since it is a weekend, homework is in fact the enemy. I tried to remind her that in his formative years she should be affirming the importance of homework, not adding to what I’m sure is his concerned opinion that homework anytime really sucks. This was a clear case of a parent imposing her sense of humor, tongue-in-cheek as it was on her little extension of herself.

My friend is not a bad parent per se. She’s not on drugs, she doesn’t expose to bad people and she makes him breakfast every morning. The issue is that she lives in a world where family values and common sense have collapsed across the United States (I’m not going to get into the rest of the world). Liberalism to the nth degree breeds this sort of moral relativity and lack of self-restraint. In my friends case it was a rather innocuous joke but in the above story, two children were irreparably damaged, probably for the better part of their lives. These two will more than likely go on to hurt many other people before they meet their maker. When you take the long view of how family values have collapsed, you can plainly see that it isn’t that far of jump from “juicy” on the butt or Jr. Ghetto Street Fights, to any number of serious child abuse and drug related offenses.

Parenting is not a laughing matter nor is it something that should be blown off in favor of debating “more serious” issues. If people would get some perspective and stop being as selfish as they are wont to be, any number of ancillary issues could be solved rather speedily. As I’ve said in previous columns, we don’t need “No Child Left Behind,” or the vast array of education and social service related programs. What we need is simply solid two-parent family homes. If said parents treated their children in a manner that lent itself to respectability instead of trying to create “Mini Me’s” you wouldn’t have half of the society issues that plague us today. Better yet, much like being a recovering alcoholic or drug addict, if you deign to be a parent, try taking care of plant for one year. The following year take care of a pet. If by the end of two years both the pet and the plant are still alive then you can become a parent.

New Review: Stepping Up

Making decisions is one of the inescapable factors of life. We all have to make decisions from the time our bodies awaken until they collapse later on at night. Once you’ve opened your eyes and have made the decision that yes, today I will get out of bed and face the world, each step brings yet another decision that must be made. Whether it is simply what should I eat for breakfast or wear to work today, right down to the most important of decisions, how will I conduct myself among my peers?

Making appropriate decisions is not always as easy as it sounds. Your values inform your decision-making process as well as your environment and culture. In addition to which, the way in which you make decisions may conflict with someone else’s decisions and thus a new set of situations and choices arises. Once again, this happens to people on almost a daily basis.

Luckily, founder and president of an executive coaching firm and fellow of the British-American Project and Wharton School's Executive Education Program in Philadelphia, PA, Timothy Dobbins has written a motivational guidebook that can help anyone, in or out of the business world, make the best decisions, whatever the circumstances may be.

“Stepping Up: Make Decisions That Matter” by Timothy Dobbins is a great book for people whom are seriously looking for guidance, especially in the corporate world. Anyone making the slow, hard, trudge to commute to work every morning knows what I am talking about. We’ve all been placed in a position where a situation arose that made us question our value system in light of a potential monetary or some other gain. Maybe a promotion or raise is at stake or the opportunity to make a move to a different job comes up and now you have to make a decision – whether or not you want to make a move in your life and then, how you are going to make it happen.

Dobbins breaks down all of the possible ways in which we can make a decision which revolve around taking responsibility, being civil to others, taking action and supporting those around you. Dobbins uses a great variety of real life examples (and some fictional ones) to show how each one of these choices can play out and how they matter in a real life scenario.

In the spirit of the book, I will go through each of Dobbins’ chapter using examples from my own life as I have made all of the above choices recently in some form or another.

Dobbins defines standing still as both the physical act of not moving but it can also be and most often is the manifestation of emotional indifference or spiritual apathy. As a social worker and a therapist in a residential treatment center I find myself running the gamut between being overly committed to the children I work with to being apathetic, or as Dobbins puts it, standing still. We recently had a rash of kids run from the program. Three of the kids were brand new and hadn’t given the program a chance. In turn, instead of showing my usual capacity for sympathy and feeling bad that I couldn’t help these kids, I was apathetic. There wasn’t much in the way of physical decisions that I could have made but I at least should have shown that their running from the program mattered in some way. Instead I just went on as if none of it happened and commenced this attitude in front of the others at work. In other words, instead of rallying the troops and providing some sort of positive feeling among people who did care that the three in question had run, I stood still and did nothing.

Stepping aside is all about shirking ones responsibility. Dobbins states that to step aside is to avoid or abdicate ones responsibility. It is to admit out loud that you don’t know what needs to be done or that you simply can’t do it. The on campus school at my job is a mess. It is one classroom for up to 20 kids that range in ability from grade level (10th, 11th, and 12th grade) to kids that can’t do first grade math at 16-years-old. The teacher is no math whiz himself but he spends most of the student’s class time making them do F-CAT packets that in some cases, he himself cannot help them with. He is also having a bevy of personal issues, which he tends to carry with him into the classroom. This volatile mixture has resulted in clients whom were ready for successful discharges from the program being denied because they were alleged to be doing badly in school. I tried to fix the problem by advocating for the clients to my boss and he in turn suggested that I draw up a proposal to make the on campus school more conducive to actual learning, which would in theory, bring down the incidents of behavioral outbursts. Instead of Stepping up and writing this thing, in my head I decided that I wasn’t the one to make such bold suggestions and stood aside while waiting for my immediate supervisor to make the needed changes. The classroom remains a mess and many of said clients have not graduated successfully and instead, opted to sign themselves out of the program out of frustration.

Stepping back is blocking someone else’s progress. Last year, shortly after I took this job one of my co-workers said she was over working for the program and wanted to move on to something else. She suggested that for the money and education level, her best option was to apply to the Sheriffs Department and become a Child Protective Services agent. Instead of encouraging her to seek out her fortunes in another avenue of the social service profession, I stood back and blocked her by saying that being a CPI is an awful job and that it wasn’t for her. A year later I am not only encouraging her to seek out this job, I’ve applied myself and am anxiously waiting to hear from the Sheriffs Department.

Stepping on someone is to attack him or her. Typically this doesn’t mean hitting them over the head but instead it means to insult or commit some sort of modern revenge on them. I’m not the type of guy that steps on too many people as it isn’t in my nature most of the time and my conscience tends to forbid me from being mean to those around me. However, my wife really knows how to push my buttons and in my less sane moments, I tend to step on her whenever we get into fights. She is the same way and what usually starts out as a simple misunderstanding usually devolves into the both of us throwing personal barbs at one another that have zilch to do with the original disagreement. In recent months both of us have been making strides in not stepping on each other whenever problems arise in our marriage.

Lastly, Dobbins says we should all reject all of the above decisions and step up by taking responsibility, being bold, not being brutal to one another and being supportive of those around you. The key to this book is not just to make beneficial career decisions but also to find that elusive meaning of life. Dobbins states that meaning is embedded in our ability to make appropriate decisions. When we step up and do right by one another, we find the meaning of life that gives us the impetus to get out of bed in the morning and face the world.

I’m not a big fan of advice or motivational books but this one was realistic and applicable to everyday life. It’s a great book for those that feel adrift and need some centering. I would highly suggest you read, “Stepping Up,” by Timothy Dobbins.

PC has its first Internet Radio Broadcast

Well the first broadcast of PC on the internet radio is officially in the can. I'm still trying to figure out the whole opening monologue/start recording thing but once things got rolling I started feeling more comfortable. Like all things as time goes on I'll become more comfortable with this format as this is something I'd eventually like to do for a living. I definitely over planned for the show and didn't take into account how much time callers would take. I took 3 calls and had two topics and still needed about an hour and half. That just goes to show that you can't plan too much for these things. In any case, as I'm listening to show again, there's definitely room for improvement but for someone just jumping into this medium, it wasn't if I do say so myself.

Thanks to all the people who listened and called in. Hopefully more will call in as time goes on.

For those that haven't heard the show yet, click the title link to hear the inaugral broadcast.

PC is FINALLY on the AIR!!!!!

I found a site that will allow me to broadcast my very own radio show over the internet. The show will be broadcasted live (via internet/Windows Media Player or Itunes) and I'll be able to take phone calls during the show. As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited about it. Essentially my vision for the show will be an audio extension of my written blog. Nothing too fancy, just whatever stories I deem of interest for the week and my opinion on them. I'll also dedicate some time to answering comments and responses I've gotten from my blog, especially the ones that seem to have misunderstood what I was trying to say in said articles.

The way Blog Talk Radio works is that I can have up to 5 simultaneous calls going on, which means I can also have a rotating co-host should any of my friends want to have an on-going role in this endeavor.

For the time being and until my work schedule changes I'm only going to broadcast once a week, 12:30 PM in the afternoon (Eastern Time) on Sundays. The show will be about an hour. You can check out my schedule here for more details.

Much Thanks in advanced for those that will support me in this effort.

Post Election Blues

Yesterday was a particularly interesting day for me. I got up early because I had a job interview in the morning before I went to my current job. As per usual I listened to my talk radio programs, (at this point Laura Ingraham) and like most people who knew the importance of the day, began thinking deeply about a number of issues.

Though I had said recently that I would vote for the Republicans (which I did, almost down the line) I wasn’t overly thrilled about the prospect. In Florida, my choices for federal representation were not inspiring in the least. Later that day when the kids in my program asked me whom I voted for and why, I had to explain to them that I was voting for ideology, not people.

That’s a sad statement right there – that the political culture in this country has gotten so corrosive throughout that I feel even when I don’t like the candidates that I should still vote with the party that, in theory, represents and should carry out my values. I think this is the electoral equivalent of pulling at straws.

For me, this election can be summed up in two Senate elections: Casey Vs Santorum and Whitehouse Vs Chafee. In both cases, the incumbent was soundly beaten by the challenger, bringing the Democrats closer to possible control over the Senate (as of this writing, VA is still being contested). However, though they are both losses, they are two different kinds of losses with varied meanings.

Going back to my morning drive, PA Senator Rick Santorum was on two of the radio shows I listen to sounding as positive and sure of himself as any man I’ve ever heard going into an execution. Despite the pundits and polls declaring Santorum was dead meat, I thought that he’d beat the collective wisdom of the elite media and keep his seat. When his was one of the first called in favor of the challenger I was left dumbstruck. I could not understand what happened to Pennsylvania that not enough conservatives could keep this man in the Senate.

Santorum was one of the few Republican senators that actually acted and voted like a conservative. He was one of the few that made it seem like having a Republican majority actually mattered because he was not some milquetoast, overly comprising, RINO that tended to sell out conservative principles for the sake of political capital. And yet, I assume because people are losing patience with how long finishing the job in Iraq is taking, he is dumped over the side for “a new direction.”

In the exact opposite case you have Lincoln Chafee. Here’s a man who embodies the phrase, “Republican In Name Only” to the letter. He voted against using force in Iraq and even had the support of NARAL because of his stance on abortion. He is by far the most liberal Republican on the Senate making whatever deficit in votes they had on paper, less in actual votes. He might as well have been a Democrat and yet he too was throw over the side in favor of “a new direction.”

Late last night when most of the votes were in and the Dems had officially taken the House, one of my friends called to kibitz about the election. He was decidedly less sympathetic toward the Republicans that I was. He stated that they deserved to have lost the House and probably should lose the Senate as well, seeing as in recent years the GOP has done little to nothing for their non-Evangelical conservative base. Trying to keep Terry Schiavo alive doesn’t count for much when the whole reason you vote Republican is so the border will be guarded and the terrorists will be appropriately battled. Waiting until a week or so to pass a decent border security bill is not exactly pro-active when you’ve had control over Congress since roughly 1994.

That to me is what happened with Santorum and Chafee. Between people not understanding the Iraq war, what it means and what we are doing over there, and disappointment with the GOP at large for seemingly taking their base for granted, it was the perfect recipe for giving Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Socialist, the third in line for Presidency spot in the House of Representatives (presumably if you were dumping your Republican senator you were also voting for a Democrat Congressional Rep.). I doubt many people put much thought into their vote beyond, “Iraq bad, vote Democrat!”

This is why I am still flabbergasted by the election results. If you are conservative, how does dumping Santorum or Chafee (RINO or not) help you? You don’t like how things are going in Iraq and you want a change, presumably a better plan of action but not to blindly leave Iraq high and dry…so you vote against Santorum? Casey is going to add his voice to the clarion call to bring the troops home ASAP, so how exactly does that help your cause? It’s a change in direction all right, backwards.

Chafee is a slightly different issue. Again, he might as well have been a Democrat. Voting in just another Democrat, Whitehouse, doesn’t really change things a whole heck of a lot. He too will simply call for an immediate retreat from Iraq, which is no different from what Chafee wanted. Again, what was the point of punishing this man by replacing him with someone just as bad? Conservatives should have dumped Chafee in the primaries and replaced him with a real conservative from the start instead of sending a RINO to the slaughter.

I guess the real reason for my blues is that if this mid-term election cycle was really predicated on the length of time it’s taking to prosecute the Iraq then we the people are incredibly stupid and our president probably the worst communicator in the modern political century.

The mission is and pretty much always has been to train an Iraqi police force and military and incrementally hand over the countries security detail to them while a new government forms and takes shape. It’s an incredibly slow and arduous undertaking. It took something like 30 – 40 years to rebuild Europe and Japan after World War II and that was with the benefit of NATO and a Marshall Plan. The former Administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer said in his book that when he consulted with experts about how long it would take to fully train a police force to patrol the streets of greater Iraq, the numbers he got back were nowhere near original projections. My point is that we are still training police and have been doing so since 2003. We have the same issue with the Iraqi military. One can argue that the de-Baathification was a stupid and confounding idea but it’s done now and the results are that we’ve had to rebuild the Iraqi military from scratch. If Americans really want to bring the troops home now, dumping Conservatives and RINO’s doesn’t really help. Learning how to speed up time and military training might however.

So despite my worst fears and nightmares, I now live in a world where Nancy Pelosi is the Speak of the House because the voters of this country don’t read or understand global affairs. We are an impetuous and capricious bunch and shows in how we vote. One can only hope that with fellow Socialist Charlie Rangel at the helm of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Democrats won’t do something truly stupid and defund the Iraq war while the troops are still in the field. Though I suppose if they do, us Conservatives will show them who is boss by electing more…Democrats!

Inconsistency by American Policy Makers on the War on Drugs and Illegal Immigration

President Bush signed a bill on October 26, 2006 authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border with the hopes that this gesture will give Republican candidates a pre-election platform for asserting they're tough on illegal immigration. Those whom are vehemently opposed to ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION have been clamoring for a fence or wall or any serious barricade to stop anyone, Mexican or otherwise from illegally entering the United States. After years of placating big business interests in cheap, illegal labor, the executive and legislative branches of our government finally decided to heed the call of its people and do something, anything to stop to the flow of illegal immigrants from coming into our country. The fence isn’t everything but at least it was a start in the right direction.

Anyone with half a brain and the ability to do elementary math should realize that this country cannot support millions upon millions of people using public services such as schools and hospitals who do not pay back into the system. Yes, they do pay sales tax on items bought in stores, but those receipts hardly cover the gap in tax receipts they do not pay i.e. income tax, property tax, etc. They also do not even come close to covering the cost of caring for all of these individuals medically, financially, educationally or in any other way, shape or form. Also, when you factor in the cost of policing and jailing said illegal immigrants (many turn out to be vicious criminals) plus the end result of their ruinous effect on labor wages, the bill for just allowing these people to cross our borders willy nilly and just make a life for themselves without attending to proper procedure becomes an unbearable nightmare.

I won’t bore you with statistics or news stories, those exist in abundance and can easily be sought out with a simple Google news search. The myths that illegal aliens do work naturalized citizens won’t or that illegal aliens somehow add value to the economy has been debunked eight ways from Sunday. That’s not what I want to talk about.

While I believe that a barricade on our borders is a good start, ultimately there are only two real ways to definitively deal with illegal immigration that will work in any real sense of the word. First the federal government must have the will and gumption to seriously punish any company or employer that employs illegal aliens. I would suggest jail time and possibly liquidation or seizure of that persons business. I’m as capitalistic as the next man but I also believe that business people have a responsibility to uphold all of the business laws just as we regular folks have a responsibility to uphold civic law. Simply put, if you drive drunk, for instance, you will have proven that you are not responsible enough to own a drivers license and as such it will summarily taken away from you until you grow up and learn to respect the law. This seems like a great way to treat CEO’s and such that prove they are not mature to follow the rules of their chosen profession and as such maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to own a company. A bit harsh, maybe, but I will say it will certainly make a man think before he hires an illegal alien to labor for him.

While punishing crooked bosses is a nice and righteous thought, the best way to stop or deter illegal immigration is total deportation. If you are found to be here illegally, under any circumstances, you must be sent back to your own country. That’s it; no questions, commentary or debate. If you are here illegally, you need to be rounded up and kicked out as soon as possible.

Here’s the rub; many have said that total deportation is impossible. They say that it can’t be done either physically or economically. They say that it is too expensive and there is not enough manpower or buses to stop the flow of illegal immigrants coming over from Mexico or anywhere else for that matter. They say we need open borders, general amnesty and infinite tolerance for Third Worlders just trying to make a life for their family.

Balderdash!

We’re a country that builds expensive bridges to nowhere and attempts to import democracy at gunpoint so don’t tell me how “expensive” total deportation would be. As a matter of fact, last year a study by a liberal Washington think tank put the cost of forcibly removing most of the nation's estimated 10 million illegal immigrants at $41 billion a year, a sum that at first glance seems preposterous as it exceeds the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security.

The study, "Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment," released by the Center for American Progress, was billed by its authors as the first-ever estimate of costs associated with arresting, detaining, prosecuting and removing immigrants who have entered the United States illegally or overstayed their visas. The total cost would be $206 billion to $230 billion over five years, depending on how many of the immigrants leave voluntarily, according to the study.

The study estimates that it would cost about $28 billion per year to apprehend illegal immigrants, $6 billion a year to detain them, $500 million for extra beds, $4 billion to secure borders, $2 million to legally process them and $1.6 billion to bus or fly them home. ((Source)

The ability to mass deport illegal aliens is not a matter of economy, it is in fact a matter of priority and political loyalty. Forty plus billion a year seems like a steep number by itself but if you look at what we’ve spent on the War on Drugs this past year alone, suddenly that number hardly seems steep at all.

According to DrugSense.org, we’ve already spent between state and federal expenditures roughly $43 billion dollars in 2006, and the year isn’t even over yet. In addition to the money spent and people we’ve locked up, every accounting I’ve researched shows there has not been a significant total drop in drug abuse despite all of time, treasure and manpower invested in drug prohibition. The evidence shows that while certain types of drug popularity ebb and flow over time, they are inevitably replaced with new drug abuses, thus keeping the rate of drug abuse roughly the same.

In other words, this year, abuse of cocaine may be down but instead of abusing cocaine, people (mostly kids) are abusing Adderall, Xanax, Ritalin, Dextromethorphan (DXM) aka cold medicine, Ambien, Oxycontin, etc. Despite all of the money and bullets we’ve thrown at drug abuse, the War on Drugs has failed miserably. The only thing it has done is create a cottage industry in private prisons that use drug offenders as cheap (damn near slave) labor. That is hardly a recipe for a successful policy.

Yet we trudge on and on with the War on Drugs. Public perception, puritan tendencies and political hackery will yield an expansion of the War on Drugs despite scores of experts swearing on a stack of bibles that there needs to be another way. Yet we trudge on, throwing more men and treasure at the problem. As bad as this situation is, why are we not consistent with illegal immigration? It would seem that we’re going to spend the billions on anti-drug program that doesn’t stop drugs, shouldn’t we also try spending billions of dollars on a total deportation that might actually work? Where these matters are concerned, there needs to be consistency. Declare war on illegal immigration the way we’ve declared war on drugs and poverty; we can’t do any worse than we already have and this time, it might actually work.

Saddam Hussein sentenced to death

Who knew this day would come? One could have bet that he'd beat the rap a la Kid Cann or Al Capone did when they were summarily charged with one crime after another. Hell, in the World Court, Milosovic died before he could be convicted. We'll see what Hussein's execution will mean in the long run vis a vis Iraq. The Sunni's are already promising civil war if he is in fact executed. Though it seems that everyone promises death to everybody else at one point or another throuhgout the Middle East so what is one supposed to make of this latest threat? Though I'm not fan of the death penalty, I suppose being hung is just desserts for what he's done to the Iraqi people at large and the Kurds.

The Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging.

Hussein's former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the killings of 148 Shi'a villagers.

The Iraqi High Tribunal acquitted a local Baath party official for crimes against humanity in a session in which Saddam Hussein is also expected to hear a verdict.

Prosecutors had recommended the acquittal of Mohammed Azawi Ali for his role in the killing of 148 Shi'a villagers following an assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982. Prosecutors have recommended death by hanging for Saddam, who was expected to be summoned to court later.

Donkeys harboring weapons stopped at Iran-Iraq border

Remember, you heard it here first folks:

Iraqi and U.S. forces intercepted six donkeys at the Iran-Iraq border Thursday and discovered they were heavily laden with lethal cargo.

According to a Multi-National Corps-Iraq press release, the donkeys were carrying 53 anti-tank land mines and one anti-tank projectile.

The mines were confiscated, and two men fled before they could be captured. The six donkeys were released unharmed, the release said.

The interception took place in eastern Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. Units from the 25th Infantry Division, known as Task Force Lightning, and soldiers from the 5th Iraqi army division, Iraqi police and Iraqi border patrol units are responsible for security there.

The mines were in good condition and determined to be Soviet (TM 62) and Italian (IT VS 2.2) made models. One of the mines was pre-rigged to be used as a roadside bomb, the press release said.

A coalition forces explosive ordnance disposal team was called in, transported all munitions to a safe area and detonated them.

“This action by an alert Iraqi border patrol prevented dozens of very lethal munitions from being employed by terrorists,” said Col. Gary Patton, Task Force Lightning chief of staff.

US claims Syria and Iran planning Lebanon coup

Here's the latest update on Iran: The EU wrote up sanctions on Iran which, China nor Russia will back because they don't want to "isolate" a "peaceful regime" AKA their economic partners. BTW though China and Russia both thought the EU sanctions were too tough, we of course thought they were too weak.

The US and UK conducted war games in the seas outside of Iran, and Tehran responded with war games of their own. During said war games, Tehran test fired missiles. Russia claims Tehran does not have the capability to build ICBM's. However, their Shahab-3 is based one NOKO tae po dong missile.

So this is where we stand. I've said before it looks like we'll be hitting Iran soon and not this story looks to be the pretext for invasion...can you say "election":

Without revealing its evidence, the US has accused Syria and Iran of trying to topple the Lebanese government and warned the two countries to keep their "hands off". It has also accused Hizbollah of being involved in efforts to bring about the collapse of the elected government.

President George Bush's spokesman said there was "mounting evidence" the two countries were working to undermine the administration headed by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The spokesman, Tony Snow, claimed one of Syria's alleged motives was to prevent the establishment of a tribunal to investigate the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri last year in which a UN inquiry found Syria to be implicated.

"Support for a sovereign, democratic, and prosperous Lebanon is a key element of US policy in the Middle East," said Mr Snow. "We are therefore increasingly concerned by mounting evidence that the Syrian and Iranian governments, Hizbollah, and their Lebanese allies are preparing plans to topple Lebanon's democratically elected government."

The Bush administration has regularly cited Lebanon as an example of an emerging democracy in the Middle East. "And if you have the example of a stable democracy that's able to fend off terror in the case of Lebanon, from Hezbollah then you have an opportunity to create an entirely different set of circumstances in the Middle East," added Mr Snow. " We're making it clear to everybody in the region that we think that there ought to be hands off the Siniora government; let them go about and do their business."

The White House made its claims for which Mr Snow said he was unable to provide supporting evidence as it was classified a day after the Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Mr Siniora's ruling coalition that it had until the middle of this month to agree on forming a unity government. Hizbollah said if no such agreement were reached there would be protests demanding new elections.

Last night the Syrian embassy in Washington also denied Mr Snow's claims, describing them as ludicrous and unfounded. In a statement it said: " What is happening in Lebanon is a purely domestic political issue. Syria fully respects the sovereignty of Lebanon and does not interfere in its internal politics. Therefore, we call on the US to follow suit and stop instigating the Lebanese people against each other and against other countries."

The accusation by the Bush administration came as Syria's commitment to peace in the Middle East was questioned by Shimon Peres, Israel's Vice-Prime Minister, who said he was sceptical of British efforts to persuade Damascus to end support for radical groups in the region. "I don't feel that the Syrians are clear and honest," he said.

In a break with US foreign policy, Tony Blair earlier this week dispatched his senior foreign policy envoy, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, to Damascus where he held talks with President Bashar al-Assad in the first official Syrian-British talks since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Why?

Tesco condemned for selling pole dancing toy



TEEN ACCUSED OF RAPING HIS MOM

Police in Albertville say 19-year-old Gary Helms, Junior is charged with raping his 45-year-old mother. Police say he did it to seek revenge against his brother after the two argued over a girlfriend.

The police report says Helms' mother was passed out drunk on the couch when the rape started. She came to and recognized her son during the attack.

The police report says his mother tried to get away but Helms held her down until he was finished. Albertville police Sergeant James Smth says Helms confessed to the attack and was ordered held in the Marshall County Jail on a $100,000 bond.



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