US Attacked: National Guard Routed

How utterly disgusting. If this was a diversion, as one scenario suggests, we can only hope that something even more dangerous wasn't smuggled in. And if you need a better example of an alleged super power so hobbled by political correctness and weak political leadership that it can hardly protect itself, let alone wage a war - you may be waiting a long time for better than this.

I imagine the National Guard was operating under ROE's [rules] that prevented them from firing back. But, yes, armed men from Mexico entered the US, attacked a National Guard position and the National Guard turned tail and ran, probably their only alternative under President Bush's wonderful border enforcement policy.

Americans should be as outraged as they are sad, because if this precipitates any change, it'll likely be seen as a rationale for taking the Guard off the border, not giving them the ability to fight back. Face it, this administration probably fears gunning down some illegal more than it does allowing them to enter the country at will.

From Riehl World

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The betrayed children of the welfare society

These neglected children are kids like Michael Oher, who turned up recently in The New York Times in Michael Lewis's "Ballad of Big Mike." Of kids like Michael you can too often write:

"that Michael's father had been shot and killed and tossed off a bridge, that his mother was addicted to crack cocaine and that his life experience was so narrow that he might as well have spent his first 16 years inside a closet... Big Mike, as he was called, was essentially homeless and so had made an art of sleeping on whatever floor the ghetto would provide for him. "

Yes, read the whole thing. It's a compelling story, and for you sophisticated ironists there is even irony in it. African American Michael Oher is doing fine now as a stand out left offensive tackle at Ole Miss thanks to a bunch of rich white conservative football fans of a school in the Old South.

But why should we continue spending five percent of GDP every year on government schooling and $200 billion a year on welfare when a nice kid like Michael Oher completely falls through the safety net? What combination of personal and institutional heedlessness does it take to produce a 16-year-old like Michael Oher, utterly unschooled and utterly unsocialized? How many more are there like him? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

It would be interesting to apply the "Enron Test" to the case of Michael Oher and the other victims of the welfare state. Suppose that Michael Oher had been neglected not by his mother, the local government child services bureaucracy, and the local school bureaucracy but by the late Ken Lay and the evil Enron corporation. What would our Democratic friends say then? For the heedless bureaucrats of the welfare state it's not the money. It's power that frees them from accountability.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Charitable nation: "Americans are better people than Europeans. Hold on, it gets better. Religious Americans are better than non-religious Americans. And religious Americans tend to be politically conservative. This admittedly tendentious rendering of reality is how some on the right are interpreting Who Really Cares? by Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. Brooks doesn't really deal with what makes one person 'better' or 'worse' than any other. But it's fair to say that how much a person gives -- of either his money or time -- is usually considered an important indicator of character. It turns out that by this yardstick alone, my little talk-radio-ready summary is basically correct."

Iran admits its nuke program may be used for weapons: "Iranian top nuclear envoy Ali Larijani said in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao Friday that Iran is committed to peaceful use of nuclear technology. "We oppose obtaining nuclear weapons and we will peacefully use nuclear technology under the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty," he said. "But," he warned, "if we are threatened, the situation may change."

People running from over-regulated Leftist New York: "Advocates for more pro-growth policies in New York will get new ammunition today with the release of a report from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that the Empire State was one of only a handful of states that lost population this year, with thousands of people moving away to other parts of America and not being replaced by new residents. The state lost more than 9,500 people between July 2005 and July 2006, putting its total statewide population at 19.3 million, according to the federal statistics. Only states like Michigan, which has been hard-hit by the decline in the domestic auto industry, and hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, which lost 4.9% of its population due to the storm, saw a more dramatic decline, the bureau estimated".

Leftist dishonesty about American wage rates: "Some economists and journalists-I'll call them "the real-wage pessimists"-have claimed that average real wages have fallen during substantial time periods over the last 30 or so years.... Start with the person's hourly wage rate. Many of the real-wage pessimists don't carefully estimate that but, instead, settle for looking at average weekly wages. But comparing average weekly wages over time will give a much more pessimistic view than is justified. Why? Part-time jobs as a percentage of total jobs have increased over time.... there is another reason that average weekly earnings understate the growth in hourly wages: the average work week, even for full-time workers, has fallen steadily... The third factor typically left out by the real-wage pessimists is the growing fraction of compensation paid in the form of benefits. Reynolds points out that between 1973 and 2005, total compensation per hour (including health insurance, retirement, and other benefits as part of compensation), rose by almost 40 percent.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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