About
Captain Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather. He lives with his wife Marcia, also known as the First Mate, their two dogs, and frequently watch their granddaughter Kayla, whom Captain Ed calls The Little Admiral.
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The Crows Nest
Rule 1: Drag The Corpse On Over First
If I've learned anything in four years of blogging, don't try to be out in front of the death rumors, especially with the villains of the world. Saddam died a hundred deaths before we caught him alive in his spider hole, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi almost as many before his demise last year. Osama may or may not be alive, but everyone's avoided speculating on his fate for a while now. Maybe Val at Babalu Blog will get luckier with his "Castro Is Dead" story. We all hope so. I'll wait for the announcement ....
Hobbs Choice
Volunteer Voters is holding its annual "Best of Nashville" on-line polls, and one of the categories is for the best political writer. Our friend Bill Hobbs, now posting at Newsbusters, and he'd like his on-line fans to cast their votes. Drop by and put one in for Bill if you get a chance!
Murtha Getting Backlogged On Apologies
Gary Gross of Let Freedom Ring sees another case collapsing on the Haditha charges. He's called for Murtha to apologize earlier, and adds another reason to the tally.
No Such Thing As 'Moderate' Islam?
Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan told a television interviewer that he finds the label "moderate Islam" offensive. Shrink Wrapped has a lot more on this, but at least in the same interview Erdogan acknowledged that "radical Islam" exists, and that it's been a catastrophe. Be sure to read the whole post.
MS-NBC Gets Punk'd
Power Line has a great post on a lack of journalistic effort on the part of MS-NBC. In covering the Michael Vick story, they reported on what they thought was Al Sharpton's website proclaiming Vick's innocence. I guess Alex Johnson and two other MS-NBC reporters couldn't bother to read the title bar of the site, which proudly proclaims it as a "parody site".
New Instapundit Podcast On Pharmaceuticals
I just caught this e-mail from Glenn Reynolds about his new podcast with Richard Epstein, the author of Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation. Haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but the topic is important enough to make sure I carve out time for it tomorrow. Get their first and tell me what I'm missing ....
Fed Trying A 'Stealth Easing'?
The Federal Reserve seems to have conducted a quiet campaign to steady markets that started spinning out of control, according to King Banaian at SCSU Scholars. He thinks that the Fed has conducted a "stealth easing". Be sure to read his explanation and follow his lnks.
A Shameless Bit Of Sel-Promotion
Gateway Pundit and Val at Babalu Blog note a crass PR move by Hugo Chavez. Venezuela has responded to Peru's eathquake disaster with food shipments -- and with Hugo's smiling picture on the cans. He also uses the tuna-can label to undermine President Garcia of Peru, who narrowly defeated Chavez' pal Ollanto Humalla, whom the labels extol for his "solidarity" with Chavez.
Tacky beyond belief.
Bush Going After Palestinian Terror Financing?
George Bush's new orders to USAID forces them to review the executive management of all NGOs to ensure that they have no terrorist connections. Carl in Jerusalem says at Israel Matzav that the order specifically intends to target Palestinian front groups for terrorists. Let's hope he's right.
Slow Start!
Yes, I'm off to a slow start today, thanks to some scripting issues, a bad back, and an alarm clock that needs replacing. Bear with me -- I'm ramping up, I promise...
And Now, In Little League Action Last Night ...
I once played in a Little League game where we lost, 30-1, obviously before mercy rules came into being. The only comfort during that shellacking was that 13-year-olds don't have to justify their salaries for being on the field. You have to wonder what the Baltimore Orioles have to feel without that caveat today, after losing 30-3 to the Texas Rangers. Sixteen of the runs came in the last two innings .... (via TMV)
Bush Speech On Iraq
I got a couple of e-mails wondering why I haven't linked to George Bush's speech today. I liked it; I just didn't have much to add. Rush Limbaugh covered it well on his site, and Power Line also links approvingly but has nothing much more to say. Michael Goldfarb notes that the Weekly Standard had made a similar argument regarding Vietnam a year ago.
Rove Fears Me -- No, Really!
Hot Air notes the latest fundraising letter from John Edwards. No longer content to indulge his paranoia when Ann Coulter mentions him, now he wants to indulge it when Karl Rove doesn't. Has any candidate seemed this desperate before now?
Racism Or Hard Truth?
Angela Winters looks at an editorial cartoon and the controvery it has caused in Jacksonville, Florida, especially in the black community. Truth or racism? When rap artists tell young listeners not to cooperate with the police, how much responsibility do they have for the victimization that follows? Read all of the essay at The Moderate Voice.
Support Citizen Journalism
Bill Ardolino at INDC Journal reminds us that there is a reporter shortage on the front lines. The best way to solve that problem? Donate to Public Multimedia, the citizen-journalist organization that supports Bill Roggio, Bill Ardolino, and others. (And a direct donation to Michael Yon would be much appreciated as well.)
Comments (4)
Posted by harleycon5 | June 21, 2007 12:55 PM
Thank God for men like Inhofe. Perhaps a phoenix will arise from the tiny burning embers of Reaganism that remain in our ranks. We can only fight the good fight, and do what is right for our country.
Surely, if we lose our country will be lost. Perhaps this sounds extreme, but is there any doubt that in 20 yrs we will be revisiting this issue once again for another 60 million illegals? And as the Democratic party gains power via these new voters, we will slowly slip away from the country we knew toward Socialism.
Who would think that the Republican party would be the key to such a future? It seems almost imaginary if we were not living it.
Posted by Urban Planning Overlord | June 21, 2007 6:18 PM
Why not just open the border with Mexico and allow a free flow of people back and forth, just like they do in the European Union?
Well first, there is the issue of security - Mexico's drug lords, the possibility of Jihadis infiltrating, etc., that would have to be resolved. But then, why not?
Right now, the U.S. has a per capita gross national product (GNP) of $44,200. Mexico's per capita GNP is $7,800. The U.S. projected economic growth rate over the next five years is 2.5%. Mexico's is 3.5%.
Meanwhile, there are great disparities between various E.U. nations with open borders. For example, Germany has a per capita GNP of $35,100, while neighboring Poland's is $8,900. Yet, despite the anecdotal talk of the "polish plumber invasion," there doesn't seem to be a huge influx of Poles into Germany (or France, or Great Britain for that matter).
And Mexico could start growing faster than 3.5% annually. Especially if we fully implement NAFTA, and the conservative PAN party remains in power (although a left-wing Mexican President would be much more likely to be another Lula da Silva as a Hugo Chavez). I would note that India's expected GNP growth rate over the next five years is expected to be 7.6%. India, like Mexico, is an imperfect democracy with a lot of difficult economic issues.
As for taking over the U.S., there are 100 million Mexicans, and 300 million of us. Even if they all moved here we'd still be a majority. And the Mexican birthrate has plummeted to about 2.5 children per family, not much higher than our birthrate.
As for language, any Mexican who wants to prosper economically in the U.S. must learn English. They all know it. And the ones that come here for the most part come because they want to prosper economically. That's why by the third generation of Mexican-Americans, 75% don't even speak Spanish any more.
There are so many sound economic reasons for allowing open immigration and travel between the U.S. and Mexico. It's a shame that so many people, for reasons contrary to Economics 101 and with a misplaced view of what it means to be an "American," don't see this.
Posted by mudhen | June 22, 2007 7:30 AM
Urban Planning Overlord, you're full of cr@p.
You obviously haven't lived among the immigrants. Anyone who has, knows that several of your points are just simply not true. They only learn our language when they are in the minority... but they aren't dispersed evenly amongst our population. They are clustered in barrios, and those barrio dwellers resist learning our rules or our language. They are run by gangs, and they demand social services. They are more insular than any other migration that we have ever had, save the Islamists. We can take a reasonable amount of immigration from the Latino countries, but if we allow a big influx, the repercussions will haunt us for decades.
Joanie in Carlsbad
Posted by Urban Planning Overlord | June 22, 2007 11:54 AM
Joanie, assuming that you are from Carlsbad, California, between 11.7% and 17.6% of your city (depending upon what figures you believe) in 2000 were Hispanic. Being somewhat familiar with Carlsbad, I'm not aware of any significant barrio area within this rather affluent city with a significant conentration of non-English speakers. Which means that about 1/6 of Carlsbad's population is HIspanic, most of them undoubtedly Mexican-Americans.
If you are from Carlsbad, New Mexico, according to the 2000 censues 36% of your city's population is Hispanic. I would suspect that a good portion of this population is descended not from recent Mexican immigrants, but from people who were present in New Mexico before most Anglos' ancestors arrived.
And the iron law of immigration hasn't been foiled by Mexican-American migrants. To get ahead in this country, you have to learn English. Spanish is still welcome in barrios because of the concentration of people, but most of them also speak English, and their children will speak less Spanish and more English, and only 25% of their grandchildren will speak any Spanish at all.
And, by the way, what do you have against bilingualism? This ocuntry needs more bilingual professionals to gain business in other nations and bring more economic prosperity to our shores. That goes not only for Spanish, but Cbinese, Hindi, and a lot of other languages too.