"Rules Are Made to be Broken"

I always thought that was a dumb saying but, now that I think of it, the whole Judeo-Christian tradition is based upon it.  If no rules were ever broken, there would be no need for forgiveness, and all the churches and synagogues would be out of business.  I suppose the Pagans and Wiccans would still be dancing naked in the forest, which might not be such a bad thing.  I'll have to ask my daughter about that the next time I see her. 

Uncle Ken has told us before about the Condo Cat Lady, and also about how the Christmas light rule was not enforced in the past.  So what's different this time?  Since Uncle Ken thinks it's okay to have unenforced rules on the books, why is he weeping and gnashing his teeth over this one?  Why doesn't he just put up his Christmas lights when the time comes and see what happens?  

I can see a problem with the dog rule.  Suppose another neighbor has a dog that barks all the time and somebody complains about it.  How could the board justify making him get rid of his barking dog while allowing the silent dog to remain?  The rule doesn't say "no barking dogs", it just says "no dogs".  A better rule might be "no loud noises that disturb the neighbors."

Meanwhile, back at the border, this is a new development for a change:

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AACddlf?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Ken and the Kondo, Part One

We do sign a contract when we move in.  I have it in a drawer where I put it when I moved in and it has not moved from there since.  I went to the very first board meeting after I moved in intending to be a good citizen and help steer the ship of the condo across rough waters.  I was never so bored in my life. 

Well the affairs of a condo are boring, mostly moving money around.  There is all kinds of shit, repairs, (remember those tv shows where they showed what would happen to the earth if man should disappear?  One of my favorite parts was about the cities,  Those grand concrete towers look like they would last forever, but without people tending to them regularly they would soon collapse into the ground), salaries, investments, debts.  I guess the way I figured it was that this is a very boring thing, and these people who run it, they live here, many own other units, it is to their own advantage to keep things going, if they take a little something for their efforts, well maybe it is not that bad.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle maybe five years ago when some unit owner was discovered to have like 37 cats, with the resultant odor problems.  They were able to kick her out on general grounds, but then they went forth to issue a cat decree declaring that studio apartments were allowed only one cat, one bedrooms, two cats, and two bedrooms three, furthermore you had to sign up into a cat database, submit a photo of your cat, and pay five bucks per cat a year to cover the cost of maintaining the cat database.

Draconian?  I thought so.  I appeared at my first board meeting since I had moved in.  The way the board meetings are run is that the board conducts its business which consists of some discussion and some votes.  Beagles is correct in that a lot of this has been decided forehand.  I suspect it is not so much secret deals as conversations between people who all know each other.  The unit owners in attendance remain mute all this time, and it is only after the meeting proper is done that they are allowed to voice their concerns.

It is a daunting task because there is one of you and like ten of them, and you really don't know who might be on your side and who not, who is open to your plea, and whose mind is slammed shut,  But as I pressed my arguments I began to become aware that they never really intended to enforce any of this.  They just wanted to have the rules so that if somebody in the future had 37 cats they could just cite her for violating that rule and boot her out without having to make a case for causing a disturbance or whatever they called it.

The way this works, and I think it is a pretty good system, is that no rules are enforced unless somebody complains.  For instance dogs are not allowed.  One day I was having a conversation with some neighbors and a small dog suddenly ran out their door and into the hallway.  They asked me to please not rat on them and I told them my lips were sealed.  The problem with dogs is the barking and I had never heard this dog bark, so I didn't have any problem with him.  They got to keep their dog and I didn't have any unpleasantness with my neighbors.  I think this is a sound system.


There is a longstanding disagreement with me and Beagles where he tends to think rules are written and then they are the order of the day, whereas I think they are enforced by people and it's people who are the order of the day.  More or less, I simplify.  But I don't want to get into that this morning,and in fact it looks like the Dawgs can expect a whole history of Ken and the Kondo,  I will continue on Monday's post.

You Need a Plan, Man

 Uncle Ken, I understand your frustration in dealing with your condo board.  It sounds like they are giving you the run around in hopes that you will exhaust yourself and give up.  You must have signed some kind of contract when you bought your unit, you need to read it thoroughly to see if there are any loopholes in your favor.  If you find it difficult to understand, you may need to have a lawyer take a look at it.  If there is enough interest among the other owners and tenants, they might be willing to share the cost with you.  Depending on what the lawyer finds, and depending on how stubborn the board is, you might have to take legal action.  Sometimes the mere threat of a lawsuit will change your opponents' minds, but don't count on it.  Before going to court, you should get a cost estimate from your lawyer, and then decide if it's worth it to you and your allies.  The only other option I can think of at the moment is to sell out and move out, but I might come up with a less drastic idea if I think about it for awhile.

Meanwhile, back at the border, the situation seems to be getting worse with no end in sight.  I give up trying to find a way to screen them, it looks like we're going to have to either let them all in or fence them all out.  Either way, it's not going to be pretty.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAC9RaB?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAC9Mz2?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

in the footsteps of The Father of Our Country

I know I get too fired up over this Christmas lights thing,  It begins to take me over like my job used to do when I particularly hated it.  I'm walking along minding my own business, not bothering anybody and maybe I am enjoying the shine of the sun and the song of the lark and then I start thinking about the affair.  Maybe I should have said this instead of that, how unfair and illogical the other side is being, how just my cause is, and then I am no longer leaning back taking long breaths of the sweet early summer air, I am walking hunched over, my fists balled, muttering so that little kids and old ladies give me a wide berth.

And then I say to myself STOP, this is stupid, it is whatever it is, even if I lose my cause the world will go on, there's nothing I can do about it at the moment, it is a lovely day, the sun is in its glory and that sweet little lark is singing its little heart out.  Well of course, I am right, aren't I almost always?

So I unball my fists, put my thumbs into my pockets cowpoke style, my mad rush becomes a genial amble, and my thoughts gently drift from this to that.  But inevitably, after a block or two some remembrance of the affair sidles out onto center stage, and within a minute my fists are balled and my mouth is muttering,

I hate Christmas music.  That gift-giving thing is very annoying.  Generally I tolerate hypocrisy because it's just another side of politeness, but it can get awfully thick around Yule time.  But I love the lights.  I have never had a Christmas tree, actually I have never had lights until I moved into Marina City, but now that I have them I love them.  It is my way of celebrating Christmas, what is more American than that?

And isn't it the right of every American to celebrate Christmas however they choose?  See here it is where my cause goes a little off the rails.  It's not just me, it is everybody, well that lives in Marina City, but maybe if I win this great victory, other condo boards will note and will not oppress their unit owners in a similar manner.  And really it is not just a fight for Christmas lights, but it is about basic rights.  It is the principle of the matter.  Did not George Washington raise the spirits of his hardy band of rebels by stringing gaily colored lights across bleak Valley Forge?  Well he would have if they had been invented.

From Hordes to Boards

There used to be an old saying: "I love humanity, it's people that I can't stand."  Well, I'm just the opposite, I like people as individuals, what I don't like are big crowds of people, most of whom I don't know, but all of whom I have to put up with.  I have already conceded that the per capita crime rate for the immigrants is probably no greater than for the general population, but I still maintain that more people generate more crime.  It's not just the crime either, it's the noise, the traffic, and the long lines at the supermarket.  I don't know how many people they have in Central America but, at the present rate, they will soon all be here.  No good can come of that.

Uncle Ken is right about me usually wanting the government to do nothing.  That's because they usually do things that I don't like.  I guess what's different now is that I'm tired of hearing them constantly talking about stuff that they probably will never do.  It just occurred to me that they might be doing this on purpose, to lull us into a false sense of security.  Then, after we become bored and quit paying attention, wham they do something, hoping that we don't notice.  

  A non profit corporation usually operates on the principle of one man, one vote.  It sounds like Uncle Ken's condo club is not one of those, so it probably operates under the Golden Rule: "He who has the gold, rules." 

I have been involved with a few boards and committees in my life and, in my experience, it usually goes something like this:  Before they hold a regular meeting, they hold a secret meeting the they don't tell me about.  All the decisions are made at this secret meeting, the regular meeting is just a dog and pony show to entertain the public.  If I refuse to rubber stamp one of the previously made decisions, they pretend to agree with me, and then go out and do what they had originally planned to do.  If I complain about that at the next meeting, they pretend that they don't know what I'm talking about.  This, my esteemed colleagues, is democracy in action.

the Christmas light battle is not won

I've lost interest in the new cornbread recipe with the word sweet.  I don't have much of a sweet tooth.  I would like to add cheese, jalapenos, sun dried tomatoes and black olives, but honey, not so much.

And of course I am not going to agree with Old Dawg's assessment that I am the man of heart and Beagles is the man of head, I think it is the reverse.  And of course I think I come out ahead way more often than I come out behind.  But then I would wouldn't I?


The more people you have the more evil you will have and also the more virtue, I don't see the point.  The bigger glass of salty water doesn't taste any different than the small glass.

The 'bad' guys of the central American countries are staying put.  The migrants represent a small portion of the population of those countries and there are still plenty of people to bully.  The trek across Mexico is grueling, why would anybody want to do it if they were the bullies rather than the bullied? 

Methinks there are a couple kinds of speculation, one is where you don't know much about a situation so you make a guess, the other is where you may or may not do something and you are thinking about it. The former is where Beagles speculates that the immigrants are bringing crime in their wake,  But fortunately we live in the era of the interweb and if Beagles were to merely google crime rate among immigrants he would soon be disabused of that opinion. It's not that much work, and I don't see why it is always up to me to do it.

As for the other kind of speculation, I hope that they speculate long and hard and never get around to getting us into a war with Iran.  Beagles claims to be for the gummint doing nothing and then when it does nothing he is upset with that.


So, when we last left Ken in the war of the Christmas lights the board had decided to revisit the issue and to take a survey before they made a final decision.  My opinion, based on my petition, was that the majority of those surveyed would come out for colored lights, so I figured that the battle was won.  There was a meeting last night which I thought would be to formulate the the survey.  As I said I thought it was decided and so apparently did the woman who appeared to be leading the meeting, but there were a couple other board members who did not think that it had been decided upon.  What kind of board is this that doesn't know what was decided?  Indeed what kind of board is this?  They are kind of a caste who all know each other and talk about things among themselves.  I am way outnumbered and I don't know who is who.

So I had to argue the whole thing again, outnumbered and outgunned I fought the good fight.  Of course it didn't hurt that the woman who was running the meeting was a little bit on my side.  Anyway the survey will take place, but I am sure there will be some kind of debate on how it is formulated.  I am wary of them slanting it so that it comes out their way.

A couple interesting things I learned.  It is not one man one vote in the towers.  Your vote is multiplied by your assessment which is based on what your unit is valued at.  The more expensive your unit is, the more your vote counts for.  The main reason they ever decided to pass the whites only rule was that some realtors had called the multicolored lights tacky.  The board members are primarily real estate types, and they are more interested in how much money they can make flipping units than what the people in the towers want,.

Spekalatin

After I signed off last night, it occured to me that the statistical probabilities of a person becoming a crime victim would be the same, for the reason that Uncle Ken gave us.  It later occurred to me that I could salvage my argument by changing a single word in it.  I therefore wish to change the word "you" to the word "somebody".   The more people you have in a given area, the more likely that somebody will become a crime victim in a given period of time.  That's all I was trying to say in the first place, the more people you have the more crime you will have, all other factors being equal.
While it's true that you might also have more economic and social opportunities, that's irrelevant to my earlier assertion that the immigrants, who are fleeing poverty and violence, are bringing poverty and violence right along with them.  I find it hard to believe that the bad guys in Central America are staying home, leaving only the good guys to seek a better life in the US.  What would the bad guys do for a living if they let all their victims escape like that?  I admit that I'm merely speculating at this point, which reminds me of story.

When I was a kid, my friend Glen and I were discussing plans for some project or adventure.  Glen's father, who was in poor health, was sitting in his favorite chair reading his newspaper, which was about all I ever saw him do.  Glen's dad seldom spoke but, when he did, he had some kind of accent, I think it was Slovakian.  All of a sudden, he put down his newspaper and addressed us with the longest vocalization I ever heard him make:  "There you guys go, spekalatin again.  You guys are always spekalatin, spekalatin, spekalatin about all the stuff you're gonna do.  Well you know what you're really gonna do?  I'll tell you what you're really gonna do.  You ain't gonna do nahtin!"

Although Glen's dad was wrong about us, we did lots of things in those days, it has occurred to me that his words of wisdom might well be applied to the politicians of today.  They are spekalatin about impeachment, they are spekalatin about immigration, they are spekalatin about the Middle East, they are spekalatin about the Far East, they are spekalatin about universal health care, and they are spekalatin about Brexit.  But you know what they're really gonna do?  I'll tell you what they're really gonna do. They ain't gonna do nahtin!

Of course the same can be said about us at the Institute, but that's different.  The Institute is a think tank, it's our job to think this stuff up, and it's their job to do it.  We have been doing our job for years, and I think it's about time they started doing theirs.

Checking in...

A while back Uncle Ken expressed some doubt that I would ever reveal my latest cornbread recipe.  I am hesitant to do so for a couple of reasons, the main one being that I don't think he'll like it.  The mini-muffins that he's made were of the savory variety, jalapeno and cheddar if I'm not mistaken, and my recipe is of the sweeter type.  Also, a nine-inch square pan is required; none of this nonsense with deformed muffins made without a proper muffin tin.

My recipe is based on a recipe I found on YouTube, with some significant changes.  I think Uncle Ken should view the video to get an idea of what's involved. ignoring the down-home presentation and crappy production values, and then read the comments.  There is no middle ground, folks either loved it or said it was too oily and sweet.  On my first attempt I used less sugar and oil; the final version uses even less.  I also changed a couple of other things including the addition of whole corn kernels, either canned or frozen is fine but they should be cooked.  I've used this recipe a couple of times and I'm happy with it.  One pan yields nine good sized pieces and they freeze well so I have a week's worth of cornbread for a post-breakfast snack.  I'll post the full recipe if desired; be advised that the ingredients include honey and bread flour.

-----

I've been enjoying the back and forth nature of your recent discussions on the topics of immigration and crime.  The sidelines suit me fine, for now, and I've noticed a few things about you guys, just an impression but it seems consistent to me.  More often than not, Uncle Ken thinks with his heart, Mr. Beagles thinks with his head, and they are usually both right and wrong in such a way that things balance out, from my point of view.  Humans are funny, aren't they?

protecting the citizens

The two areas would have the same rate statistical probability of a person being the victim of a crime.  While the more populated area has more criminals, it also has more law-abiding victims so the chances of the victims remain the same in both places.  If you have a pitcher of a five percent sodium solution and you fill a small and a big glass, the big glass will contain more salt, but if you drink from them they will both be equally salty.


I think those gravel trucks were to protect the spectators and the marchers, I guess from somebody who would drive an explosives laden,vehicle or maybe just some rented truck as has been done a few times lately.  But I was thinking how often do the terrorists attack some big event, and I think the answer to that is never.  Then I thought of those kids who bombed that Boston race,  Those gravel trucks wouldn't have made any difference there.  On the other hand their device was pretty amateurish, and I think they only killed a couple people. 

And what kind of terrorists were they?  They spoke the language of Jihad but they weren't affiliated with any group.  In a way these people, call them amateur terrorists, are more dangerous because they can't be tracked the way professional terrorists, terrorists belonging to a group, can be, on the other hand their weapons are not as potent as the professionals.  I would roughly say that the difference between amateur and professional terrorism is the potency of the explosives. 

Those big terrorist events, the truck laden with explosives driving through a barricade happen in the mideast seems like all the time.  Well that is chiefly where the terrorists are fighting their wars, primarily Sunni vs Shia.  If the bomb kills a bunch of the other side and scares the ones who aren't killed that is a point for their side,  If they come here and kill a bunch of Americans what have they gained?  Nothing.  I'm thinking offhand that nothing big has happened here since the twin towers, and what did that gain?  What military objective did it achieve?  It got Al Qaeda driven out of Afghanistan and Bin Laden ultimately killed.  Well it did get us into a totally pointless war in Iraq, and whatever we are still doing in Afghanistan, but I don't think that was something foreseen by Bin Laden, just our personal national bad.

Going about my normal life I fear the guy talking on his cellphone while driving much more than I fear any terrorists.  Those gravel laden trucks strike me as a big waste of money, but maybe they make some feel good, like their government is protecting them.

Clearing Up Some Confusion

I don't usually like hypothetical scenarios, but I don't know how else to express this.  Let's say that you have a choice of living in two different neighborhoods.  Both neighborhoods are the same size, but one has way more people in it than the other.  Both neighborhoods have the same crime rate per person, but the more crowded neighborhood has more crime incidents per year only because it has more people living in it.  In which neighborhood would you have the higher statistical probability of becoming a crime victim?

I read a thing on my news app last night but I didn't copy the link because it was really long and it mostly covered things that we already know about.  One thing, however, caught my attention, and it may explain the discrepancy between the different reports about how many asylum seekers show up for their hearings.  It seems there are two ways to apply for asylum.  One way is to check in at one of the official entry points.  There they will give you a pre-hearing interview and, if you pass that, they will schedule your asylum hearing.  It didn't say what happens to the guys who flunk the interview, but I assume they get sent back.  The guys who pass the interview also get sent back to wait for their hearing date.  I remember reading that Trump was planning to do this, but I thought he had been prevented by a court order.  Be that as it may, the article says that they have been doing it for some time, and that "thousands" are presently waiting in Mexico.  The other way is to cross the border illegally and then either surrender to, or be captured by, the Border Patrol.  Last I heard, they were doing that at a rate of over a hundred thousand a month.  All of these guys get a hearing date, and then most of them are released on the US side.  The article didn't say so, but I suspect that the ones waiting in Mexico are more likely to show up for their hearing than the ones who are released on the US side.  The ones on the US side are already in the country, where there's a  chance they can remain incognito indefinitely.  If they show up for their hearing, there's a chance they will be rejected and deported.

I'm not clear on the function of all those gravel trucks in Chicago for the parade.  Were they protecting the parade from the spectators or protecting everybody from some common threat?  It seems like, if somebody wanted to bomb the parade, they could have easily done it from one of the surrounding tall buildings.

crime rates

There are indeed many opinions on the internet, but to throw up your hands and declare that the truth is unknowable is foolish.  Not all sources are equal.  When something goes wrong with your new truck are you going to step into the nearest bar or coffee shop and ask random strangers what they think you should do, and when they all have a different opinion throw up your hands in despair and go out and kick your tires?  Or are you going to ask people who know something about trucks and judge their opinions?

When I looked up that immigration thing I could tell pretty soon what were the lefty and righty sources, and if you look into the other contents of the site you can get a pretty good idea.  It takes a bit of time, but if you want to know what is going on in the world it's something you have to do.

I don't know how crime rate per square mile could possibly mean anything.  To get the crime rate they divide the number of crimes by the number of people in an area.  Crime rate per square mile would mean you would divide the crimes by the area.  I think what Beagles is talking about is the total amount of crime.  As he says if the population grows the total amount of crime would rise, but so would the total amount of flower shops and churches.  The crime rate per person would be the same, so where is the problem? 

I think it's a mistake to think that the Hispanic citizens of the US are the same people as the immigrants.  Many of the Hispanic citizens have been here longer than we have, while the immigrants have not been here at all.  If Beagles and I were to invite our distant Czech relatives over for a visit we would have much less in common with them than we do with our fellow US citizens.


When I went out to get lunch ySaturday I noticed that they were holding the Memorial Day parade.  As I crossed the State Street bridge I noticed a couple city trucks loaded with gravel, and as I continued down State Street they were lining the route.  Omigod I thought they are afraid of terrorists.  The terrorists have won.  How much did it cost to fill those trucks with gravel and have the drivers hang by them for the length of the parade?

Mr Google says we spend about 186 billion a year, or approximately 1/12 of our annual take in income taxes.  Seems like a lot

Who Checks the Fact Checkers?

The internet is like the Bible in that, if you search long enough, you can find something that supports almost any position you want to take on an issue.  I understand that Shakespeare is like that as well, but I am more familiar with the Bible than I am with Shakespeare, or the internet either for that matter.  That's fine for people who have the inclination to do so but, in the words of Earl Sinclair's mother-in-law, "I don't have much time left in my life, and I don't want to waste any of it doing stuff."

What Uncle Ken said about the asylum seekers is generally consistent with what I have read about them, except for the part about most of them showing up for their hearings.  Even if that part is true, it's still a sucky system because the hearings are being scheduled a year of two into the future because of the backlog of cases.  To me, this is proof enough that the system is not working properly.  Another thing that Uncle Ken did not make very clear is that, once they set foot on US soil, whether legally or illegally, and request asylum, the law requires that they be run through the process.  Trump's solution to that is to fence them out so they can't set foot on US soil.  Well, that's one way to look at it, but I don't think that alone is likely to solve the problem.  The asylum law was originally intended for people who are fleeing political persecution, while the current crop of asylum seekers are fleeing poverty and gang violence.  In my opinion, we need a different law that's designed with that in mind.

Speaking of not making something very clear, I was meaning to address this point last night, but I forgot:  When I said that the crime rate would go up, I meant the crime rate per square mile, not the crime rate per capita.  If the population density increases, the crime rate per square mile is bound to go up, all other factors being equal.  I also said something about the Hispanic crime rate increasing, and here's what I meant by that:  Last I heard, Hispanics made up about a third of the Chicago population.  Therefore, they should account for about a third of the crime rate, all other factors being equal.  If the Hispanic demographic were to increase to say half the population, their share of the crime rate should also increase to about half of the total, all other factors being equal.  As I've said before, it's not that the Hispanic immigrants are bad people, it's just that there are way to many of them.

fact checking

I hear the term sin often enough among secular people like myself to think it has meaning independent of religion.  Well you know I think religion has borrowed good and evil from our human nature and not invented it.  I guess I have a rather specialized definition of sin: knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway.  If you did something wrong maybe you didn't know any better, and if you did a crime maybe you didn't think it was the wrong thing to do. 

I do get confused when Beagles is talking about immigrants sneaking across the border and asylum seekers,  He is wanting to treat them the same, but they are quite different, the former would be mainly Mexicans looking to get ahead and the latter would generally be from central America and in danger of their lives in their home countries.  Mexicans sneaking across the border are detained only until they can be shipped back.  Asylum seekers are not sneaking, they want to turn themselves in so that they can plead their case and possibly be granted asylum.  These are the guys that are who are detained until their case is heard and when there is no room for them there they are released into the country with instructions to return for their court dates.  It's not true that most of them do not show up for their court dates.  I googled do asylum seekers show up for court  I was looking for a source like wiki but all of the links on page one seemed to be from varying partisan sources, the anti asylum guys held that 30 percent did not show up and the pro asylum groups said that figure included missed dates but the asylum seeker did show up for later dates, and the true rate is closer to 10 percent.

Beagles asks if I read different news sources them him and I don't think that's the case, I just read more.  I read two newspapers a day.  I listen to NPR and CNN.  I have internet news sites (chiefly political) that I check in on a few times a day.  I read the New Yorker and Harpers Magazine that have a lot of in-depth news articles, and I read books on the subject. 

In addition when something comes up like Beagles says most of them do not show up, I thought I had heard something different, but I wasn't sure where so I did the google.  I do that sometimes when I am writing a post and as I put down the words I become unsure of what I am saying so I do a google on that.  It takes a lot of time to do these google things and I wonder why it is always up to me rather than Beagles to do the fact-checking.  This seems unfair.  I am asking Beagles to do his own fact-checking on this criminal thing because the morning is growing old.

I will admit that this border problem has become worse than I thought it would, though I stop short of calling it an invasion or a threat to our sovereignty.  But it is very complicated and their are a lot of factors and currently the rhetoric is red hot, and even if Beagles's solution was viable there is scant evidence that it would be applied, but as the dawg himself says often enough, that has never stopped him before.

But of course I don't think Beagles's solution is viable.because if all we were looking for was criminals most everybody would get through and it looks a lot like open borders to me.

It's getting late, happy Memorial Day gents. 

Sin and Sensibility

The word "sin" is almost always used in a religious context, so I find it strange that people who are not religious would talk about it.  A religious person would say "I sinned", while a non religious person would be more likely to say "I made a mistake", or maybe "I screwed up".  I seem to be more comfortable with words like "right, wrong, good, and bad". I'm not sure why, maybe it's because I used to be religious and now I'm not anymore.  Each of us makes value judgements from time to time and, let's face it, the values upon which we base our judgements are largely cultural.  While a person might reject some of the values he grew up with, he usually replaces them with different values that he has gleaned from other cultures.  He may internalize those values to the point that he believes he originated them, but he's just kidding himself.

Words like "good and right" are not limited to a moral context. Sometimes we say that something is good or right because it works or seems to make sense.  It is in that context that I keep insisting that the way our government is handling the current immigration crisis is wrong.  It doesn't make sense to me the they apprehend illegal immigrants, detain them for a period of time, and then release them with instructions to appear before a judge in a year or two when they know that most of them will not show up.  It would be better to just throw open the gates and let them enter unhindered. At least then they wouldn't have to feed and house them.  Better than that would be to have some sort of screening process set up right at the border so the applicants can be screened before they enter the country.  My esteemed colleagues seem to think that there is nothing wrong with having the country over run with illegal immigrants.  Well, they have a right to their opinion the same as I do.

Uncle Ken has asserted that the number of violent criminals illegally crossing the border with the refugees is insignificant.  I have asserted that this is contrary to what I have been reading in the news media.  Although I didn't identify specific sources, I will try to remember to do so the next time I come across one.  All I asked was if Uncle Ken has access to different information than I do, assuming that he has been reading the same articles that I have.  It just occurred to me that he might have just read different articles than I have, which is possible because he follows the news more than I do.  Be that as it may, answer me this if you can:  If the crime rate among the immigrants is less than it is among indigenous Americans, then what are the immigrants seeking asylum from?  I find it hard to believe that they would flee their homelands and undertake the dangerous and arduous journey across Mexico if they though conditions in the US wouldn't be any better than what they were leaving behind.

Jurors do indeed get paid, although not very much, and a typical juror would lose money if he had to take off work for jury duty, which is one reason why many people don't want to serve on a jury.  I was fortunate when I served on a jury that my employer made up the difference between my jury pay and my lost wages.  This was not a law, it was a negotiated benefit in our union contract.  Another reason I favor a full time jury in my BIP is that it's kind of a laborious process selecting a new jury for each trial.  I understand the need for it in a regular court, but I don't think it would be necessary in this application.  As I said, we don't even have to call it a jury, we can call it a board of review or something like that.  They wouldn't be expected to identify potential criminals, just the ones that had already done something.  Of course they won't catch them all, but I thought we might have a better chance with them than relying on information from the immigrants' home countries.  Like I said, this plan has some bugs in it, but at least it's a plan.  I would scrap the whole thing and start all over again if my esteemed colleagues were willing to join me in that effort.

I have little experience with garlic.  I understand that it's in the sausages that I eat, but I have no idea how it got there.
   

can we agree on garlic?

Well I guess there will be no new and improved corn bread recipe for Uncle Ken.  I didn't mean to imply that I was bragging about taking a buck advantage out of the Seven Elevens not updating their price database in a timely manner two or three times a year.  I do not wear badass aloofness well, though I will confess to smugness.  Because I am an admitted sinner does that mean I am not worthy of expressing compassion for the less fortunate?

My intent was to open up a discussion on the metaphysics of sin, using myself as an example, even though I knew that the dawgs are not fond of that sort of thing.  Well so it goes.  I guess I will continue to bake the old and unimproved corn bread.


How about garlic?  My wintertime main meal consists of some mixture of the vegetables I named in my shocking confession along with other veggies for variation.  It's pretty good, but it can get to be rather bland.  Towards that end I have added freshly ground pepper, soy sauce, a dollop of butter, and garlic.  I used to buy that clump at the Jewel (at full price) and peel off a clove or two and strip them of their skins and chop them up into little pieces.  Then I came across the garlic press.  Quite an elegant piece of machinery, and how satisfying to mash the cloves through those tiny holes.  But you still have to strip the cloves of their skin, and then after you mash there is that unpleasant glop of residue that you have to pick out with a pointed knife.  Not much of a time saver, so I went back to slicing the cloves.  But then I came across minced garlic.  A two pound jar goes for five bucks and you just spoon out an amount a little larger than the cloves you would have used.


So I was about to google something like about crime in Mexican refugee camps to find sources that showed it was not the refugees but the locals who were doing the crime and then get links and so on and so on, and then it occurred to me that Beagles's references are named only as what he has read and heard in the news media, so why is the onus on me?  I wonder how Beagles is more aware of the increasing crime in our big cities than people who live in them, especially when statistically crime is down everywhere in the past five or so years. 

It's Beagles who is doing the open borders by allowing anybody who can pass his superficial tests into the country.

The whole point of a jury is that the people are not paid.  They are everyday citizens with no axe to grind doing their civic duty.  If you pay them they are hardly disinterested and will follow the lead of those who pay them.

A Jury of Their Peers

The more I think about it, it's unrealistic to expect a judge to sort out the immigrants all by himself.  What's needed is a jury, or a board, or a committee that consists of legal immigrants of good repute.   I think it should be a full time job rather than the jury selection process that we use for our regular courts.  Many people hate being called for jury duty and try to evade it, and I want people who will take their responsibilities seriously.

The refugee camps I referred to were in Mexico, and all I know about them is what I have read and heard in the news media.  If Uncle Ken has a more reliable source of information, I'd like to know what it is.  The gang activity in major cities is well known, but of course it's not all Hispanic.  As more and more Hispanics crowd into our cities, however, their share of the violence can only increase.  This might be more of an urban problem than an immigration problem, but it's definitely a problem, and it will not be solved by importing more of it.  Is Uncle Ken saying that we should let them all in, the good, the bad, and the ugly?  Is Uncle Ken still denying that it's a problem at all?  Living in de Nile might be okay for all those Egyptians, but I expect better from my esteemed colleagues.

I was going to get into all that talk about sin, but Old Dog summed it up pretty well.  Amen brother!  Nevertheless, let me say this about that:  The few times I was either over or under charged at the supermarket, it was only a dollar or two either way, but the last time I was over charged $10 for toilet paper, which is probably more than Old Dog spends on that commodity for a whole year.  Hours later, it would have been difficult for me to prove to the store management that I was charged for two packages when I only bought one, which is what happened.  I chalked it up as a learning experience, and have been checking my receipt before leaving the store ever since.  When the roll is called Up Yonder, I feel confident that the store will owe me money instead of the other way around.

I like my new tractor just fine.  It's a kick ass machine for moving snow, which we seemed to have a lot of this past winter.  The new truck project is on hold until the 2020 models come out because they are the ones that are supposed to be available in stick shift.  I drove a 3/4 in the army.  We had the older models, maybe WWII or Korean era, with canvas tops and no heaters.  Shortly after I got out, they started transitioning to something that more resembled a civilian 4WD pickup.  By then I had one of my own.

What's that smell?

Before it gets any warmer as we head into summer I've been meaning to ask Mr. Beagles about that new tractor.  How well did it handle the winter chores up there in Beaglesonia?  I can visualize the joyful anticipation of a heavy snowfall and the satisfaction of a job well done.  Until it becomes real work new machines can be fun to play with.

Are you still on track with that GMC pickup with the manual transmission?  My limited exposure to modern trucks shows me that they are getting pretty fancy; I don't know if they even make basic trucks for the working guy any more, the kind of truck you can use a garden hose to clean the interior with.

The biggest truck I ever drove with any regularity was the military Deuce and a Half, a good sized, no-nonsense beast.  We used them for troop transport, bringing the guys to and from the printing plant where we worked, and it became a kind of contest as to who could drive the trucks the most smoothly, not an easy task.  My favorite truck, though, was the 3/4 Ton, made by Dodge.  There was something about the size and proportion that was just right, at least that's how I saw it.  I always wanted one of those, to go ripping down snowfilled streets and alleys in Chicago, the canvas top flapping in the breeze.

-----

The right thing to do would be to tell the Jewel, but I'd feel like a ratfink to my fellow consumers.

Huh?  You'll feel bad by depriving your fellow consumers of, what is essentially, the opportunity to steal?  You knew the right thing to do and you didn't do it, end of story.  Yes, we are all sinners, but in stating "Oh I am black with sin" you sound proud of it.   Are you still standing on the corner, trying to look cool in all of your badass aloofness?  You can talk at length about the plight of the refugees at the southern border, people you will probably never meet, and yet you take the opportunity, over a period of years, to scam some poor mope at the 7/11 out of a buck, somebody you are looking in the eye and dealing with face to face.  I'm over reacting, sure, but it doesn't pass the smell test to me, the scent of bullshit is strong.

I kind of look down my nose at blogs where recipes are swapped...
 
Yes, I'm sure you do.

who will be able to cast that first stone?

I'd really rather be talking about turnips, and I shall presently, but first I shall have to deal with BIP (Beagles's Immigration Plan).  I didn't even know we had refuge camps.  There are the those prison-like places we hold people stateside, but I haven't heard of gang activity there.  I imagine there is trouble with criminal elements in those places where we make them wait in Mexico, but those criminals are ;local.  There were reports of MS-13 among the caravans (Whatever happened to the caravans?), but the sources were dubious and none of them have been substantiated.

Of course there are some criminals among the immigrants.  There are criminals among every group of people but all reports are that there are fewer among immigrants than there are among US citizens so letting them in will dilute the presence of criminals here.  Well that's assuming that the 'good guys' don't become criminals later.  Under Beagles's loose definition 'good guys' are guys who haven't done anything bad yet.  I don't think any judge is going to be able to look somebody in the eye and see his or her future.

There was a general feeling about guarding our borders after 9-11, but that didn't pertain to the southern border exclusively nor did it achieve its current furor until you-know-how descended that escalator, what was it, about four years ago, but is surely seems like forty at least.


Mere turnips, though tasty and well-known in popular lore as being the kind of truck that rubes fall out of, are not that important, but the issue of sin is.  I think without sin you don't have any religion and even atheists like myself use it to direct our moral compasses.  I have never claimed to be a man without sin, witness my shameful behavior at the Seven Eleven, but Beagles has claimed to be a man without sin, but now when I hear that unlike Honest Abe, when he was undercharged he did not go right back to the store and refund his ill gotten gains.  Looks like sin to me.

Way back when we discussed this earlier (and I can see Old Dog reading this this afternoon and rubbing his sore fingers, not this crap again and wondering why don't we discuss baking (and where is that improved cornbread recipe?)), sin was knowing something was wrong and doing it anyway.  Certainly Beagles did not know he was doing anything wrong when he accepted that extra ten spot in his change.  But later on when the error came to light surely he knew it was wrong not to drive back to the store and make things right, and yet he stayed home anyway.

Back in the day when Old Dog attended seminars I believe I foisted on him the book The Lost City by Alan Ehrenhalt, and maybe I somehow foisted it on Beagles because part of it is about our old hood.  One of the parts I liked was where he was discussing how the people of a parish in Chicago dealt with sin, how they recognized that they were sinners and therefore were more congenial in their behavior towards other sinners than people who thought they were free of sin.  I thought that was a good thing.  I guess that's part of the reason I don't like the good guys/bad guys terminology, because well, we are all sinners Gentlemen.

Here Come the Judge!

Okay, forget about the scanners.  If they can't tell the difference between broccoli and turnips, they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between good guys and bad guys.  Instead, let's move the immigration courts right into the IRCs.  I don't know where they are now, but it makes more sense to locate them right along the border where the immigrants are.  Judges must be able to tell good guys from bad guys because that's their job anyway.  I say again, forget the whole asylum thing, after changing the laws of course.  The important thing is to screen out the bad guys, the very people that the good guys are seeking asylum from.  I don't know where Uncle Ken is getting his information, but I have read a number of news articles about criminal gangs operating in refugee camps and in US Hispanic neighborhoods, and none of those articles was written by Donald Trump.  It's probably not a very large percentage of the immigrants, but it's certainly not zero.

In my plan, the IRCs would be the entry points.  I don't know how many we would need, but we likely would have to hire more judges, which is something that Uncle Ken has said we should do anyway.  Sure it would be expensive, but the costs would be offset by the savings we would realize by discontinuing the present ineffective system.  We have discussed this wall v fence thing before.  The pre fab panels they are presently installing to upgrade the existing barriers look more like a fence than a wall to me, but call them what you will.  The  main thing is that we need to give the immigrants their hearing before we let them into the country, not a year or two afterwards.  That's just common sense.

Speaking of common sense, this turnip thing is not one of the great philosophical and theological problems of the cosmic universe, it's just common sense and common decency.  Even an Atheist should understand that.  I can remember a couple of times when I was either overcharged or undercharged at the supermarket.  I didn't find out about it until later that night when my hypothetical wife was checking over the receipt, and we just let it slide both times.  She told me that she always checks her receipt before leaving the store, and I have started doing that as well.

Illegal immigration has been a problem for a long time, but public concern about it took a big jump right after 9-11.  That's why we need a passport to go to Canada now, and I suppose to Mexico as well.  I know it doesn't make a lot of sense since none of the hijackers came into the country from Canada of Mexico, but that's how people are, they never miss the water until the horse gets out, or something like that.

The nature of sin

9-11?  What does 9-11 have to do with the border?  Why would anybody care more about the border after 9-11 than before?  To my knowledge the only terrorist to ever cross a border to commit an act  was a guy who came in from Canada and didn't get very far.

I thought the IRCs were going to be at the points of entry, not strung along the border.  How far apart are these going to be?  How many of them?  Sounds like you would need hundreds of them.  That would probably cost more than the wall.  I think what Beagles is calling a fence is actually a wall because generally it is no problem getting through a fence. 

The airports don't screen for good guys and bad guys.  They screen for people who they think are likely to hijack an airplane.  I guess they do something for drug smugglers but I think that is pointed more at the luggage than the person.  As far as criminals I don't believe they care.  And I have a problem with this good guy/bad guy classification because in this case what he is calling good guys are just people who haven't been caught doing anything.  This doesn't really make them good.

There is no evidence that there are a lot of criminals among the immigrants, that is just a Trump talking point, and most of the drugs that come in here do not come across the border so I don't see where Beagles's superficial screening (patting them down for drugs, inspecting them for tats, consulting a dubious database) is going to give us a better grade of immigrant than the current system does.  It will certainly bring in a lot more.  Perhaps Beagles is hankering for some salsa on his breakfast table to season his huevos rancheros.


Beagles is probably right that I should inform the Jewel of their turnip glitch.  I know that Beagles is a man without sin, but I have to ask if he has ever come back from the store and realizing that he has been undercharged, then gone back to the store and given back what he should have been charged?  It just seems like that is one of those things, that are like part of the game; sometimes you get overcharged, sometimes you get undercharged, it all comes out even in the end.

But I realize that his turnip thing is beyond that because it is a continuing situation.  Probably it was okay the first time I did it because I had no intention of beating the Jewel out of six bucks, and I think it falls into the overcharge/undercharge thing.

The second time was a grey area because I didn't purposely type in turnips instead of broccoli, it was just a mental typo, but having done that I did proceed to cash in on it, so I think that makes me more culpable.

The third time, which hasn't happened yet, if I load up on turnips rather than say parsnips, and pay 50 cents for six bucks worth of turnips I think I am pretty clearly guilty.  But it gets worse, what if I purposely type in turnips for my broccoli?  Aren't I just a step away from pulling on a mask and pulling out a gun?   Are there degrees of sin?  Is taking advantage of an undercharge less a sin than purposely causing the undercharge, and is that less a sin than doing an armed robbery?  Or is all sin equally black?

Beagles's example of my ripping off the Jewel being sinful because it results in higher prices for my fellow consumers is the utilitarian interpretation, where the consequences of the act are taken into consideration, as opposed to the oh, stoic interpretation where an act can be sinful in itself without regard to the consequences.  What if I knew somehow that my theft would not result in higher prices for my fellow consumers?  Would it be okay to do it then?

One more thing.  A Sunday Sun Times costs 4 bucks, but for some reason the Seven Eleven at State and Kinzie rings it up as 3.  I've known this for years and if it fits conveniently into my schedule I purchase my paper there rather than somewhere else.  Oh I am black with sin.

Debugging the Plan

As I said, the asylum system is not working.  A hundred thousand people a month are flooding across the border, surrendering to the authorities, being detained for awhile, given an appointment for a hearing, and then being released.  Most of them will not show up for their hearing, so they join the ranks of the illegals that are already here.  I don't blame the immigrants because they have discovered that this is the easiest way to get into the country.  Even before this started, I have long maintained that it's easier to get into this country illegally than legally.  Most people didn't seem to care about this before 9-11, they thought the law was a big joke, which is exactly why I was one of the few who said that there ought to be a better way.  My proposal is an attempt to find that better way.  Like any new idea, this one has some bugs in it, let's see if we can work some of them out.

I have already decided that "sorting pens" is not an appropriate name for these things.  How about "immigrant reception centers", "IRCs" for short?  I don't want anything with the word "lounge" in it because the whole intent is to move people in and out in a timely fashion.  Ellis Island worked pretty well because it was an island, they could control the inflow and the outflow, which you can't do with a 1600 mile long land border.  Think of these IRCs as a bunch of mini Ellis Islands strung all along the border.  I think a bunch of small IRCs would be better than one big one because they would spread the crowd out, but I'm open to suggestions about this.

We need a fence to channel the immigrants into the IRCs, otherwise they would just wander across the border like they always did, making it impossible to screen them.  The intent is to let the good guys in and keep the bad guys out.  I agree that it might be a problem establishing a reliable data base of known bad guys.  Does anybody know how they do it at the airports, assuming they are actually doing it by now instead of just talking about it?

I don't know if my plan would result in more immigrants coming in or less, but it should result in a better quality of immigrants.  These people are fleeing their homelands to escape poverty and violence, but they are bringing the poverty and violence right along with them, not on purpose, but because it is the nature of predators to follow their prey.  Only by sorting them out and turning the predators back can we insure that the good immigrants will have a better life here than they did at home.

This turnip thing is probably a glitch in the machine, it's nobody's fault, but it has got to be costing the Jewell money.  The only way they can recover their losses is by raising the prices on their products, which hurts everybody.  I'm surprised that somebody hasn't reported it by now, but somebody certainly should.  By "somebody" I mean you, Uncle Ken.  If you don't do it, who will?  If you consider the Jewell corporation to be an enemy of the people, then why don't you shop at a different store?  Unless you believe that all the store owners are in it together, but that would be just paranoid.

cheap turnips at the Jewel

Beagles does not make a distinction between asylum seekers and Jose Sixpack, but what he is proposing sounds to me like open borders.  Are we going to let everybody in as long as they leave their drugs at home and don't get tattoos?  As for the databases, how reliable is information from Honduras or El Salvador likely to be? 


Walgreens scans Uncle Ken for beer and for cigs, which of course means they scan everybody.  Well it sort of makes sense, it eliminates the possibility of some very old looking teenager sneaking through the cracks, and it's kind of an equality thing, why not make everybody go through the same thing?

I wonder what would happen if I lost my wallet, would I have to go without beer until it got replaced?  Would I be reduced to standing on the corner and asking passersby, "Hey Mister, could you buy me a six pack of Goose Island IPA?"  Well there is a whole story of trying to get beer when you are underage that would make a good topic for The Institute, but I want to move on to other issues for the nonce.


I kind of look down my nose at blogs where recipes are swapped, but I would like to hear Old Dog's recipe for New and Improved cornbread.


Rereading Beagles's proposal (must we call them pens, could we not call them Courtesy Lounges?), I see where he is for scrapping asylum, but if all the guy has to do is not have drugs in his pockets, or tats, or is in some kind of rinky dink good guys databasem isn't that like asylum for everybody?   If everybody on the southern side of the border could get through these Courtesy Lounge Gateways, why would anybody try to scale a fence, so why even have fences?


Here's a little moral dilemma thing.  As I was using the DIY checkout machine at the Jewel yesterday, when I weighed in my broccoli, I absentmindedly typed in turnips on the thingy, and instead of the expected six or seven bucks, 50 cents came up.  Well it's a thing, I have noticed it previously that there is a glitch in the turnip category where no matter how many you buy it comes out to 50 cents.  I suppose maybe I should have brought this up to the management, but at the time I thought well, their bad, and I am in a hurry and it's a drop in the bucket, and aren't those big corporations ripping us off anyway?.

The difference is that this time I wasn't even buying turnips, but on the other hand it was an honest slip of mind, I wasn't doing it purposely to get the cheaper price, so that was okay wasn't it, oh and all the crap about big corporations etc.

But I have to say, it did cross my mind, maybe I could.  Maybe the next time I bought some other produce I could just type in turnips.  But that would clearly be wrong.

The right thing to do would be to tell the Jewel, but I'd feel like a ratfink to my fellow consumers.  What say the sagacious and very moral dawgs on the subject?

The Future is Now

I'm not sure how sensitive those drug sniffing dogs are, but I've never heard of one homing in on currency.  I have heard that most currency has traces of drugs on it.  I seem to remember there was a court case about that some years ago.  I don't remember how it came out, but I remember somebody at work commenting on it: "Yeah, and if he had cleaned the drugs off, they would have accused him of money laundering."  Remember, I said that the candidate would be able to challenge the dog's judgement by voluntarily submitting to a full body search. 

As for that bad guy data base, last I heard they were planning to use something like that to screen passengers at airports, but I don't know if they have actually done it yet.  The police have been using fingerprint technology for a long time.  The only difference is that my plan digitalizes it which, for all I know, some police agencies may already be doing.  I have heard that the Red Chinese were experimenting with facial recognition, but I think our guys have been as well.  I understand that some crows in Seattle, Washington have learned how to do that, and they don't even have access to computers. (I am not making this up, studies have been done.)  

Michigan driver's licenses have been scannable for a long time.  Instead of something on the back, they have a strip along the edge that they zip through a scanner like a credit card.  The police use it to check you for priors and outstanding warrants when they pull you over for whatever reason.  Retail dealers also use it when you buy a gun or a hunting or fishing license, as do election workers when you go to vote.  I don't know if they are using it when you buy alcoholic beverages as it's been a long time since anyone has asked to check my ID when I do that.  

I am not advocating that any of this stuff  be used to randomly check people on the street, just for people that are voluntarily applying to enter the US.  My intent is to provide something that is faster and more efficient than the system they have now.  It shouldn't take more than an hour or two to pass a candidate through one of my sorting pens, while it now takes a year or two for them to get an asylum hearing, for which many of them don't even bother to show up.  I agree that our current crop of politicians will never go for it.  I don't think any of them want to actually solve this problem, just use it as ammunition against each other in election campaigns.  I am proposing it nevertheless, because that's what we do at the Beaglesonian Institute.  Part of our mission here is to enlighten humanity, whether they want us to or not.  

I think that a certain amount of exercise is recommended for injuries like Old Dog has incurred, but I don't think you're supposed to make an endurance contest out of it.  A doctor or physical therapist would probably be able to tell you how much is too much.

Working through the pain

What's not to like about this plan?

It's not the worst plan I've read but it almost makes too much sense for the bickering politicians to get behind.  I'm not crazy about the drug thing because of the likelihood of false positives. I read once, maybe it's true, maybe it isn't, that most of the one-hundred dollar bills in circulation have traces of cocaine.   You can probably find traces of drugs everywhere if the tests are sensitive enough.

I'm also a little leery of the whole "good guys in the database" thing; this kind of thing can get out of hand.  If it's okay for immigrants to be categorized like that it isn't much of a stretch to have everyone in a database of "good guys."  It's a little creepy, and exactly what the Chinese are doing right now.  I saw something interesting in Target last week, something new to me.  The lady in front of me was buying a bottle of wine and the check-out guy asked to see an ID.  Pretty normal, except the guy didn't look at the driver's license; he scanned the back of it with a hand-held laser gizmo instead.  I was surprised at this new bit of high tech and asked if it was a new thing and the guy said "Yeah."  I wonder what other kind of information Target can glom onto.  Could a minor copy the back of an adult's license and scam the system?  There are a lot of interesting possibilities at play and I'm not sure if they're all good.

-----

Typing is still a pain in the ass, er, hand.  It's like an old softball injury when that 16 inch Clincher would jam your fingers but you healed much more quickly at 17 than 70.  I should be taking it easy but what the hell, I can live with it.

Whole lot of baking going on in the Old Dog's kitchen.  Besides the stuff I already mentioned there are new additions to the menu: an improved cornbread recipe, jumbo blueberry muffins, pineapple upside-down cake, devil's food layer cake, and in a nod to the inspiration of Mr. Beagles, a Finnish rye flatbread.

Kneading dough when you are nursing a sprained hand and elbow is not the smartest thing I've ever done.  In French, the word for bread is pain, and now I know why.

Sorting Them Out

"There are plenty of refugees in leaky boats, I hadn't realized that Beagles was for bringing them here." - Uncle Ken

Obviously we can't bring them all here, we have to draw the line somewhere, and I've got an idea of how we might draw that line.  I haven't considered the guys in the leaky boats or the Muslim interpreters yet, this is just about the vast hordes that are clamoring at our southern border, which I think is the more imminent problem.

Forget about that asylum thing, it's not working anyway.  What we need to do is build a bunch of sorting pens right up against the border fence.  Each pen would have an entrance gate that was just wide enough to let one person through at a time.  There would also be two exit gates, one for the accepts that would send people into the US, and one for the rejects that would send people back to Mexico.

As each candidate came in through the entrance gate, he would be greeted by one of those drug sniffing dogs.  If drugs were detected on his person, he would immediately be sent back through the reject gate.  Don't arrest him, don't search him, just send him back where he came from, drugs and all.  In the event that the candidate claims that the dog made a mistake, which can happen, then  search him with his consent.  If no drugs are found on or in his person, then allow him to advance to the next station.

At the next station, each candidate would be checked for tattoos.  Anybody sporting one of those flamboyant tattoos that identifies him as a member of a hoodlum gang like MS-13 goes out through the reject gate.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

At the next station, scan each candidate with one of those new fangled computers that can identify people by their fingerprints and facial features.  Check this scan against a data base of known criminals, terrorists, and psychopaths. If the candidate is on that list, send him you know where.  If he passes muster, scan him into a data base of good guys, and send him through the accepts gate.  This good guy list will be helpful if the guy later loses his ID card or something like that.

What's not to like about this plan?  No detention facilities, no cages, no separation of families, and we don't have to feed them because they won't be in the sorting pen that long.  The cost savings should more than pay for the new system.  We still would need to fence the entire border but, since it's called a fence rather than a wall, nobody should object to that.

the kid in the well and the kid in the crappy classroom

The code of the road sounds a lot like the good Samaritan except that the point of the good Samaritan is not so much helping out a guy at the side of the road as it is helping out a guy who is of a different creed, not just different but one that is not liked.  I was going to use the example of the kid falling down the well.  The kid could be black or white or muslim or atheist and we would go all out to help him out.  All kinds of fancy equipment would be deployed, lives would be risked, even people uninvolved would gather at the watercolor and ask how is that kid at the well was doing, and when he was pulled out hearts would be gladdened and nobody would complain about how much it cost and would that end up raising their taxes. 

But that's an emergency situation, kind of a subset of the golden rule.  Once the kid is out of the well and it turns out that he is going to a crappy school that could be improved by an influx of money proposed in some referendum people are likely to vote it down. 

Beagles is right about the code of the road not being applied as vigorously in urban as in rural areas.  One thing in a rural area only so many people are going to go by that guy in the ditch and so somebody better help him before he starves to death or gets eaten by a bear.  On an expressway there are tons of other people who might stop by and there are even city workers whose express job is to help out people by the side of the road so the onus is not so much on you to do something. 

But there is a certain hardness in the city, there is a certain kind of mental armor that you put on as you leave the door.  You have somewhere to go and there will be distractions and you want to keep to your mission.  When I first moved back to Chicago I felt like the people were made of iron and I, from downstate, was made of a soft wood. 

One example I remember is that I got into a half empty el car and there was a young girl hanging onto a rail in the emptier part of the car.  It soon became apparent that it was emptier because most people had moved away from her because her clothes were in tatters, she was bruised and scratched, she was in a daze.  Maybe she was in need of help, maybe she was some crazy or druggy and if you reached out to her she would attack you somehow.  I think if she had asked for help people would have reached out, but she didn't.  Still I thought if this was in Champaign somebody would have done something.  There are a lot of good things about living in Chicago.  This is not one of them.


We did bring a lot of Vietnamese people to the USA.  Is Beagle's point that we should have brought more or that we should have stayed in Vietnam indefinitely?  It was hard times of our supporters  there but it was not certain death.  We have left a lot of interpreters for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq behind in part because of the anti Muslim immigration bans.  There are plenty of refugees in leaky boats, I hadn't realized that Beagles was for bringing them here.

The Code of the Road

For a self declared Atheist, Uncle Ken has demonstrated an impressive knowledge of religious principles.  I agree that these principles are not always followed, and that some of them are just not practical in many situations, but that's not my point.  I was thinking more along the lines of common decency or a Code of the West sort of thing or, as I prefer to call it, the Code of the Road.

When I was a union steward at the paper mill, I was called upon to represent a guy who was not exactly a friend of mine, and the feeling was mutual.  The manager, possibly in an attempt to drive a wedge between us said, "Al, you don't like Beagles very much, do you."  Before I could raise an objection to this tactic, Al responded, "Well, we are not the best of friends but, if he was stuck in a ditch, and I was passing by in my 4WD truck, I would pull him out."  That's the Code of the Road, at least in rural areas.  It's less commonly practiced in urban areas, for a couple of reasons, but if you saw somebody in trouble in Chicago, the decent thing to do still would be to render some kind of assistance. If you didn't feel safe getting out of your car in that neighborhood, the least you could do would be to call 911 and report it.

Another thing is, if somebody stops to help you, and gets a flat tire in the process, you don't drive away and leave him there.  A lot of Vietnamese people literally stuck their necks out to help the American cause.  Maybe some of them did it for a selfish reason but, nevertheless, those people should not have been abandoned to certain death or left to float around on the ocean in their leaky boats.  I read somewhere at the time that plans had been made to evacuate as many of them as possible but, for one reason or another, the plans were poorly implemented.  I thought at the time that nobody would want to be our ally ever again, but I was wrong about that.  Maybe Uncle Ken is correct when he says that everybody is in it for their own short term selfish interests, and fuck the other guy.  It may be true, it may be realistic, but it still ain't right.

turning the other cheek

My opinion about the way nations are supposed to treat each other is an extrapolation of the way individual people are supposed to treat each other, but I suppose that is no longer fashionable either.

A lot of variables in that sentence,  Note that nations are supposed to treat each other the way people are supposed to treat each other, as opposed to the way they actually do treat each other, which as we know is not so hot.  Well generally within a family or a neighborhood, or some other small group we are pretty good to each other, with people we don't know as well, not so much.  I assume Beagles is speaking of the golden rule when he speaks of how people are supposed to treat each other.  The tale of the good Samaritan comes to mind, and this is not so commonly emulated,  I guess that's why it is a parable instead of just another story, it illustrates that this sort of thing was rather rare.  I assume the audience was not Samaritans and looked upon them as some white people do on those of duskier hues, and found it a little shocking that such a person would do something for them, and that such behavior was expected of them.

That Jesus, what a wag, how about that turn the other cheek thing?  No really how about that.  Even me, a big peacenik and love your brothers kumbaya kind of guy, think that this is just going too far.  Isn't the other guy going to just slap you silly then, and take your wallet as long as he is at it? 

But maybe it sort of worked for the early Christians.  They were often up against burly Roman soldiers and what choice do you have?  It's not likely that you are going to get away with slapping him back.  After awhile this sort of thing, singing on the way down to meet the tigers, rather impressed some Romans and they converted, and eventually the Christians took over the fading Roman Empire.  Of course once they did, that turn the other cheek thing went out of fashion with them.

Ghandi's nonviolence is said to have helped India gain independence, but I suspect that there were other bigger factors in that.  But then Dr King used nonviolence to good effect in the civil rights movement.  Jackie Robinson by keeping his head down and not replying to taunts integrated the major leagues.

Of course the situation has to be right.  Ghandi instructed the Jews to fight the Nazis with nonviolence, but nobody expected that that would work. 

The Inies and the Outies

I think the reason we have gridlock on this immigration issue is that half the American people want to let them in and half the American people want to keep them out.  Okay, it's probably not exactly half, but the point is that neither the Inies nor the Outies have enough political power to force the other side to accept their agenda.  I don't know what part the Wishy-Washers are playing in this, maybe they haven't yet decided whether to support the Inies or the Outies.  I have been an Outie for as long as I can remember, but I might be drifting towards the Wishy-Washers because I want this thing resolved one way or another.  If you want to let them in, so be it, but first we need some kind of system to process them in that works, and then we have to decide what to do with them once they're here.  Like I said, I doubt that there are enough busboy positions to accommodate them all.

As I understand it, they have to be standing on US soil before they can request asylum, so they cross over any way they can and then surrender to the Border Patrol.  They are then detained for a few days where they are fed, watered, given medical care, and get cleaned up and rested up from their long journey.  Then they are being released because the detention facilities are all maxed out. Besides, the courts have ruled that families with children can't be detained for more than 20 days, and that children cannot be separated from their parents.  Last I heard, unaccompanied minors were being farmed out to foster homes, but I'm not sure if they are still doing that because they were running out of foster homes as well.

I didn't know about the Saudis' latest shift in alliances, but I remember reading that Charlemagne or somebody once formed an alliance with some Muslims to fight against some Christians that were after his job, so I guess anything's possible.  My opinion about the way nations are supposed to treat each other is an extrapolation of the way individual people are supposed to treat each other, but I suppose that is no longer fashionable either.

Doris Day pillow talks Hanoi

The wall would mean nothing for the asylum seekers because they want to be caught at the border.  One thing that would help the crush on the border would be to hire more judges so that they could process them more quickly. but I don't see the current administration considering that.  You might think that they would be readying a bill to change that amendment to the asylum laws but I don't see that happening either. 

Sword dance not saber dance.  I wonder what is the difference between a sword and a saber.  Saber seems somehow more technologically advanced or maybe just a specialized type of sword,  Wiki tells us that it is an artillery sword, curved and only sharpened on one side.  I'm guessing this would help on the backswing, kind of encircling the neck of your victim.  A more extreme version would be the scimitar, even more curved and certainly reeking of camels and date trees.  Maybe too curved to safely dance with and that is why they were doing the sword dance with what looked like broadswords, bigger and shinier and easier on soft hands with tiny fingers.

Anyway the Saudis have of late been selling their Palestinian brethren down the river and cozying up to Israel mainly I think because they would like to wipe out Iran.

I was explaining at the Ten Cat the other night that Pompeo only seems like a rational man compared to Bolton, and that Bolton only seems like a rational man compared to Trump, but the now the latter two have switched places and terrifyingly we are now depending on Trump to leash in Bolton who is in full Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran mode.  Currently we have the US, Israel, and the Saudis united in the enemy of my enemy is my friend mode. 

I don't know where Beagles gets the idea that there is some way that nations are supposed to be to each other.  Under the tenet of America First, or Russia First, or China First, you use nations (and they use you) as long as it is of advantage to you, or them. and then you discard them.

Nixon put in the taping system because he wanted to preserve his place in history and probably to be able to use the tapes to coerce people.  Johnson and probably other prez's used tapes too so there is no mystery there.  It always has been a mystery why he didn't burn the tapes, but from there it does not follow that Doris Day thought up the whole thing as a way of selling South Vietnam down the river.  Conspiracy theorists are fond of pouncing on some odd, unlikely event and then using it as evidence of their crackpot theory, when in truth any crackpot theory can go in that place.

Condolences to Old Dog on his mishap.  I hope his typing fingers weren't injured.

Okay, It's Not an Invasion

I was calling it that when several thousand of them were advancing on the border with what appeared to be the intent of overwhelming the border guards and forcing their way into the country.  Turned out they were not that well organized.  They did make a couple of half hearted attempts but were easily turned back with tear gas.  Since then, the number of illegal border crossings has steadily increased, more of an infiltration than an invasion, but the results are the same.  The system for processing asylum requests has indeed been overwhelmed, and most of those being caught and released will probably never show up for their hearings.  Trump's Wall might slow them down, but it won't stop them.  It's a case of too little too late, but it's better than doing nothing, which appears to be the agenda of the Democrats.  What's needed is the repeal or amendment of the asylum law.  That law was intended to handle the occasional defector from the Soviet Union, it was not intended to deal with one of the largest mass migrations in human history, which is what this is if it isn't anything else.

I seem to remember Uncle Ken telling us about Trump doing the Sabre Dance with the leaders of Saudi Arabia.  I'm not sure what the Sabre Dance is exactly, but it sounds like some kind of male bonding ritual.  While Saudi Arabia is supposed to be on our side, I never really bought that story.  It is a strict Muslim country, and I have never heard of a strict Muslim country that didn't want to drive Israel into the sea.  They might be kissing up to us at the moment because they want our money or more weapons or something but, as soon as their alliance with us no longer serves their interests, they will drop us like a hot potato.  I remember Uncle Ken saying that's what nations do to each other, which may be true, but it's not what nations are supposed to do to each other.

I spent time on Wiki tonight trying to dig up some dirt on David Rockefeller, but the worst thing I could find was that he was an internationalist, and I know that Uncle Ken thinks that's good thing, so that doesn't help my case.  The question still remains, why didn't Nixon destroy those tapes or not make them in the first place?

Sorry to hear about Old Dog's injury, and wish him a rapid and complete recovery.

Pride goeth before a fall

Took a tumble last week, maybe due to the distortion of new eyeglasses, and banged myself up pretty good.  Nothing broke except a denture but sprained knee, elbow, hand and fine motor control is suffering.  Minor bloodied face, took a small piece out of mustache and have no idea how that happened.  But time heals all wounds, doesn't it?

Links instead of patties?  Are you kidding me?  You never know what's hiding in that casing.

let's change the subject

The base of the democratic party wants to impeach Trump. and some of the newly elected reps ran on that, but the leadership knows that it would be futile because the senate would never vote for removal, and there is some fear that it would rile up the Trumpists, but aren't they already riled up is what I think.  But somewhere between that hard wall of Trumpism are some people whose minds could be changed and maybe exposing Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors will change their minds and he can be voted out in 2020.   And you know if he has done nothing wrong, what is he worried about?  The reps are now beginning to investigate the investigation and maybe Benghazi and Hillary's emails again because what the hell, and I say let them go for it.  We innocent dems have nothing to fear,

I don't think that two wrongs don't make a right applies here.  If I walk up to you and punch you and when I see you balling up your fists I admonish you that two wrongs don't make a right I don't think you are going to smile ruefully and say that you guess I am right and walk away.

David Rockefeller?  I think more likely it was Doris Day who was pulling the strings on Nixon, because as long as we are telling tall tales we might as well have attractive characters.  And as long as we are telling tall tales why not agree that if it hadn't been that everybody had their heads turned to Watergate we could still be slogging our way through their jungles because everybody thought it was a sensible war.

There is plenty of news about the border.  I think Beagles would be happy with the news only if they reported on just the thing he wants reported.  Things he wants to hear about are automatically under reported and things he doesn't want to hear about are over reported.  I think what I said about the border was not that it was not a problem but that it is not an invasion.  Germany invades Poland, now there was an invasion.

What mortal enemy of Israel is Trump playing up to?

I worry about that free candy thing at Christmastime when I am wearing my Santa hat and passing out Hershey kisses to the kiddos.  So far I haven't run into any trouble.

This politics thing is tiresome.  Beagles why don't you tell the story again about the Bliss(?) festival, i don't think Old Dog has heard that.

Impeach This!

In another context, "impeach" means to sully someone's reputation, as in "To impeach his good name".  In that context, although she probably didn't mean it that way, Pelosi was right when she said that Trump is doing a better job of impeaching himself than Congress could ever do, or words to that effect.  Okay, back to the constitutional context now.  If the Dems have no intention of impeaching Trump, then why do they keep investigating him?  Possibly to avenge the hatchet job that the Reps did on Hillary?  Although that would be justified under the "Turnabout is fair play" doctrine, it would seem to be just as frivolous a waste of time and energy as it was when the Reps did it.  Whatever happened to the "Two wrongs don't make a right" doctrine?

Nixon didn't "do" Watergate, at least not by himself.  Many knowledgeable people (okay, the Birchers) believed at the time that Nixon was just a puppet of David Rockefeller and his ilk.  If not, then why didn't Nixon destroy the Watergate tapes, or not even record them in the first place?  Although people today have been known to make a video of themselves committing a crime and post it on You Tube, Nixon should have known better, since they hadn't closed down all the mental institutions yet.  Be that as it may, if you ask most people today what the worst thing was that Nixon did, they will say "Watergate".  Sure there was plenty of news about Taiwan and Vietnam, but most people focused on Watergate nevertheless.  Although it certainly is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time, many people don't seem to be interested in doing it.

Speaking of plenty of news:  If there is plenty of news today about the border, then why does a self proclaimed news junkie like Uncle Ken persist in denying that it is a problem?  Last I heard, even the immigrant advocacy groups were complaining that they couldn't process them as fast as they were being caught and released.

I don't know for a fact that Trump is planning to dump South Korea an Israel, I was just speculating.  Why else would he be kissing up to their mortal enemies?

I certainly was a big fan of Peter, Paul, and Mary back in the day, but that's not why I posted the link to that song.  The other link I posted was about some clown who was busted for passing out free candy to kids at a bus stop.  Turned out that he was just a nice old man who had done this on his birthday for years.  The news article reminded me of that old song, which I found on You Tube.

divert this

I always preferred piss or get off the pot.  I like alliteration and the mental picture is not as graphic, but the google machine says that both are about equally used.  Should the dems be concerned with what Beagles is tired of hearing about inasmuch as it has probably been decades since he has pulled the dem lever?  (I have never pulled a lever, it was gone before my time, but I cling to the phrase because what else can I say, slid the paper through that machine?  And actually we don't get to slide it either, we give it to the nice lady who does that.  The whole thing lacks any tactile gratification.)

Last I knew Beagles had his newspaper and occasional blips from the radio, and then he has his internet news services that I think he reads just before writing his posts, so it amounts to not that big a barrage compared to oh, me, who listens to NPR till ten in the morning and then it's CNN till suppertime, and then I'm fooling with my internet sites till bedtime.  So I don't know it doesn't seem like such a big burden for him to hear a few reports that agitate him.  If he read those articles that he put in his post then he should know why the dems are reluctant to impeach, but the base kind of wants it because, oh, it seems like the right thing to do and it would feel so good.

When Trump took the oval office people used to say that he made those outrageous tweets to divert attention from whatever, but if soon became apparent that he is just not that clever.  But still you hear that diversion thing often enough, generally it is applied to something that the other guy is doing that you don't like and then you compare it to something else they are doing that you don't like so it's kind of a win win.  But I'm not buying it, I don't see where it ever works.

There is plenty of news from the border and I don't see how the issue of impeachment has caused it to to be shoved out of the headlines.  You hear a lot these days about walking and chewing gum when one side gets accused of doing something the other side does not like and they prefer them to do this other sing and the accused side replies that they can walk and chew gum, i e, they can do both, doing one thing does not preclude them from doing another.

Is Beagles saying that Nixon did Watergate because he didn't want anybody to notice that he was selling plucky South Vietnam and Taiwan down the river?  As I recall there was plenty of coverage of Vietnam while Nixon was getting impeached.

Israel is hardly being sold down the river.  Netanyahu has Trump's pecker in his pocket.  Who cares about South Korea when charming Kim Jong Un can be courted with flowers and chocolates? 

A little confused by that Peter Paul and Mary song.  Is that what he was soothing his teen spirit with many years ago?