freecounterpoint: They're letting terrorists in alright...

Thursday, September 15, 2011

They're letting terrorists in alright...

17 comments:

Tecumseh said...: Yep, they are. You have any qualms about that?

By the way, with all the snark I hear on this general theme, I no longer know where you stand on Los Zetas & co. To sum up, here is what I understand from what you've been writing on the subject for many months now:

(1) You don't like Fast & Furious. OK, we agree on that, but that's like saying we both don't like cervical cancer, or something.

(2) You're more than OK with open borders (I'm not).

(3) As a somewhat logical corollary to (2), you are also OK with the untrammeled flow of drug bandits, with terrorists perhaps sprinkled in, but hey, who cares, it's one of those things one needs to put up with in life. And you are also basically OK with random American getting killed periodically when they are at the "wrong time, wrong place" as the Zetas & co ply their trade along vast swatches of border land. I'm not OK with any of that.

(4) This is the most insidious: now and then, when I bring up (3), and you don't feel like arguing the facts (as happens often), you dismiss my concerns (and those of millions of others) by saying it's a smokescreen, and imply that, in essence, it's just about being opposed to (2), and using (3) as a cover, when in fact, I'm very much open about the fact that I'm not OK with either (2) or (3), which clearly are intertwined, but of course I'm much more agitated about (3), which I see as a clear and present danger to the country.

Incidentally, you are in good company on this with Pepe, who dismissed any worry about the drug war down in Mexico spreading into the US as "scapegoating". You haven't used that term (yet), but that's what must be the implicit assumption.; 9/15/2011 9:28 AM
Mr roT said...: Los Zetas should be exterminated, not armed, by Uncle Sam.

They should also not be exploited, for local political ends, by people that don't know anything at all about how the border (or any other US) economy works, and that is partly, but importantly, by employing undocumented aliens. If you want them out, shoot their employers. If you don't care about your BS illegality moral issue, then zip it.

This is regular BS in Texas, as I have explained before, and it is dishonest. In Texas, the GOP used to put hilariously stupid ballot "issues" for their idiots to vote on in primaries, like English Official Language and so on.

It was a ploy to get the stupidest Texans to vote in their primaries and give money to the GOP instead of the (politically identical but more Mexican) Dems. As soon as the demographic changed, all these moral issues vanished and so Perry seems to you to be Obama.

Don't you believe that for a moment and also don't believe that Romney will be any different than Perry.

Only guys that don't matter can afford to threaten the economy like that, and they can because they have nothing to lose.

Yeah, I am talking about principled TPer Bachmann and her offense for the little girls' mental retardation and all that.; 9/15/2011 9:39 AM
Mr roT said...: As a somewhat logical corollary to (2), you are also OK with the untrammeled flow of drug bandits, with terrorists perhaps sprinkled in, but hey,...

A lie, but hey,...; 9/15/2011 9:55 AM
Tecumseh said...: OK, good to hear you are not OK with the zetas. I was assuming that without even thinking, but lately, all I hear are things like "learn to live with it", various other rationalizations and deflections (Honecker, whatnot), or plain old silence, like here, so it has become less self-evident.

Still, would you consider directing even 10% of the energy you devote to excoriating people like Jan Brewer who are trying to control the (now essentially open) border, and redirect a fraction of that energy to excoriating the cartels for trampling said border, and sowing mayhem?

PS: I have no idea about ancient internal Texas politics -- why would I care about that, and why would that be relevant to anything, except as an anecdote?; 9/15/2011 10:06 AM
Mr roT said...: 1) "Learn to live with it." Immigrants have always brought social problems with them. Italians, Irish, Mexicans, Jews, and so on. The reason that the US didn't shut out any of these successive waves is because those immigrants were valuable in spite of the problems they brought along. Locals that concentrated on the problems were usually people that were being edged out of low-skill jobs that immigrants took. And so it went, with each group getting to the middle class, one after the other. The bad guys of the moment always seem to disappear, just to be replaced by others, and the thuggish unions and dumbasses that don't understand why immigrants are around have always been the ones opposing them.

2) Turning the US into a police state because someone wants to mow your lawn is even stupider than doing so because a few Arabs want to kill a couple Americans. It's just too high a price.

3) My excoriating cartels seems an ineffective way to cut the drug trade. Probably it makes more sense to tell people that concentrate on the evils of outsiders in providing drugs to nice, sweet American kids that the nice sweet American kids are searching out and buying the drugs.

Matt. 7:3. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

3) Ancient Texas politics: You should recognize cynicism in current national politics. Somehow, you don't believe that a nice lady like Bachmann could be a dishonest scumbag.

Turns out that everyone in Florida saw that. Must be that you don't understanD US politics and better than a racialist Democrat!

Powww!!!; 9/15/2011 10:25 AM
Tecumseh said...: Just to comment on (1) -- the rest doesn't really have content that I could latch on:

Of course, you perform the usual 3-card Monte game (aka red herring) in which you conflate **illegal** immigration (like in coyotaje smuggling in people at $2,000 a pop) with the perfectly legitimate and universally accepted practice of **legal** immigration.

Then again, that's the 100% standard trick performed by the likes of James Carville, day in, day out:

As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation. I sit in front of the television and shudder at the thought of one of these creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing, Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, mortality-fascinated, Wall-Street-protecting Republicans running my country.

Welcome to the club.; 9/15/2011 12:29 PM
Mr roT said...: Hardly shocking, but you didn't latch onto anything.

Legal or illegal, immigrants bring problem, also without regard to class. Julius and Ethel were here nice and legal.

Maybe here you might get the idea. The ideal for Americans is "leave me and everyone else alone." I gave the example of the right to contract.

Tolerance of cultural diversity has become a hallmark of Houston’s ascent, despite the state’s checkered history of race relations. Texans take individual freedom and individual responsibility very seriously, so meritocracy comes naturally to them. In the words of George Strake, one of Houston’s most venerated oilmen, “Everyone’s welcome here, so long as you’re willing to pull the wagon and not just sit in it.” That is perhaps why anti-immigrant feeling is not nearly as pronounced in Texas as it is in other parts of the Southwest.

It's not so tough.; 9/15/2011 1:19 PM
Tecumseh said...: We're talking past each other: I'm talking about Los Zetas shooting up everything that moves with AK47s, and coyotes engaging in massive human trafficking and things like that, and you respond in a total non-sequitur fashion with a mom-and-apple pie story of love, brotherhood, and harmony in Houston.

The only more-or-less to-the-point point you make is a classic tu quoque: how about legal immigrants, they can be real bad, witness Julius and Ethel. OK, what am I supposed to say? What about Einstein? Or Fermi? For that matter, how about Marco Rubio? Or Manny Ramirez? Or Salma Hayek? Or whatever? What does this have to do with Los Zetas shooting it up down in Nuevo Laredo, just across the bridge?

Is there ever an A => B => C type of argument that you care to make, where I can give my opinion whether the diagram commutes or not?; 9/15/2011 1:40 PM
Mr roT said...: You deliberately mix stuff up, get all emotional, and then claim that you're the logician here.

Here's a test. It is my opinion that:

The Zetas have nothing to do with Perry's giving illegals in-state tuition and the TPers that try to conflate these two ideas are caught up in the hysteria of idiocy.

The tuition thing is a purely political cost-benefit choice that you reject on some kind of moralistic grounds that probably no sane American sees rationally as being about morals in the slightest.

Those TP chimps boo and cheer on cue from idiots with thicker manes, just like during the discussion of Perry's execution record (wtf?) and the uninsured guy's being left to die in R. Paul's hypo (wtf???).

You agree with boneheads like that?

The Zetas are criminals and though illegals are breaking the law by definition, it is idiotic to consider most of them criminals, because that word has a moral value. Modern societies generally regard crimes as offences against the public or the state, wiki says.

Yes, that's about right, but by just being where he's not supposed to be by law, a person usually doesn't offend anyone.

This is similar to the idea that for just being, the state can't squeeze you to do anything.

And this is part of the bedrock of Anglo - Saxon legal thought though you and AA insist on denying it.

On the other side, the law can be perfectly permissive of actions that are obviously immoral to the point of physical revulsion. I can't think of many things morally worse than partial birth abortion but it's legal. If you don't like it, you try to change the law, because it's the law that's stupid. It is an offense against the public to kill babies.

See? Crime.; 9/15/2011 2:04 PM
Tecumseh said...: What does any of this have to do with me wanting to change any law? And where am I trying to change the subject, or mix things up This is called projection, man.

To the contrary, the subject of this post (if words in the title still have any meaning in Rotter-Derrida speech) is how Fast & Furious helped arm the zetas, so they could get back into the US and shoot at will -- no? What does this have to do with the Dream Act, being peddled by the Obama-Perry-Rot troika?

Now, if you want to talk about that favorite piece of legislation of yours -- giving handouts to illegal aliens -- fine, start another thread. And don't go on and on about morals or lack thereof -- just explain why my tax dollars should pay for the free education of everyone who crosses into the US, by any means -- especially if those means break the existing laws of the land.

While at it, why stop at free education, and nor also pay for free health care (like in Obamacare) for everyone on Earth, or at least those willing and able to cross the Rio Grande, or fly into JFK or Logan?

And why stop at that? Maybe also pay for a free Ferrari for everyone? I mean, the sky's the limit, no?

Man, you make Pepe sound like Hayek, all of a sudden.; 9/15/2011 4:58 PM
Mr roT said...: Pepe is right about how the right politicizes this stuff.; 9/15/2011 5:45 PM
Tecumseh said...: So I see--you agree with Pepe that tax dollars should go to support all sorts of Nanny State endeavors, including freebies for illegal immigrants.

Does this also mean you agree with Pepe that we should have Obamacare? Complete state control of every aspect of life, while at it? If not, where do you draw the line then?; 9/15/2011 8:09 PM
Mr roT said...: Well, all that follows logically from what I said, doesn't it, Michelle?; 9/15/2011 8:21 PM
Tecumseh said...: You're the big propounder of the famous Rotter syllogism, which says, "A implies B, for every A and B".

What I say is much more precise than that. Namely, I was making the point that

(A) you seem 100% OK with using state-collected taxes to give subsidies to people who break the law (the Perry position) -- at least, you did not raise any objection to my (rather accurately) describing your position as such (how could you object, when it's evident?)

Instead, you made the point (B) that "right-wing" opposition to using the taxing power of a State to reward illegal activities (a position for which Perry was booed at the Tampa debate) amounts to "politicizing the debate" -- position that you correctly identify as being in 100% sync with the standard Pepean party line.

From which I inferred that (C) you are swallowing the whole Pepean party line, hook, line, and sink. So OK, I'm not 100% sure that B=>C, but sure as hell B implies C with probability \gge 0. Or, as you'd say, B \lesssim C.; 9/15/2011 9:16 PM
Mr roT said...: You succeeded in

A

B

C.

Arrows are a different story.; 9/15/2011 9:27 PM
Tecumseh said...: You mean, I succeeded in summarizing your positions in A, B, and C? Of course. It's a cinch. As for the arrows, I'll let you put them however you want. After all, since it's axiomatic for you that (A=>B for all A &B), the arrows become irrelevant.; 9/16/2011 1:44 AM
Mr roT said...: Who could argue that?; 9/16/2011 5:02 AM

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