1,000 words of unintentional honesty

Devastating photos

Fascinating photos of the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima atomic bomb drop.  Fascinating viewing.

The price of xenophobia

You may recall that Arizona has passed some rather comprehensive legislation to “discourage” illegal immigration.  An interesting piece at Disloyal Opposition starts to quantify economic loss due to immigrant bashing.

…advocates of the sanctions law will say that this is exactly the result they were hoping for; they want Hispanics to flee the state (usually, they’ll claim that they just want the illegal ones to leave). But with workers leaving Arizona, taking their rent money, mortgage payments and shopping dollars with them, and with state employers facing rising labor costs — if they can even find workers — the economy is likely to take a major hit. In fact, the University of Arizona predicts a $29 billion economic loss if illegal workers are successfully purged from the state (full report here in PDF).

Curious. Meanwhile the wingnut caucus has taken to calling McCain “Juan” because he’s not ready to draw and quarter all brown people north of the Rio Grande.  It’s unfortunate because McCain’s right to be out of step with his comrades on this issue.  Fewer things would bring about more economic benefit to the nation, or to the poor worldwide, than freeing up the movement of people across national borders.

Hat tip: Coyote Blog

Laws matter, at least in Peru

It’s nice to know that trivial matters like the rule of law matter some places in the world.

A Peruvian court Tuesday sentenced former president Alberto Fujimori to six years in prison for abusing his powers by ordering an illegal search in the dying days of his 1990-2000 rule.

The punishment — which his lawyer immediately moved to appeal — was handed down in a case heard separately from a trial that opened Monday against Fujimori, 69, for alleged human rights violations.

Too bad the US isn’t one of them.  As my friend Michael Stickings observes at The Reaction:

I don’t have to use my imagination to picture the Bush administration safely cruising that same minefield with total disregard for any consequences in their armored tank called the Patriot Act. The law is what they want it to be; justice is what they say it is and the people do nothing but argue about Christmas and heretics and what the Wal-Mart greeters are saying this year. How sad it is that the country that once had some legitimate claim to holding up the torch of liberty for the world to see has to look to Peru as a lesson in the limits of government power.

Exploding heads

Via satirist Andy Borowitz:

The head of longtime CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs exploded last night, fifteen minutes into the broadcast of his nightly news program, “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

Mr. Dobbs’ rants about illegal immigration over the past few years have made his head exploding while on television a distinct possibility, but few viewers were prepared for the shocking spectacle they witnessed Tuesday night.

During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Mr. Dobbs blamed illegal aliens for most of the ills of American society, including crime, leprosy, and confusing signs written in foreign languages.

“And here’s the latest outrage, Anderson,” Mr. Dobbs said. “If a border fence is built between the U.S. and Mexico, as I’ve suggested, it’ll probably be built by illegal Mexican workers.”

Shortly after his statement about illegal Mexican laborers constructing a border fence, Mr. Dobbs’ head exploded, filling the screen with smoke and visibly startling Mr. Cooper.

After Mr. Dobbs’ head burst into flames, his CNN cohort attempted to go to commercial, but Mr. Dobbs continued talking undaunted for another fifteen minutes.

Immediately after the broadcast, Mr. Dobbs was rushed to the Head Explosion Unit at George Washington University Hospital where the CNN anchor continued talking for an additional five hours before being administered general anesthesia.

“In all my years as a brain surgeon I have never seen someone with such serious head trauma continue speaking,” said chief of surgery Dr. Hiroshi Kyosuke. “It is almost as if Lou Dobbs’ mouth functions completely independently from his brain.”

Elsewhere, in response to the controversy over the CIA’s waterboarding videotapes, President Bush reaffirmed his Administration’s opposition to videotaping.

Sanity on immigration

Read it in full.  We REALLY need to fix immigration law.  But hey, where would Republican’t politics be without xenophobia?

Tancredo out

Word has it that Tom Tancredo is leaving the House after 2008 regardless of his pointless bid for the presidency.

Even if he loses his long-shot bid for the White House, Rep. Tom Tancredo will be leaving the U.S. House of Representatives at the end of 2008.

Good riddance to one of the most gratuitously divisive assbites in politics. He is the walking embodiment of so much that is wrong with today’s GOP.

The fruits of an abortion ban

Three nations, Chile, El Salvador and most recently Nicaragua,  have complete bans on abortion - with Razi’s blessing as one might expect.  Mahablog has an infuriating piece about the cost in human life in Nicaragua.

Last November, Nicaragua became the third country in the world, after Chile and El Salvador, to criminalize all abortions. There are no exceptions; not for rape, not for incest, not for threats to the life of the mother.

So far, this law has resulted in the deaths of at least 82 women.

A lot of people have concerns about abortion as retroactive contraception and reasonable people will disagree over what limits are appropriate.  But the religion wrong is treating this as a zero sum game, and it’s not.  They are playing with the lives of real people.  The American people deserve better.

Pass it on

Guest post by Sean at Hiding in the Backwaters:

Still another story to add to the growing list. My friends Jim and Fernando were returning from a vacation in Puerto Rico when Fernando was detained in customs because his visa has expired. Jim has returned to Utah, but Fernando is stuck in Puerto Rico seeking legal representation to set up a bond that will allow him to return to the U.S. If that fails, Fernando could have to return to Brazil and it will be 10 years before he can return to the U.S.

We are trying to raise money to help pay for Fernando’s legal fees. Any amount you feel you can spare is greatly appreciated.

Follow the link for contact information if you can help out.

Convenient comparisons on immgration

Interesting tidbit from Jane Galt:

I can only think of one group that has managed to ruthlessly prevent assimilation, passing their strange religious customs, their language, and their clothes on generation after generation . . . a group that refuses to serve in the military, barely pays taxes, and frequently pulls its children out of school after eighth grade to keep them from getting Americanised. Not only that, but they have dominated their local area with their funny customs for years, pushing their unAmerican agenda on their neighbours.

That group is, of course, the Amish, and many of the same people complaining that Mexicans won’t assimilate flock to Lancaster to take pictures of women in funny hats vending sticky-sweet food and overpriced handwork. Can someone explain this in terms that don’t devolve into “But the Mexicans are brown“?

This is a good “yes, but…” moment.

A few thousand Amish are not a good demographic comparison to make against millions upon millions of Hispanics, and most people would say they oppose illegal immigration, not immigration per se.

But that comparison fails a bit too.  Why on earth don’t we take more immigrants legally?  Why do we make it so hard for people from the Philippines, Mexico, etc., who are probably the best equipped to assimilate and become productive quickly, to get into the country?

At what point do we acknowledge the elephant in the living room?  It has always been about “brown” people, though in decades past the “brown” people might be Italians or Irish or Slovakian.

They can talk and whine and pontificate all the want, but the bottom line is we take in too few immigrants, too few refugees, and we make things a lot harder than they need to be for a whole lot of people.  Illegal immigration is going to be a problem due to simple supply and demand until the larger issues are fixed first.

Ezra Klein gets it right.

You think a bus in Austin, Chicago, circa 1930, after Italian immigration had pumped the tiny suburb’s population from 4,000 to 120,000, had a whole lot of English on it? Doubtful. And you didn’t get business recordings in other languages because there were no recordings during previous waves of immigration. Hispanic immigration happens to be the first to occur during the era of automated answering services. The relevant metric here is whether the second-generation assimilates, as it’s they, and successive generations, who will remain in the country. And in that, the data is clear. Mexican immigrants assimilate. In the first generation, English proficiency is undeniably poor. Only 24 percent on Mexican immigrants speak it well, as compared to 40 percent of Asian immigrants. But the intergenerational transmission of English fluency is higher among Mexicans than among any other immigrant group.

The real straight talk express

The real straight talk express has little to do with John McCain, and is en route to Paris.

From French president-elect Sarkozy’s official website:

Je respecte toutes les cultures à travers le monde, mais qu’il soit bien claire : si je suis élu Président de la République, je n’accepterai pas que la femme soit traitée à l’inférieur de l’homme. La République française ce sont des valeurs : le respect de la femme, l’égalité entre un homme et une femme. Personne n’a le droit d’être prisonnier, y compris dans sa propre famille. Je le dis clairement, que la polygamie est interdite sur le territoire de la République Française. Que l’excision je la combattrai et que ceux qui ne veulent pas comprendre que les valeurs de la République française c’est la liberté de la femme, la dignité de la femme, le respect de la femme : ceux là n’ont rien à faire en France.

Si on ne respecte pas nos lois et si on ne veut pas comprendre les valeurs qui sont les nôtres, si on ne veut pas apprendre le français, alors on n’a rien à faire sur le territoire de la France.

Nailing it on immigration

Great piece at Todd’s Hammer on immigration.  Read the whole thing.

My mother forwarded an email to me today about how illegal immigrants may be granted social security benefits in the near future. It really pushed some of my buttons (this anti-immigrant hysteria is getting irritating in the extreme), so I wrote a detailed response and committed the internet faux-pas of replying to all.

Pots and kettles

Interesting piece out of California:

A California Republican’s congressional campaign went into meltdown Thursday after he said a staff member was responsible for sending thousands of letters to new voters with Hispanic surnames telling them — wrongly — that it is illegal for them to vote if they are immigrants.

Tan Nguyen, the GOP candidate for California’s 47th District, said in a statement that a staff member had sent the letters without his knowledge and has since been fired. Nguyen, himself an immigrant from Vietnam, has focused his campaign on keeping illegal immigrants out of the country, a deeply felt issue in suburban Orange County.

Note, this guy is himself an immigrant.  What was he thinking?  This isn’t exactly what the GOP needs right now…

Unintended consequences

A conservative backlash to the massive street demonstrations over immigration is aggravating Republican leaders’ carefully orchestrated plans to renew the landmark Voting Rights Act before the fall elections.

Cannon survives in UT-3

CNN reports Cannon, the incumbent, beat his anti immigration challenger by a 12 point margin.

Cannon and Jacob squared off in Utah’s 3rd District, which stretches from the western suburbs of Salt Lake City through Provo to rural counties in the southwestern part of the state. Cannon first won the solidly Republican district in 1996.

But last month, Jacob used anger over the immigration issue to defeat Cannon at the state Republican convention, which forced Cannon into a primary that he conceded he could lose “if there are a lot of people who are really afraid … and they vote against me.”

“(The) disagreement is whether the Republican Party is going to be some kind of new, xenophobic, anti-foreigner party, or whether we’re going to be the party of a country we’re thrilled has grown,” he said.

UPDATE:  Mick talks about the aftermath HERE.  Worth a read.