The Time Has Come

 

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings."

It's time, also, to consider what the Founders meant by the text of the First Amendment.  Did they, I wonder, mean to include political ideologies bent on world conquest that protect themselves by wrapping a camouflage cloak of 'religion' around them?  Did they really mean that we should clasp such a viper to our breast?

I speak, of course, of Islam, a religion-in-name-only, adherence to which involves a committment to the destruction of the western values upon which the United States was based.  It seems counter-intuitive that the Constitution (which we are assured is not a suicide pact) requires us to harbor within our midst persons who are dedicated to our destruction.

It's time for Congress to assert that Islam and its practice is not a religion as the term is normally understood, and that Islam is not a religion as the term was understood at the passage of the Bill of Rights.  That is: the Bill of Rights was never meant to protect a conquering army merely because it claims a religious exemption.

Why now?  What happened that suddenly makes this "an issue"?

Early this morning as revelers in New Orleans (LA) celebrated the start of a new year, an Islamic terrorist, possibly aided by presently unknown co-conspirators, drove a truck bearing an ISIS (black) flag into the crowd killing 15 and injuring many others.  Some of the deaths were due to the terrorist shooting into the crowd with, some reports say, firearms reported stolen in New Jersey.  A few hours earlier, the same scenario played out in several places in Western Europe.  We are at war.

The practice of Islam must be treated as we treated Communists.  We didn't allow them to enter the country.  If they somehow got in by hiding their Communist bona fides, we revoked their citizenship and deported them.  It was merely a matter of self-protection.

Failure to do this — and soon — means facing eventual dissolution of the United States of America.

 

The H1-B Problem

 

There's trouble in DOGE City, and it's all because of H1-B visas.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy both defend the idea of H1-Bs, but the bulk of the MAGA-populace see them as 'part of the immigration problem'.  Thery're both right to a certain extent.

There's no doubt that bringing in highly specialized manpower is good for the economy and good for business, so Vivek and Elon are right — as far as that goes.  And if that was what H1-Bs are used for, no one would have any complaints.

But that's not, in many cases, what H1-Bs are used for.  In all but a few unusual cases, H1-Bs are used to bring in inexpensive manpower.  They have no particular specialized talents save only that they don't cost as much.  That's good for business, but not for the economy — as viewed from the bottom-up.

So, doing away with H1-Bs is a bad idea, but keeping them (in their current form) is an equally bad idea.  Bringing in foreign headcount — as indentured servants — simply to cut costs is the thing that the bulk of the voting populace sees as 'the problem'.  Whether they're right or wrong is irrelevant; perception is reality.

Curing that perception is, I think, fairly easy.  H1-Bs are requested/applied for not by the companies where the imported headcount will eventually work, but by 'consultancies' or other temporary labor agencies.  In all but a few cases, there has not been an actual job offer made for any of these H1-Bs as of the time the visa is requested.  That's the problem in a nutshell.  Fix that and the problem goes away.

Require that every application for a new H1-B visa be accompanied by a bona fide requisition from a potential employer that constitutes a real job offer.  No job offer?  Sorry, no visa.

You're welcome.

 

Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud

 

So President Joe (Never going to pardon Hunter; not going to happen) Biden has issued a 10-year Presidential Pardon for his son Hunter for any federal crimes he may or may not have committed.  Color me 'unsurprised'.

But as they say: every silver lining has a cloud.  Hunter can no longer 'plead the 5th' because he cannot self-incriminate.  That threat has just been erased — permanently.

So now, when he's subpoenaed by a House subcommittee and asked "How much money went to your father?  How much to your uncle Jim?" he must answer — and truthfully, lest he commit perjury for which he has not been pardoned.

May he live in interesting times.

 

18 USC 241

 

Tonight, I heard — for the first time — a political commentator reference 18 USC 241 as the tool with which to fight back against the 'lawfare' recently waged against Donald Trump.  That person was Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, talking to Carl Higbee on his NewsMax program.

For those unfamiliar with 18 USC 241 "Conspiracy against rights", here is the relevant text:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

This applies to NYS AG Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron as follows:  they conspired to interfere with the defendant's freedom to engage in business and to enter into contracts.

This applies to Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan as follows:  they conspired to interfere with the defendant's right to be protected against self-incrimination.

This applies to US AG Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith as follows:  they conspired to interfere with the (former) President's power to declassify documents as affirmed by the Supreme Court in Navy v Egan.

This applies to US AG Merrick Garland, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, and Judge Tanya Chutkan as follows:  they conspired to indict the (former) President for exercising his duty "to see the laws be faithfully executed".

I look forward to seeing all of them in federal prison for "not more than ten years" on each count.  That day cannot come soon enough.

 

What just happened?

 

The short answer is that Lara Trump happened.  Lara Trump ran the RNC after Ronna McDaniel was ousted.  Lara asked for 100,000 volunteer poll workers/watchers.  She got 200,000 volunteers.  That scale of oversight made cheating too difficult to manage.  This also shows us the scale of the cheating that went on in 2020.  The simple tactic of having eyeballs standing ready at the polls is repeatable.  As long as the RNC can provide that level of oversight on elections, cheating, if any occurs at all, will be "small potatoes".

But something else happened, too.  The Republican Party has undergone a metamorphosis.  It is truly "not your father's Republican Party" anymore.  It has been captured by MAGA forces and, like a Borg invasion, has been assimilated.  So the election just past was not a contest between Republicans and Democrats; it was a contest between 'America first' and something else — maybe 'identity politics'.

Because those poll workers made cheating difficult-to-impossible, we can now see the scale of the cheating that happened in the last Presidential election:  approximately 14 million voters have seemingly disappeared since 2020.  Oddly, that election's vote totals were statistically improbable — to the tune of approximately 14 million votes.  Those who continue to hold that 2020 was the fairest and most secure election in U.S. history got some 'splainin' to do.

 

Education

 

The topic of 'Education' has been popping up in conversation recently, and it got me to thinking — always a dangerous situation.  One of those conversations centered around my time at St. Augustine Diocesan High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., a Catholic school for boys.

My spouse is a Protestant, and so we have distinct differences as regards religion and The Bible.  For one thing, Protestants revere The Bible and study it methodically; Catholics, not so much.  With regard to the Old Testament, Catholics, as a general rule, learn about Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, The Exodus from Egypt, the Ten Commandments, and other 'high points', but largely ignore the pieces between.

...As a general rule...

At a Catholic High School for boys (or for girls, for that matter) 'Religion' is a required subject, and typically focuses on Catholic doctrine and dogma.  At St. Augustine, whether by accident or design, my freshman Religion instructor was Brother Robert FSC, and Br. Robert taught a very different sort of class.  He focused on "Biblical exegesis", the extraction of meaning from the text.  He taught, for instance, that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, but that 'swallowed by a whale' did not mean what the literal words signify.  Today, we would say that Jonah got himself into a jam, and those words don't mean what they seem to imply, either.  Another lesson was on "Belshazar's Feast".

In the Book of Daniel, there is a scene (at the feast) where a ghostly finger appears and begins writing Hebrew characters on the wall (from which we get the phrase 'the handwriting on the wall').  Belshazar calls in his wise men and wants to know what the finger wrote.  They are stumped because, even though they can read Hebrew, the words don't seem to make sense.  The words were "Mene, mene, tekkel, upharsin".  "Tekkel" (or shekel) is a coin and a weight, and only the context can tell you which one is meant.  "Mene" is also a coin, half a shekel, and is sometimes used as a token in counting games (unless there's another 'mene' that isn't a coin).  "Upharsin" has a rainbow of meanings, and interpretation is a bear because Hebrew doesn't have vowels, so depending on which vowel-ish things one chooses when pronouncing the words and where they get inserted among the consonants, "upharsin" can mean "divide", or "Persian", and a few other things.

Daniel, a Hebrew slave at Belshazar's court, is called in and given a shot at explaining the handwriting on the wall.  Daniel looks and shortly tells Belshazar "It says: (mene mene) your days are numbered, (tekkel) you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, (upharsin) your kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians."  Naturally, all this comes to pass and Belshazar gets what's coming to him.

Sometime back, wife invited me to a Bible Study because the topic was "The Book of Daniel", and I got to explain to a roomful of Biblically-well-read folk why Daniel said what he said.  They were suitably impressed that a Catholic knew all that.

People constantly hit me with "How do you know all this stuff?"  That's easy...  I got a really good education.

 

'Less' vs 'Fewer'

 

English is a marvelous language.  It's said to be a bear to learn for E2L students because it has so many little quirks, but those quirks also make it deliciously precise.  It's that built-in precision that — in most cases — allows a native speaker of English to understand a foreigner even when they make the sort of mistake that non-native speakers might make.

For native speakers, there's no excuse for not exercising the precision our native tongue grants us.

Lately, I've been noticing — especially in TV advertising — instances where 'less' and 'fewer' are being misused.  The classic example is seen at the supermarket check-out line: "10 items or less", which is wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong.

The easy-to-remember rule-of-thumb is that 'fewer' is always associated with a plural object: (e.g.) fewer dollars, fewer children; 'less' is always associated with a singular object: (e.g.) less wealth.  Alternatively, you can say that 'fewer' is digital (or discrete) and 'less' is analog (or continuous); if you can have 2 or 3 but not 2.5, 'fewer'.  Fewer dollars means less wealth; 10 items or fewer; less waiting time means fewer minutes spent on 'hold'.  Easy-peasy.