tvashtarkatena

The question here is what is the most cost effective way to reduce the population of illegal immigrants. The answer is clearly: focus on the employers. There are fewer of them, they have much more to lose, and they are here permanently. Frankly, it's all about enforcement of existing laws. Running a non-tax paying business? It's called tax evasion. Don't have a business license? It's call tax evasion. Not paying your payroll taxes? It's called tax evasion. Worked with the mafia.

jesus - where would you begin to get the amount of tequila required to prevent that frosty beverage from being hopelessly watery? I'm working on desertifying the entire Northern Hemisphere to supply enough blue agave. Stay tuned.

Spot on. I was out in the Yakima valley this fall, wine tasting with my little pinky in the air and discussing mouth feel, nose, and hints of almond and mesquite with my wife. Every single orchard had a 'pickers wanted' sign. The situation was desperate. There was fruit rotting on the trees everywhere. Farmers were telling reporters that they would have paid triple to get their fruit picked had they been able to find pickers. Immigration legislation was responsible for this. Lesson: we can hault illegal immigration any time we want by focusing on the employers. The Fence, which isn't funded by the way, is just another knee jerk, expensive boondoggle by a 'business friendly' administration/legislature who, for political reasons, won't pin the tail on the right donkey. Why would they? Hispanics vote Democrat, farmers and labor contractors vote Republican. End of fucking story there. And as for illegal nannys and maids? Uh...they don't exactly hire themselves, do they? The Drug War is an exact parallel. Blame the poor farmers supplying our Hoover-like nostrils. After all, they don't vote. The blame certainly doesn't rest with us, who consume the product (Take our cocaine away before we snort again!) That would require too much personal responsibility, and we all know the GOP abandoned that principle a long, long time ago. Full disclosure: I believe in total drug legalization.

All of you climb like lost little children, shivering in a St. Petersburg January with big, sad eyes and nothing but a moth eaten shawl to fend off a cruel wind. You are worse than nothing, because you are something that should not be here. I could crush all of you with a single withering glance. When I piss, with one boot on Adams and the other on Hood, the Columbia River flows the color of lemon rind. When I fart, Mt. St. Helens observes a moment of silence. I forged Chelan with my ice axe, The Potholes with my crampons, and the Palouse when I made love to Hell's Canyon and ruffled the sheets. On my head, a lenticular. My jacket is a thunderstorm. I cut two holes in the Chocolate Glacier for underwear. So, mites, quibble away about your mite conquests. I'm off to forge another Himalayas so that I may have a comfortable seat on which to drink a margarita made with the Greenland Icecap.

The problem is, that's where the terrorists come from. Without at least some cooperation from these governments and their local populaces how are we going to conduct effective counter terrorism operations? I suppose we could pull out of the region altogether and hope for the best. Actually - a significant number - if not an outright majority of the terrorists involved in the attacks on the West spent a significant amount of time living in the West, in Europe or Britain in particular. These were not destititute Yemeni goatherds whose entire education consisted of memorizing a few bits of the Koran in the local free-lance Madrassa. They were fairly affluent and well educated men who were either living in or educated in the West, and were radicalized while living in Western countries in a way that they hadn't been while living in their native countries. I've already profiled the 'typical terrorist' in previous posts on another thread. Noone here has suggested they are mainly simple, angry villagers. There are not training camps, however, in the West. Those do exist in the Middle East. Furthermore, the big cheeses of Al Qaeda currently operate in obscure, destabilized locations in N Africa and Western Asia, not Europe. You've also oversimplified the European muslim issue. In France, for example, the riots there were not primarily religious in nature; they were more akin to our own Watts race riots, fomented by a marginalized minority. The terrorists you speak of were radicalized by a community with leadership outside those countries. Taking out the leadership is one effective way to tackle the problem, and that involves operating in those countries where the leadership operates. Again, no on on this forum has suggested any such cultural capitulation. Quite the opposite. I've suggested repeatedly that we marginalize these assholes by giving them less play in the public sphere, treating them as just another international criminal enterprise, not a 'War on Western Civilization', and getting on with our lives. After all, the whole point of terrorism is to disrupt the public psyche and garnish publicity. We've played right into that strategy. This is one of your 'theme' admonitions, but no one here is really sure who you're addressing it to.

Camps...with no internet access.

Hello, Mr. President?

Not necessarily. One theory of consciousness postulates that sentience is a continuum, starting with complex (humans) all the way down to simple (a toaster). While it is true that researchers would have to extend this continuum's lower end to accomodate Seahawk, the presence of brain cells would not be required.

Her actions were rash. Daiper rash.

Seahawk is quite likely THE dumbest object in the universe. That almost makes him worthy of scientific study. Almost.

I'm inspired by those framed, inspirational office posters that say thing like "Inspiration", and then show a picture of a really cool golf course or something.

Pushbutton diplomacy:

Hey guys I found God. G-spotter is God. He decides what is right and wrong. Better than nothing.

You are a complete avatard.

Hey guys I found God. G-spotter is God. He decides what is right and wrong. He's as good as any.

English doesn't seem to like you too much, either.

Did you??? Mine was all math related, love math. I hate english and such. I like right and wrong, hated anything subjective. I'm a Doctor of Hyperbolic Rhetoric. And I invented Post-its.

bifurcating sprayverses one dimensional arguments in 20th dimensional space

bifurcating sprayverses

Seahawks went to college. That, for me, has been the most fundamental, disturbing, and world shattering revelation of this entire forum.

You can't really prove that those other 19 posts aren't appearing in and thus creating 19 alternative universes.

The problem is, that's where the terrorists come from. Without at least some cooperation from these governments and their local populaces how are we going to conduct effective counter terrorism operations? I suppose we could pull out of the region altogether and hope for the best. An analogy here at home. Every couple of years a homeless camp moves on to the lawn of the local church. The assault rate immediately goes up, and goes down when they leave. The solution on one side, I suppose, would be to kill them all. OK. Another solution might be to address the issue of why these people are on the streets in the first place. The worst option is to just ignore the problem, because the problem isn't going to ignore us. Plus, there's that oil dependency thing we still haven't addressed.

I believe that, just beyond the range of our telescopes, exists a universe filled with frolicking taunphins. I can't prove it, but none of you can prove me wrong, either.

That's also called the philosphy of Idiocy. Einstein's theory of general relativity wasn't verified 'by the senses' until decades later. Nonsense? I think not.

Neurological experiments and NDE anecdotes all indicate that NDEs are remarkably similar, indicating that similar underlying physiological processes are to blame.