Border Patrol agents are allowed to use lethal force against rock-throwers.Yeah? Well, the rocks he was throwing were hitting people on the US side of the border, assholes, and the Mexican police were pointing guns across the border at our agents.
Mexico – through diplomatic correspondence and an angry phone call to the Homeland Security Secretary – have called for the agent's extradition to face its justice system, as the teenager was killed on its side of its border with El Paso, Texas.
Shortly after the shooting, Mexican federal police chased Border Patrol agents out of the riverbed with rifles trained on them while a crowd on the Mexican side taunted the U.S. officials and threw rocks and firecrackers.
I'm sick and tired of this kind of bullshit. It's long past time to close the fucking border.
I've just about made up my mind that the United States needs to put up a serious barrier on the US-Mexico border. I'm talking about razor wire, electrified fences, trenches, moats, and mine fields. Put up signs every 50 yards which say, in English and Spanish, "IF YOU PASS THIS FENCE YOU WILL DIE." Have guards posted in towers with night vision goggles and rifles with orders to shoot at anything human-shaped which attempts to cross. If someone tries to cross and gets blown up, shot, or electrocuted, he's left there.(I'm quoting ME!)
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The Border Patrol union is standing up for the guy but who wants to bet that Obama will roll over like the gutless pussy he is and hand the Border Patrol agent over to Mexico?
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Let's station a few battalions of tanks and light infantry on the border and shoot anyone trying to cross, and if the Mexican Federales aim their guns at the troops, the troops can blow their asses up. Let's show Mexico what it really looks like when the United States wants to be hardass. And when their troops or agents step across the border, they're blown up, too. We hand back whatever we can sweep up ("Sorry, this is what was left") but otherwise don't apologize or explain a damn thing. "Keep your people on your side of the border," we should say, "and this won't happen again."
I'm going to apply the formula I learned not long ago for how the US can deal with friendly nations, and ask, "What can Mexico do about it? Stop letting people into America? Stop accepting our money?" The only thing Mexico can do is whine to the United Nations.
You know what? Fuck Mexico. I don't care if they're happy with it.
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You know, the original Red Dawn was also excoriated as being a "right-wing fantasy".
A Handmaid's Tale, that was a gripping and powerful drama, don't you know, not a left-wing fantasy...but anything showing communists doing what comes naturally to them is a "right-wing fantasy".
If the new Red Dawn is as right-wing as they say--and I doubt it--then I may have to get a copy of it once it hits DVD.
...because to the people who are freaking out over this, anything to the right of Joe Lieberman (including Lieberman himself, in some circles) is "Nazi" territory. The mindset which lumps country club Republicanism (such as that practiced by George W. Bush) in with the skinheads and the KKK.
I'm still not holding out high hopes for the new movie. But you never know; it might surprise me and end up being just as patriotic as the original.
That would be a pleasant surprise.
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The last time the Democrat party was capable of running the country in wartime and winning a war was 1945. Since then, the Democrat party has specialized in giving away all the hard-won gains (bought with the blood of US military personnel) to dictators and thugs. Wherever they have been given leave to, they've abandoned allies and refused to honor commitments which have left whole countries out to dry, leaving them at the mercy of their enemies. It's why Vietnam is now communist. It's why Iran is a muslim terror nation.
It's why Israel will soon be fighting for its very existence--yet again. The Obama administration shows no sign of being interested in helping our traditional allies, and worse, has demonstrated a real incompetence when it comes to dealing with hostile nations. It's as if he has no grounding whatsoever in history and doesn't understand what happens when you appease and placate rather than stand up and say, "No." He'd rather bow and scrape than risk having foreign leaders dislike him.
The right foreign leaders, that is: Castro, Chavez, etcetera. Obama doesn't care if Israel or Great Britain like him, as long as the thugs and dictators do.
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It's been three weeks since I last ran the torrents. Last night I set the machine up to grab 'em and then went to bed.
This morning, after cooking breakfast, I sat down here to eat and blog, and the computer wouldn't turn on when I moved the mouse and why the hell is it so warm over here? and then I finally realized, the computer is on, you moron and switched on the monitor.
At least all the torrents were done.
As for the breakfast, it was a potato's worth of german fries, two eggs (scrambled), two slices of bacon, and two slices of toast. I no longer cook the potato in the bacon grease--I swab the pan out with a slice of bread, which ends up going out for the birds or critters--but use a shot of nonstick cooking spray. There's no appreciable difference in the taste. (And just one potato, by the way; not two, as I used to do.)
I only had the toast because we picked up a loaf of Marconi's Italian bread on Thursday and it was incredibly fresh. Usually the stuff has developed a hard crust by the time we buy it--this is a feature, not a bug--but this loaf was so fresh the crust was still soft. So I'm making toast with it while the gettin's good, because Marconi's is the ultimate bread.
Anyway, I didn't finish my breakfast. I left some of the egg and potato because I just didn't want any more; and one of the things I have to do to lose weight is to resist the impulse to clean my plate. If you're full, it's time to stop eating. (In fact, the time to stop eating came before you were full.)
I used to eat two strips of bacon (sometimes four!); two potatos' worth of german fries cooked in the bacon grease; and three eggs--and right now I feel just as satisfied as I did with that monster breakfast. (I called it the "big farm breakfast" but it's really only appropriate if, you know, you're doing lots of physical labor every day. World of Warcraft doesn't count.)
Yesterday's breakfast was the same thing I had today, and it was the heaviest meal of the day. Lunch was a McDonald's Ranch chicken BLT. I had three stalks of celery dipped in light ranch dressing around 5-ish, and half a chicken breast on a Marconi's roll at 11 PM.
It's a far cry from a big farm breakfast, two Big Macs for lunch, and some almost-healthy dinner, followed by another trip to McDonald's for something around midnight....
Damn, no wonder I'm such a fatass.
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Several years ago there was a commercial for Pioneer car audio products which I occasionally recall, and chuckle over, to this day.
We first see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, "Galloping Gertie", flexing back and forth in time to some heavy rock music. We see a hand turn off a Pioneer dash unit and the music stops; we then see that the bridge is again still.
Cut to the guy sitting in the driver's seat of the car, looking completely stunned. Then he looks at the camera, gives a sheepish grin, and says, "Sorry."
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Of late I've been thinking about building a small sub box for both the Jeep and the Escort.
What I want is a way to get the bass out of the door speakers. Right now, when I want to listen to something (particularly the ambient electronic stuff, which is bass-heavy) I need to compromise between volume and sound. The louder the sound, the lower the bass must go, because otherwise the speakers just crap out and go BPPPTTHHH BPPTHHHH. It is never good to drive your speakers into clipping; that's how you blow them.
(Yes: I could go buy new speakers and cut up my door panels and install them. It would probably look fine. No, I don't want to do that; I like the look of the stock interior. Besides, for two vehicles it's a total of eight speakers. That's about $400 worth of speakers without considering wiring and other ancilliary costs.)
A small subwoofer would fix the problem. Get some MDF and build a smallish enclosure which will fit under one of the front seats. Use about a 4" subwoofer and perhaps a 25-50 watt amplifier to drive it. The idea is not to build one of those systems which routinely bludgeons the entire county with noise as it drives by on the main drag, but simply to move the generation of bass from the main speakers to one which is dedicated to the cause.
The stereo in the Jeep at least (and probably the one in the Escort too) has a provision for using a subwoofer; I don't even think I'd have to buy a crossover. Just hook the appropriate terminals up and off we go. The real expense comes from the amplifier itself.
Anyway, it's a thought that's been randomly banging around in my brain; we'll see if I do anything with it. First I'd have to figure out if I can even work with MDF without causing a fire or explosion, much less generating a useful speaker enclosure....