Grimy.

Theo Cottle is a photographer who documents the less glamorous sides of places like Thailand and Germany and the UK. His work is not pornographic, but it's unsavory, and some of it might not be safe for work.

Looking at his documentation of skinheads in the street, I am struck by the common traits among trash in different modern cultures, spanning different races that disdain each other.

Some of these people have less in common with me than the African bushmen, or the Dani of New Guinea.

I am a little defensive of the redneck, at times. There is a popular misconception that the term "redneck" is synonymous with "white trash." That's simply not true. While the terms are not mutually exclusive and there can be some overlap, that's just like saying "plumber" and "Catholic" can overlap.

White trash is world-wide, and even redneck white trash can span continents. Just ask the dwanky zef Boer trash that is Die Antwoord. (Don't watch that. Well, okay, you can watch that, but DON'T watch this. Seriously.)

Trash is universal. Why isn't distaste for it universal?

Wink-wink. Nudge-nudge.

One rule that I was taught early as a peace officer writing probable cause affidavits is the Four Corners Doctrine. Simply put, if the information is not put within the four corners of the sheet[s] of paper that the affidavit is written upon, the judge may not consider it.  If I charge Mr. Smith with Assault Causes Bodily Injury With Prior Conviction, I had darned well better mention his prior conviction for Assault CBI in that PC affidavit. I know of a judge who fairly recently threw out a PC on this doctrine, when the officer charged the defendant with Dischage Firearm In Certain Municipalities, but forgot to mention that the city was over 100,000 people. (Everyone knew that town had over 100,000 people, but the officer didn't mention it.)
It makes sense, though-- if it hasn't been testified to, the judge may not consider it.

Looking at the Arizona law SB1070 (which empowered Arizona law enforcement to make on-view warrantless arrests of individuals where there illegally, for violation of the new state law against being in Arizona illegally), we see that, first shake out of the box, it forbade enforcement based on ethnicity or race in black letter law. Yet concerns about harassment of people based upon race and ethnicity were exactly what got its opponents upset. A cynical person might also say that some were concerned that, even without harrassment based on race or ethnicity, some opponents were simply concerned that the law might actually be effective, in detaining and eventually deporting people not legally in this country.
But when the feds challenged the state law and brought it to the Supreme Court of this nation, the racial/ethnic issue wasn't brought up.

Although some critics of the law have contended that it would inevitably lead to targeting of Latinos simply because of appearance, speaking Spanish, or having a Spanish accent, Verrilli told the justices on April 25 “We're not making any allegation about racial or ethnic profiling in the case."

When the federal attorneys challenging a state enforcement law bring no allegation about race or ethnic oppression to court, that's because they haven't got any evidence supporting that issue.

But the law was struck down in all ways but one: state-appointed police are still permitted to enforce the federal immigration laws. The new provisions that it be illegal on a state level to seek work as an undocumented alien, and that that aliens must register with the state, and that Arizona law enforcement may make warrantless arrests of undocumented aliens for violation of the state law-- these were struck down.

The reasoning given by Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer and Sotomayor, was that the state must not usurp the federal authority. We already have laws about that. Huh. We have federal laws about drugs, and bank robbery, and a thousands of other things that are redundant on the state level. But this one, we must see overturned. But it's not about race or ethnicity.

The dissent given by Thomas and Scalia and Alito (all notably conservative or libertarian justices) is that there is state sovereingty to consider. The Arizona governor strangely claimed this as a victory for the 10th Amendment.

But it's not about race or ethnicity.

About as good as we'll probably get.

I suppose we've got as good of a deal as we're going to get on the Polanski situation. He's served some time, and the warrant in the US is still extant, meaning that he'll not come to the U.S.

But most of that time was in house arrest, in Switzerland, not especially known for their horrific prisons.

Best would be if we as a nation would quit buying the product of a felon. But so long as the felon's product is bought and sold and produced in a land of insanity, this pretty much amounts to trying to buy things not manufactured by slave labor.

Our nation.

Our President said today that we can't do much about the immigration problem until we have done something about the illegal employment problem. I happen to agree. We need to do something about the large pile of sugar that's sitting out.

Well, it appears that our President says that he wants to hold our estimated 11M illegal immigrants accountable. Okay. I agree there, too.

Barack Obama says that deporting them all would be untenable. As much as this irritates me, it's probably partially true, though exporting illegal border-crossers would certainly decrease the work taken to document them. Okay.

He says that we should make them "get right with the law" before they can get in line to apply for citizenship. Okay.

He says that they should be fined* (for a felony), and admit that they did wrong, and lean English, before they can apply for citizenship. Okay. (Side question: When are we ever going to push for English as a national language? Until this is done, frankly, the English language requirement to be a citizen seems unwarranted.)

He claims that this puts them in at the BACK of the line. I wonder.

He also claims that "there are, right now, more boots on the ground on the SouthWest border, than ever before." He also claims that crime on the SW border is down to less than it has been in 20 years. This is clearly a set-up to deny further funding to border security.

So it would appear that the President's answer to Border Security is to largely to make the illegal citizens legal.

As a guy who's constantly dealing with undocumented aliens, I'm actually not quite as disgusted with this as you might suspect.

Understand: I'm NOT anti-Mexican. I'm NOT anti-Hispanic. I'm NOT anti-immigrant. I wish to hell that the race/ethnicity/xenophobe argument was gone, frankly; it's a red herring. I'm first and foremost unhappy that the documented citizen has to pay taxes and answer for violations of the law, which the undocumented alien does not. So I'll admit that our President managed to actually speak to my interests in this speech.

But I suspect that he'll hold border security hostage until the Republican votes for the new immigration bill are in. Mark me on this one.

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By way of Tamara, I read of a little girl who insists that her mama keep her promises to be patriotic. I had to wipe my eyes to see to type a response.
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*How much? Set the price point too high, and no one is buying. Set it too low, and everyone will buy.

The border.

I don't ask much from our Federal Government. Actually, I ask LESS from it. Our Fed.gov gets up in people's business when it has no right to do so, a vast majority of the time. As such, it spends citizen's money without generating new income, without a compelling reason.

But there are a few things that our Fed.gov IS expected to do. Such as this little ditty:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." (Art. IV, Sec. 4, USC)

Now, there are those who would claim "well, there's not an official invasion going on at our border." Okay-- it's just domestic violence, then. Hey, I don't believe that the average immigrant that illegally crosses the border into the U.S. is violent. The vast majority of the violence committed by illegal border-crossers is committed by smugglers. And, for better or worse, they're smuggling in what our Federal Government declared war on, back in 1986.

Now, we've Declared War On A Noun.

And, the Other Side (the drug dealers) are coming into our country, illegally, to sell their wares.

And, our federal government, the guys who Declared War On A Noun (that aforementioned ware that's being smuggled in), doesn't consider this an invasion?

Think about what would happen if other opponents in other wars came into our country in an organized fashion. Think about what happened the last time a semi-organized group of Mexicans came into our country to commit felonies against U.S. citizens.

Look, I'm not asking that our federal government commit to a punitive expedition. I'm just asking that we see more done to secure the borders, rather than suing the states that are trying to do it themselves.

Over at Tam's place, she's commented on the situation, and there's an interesting interaction going on in her comments. Her libertarian-minded friend Shootin' Buddy is of the mind that the folks along the border should handle the problem themselves. "If you choose to live near the bear cage, don't complain about the smell. They clean the cage, or they can whine."

Funny thing-- they're trying to do just that, and are being threatened with federal suit by the same feds that have a duty to handle this.

And U.S. border residents aren't afraid to defend their turf; they're just afraid of their own government for attacking them when they do so. My friend Art, who goes by DesertRat in those comments on Tam's post, lives in the Big Bend region of Texas. As he says in the comments about Shootin' Buddy's derision of people US Citizens along the border: "Nuthin' more helpful than someone who doesn't know sheep dip from wild honey about other folks' problems."

Art's not asking for a handout. He doesn't expect the Nanny Government to hold his hand. But he'd like to see the same government that tells him it's now a felony to drive his pickup across the Rio at a convenient crossing for an evening across the border, do something to stem the flow of illegals threatening legal citizens.

The Bureau of Land Management has put up some very helpful signs on southern AZ BLM lands, to help would-be hikers and campers stay away from the problem, though.


We cops who work in the border states have been getting notice for the past year that the cartels are putting pressure on their mules not to give up their loads without a fight. Last week, direct threats were made to the Nogales, AZ police that they would be shot at if they worked too hard at stopping smuggled shipments.

My partner and I caught an undocumented alien this weekend, who lied about who he was, where he lived, where he was from. Due to state and federal law, I couldn't even run his fingerprints to see if he was a wanted criminal. All we had him on was a simple traffic ticket: No driver license. It wasn't until I had spent 2 hours researching and calling in database searches (IAQs) that we finally identified him as a person living under an alias, which made him un-accountable for his prior offenses. This made him guilty of "Fail To Identify," it finally got us a Class B misdemeanor, which allowed us to put an ICE hold on him, so that he couldn't bond out, to change his name for the fifth time in two years. Part of living in a society of laws is being accountable for your actions. When you're here illegally, you're not.

In Arizona, their new law makes it a jailable misdemeanor for a documented alien not to carry their papers, or a state jailable misdemeanor to be an undocumented alien. This allows them to quickly and easily put an ICE hold on them, for deportation. It also allows them to run the guy's fingerprints through the state system.

I wish we had that law. It would save a lot of time. It also would be fairer to the citizens that I arrest who ARE documented, who have to actually account for their misdeeds.

Where only the criminals go armed.

Falcon Lake is an international lake, straddling the Texas-Mexico border. The fishing there, I've always heard, is spectacular. Due to the agreement, a fisherman can fish from one shore to another, but down the center of the lake is the international border. One shore it Texas, and the other is Mexico.

Lately, some Mexican gang members have been boarding anglers' boats by force, robbing the fisherman at gunpoint. They at first claim to be federales, but they get spotted for the gang members they are, pretty quickly. They are criminal predators.

So, here's the interesting part-- the attacks are ALL taking part on the Mexico part of the lake. Not in Texas.

Why?

Because the pirates know that it's against the law to carry guns or ammunition into Mexico. It's almost universally illegal for Mexicans to carry weapons of their own in Mexico, as well. Thus, if the gangsters attack people on the Mexican side, they will receive no armed resistance. The Mexican law protects the robbers.

Of course, it's against the law for the gangsters to have guns, too. But seeing as how they're engaged in organized crime, conspiracy, and armed robbery, just to name a few, they're not really worried about breaking a little weapon law. You know who worries about that? Law abiders. A.K.A.: their prey.

We would do well to point to this superb example of the unintended consequence of gun control, the next time someone suggests that it would be safer if you would just pass another gun law to protect the populace.

Giant ape displaced by a red dragon.

Apparently, somebody decided to put a little more Empire State into the Empire State Building.

I suppose that, come New Year's Eve, we'll be seeing a red star descend onto Times Square?

Why not this time donate...

...a tubal ligation?

H/T to Nautical Dawn.

Gunship Diplomacy

Friend Tamara brings up a good point: If we're gonna be called an imperialistic hegemony, and people are going to treat us like one, then why can't we act like one, once in a while?

Tamara also brings to mind a scene that was best portrayed in one of my all-time favorite movies, The Wind And The Lion.

There are two superb scenes in that altogether great movie.

The first is in the opening scene, where Sir Joshua Smith is taking high tea with the American Mrs. Eden Perdicaris in her Morocco courtyard. Disturbing their tea, a group of armed Berbers sweeps in on horseback to kidnap Mrs. Perdicaris and her brood. The British man, like all good gentlemen abroad, is heeled. He draws his Webley, stands, and begins firing with some effect, unhorsing at least two Berber attackers before his revolver goes click on an empty chamber as another attacker bears down on him. Sir Joshua Smith looks at his revolver with great disdain and says "Dahmn!" before he is cut down.

I was about 14 when I first saw that movie and that scene, and ever since then, I've wanted a Mark I or early Mark II Webley .455 revolver.*

The second great scene of the movie is when, irritated that a foreign "dignitary" (for such Raisuli, the leader of the pirates, claimed to be) should take an American captive, and not unaware of the international (as well as political) repercussions of his actions, Theordore Roosevelt decides to send in the South Atlantic Squadron (later known as the South Atlantic Fleet). When negations for the Perdicarises fails to bring their release, a company of Marines, supplemented by sailors, come ashore in Tangier and march at double time to the palace**, where they take the Pasha captive, right smartly. The guard force that too late attempts to defend the palace is dispatched with alacrity.

It's beautiful.

The movie is loosely based on a historical incident. Some have made hay over the fact that diplomacy won the day, and that no shots were fired in the taking of the port of Tangier in the actual 1904 incident. So? When a fleet of SEVEN battleships and several companies of Marines comes knocking at your door, and you submit, you have effectively been subdued by military force (the threat thereof.).

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* Roberta knows what I'm talking about.
** You really ought to watch that clip, if you've got a minute. Part 1 to that is HERE.

Protesting too much? No, no, no...

. . . yes.

Is anybody else beginning to feel like we're being subjected to a marathon screening of Weekend At Bernie's III?

Shafted.

It seems that there's some outcry against a new device being marketed in South Africa to prevent rapes.

The "Rapex" is a device that's designed to be worn by a woman in her vagina, to literally barb and trap her attacker's offending member when inserted where it doesn't belong. The device is filled with razor-sharp barbs that require surgery to remove.

Apparently, this is just too violent, for some. "'Vengeful, horrible, and disgusting,' was the response from Charlene Smith, one of South Africa's leading anti-rape campaigners." In a land where 1,700,000 women are raped each year, partially because of the perpetuated myth that having sex with a virgin will cure a man of AIDS, you would think that Ms. Smith would understand something:

One protects many. Just the fact that a few of those devices are fielded, and the fact that a few dastardly dinguses have been shredded, will deter a certain number of would-be rapists.

Not a perfect answer. But in a world where rape can be a death sentence, isn't fighting back in some way, no matter how passive, worth something?

Planes.

Well, it's been a long time since I've seen a MeMe worth posting, but Tamara brings one to mind, as she was referred from NRAhab, who lists his favorite five airplanes.

Best friend Scott and I spent hours of our teenaged life discussing the relative merits of this airplane and that. This group kills me to select, and I have changed it three times already. I'll just accept that it changes daily. Yes, there are a hundred others that I love, but some of those will be mentioned by others. Here are some of my faves that are underdogs:


5: B-58 Hustler. There was a time, friends, when this nation launched bombers that could outrun most (if not all) operational fighters. Hard to fly and with a notorious accident record, the Hustler had a lot more class than the smaller Aardvark that replaced it. Plus, the "ejection seats" were actually little escape pods, first tested with live bears! (Something tells me that the boys at S.A.C. had a grasp of symbolic irony.)

4. P-38 Lightning. No, it wasn't quite the fastest operational piston fighter in WWII-- that honor was edged out by the Mustang. No, it never fully did quite fulfill its destiny as a heavy bomber escort or interceptor-- its engines began to double and triple the wear time above 20,000 feet. But it was an amazing aircraft, and with that cluster of machineguns and cannon all firing parallel from the nose, the ability to hit far further out like a buzzsaw became legendary, in a time with other aircraft had to shoot at targets in their point of convergence. It was originally outfitted with two .50s, two .30s, and a 37mm cannon in the middle. (Later models replaced the .30s with two more .50s.) Think that wouldn't just ruin a Junker 88 pilot's day?

3. Fieseler Fi 156 "Storch." The very definition of ponderous, slow flying. So ungainly looking, it was called the Stork by those who saw its oversized fixed main gears. Renown for its STOL abilities and friendly to grass fields, it was a damned useful tool for the field marshal who wanted to know how effective an artillary barrage had been.

2. Supermarine Spitfire. Of the 24 marks of this incredibly profligate design, the only ones that capture my attention are the eliptical wing marks, with retractable gear. This was the Brit fighter in the Battle of Britain, as it had pre-dated WWII, and was able to turn tight without stalling, while being able to dive faster than just about any other prop fighter, ever. Whatever-- it was beautiful.

1. PBY Catalina. It's a boat. It's a plane. It's a boat plane. Anti submarine? You got it. Coastline patrol? Natch. Night-time naval bombing missions? Why not. Introduced before the War, the PBY found a LOT of people eager to employ it in peacetime service, post-war. More than one island airline was started with a Catalina. Nowadays, they're still in use in some places for fire-fighting and general transportation, in places where lakes and docks are more common than runways or roads. 70 years after it was first introduced, the Catalina is still a damned useful tool. Beauty is as beauty does.

If you could go anywhere. . .

Clairbell's mother makes her an offer she can't refuse.

"She wants to go on a trip with just me. Somewhere, anywhere. Without the boys, she says. Anywhere, for an undetermined amount of time, and doing anything as long as it’s not 'too rugged.' Not too hot, less than 100 miles."

So, if you had passports, several weeks, and a blank check to ANYwhere and back with your favorite close relative, where would pick, and why, specifically?

My wife and I play this game, but we've never even gotten passports. (Feel free to laugh and point at the pathetic hicks. We don't mind; we're used to it.)

Something doesn't smell right.

Why are Russia's main stories lately ones of sabre-rattling, partial regime change, and new armaments?

When you're a poor country starving for recognition as a major world power, it's almost understandable that you'll feature any new developments that you can on the international news. Sort of a "Hey! We're still here!" Often the only thing that some countries have to show off is their military, and advances for same.

But this gives me an... unstable feeling.



(H/T to Tamara)