Monday, September 30, 2019

The Door is Locked, No One Answers & a Bear is Chasing Them



 ADDRESSING THE "HUMANITARIAN" ARGUMENT AGAINST THE BORDER WALL

Band of illegals left stranded in the Arizona desert
rescued by Border Patrol officers.
It all sounds very humane and earns my friends on the left extra dollops of unearned moral superiority to say such things as the title of this piece. So let me ask the anti-wall folks a question about that philosophy which purports to be so logical and obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence. Putting aside all that unearned moral superiority one gets from being "for" open borders, is the status quo really what you want?

Are you folks on the open borders side claiming that our good friends in Mexico are chasing down and murdering their own citizens? Are Mexican authorities chasing them northward (while providing them escorted buses to the southern US border)? Who is "the bear"? If it's Mexico, that my friend would be an act of war. If Mexico is sending waves of its citizens across the border into the United States, that would pose a very real threat to the security of our nation. That would constitute an actual invasion - to chase millions of undocumented individuals across the US border. What would they do that for? Are they spies? Saboteurs? What? 


As far as I know Mexico is supposed to be our good neighbor. The only reason we would need to build a wall is if some neighbor nation might be conducting operations to rid themselves of undesirable people at our expense. Could they not drive the buses to legal immigration portals? We have them all over Mexico (see the map below). How about if Mexico transships all those Central American illegals to an American consulate where they can apply for asylum if they are "running from a bear". We certainly have a lot of them.
US Consulates in Mexico that accept asylum requests.
And what if Mexican government officials stopped sucking the life out of the Mexican economy through graft and corruption and maybe took in some of those refugees themselves, giving them a place of refuge in a place where they are familiar with the customs, language and traditions?. Would that not be kinder to real refugees?

How about they clean up the cartels? If the cartels are "the bear", why not shoot the bear. If they asked, I bet we'd be happy to send down some SEAL teams, Delta Force, Marines and Rangers along with some big nasty jets to help the Mexican government clean out drug cartel strongholds that are strangling the nation, leaving headless corpses on the streets and highways and threatening the peace and safety of Mexican Citizens. 

"Refugee" found dead in the desert murdered.
I bet Donald Trump would be happy to do so given the existential threat posed by these vicious enclaves of murderers and slavers. How about we do something to solve the problem instead of wringing our hands and tolerating a steady flow of people into our country and funneling them into ghettos and colonias where corporations and factory farms exploit their labor at slave wages.

How about we do that?

Mexico won't send those people to the consulates where they can legally apply for asylum. That would create refugee camps around the consulates. That would be bad press for the Dons for the people to see how many people are applying to get out of Mexico. Much better to drop them off on a lonely stretch of undefended border. That way they take themselves out of Mexico and solves the government officials's problems without costing them anything out of their graft and bribes budget. Mexico doesn't care if they die in the desert at the hands of the coyotes, drug mules,
Refugee found raped and murdered just across our border.
sex traffickers and terrorists that cross the border with them. Mexico doesn't give a crap if America's southern borderlands are littered with the corpses of men, women and children, murdered or dead from thirst in the desert. So long as they get rid of their undesirables.

Look we put fences and walls around electrical transformers, oil wells, yards full of pit bulls and even swimming pools. The southern border crossing is dangerous. Shouldn't we put a safety fence across it since illegals seem not to understand the danger. We put childproof caps on aspirin bottles. For crying out loud, why not make the borders childproof. Too many children keep showing up dead in the desert or are being trafficked into pedophile rings and prostitution. We've got to put a lid on this. Not one more human being need die in the desert. Let's set up a guest worker program, protect migrant workers the way we do American workers. Prevent their exploitation. Make evil corporations pay them proper wages. It's only going to cost you a little more at your "mom and pop" grocery store and your boutique fashion center as cotton and food prices rise. I don't mind that very much if we can keep stuff like we see in the pictures above from happening.

It's not America that's the problem. And closing that border as tightly as we can will not only help solve our problem, but will also fix the migrant worker mess, and force Mexico to do something about their own problems. Because if they don't do something, they will face armies of unhappy people turned back at the wall. Such people, historically, have turned around and done what Mexicans throughout their history have always done - stage a revolution!

And there's nothing like an impending revolution to wake up the Dons and get them to do something to save their own butts.


The real reason they want "open borders' - cheap labor.
Without it, who could afford to eat all that kale?

© 2019 by Tom King

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Sentences for Hackers: A Modest Proposal

No Internet, no electricity, only computer on the island
As a Christian I am obliged to hate the sin and love the sinner, but the truth is, I find that very very hard to do with hackers. These slimy little basement dwelling weasels have caused me to break my rule about name-calling.

In the middle of the night last night some @#$%@ charged $900 worth of video games to my bank debit card. Because I work nights and check my email frequently watching for payments from various clients, I caught the charge moments after the charge was made. I stopped payment within minutes and changed passwords on all my financial accounts by dawn's early light! 


I'm careful about how I make online purchases, so this wasn't my fault. One of the companies I do business with, CafePress got itself hacked. I got a letter from them a few days ago telling me hackers had got my card #, passwords, address and whatever else I had on file. I've been watching my accounts closely ever since and last night I was glad I did. I don't think there will be any damage. Bank of America is removing any charges resulting from the hack, but it will be at least 4 days before I can access my bank account. It's not fatal, but it's extremely inconvenient and irritating. BOA has canceled my old card and has a new one on the way. Now all I have to do is delete my old card from Amazon, Kaiser Permanente, eBay, Paypal, Walmart and a few others I regularly do business with online.

I also contacted the video game merchant, Steamgames, and they were unusually solicitous. They have an 24 hour automated number that lets you report if the company has charged your account for something that you didn't buy. They collect a little info - enough to identify the transaction - and assure you they will not charge you. It remains to be seen if they actually withdraw the charge. This presents two possibilities for why Steamgames would have a special punch this number option on their 800 number:

  1. Hackers steal personal IDs so they can buy a lot of video games which sounds plausible. If you sell video games, it stands to reason hackers would use their ill-gotten booty to buy your product. An honest retailer of video games would, therefore work hard to insure they weren't participating in fraud and identity theft. 
  2. The other possibility is that Steamgames itself is sponsoring or at least encouraging the hacking and running fraudulent charges through their company. If they get caught at it, they cancel the charge - no harm, no foul.  If they don't get caught, then they make off with the dough and don't even have to provide any games. 
I am a suspicious person living as I do in, what I believe, are the last days of Earth. Naughtiness abounds. Hackers in particular cause millions of dollars in direct and indirect damage to individuals and companies. They hide in basements and cast their webs like spiders. If they get caught, their sentences are ridiculously small by and large. I would, therefore like to recommend this sentencing strategy.
  • If an theft of information affects a thousand people, then each person violated should be considered as a separate case with a separate sentence for each.
  • Sentences should be served consecutively. In other words, if you steal the information of 1,000 people and the usual sentence is 18 months in prison, then multiply 18 months by 1,000 victims and the hacker gets 1500 years incarceration.
  • There should be a special prison for hackers. They should be put on an island in the midst of shark-infested waters. The island would have no electricity, no Internet, no phones - just farming tools and some bags of fertilizer and seed (I suggest beets and rutabagas.). There should be a dump on the island containing discarded Commodore 64s and Radio Shack TRS-80s, just to torment them. I can see them sitting under a scraggly tree, tapping morosely at an elderly keyboard.
I hate thinking like that, but sadly, I know too many basement dwelling weasels and their kind. Banishment and marooning on a deserted island is too good for them. Still we don't want to be vicious and cruel. Okay, diabolical maybe?


© 2019 by Tom King