Today's Reading - Jan 01

My first obligation is to the Lord. Everything else is secondary, even my beloved wife and family. Politics, various earthly efforts and controversies have a place well behind them, and while they will continue to have a place here, they will and must remain lesser in importance to Him.

In an earlier period of my life, I was greatly privileged to be associated with the Gideons International. I commend them to you as an organization worth supporting, either personally or through your local church. One of the things that they publish, in addition to the Bibles given out and placed in hotels, is a very worthwhile schedule that will let you read through the Bible in a year. I've been using it for more than ten years now, it is worth your consideration. The entire year's schedule can be seen on their web site at http://www.gideons.org

For January 1:
Morning Genesis 1, 2
Evening Matthew 1


There are links at their site that will also take you to a King James translation of the readings for the day. Enjoy.

Civilization is a delicate thing

The world, in particular the Internet version of it, is filled with people who are more learned than I. One of the really neat things about the 'Net is the ability to find them, sort of like a candy store and library all in one. Not Heaven, but pretty neat.

Sometimes you find something that someone said or wrote or did that deserves an even wider distribution. Here is one: Orson Scott Card's How Our Civilization Can Fall dated Dec 3rd and posted on the The Ornery American site

One of the things that has concerned me for a while now has been the perception on the part of most Americans that the current state of our nation, our economy, our civilization, are just the normal state of affairs. Not so, and, to the degree that most even think about it, they seem to believe that the only changes that should be made are to undo those things that in fact created and maintain this state of affairs. We are never more than a generation from barbarism, and he lays out in pretty logical fashion, not only how it could happen, but goes into some detail how it has happened.
Read it. You won't like it. I didn't. But read it anyway.

A Congressional Report on Illegal Aliens

I have been reminded of a staff report entitled ''A Line in the Sand:
Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border'', which came out of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Investigations. Go read it - you paid for it after all. It puts the lie - again - to some of the blather put out by those who persist in making excuses for widespread illegality and shows more clearly than I like the breakdown of law on the Mexican border.

I hate pounding on this subject. I hate it. There are a lot of things that ought rather to be in front of us. But unless and until we deal with this issue as, in my humble opinion, we should do -- by vigorously enforcing existing laws without an apologies for doing so, we shall continue to have this problem

An exchange of views on illegal immigration

The following is a series of e-mail exchanges I've had recently with another blogger who has a rather different take on the matter of illegal immigration than I do. I do not have his permission to release his name so I've removed it and references to his site.
Despite our differences, I have found him to be unfailingly courteous, reasoned, and intelligent. While I doubt that either of us has persuaded the other, I am happy to have encountered him and wish him well.

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The exchange began when he sent me the following message after I had left a comment on his site.

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Thank you for visiting -his site - and submitting a comment. If you don't mind my asking, I have a few questions which will help me understand your thinking on the issue of immigrants working illegally in the US. Q: The Latino population has grown tremendously in numbers. Aside from those here illegally, is that a problem? I see from your website that you are a Christian man, what is your responsibility to a fellow Christian that is trying to feed their family by seeking work in a foreign land? Was Jesus and his disciples illegal when they traveled to live and work in foreign lands? Finally, neither you or I have sought or employ foreign workers in our homes or in our businesses, but millions of American citizens and businesses do. To be morally and legally consistent in your absolutist approach, shouldn't the federal government also arrest, charge, convict and jail millions of "law-breaking" Americans?

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To which I replied:

This contains some fair questions and they deserve fair answers.

To address the last one first, yes to be consistent those who deliberately or recklessly employ illegal aliens should be prosecuted to full extent of the law. I favor this in fact and have said so.

Now, with regard to the other issues. Christianity nowhere requires nor even permits me to violate the law of the land except as part of a religious obligation such as not bowing to Baal. It does not require me to, for example, steal from my neighbor in order to give money to someone in need. The fact that we are as Christians said to be under Grace does not get us out of speeding tickets nor excuse us from paying taxes.

The idea that we should overlook egregious violations of law as part of some sort of Christian duty is bad logic, bad law, bad theology, and a rather transparent attempt to excuse the inexcusable. The law exists. The border exists. ''I wanted to'' is no better an excuse for an illegal immigrant than it is for a rapist.

I note, by the way, that the Bible, including the New Testament, has considerable to say on the matter of being subject to governing authorities. I commend such reading to the attention of all.

Finally, the world has changed in many ways in the last 2000 years. There were, for example, no Social Security cards nor photo ID's in those days. I have no reason to believe that Jesus would have been in favor of forging them if there were and see no reason He is pleased with doing so now.
regards
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He responded with (and I did mention his courteous and civil attitude throughout.)
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Your position is principled and consistent. In civil society, lawbreakers are lawbreakers and 1) shoudn't be excused, and 2) should be punished.

I generally agree with this view. However, taken to its extreme it becomes silly and self-defeating. For example, people speed, litter, cheat some on taxes, etc. Except for a few saints, most of us are guilt of breaking some of the rules.

We have between 10 and 20 million people here illegally. Where I live in afluent suburbia, I'd say that every other homeowner utilizes the services of what I suspect are illegal workers. Additionally, the farms, restaurants, car washes and other labor-intensive buisnesses seem to depend heavily on this workforce.

But wouldn't arresting millions of guilty Americans be politically and practically impossible? Frankly, don't believe that Americans support arresting 20MM, or 10MM, or 5MM, or even 1MM illegally employed/employers.

My view is that the fundamental dynamic at play is one of supply and demand, and that to the extent that you have a huge and powerful demand for labor, you won't stop workers from crossing the broders nor Americans from hiring them. Supply doesn't cause the problem. As with Prohibition, Americans and the people they seek to employ will find creative ways around government restrictions.

This is why I agree w/President Bush and others that have proposed a temporary guest worker program. It's really the only way to rationalize and manage this part of America's labor supply.
It took 1,000 federal agents to arrest 1200 Swift Company workers. The human and economic damage to workers, families, communities and the company is incalculable. Arresting and/or harassing the valued workers of the Swift Company, people who do incredibly taxing and dangerous work, instead on tracking and arresting domestic and foreign terrorists, seems, well, confused.
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I responded with:

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Are you familiar with the ''broken windows" theory of society and law enforcement? Roughly, it translates out to ''there are no insignificant violations''. And that goes straight to the heart of the rule of law, the nature of our society, and a lot of other things. It recognizes that once littering, for example, is accepted, there will be more litter. One Coke can on the street is not a disaster. A million in a block is. Part of the inner workings of our society and our government (and, by the way, they are NOT the same, one of the reasons that socialism is such a vile and unmitigated disaster) is to define and to enforce the limits and the boundaries and the expectations. One illegal is not a disaster for the society. But twelve million are. And pretending it is not a disaster is at least as big a disaster - it trashes the whole rule of law concept. Without close examination, it is at least possible that lack of such expectations are what has so damaged the societies that many of these illegals are leaving. Why should we import that?

You spoke of ''guest worker'' programs. I have two problems, at least, with that.
- Go to Europe. Many nations there adopted 'guest worker' programs over the last 20 or 30 years. The result? A permanent, un-assimilated, un-assimilable, hostile 'state within a state'. Check the Turks in Germany, the Algerians in France, the Somalis in the Netherlands, and so forth. This is a bad thing, a very bad thing, for everyone involved. Again, who would seriously want this?
- Under current - erroneous in my opinion - interpretations of federal law, children born to ''guest workers'' become citizens. That flies in the face of any reasonable expectation of 'guest worker' as a temporary resident, here for a very limited and specified period, expected to return in a short time to the nation of origin and possibly remain there forever.
- It flies in the face of the expectations of assimilation. Books and articles have been written on the subject, all probably better than I could write. If some of these proponents of 'guest worker' programs were correct, we would not even see the existence of organizations like LULAC and La Raza here. But we do, so I see hidden agendas.

Look, I have lived much of my life in various areas that had experienced a great deal of LEGAL immigration. People, good ones and bad, who had come from Guatemala, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Japan, Italy, Egypt, Mexico, Taiwan, etc. Many of them waited YEARS, some decades, for the permission to enter the nation legally. To allow those who ignored or willfully violated our laws to remain here is to insult those who followed the rules. So far as I am concerned, illegals here in our country should be deported TODAY, and sent to the border with the clothes on their backs and nothing else, and the nations of origin billed for the cost of the roundup and deportation. We do not excuse nor subsidize bank robbers and I class illegal immigrants as no better.

A word about the oft-repeated phrase ''doing jobs Americans will not do''. IT IS A LIE. It is a despicable lie, and it is an insult. Sir, I have DONE a number of these jobs. I've swept floors and picked produce and cleaned up after cattle and caught chickens and scrubbed toilets and .... and I resent the phrase. It is a lie. And I know, personally, American citizens who have been denied the opportunity to do these same low-end jobs because illegal aliens will do it for less. It has not escaped anyone's attention that there are now many applicants for those jobs at Swift, jobs Americans are quite willing to do, that had been in effect stolen by illegals. The work at a meat packing/slaughtering plant is not great. But Americans have done it for a long time - we need not import others to do it.

Rounding up and deporting 10 million is not easy. But it can be done and it starts with efforts like this - by making it crystal clear to all that we respect the law and expect others to do so and that lawbreakers WILL be apprehended and WILL be subject to the provisions of the law. It should not have been allowed to get this bad, that is true. But delay will not improve matters.

No.

While illegals can be and sometimes are fine individuals, the United States as an entity can neither afford their presence nor tolerate the damage that widespread illegality does to the society. Time for them to go home and stay there. Time for vigorous defense of the border and vigorous efforts to apprehend and deport illegals. And time to remind the nations of origin, Mexico in particular, that cross-border invasions are an Act of War. We've had that discussion before and Mexico might wish to reconsider her actions based upon that memory.

The people of Guatemala, Mexico, etc. are welcome to solve their own problems. We have our own. The United States is NOT part of Mexico or Aztlan or a revived Olmec empire or other idiocies.

I bid you good day.

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He answered with:

Thank you again for your spirited and thoughtful response. You make a number of very good points. I do, for example, see that in Germany's case the guest worker program there seems to have morfed into a large semi-permanent population of Turks. And it's true, a guest worker program that's not enforced, i.e., people don't go back and are not made to do so, is no better than what we have.

But having spent time in Europe, I can tell you that a big part of the unassimilating minorities problem there is that many of those societies are quite distinct from ours. That is, our immigrants have been historically-speaking assimilated, whereas in Europe the Germans, the French and others do not view immigrants as ever rising to the status of become a "real" Frenchman or a "real" German. So while immigrants there and everywhere tend to band together for mutual support, French, German or other societies there--through custom and law--ensure that immigrants are always, well, foreigners. America is just not that type of caste society.

I also appreciate the broken window theory. Believe me, I worked in NYC before and after it's implementation there and it made all of the difference in the world. So yes, I understand and appreciate the wisdom of the enforcing the smallest rules in order to deter/prevent larger infractions. (By the way, you should love Rudy Giulianni. What he did to clean of NYC verged on the miraculous.)

I also noticed the long lines of people seeking jobs at Swift. But you should know that Swift is offering higher pay to the new employees, and that that will bite into company profits and/or raise the cost of their products. I personally support people getting paid livable wages. But while long lines are telling, we'll have to wait to see how many of the new applicants are themselves working with false papers and whether or not productivity suffers.

My bet is that while many of the toughest, most dangerous and lowest paying jobs will go begging, many jobs can and will be filled by under-employed and unemployed citizens. I do believe that many American businesses have become hooked on low wage workers from Mexico and may be biased against American workers. I've heard a number of business owners suggest that American laborers are poor workers.

I especially love your point about the need to take to the Mexican government and the ruling elites there. See, I am more symthathetic to the Mexican worker even when they sneak across our borders to look for work, because I really believe that their government gives them no choice. From what I can tell, Mexico is no democracy and it doesn't really have a market economy. It's a more "acceptable" version of the Banana Republic, a society ruled by an exceedingly self-serving elite. It has virtually none of the policies that allows a middle class to expand and workers to become property owners.

In a sense, an open border w/Mexico is first and foremost a way to ensure that Mexico's robber classes are never held to account. That is why the oligarchy there is more than happy to find ever more creative ways to push their poor out of the country.

So here's where you and I may agree. The U.S. should demand that our neighbors real democracies. You never hear about Costa Ricans sneaking across the border, and that's because it's a real domcracy with a real middle class. To poor and working classes --as they do here--have pathways available for upward mobility through education and hard work. Costa Rica is the complete opposite of Mexico.

I for the life of me don't understand why we treat that regime in Mexico with kid gloves. My understanding is also that most of the "illegals" here and workers in Mexico would favor the US helping take down the Mexican plutocracy.

BTW: Talk that promote Aztlan simply have too much time on their hands. It's silly stuff. Any sensible American Latino--and most are that--can clearly see that there's a world of difference between the the U.S. and Latin nations. If in some fantasy world Aztlan ever came into being, most Latinos would move out.

While I still think arresting millions of people is probably a nonstarter, I do favor the use of a modern social security identification system that's tamper proof. It's kind of ridiculous that in this day people can simply say they're someone else and get their ID/SS card. Technology exists today to make that impossible.

Anyway, thanks again for the discussion. I do agree that we have a proble and that it has to be solved--and quickly. The solutions however should solutions and not half-baked measures that sound good but make things worse for everybody involved.
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To which I responded, last night, with

Good evening and a very Merry Christmas to you. I hope that your holiday has been a pleasant one.

I need to amplify a bit on the 'guest worker'' issue just a bit among other things . Your comments were quite correct, but I wonder if perhaps don't cover quite the whole issue, starting with the European example.

But first, let's be clear about the meaning of the term. To the Europeans, it appears to mean imported hewers of wood, drawers of water, a permanent underclass that will never ever achieve true citizenship and/or acceptance. A lousy deal, but perhaps to be expected from a culture and civilization in a demographic death spiral, too fastidious to wash their own clothes.

To the Americans, the term means what I said before, someone coming in country temporarily , rather like a excavating contractor, and then leaving when the job is done. Not a citizen, not a prospective citizen, not a permanent resident, a contractor. The 'anchor baby' question is very much in play here. Again, the analogy to a contractor is on point. But there is this suspicion that what is being proposed is something very different from either of these, that it is instead a way to effect a back door amnesty for criminals, which is at best what illegal aliens are. And most Americans are revolted by the idea of an amnesty, a reward for criminality. Hence the controversy.

With respect to the Europeans, you are quite correct that the Europeans tend to be clannish and insular, even if they don't want to admit it. A Turk, for example, will never in a century be regarded as a ''real'' German. (By the way, the Japanese are much worse about this, and so are truly tribal cultures such as in the Middle East). There is history to prove this, the Jewish experience in the 20th century Germany being just one example. But in truth, the Turkish (or whatever) 'guest workers' have no intention of becoming German either, else we wouldn't have mosques being built in Bonn or see burquas on the streets of Berlin or Wuppertal. Or parts of Spain, France, Denmark, or the Netherlands.

The US experience is much different. As I noted before, I've spent much of my life in areas that have had substantial levels of legal immigration from many parts of the world, Latin America included (with substantial levels in both directions with regard to Puerto Rico, which is a special case). The situation was generally consistent without regard to nation of origin. Those who came here as adults from, say, Poland, would still speak Polish at home, but insist that their children learn and speak English in order to become 'real Americans'. They might, for a number of reasons, remain part of the Polish National Catholic Church, but even that might change by the 2nd generation or even the first. Same for Christians from every nation, except that those of Greek extraction might still be Greek Orthodox, the Russians remain Russian or Eastern Orthodox or might go over to the Byzantine Rite Catholics. But outside of that they would endeavor to assimilate while maintaining some unique cooking heritage.

The large exceptions to this are the Hindu immigrants from India, and the Muslims from everywhere, though that is a wholly separate issue.

In most of these cases, the individuals involved are great people regardless of nation of origin, race, color, etc. Mafiosi excepted, of course.

Perhaps the process involved to gain legal entry plays a part in that; known felons and wanted criminals are not welcome and the process of moving from legal presence (green card) to potential citizenship is one that expects and reinforces lawful behavior and a demonstrated intention to assimilate, to become an un-hyphenated American.

The illegals are a different story. Yes, there are examples, individuals we both know, of wonderful people who came here illegally. Wonderful, except that they commited a serious crime by coming here in violation of law, and compound that by remaining here. Consider, when you have a group that starts out by demonstrating a lack of respect for law, what are the chances that such an attitude will carry over into other areas? Good, actually. Here are some recently publicized figures:

''illegal aliens commit 12 murders every day in the U.S. and kill another 13 daily through drunk driving incidents. That's more than 9,000 people killed every year by illegal aliens. on average, eight children are sexually abused by illegal aliens every day -- that's over 2,920 annually.''

I did not make up these numbers, they were I believe used in a speech on the floor of Congress. Add to that the areas along the border (primarily) where English is rarely heard even among 3rd generation kids, perhaps one is permitted to suspect that assimilation and becoming law-abiding American citizens was not the real objective of this. The stories I hear from law enforcement (including the Border Patrol types), nurses, store managers, and many others are consistent. We have a problem, and it will not be solved by ignoring it nor by calling it something else.

So.

I repeat my original statements. All illegals need to leave, now. Period. No exceptions. Those who leave voluntarily are free to petition for legal residency, from their home countries. No exceptions. My personal belief is that anyone found illegally here by law enforcement should NEVER be permitted legal status. And that the nation of origin be billed for the cost of apprehension, incarceration, deportation, and any appropriate restitution.

There is no good remedy for illegality. But there are appropriate penalties. And it is time to employ them. Unfortunately.

I bid you a Happy New Year.

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Again, there are matters upon which reasonable people may disagree. And we can disagree without becoming disagreeable.

An apology

First of all, posting has been very light. The Christmas season has been quite busy for us, and has had its moments. I hope that God has blessed you through it as He has us.

But that is not the reason for the apology. A few minutes ago, I opened the blog as a regular reader would do, and clicked on an item on the sidebar links list. To my horror, what opened (after what appeared to be a redirection) was a very raw porn site. That's awful enough, but it was one of those hijack-type sites that then warns you of all the porn sites they claim you've visited (totally untrue) and ''offers'' a ''service'' to remove any embarrassing records.

While a list of everything God's had to forgive me for would require a lot of paper, hitting up the porn sites on the Internet hasn't lately been one of them. I have no idea as to what series of events led to this - I normally do a cut-and-paste while at the site I'm linking to, so I suspect that their site may have been hacked, but I don't know. It certainly wasn't any site I've visited.

If anyone has visited here and been hijacked like this, you have my sincere apologies. I can only say that I've removed the hijacked link. I don't know what else I can do.

Just a brief

A quick, brief post, and perhaps more later.
I was made aware earlier of another site on blogger, one that has on it the COMPLETE text of Andre Servier's book, Islam and the Psychology (Mind) of the Musulman, written about 1924 about the heathen devotees of the Mohammedan cult of the Devil. Highly recommended. Go to http://musulmanbook.blogspot.com/ and see for yourself. I will also put this on the sidebar under my links list.

Islam delenda est.

Short Shrift Again

I must apologize for the light posting of the last week. Things have been busy, and not all good.

Good - sort of. Our older daughter, Ashley, has announced her engagement to Brian, with a wedding set for a year from now. He's a good guy. I just hope he's strong enough. I love her dearly and she's been a delight and a blessing. But she is one tough gal who wants to get her own way, always (not that she inherited that anywhere!) and would rather die than admit to a mistake. I wish them well. At this point they intend to live in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Brian believed her flat statement that under no circumstances would she ever again live in Fort Smith, Arkansas. I'm already hearing rumors of ice sculptures, etc. I hope she's found a chest full of money 'cause I sure don't have one.

Bad - definitely. Brian's brother, Justin, was killed last week in a head-on crash with a drunk driver. He leaves behind a wife and a baby. Christmas will never be the same for any of them, or us.

The end of the year is always a time for reflection and memory. In the last 30 months, we moved several times across several states. While we had hoped, at this point in our lives, for a measure of stability and settledness, perhaps looking forward to a retirement some day. Instead, we moved hither and yon, lost everything we had, and at this point a retirement - ever - appears unlikely. Instead, I'll probably work until the day I die. And, since the average lifespan of a male in my family is around 48, borrowed time is a very real concept for me. Yet God knew, a million years ago, that this would be the case. He doesn't get worried over such things, so perhaps I shouldn't either.

Illegal aliens, part 1004 and the death of more innocents

Anyone surprised that the problem continues?
Comes now a story out of Broward County, Maryland, entitled ''Crash may revive effort to bar illegals from driving'' which details the fallout from - brace yourselves for the shock - the death by vehicular homicide of two Americans. Citizens. You know, people who were born here and had a lawful right to be here and a reasonable expectation that their lives would not be ended violently as a result of the behavior of one Eduardo Raul Morales-Soriano, an illegal alien, with a blood alcohol level four times the limit. Sounds like blind drunk to me, sounds like a serious crime to me. Probably to the family of the deceased as well, though it would appear that this counts for very little these days.

What is truly aggravating is that officials of the state of Maryland had issued a driving license to a man whose very presence inside our borders is a crime. I wish that I knew the names of all of those responsible for that travesty, in order that I might do a more complete job of wishing them ill. There is blood on their hands, and they evidently have not even the sense of decency to be ashamed of their criminal malfeasance in office. This illegal should bear the full wrath of the state. But I see the entire range of persons whose actions and inactions led to this situation as being criminially culpable as well. Like the officials in Maryland who sanction such things. Like the persons who issued the driving license and auto tags, who employed this criminal, who housed and succored him, who refused to vigorously enforce the laws regarding illegals. And, not least, the evil, despicable, worthless persons within the government of the nation of origin. We should declare war on that nation.

Oh, by the way, back in February, this same illegal was involved in another drunken driving accident. The law was ignored then as well. Had it been enforced, two American citizens might be alive today.

I wish curses unceasing upon the heads of all those who make it their business to excuse the inexcusable. I mention in particular those persons within the Assembly of Maryland whose criminal inaction and despicable posturing has created this state of affairs.

Illegal aliens, part 1003 and the death of innocents

Sometimes it seems that some things never end. Take for example the ongoing carnage in our nation from illegal immigrants. Sometimes it is expressed in the death of citizens as they wait too long for care in an Emergency Room crowded with those who have zero business in our borders.

Sometimes it appears in the death, injury, rape, or fear resulting from the depradations of roving gangs who have, with good reason, no respect for our laws, culture, or criminal justice system. (and who can blame them?).

Sometimes, far too often, the result of the illegal aliens invading this nation appear in the newspapers as they report yet more death and injury resulting from traffic accidents caused by illegal aliens behind the wheel, quite often very drunk. Here's another such, out of North Carolina (odd how many times North Carolina figures in these), reported in the Fayetteville Observer under the heading Man charged in driving deaths apparently in U.S. illegally with N.C. driver's license

By the way, his blood alcohol level was four times the legal limit.

To add to the insult, back in February these creep refused a breathalyzer test at the scene of yet another accident. Yet his license (unlawfully obtained) was not suspended, nor was he apprehended as an illegal, nor was he arrested and required to appear. And so, two more US citizens are dead.

I have heard, until I want to vomit, the lie that illegals simply ''do the work that Americans won't do.'' That is a lie. It is a big lie, and it is an accursed lie, and I for one resent it - I've DONE a lot of the scutwork jobs these liars are referring to, and so have many other Americans.

I want to be kind. On this issue, there is no nice way to put this:

• Enforce the laws. ALL of them.
• Deport the illegals. ALL of them.
• Arrest the employers. ALL of them.
• Arrest those who aid and abet illegals. ALL of them, including the worthless two-bit liars that set up these ''sanctuary cities'' and those who REFUSE to do their sworn duty in this matter.
• Erect the walls, include sound sensors to detect tunnels, on the Mexican and Canadian borders. Do it immediately.
• Tell the government of Mexico to butt out, and give a strong hint that we are considering a Declaration of War.
• Immediately present a bill to the government of Mexico on behalf of US citizens damaged by the incursions of these illegal invaders. Hold all cargo coming across the border as collateral for these bills.
• Repudiate NAFTA and CAFTA.
• Then get tough.
  

ROPMA Again, Teachers Again

You can't do much better than a good headline:

Disembowelled, then torn apart:
The price of daring to teach girls

A story, out of Afghanistan this time, detailing a particularly brutal murder of a teacher who fell afoul of the demon-worshippers of Islam. Coming, no doubt, to a town near you, as these latter-day followers of a false god travel around the world spreading misery and death everywhere they appear.

Manufacturing and engineering today

I've been remiss in following up on a previous post dealing with the realities of working in an engineering capacity in the American manufacturing world today. And part of that is a reluctance on my part, a reluctance in part born out of fear. A fear coming from experience.

Let's start with what we can see and I will speak of personal experience. Many of the industrial activities that I observed growing up are no longer around. I spent my early years down on the border of Ohio-West Virginia - Pennsylvania. Coal mining country. Appalachia, if you like. Places of great poverty and want, where the only occupations to speak of were farming, coal mining, or servicing one of the above, like driving coal trucks and working in the little truck stops. Oh, and yes, moonshine running was still done there and probably still is. I was in the little hamlet this summer where we once lived, and some of those homes still have outhouses and dirt floors. Yes, it still happens. But there's little going on today, little coal mining being done. More on that in a moment, but note that there is a large segment of endeavor now essentially gone.

Later we relocated up into that area bounded by Akron - Pittsburgh - Cleveland, including the industrial towns of Youngstown and Warren. Places where the industrial activities were the tire companies in Akron and the steel-related plants in Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Youngstown-Warren, including the ports up in Ashtabula and Cleveland. The steel plants were major users of the coal mined in the operations previously noted. Only most of the steel plants are gone. Without them, of course, no need for coal. Or metallurgical engineers, or designers of ladles, or protective clothing, or a lot of foundry equipment, or coking furnaces, or specialized rail cars or trucks or .... you get the picture. The tire plants are mostly gone from Akron also, which affects the makers and designers of things such as tire molds, or all the specialized equipment involved in being the world's tire center. Which it isn't any more.

Some of the steel coming out of Pittsburgh and Youngstown went to the US automakers. Back when the Big 3 really were dominant, and cars were made out of honest US steel coming from American steel companies who smelted American ore with American coal. Not so much the case now, is it? So changes there also.

I could go on at greater length and a whole lot more detail. But let's pause there for now.

I'm in the business of being a change agent, of finding a better way, of refusing to settle for the line ''but that's the way we've always done it''. At the same time, it's been painfully evident that a lot of what has been touted as improvements are nothing of the sort, at best neutral and sometimes injurious to the cause.

While America has been a dominating industrial center for a century, that is less the case every day, and in some of the remaining operations the important decisions are being made in Yokohama, or Dusseldorf, or Liverpool, or Wuppertal, or Seoul, or Shanghai. Chrysler is a German company now. Firestone Tire and Rubber is owned by a Japanese company. And remaining ones continue to shove production outside the borders. The last report I heard of the Whirlpool plant in Ft. Smith Arkansas showed a loss of some 1600 jobs (and still counting) most of which are going to their new facility in Ramos Orizpe, Mexico. And corollary damage - Moll Industries which had been a major supplier to Whirlpool is giving that business up totally - roughly a third of their entire production. I understand another firm with a Mexican operation will take it over.

We all have examples of this we can cite. Some are much worse.

To respond to this onslaught, a number of approaches have been taken. Some are the desperate flailings of an organism under attack and in danger of death. And, in such circumstances, unanimity of purpose, marching to the beat, is sometimes more valued than marching in the right direction. I think that I've been involved to some extent with just about every one of them over the last 20-odd years or so. Anybody out there stil refer to their copy of A Book of Five Rings which was very popular around 1982 or so, and supposedly allowed the words an author put into the mouth of a long-dead Japanese swordsman to be the path to True Manufacturing Greatness. Yes, people really bought into this stuff. Lot of money got spent and some people were greatly rewarded. Those who had some reservations were labled obstructionists and many were pushed out. Not marching to the beat. Same thing for every other such fad. Problem is that no matter how worthy a concept, it has some limitations that too many management types can't or won't comprehend. So any failures are blamed on the ''obstructionists'' and the 'champions' go off to tout the next management fad du jour

Most of us know this. And we all know that the most dangerous of these fads are those which correspond to the personal preferences of top managers. For example, take 5-S. Anyone want to dispute the merits of organized workplaces? It makes sense in an operating theater to have all the scalpels, clamps, retractors, etc. ready for used and in a particular place. Not the place to have a stray toilet mop show up, nor to run out of something necessary. But organization is to be directed to a purpose, it should not be an end in itself. But I once ran into a top manager with what I called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. He would have demanded that the scalpels be serially numbered and placed in the OR tray in that order. A nut, in other words, the kind that actually spends his evenings combing the fringe on rugs in his home. To him, 5-S is not a useful technique, it's a religion, a way of life, and doubters are worse than heretics, they are dangerous enemies to be liquidated. This is a useful way to improve your company? And there are many other examples that might be cited.

Those of us who took our engineering education into the manufacturing arena find ourselves dealing with most of the standard engineering issues, but we also find ourselves dealing with human factors, imbecilic regulations, avaricious investors, idiotic accountants, crooked union officials, and off-shore competition from slave labor countries like China. And yet we are periodically assured that what we do is valuable. Generally right before a major downsizing or corporate takeover.

I enjoy what I do, all things considered. But I wouldn't recommend it to my children.

Today's Reading - November 25

Ezekiel 34, 35 and I Peter 2

The ''Religion of Peace'' Murders, Teachers this time

After a while, the phrase ''murdered by Mohammedan heathens'' becomes sort of a yeah, so what else is new? thing, we are becoming accustomed to the reality that those who worship a demon will do other evil in consequence.
Comes now a story out of Thailand via CNN of yet another murder of a school teacher by more of these truly evil people. See Teacher slayings shut Thai schools with a tip to Little Green Footballs for pointing us at the story.

Mohammedans have a great deal in common, more than they realize, with the ancient worship of Baal, Dagon, Moloch, Asherah, etc. Allah is simply another name for the demon that they worship, albeit unknowingly. They are deceived. Attractive as the urge to bomb and shoot them into oblivion, I believe that God Almighty has another plan, and in any even has reserved such things to himself.

Another approach on illegal aliens - going after employers

One of the elements that must be included in dealing with the invasion of illegal aliens that our federal government, most especially starting with the President, has steadfastly (and in violation of law) refused to do, is to deal with employers who deliberately or recklessly employ this illegals.
Check out this site, entitled We Hire Aliens.com. Just like calling your local police to report a crime in progress, this provides an avenue to publicly call attention to this sort of criminal activity and also to alert other citizens of the situation.
Check it out.
And shame on the feds for violating their oaths and public trust.

You know you live in the South when ....

Your wife's cat climbs up on her lap and ''shares'' her plate of grits. Betcha they don't see that in Manhattan or Chicago or San Diego. Durndest thing I've seen this week.

I'll be posting later as we recover from the holiday's events. Oh, and this marks the day that my One True Love In This World turns 29. Again.

Yet more of the heathen horde

Some thiings are too awful to be described in words - the visual images are adequate.
WARNING!
This link is to a site with some images that should not be seen by children or those who are easily impressionable.
Link

The next time one of these liars tells you Islam is a great religion
or
That all cultures are equally valid
or
We have no business judging other societies

Consider: the scenes depicted here have been the rule, not the exception, through the entire history of Mohammedanism. And they want to bring it here. In fact, chances are good that there is a mosque dedicated to that and it's not far from where you live. Does that make you feel good?

Nov 18 2006

Today's readings: Ezekiel 17, 18, 19 and Hebrews 13

I am generally reluctant to comment much on Paul's letter to the Hebrews. Perhaps it stems from too many years of watching the 'name it and claim it' TV preachers go overboard on the faith passages in Chapter 11 in particular. It's not up to me to oppose their message, but I don't agree with what some of these ''faith movement'' people have put forth.

The passages in Ezekiel are full of imagery and warning. As I've said here before, the issue for me is that so many of these warnings were ignored and the results foretold came to pass. The attitudes and sin preached against can be found in virtually every Western village and town. Should we think ourselves beyond the reach of God's retribution? Somehow we've come to believe that peace, prosperity, plenty, and the necessity for wicked entertainment are somehow our right. Ain't so.



--------------------------------
Sorry for the light posting this week, we've had illness in the family while still working heavy duty hours. Rising at 04:30 every day and getting back home around 12 hours later, just as it begins to get dark, means you feel yourself living in a time tunnel. The tornadoes and related storms that roared through here the other day have added to the stress. Meanwhile, at work I'm trying to figure out the problems with a multimillion dollar piece of machinery that the Germans inflicted upon us. With the time difference and their less-than-inspiring office hours, invisible work ethic, and general ''attitude'', it's been a trial. I spent about 90 minutes the other day on the international call, including being shuttled from one side of their operation to the other, and at the end of it all was no further ahead. Having dealt extensively over the years with the Japanese attitudes, which I don't like, and also with the Europeans (Finland/Switzerland/ Denmark/ Germany /France/Italy), I can't say which aggravates me more.

Today's Readings 14 Nov.

For today
Ezekiel 7, 8, 9
Hebrews 10:24-39

Ezekiel is one of those books that I always feel I've not studied enough, yet am a bit uncomfortable with those who claim to understand all contained in it and in the book of Daniel. There's a great deal of very heavy imagery, a lot of judgment and retribution against the nation for prolonged and serious violation of the covenant. What makes it truly serious is that that promised judgment did occur, it was terrible, ghastly. And deserved.

Then we go from that reading to Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews for today's portion, and we find therein warnings such as

26	For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
27	But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.
28	He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
29	Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
30	For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. Deut 32:35,36
31	It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

God is love, and He is full of grace and compassion and mercy. But He has standards, and expectations, and there is a point at which we are called to account.
The judgement upon the people of Israel and Judah was terrible and severe. They did little of a sinful nature that is markedly different than what is common in our society today. Does anyone really think we are somehow immune from the same result?

Today's Readings 13 Nov.

Ezekiel 4,5,6 Hebrews 10:1-23

Today's Readings 12 Nov.

Ezekiel 1,2,3 and Hebrews 9

God's word is always appropriate, timely, and useful. With the events of the last few months, I've found this to be even more so than other times.
The passage from the prophet Ezekiel reminds us, among other things, that even in the midst of great trial and pain, God Almighty is still in charge and very much aware of what is going on in our lives.
And He cares. He cares not only in a remote and mildly interested sense, but He cares enough to make His interest known. And to seek to engage with us, even though we can not understand His purpose or nature.

The passage from the letter to the Hebrews is also a warning, a reminder that at the end of all of this life on earth, there is an accounting. Verse 27 should be memorized by all.