Obama has announced that he would relax trravel restrictions currently placed on Cuban exiles wanting to visit family in Cuba. Though this would seem a compassionate policy change and one that might break down political barriers between the US and Cuba, relaxing travel restrictions could very well encourage more Cubans to take advantage of our bizarre Wet Foot Dry Foot policy and make a potentially very dangerous dash across the Florida Straits to US soil. 

Moreover, the justification for allowing Cubans who manage to successfully sneak across the Florida straits and touch US soil to stay, where we pack up and send away Haitians who have done the very same thing along with those Cubans who don't make it all the way to pay dirt, is that they are escaping a repressive communist regime.  That someone who games his way into the US would then want to return to their former virtual political prison TO VISIT calls into question the status of "political exile" we use to justify their fast track to citizenship.

A more rational position for Obama - or anyone for that matter - would be to remove travel restrictions for any Cuban who has come to the US through the front door, using normal immigration procedures, and prohibit anyone who has come here claiming political sanctuary from visiting Cuba at all.  Exiles wanting to go on holiday to the places from which they were exiled just doesn't work for me.

While we are on the topic, why illegal immigrants in the country today haven't tried to make their way to a beach in the Florida Keys and claim they just arrived from Cuba is beyond me.

Building a border fence is a big problem. If it goes along the border, it will bisect and divide some nice communities and nature preserves, places that should not be bisected and divided. To prevent that from happening, we should not build the fence. What sloppy logic. Who says the fence has to be constructed along the border? Probably the people who don't want it built. Why not build it along the border as much as possible, and around obstacles and communities when it is necessary. Let the local people decided whether or not they want to be inside or outside the fence. California might vote to be all outside the fence, but that is a risk we will have to take.

Listen to today's actors and producers and directors, and you hear a common message: to do good and important work, you have to be edgy, push the envelope, raise the bar. They can't just be clever, creative, professional, tell a good story well. They have to do something new, edgy. They have to push the envelope. The problem is: not everyone in the industry is pushing the envelope in a good direction.

But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. There are a lot of very talented people in the entertainment business that continually improve their own art as well as the state of the art. There are a lot of just plain great actors, comedians, musicians, editors, special effects designers, producers, directors. There are also a lot of entertainers who appear to be just "acting out," comedians using the "f" word more than anyone else, directors torturing and killing more people than anyone else, actors getting more naked and nasty than anyone else.

I like a good sci-fi monster movie every once in a while. But mostly, my wife and I like movies that tell us something good about life, stories about love, courage, compassion, sacrifice, invention, art, humor. There is so much failure and violence in the news every day. We don't find that very entertaining. Why should we choose more of it to watch when we want to relax? But when we head to the local video store or check the PPV channels on the dish, what we get to choose from is violent.

If people in the entertainment business are so dedicated to pushing the envelope, doing something edgy, why don't they stop trying to give us what they think we want and try giving us what they think we need? That would be very risky and very edgy.

There was a time we worked hard "within the system" to right social wrongs. Now we just ignore laws we don't like. Isn't that anarchy? It is certainly not the Rule of Law. Every time we let someone off because it is the compassionate thing to do, or because they are famous, or because they didn't have a good family growing up, or because they are black or Hispanic or old or young or smart or stupid, we make it just that much harder to apply the law fairly and consistently the next time. Eventually we will forget how to do it at all. And then, along with letting people off who should not be, we will be not letting people off who should be. And THAT is really scary.

People sympathetic to illegal/undocumented immigration group immigrants who have come to live in the US without permission with those who have, and claim they do work the citizenry won’t do and contribute to the overall welfare of the country. Unsympathetic people group them with other lawbreakers, and claim they place a burden on US social, criminal and judicial systems which they do not support financially with their taxes. Both positions are argued from the heart, not the head. We simply do not know and, tragically don’t seem to want to know, the true impact on the US, of our de facto open border policy.

Recent high profile cases, in which predators have been quickly released to the streets to commit additional crimes, have exposed a criminal and judicial system that is so over worked and under resourced, that it is making careless mistakes with fatal consequences.

We need to know more than we do in order to make sound decisions relative to illegal immigration and its impact on our society and our institutions. It would be a shame to push our government toward anarchy if, by taking a realistic look at contributing factors rather than just seeing what we want to see, we can take reasoned action that will actually solve the problem.

How much of our judicial system’s apparent melt-down is due to being overburdened by predators imbedded in our undocumented immigrant population? Would our courts be as busy and our jails as crowded if we were able to actually manage immigration? Perhaps we need to devote some resources to actually studying and tracking how many undocumented people are placing demands on our social systems and services. If our lack of immigration oversight and control is attracting predators

My understanding is that Iraq has a “representative” government. The problem with a representative government is that its representatives will restrict their votes to the specific interests of the groups they represent, rather than compromise when necessary to reach consensus and achieve real progress for the benefit of the country. Our government, which is representative as well, includes enough moderates and independents to be able to get some real work done from time to time. When faced with controversial decisions, however, even our most moderate and independent thinking representatives typically revert to kind, restrict their votes to the positions of their groups, and prevent Congress from making critically needed progress. It seems somewhat silly of us to be wagging our fingers at the Iraqi government.

If it is true that Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail capitalize on anti-Bush sentiment by taking anti-Bush positions rather than those that are more indicative of what they really think and would otherwise do, what will they say and do if they retain power in Congress and add the Whitehouse to their holdings? Will they be saddled with a legacy of anti-Bush promises? Will they rationalize and doublespeak their way out of any post-Bush dilemmas they might face? Or will they just hope, like carnival fortune tellers, that no one connects the dots between what they claim now and what they do later?

Islamic Supremacists, and the moderate Muslims who support them, want to pave the way to a geopolitical caliphate with the sacrifices of bomb-fodder Muslims made suicidal by their intolerant and fatalistic beliefs, and the shredded bodies of men, women and children whose innocent will for personal freedom they passionately hate.

Some of us, who believe the number of American soldiers killed and wounded there has exceeded “acceptable” for Mid-East nation-building, say now that we acted prematurely in deploying our military to Iraq. Islamic Supremacists listen to us decry our mistake, and think their plan to plant their seeds for a repressive and totalitarian geopolitical caliphate in the fertile fields of terrified and destabilized countries, will work. They are, of course, wrong. They lack leadership. Men who give orders from mountain caves and sub-basements in mud huts are not leaders. And they don’t remember that our nation was hard-wired from birth to hate repressive, totalitarian governments, especially those with aspirations for world domination. We have demonstrated that through two hot wars, a cold war, numerous mini-wars, and several long-term police actions. Should they succeed in coughing up another Hitler or Mussolini and/or become more successful in their efforts to damage the world and destabilize more already tortured nations, they will hear our anti-war voices become quiet, and see the rest of our weapons come out.

Islamic Supremacists are also wrong, dead wrong, in believing a geopolitical caliphate begun by terrorists will bring Muslims respect, power and influence in the world. Evil does not beget good; evil begets evil.

I feel sorry for the Muslim world. In spite of an immense population and vast resources, it rides backward while the rest of the world faces forward. Rather than making advancements in Art or Science, rather than contributing positively to the human spirit, rather than helping humankind advance as a species, rather than developing a culture that makes the world a better place in which to live, it works on its reputation as inventor of the bomber jacket. Terrorism is the weapon of choice among fatalists. The fatalism endemic in the Muslim world reflects a suppressive culture that is not just incapable of tolerating others, accepting others, welcoming others, loving others, but also is incapable of tolerating, accepting, welcoming and loving self. Self-loathing is the result. Terror is the result. Terrorism is the result.  

How can Islamic Supremacists achieve the power, respect and influence they crave if not through barbarism and terror, national destabilization, and destruction? They could start by creating a spiritual caliphate. The Pope, the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch and the Dalai Lama, all govern the religious lives of millions, but keep their holy hands off the non-sectarian governments of the nations in which their followers live. Non-sectarian governments world-wide should welcome the development of a benign, spiritual caliphate. But there is a reason why such a caliphate, spiritually uniting Muslims across the troubled geographic and philosophical borders that separate them, does not exist today: their own self-imposed inability to tolerate, accept, welcome and love others, and, as importantly, themselves and each other.

Muslims claim to grant respect to the great religions of the world. They claim to respect Christ, not as the Son of God, but as a great prophet. While they may claim to respect religious figures other than Muhammad, they apparently don’t read their teachings. Perhaps if they read the teachings of Christ or Buddha, or heard the voice of the Dalai Lama, Muslims might find what they need to have a chance to build a spiritual caliphate, and Islam can truly become one of the great religions and a true, Godly, spiritual leader of the world.

I won’t hold my breath.

 

Twice now a limited group of players has sequestered itself behind closed doors to come with federal law, first with an immigration bill, and now with a national disaster plan. Both times, the work has been received with suspicion and paranoia. Someone is trying to pull a fast one.

Another explanation is that some people in Congress and at the White House are actually trying to get work done in spite of the fact that the nicely groomed and finely dressed men and women in the House and the Senate have become a mob in a virtual melee, ripping at each others clothing, pulling each others hair and smashing each others noses flat. The only thing saving their image as the world’s foremost governing body is that rotting cabbages and tomatoes are not permitted in the houses of Congress.

Unfortunately, trying to actually accomplish some work away from the noise and chaos of the riot won’t work. The rioters have to participate. And the extent of their participation is simply to rip the work to shreds along with the ragged sleeves of their opponents and return to skirmishes of the day.

It seems the folks in government tasked with dealing with emergency management are behaving like angry cats in a bag. Part of their problem is not seeing that homeland security and emergency response reflect two very different world views. They should be the responsiblity of two separate organizations who can talk to each other rather than one organization talking only to itself. Perhaps there should be one person with a small staff responsible for herding the cats, or at least informing the county of where the cats are. But planning for and responding to disasters should in no way be the responsibility of any organization responsible for guarding our borders and our airports. Create that organization and you have created a dysfunctionally schizophrenic organization. 

For the most part, states do not want any part of enforcing immigration laws. They don't want to know who is living in them. They don't want fences around them. They don't want to be looking into peoples' citizenship and ratting out possible illegals to to Feds. When they do try to help with national security, they have their hands slapped by the courts or the Feds for overstepping their authority.

They also don't want the National Guard to be showing up on their doorsteps unnannounced whenever a storm or fire wipes out a town or two. Think about how long it has taken Minneapolis to ask for help from the Navy, the organization with the world's foremost underwater disaster response capability. (Note that local governments do not need to be inhibited when it comes to bigger government elements. When a tanker truck crashed on the 7 Mile Bridge and threatened to sever the only road running through Monroe County (the Florida Keys), it took about two hours for the County and the Navy to work together to bring in Navy equipment capable of handling crashed tanker trucks as well as crashed war planes.)

I think the Department of Homeland Security should be responsible for risk assessment relative to our national security, specifically threats of violence from malevolent human forces inside and outside the country. HSA should run the borders, the airports, and have the FBI, the NSA, the National Guard, the Coast Guard, and the CIA, and should be able do their business here and abroad, borrow local police when they are needed, and coordinate with our military forces overseas and with foreign armies and police when necessary.

HSA should keep FEMA and state and local governments and response organizations such as the American Red Cross informed of potential threats.

Other relevant government agencies should keep FEMA and state and local governments and the Red Cross informed of threats from natural disasters such as storms, fires, earthquakes and, if you must, climate change.

FEMA should be reponsible for risk assessment relative to both natural and man-made disasters, for response planning at the national level, for obtaining and maintaining its own inventory of response and recovery resources (personnel, tents, water, trailers), and for maintaining access to other resources such as the Red Cross and the National Guard.

Each state should have its own plan based on its own unique needs and resources and should probably have its own little FEMA to do at the state level what FEMA does at the national level.

The national emergency plan should concisely describe the resources of the relevant organization and how they intend to carry out their responsibilities. Most importantly, it should define how each will keep the others informed of what it knows and what it is doing.

Maybe we need an emergency Zar (Tzar and Czar are not good words). His/her job would be to look for and fill any holes in the plan by improving coordination and communication, and by acquiring additional resources that might be needed.

After Challenger blew up, NASA centralized project management for the Space Station program in Reston, Virginia rather than assign one of their sites as lead. In the early stages of the design phase of the program, they eliminated that level and went back to how they did business when they built Titan rockets and lauched the Shuttle.

We need to understand that command and control depend on communication and coordination and that improving communication and coordination must be accomplished by improving communication and coordination, not by glomming departments together. What do you have when you take two people in different rooms speaking different languages and you put them in the same room? Two people in the same room speaking different languages. 

In the Era of the Sound Bite, the broadcast debate, the stump speach, and print, TV and talk radio coverage (with the possible exception of Rush Limbaugh's detailed and extended rants), conspire to limit candidate risk on essential issues and deprive voters of information and insight they need to make good, informed decisons. We once had informed and impartial analysts sitting around the set Sunday morning discussing the issues. We once had candidates capable of explaining the source of a problem, what had been tried before and with what positive and negative results, and what should be done next to fix the problem without causing newer and bigger problems. But you can't stuff that into a response concise enough to make it intact into the papers or the evening news.

The more polished the politician, the more practiced he or she is at packaging a political position for the press. The better the package, the closer it is to a well-crafted slogan than a position statement, the more it skirts the downsides, the risks, the real costs, the possible collateral distruction.

Take the recent responses of politicians to the bridge collapse trajedy, our deteriorating infrastructure, and how repairs should be funded. Politicians on the Left quickly and adeptly blamed lack of bridge maintenance funding on the war in Iraq (we have billions to spend on bridges in Iraq and none to spend on our own). The issue that should have been addressed in depth is the diversion of potential infrastructure funds to earmarked projects of questionable benefit to the nation. In all fairness, a soundbite about a new highway being funded while old bridges went unmaintained zipped across our TV screens.  But not only were not all of the dots connected, most were not even identified. How about looking at ALL the earmarks? How about setting better priorities for ALL earmarks? Maybe that new highway was not as important as fixing our bridges. But maybe it was more important that a museum in an influential senator's state. Maybe we should be assessing what each of our people in Congress are doing with their earmarks, and talking to them about their priorities if they are spending their shares on glitz instead of good old everyday infrastructor.

But I digress.

Newt Gingrich says we should be able to see extended weekly debates, debates that are long enough to get to the hard questions (Will you retaliate in kind if Isreal or New York are attacked with nuclear weapons? Do you think the bill for free medical insurance with which we would like to entitle children today will be handed to them to pay when they join the workforce as young adults?  Should we be forcing illegal immigrants who have come here only to work and send money home to their families to become US citizens?) His is a good idea. But only if candidates can be judged on how thoroughly they answered the questions. Giving candidates more time to address an issue could simply result in a more extended and dramatic presentation of their sound bite. A juried debate might work, though. A panel of (key word here) impartial judges could score the candidates on how well they answered the questions put to them, with the score being flashed on the screen, and a winner being declared based on the best average score.

But then again, perhaps the voters don't want to know more. If they knew more, it would be harder for them to vote their hearts instead of their heads.  

Elections should be determined by the candidates' stands on issues of primary concern to the country, not by their sex and/or race. And yet people can and do cast votes for or against candidates because of their sex or race. Right now, both sex and race are significant factors in the next presidential election, and one can assume that candidate Clinton would blame a loss on the country not being ready for a woman president rather than her stand on the issues, and candidate Obama would blame a loss on the country not being ready for a black president rather than his lack of experience. So what would happen to sex and race as election issues if Condy Rice were recruited as GOP vice presidential candidate? Would her presence in the final four  neutralize sex and race and focus the election on more important national and international issues?