Cheat Seeking Missiles

See Ya, Smuggler’s Gulch

I got a real kick out of seeing this picture in this morning’s LA Times. It shows the border fence on the U.S./Mexican border, apparently looking east-to-west as the fence snakes through Smuggler’s Gulch. Here’s the LAT:

Reporting from San Diego — Smuggler’s Gulch lived up to its infamous name.

For a century, the narrow canyon leading into California from Mexico provided cover for cattle thieves and opium dealers, bandits and booze runners. More recently, it has hidden thousands of illegal immigrants on their journey north, sealing its place in border lore.

Now, it’s a fading memory.

The canyon has been all but wiped off the landscape, its steep walls carved into gentle slopes, its depths filled with 35,000 truckloads of dirt as the federal government nears completion of an extensive border reinforcement project at the southwesternmost point of the United States.

Environmentalists, including California’s notorious Coastal Commission, fought the fence, citing all sorts of environmental chaos that surely would follow, saying it “will harm the Tijuana River estuary, threaten endangered species and destroy culturally sensitive Native American sites.” As the photo shows, there’s an environmental point to be made here - but it’s a limited one. The very dense cities of Tijuana and San Deigo create a much more impervious barrier to species migration than this puny wall.

In the end, the Bush admin. had to just override all this and push the fence forward. Now that Smuggler’s Gulch has been bulldozed into oblivion, I’m in accord with former Border Patrol agent Donald McDermott who told the LAT:

Good riddance. Anything that makes it easier to control the border is a good thing.

Global Warming Update: Brrrrr!

Here are a few tidbits from the global weather front that might warm your heart if you’re a bit of an anthropogenic global warming skeptic:

Temperatures in England have been unusually cold as the longest cold snap of the last decade holds the country in its grip. As temperatures hover around zero, experts are calling it the coldest weather in Betty Windsor’s realm since 1996. (source)

Another sign of the cold that’s gripping England:

A birdwatcher who made a fruitless journey to Norway to see a rare snow bunting, returned home to Britain only to discover one of the species had landed on her garden fence. Janet Davies, 58, an amateur ornithologist, spent three weeks in the Arctic including a week in Spitzbergen hoping to catch sight of a snow bunting. She failed to see one of the distinctive birds but was startled when she returned to home in Helston, Cornwall, and found one in her garden. (source)

In Alaska, promoters of the U.S. Cross Country championship were forced to cancel the race because temperatures were way too cold. (Don’t ask me why the race organizers thought a January race in Alaska was a good idea.) Temperatures in Fairbanks were 40 below on Saturday afternoon. Forecasters said it would dip to 50 below over the weekend. (source)

All in all, it appears that 2008 will be the coldest year of our albeit not-too-long century. Warmies will quickly point out that if you pose these recent cooler years against years in the early 1990s they would be considered warm years. Still, 2008 was definitely not a year that helped to end the debate on global warming - you know, that debate that’s all over and done with.

hat-tip: Greenie Watch

Harry “Pinky”‘ Reid, Racist

How quick Harry Reid plays the race card to attack the GOP for all sorts of imagined acts of hate. But what about this?

Days before Gov. Blagojevich was charged with trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, top Senate Democrat Harry Reid made it clear who he didn’t want in the post: Jesse Jackson, Jr., Danny Davis or Emil Jones.

Rather, Reid called Blagojevich to argue he appoint either state Veterans Affairs chief Tammy Duckworth or Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Jackson, Davis and Jones are black. Dockworth and Madigan are white.

Sure, sure, Reid can say (and lefty pundits are saying) that he made the call out of nothing more than electability, that the yahoos and hatemongers of Illinois jsut aren’t ready to elect a black man from Chicago as their senator.

Oh yeah? Anyone ever heard of a guy named Barack Obama? If memory serves, he’s black and from Illinois. Can you imagine the hue and cry that would follow if a GOP Senate leader placed a call like Harry Reid’s to Blagojevich? Do you suppose it would get a bit more coverage than Reid’s call has received?

Oregon To Tax The Poor For Gaia

Those madcap Greenie state planners that have turned Oregon into a showcase of planning theory at the expense of economic sensibility are at it again:

Oregon ran a pilot program in 2006 and 2007 that fitted 300 cars with GPS receivers, which kept track of the cars’ mileage. The receivers also kept records of when the cars were on the road, noting whether they traveled during rush hour or not. When the drivers went to several specially-equipped gas stations, they paid a mileage tax based on how far they had driven and when they drove, rush hour being more expensive than the wee hours. Taxing mileage — as opposed to trying to raise fuel taxes — is an idea that’s not only raising eyebrows, it’s also raising interest. Seven other states are reported to be interested in finding a publicly-palatable way to tax mileage. (Auto Blog)

Think about it for a moment. Who moves to far-flung neighborhoods because they can’t afford the pricier neighborhoods closer to job centers? For sure, some are well to do, seeking out quiet upscale developments (like ours). But we live just 15 miles from our OC office. The ones who really move out to the distant burbs are the less well to do, who move much further out to find homes they can afford, and they drive 40, 50 or 70 miles to get to work. They already live lives that are highly taxed emotionally. Now Oregon and several other states would tax them to offset reductions to state tax income brought about by higher efficiency cars. Where are the cries about environmental justice? Are those cries reserved only for industry’s impact on poor people, and off limits for government’s impacts?

If Google Were Truly Unrestrained…

I’ve written on several occasions about the left-wing, secularist bias that shows up in Google’s logo tweaks (here, here, here). The always refreshingly witty guys at The Nose On Your Face got set off on the subject this holiday season, explaining themselves thusly:

Google’s practice of dressing up their logo to commemorate selective holidays has generated much speculation about the company’s politics. Some have suggested that Google’s yearly tributes to holidays like France’s Bastille Day, Earth Day, and the Persian New Year, and ignoring of holidays like Memorial Day, Christmas and Flag Day, indicates a decidedly anti-American and anti Judeo-Christian stance.

They then conjured up a half-dozen or so logos showing how Google would decorate itself if it shook off all self-censorship and let its true worldview shine through. Here are two examples, starting with Labor Day: