The New Chainik Hocker

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Trabajo, senior?

You drive by them quickly, trying not to make eye contact. You don’t slow down and you don’t stop for anything but red lights and you definitely don’t park and get out. If you have to park- especially if you drive a pickup truck, as I do- you walk away from your vehicle as quick as possible.

You know they are desperate men, and you don’t dare look them in the eye.

They are the day laborers, standing around all day in all kinds of weather, ready to do any kind of work for almost any pay. And you can’t look them in the eye because you have no work for them. You can’t look them in the eye because they work twice as hard as you do for a quarter the pay. You can’t look them in the eye because you know they are the targets of racism, ignorance, stupidity, and hatred, and you can’t help but wonder, if the shoe was on the other foot- how would you act?

You imagine what they must think of you and your people. You see the kind of abuse and ridicule they face every day, and you just can’t deal with the thought of what they must think of you and yours.

And now we want to take away their jobs.

In a surprise twist, the Township Committee has dropped the idea of creating a downtown muster zone and instead may designate the downtown a "no-stopping zone" to make it illegal for contractors to pick up per-diem workers. The township attorney will now draft an ordinance that makes the downtown area — Cunliffe wasn't specific, but that usually refers to the box of Route 9 to Lexington Avenue and First to Fourth streets — a "no-stopping zone." The ordinance also would likely ban standing, cruising, double-parking or picking people up, Cunliffe said, adding that he wants a legal ruling on whether his idea can be implemented.

From the Asbury Park Press.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

A Little Break From All the Politics

I've been listening to a new CD by Hasidic recording artist Lipa Schmeltzer, and it is really good.

I'm a big fan of Lipa's. Here's a video of him singing his song "Abi Mileibt" (at least we live). This music video was part of a fundraiser for HASC, a charity which you should be donating to.

Everyone who knows me is aware off my odd obsession with covers, remixes, and even rip-offs. I like to see people doing new things with old songs, and this certainly qualifies.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Fun Facts about Chainik Hocker!

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Chainik Hocker!

It's bad luck for a flag to touch Chainik Hocker.
Chainik Hockerology is the study of Chainik Hocker.
Chainik Hocker can be seen from space.
Chainik Hocker can grow up to three feet in a 24 hour period.
The blood of mammals is red, the blood of insects is yellow, and the blood of Chainik Hocker is blue!
If you toss Chainik Hocker 10000 times, he will not land heads 5000 times, but more like 4950, because his head weighs more and thus ends up on the bottom!
In the 1600s, tobacco was frequently prescribed to treat headaches, bad breath and Chainik Hocker.
Chainik Hocker can last longer without water than a camel can.
The pupil of an octopus's eye is shaped like Chainik Hocker.
Ancient Chinese artists would never paint pictures of Chainik Hocker.

Via Petitdov.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Saddam and Islamic Fascism

Stephen F. Hayes from The Weekly Standard has heroically chronicled the connections between the former tyrant and militant Islamic groups, an axis which everyone knows never existed

The official continued: "[Saddam] used these groups because he was interested in extending his influence and extending the influence of Iraq. There are definite and absolute ties to terrorism. The evidence is there, especially at the network level. How high up in the government was it sanctioned? I can't tell you. I don't know whether it was run by Qusay [Hussein] or [Izzat Ibrahim] al-Duri or someone else. I'm just not sure. But to say Iraq wasn't involved in terrorism is flat wrong."

Read it here

In fact, Hayes has even written a book on this

Yehudi lo megaresh yehudi!

Viz. this post:

Hevron has been declared a closed military zone, upon order of IDF Central District Commander Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh. Non-residents of the Jewish section of the city will not be allowed in by the IDF.

"Hebron, the first Jewish city in Eretz Yisrael, the roots of the Jewish people, site of the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, was closed to the Jewish people for 19 years, between 1948 and 1967, when under Jordanian occupation following the War of Independence," a statement from Hevron's Jewish community said following the announcement. "Entrance to Ma'arat HaMachpela was off-limits to Jews for 700 years, from 1267, following the Mameluk victory over the Crusaders, until the Six-Day War in 1967.

"Now, the State of Israel, impersonating the Mameluks and the Jordanians, is again closing Cave of the Patriarchs to Jews. What could be more dastardly than placing the 2nd holiest site to the Jewish people in all the world, again, off-limits?"

From Arutz Sheva, the only news outlet on the Internet who cares about this story, appearently.

Yeshiva World links to some pics.

Warning: the following link contains disturbing images.

Chevron blog- pics.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Nullification Makes a Comeback

In the seventy years between the ratification of the Constitution of these United States and the Civil War, one of the darkest shadows hanging over the Republic was that of nullification.

The theory of nullification is that any state has a right to nullify–or cancel–any federal law within its own borders.

The South used nullification to restrain the federal government, first during the fallout from the Alien and Sedition Acts. The agrarian Jeffersonians saw these laws, which were passed during the administration of John Adams, as tyrannical encroachments into the lives of citizens, and Jefferson and Madison quickly moved to destroy them. Together they passed the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which nullified the hated law within those two states.

Over thirty years later, Vice President John C. Calhoun dug up their argument and attempted to nullify yet another federal law. In 1828, Calhoun secretly authored the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, which encouraged Southern states to nullify the tariff of 1828, a protective tariff that was universally deplored by the South.

Four years later, after the tariff of 1832 was passed, South Carolina’s state legislature passed the Nullification Ordinance, which nullified both the tariffs of 1828 and 1832. President Andrew Jackson threatened to hang Calhoun as a traitor and signed the Force Bill, which authorized federal troops to be deployed in order to collect the tariff.

Twenty nine years later, South Carolina borrowed heavily from the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions as well as the Nullification Ordinance when it seceded from the Union in response to the election of Abraham Lincoln. Four years and 620,000 dead later, the issue of whether states have the right to nullify federal laws had been settled forever. Or had it?

On November 8th, 2005, the City of San Francisco included on its ballot a measure called Proposition I. In its entirety, it states “Shall it be City policy to oppose military recruiting in public schools and consider funding scholarships for education and training that could provide an alternative to military service?”

Residents of San Francisco approved the proposition by an overwhelming margin of 20%. However, the measure itself will not change anything. The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) revokes federal funding for all schools who ban military recruiters on campus.

For over a decade prior to NCLBA, San Francisco had military recruiters from public schools. The city only changed its policy after NCLBA was passed, not wanting to have federal funding cut. Because of the funding clause, the Bay City’s Proposition I lacks any real punch, but its lasting impact is significant.

If any city across the nation can vote to ban military recruiters and in fact, actively hand out scholarships as an alternative to military service, the nation is in serious peril. Our military defends and serves us all, and no state, city, or town has a right to deny recruiters access to schools. If such denial becomes a trend, the military would be crippled by low recruitment levels. As we are currently in a state of war, low recruitment puts additional strain upon the courageous troops serving not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, South Korea, and across the globe. Inadequate troop levels mean higher casualties not only for ourselves but for Iraqis and would cataclysmically destabilize our Armed Forces at a time when the creation of a free and democratic Iraq is closer than ever before.

The only thing keeping San Francisco from actually banning military recruiters is the clause in NCLBA that ties funding to recruitment access, and even that clause is under assault. A group of college law schools, intellectuals, and “free speech” activists are challenging the Solomon Amendment, a piece of legislation which mandates that all colleges who accept federal funding also allow military recruiters on campus. If the Solomon Amendment is overturned, cities like San Francisco could potentially sue for the recruitment access clause in NCLBA to be overturned as well.

On December 6th, the case of Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR) was argued before the Supreme Court. At issue was FAIR’s contention that the Solomon Amendment violated the college’s first amendment rights.

FAIR’s case was built upon the fact that the military currently maintains a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” towards gay soldiers. This supposedly conflicts with the tolerant progressivism of these universities, and any federal law which mandates that an institution abide by a policy with which it does not agree is unconstitutional.

A closer look reveals that FAIR’s position is anything but tolerant. Justice Steven Breyer questioned FAIR attorney Joshua Rosenkranz during the oral arguments. He asked if colleges that held a similar aversion to the federal racial integration policy should be entitled to the same protection that FAIR was seeking. Rosenkranz’s answer was “absolutely.” Consequently, FAIR is then endorsing a policy which could be used to deny blacks or any other minority entrance into a college because the college had an academic right to disagree with federal non-discrimination laws.

Things become more absurd from there. Rosenkranz went on to cite the 1995 case Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. Mayor of Thurmon, where the KKK argued that the federal government cannot compel the organization to admit minorities. These progressives who claim to be representing tolerance are citing the KKK in their defense.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court does not look like it will overturn the Solomon Amendment. Of course, nothing forces the colleges to accept federal aid in the first place. If they feel morally compelled to ban military recruiters, they can do so, but at the cost of grant money. Thus they are really trying to have it both ways: keep their pockets lined yet be able to nullify any federal law with which they disagree.

With the Solomon Amendment secure, military recruiters will still be able to recruit on college campuses. It also means that the clause in the NCLBA preventing schools from banning recruiters will be upheld. But the San Francisco and FAIR cases provide a disturbing trend in which educational institutions are systematically threatening our military’s strength and actively assaulting recruitment.

Not only is this a reckless endangerment of our Armed Forces, it also runs against the principle of federalism which the Civil War attempted to settle. San Francisco’s and FAIR’s defenses are nothing more than politically correct versions of nullification. It is the same reasoning advanced by John C. Calhoun and it runs contrary to the fundamental tenets of republican federalism upon which our political system was based.

There is a reason why some laws are passed at a federal instead of state level, and just as South Carolina had no right to nullify the tariffs of 1828 and 1832, San Francisco has no right to nullify No Child Left Behind nor does FAIR possess the ability to wipe the Solomon Amendment from the books. If, however, they do succeed in nullifying these federal laws, I’m sure the ghost of Andy Jackson can come up with a suitable federal response.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

RIP OFFICER FRANCIS HENNESSY, NYPD

Hennessy collapsed on the street shortly after responding to a call of a man with a gun at Farragut Road and Flatbush Avenue around 9:30 Monday night. The call turned out to be unfounded.

Fidelis Ad Mortem.

US army in Iraq institutionally racist, claims British officer.

From the Al-Guardian:

A senior British officer has criticised the US army for its conduct in Iraq, accusing it of institutional racism, moral righteousness, misplaced optimism, and of being ill-suited to engage in counter-insurgency operations.

Huh?

Moral righteousness is a sin? Misplaced optimism is a mistake?
Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster was second in command at the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (CMATT), the military training arm of the Office of Security Cooperation (OSC), a division of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Google anything that has to do with military persons above the rank of major and you find yourself wading into a cesspool of information, looking for a diamond of fact. Sure, you find a mountain of facts and figures, but you have to dig through it all, decrypting acronyms as you go, fighting to stay awake as you imagine a flowchart written by a man standing on a trampoline in an earthquake.

In the dark. Drunk. In a foreign language.

Anyway, Aylwin-Foster’s job was training Iraqi soldiers and cops. Seems he wasn’t happy at having to work with a bunch of yahoo white trash hick colonials. From the Al-Guardian article:

American soldiers, says Brig Aylwin-Foster, were "almost unfailingly courteous and considerate". But he says "at times their cultural insensitivity, almost certainly inadvertent, arguably amounted to institutional racism".

Inadvertent cultural insensitivity = racism. I’m sorry, institutional racism. Okay. What kind of “inadvertent cultural insensitivity”? Did some Guardsmen from North Carolina walk into a mosque and light a candle in front of a picture of Dale Earnhardt? Did some female soldier fail to wear a desert camo burqa? Did someone call a “morale officer” Reverend? Because, as we all know, not knowing everything about another culture and not acting in accordance with another culture’s mores is proof positive, admissible in a court of law, that you are racist.
Tomorrow I’m going to my lawyer and drawing papers suing Ted Kennedy for depriving me of my civil rights. I’m going to demand that he appear in public wearing a yarmulka at all times, and that he say the proper blessing on Scotch when he takes a swig from his hip flask- although he usually does this when the CSPAN cameras are on Senatrix Boxter, so that might not fly.

After all, his failing to follow the rules of my culture is, by definition, racist.

General Aylwin-Foster goes on to say that the US army is imbued with an unparalleled sense of patriotism, duty, passion and talent. "Yet it seemed weighed down by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, a predisposition to offensive operations and a sense that duty required all issues to be confronted head-on."

Okay, Nigel. I’ll give you the bureaucracy and the stiflingly hierarchical outlook, although it seems to me that a military kinda sorta needs a hierarchy. But the predisposition to offensive operations? The sense that all issues need to be confronted head on? Wha? You kiddin, right? We invaded Iraq, man. You don’t win an invasion with defensive operations. We proved that in Vietnam, and the Israelis proved it again in Lebanon.
The story goes on:

While US officers in Iraq criticised their allies for being too reluctant to use force, their strategy was "to kill or capture all terrorists and insurgents: they saw military destruction of the enemy as a strategic goal in its own right". In short, the brigadier says, "the US army has developed over time a singular focus on conventional warfare, of a particularly swift and violent kind". Such an unsophisticated approach, ingrained in American military doctrine, is counter-productive, exacerbating the task the US faced by alienating significant sections of the population, argues Brig Aylwin-Foster.

Well, I suppose that romping and stomping through Iraq, killing everything that moves and setting fire to everything that doesn’t, is rather unsubtle. While it would be a good way to accomplish our goals of making the bad people dead, it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that not everyone in Iraq is bad people. But that isn’t what they’ve been doing there. Our soldiers in Iraq are bending over backward to be solicitous to civilians who live in the middle of a combat zone. The US military has, arguably, put its own soldiers’ lives in danger by not allowing them to fire on mosques even when they were taking fire from those mosques.
But, says General Aylwin-Foster, US military commanders are too darn focused on doing the thing the US military pays them for, i.e. shooting bad guys and making sure stuff gets blowed up good. Those guys should, like, learn to see the big picture, maaaan.

What he calls a sense of "moral righteousness" contributed to the US response to the killing of four American contractors in Falluja in the spring of 2004. As a "come-on" tactic by insurgents, designed to provoke a disproportionate response, it succeeded, says the brigadier, as US commanders were "set on the total destruction of the enemy".

What? Outrageous! Who ever heard of such a thing, soldiers set on the total destruction of the enemy! Why, its exactly this kind of violent tendencies that cause Girl Scouts not to invite Marine Corps gunnery sergeants to their tea parties. They’re all so totally set on the total destruction of the enemy that they can hardly focus on the drama between Mister Bunny and Barbie.

Those soldiers sure are a bunch of meanies. You’d almost think they’re over there to fight a war or something, the way they go around being heavily armed and all wearing the same thing and having a rigid hierarchy and being totally set on the destruction of the enemy all the time like that. Plus, they also go around being racist in an institutional manner. Not to mention the insensitivity to the local culture.

……….

Okay, devil’s advocate time. The soldiery is aces at seeing that things get blowed up real good, of course, but notso hotso at rebuilding the sewage system and getting school back in session and finding and staffing the new fire truck at Hook and Ladder Company 42 (“The Thieves of Baghdad”). To be fair, they aren’t trained for things like that. It simply isn’t realistic to expect soldiers to be good civil engineers and governmental administrators. They are having to rely on common sense for things like how to put a country back together again once you’ve blown it apart (not to mention the fact that it really wasn’t working all that great beforehand). Credit where credit is due, the common sense approach has worked a lot better than we had any right to expect. But it isn’t really enough. In this, the smelly hippies have a small inkling of a point.

So, President Bush, before we invade Iran, can we take like six months to put together a corps of, oh, colonial administrators? The British didn’t just move into a country and kill everyone, back in the day. They wanted to make a buck off the place, after all. So they had civil servants ready and waiting right behind the army in order to get things running as soon as possible. Not a bad idea.

I hear Nigel Aylwin-Foster has some good ideas on the subject, maybe you can ask him.

Monday, January 09, 2006

That Lileks fella sure does have a way with words.

God, I hate spammers. I hate them like I hate spray-paint vandals. Somewhere in the afterlife they will be repeatedly pounded in the nuts with Thor’s hammer, if there’s any justice.

Mwahahaha. RTHT.

That's Just Wrong.

I have been using the Internet since 1995. I have been in housing projects, crack houses, and a Wall Street brokerage. I have worked in East New York and the South Bronx and Atlantic City, New Jersey.

But this is honestly the creepiest thing I've ever seen.

You know the websites that sell small patches of thier space to advertisers? Well... this is kind of like that.

NSFW (not safe for work).