The six-block scar: Amazing satellite photos pinpoint devastation of Joplin as it emerges that 232 people are still missing

UK Daily Mail  "Following the devastating tornado which ripped though Joplin at the weekend, these satellite images show the extent of the damage.''
"Before and after aerial photos show the shocking extent of the damage caused by the twister in the Missouri city - this image shows a six-block path of destruction."
Hat tip to Don Standlee, Arlington, TX.

Back to the Pre-American World?

Victor Davis Hanson  ..."There have been plenty of thugs who threatened their neighbors over the last 30 years. Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Manuel Noriega, and the Taliban were all deposed from rule only by American power. The “lost” war in Iraq resulted in a democratic and, for now, still viable government in place of genocide. Afghanistan is depressing, but the medieval Taliban still have remained out of power for nearly a decade.

"In short, the old pre-American world was as unstable and dangerous as would be a new post-American update. But both retrenchments were choices that an unsure and depressed United States made — not symptoms, then or now, of inherent weakness or inevitable decline."
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.

Memorial Day

 Memorial Day links to Browse  

http://memorialday2011.org/



http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/danasummers

Making Sense of Natural Disasters

Breakpoint  "The standard Christian answer, “it’s the consequence of sin and the fall,” can come up short, especially for the victims of nature’s fury. While it is easy to draw a cause-and-effect relationship between man’s moral choices and much of human suffering—diseases, plagues, poverty, and war—man’s culpability for tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanoes is less than apparent.
"So the question remains: Why, in a world created by an all-powerful, all-good God, are natural disasters, which claim hundreds to hundreds of thousands of lives, permitted to exist? Is God a monster or merely a klutz?"   Read more...

The Obama Administration’s ‘Sidam Touch’

Pajamas Media "According to the Urban Dictionary, a person with “the Sidam Touch” has an ability that is “[t]he opposite of The Midas Touch, which turns everything to gold.” A person with the Sidam Touch “breaks and/or ruins everything.”
"To say that President Barack Obama and his administration, especially what’s left of his economic team, have the Sidam Touch is the understatement of the 21st century."
....
"Since President Obama and his brain trust surely know that the Sidam Touch actions being taken against Texas will hinder its economy and hurt job growth, one can only conclude that they don’t care. This leads to a broader and much more important question: do they really care if the economy recovers anywhere else, or are they on an entirely different mission?"

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Mexico’s Immigration Laws: The Untold Story

The Foundry  "And though criticism of U.S. immigration laws can be fierce – particularly in the case of Arizona’s SB 1070, the Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Acts – Mexico’s much harsher immigration laws rarely get noticed." ....
"But receiving far less scrutiny was how President Calderon and his country are dealing with illegal immigration. Upon closer examination, Arizona’s SB 1070 looks like amnesty compared to Mexican law."....
"With nearly sixty percent of illegal immigrants originating from Mexico, it is particularly helpful to remember that our neighbor to the south is dealing with illegal immigration in a much harsher manner than the United States, a fact that illustrates the hypocrisy of Calderon’s criticisms of Arizona’s new law."
Andres Celedon, an intern at The Heritage Foundation is a junior at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is studying public policy with a minor in history.

Arizona Wins Big in Supreme Court Immigration Ruling "Arizona won a spectacular victory today in the Supreme Court in its ongoing efforts to do something about the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who reside in the state and cost Arizona taxpayers an estimated $1.3 billion a year. In its ruling against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Obama administration, the Court also disproved the breathless claims of liberals and the editorial pages of publications like the New York Times that the conservative justices on the Court are just the handmaidens of big business who always rule in favor of corporate America."


http://knowledgeczar.blogspot.com/2010/04/illegal-immigration-is-color-blind.html



From What I Know : ...."I fear that what the Democrats are doing is using the Hispanics for political gain, letting them in illegally and then attempting to defame and ridicule anyone that doesn't think it's right for them to so blatantly mistreat and victimize a whole race of people. We have a real slavery problem in this country, and it's being perpetuated by those who pretend to be helping those they enslave. They're not helping. They're creating dependency." By TKZ

A few years ago when our church in Santa Maria, Ca, was in a heavily Latino area of town, I was setting up a kids game square in a field about a block from where a Cinco de Mayo parade was being held. I heard music and cheering with Mexican flags flying while setting up the American flag for our opening pledge. Returning to the game square a few minutes later with the children, we found the American flag to be nothing but ashes with not a soul around. Somebody there did not like this country.
Tunnel Dweller.

Alligators, Moats and Other Such Nonsense  "President Obama gave what was billed as an important speech on immigration last week near the border in El Paso, Texas. Unfortunately, it was one of the most demagogic moments in recent presidential history. Nearly everything Obama said was either factually incorrect or deliberately misleading." Victor Davis Hanson