Pied Piper

Homeland Security on ABC has been on my TV appointment list ever since it debuted.  I thought it was going to be a show like Third Watch (NBC, 1999-2005), where it shows fictional composite officers and situations of the real-world Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and other Homeland Security Department-supervised Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).

As it turns out, the show does focus on those real-world agencies, but it’s more like COPS than Third Watch, in that they show you the real thing.  Still, I like it.

Evidently, the show has had an effect, so much so that the open borders rabble protested the ABC studios in Burbank this past weekend, and the few Patriots left in Southern California were there to counter-protest.

Before you so easily take sides, heed an opinion of the show that I have recently formulated.

Shows like CSI and Law & Order are almost always at the top of the ratings charts.  And it has become quite a problem for real world prosecutors — more and more, jurors are more hesitant to return guilty verdicts, because they see how well the fictional cops do it on CSI, and therefore expect the real world cops to do just the same.  You know, they’re supposed to ask just the right question in just the right way to just the right person, and find just the right hair in just the right room after hours on end of searching, in order to bag a murder suspect.

And it gets worse.  Criminals watch CSI, too, and some of them are beginning to cover their tracks well enough such that even if the real world cops were as good as the ones on CSI, they couldn’t bag the doer.  More and more murders are going unsolved because of this.

Perhaps the writers and networks, in the spirit of the public interest, want to promulgate the notion that the cops always get their man, so don’t even try to commit a crime.  The sword is actually cutting in the other direction.

I think Homeland Security is suffering from something similar.  I could easily understand how some average shmuck who doesn’t live in an Aztlan border state can watch this show and think the immigration problem is far more under control than it actually is.  If you watch Homeland Security week in and week out, like I do, and wouldn’t know any better, you would think that CBP/ICE/TSA always get their man, always preclude every attempt at illicit border entry, always round up border jumpers not far from the actual border, always nab every bag of weed and brick of crack boobyhatched in cars and SUVs coming from Mexico, and always turn away at the airport ne’er-do-wells from Pakistan with bad intentions.

If that’s the case, then explain all the illegal drugs and illegal aliens in the country.  Explain 9/11.

And, similar to the CSI Effect where criminals cover their trails far better, I bet there are going to be a lot of drug runners and human smugglers and other ne’er-do-wells who will watch Homeland Security, and pick up on the methods that CBP/ICE/TSA use to weed out suspicious people and behavior, and alter their tactics to slide by the authorities.

To net it out, ABC is trying to deball the right wing on the immigration issue, by promulgating the notion that the real authorities have the problem far more under control than it actually is, and that there are actually very few illegal aliens living in the interior of the coterminous U.S.  Therefore, no need to elect right-wingers, because Bush/Obama are doing just fine, you see at 8/7c every Tuesday night.

The open borders left should love this show, and the Patriots really shouldn’t be defending it.  Even if they like it.

UPDATE 3/14: ABC is tabling “HLS” for now, and may not ever bring it back.  Its ratings are poor, but when your competition is American Idol, NCIS, Biggest Loser and Reaper, anything you put up on that time slot is going to have poor ratings.  I have mixed feelings about what looks to be “HLS’s: cancellation, for as I said, I like it, but I’m aware of the propaganda angle.

Don’t Rest On Your Laurels Just Yet, Taxpayer

CNS:

Obama Administration Says No to Transportation Secretary’s Mileage Tax Idea

AP Interview: LaHood’s Talk of Mileage Tax Nixed

Washington (AP) – President Barack Obama will not adopt a policy to tax motorists based on how many miles they drive instead of how much gasoline they buy, his chief spokesman said Friday.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs commented after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told The Associated Press that he wants to consider the idea, which has been proposed in some states but has angered many drivers.

Now it’s clear what’s going on — Ray LaHood fell on his sword and floated a ridiculous proposal in order to get people to accept the sublime alternative, which is what the Obama Administration really wants.  President Clinton used this trick all the time — it got so bad that the running joke in the late 1990s was that if Clinton introduced a bill to implode the Capitol, the Republicans in Congress would introduce an alternative to phase the implosion in over five years.

Now all that’s left to find out is what new tax is just around the corner that the “mileage” thing was just a diversion around.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Chicago Sun-Times:  Surveillance cams help fight crime, city says – PUBLIC SAFETY | Goal is to have them on every corner

Then and only then will I feel confident enough to walk the streets of the South Side at midnight.

CNS:  Reich’s Call for Unionization is ‘a 1930s Solution to a 2009 Problem,’ Economists Say

Someone named “Reich” calls for a 1930s paradigm.  Who knew?

AP/Obama:  Cops clock man driving 137 mph in ’93 Honda Civic

They must mean 137 meters per hour, because you’re not getting a Civic up to 137 miles an hour.

AP/Obama:  Obama warns mayors not to waste stimulus money

Why?  Wasting money for big city mayors is tantamount with oxygen and water.

Daily Beast:  Katie Talks Katie

How can Katie Couric talk about herself as if she has more than one personality?  From what I’ve seen, she’s the same beyotch all the time.

CNS:  NY Post Cartoon of Dead Chimpanzee Stirs Outrage

NYP apologizes by starting a new section of the printed edition — “Chimp My Ride.”

CNS:  Sidney Poitier: Cap CEO Salaries In Hollywood and Everywhere Else

Just not those of actors salaries.

CNS:  Calif. Republicans Keep Their No-New-Taxes Promise

They both united to vote against a tax-raising budget for the state.

CNS:  Cheered in Canada, Obama Treads Lightly

Treading, like most other forms of fun, might be prohibited in Canada.

Jihad Watch:  “Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe” gets $3,600 from European Court of Human Rights

Will there be anything left for those who had their human rights violated on 7/7?

Jihad Watch:  Hamas sends letter to Barack Hussein Obama

Ann Coulter sends a letter to B. Hussein Obama.

Jihad Watch:  Hillary seeks to improve US image with Muslims

Maybe she’ll take a page from her husband, and start calling 9/11 “collateral damage.”

P-D:  Post offices ready to help with passports

They think a lot of people want to get out of Dodge before the shootin’ starts?

P-D:  Humane Society rescues 150 dogs, 1 tiger

The owner of the breeding mill could have sworn that there were 300 dogs.

P-D:  Democrats on Roy Blunt: Missouri needs a fresh perspective

“So, we’ll run a Carnahan.”

P-D:  New ‘hip-hop’ GOP open to all, including ‘one-armed midgets’

Making amends for the days when the GOP had a “No Hip-Hopping One-Armed Midgets” sign out on their front door.

Blue Collar Republican:  Chicago (Memphis) Tea Party 2009

This means that if you approach I-270 from I-70 going east in St. Louis County, and you exit at 270, it means you’ll get to a tea party no matter which direction you take.

KFVS-12:  Illinois gov.: Burris should resign from Senate

Let’s see.  Pat Quinn wanted Rod Blagojevich to resign, then he became Governor.  Seems like every time this guy wants someone to quit, he moves up the political food chain.  Wonder if he’s interested in being President.

Looking Toward 2010 — Round Up the Barlettocrats

If he’s speaking to the Allegheny County GOP, then I get he’s talking to other party groups throughout the state.  Methinks he wants to take on either Rendell or Specter, both are up in 2010.

My bet is that, even though it would have to start with challenging an incumbent in his own party, he’d take on Specter before Rendell, because as Pat Toomey showed in 2004, Specter is very vulnerable within his own party, only beating Toomey by not even 2 percent, with Specter having the wind to his back of then-Sen. Santorum and then-President Bush, plus the state and national party establishment and the media.  With his porkulus treachery, I think Barletta thinks Specter is even more vulnerable for 2010.

Ed Rendell, on the other hand, has a solid and loyal constituency of otherwise Republican-leaning voters in the Philly ‘burbs (“Rendellicans”) that knew him as the Mayor of Philly before he had statewide ambitions, so they might not flip.  Unless the PA Gov. has term limits, in which case it’ll open for 2010, but even then, a U.S. Senator can have more sway over Barletta’s keynote issue, immigration, than a Governor.  On the other hand, if Barletta has the Presidency in mind, he might think being Governor is still a better springboard to the White House, in spite of last year.

It should be noted that Barletta gets some pretty good Democrat rank-and-file support every time he runs.  He had enough Democrat support in a pretty solid Democrat town to become Mayor to begin with, and won re-election in 2007 by winning both the Republican and Democrat primaries, the latter coming by write-ins against a former mayor, and even though he fell just short of topping longtime incumbent Paul Kanjorski in PA-11 last November, that he got so close in a very Democrat district meant that he had to have gotten a lot of crossover votes, and indeed the local media did quote a lot of people who did say that Barletta was the first Republican they ever voted for in their lives.  So for every “Rendellican,” there might be the same number of “Barlettocrats.”

What? No BET?

Multichannel News:

ESPN, Discovery Are Top ‘Must-Keep’ Cable Nets: Survey

If viewers had to pick just a handful of TV channels they could keep, ESPN and Discovery Channel would be the first two cable networks on their lists, according to a survey by research firm Solutions Research Group.

SRG asked 1,200 U.S. TV viewers which channels they considered “must keep” given a limited lineup during the sweeps period in November 2008.

The four major broadcast networks topped the rankings, with consumers selecting in order of preference ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. About 81% of those surveyed said they would keep at least one of the four networks if they had a very limited set of channels, and 57% said they would keep two of the four.

Rounding out the rest of the top 10 in order were: ESPN, Discovery Channel, History, Sci Fi Channel, HBO and Food Network. Of the two major cable news networks, CNN came in at No. 14 and Fox News was No. 18.

Compared with a similar survey SRG conducted in the fourth quarter of 2007, Sci Fi moved into the No. 8 spot from No. 14 a year earlier, and Food Network entered into the top 10 for the first time.

Other “momentum brands” in the 2008 survey included USA at the No. 11 spot (up from 20 a year earlier), TNT at 13 (up from 23) and TBS at 23 (up from 32).

A&E slipped to 21 from 16, according to the survey, while MTV fell to 36th place from 33 in the fall of 2007. CW also lost momentum, now ranking  25th, down four spots from a year earlier.

Top gainers in the 18-34 demographic were VH1 (up 10 spots to No. 13), Bravo (up 14 spots to No. 19) and Spike (up 10 spots to No. 21), according to SRG.

I don’t read BET anywhere in this article.  Which is why the NAACP opposes A La Carte for cable and satellite, because they know that most people would unload BET like the plague, and it would bleed money such that whatever conglomerate owns it would shut it down.

Officer Eric

Steve Sailer:

America’s Top Cop says: “Ve haf vays of making you talk about race!”

New Attorney-General Eric Holder announced at a Department of Justice shindig marking Black History Month:

I know, I’ve covered this story before.  But what I don’t like is referring to the U.S. Attorney General as “America’s Top Cop.”  It’s only because it used to be that most Federal law enforcement agencies were under the DOJ.  In reality, the AG is America’s top prosecutor.  Especially since most Fed LEAs are now under HLS, making Janet Napolitano “America’s Top Cop.”  Which is a good thing, we need big strong men to be cops.

Save the FBI and ATF, the FBI stayed under DOJ and the ATF was moved from Treasury to DOJ at the same time that most of the rest were moved to HLS to correspond with it being designated a cabinet-level agency in 2002.

In reality, that most Federal LEAs, plus the U.S. Attorneys and the Correctional Institutions were under the same roof created a horrible conflict of interest, as we all learned from the Tom Sell saga.  Ideally, the FBI and ATF should be moved to HLS, and the prisons and their management should be plucked out of DOJ and moved to their own cabinet-level agency, the Federal Department of Corrections.