The Taco Bell E. Coli outbreak continues to rage on, and this time, the feds believe a different veggie is to blame. Apparently, the E. Coli which has now infected 71 people across the country, is being carried by lettuce, which, if I recall correctly, is found on just about everything served at Taco Bell.
And just to make things interesting, Taco Bell's lesser known rival, Taco John's, has an E. Coli outbreak of it's own. At this point, I think it's advisable to avoid Americanized Mexican fast food altogether. Stick to good, wholesome, old fashioned, patriotic food like McDonald's. There's absolutely no health risk there, right? As the brilliant marketers over at the golden arches put it: I'm lovin' it! (TM).
2. Government enforces law. Uproar ensues.
Why is the fact that federal agents arrested 1200+ illegal immigrants in a series of massive meat-packing plant raids causing such a hubub? Our law enforcement agents have one job: to enforce the law. Illegal immigration is (as the name implies) against the law. People that are upset by the raid have only one rational course of action: to attempt to repeal our countries immigration laws. Complaining that our law enforcers are enforcing our laws is ridiculous. The following is an excerpt from the linked article that you didn't (and in all likelihood, won't) read:
Immigration officials last month informed Swift (the company that hired the illegal workers) that it would remove unauthorized workers on Dec. 4, but Swift asked a federal judge to prevent agents from conducting the raid, arguing it would cause "substantial and irreparable injury" to its business.
What a stupid company. It hires a bunch of illegals (although they claim that they had no knowledge of illegal workers in the company), is found out and warned of the upcoming raid, and then tries to convince the government not to arrest a bunch of criminals because it would hurt it's business. That's not how it works. When someone breaks a federal law, they get punished. It doesn't matter who they are, or who they work for. Justice is supposed to be blind.
Again, although it's very understandable that some might feel empathy for the illegals in our country who are just trying to make a better life for their families, any quarrel people have with these raids should rest with the laws themselves, not the enforcement.
3. Excellent Comments on Iraq
Here's a very insightful quote concerning one of the major mistakes the US made in our "war on terror" in Iraq:
"Imagine one day waking up and finding out that your nation's leaders had completely dismantled all police and military. As a result, there is not one policeman, or state, or federal law enforcement agent, or even one national guard or any soldier to protect you from criminal elements, or terrorists. It will be total chaos.
"Then imagine that instead of calling back the army and security forces, the authorities in this imaginary scenario decided to form a new army and police from racist militias, some mercenaries and organised crime gangs.
"With the new government-issued budget and government-issued vehicles, these armed groups begin arresting, torturing, murdering innocent people either because of their faith, or creed, or purely for profit.
"This is exactly what has happened in
That quote comes from none other than the vice president of Iraq, Tareq Al-Hashemi. And he's right on. The United States was quite naive to think that a peaceful country would emerge gently out of the state of anarchy it created. The fact is that Iraq is made up of several groups of people who want to kill each other. For years, Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, for all it's faults, did one thing well: it stabilized the country. The various radical factions co-existing in Iraq needed, as Hobbes (the philosopher, not the tiger) would say, "a common power to keep them all in awe" . Saddam delivered this in spades. When America dismantled the Iraqi Government and all it's institutions, they created a vacuum of power that the opposing religious and ethnic groups are still violently attempting to fill. The US-supported Iraqi military and police force is helpless in the face of the escalating violence because most of the people perpetrating the violence are in their ranks. Whole regions are under the control of radical militias. The leader of the most powerful Shiite death squads and militias, Muqtada Al-Sadr is a powerful member of Iraq's democratic government. Essentially, everything that could have gone wrong is going wrong. With conservative estimates of Iraqi deaths currently standing at over 55,000, and high estimates going over 100,000, the death toll in this period of anarchy is already exceeding that of Saddam's reign.
Of course, "cut and run" still isn't an option. America seriously screwed up Iraq, and if we pull out before the job of stabilizing the country is done, the Iraqis will suffer even more. It just makes you wish we had leaders that could think twice before doing something so stupid. The worst part of it all is that even if the country is successfully stabilized, it'll just be another islamic nation, which is something we could certainly do without. In the long run, I don't think that Iraq's Islamic democracy will be any improvement over Saddam's secular government. I guess only time will tell.
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