There’s a Vanity Fair article about Sarah Palin I want you all to read… As I read it, I couldn’t help but recall the pandering, blackmailing, populist politician Willie Stark from All the King’s Men. Is America stupid enough to elect Palin in 2012? I think we are, and I hope I’m proven wrong in 26 months or less.

Also, have fun with the Sarah Palin backstage rider…

I tire of hearing people declare the Constitution is founded upon Judaeo-Christian principles and then proceed to use that as an argument to justify something horrendous, like ending true religious freedom or letting corporations or populists blind us to their insidious attempts to further undermine the dignity of humanity. Let’s set the facts straight: the Constitution is based upon the laws of mammon, not God.

Mammon is the Hebrew word for financial dealings. One who deals with money is a mammonai, simple as that. For those that claim to be Christian fundamentalists, they need to know that Jesus told his followers that they can choose to serve either God or mammon. The two are exclusive. And yet, the Constitution enshrines protections for the worst excess of capitalism: chattel slavery.

Looking back in the Old Testament, one finds these verses dealing with the treatment of escaped slaves:

15 Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee:
16 He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him. – Deuteronomy 23:15-16

And now, from the Constitution:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. – US Constitution, Article 4 Section 2

The Constitution is in opposition to the Law of Moses. The Constitution is therefore not Judaeo, nor is it Christian, with or without the hyphenation. The first limitation on the powers of Congress is its restriction against Congress doing away with slavery. What would Jesus do? Hmmm?

Men wrote the Constitution. Men made compromises with each other, bargained, debated, and settled for less than they demanded in the process of writing the Constitution. Men continue to work with the document, not prophets. Moses’ law did not serve as the basis for the Constitution, nor did Jesus’. If the writers of the Constitution did not choose God, then they must have been serving mammon. Let the blood of every slave worked to death in the fields testify to that conclusion.

Set aside arguments for or against the safety of genetically modified, or GM, foods. Consider their impact on property rights. I recently saw a report on how a farmer that collected his own seeds ran into trouble when a herbicide-resistant strain of canola started growing on his property. He couldn’t get rid of it with normal herbicides and sued Monsanto for the damages caused to his crops.

Monsanto counter-sued the farmer for growing its canola without a license. Monsanto won both of its cases. While the farmer is appealing the case, he’s outclassed in terms of what he can do legally. Other farmers that maintain their own seed banks have been sued by Monsanto when some of Monsanto’s species started to grow on their property. The farmers never intentionally planted the crops, but courts have nevertheless held them liable for violating Monsanto’s property rights.

This is a travesty. Leave the benefit or harm of GM crops aside: no amount of benefit could justify the way Monsanto is essentially polluting the countryside and then using that pollution to take down farmers not using its products. Simple laws that should keep plundering such as this from happening have been easily perverted by Monsanto’s legal teams. Yes, Monsanto’s got to make a profit to stay in business, but for it to destroy rights in the name of profits is inexcusable.

I think it’s a strong possibility. I’m not happy about it, because I think she’s proof stupidity exists. All the same, this is a discussion. What factors will contribute to Palin winning in 2012? What factors will hinder her chances? Discuss.

Mount Sinabung is erupting, right after I have a Geography lesson about the “Ring of Fire” in which I mentioned the most remarkable area for volcanoes has been the western part of Indonesia. Now this. I think I’ll skip a discussion of major earthquakes in light of my new-found powers.

Henry C. Wallich, former Federal Reserve Governor, on the economy: “It’s a form of fraud, perpetrated by everybody on everybody. It is a world in which nobody keeps his word. Even if you could adjust perfectly for it, it would be a very unpleasant world.”

I saw a bumper sticker today that had a picture of Bush on it with the caption, “Miss me?” I decided to think about that. As I thought, I started watching 9/11 – Press for Truth, a documentary about the lack of investigation into the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The short answer is, “no.” I do not miss a plunderer, not one bit.

Bush first wanted to appoint Henry Kissinger to investigate. Kissinger’s clients included the Bin Laden family. When the New Jersey Widows revealed that information, he resigned from his position. When the New Jersey Widows revealed that the 9/11 investigation committee included a close confidant of Condoleeza Rice and a member of Bush’s national security team, nothing came of that. By nothing, I refer to the ultimate value of the report. Bush did not want anyone to know about the attacks.

I won’t make a wild accusation against Bush. I’ll make a well-founded one. He used the 9/11 attacks to justify an already-planned invasion of Afghanistan and then went on to lie his way into getting the US to invade Iraq. I have a strong suspicion he also knew the attacks were coming and where they would hit. Cheney, in DC, got evacuated immediately upon receiving news of the attacks. Bush, in Florida, stayed put, even though there had been an assassination attempt against him the night before. That tells me he knew Florida wasn’t on the list of targets.

The US made sure to invade Afghanistan just before the beginning of the opium-growing season. Since Clinton had forced the Taliban to ban opium growing, the people of Afghanistan were ready to switch governments so they could get back to the drugs trade. Now Afghanistan is producing opium and heroin in record amounts, one of the biggest opium growers there is the brother of President Karzai, and the Taliban have regenerated their power in the region.

As Bush prepared to invade Iraq, they trotted out Ahmed Chalabi to explain to the USA how eager the Iraqis were to have us go in there. It later turned out that Chalabi was an Iranian spy with a mission to get the US to do what the Iranians couldn’t: get rid of Saddam Hussein. In the wake of such a move, the Iranians knew that the resulting Iraq would eventually be an ally of theirs, not the US.

Bush ran up the national debt to truly massive levels, and for what? He enriched a few men at the expense of a nation. Bush was a plunderer, a cheat, and a liar. We have the evidence to prove it beyond any reasonable doubt. No, I do not miss President Bush.

Most of us in the USA are familiar with Godzilla, the monster movie from 1954 in which Raymond Burr witnesses the destruction of Tokyo by a massive sea monster. That movie, compared to other Godzilla movies, has a darker edge to it and has long been a guilty pleasure of mine. Even though I know it was a chopped-up version of the original Japanese film, I like it.

Enter Gojira, the original Japanese film, now available on DVD. It was one of three smash hits for Toho in 1954, along with Musashi Miyamoto and The Seven Samurai. Like the other two, Gojira was no lightweight in the script department. I’ve just finished watching it and I’m stunned at how powerful an anti-nuclear weapons film it was. Much of the anti-nuclear message was cropped from the USA release. In this one, we see casualty wards, crying children, and shrouds pulled over those that did not make it. Doctors watch helplessly as they see Geiger counters go off the scale when they check survivors for radiation.

The makers of Gojira wanted to produce a strong antiwar movie. They had survived the firebombings of World War Two and some had also witnessed firsthand the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In their Gojira, Tokyo is destroyed by fire for the second time in ten years and we have chances to bond with the people of Tokyo, only to see the monster Gojira make them casualties of his wrath. The destruction of Tokyo is not mindless: it is purposeful, and terrible.

As I watched Gojira, I considered it to be the first anime film. Parts of it are animated and the premise certainly fits with the mature tradition of Japanese animated arts. If one suspends disbelief around the actor in the monster suit – which isn’t campy in this version – one sees the potential for what could have been an epic anime feature. Given today’s technology, Gojira could be redone with satisfyingly realistic special effects. But in the hands of a Hollywood team, the deeper themes of the film would be lost.

At its heart, Gojira is a true protest film. The monster Gojira himself is something out of the Shinto world, a force of nature turning on a humanity that forgot its own bond with the world. In Gojira, I saw the beginnings of some of Hiyao Miyazaki’s work, especially his films Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind and Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke). Parts of the film also came uncomfortably close to Grave of the Fireflies, the anime that deals with the firebombing of Tokyo in May, 1945. The film is not light entertainment. It is heart-wrenching and makes one ponder about man’s inability to turn away from violence.

Gojira is not a metaphor for nuclear destruction – he is nuclear destruction. The prophecy at the end of the film that continued testing would create a new Gojira has come to pass. In the 56 years since the film’s release, we have seen new Gojiras arise in the form of unstable nations with nuclear powers, such as North Korea and Pakistan, as well as in the spectre of a possible terrorist-spawned nuclear attack. Like the victims in Gojira, we stand helplessly, unable to truly halt a calamity, should it visit us. Perhaps we should be more humble in our ways, lest nature take on an aspect of terror and provide us with a nightmare designed to destroy the proud.

The United States’ border with Mexico hasn’t always been an area of national concern. Back in the 1920s, the US Border Patrol was created to halt bootleggers bringing illegal liquor from Canada. Now, the Border Patrol has turned its attentions to the US-Mexico border. Why did this happen?

You probably thought about illegal immigration. Maybe you thought about stopping the flow of drugs. Both of those are things the Border Patrol is trying to stop. If you look at the map above, you’ll see they have to cover nearly 2000 miles of territory. If you know anything about that area, you’ll know it’s a dry, dusty, rocky, rugged region that is not kind to strangers.

All along the Texas side is the Rio Grande. As a river, the Rio Grande has many locations with shallow waters and slow currents, making them good locations to cross on foot or vehicle. The Arizona border is dominated by both the Rocky Mountains and the Sonoran Desert. To get an idea of how rough the country is in that area, the Spanish named a road that went through that area, “El Camino del Diablo,” or “The Road of the Devil.” There is very little water out there and temperatures can easily become dangerously hot on most days of the year.

The temperate areas of the border, near San Diego in California and along the lower Rio Grande in Texas, are also the most densely populated areas, where the majority of the 12 million people that live along the border make their homes. In fact, the cities of San Diego-Tijuana and El Paso-Ciudad Juarez are considered to be the two largest “international cities” in the world. Even though a border runs through them, they are almost as one, large urban area.

Where there are a lot of people, the Border Patrol has set up many fences and barriers to discourage illegal crossings. Some people do try to cross at those points, and they put their lives in danger doing so. When people try to cross in the more desolate regions, they also risk their lives. Many times, the Border Patrol has to rescue the illegal aliens before it can arrest them. Other times, people making the crossing die in the deserts.

The Border Patrol estimates that it has effective control of 700 miles along the US-Mexico border. While several hundred people die attempting to cross in the remote regions, about half a million people each year enter the US illegally along the US-Mexico border. Some officials in the Border Patrol have asked for additional people to man the border. While the Border Patrol employs 20,000 today, some would like to double its size so it can patrol the entire border more effectively. Not only are there times when Border Patrol agents have to pick and choose which illegal entrants to capture if a large group scatters in many directions, they also have to face increased organization among drug smugglers. One Border Patrol group was halted in its pursuit of a drug smuggler when it ran into a group of armed men in Mexican army uniforms.

Some state governors have ordered members of their state national guard units to assist in patrolling the border, but all of them look to the US government in Washington, D.C. for financial support for these operations. California’s current budget problems make it exceptionally eager to receive federal funding for its border patrol operations. Arizona went one step further and passed a controversial law that would enable its own law enforcement personnel to operate with powers normally granted to the federal Border Patrol. Governors of the border states point out that illegal aliens are a large drain on state budgets and that the expenditures on border control are balanced out by the savings in state programs.

Critics of stricter control point out that most illegal aliens work in the agricultural industries in the border states. The illegal aliens are typically paid much less than domestic or resident alien workers. If we eliminated illegal immigration in the US, then many agricultural businesses would either shut down or have to raise prices sharply in order to afford domestic labor. This would have a major impact on the US economy.

It would also have a major impact on the economy of Mexico and Central American nations, particularly El Salvador and Guatemala. Many illegal aliens send a large part of the money they earn in the USA back to relatives in their home countries, providing their relatives with the cash they need to keep going.

The USA does permit 700,000 legal immigrants each year, but that number is from all nations, combined. When immigrants cannot get awarded a legal entrance in the immigration lottery, many choose to enter illegally. They make this choice because they feel that their situation in their home country is much worse than what it could be in the United States.

Central American immigrants make the most terrifying journey of all, passing through parts of Mexico that are controlled by the Mara Salvatruchaa gang. The MS gang often robs, assaults, and murders immigrants from Central America. While the money and clothing they steal from each individual immigrant is small, they rob and kill so many that they are able to profit from their wholesale crimes. After passing through the gang country, the immigrants will travel north by hopping on trains. The two major train routes in Mexico follow its major mountain ranges: the Sierra Madre Oriental (Eastern Sierra Madre) and the Sierra Madre Occidental (Western Sierra Madre). Many immigrants are injured or killed as they jump on or off the moving trains. Finding food along the way is also very difficult. Mexico itself maintains a border patrol on its southern frontier in order to turn back these illegal entrants. Once in Mexico, the government will encourage them on their way north: the Mexican government even printed an illustrated guide on how to enter the US illegally and safely.

Once at the border, all the illegal immigrants are faced with a question of how to continue their journey into the USA. Once in the USA, they have to avoid law enforcement officers as they seek out jobs that often pay very little and that have unacceptable working conditions. They cannot speak out against their oppression for fear of deportation.

There is also a flow of US citizens into Mexico, although it is much smaller than the number of immigrants leaving Mexico and Central America for the USA. There are about 200,000 Americans living in Baja California, just south of San Diego, and that number grows each year. Americans choose to live in Mexico because the cost of living there is much less than in California, although because of their move to the region, the cost of living is increasing overall in Baja California.

When the US economy entered a recession in 2008, illegal immigration to the US went down by a large amount. When times are not as good in the USA, many people feel the risk of entering the US illegally is not worth the potential benefit. Improving conditions in Mexico and Central America also reduce the number of illegal aliens attempting to enter the USA. When the civil wars ended in El Salvador and Guatemala, for example, immigration from those nations decreased as people chose to stay in their homes as their lives improved. Nevertheless, the flow of immigrants from Central America and Mexico continues and the Border Patrol remains busy dealing with that issue.

Below are links to PDF files for my AP US Government and AP Economics classes. These files are current as of August, 2010. Syllabuses for my courses are updated and abridged versions of the ones I submitted to College Board, so AP instructors hoping to submit them will be advised to use my fuller, approved syllabuses I’ve already submitted to CB. Instructors and students are free to use this material for personal and class use, but are not allowed to present this material as their own work, nor are they permitted to sell this material. All materials copyright 2010 and on, L. Dean Webb and Zzzptm.com. All rights reserved.

AP US GOVERNMENT
AP US Government Syllabus

AP US Government Multiple Choice Question Correlation

AP US Government Free Response Question Correlation

AP MACROECONOMICS
AP Macroeconomics Key Concepts and Terms 2010

AP Macroeconomics Multiple Choice Question Correlation

AP Macroeconomics Free Response Question Correlation