Veterans Day

In case you didn't know, yes, I'm a veteran. I served 8 years in the Army Reserve and I was deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as part of operation Enduring Freedom.

Let's just say, it was very stressful.

Border Patrol

The president is going to address the nation tonight to outline his proposal for deploying 5,000 National Guard troops to stop illegal immigration across the 2,000 mile border with Mexico.

Let me do the math...

Okay, that's 2.5 guardsmen per mile.

Oh, wait -- it's against the law to actually place the guardsmen on the border, so they're going to use them to do administrative duties to free up the actual border patrol. So men and women who are already burned out from doing tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq will be deployed to border towns to make Xeroxes for six months.

Is there any incentive to joining the National Guard nowadays? And surely 5,000 troops isn't enough to make a difference, so why bother? Conduct a massive effort to penalize the employers that are hiring the illegals if you're serious and this is not just an exercise in making people scared of Mexicans feel secure. But shutting down businesses and sending white collar folks to prison is not sexy.

Should be a good speech.

8 Million Stories

I'm watching Alien Siege, another Sci-Fi Channel Original. The premise is that aliens have landed on Earth and are demanding 8 million people as sacrifices or they'll destroy the planet. Early on the show establishes that most countries have selected their sacrifices from their prison populations, but the good old USA is trying to be fair. 650,000 Americans will be chosen using a lottery system. The President gets on TV and tells the people who are fighting back to stop resisting.

As if!

Could any President sell this? Someone would assassinate him. His party would be ruined forever. And I hate how they always show soldiers in these types of films as having no problem with what is going on. Let me tell you, we bitched all the time about our orders and we weren't being asked to escort people to their deaths!

There are two things that civilians don't seem to know about the U.S. military, and it's really important.

• The soldier has taken an oath to defend the Constitution, not to do what the President says. If there is a contradiction, the Constitution must be upheld.
• The soldier is not supposed to obey an unlawful order.

Handing people over to an alien race is enslaving them. Slavery is unconstitutional. And human sacrifice is against the law, even in the red states. So no soldier (airman, sailor or Marine) should be standing there assisting in "processing" the "winners" of the lottery.

Would some assholes go along with this farce? Oh, hell yeah. But I have no doubt that military personnel would go AWOL rather than do this, especially since their own families would be effected if the lottery is truly random.

But would the lottery be truly random?

The best way to ensure that the majority population could be sold this would be to weight the lottery. For example, you're more likely to be picked if you've ever done time, been on probabtion or ever collected public assistance. You're less likely to be picked if you hold a college degree, and you are given extra consideration if you hold an advanced degree. Certain professions would be exempt entirely -- police, military, medical professionals, etc.

That is how you would get the majority to cooperate.

By the way, my discussion of this is way better than the show.