News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Jamaicans love akee. It is said to be delicious.
Don’t look for it in the supermarket, though. The Food and Drug Administration bans its importation. The fruit that can cause coma or death if eaten before fully ripe.
And the seeds of the akee are always poisonous.
The scientific name, blighia sapida, honors Captain William Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. Bligh brought the plant to Jamaica from Africa as food for slaves.
Criticism of the president 2-18-20 2-18-14 By William Lawrence Sr
Q vqbiu vhyudt qdt q ixqtem ijqo edbo mxybu jxu ikd ixydui.
Qcuhysqd Veba Iqoydw
Answer to yesterday’s puzzle: To announce that there must be no criticism of the president is morally treasonable to the American public.
Lincoln Washington Descendants — There are no living direct descendants of either Abraham Lincoln or George Washington.
The last undisputed descendant of Honest Abe was his great-grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckworth who had three marriages which produced one son but (cough) during a divorce and after his vasectomy. Beckworth denied the paternity and this was upheld by the courts. Beckworth died in 1985 at the age of 81.
While G.W. had two step children from Martha’s first marriage, he never had any of his own as smallpox likely rendered him sterile.
Feds Finally Tackle Birth Tourism Criminals
By Joe Guzzardi
As the old saying goes, half a loaf is better than none. Today’s subject isn’t bread baking but rather the recent and long overdue Homeland Security Investigations’ action against 19 California-based Chinese nationals for birth tourism operations. HSI’s action followed up on its 2015 sweep that uncovered several illicit goings-on that included criminal offenses at maternity hotels that centered on women who paid as much as $80,000 for the privilege of giving birth to a U.S. citizen child.
By violating immigration laws and committing other crimes involving conspiracy, visa fraud, income tax fraud and money laundering, the unscrupulous birth tourism proprietors raked in tens of millions of dollars over the years. One of the operators, Dongyuan Li, faced the seizure of her $2.1 million Irving, Calif., home, six luxury vehicles and more than $1 million from bank accounts, as well as many gold bars and coins. According to the ICE press release, Li “received $3 million in international wire transfers from China in just two years.”
According to the indictments, birth hotel owners advised their clients to lie on their visa applications, a crime, and to hide their pregnancies from airport Customs and Border Protection officials. The end game for the foreign-born mothers is to secure U.S. citizenship for their children through the current misinterpretation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Although no court has ruled on the 14th Amendment as it applies to U.S.-born children whose mothers are not American citizens, those children born on U.S. soil are granted automatic citizenship, a practice known as jus soli.Constitutionalists argue that since the foreign-born mother isn’t “under the jurisdiction thereof…” (the U.S. government), citizenship should be conferred only on children whose parents are citizens, known as jus sanguinis.
Birth tourism hurts Americans in multiple ways. Later in their lives, the newly minted citizens will have unfettered access to jobs, Social Security and other affirmative benefits. The birth tourism industry is big business. Estimates for the annual births related to the tourist scam range between 40,000 and 60,000 annually. Birth tourism spawns population-busting chain migration since the anchor babies, once they turn 21, can sponsor their parents for permanent residency. Then, in turn, the parents will eventually sponsor their non-nuclear family members. In 2016, the U.S. admitted more than 300,000 people through chain migration.
As welcome as the HSI action is, the best hope is that it will send a warning shot over the operators’ heads, and possibly deter other global foreign nationals from signing up for birth tourism packages. It would be more effective, however, if the State Department announced that it will no longer issue travel visas to obviously pregnant women. Then, pregnant women who ignore the State Department’s warning should be turned away at their port of entry.
Since this is the first federal intervention into the sleazy, criminal birth tourism businesses that’s been thriving for more than a decade, the question is what took so long. The query is especially significant because the preferred destination for many wealthy pregnant Russians is Florida Trump properties. Although the Trump Organization doesn’t profit from the subleased condominiums that the Russians rent at up to $85,000, it’s inconceivable that President Trump, who railed against chain migration, is unaware of birth tourism on his Florida property.
Joseph Macias, Special Agent in Charge of HSI Los Angeles, said that “America’s way of life is not for sale,” and promised to aggressively target “those who would make a mockery of our laws and our values to benefit and enrich themselves.” HSI has a long row to hoe. Dozens of birth tourism scams are still thriving, although perhaps less brazenly.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
New commandment William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 2-17-20
Id pccdjcrt iwpi iwtgt bjhi qt cd rgxixrxhb du iwt egthxstci xh bdgpaan igtphdcpqat id iwt Pbtgxrpc ejqaxr.
Iwtdsdgt Gddhtktai
Answer to yesterday’s puzzle: A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.
Old body William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 2-16-20
O bsk qcaaobrasbh W uwjs ibhc mci: Hvoh mci zcjs cbs obchvsf, og W vojs zcjsr mci, hvoh mci ozgc zcjs cbs obchvsf. Pm hvwg gvozz ozz asb ybck hvoh mci ofs am rwgqwdzsg, wt mci vojs zcjs cbs tcf obchvsf.
Xcvb
Answer to yesterday’s puzzle: There’s many a young heart that beats in an old body
Evelyn Waugh (At least we thought so)
Cape Horn, the very tip of South America where the Atlantic meets Pacific and what clipper ships braved in days of yore, is not named for the pointy things on the heads of bulls and bisons but for the town of Hoorn in Holland.
That was the home of navigator and merchant Willem Cornelisz Schouten, who was part of an enterprise in 1615 to find a route to the Pacific not controlled by the Dutch East India Company.
Yes Anthony, it was Schouten not Sir Francis Drake who made the discovery.
World Can Fit In Texas But Don’t Try It
By Jack McKerrigan
“If every member of the United States lived in an area with the population density of Brooklyn, New York, all 327 million of us could fit into New Hampshire,” wrote Jennifer Wright in a recent article in Harper’s Bazaar. (The current U.S. population actually is 330 million.)
Similar nonsensical pieces have made similar claims – everyone could fit in Texas or the Grand Canyon. These statements are so naïve they leave me practically speechless. Are the authors of these comments, including Bazaar’sWright, who has the seemingly impressive-sounding title of “Political Editor at Large,” so incapable of conceptualizing what actually is required to maintain human life? Besides the physical space that one occupies, vastly larger amounts of space are required to support life! Anyone who believes that the entire U.S. population could live in New Hampshire must never leave New York City and believe everything they eat and use is made by fairies off planet.
According to a 1998 study by Mathis Wackernagel and J. David Yount, of the total space on Earth, 71 percent is ocean, 16 percent is biologically productive land and 13 percent is desert, ice caps and barren land. However, the amount of available biologically productive land would drop dramatically if the availability of energy significantly decreased. Energy is needed to move water to otherwise uninhabitable areas (Los Angeles), pump water from the ground (Ogallala Aquifer) and make the water suitable for human consumption. In addition, energy is required to heat (New Hampshire) and cool (Phoenix) homes and transport food supplies to less temperate climates.
According to the same Wackernagel/Yount study, the space required to support a lifestyle is called an ecological footprint. The ecological footprint (which varies by location) does not include just the space where you are actually living, but includes everything for a steady supply of the basic requirements for life, including energy for warmth and mobility; wood for housing, furniture and paper; materials for clothing and products; food and water, and ecological sinks for waste absorption and other nonconsumptive life support activities. There should also be included in the footprint space for biodiversity preservation. According to this study, the average 1998 U.S. citizen style of life required 21 acres of biological productive space (BPS) per person.
There were only approximately 19 acres of BPS per person available in the U.S., according to the study. That means there was only sufficient space for approximately 91.5 percent of the U.S. population to live the lifestyle of the average U.S. citizen in 1998.
Since 1998 the population of the United States has increased 19.5 percent which means that only approximately 73.7 percent of the current U.S. population can currently live what was previously thought as the average citizen’s style of life in 1998. If every person on Earth in 1998 had the U.S. lifestyle requiring 21 acres of BPS per person, it would have required an area the size of six Earths, and for the current world population, eight Earths.
Since Texas is much larger than New Hampshire (and approximately 25 percent of New Hampshire consists of the White Mountains which are uninhabitable), let’s limit our calculations to how much BPS Texas acreage would be available to each individual on Earth.
To do this, we calculate the number of acres in Texas every person on Earth would receive if we divided the total acres in Texas by current total world population.
This calculation yields .02 acres, or approximately 960 square feet (the size of a small apartment), per every person on Earth. It should be noted that this is total acres, not BPS Texas acres per person. Estimates range that up to half of Texas is uninhabitable, but if we just exclude the 12 percent of Texas which is desert to calculate the Texas BPS acres, it would reduce the space to 844 square feet per person, and this space includes no space for biodiversity. The ecological footprint of the average Japanese, who are some of the most efficient people ecologically in the world, is approximately 441,000 square feet, or approximately 522 times the size of the calculated Texas BPS acres.
Accordingly, the argument that we could put all families in the world in the state of Texas is true, but as we can see from the footprint needed in Japan all of these people would be dead within a week from starvation, lack of water or poisoned from no waste disposal.
And in New Hampshire, they’d just be put out of their misery sooner.
Jack McKerrigan spent 10 years with an international consulting firm where he worked with companies on five continents while living on three. His clients were large international companies and local governments. He has held senior finance positions for two Fortune 500 companies and was the CFO for four public companies.
Chocolate now and then William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 2-15-20
Gurer’f znal n lbhat urneg gung orngf va na byq obql
Riryla Jnhtu
Answer to yesterday’s puzzle: All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.
The oldest known valentine was from Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife, Bonne. Charles wrote it while imprisoned in the Tower of London after being captured at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.
It reads:
My very gentle Valentine,
Since for me you were born too soon,
And I for you was born too late.
God forgives him who has estranged
Me from you for the whole year.
I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine.
Charles never saw Bonne again. She died about 10 years before he gained his freedom in 1440.
