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Tuesday, May 30, 2006

More Than Amnesty

The Senate's bill is not amnesty. Amnesty is a pardon. The Senate bill goes beyond forgiveness. It grants rewards. As Mark Steyn says:
The undocumented guys only have to pay taxes for any three out of the last five years? How come Americans can't get a deal like that? Meanwhile, any attempt to enforce the border requires "consultation" with Mexico. Vicente Fox has just got his own permanent Security Council veto in the Department of Homeland Security.

I think it's very hard for conservatives to support a Congress that would pass such a bill. Aside from the entitlement explosion and the national security issues, this bill is a cynical corruption of the integrity of US sovereignty and citizenship.
And he says it so well.

This bill is no compromise. It obviously satisfies and locks into precedent virtually all pro-immigrant desires. It will retroactively legalize what has been illegal since the last amnesty. It will immediately add ten million new residents to the "official" rolls, a number that will probably double or quadruple before the next amnesty. It offers a shortcut to citizenship for most of these new residents.

We now need another name for "legal aliens", one that hasn't lost its meaning.

The parts that appeal to the anti-immigrants are modest in scale and emminently defundable once the media spotlight moves on.

A compromise along similar lines from my point of view would be: a coast-to-coast fence, internal enforcement, deportation, anchor babies back on the boat and shipped home free of charge. Oh and you can have a limited form of your guest worker program, subject to financial circumstances of course. Ahem.

It's embarassing to be so greedy in what is supposed to be a "compromise" but that's what the Senate bill is like, just skewed the opposite way.

Whether this bill dies in commitee or gets a few bits lopped off before passage, the damage is done. The carrot is being shaken within easy grasp for millions waiting beyond US borders, and it's obvious there isn't much of a stick for those who ignore the rules.
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Friday, May 26, 2006

Fever Swamp Legends Debunked

Quick, we have to pull out before the Iraqi government solidifies!

Revisionist History
BY PETER WEHNER
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom. And what a strange world it is: For many antiwar critics, the president is faulted for the war, and he, not the former dictator of Iraq, inspires rage. The liberator rather than the oppressor provokes hatred. It is as if we have stepped through the political looking glass, into a world turned upside down and inside out.
A looking glass fixed around the Downing Street memo. Too late to stop the chimpeachment now.

Here's a guy who finally had enough of the Left and deprogrammed himself:

Goodbye, Left-Wing Idiocy
By Ron Rosenbaum
The New York Observer | October 10, 2002
Here’s the analogy: Heidegger’s peculiar neutrality-slash-denial about Nazism and the Holocaust after the facts had come out, and the contemporary Left’s curious neutrality-slash-denial after the facts had come out about Marxist genocides—in Russia, in China, in Cambodia, after 20 million, 50 million, who knows how many millions had been slaughtered. Not all of the Left; many were honorable opponents. But for many others, it just hasn’t registered, it just hasn’t been incorporated into their "analysis" of history and human nature; it just hasn’t been factored in. America is still the one and only evil empire. The silence of the Left, or the exclusive focus of the Left, on America’s alleged crimes over the past half-century, the disdainful sneering at America’s deplorable "Cold War mentality"—none of this has to be reassessed in light of the evidence of genocides that surpassed Hitler’s, all in the name of a Marxist ideology. An ideology that doesn’t need to be reassessed. As if it was maybe just an accident that Marxist-Leninist regimes turned totalitarian and genocidal. No connection there. The judgment that McCarthyism was the chief crime of the Cold War era doesn’t need a bit of a rethink, even when put up against the mass murder of dissidents by Marxist states.
Friedrich Hayek. The Road to Serfdom. He predicted it and laid out why it is inevitable that any centralized planning eventually come under totalitarian control. It's been demonstrated empirically enough times, you would think, to get through to the "reality-based" community.

Both stories via SOXBLOG.
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Monday, May 22, 2006

Amnesty To Leave

If Bush ever wants to get serious about solving illegal immigration here is what he could say:
You have 60 days to arrange your affairs and leave. If you leave during this exit amnesty period and have committed no other crimes against the American people, you will suffer no penalty or recriminations. You will not be harassed or persecuted in any manner while you depart from our nation. You may show your appreciation for the better wages and working conditions we have provided you by obeying our laws.

If you leave voluntarily, you will be free to enter the U.S. in the future without prejudice or discrimination. You will be allowed to apply for lawful immigration to the U.S. in the future. However, you will be given no special privileges and will have to wait in line like every one else. And you will have to wait in your country not ours.
I would say 90 days, but the rest is pretty much perfect.

In fact the letter above lays out a centrist position that is more reasonable and more defensible than any other I've heard. Centrist? But doesn't the media call anyone and any position short of open borders "far right"? Why yes, they do. That doesn't mean it's true. But as long as we're casting aspersions allow me to critique some other popular positions:

The Anarchist/Libertarian: Relax. Do nothing. Problem? There's no problem.

The Capitalist: I need guest workers to be profitable. It doesn't trouble me what everyone else will pay for what I stand to gain.

The Socialist: Amnesty for the exploited and oppressed undocumented worker! Che Guevara is my hero.

The Activist: What would hurt Bush? He's sorta for stuff alotta Republicans are against. Hmmm. I know! Let's protest!

The Priest: I need to fill my flock. Let us all be brothers in poverty.

The Racist Reconquista: This is stolen land. We will take it back and then you will be the oppressed minority you dirty anglo gringo.

The President: Americans just won't do these jobs. We need to turn the underclass that came here illegally into citizens, and we need a new underclass to take their place. Until we can get that done I'll send a few thousand soldiers down to keep an eye on the vigilantes.

So go read that supposed extreme right position again and decide for yourself who the extremists are.
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Sunday, May 21, 2006

Actors Against America

Our heroic actors. Where would we be without their shameless defiance and nacissism?
Film actress Susan Sarandon has revealed how she felt isolated and frightened by death threats and verbal attacks after she criticised US policy in Iraq.
That's classic. Sarandon thinks she has problems. She should try criticizing the Religion of Pieces.

In spite of the lack of attempts on her life and zero persecution from the thoroughly corrupt and terribly inept Bush Police State Sarandon courageously continues to spout her negative message in public and have it echoed in the media:
"Stop supporting Bush and the war crimes," she said. "It's not working. No matter what you think their role is, it's not happening. So before you sacrifice anyone else you should pull out.
In Sarandon's world "war crimes" are committed whenever someone crosses her politically. And she's not the only one. Sarandon's husband Tim Robbins says:
"We have right now a media that is willfully ignoring the high crimes and misdemeanours of the president of the United States," the star of Hollywood hits including "Mystic River" and "The Player" told reporters.

"Clinton lied about a blowjob, and got impeached by the media and Congress," Robbins said.

"(Bush) got us into (the Iraq) war based on lies that he knew were lies. ... His war has recruited more Al-Qaeda members than Osama bin Laden could ever have dreamed for ... yet no one in the media is calling for impeachment," he said.
No one in the media is calling for impeachment? Robbins and his buds certainly are "in the media" ad nauseum. Hmmm, that couldn't be it. He must be calling on reporters and journalists "in the media" to tear off their masks and go Cronkite. Interesting but unlikely.
"Unfortunately, the book and the play is more relevant now than it ever has been," he said. "(It) talks about continuous warfare as a means to control the Western economy, and as a way to control rebel elements within society through the use of fear, constant fear."

"In my country we seem to be sanctioning renditioning of innocent people without trial ... put them in jail without telling anyone ... and torture them out of suspicion of what we think they might do," Robbins said.
The horror of continuous warfare is an archetype of the Left. For them a cabal always scheming to cause trouble and generate fear is not difficult to imagine. Why? Consider the constant flow of cynical and hypocritical bile from the left. Fear of the Police State. Fear that your benefits will be cut off and you'll be thrown in the street. The protests. Demonstrations for this, against that, whatever their infantile collective guilt complex tells them is the trendy bleeding heart cause to march for today. Always shrill and ready to preemtively shout down opponents. Nobody else's rights matter but theirs. No sense of the irony. They are pacifist activist hypocrites who don't recognize the Jihad as the true continuous warfare afflicting the world.

When jihadis attack those able to defend themselves, like the US military, what would the Gitmo gadflys like to happen? Most jihadis expect to die. They want to and many do. The lucky ones are captured, fed like sheiks, and get to pray and read the Koran all day. Give them a few black eyed virgins and they'd recognize Gitmo as their promised paradise. Should we let them go and wish them well while they plan the next 9/11? Or would it be considered torture to remove them from paradise? Gee that's a tough one. Tim Robbins can sympathize with the bastards. I don't.

Jodie Foster is another superstar bubbling over with love of country:
Besides slamming the general state of the nation, Miss Foster also graciously offered up her views on the country’s “miserable” response to Katrina and the way we have allegedly squandered the world’s goodwill since we went to war. Some commencement address. Perhaps for an encore, she can hand out pieces of rope to each of the students so they can form a noose and hang themselves from the rafters of the auditorium since we’re such a crummy, hopeless bully of a country.

And yet when someone who has a legitimate and powerful role on the world stage is invited to be a commencement speaker, but is a vital part of the Bush Administration, the list of protests by faculty and students is a mile long. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might just be the perfect commencement speaker, a black woman who rose from poverty to become an architect of foreign policy and a widely respected member of a presidential cabinet. No less than two hundred faculty members signed a letter of protest after Boston College invited Dr. Rice to deliver the commencement address there. Two hundred out of approximately one thousand faculty members at Boston College have signed this ugly petition.
The most miserable thing about Katrina is that some people continue to milk it. As if any response to a natural disaster of that scale could have been flawless enough to please them. What is most miserable for them is that the US economy did not collapse because of Katrina, or Rita, or the 12 other hurricanes, or Iraq, or the immigration protests, or the gas prices, ... Imagine how loud they'd whine if the economy had any serious problems. Well it doesn't, but they whine anyway.

Now comes the time when we synthesize.

The war and US policy in Iraq is just one facet of the long-standing clash between Western civilization and Islamofacist jihadism. Raging outward and rolling over neighboring civilizations since 622 AD the jihadis have recently upped the ante. They murder innocents around the world with conventional explosives every day. They seek and will eventually use more severe weapons. This situation is so far past obvious that even movie stars looking at the world from their private jets should see it clearly by now. Instead a preponderance of these elites choose to regurgitate the pacifist and defeatist lines: America is to blame, Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11, nothing has been or will be gained in Iraq, and we are doomed to lose especially if we try not to.

You can call my view apocalyptic, confrontational, reactionary, racist, xenophobic, arrogant, nationalistic, or whatever you please. Dismiss me. That won't change the fact that today's leftist pacifism is worse than false, it's suicidal. I know they imagine they can negotiate peace for our time. They will embrace their conquerors and be conquered. It is inevitable. Some will emulate the Vichy French. Unfortunately the fusion of leftism and Islam produces at best police states like Sadat and Mubarak's Egypt or Saddam's Iraq, and at worst Islam purges the leftism to produce an Iran or Taliban-like theocratic state.

I would like some other choices.
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Thursday, May 18, 2006

Si Se Puede

It would be too hard. It would take too long. It would cost too much. We can't find enough cheap labor. We can't deport millions of people. We can't build a fence. We can't spare 2% of the National Guard to guard the nation. We can't allow them to stop anyone. We can't call them illegals. And for Pete's sake we can't call it amnesty, because all we're really doing is converting illegal aliens into citizens.

But don't let that get you down. There's plenty we can do. We can...

...send millions of people and our engines of war to the far reaches of the globe.

...rebuild New Orleans.

...explore space.

...make mind-numbingly expensive bad movies.

We can do whatever we want, whenever we want, for as long as we like. That's what arrogant imperial superpowers do.
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Chomsky and Hezbollah Sittin in a Tree

Noam Chomsky's Love Affair with Nazis
By David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 15, 2006
Rarely has the world been afforded such a clear glimpse into the unholy alliance between Islamic extremists and secular radicals in the West. That’s exactly what it got last week when the foremost Imam of the radical Left, Noam Chomsky, bestowed his blessings on the world’s largest terrorist army, the Shiite jihad outfit sponsored by Iran and known as Hezbollah (“Party of God.”)
Pin another medal on the man.
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Monday, May 15, 2006

Invite Them In, Let Them Go

Tonight President Bush started by admiting US borders have not been under control for years and vowed that securing the border was job #1 starting immediately, as part of a 5 step comprehensive plan.

He then described the game of Catch and Release, and said he would put an end to it. The game is how we handle illegal immigrants we catch that are hard to deport. We tell them to report to a hearing which neither they nor the US govt expect them to actually attend, and then let them go. To Bush's promise he will put an end to it I say: great, it's very little, very late, but yes we should secure the border and part of that is putting an end to Catch and Release.

Then Bush, once again, pushed his Guest Worker and Crypto Amnesty plans. For support he called on the same old canards. They come for jobs. Jobs Americans won't do. We can't disrupt their families by deporting them all.

Therefore we must invite more foreign workers in and then....let them go!

Catch and Release? Bad! Guest Worker? Good!
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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Undocumented At the Gates

May 1st. Garbageman came. Toilets flushed. Internet, phone, TV online. Getting to work took a little longer than usual. The roads were ununsually clear but I stopped at every store on the way. At work nothing unusual. Plain day. The trip home likewise, again a little light on traffic.

So much for the Great American Boycott. Some restaurants were closed. Big whup. No more tacos and burritos for you Gringo! But there were also no lines for gas. And the schools were uncrowded. This is bad? Clearly El Gran Boyocoto hurt most exactly those people it was meant to call attention to. Just what the victimologist ordered.

There were disturbing stories from the border. Mobs disrupted the flow of traffic, blocking the border completely at times, then letting it through. On and off. On and off. The messages is clear. We, the invaders, so well-entrenched so self-confident now openly brandish our power. We close and open with ease the very gates to the castle we've invaded. The old owners cannot or will not defend themselves. We will take what is theirs. We will be the new owners.

Why wasn't the US National Guard mobilized? Wasn't this kind of lawlessness expected? I'm no fan of The Man but one of the few things worse than a Police State is Mob Rule. Mobs are not cool. The use of this political tool has certain revolutionary and umm apocalyptic tendencies. They kept Che and their Mexican flags on the down low, but there's no mistaking the marxist class warfare agitation at the core. There's little doubt which direction they want to take things:

Open the borders. Redistribute the wealth. Re-educate the masses. To death.

Next up: an especially raucous Cinqo de Mayo.
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