Redford seems to be improving, though quite weak.  Rumsfeld has had a terrible day, and is claiming poodle abuse.  I’ve had workmen in and out all day trying to finish this blasted renovation, so Rumsy is locked in my little kitchen.  Definitely abuse.  No tissue to destroy. 

 

The new Mac PowerBook arrived this morning, 5 days ahead of schedule.  Big difference to the HP DZ8000 lemon that arrived 5 days late.   It is a magnificent machine, even though learning to use it is going to be something akin to learning to speak Klingon.

 

THE LOSS OF A FRIEND

My prayers and love go to my friend James Wright.  His wife, Carrla succumbed last night to lung disease.  She had been on the transplant list for months, and spent well over a year being tested to go on the list, then had to wait to be put on the list.  The worst part of it is the genetic problem she had could have been handled by medication if her original physician had been competent.  If organs for transplant were more available and the process simplified, she might still be alive.   Several months ago I wrote about her condition over at The Subway Canaries.

NEWS

Marriage, Republicans and Democrats – from the American Thinker

 

If “filler” in animal food in China is SOP, my question of the day:  How long have we been subjected to this stuff, how long are we going to put up with it, and what are the implications for the human food chain? Okay, it’s more like three questions, but you get the picture.

 

NOTE TO ROSIE:  If fire can melt steel and concrete as we saw yesterday, is it possible that the tanker fire in SF were also caused by GWB?  After all, she says GWB helped plan the WTC 9/11 collapse. Don’t you just love this logic?

Blog Lizards

 

Townhall’s Frank Pastore on cults, churches, LDS, etc.

 

Is China the Big Red Dragon we think it is?

 

There’s a new GOP poll.  I don’t even know why I have put it up because half the blogs in the country are doing the same thing, but what the heck.

 

MY RANT FOR THE DAY

(postponed from yesterday)

Why Not Go After the Criminals?

The following article works directly in to the rant I was planning.   It is also a MUST READ:  Ah, yes, common sense immigration.  (nah – won’t work)  Check out Sebastian Mallaby’s column in the WoPost today. 

“…People accuse immigrants of gang violence, drunken driving and a general contempt for the law. But in 2000 the incarceration rate for immigrants was just one-fifth the rate for the population as a whole, according to Kristin Butcher of the Federal Reserve and Anne Morrison Piehl of Rutgers University. People say immigrants are feckless and lazy. But in California in 2004, 94 percent of undocumented men ages 18 to 64 were in the workforce, compared with 82 percent of native-born men. Far from being part of a shiftless underclass, the act of coming to the United States makes immigrants among the most upwardly mobile groups in the nation, only a bit behind hedge-fund managers….”

 The other problem we hare having with Mexico is DRUGS. Trafficers refuse to stop.

Anyone who tries to expose them is murdered. They rule by terror. Oh, those “Mexican soldiers” who were firing at our Border Patrol agents – drug dealers.

And, until the move away from chasing drug dealers and going after “innocent” undocumented workers and families, this sort of thing was common place. Now arrests of ‘migrant’ workers are down.

 

Maybe we need to start concentrating on the drugs that are coming across the border.  Fact is, something like 80% of the drugs that come into the US come over the border from Juarez.

 

The multi-factories in Mexico that are along the border with the US are called maquiladoras.  The husband of a friend of mine opened in the first one in Mexico years ago.  The original intent was to provide a living wage for people in Mexico and improve their standard of living.  Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred.  In fact, my friend’s husband in no longer involved in one and decries them as exploiting and almost enslaving their workers.  He and my friend are now US citizens and are Republicans as am I.

 

The average factory worker in the US makes $23 an hour (according to the most recent stats).  In Mexico the average wage is perhaps $2.30 if a worker is lucky.  This provides for only 16% of a living wage necessary to keep a family fed, clothed, housed, etc.  Unfortunately because these same multi-national concerns can now go to China and pay 35cents an hour, they have cut the average Mexican maquiladora worker’s pay in half.  Consequently, in order for a family to survive on the average take home pay of anywhere from $35 to $58 a week, someone from the family must come across the Border and work illegally for the same amount per day.

 

The roots of illegal immigration are quite simple – survival.  Until I moved to New Mexico I was as xenophobic anti-illegal and anti-Mexican as are you.  My conservative GOP eyes have been opened.  The average person who comes over the Border illegally is simply trying to survive and make a better life for their family.  Note that I said “average”. 

 

Since the implementation of NAFTA (I was once a huge NAFTA fan) the average wage in Mexico has dropped.  Instead of improving the quality of life by opening the Border to trade and facilitate business – well that has happened – but the human cost has been deplorable.  In fact, I would suggest The Daughters of Juarez  by Teresa Rodriguez.  It is an eye-opening account of life in and around Juarez and the unsolved murders of up to 800 women, many associated with the maquiladoras.  

 

The bottom line here is if these multi-national corporations were forced to pay a “living wage” we could solve much of our illegal immigration problem almost instantly.  Until this happens, we are never going to solve illegal immigration.  According to my friend who is from Mexico, there is no will on the Mexican side to end the corruption and do what is morally right.  The fact is, if something isn’t done, within the decade Mexico will go the way of Venezuela.  You think we have a problem now with immigration – wait until Mexico falls to a Chavez

 

Just how innocent are those precious little anti-immigration minutemen? Well….right now this makes me proud to be an Episcopalian!  

“…Throughout the morning in Cave Creek, the American Freedom Riders played cat and mouse with immigrants clustered on street corners and in front of convenience stores. The sight of the advancing bikers, some of whom were strapped with handguns, scared the immigrants into seeking cover in nearby dry washes. "They scattered like cockroaches in all directions," American Freedom Riders leader "Buffalo" Rick Galeener later boasted in a letter published in the Sonoran News. "They simply ran, like the criminals they are!"

 

In one instance, a two-ton truck flying a huge American flag roared into the parking lot of the Good Shepherd of the Hills Episcopal Church, where 20-30 Latinos were gathered at a day labor shelter provided by the church. The truck drove in tight circles around the immigrants, trailed by about 20 motorcycles. Half the immigrants fled. According to Rev. Glenn Jenks, rector at Good Shepherd, the bikers cheered and shouted, "Go back to Mexico!" Later the members of the American Freedom Riders surrounded the church, videotaping and photographing any Latinos who remained, and vowing to come back until Cave Creek is "illegal alien-free."…”

They call them “Rogue Minutemen”

“…The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and Minuteman Project also have spawned a slew of imitators, spin-offs and splinter groups that have no official affiliation with either national Minuteman organization. These rogue Minuteman outfits include the Antelope Valley Minutemen, whose leader, Frank Jorge, writes on his website: "We have a right, and an obligation, to defend our country, our homes, and our families not only from this invasion, but also from the very Government that is precipitating this treasonous act."

 

The most radical and widespread rogue Minuteman group is the so-called Minuteman of One, which consists of at least three chapters in Arizona, two in California and one in Texas. More of an extremist creed than a hierarchal organization, Minuteman of One was founded by Fred Puckett, who was expelled from the original Minuteman operation for, among other things, Violating rules against openly carrying assault rifles (the original Minuteman Project restricted volunteers to handguns only).

"We don't have no by-laws, we don't have nothin'," Puckett told a Phoenix television news crew last April. "We go out in two-man teams and we hit them like we did 40 years ago in Vietnam."

 Or is it pure hate?

“…"America is being destroyed by a modern version of Genghis Khan's army," according to the Emigration Party of Nevada, whose leader, Donald Pauly, has called for the Department of Homeland Security to station "sniper teams" on the border and demanded that Latino women apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol be forced to undergo sterilization so that America does not become a "Third World sewer." Increasingly, the ideology of nativist extremist groups is shot through with paranoid conspiracy theories strongly reminiscent of the antigovernment militia movement of the 1990s."You need to understand that WE ARE AT WAR RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA," reads the recruiting literature of United Citizens of America, a group based in Omaha, Neb. "We are being invaded by a foreign country and we are being betrayed from within. Our government, from top to bottom, is being controlled by global elites. They have infiltrated our government at ALL levels."

 

According to the Minutemen Midwest, a group based in Harvard, Ill.: "There is a conspiracy afoot to merge the U.S. and Mexico. This heinous ongoing treason has been engineered by an entrenched cabal of legislators, courts, military brass, and government employees embedded at all levels of the executive branch, constituting a 'Shadow Government,' who are working to dismantle this country in plain sight."

MUST READ:  This SPLC interview with a former Border Patrol agent is fascinating.

  It is also quite illuminating, as is this comment:   

"…The backlash — and the rhetoric of the hate groups that promulgate outright race hate — transcends national borders. That's reflected in another Holthouse story in this issue, this one revealing that a Belgian computer expert runs notorious former Klan leader David Duke's website — along with the sites of the racist British National Party and the French National Front. These parties, despite their obvious racial extremism, both have made stunning advances in local elections.

Such international ties go far beyond cyberspace. In the last year, American white supremacists have attended extremist events in Britain, France and Germany, and Duke even starred at an international Holocaust denial conference hosted by Iran. A Canadian extremist, Paul Fromm, spent much of 2006 lecturing at events put on by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a U.S. hate group.

 

European extremists are welcomed here as well. This February, two leaders of the racist and xenophobic Belgian party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), spoke to a gathering of extremists in Virginia, warning that Europe was about to be "taken over" by people "hostile to Western civilization." It didn't stop there. After their meeting with Holocaust deniers, white supremacists and others on the fringe, the Belgians went on to meet with officials of another Washington, D.C.-area organization — the wealthy, well-connected and allegedly mainstream immigration-restrictionist organization, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).”

 FAIR is quoted by everyone from O’Reilly on down.  

THOSE DIRTY LYIN’ DEMS!

Impeach Bush – bring it on! The whole thing is about Murtha trying to force GWB to do what Murtha wants.  The worst part of this is if GWB were to do what Murtha wants, the Office of the Presidency would be FOREVER destroyed.  If GWB doesn’t do want Murtha wants and Murtha tries to Impeach him over this, Murtha will be forever destroyed.  Yep, no contest.  It’s a MAKE MY DAY kind of thing.  I think trying to impeach a man for something that isn’t spelled out in the Constitution is – well – interesting.

Blogs for Bush

Flap

Wizbang

Malkin

Flopping Aces on the President setting benchmarks for Congress! 

Condi is thumbing her nose at the Waxman subpoena! You go girl.  

PRIMARIES 2008

How Obama (the messiah) found Christ.

Okay, it sounds tacky, but I don’t know if we are talking about Black Liberation Theology or faith in Christ.  There is a difference.  Sorry….

A Bloomberg hit on Giuliani?

Brownback is jumping on the anti-Bush bandwagon.

Fred Thompson is not the 2nd coming of Ronald Reagan. I know people want him to be, but perhaps they are just ducking reality.

If Edwards wants to tax the rich – what will he pay?

Rasmussen has Obama (the messiah) ahead of Hillary.  Don’t you know Dem front-runners always flop?

McCain’s numbers are way up.  He had a great week.  

Will Bernstein hurt Hillary? 

Race 42004 has the Gallup primary aggregate.  Romney still can’t pull over 6%.