QUESTION OF THE DAY: 

How many REAL, GENUINE, CARD-CARRYING, GOP VOTING REPUBLICANS do you know who have deserted the Republican Party over this immigration bill?  I’m not talking CONSERVATIVES, who have all the loyalty of a five year old pandering for Christmas presents, but real, traditional Republicans?   

 

Today is my last Microsoft straw.  I am using their One Care for anti-virus.  Somehow it appears as though a Trojan has managed to get into my system, slowing me down to the point where I want to scream.  I have run three different scans by three different sources.  Nothing.   The whole basted system has been scanning to remove all traces of the blast adware for the past two hours! 

 

HOUSEKEEPING:  I've been tweeking the apearence of my postings.  Let me know if they are annoying.

 

MUST READ:  DJ Drummond at Stolen Thunder had some of the most fascinating numbers crunching on POTUS job approvals that I have seen to date.

A MINI RANT

The TB Guy

We have been treated to a tremendous amount of pontificating and self-righteous twitterings from people like Bill O’Reilly on the subject of the TB guy who did what he had to in order to get home and to medication.  I do not mind admitting I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for this man.  

 

Why?

 

1.  Having been presented with a disease that would be 100% fatal if not treated, my whole world changed.  When you are faced with a terminal illness, your entire life changes.  I think if I were him, I would file a lawsuit against the CDC.  Also, the mask he is wearing is probably not needed.

 

2.  Doc Holiday had TB.  He and Big Nose Kate co-habituated with him for years.  She died a very old lady.  He spent years hanging out with Wyatt Earp, who died an old man.  His associates included Bat Masterson, Fred Dodge, John Clum, George Parsons, etc. none of whom contracted TB.  If they spent so much time with Doc and did not come down with it, and he was a raging case of an active disease, and the TB Guy’s disease was classified as “inactive”, I would probably have done the same thing.

STUPIDLY CONSERVATIVELY INSANE

Simpering has-been Peggy Noonan has taken yet another swipe at the Bush family in yet another futile attempt to revive an increasingly irrelevant career that has been eclipsed by the saber sharpness of a Coulter or Malkin. I don’t know why her nasty attack on both Presidents Bush should come as a surprise.  She has never liked either one, and like a viper laying in wait, she never hesitates to strike, even in moments of triumph.  A perfect example is her over the top criticism of GWB’s 2nd Inaugural Address.  Anything she writes about either man should have a disclaimer in front of it.  Evidently George Bush #41 did not treat her with kid gloves the way his predecessor did. 

 

I have long told you the extreme conservatives are NOT REAL REPUBLICANS.  Want a few examples?

Vox Populi

Below the Beltway thinks Bush has finally lost Noonan.  She was never there to begin with.

Flopping Aces – I am disappointed in Curt.

I like Malkin on everything but immigration.  To be effective she needs to quit associating with the likes of Vdare, Peter Brimelow and the John Tanton flunkies.  

Right Wing Nuthouse – the sky is falling for Rick Moran.

RedState is simply pathetic!

THOSE WHO “GET” IT!

You just don’t know how relieved I am to discover there are people who understand what these stupid conservatives are doing to the GOP.  I’m sorry, the only word to use is stupid.  After all, “Stupid is as stupid does”  as the T-shirt says, “I’m with Stupid” – well, I’m not.  Neither is:

AJ Strata

Captain’s Quarters (I disagree with Captain Ed that conservatives did not deserve the “attack”) but as usual he is rational.  

Outside the Beltway – I’ve been seeing signs of reason from Steven Taylor.  He picks up on O’Reilly’s “white Christian,male power structure) 

Blog Lizards

Blogs for Bush  

Powerline (surprisingly)

Wizbang’s DJ Drummond has an excellent commentary today. 

MY RANT FOR THE DAY

CONSERVATIVE IRE

I think Harold Hutchison’s post today at Called As Seen is one of the most important postings on the state of affairs in the GOP I’ve seen in ages.    Harold is being slammed for his position on immigration (FYI – It is the same as mine). 

 

COLD HEARTS:   While I am writing this I was listening to an interview on H&C between conservative (not a Republican) Sean Hannity and Juan Hernandez.  The thing I noticed is Hannity’s heart and mind have turned to stone.  It doesn’t matter how much you discuss this matter with him, he is going to quote the CONSERVATIVE Heritage Foundation’s report on immigration, and welfare, no matter that the report was crated with false statistics that come directly from CAIR and a man named David Simcox (who may or may not be a relative of Chris).  

 

Sean Hannity is the perfect example of what reasonable, logical people are being forced to deal with.  Why do people allow their hearts and minds to turn to stone?  What causes a person, a logical, intelligent person to completely close their mind to an issue?   So I hear Hannity change his mind about the TB Guy when presented with additional facts, so why can’t he do the same with immigration.

 

Let’s also realize that coming into the US is a misdemeanor, not a felony.

 

The profound amount of intellectual dishonesty on this subject is amazing.  The small minority of people who are violently against immigration are extremely well organized and very vocal.  The rest of us have lives to live. On Tuesday or so Grassfire had approximately 613,000 names on their anti-immigration petition.  Today they have 658,000 names.  A four day addition of 45,000 names Is NOT a groundswell! It is a blip, a hiccup. At this writing the current population is 301,980,244.   

 

8:18PM  I have spent an hour trying to find stats online about the number of registered GOP, Dem, Libertarian, etc. in the US.  At 8:30 I finally gave up.  But, I think you can see from the bare stats I have here, and the ones I presented last night, we’re dealing with a thimble full of toddlers who have nasty temper tantrums when they can’t get their own nasty way.

 

I don’t know about you, but this is one fairly conservative (Reagan style) who is sick and tired of their deplorable behavior.  I am absolutely disgusted over the fact that they are incapable of even looking at the stats from other sources.  When a person is like this, let’s just face the fact that they have been brainwashed and need to be deprogrammed!  I don’t care how rich, important, or powerful a person is, when they absolutely refuse to listen to a different side of the story, they are showing  serious intellectual problems.  They are also showing some serious flaws in their character. 

 

Okay, how can I say this?   

 

Ten years ago I was the most anti-Hispanic, anti-immigration person in the world.  If I had read the works of Brimelow, Malkin, Tancredo, Hannity, etc. I would have agreed with them.  I would have been marching lock-step with Chris Simcox and his adorable little racist patriots.  I was a card carrying member of the League of the South.  

 

Then –

 

I moved to New Mexico.  My racist eyes were opened. There is none more fervent than the recently converted. I fell in love with a beautiful culture and extraordinary, remarkable people.  I saw, first hand the poverty of Juarez.  I  helped feed hungry, terrified illegal migrants, along with everyone else in my church.  I help support a missionary who works in the slums of Juarez.  I try my best to live the Sermon on the Mount.  To turn my back on these people, to harden my heart to them, to refuse to see what I was brought here to see would be turning my back, hardening my heart to the teachings of my Lord and Savior.

 

P. S.  Ten years ago I would be get very hostile with people here in NM when they spoke Spanish.  Today, when the man I know is illegal carries my groceries out and loads the car, I reply, “Gracias”.  My 75 year old mother has decided to learn a few phrases in Spanish.  

WHAT’S UP WITH NRO?

Once upon a time NRO was not anti-immigration enough for the likes of Peter Brimelow.   .  NRO stalwarts like Jonah Goldberg understood right from wrong and stressed them, much to Brimelow’s dismay. He was reasonable when it came to immigration, even taking on Pat Buchanan. Something has happened.  Granted, Goldberg   has a wonderful column about Fred Thompson today. I also agree with him about GWB’s abject inability to communicate is his greatest problem.  But, I don’t mind saying that I think William F. Buckley has become senile, is being co-opted by John Tanton, has become his political shill, and he needs to be put out to pasture.  Someone needs to put a sock in Peggy Noonan’s mouth and suggest she get a life.  I think we are starting to see the far conservative right fall apart. And – maybe it’s about time.  When the NRO starts pandering and promoting the likes of Heather MacDonald (her atheist views here)   and Mark Krikorian,  another John Tanton puppet it makes one wonder who is calling the shots, WFB or the man the SPLC has labeled the Puppetmaster?

“…Equating terrorist threats with immigration has resulted in a steady dilution of immigrant rights and, by extension, increased restraints on the civil liberties of the entire society. The embrace of the “home front” logic of national security has also reinforced the steady militarization of the country’s borders and ports of entry. The anti-immigrant forces believe that terrorism will prove the game-winning trump card. Like the spurious “terrorist” evidence offered to build support for the Iraq invasion, restrictionists are offering their own manufactured proof that the southern border is a “terrorist alley” and the immigrant population represents a clear and present danger. The purported immigration/terrorism link has proved a convenient political vehicle to advance the long-standing agenda of anti-immigrant groups.

 

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Representative Tancredo asked his colleagues: “How many people in this country have to lose their lives before we come to the understanding that the defense of the nation begins at the defense of the borders?”8 But not one of the al-Qaida terrorists entered the country through Mexico. Nor did any of them enter as immigrants. Rather they visited the United States on temporary visas. As the Cato Institute’s Daniel Griswold observed: “We could reduce immigration to zero and still not stop terrorists from slipping into the country on temporary, non-immigrant visas.”9

 

Rabid anti-immigration figures like Tancredo, media personality Lou Dobbs, and think tank president Mark Krikorian are betting that they can persuade a credulous U.S. public and Congress to launch a “home front” war against immigrants by casting them as national security threats. Like the war in Iraq, the mounting campaign against immigrants is a dangerous diversion from the real national security task of identifying and dismantling international terrorist networks that threaten our collective security. The “counterterrorism” measures contained in legislation sponsored by House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, of extending the barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, of making it more difficult for refugees to gain asylum and of prohibiting illegal immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses, will prove of little use in capturing Osama bin Laden or preventing another terrorist attack.

 

The anti-immigrant forces are certainly right, however, in their contention that immigration--legal and illegal--is an issue that needs the urgent attention of policymakers. However, by scapegoating immigrants for so many of the country’s ills--environmental degradation, low wages, tax burdens, crime, social disintegration, and even terrorist threats--the anti-immigration forces are unleashing a vicious backlash movement that’s already deepening the social, economic, and political divides in the nation. In the process, the anti-immigrant groups are diverting popular attention away from the more fundamental causes of the socioeconomic problems that are eroding the substance and spirit of the United States.”

MacDonald writes for the City Journal, an allegedly scholarly publication that misquotes, and misrepresents facts almost as readily and easily as does Lou Dobbs, who uses their racist publications as research.  In a piece for the NY Sun, Diana Furchtgott-Roth describes the problem.   In a May 29 NRO piece, MacDonald references another City Journal author, Steve Malgana. 

In her piece, Roth takes Malagna apart when it comes to agriculture labor and the worker shortage.  It is quite obvious Malagna has no earthly idea how produce reaches market, and how extremely inflationary his version of immigration will be.

 

For more about the impact on agriculture, Lindsey toured the Farmer’s Market in Greenville (boy has that thing grown over the years).

 

Mark Krikorian of CAIR is another Tanton puppet.  You must did deep, but the racist tendencies are there. 

 “…"You are witnessing a federal crime!" bellowed Hal Turner, a neo-Nazi radio host from nearby North Bergen. "These people are illegal aliens, and they are criminals."  "Get the hell out of my country!" Turner yelled, straining to be heard by the Freedom Ride supporters. "We don't want you here! Go back where you came from!"  As more than 50 counter-demonstrators took up Turner's chant — "Arrest the illegals! Arrest the illegals!" — they waved hand-painted signs toward the immigrant rights rally: "Illegal Invasion," "Mine the Mexican Border," "No!!! Minority White America," "I Never Asked for Diversity."

 

Like the immigrant rights rally, this counter-demonstration — organized by Turner and heavily promoted on his Web site and radio show — was a culmination of sorts. Small clusters of protesters had greeted the Freedom Riders at more than 20 of their stops along the way.  Some of the protests had been lonely, with one or two anti-immigration activists holding signs with slogans like "Being Illegal Is Not a Civil Right." But at upwards of a dozen Freedom Ride stops, the anti-immigration activists had been joined by members of the nation's largest white-supremacist hate groups — all of whom had come together for today's demonstration.  Their arguments often sounded similar. Like Turner and many hate-group leaders, the powerful Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) called for federal officials to arrest the undocumented Freedom Riders. "Any event that advertises the participation of illegal aliens ought to be raided, and the illegal aliens deported," Mark Krikorian of CIS told the Miami Herald….”

Let’s face it, when a formerly respectable publication like NRO begins to pander to the likes of John Tanton, a known racist, and the engineer of most of today’s anti-immigration fervor. 

 

All of this is leading to the growing REPUBLICAN – CONSERVATIVE feud.  Be honest, it has nothing to do with GWB and everything to do with the fact that conservatives can’t deal with someone who doesn’t scrape and bow to them and give in to all their demands like a doting grandfather would to a 9 month old baby slamming her high-chair tray with her tommy-tumbler. Peggy Noonan is having a conservative melt-down.

 

She is not the first and will not be the last.  The great thing about all of this is those of us who are LOYAL REPUBLICANS can finally breathe a sigh of relief that these people are exposing themselves like a man with a mid-life crises at his first nude beach.   Ms Noonan also separates conservatives from Republicans.  We are different.  Republicans are loyal elephants.  Conservatives are mindless followers who are so afraid of change they must stick to the past in order to keep their view of the future going.

 

Too bad Noonan doesn’t understand the truth and had probably never been friends with a Hispanic in her life.  She might like them.  She might also discover they are extremely conservative!  An article out of Texas explains the President’s views on immigration.     This piece does put her to shame, as does this WSJ Opinion Journal interview by Kimberley Strassel.

 “…For Bush, the fight over immigration reform is a personal one — unlike Social Security or education reform, which were mostly political.  "I feel passionate about the issue. It's something I have felt strongly about ever since I was the governor of Texas," he said. "Texas is a very diverse state, Houston is a very diverse city, and through that diversity, if you're open-minded, you get a great sense of how it invigorates the society," said Bush, a Houston resident in the 1960s and '70s.

 

Growing up in Texas, Bush said, "you recognize the decency and hard work and humanity of Hispanics. And the truth of the matter is a lot of this immigration debate is driven as a result of Latinos being in our country." Or to be more specific, an unhappiness about Latinos being in the country. Bush, for the first time, is putting opponents on notice that he's going to call them out on their xenophobia if he needs to. In last year's failed effort at passing immigration reform, he never went that far.

 

"A lot of us in Texas were very aware of the immigration issue way before the rest of the country," Bush told McClatchy. Bush is working to keep the bill intact and moving forward…”

 

I feel sorry for conservatives who don’t understand what courage and leadership is.  Ronald Reagan had it.  The problem is today’s conservatives have strayed so far from Reagan they truly do not understand what that great man was all about.  I have a feeling if he were here today, he would be on the President’s side. 

 

“…The answer is no, although Mr. Bush is aware he'll have to work hard to prove it. In our 35 minutes together, he hardly comes across as blind to the fears and anger of his critics. "I think that some of the signals that people have seen are very disturbing to very patriotic Americans, such as people flying Mexican flags during immigration rallies," or "people here illegally straining the social services of different communities," or American towns wondering whether "the basic culture of their community is going to be affected negatively by people from, basically, a foreign land," he says.

 

Yet he also points out that "this isn't the first time our country has had to wrestle with waves of immigration"--noting Italians, Irish, Jews. He's enthusiastic in his belief that America still has the "great capacity" to continue to "assimilate" more cultures, which makes the nation stronger. Most notably, he's passionate that immigration is fundamentally a conservative cause, embodying core Republican values, and the issue is vital to his party's political future. "Part of the reason why I think it's important for me to be out speaking about it is it might cause people to say, well, wait a minute, the president supports it, let me find out why."…

 

Mr. Bush even has a few words for cultural conservatives, who have perhaps been most resistant to, and most emotional over, immigration reform. He talks of a belief in opportunity, which has defined conservatives for generations. "America is a country whose soul is constantly renewed by people pursuing what has been labeled the American Dream. It's an amazing country where people can come with nothing except for God-given talent and a deep desire to improve their family's lives and succeed." He notes his time in Texas, and how many Latinos he saw arrive, whose offspring "rose to positions of prominence and became significant contributors to our society." He also gets rolling on his hallmark theme, the compassion of Americans, a quality he believes should inspire them to look beyond the political fight to the harsher human realities of this mess. "A system that has encouraged the evolution of an underground network that treats people like a commodity, to be--in many cases, to be exploited--is not right, and it's not American." He sits forward, even gets a little, well, emotional. "We are a country of law, and we ought to uphold the law. But the system in place now has created a whole group of people who are evasive of the law and, therefore, people suffer--good, decent people suffer, whether they be people paying coyotes a large sum of money relative to their income in order to be stuffed in the bottom of an 18-wheeler, or guides that they pay that then drop them off in the deserts and wish them all the best, or document forgers or innkeepers that exploit these poor people, who are mostly looking just for a chance to feed their families."...”

 

I truly have a problem with people who cannot stop an examine information besides the sources they trust.  I also have problems with people who cannot take a critical look at their trusted sources.  

 

PRIMARIES 2008

I think Novak has lost all objectivity when it comes to Fred Thompson.

 

Romney’s Mass Problem

 

Jonathan Martin has a fascinating Politico take on Romney.  I want to use the sociopath word so bad when dealing with Romney, but I am refraining from doing so.

 

Giuliani takes lead in SC.   

 

If you see a man walking around with a bull’s eye on the top of his baldish head – it’s Rudy Giuliani.  The way I feel, bring it on.  Why not let them use up all their amo in the early rounds.  When we get to the finals his opponents will have nothing left.

 

Romney the gnat slapping at Fred Thompson T-Rex?