Some sanity in an error of insanity

Of all the reports, accounts, and opinions I've read about the current state of affairs in Arizona, one of the more balanced pieces appeared in the SFGate today by Debra Sanders. America is being divided -- hence the title "America's Political Grand Canyon" -- by the politics surrounding Arizona's new immigration law.

Let me lead with what should be an unremarkable observation: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer did not write federal immigration laws that require permanent residents to carry green cards, employers to check documentation or limit the number of legal immigrants admitted each year. Washington did. But because Washington has failed to enforce those rules, Brewer signed into law a bill passed by the Arizona legislature to beef up and expand enforcement of federal immigration law.

This is something similar to in a recent post by me:  Inaction by the Feds caused an over-reaction in Arizona. This may be tried in Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry has been asking for federal help for more than a year.

There are always two sides to each story, it seems:

Why alienate Latinos who are good Arizonans when local police already can notify the feds after they arrest illegal immigrants?

By the same token, supporters of the bill feel alienated, too. Their belief in enforcing duly enacted federal laws earns them the tag of "racist" - whether they are or not.

Opponents of the new law drew swastikas on the Arizona Capitol, yet somehow pundits aren't asking whether they are inciting violence. Some critics have likened the bill to the "Your papers, please" authoritarianism of Nazi Germany. Please. If you think you shouldn't have to carry identification, don't travel abroad. And don't drive.

Then there's San Francisco's response - calling for a boycott.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera believes the Arizona law is "unconstitutional," and he may well be right. He was righteous when he told me, "We all know that racial profiling happens within the law enforcement community" - not only for arrests, but also when questioning innocent people.

I still have to ask: Why should San Francisco support a boycott of another government? Don't city politicians have their hands full governing this place, without telling other politicians how to run their turf?

One of her conclusions: This is how America gets torn apart.

This article is fair and balanced. We need more of this today, now more than ever. You can find the entire article here.

If for some reason, you don't like the SFGate article, try this one from the Los Angeles Times.

On a side-bar, most media reports of this issue are very intellectually dishonest. First of all, the law is not anti-immigrant, but anti-illegal-immigrant. A small, but important distinction, and the mis-reporting is driving me crazy.

Burn this racist city down!

The message to "burn this racist city down" was reportedly spray-painted on a Phoenix sidewalk. Protesters in Phoenix are arrested for throwing rocks and bricks at police and 12 are arrested in Chicago for blocking a street.

Real nice. And it's the Tea Parties that have the left and the MSM worried about violence. No Tea Party demonstration or protest matched what is going on in Arizona and elsewhere.

But we should be more understanding, because it really does seem that the left in this country truly gets deranged over this subject of illegal aliens streaming across our borders. As opposed to "undocumented workers." So much nicer, makes you feel good all over, a tingly feeling running up your leg (right, Chris Matthews?)

Leo Banks, who covers the border for Tuscon Weekly, offers some context in an article for American Thinker:

This isn't your father's illegal immigration, when polite farm workers offered to do chores in return for some water and a sandwich as they walked north. Today, the drug cartels have taken over the people-smuggling business. They own the trails into the country and dominate the land, the same way urban gangs control neighborhoods...

Along the Chiricahua Corridor smuggling route north and east of Douglas, Arizona, residents have been screaming for some time about break-ins, threats, intimidation, vandalism, and home invasions. But the feds did nothing to keep citizens safe. Instead, they talked amnesty.

Then, a highly respected rancher in Arizona is gunned down by a suspected drug smuggler, still at large, presumably in Mexico. The State of Arizona reacts by saying they are going to enforce federal law.

Now, the Hispanic News in Tuscon says:

Arizona SB 1070, which will become Arizona law 90 days after the state legislature’s present session comes to an end, will bring havoc on Arizona directly turning Arizona into a Gestapo state violating the civil rights of Arizona Hispanics by significantly increasing police profiling of everyone with a brown face.

Gestapo? This shows no understanding of what really happened in Germany in the 1930s. Stopping illegal immigration (of all races, not just Hispanic) and its corresponding horrendous crime rates, is the motivation. The Nazis had different motivations.

Crime in Arizona is out of control. Phoenix is the number two kidnapping capitol of the world, behind number one Mexico City.

But keep crying racism. It won't do any good. If the federal government would get off its ass and do it's job, this would not be an issue.

And we have the President of Mexico weighing in as well. He should be ashamed, but he has economic motivations. The measure, which will make it a crime under state law to be an illegal immigrant, “opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement,” Calderon said.

So what would happen if an American citizen was in Mexico illegally? Foreigners who fail to obey the rules will be fined, deported, and/or imprisoned as felons:

• Foreigners who fail to obey a deportation order are to be punished. (Article 117)
• Foreigners who are deported from Mexico and attempt to re-enter the country without authorization can be imprisoned for up to 10 years. (Article 118)
• Foreigners who violate the terms of their visa may be sentenced to up to six years in prison (Articles 119, 120 and 121). Foreigners who misrepresent the terms of their visa while in Mexico — such as working with out a permit — can also be imprisoned.

Under Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony. The General Law on Population says,

• A penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine of three hundred to five thousand pesos will be imposed on the foreigner who enters the country illegally.” (Article 123)
• Foreigners with legal immigration problems may be deported from Mexico instead of being imprisoned. (Article 125)
• Foreigners who “attempt against national sovereignty or security” will be deported. (Article 126)

Mexicans who help illegal aliens enter the country are themselves considered criminals under the law:

• A Mexican who marries a foreigner with the sole objective of helping the foreigner live in the country is subject to up to five years in prison. (Article 127)
• Shipping and airline companies that bring undocumented foreigners into Mexico will be fined. (Article 132)

Ah, so if the shoe fits, you'd better wear it, huh El Jeffe?

Hat tip to Cassio Fiano for some of this material.

One bad piece of legislation, followed by another?

I'm all for health care reform, and I wanted to get that said up front. But the more I learn about the current attempt, the more I think it is a bad piece of legislation and will have negative consequences. This happens quite often with government programs. Even the government's Medicaid office agrees. You can read about this here at MSNBC, or here at Fox.

My first experience with governmental aid programs was back in the late 1980s. Our next-door nieghbors were having financial problems, as well as martial problems. They weren't bad people, just having a problem getting their act together. The husband moved out and the wife and two kids whet on whatever welfare was called at the time -- I think it was a combination of programs.

As they worked on their problems, the husband moved back in. Then the government swooped in because they had heard or suspected (from where I do not know) that the husband was back in the house. If there were to continue receiving aid, the husband could not live there. I will now admit I lied to the agency worker, that the husband only visited, but wasn't staying there. It did not seem right to split a family up like this...but we know this has been happening for decades.

Now we face financial "reform." I'm no expert on the mattter, but I'm nervous about the outcome. More than 1,000 pages long, the new bill has to be filled with pork and handouts for special interests. I suspect it will do more damage than good.

But don't take my word. Read John Mauldin's take on it in his article First, Let's Kill the Angels and decide for yourself. A short excerpt:

When you draft a 1,300-page "financial reform" bill, various special interests get language tucked into the bill to help their agendas. However, the unintended consequences can be devastating. And the financial reform bill has more than a few such items...a new problem has surfaced that has major implications for the US economy and our ability to grow it. For all intents and purposes, the bill will utterly devastate angel investing in the US. And as we will see, that is not hyperbole. For a Congress and administration that purports to be all about jobs, this section of the bill makes less than no sense. It is a job and innovation killer of the first order.

There's more, and you should read it.

Arizona: Is it an over-reaction to Federal inaction?

The recent law in Arizona is called racist. But I hardly think race is the motivation. For those who live in border states, and even more so for those who live along the border, Federal inaction has now caused an over-reaction to the problem of illegals and the ongoing drug wars.

Are we tired yet of playing the race card? This does not solve anything.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 70% of likely voters in Arizona approve of the legislation, while just 23% oppose it.

And for Obama to direct his people to investigate this law, I don't think it's his responsibility. What is he going to do. He can't repeal the law. This is up to the courts. He claims it might violate illegal immigrant's civil rights. But what about the rights of citizens who have to support illegals and put up with the crime that a small majority of these illegals perpertrate on U.S. residents. And it hurts our legal immigrants as much as citizens.

This is not a matter of immigration reform, but of enforcing the laws of the land. The last several Presidents have not lived up to their reponsibilities. Congress makes the law. The President is supposed to enforce it. If the law is bad, change it. But the President doesn't have the right to say, "I like this law, so I'll enforce it. But I don't like this one, so I'll ignore it."

But hey, that's just the Constitution.

The Obama Youth Corps

It can't happen here. The hell it can't.

Have you checked out the latest on what Obama and his minions are doing behind your back? This is in addition to his Organize for America campaign, which is setting up TRAINING CAMPS for education in "political methods."

In a bill that received very little MSM coverage, the house last month passed by a 321-105 margin The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act. Later that month, it passed the Senate and was signed into law.

Under section 6104 of the bill, entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, the legislation states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

Section 120 of the bill also discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.”

“The legislation, slated to cost $6 billion over five years, would create 175,000 “new service opportunities” under AmeriCorps, bringing the number of participants in the national volunteer program to 250,000. It would also create additional “corps” to expand the reach of volunteerism into new sectors, including a Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps and Veterans Service Corps, and it expands the National Civilian Community Corps to focus on additional areas like disaster relief and energy conservation,” reports Fox News.

The Senate is also considering a similar piece of legislation known as the “Serve America Act,” which also includes language about “Youth Engagement Zones”.

Fears about Obama’s plans to create involuntary servitude were first stoked in July 2008, when Obama told a rally in Colorado Springs, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

Despite denials that Obama plans to institute a mandatory program of national service, his original change.gov website stated that Americans would be “required” to complete “50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year”. The text was only later changed to state that Americans would be “encouraged” to undertake such programs.

In addition, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, publicly stated his intention to help create “universal civil defense training” in 2006.

Rahm Emanuel describes the Obama Youth Corps in enthusiastic detail. Apparently it is a very serious defense organization not associated with the current military. The Obama Youth Corps will counterbalance that failed degenerate US Military apparatus which is known by the Obama administration to be manipulated by greedy capitalists.

Now there is the City Year program, all dressed in their brown shirts red coats. And the Pledge of Allegiance and school prayer is under attack. What's next? How far will it go?



Who makes sure it doesn't go too far? Well, sometimes the little shit like refusing to fly the colors will tell a story about what a man believes.

The writing is on the wall. The truth is out there.

Earth Day 2010

Contrary to popular belief, there are some people who label themselves as conservatives, libertarians, Republicans -- you know, those knuckle-dragging ignoramuses who clutch to their bibles and guns, spew toxic waste, are racists and pretty much your trailer trash citizen -- who actually prefer a cleaner environment.

Happy Earth Day to all you crazy liberals and tree huggers.

I think there should be a custom in Texas that if you see someone throw trash out of their car, you get to shoot them. But hey, that's just me. Or how about those old cars spewing black or white or grey smoke from their tailpipes. Can I run them off the road? Probably not, huh? Hey, it's my air too, ashhole.

This year we planted 10 new trees on our property, a new record for a single year. This makes about 40 new trees over the last decade, if memory serves. Twelve of these will be huge Cedar Elms, which can grow to 50 feet. And we got some maples, crepe myrtles, Mexican plums, sweet gums, mimosa's, among what has grown natually.

Over the last 3 years, we've spent about $20,000 on energy upgrades to the house -- hi-grade foil on the roof (we don't have an attic), new shingles and siding, new windows. In our harsh climate, this may save about 5-10 percent of our costs, which won't pay off until after I'm dead and gone. But the 40-year-old house is a little more comfortable, which was our primary motivator.

I drive a Buick, one of those big old Detroit models. GPA: 34 highway, 24 city. Not too bad. I traded my Cadillac (26 Highway, 18 city) for the Buick when the Cadillac started showing signs of decay.

Before I came along, it was common practice to use the woods as  a dumping ground -- hey, where else are you going to put the old shingles from the chicken coop or the old tractor oil -- but I put a stop to that right away and eventually I'll get it cleaned up.

I'm still trying to get my wife to lower the gas water heater temp by 5 degrees, but she just loves a very hot bath, and we are heating well water, which tends to be very cold from 85 feet underground.

When I first moved to Texas 17 years ago, I did noticed the lack of litter on the highways. The state was running a "Don't Mess with Texas" campaign, which seemed to work. Wish they'd do it again. I guess they are too many people coming in from around the country to make it work. I don't know why people got lazy again. Someone told me the prisoners from the county jail will take care of it.

I generally support environmental causes, if they are reasonable and don't hurt people. In my book, people come first, not some little 1-inch California fish. Screw the farmers and their families, right? Got to protect that little fish. But since we all are human, some of us will go to extremes.

Ever really studied what the environment was like in London in 1600? It might make you think hard about "how bad we have it today."

Every day should be earth day. Let's just not go off the deep end about it, and I don't want or need the government looking over my shoulder. And if someone tells me I've got to reduce my "carbon footprint" one more time, the footprint you see on your behind won't be carbon.