The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

Amnesty By Fiat

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Thumbing his nose at the Constitutional requirement that immigration policy originates with Congress, President Lame Duck today announced he has decided that  he is suspending the deportation of most illegal aliens under the age of 31.  And he will give them forever-renewable work permits.

No matter that 20 million American citizens are currently unemployed.

No matter that the millions of young Americans graduating from high school and college this month can’t find work.

No matter that unemployment of black youth in particular is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%.

No matter that this is a slap in the face to every person who came to America legally.

No matter that every attempt to pass some sort of DREAM Act has – rightfully – failed to make it through both House and Senate.

No matter that a majority of Americans do not want any more amnesty programs but instead want sane legal immigration policy and secure borders.

No, all that matters is pandering to the deliberate, pre-meditated criminal leeches who suck the lifeblood of the American taxpayer.  Leeches who can’t even legally vote (but in too many cases do) but who are seen as future Democrat victims…errr…voters by slavering progressive liberals.

Congress has the power to put a stop to this banana republic dictator-wannabe nonsense now.  The question is:  do they have big enough cojones to do it?

The End Of Federal Money-Laundering?

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Taxes are a big theme in this year’s midterm election mudslinging contest.  It is not just a response to the current administration’s obvious attempts to crush the productive in order to maintain their personal wealth and delusions of power but rather quite a normal reflex.  Humans, being just another species of animal (regardless what self-perceived elitists like to think about themselves and others in their little herd), are normally self-protective, selfish, and therefore not really very generous until such time as they, themselves, feel their personal needs have been safely and securely met.

Progressives, in their contempt for the protections of  the fallibility of humans as written into the governing documents of the Republic by our Founding Fathers, have always known this.  And they have used it for their own equally selfish advantage by professing to offer something for nothing to those who have not fairly earned it.  The ideology of “distributing the wealth” plays on the inherently sympathetic nature of the inherently self-protective, using age-old exhortations to Man’s “higher nature” to press the guilt button and thereby gain acquiese to more and more of the fruits of their labors.

I see the rise of the Tea Party as a logical response to this theft.  And I have come to see the idiocy in believing there can be much (if any) good in what is essentially money laundering by the federal government.  The Enumerated Powers were quite clear yet today we pay thousands and thousands of bureaucrats two and three times the going rate to decide how we should be spending our money on things in which the federal government simply does not belong.  In the same way Jesus is reported to have overturned the tables of the money-changers in the temple, so now does the Tea Party stand to overturn the same thievery that has become the federal government.

What good does it to give money to what is essentially a charitable endeavor (food stamps, welfare, Social Security, even education) but allow a big bite to be taken out of it before it may be used as originally intended?  What most readily recognize as a charity gets double-dipped for they must give money to the federal government in order to be recognized as doing charitable work in the first place; then our tax dollars pay thousands of bureaucrats to monitor the flow of money from donor to recipient.  Would it not be better to be able to hand over some of your dollars directly to someone who is, say, stocking a food pantry and know that it is going to be spent on food, rather than going first to subsidize some bureaucrat’s above-average lifestyle?  Would you not be more willing to donate in the first place, and even to donate more?

I know I would.  And for anyone who thinks that this tax-loving bureaucratic micro-regulating of charities is a good idea, I would only point to organizations like ACORN and ask you just how well has that worked out?  In this age of free-flowing information, I would err on the thought that word of mouth about organizations pocketing more than reasonable expenses (United Way, anyone?) would spread quickly and they would soon find their donations dropping; the worst would have to close their doors and the userers in charge would have to go out and earn a real living.

The same can be said for unions, which have become little more than the worst kind of charities.  The truth is, teachers and teamsters, that your Viagra is not my problem and if you think your dues can make it so, just ask Jimmy Hoffa what happened to Michigan.  Even banks, when subject to the free-flow of information in a truly free market, would not stay in business very long when they force responsible customers to pay for their loans to customers who are less responsible.

The federal government has long overstepped its bounds and their demonstrations of entitlement to do so become more clear each day.  Why else is President Walking Eagle stumping around the country inciting violence towards those who disagree with his socialist policies – on our dime?  I don’t recall that calling those who don’t want to pay to support millions more people with entitlements the “enemy” was part of his job description.  But it is certainly in the job description of we, the people, to find and to root out the enemies both without and within.

And that is why November 2nd is so important.  There are lamestream media squeakings this morning about sending the “inexperienced” into our “complicated” contemporary federal government machine in Washington.  But at the end of the day and in the final analysis it is exactly such “inexperience” that is needed to cut the crap if we don’t want Americans to end up in Greece or France without need for a passport and plane ride.  They are needed to walk those Democrat-desecrated hallowed halls wielding the scalpel about which His Transparency lied during the 2008 election campaign and then use it to cut out the heart of progressive liberalism whether it comes in the guise of an ass or a RINO and restore the Republic; beholden to no one except those who sent them there to do that very job.

As the Justice Department would say, “Bring out your dead and vote early and often.”

Quote(s) Of The Day

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“The problem is, if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’ “

(President Obama to Senator Kyl when asked directly about securing Arizona’s border with Mexico)

 

“They want to get something in return for doing their duty.”

(Senator Kyle, R-AZ)

Let Us Marginalize

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In the latest of a string of reports and statements from those in the federal government, both FBI Director, Robert Mueller and former President Clinton recently donned their best Daddy Dearest ballcaps and issued statements warning about the dangers of “extreme” anger that might surface from the right.  Progressive liberal code for the Tea Party protests and in stereotypical hypocritical contrast, of course, to His Transparency’s excuse after the Fort Hood shooting, “We have seen, in the past, rampages of this sort.  And in a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable.”

Both the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and the recent bust of the wacko Hutaree militia, not to mention the Islamic-raged Fort Hood shooter, have highlighted the fact that they do, indeed, walk amongst us.  But the dangers posed by a few, no matter what side of the political fence they ride, are no reason to tar the majority of Americans with the same brush of suspicion.  Nor does it show any kind of logic or reason to dismiss active Tea Party members because allegedly a whole lot of them happen to be white and work for a living, and while working manage to not only actually spend their money wisely but to save some of it, too.  (Where, exactly, do you think all that money spent on entitlements come from, anyway?)

Yet that big, broad brush is being swept gleefully as the left’s last, best hope to save its sorry political skin in articles by all sorts of media.  Based on a poll taken by CBS and the New York Times:

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class….

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

…while most Americans blame the Bush administration or Wall Street for the current state of the American economy, the greatest number of Tea Party supporters blame Congress.

This is simply a prelude to another gut-busting fight now surfacing, courtesy of the brave yet criminally-beleagured state of Arizona, who just last week made it a state crime to be in the country illegally.  Simply put, it reiterates federal law.  Federal law that goes so unenforced that some estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants have invaded Arizona, resulting in a massive crime wave that authorities believe includes the recent murder of rancher Rob Krentz. 

Those who would coddle blatant criminals are angrily protesting, including members of Congress like Arizona Democrat Representative Raul M. Grijalva, who need those beholden, dependent voters to hold onto their self-perceived power, but these protests bear no resemblance to the peaceful Tea Party rallies.  No, these are reminiscent of the liberal left’s protests against the Bush administration, only this time they come with swastikas painted on the windows of the Arizona state capital with refried beans. 

One attendee,  Bill Baker, was quoted as stating the obvious in a Washington Times article, “If I go to another foreign country, if I go to Mexico, I have to have papers.”  All together now:  “Duh“.   To expect the average American to except and embrace criminals here is insanity.

But that insane argument is exactly what is going to be the rallying cry for the November elections.  President Walking Eagle has thrown down the gauntlet by calling on his 2008 minions of “young people, African Americans, Latinos and women” to deliver for Democrats in November, as well as having the Justice Department “examine the civil rights and other implications” of the new Arizona law.  This is, of course, the same “Justice” department of BO cronies who didn’t bother to take the freebie conviction in the Black Panther voting precinct intimidation case and gave the Underoo Bomber Miranda rights. 

All of which is nothing more than continuing to use the race card to pit those raised to believe in entitlement against those who believe in earning their own way.

A Fatal Blow To The Republic

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I’m not sure where we are this evening, dear readers, but we’re certainly not in the Republic of the United States any more.  At 1045 p.m., the House of Representatives voted to change this great nation into a banana republic by passing the Senate’s version of health care “reform”.  They then voted to send their even more restrictive and more debt-containing “reconciliation” bill over to the Senate.  A Senate that has absolutely no obligation to even consider it, mind you, let alone actually pass it into law. 

Michigan Representative Bart Stupak and most of his pro-life Democratic delegation voted “yes” for this blatant reversal of the Hyde amendment prohibiting the use of taxpayer funding of abortions, based only on a worthless piece of paper that His Transparency agreed at the last hour to sign as an Executive Order.  An order that in first draft merely reiterates bits and pieces of the Senate bill and has absolutely NO weight behind it since an Executive Order can’t trump law.

As a lawyer, Stupak knows all this, which makes him a traitor of the worst sort.  But, as is said, once a Democrat, always a Democrat and so it is that Americans, if they still believe in the inalienable Rights given to them by the literal blood and sweat of the Founding Fathers, now have a long, hard road ahead.  Life as we know it is going to be messy for a good long while since there will be immediate court challenges filed against the unconstitutional aspects of the Senate bill, including the individual mandate that NOT doing something now becomes a crime.  In 38 states, attorney generals are readying lawsuits to exempt their states from the legislation.  And the true conservative part of the GOP has begun the effort to gather support for an outright appeal of it.

And yet most of us have to get up tomorrow morning and go about our regular business of making a living and living our regular lives.  It’s a surreal feeling tonight and I weep with both Lady Liberty and Justice.  I weep because the America I so dearly love does not deserve this usurpation of her liberties, this castration of those things that have made Her the most powerful nation on earth, even though a majority of her citizens were stupid enough to believe that “hope and change” meant something a little less tyrannical.

Immigration reform is next, you know.  The Democrats are hoping that an infusion of millions of grateful new citizens via amnesty, though they are today all criminals, will help them next November.  No matter there is then the risk of these criminals legally displacing more American workers at a time when America’s unemployment rate still hovers near 10%.  No matter that hard-working Americans will have even more health insurance (and abortions) to subsidize with their tax dollars.

The road ahead is, indeed, going to be long and hard.  And bloodier than previously anticipated.

May God have mercy on us.

The Dems Are Faking Suicide

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The Democrat-controlled Congress is busy planning how to ram their visions of health care “reform” down America’s throat and the rising backlash against their tactics and, indeed, against their progressive liberal ideology is becoming more and more severe.

So severe, that true to the form of all yellow-bellied selfish cowards, Democrats are turning tail and dropping out of 2010 elections left and right.  And the pious spinning begins.  Among the louder dropouts is the infamous sleazeball Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn).  Perhaps to spend some time licking his wounds at his Countrywide sweetheart-deal-bought cottage in Ireland? 

 
Yeah, right.  He seems to forget our flying pigs are waiting patiently in the wings.
 
The real reason that Dodd, Dorgan (ND), Kaufman (DE), and Burris (IL), along with Colorado Governor Bill Ritter are leading the rat charge off the sinking ship is because in the larger progressive liberal Democrat scheme of things, they’re expendable.
 
How can they be expendable when the Democrats need their 60-vote majority in the Senate?  Let us count the ways.  The first answer is contained in three little words:  “universal voter registration”.
 
Simply put, this is a tactic planned by the Democrats that will force – by federal mandate – the states to register everyone to vote. 
In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration. …  It means all of the state laws on elections will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states: “take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be …” 
 
The problems with universal voter registration are numerous and obvious. Many states’ lists include vast numbers of illegals, including some states which allow illegals to obtain drivers licenses; because many homeowners have more than one home, there will be duplicates; because so many people are on so many separate federal and state government agency lists, there will be duplicates; and because so many lists exist with little or no cross-checking capability, all of these duplicates are likely to go uncorrected. Add to this the fact that Dems hope to extend voting rights to felons, and the whole thing begins to look like a nationwide Democrat voter registration drive facilitated by taxpayers.
 
The second answer is that odious little poster child for all things fraudulent and illegal:  ACORN.  Under investigation in numerous states for their 2008 “assistance” to the Obama campaign, when something as precious as a 60-seat Democrat Senate majority hangs in the balance, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of false voters registered and as many fraudulent ballots cast.  Politico nicely outlined the ACORN problem last year:

Larry Lomax, the chief elections officer in Las Vegas, responded that the group’s claims it had extensive quality controls to catch fraudulent registrations were “pathetic.” He noted that ACORN had hired 59 inmates from a work-release program at a nearby prison and that some inmates who had been convicted of identity theft had been made supervisors. That led some local wags to joke that at least ACORN was hiring specialists to do their work.

ACORN’s second line of defense has been that fraudulent registrations can’t turn into fraudulent votes, as if the felony of polluting voter lists was somehow not all that serious. But that defense goes only a short distance. “How would you know if people using fake names had cast votes in states without strict ID laws?” says GOP Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who this year won a major Supreme Court case upholding his state’s photo identification law. “It’s almost impossible to detect and once the fraudulent voter leaves the precinct or casts an absentee ballot, that vote is thrown in with other secret ballots there’s no way to trace it.”

Anita MonCrief, an ACORN whistle-blower who worked for both it and its Project Vote registration affiliate from 2005 until early this year, agrees. “It’s ludicrous to say that fake registrations can’t become fraudulent votes,” she told me. “I assure you that if you can get them on the rolls you can get them to vote, especially using absentee ballots.”

…some ACORN affiliates had a conscious strategy of flooding voter registration offices with suspect last-minute forms in part to create confusion and chaos that would make it more likely suspect voters would be allowed to cast ballots by overworked officials. Nate Toller, who worked on ACORN registration drives and headed an ACORN campaign against Wal-Mart in California until 2006, agrees. “There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” he told me.

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Perhaps the clearest look at how fraudulent registrations can be converted into votes comes from Wisconsin. Earlier this year, the Milwaukee Police Department’s Special Investigation Unit released a stunning 67-page report detailing an “illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome” of the 2004 presidential election. 

 It noted many documented cases of staffers for a presidential campaign and an allied 527 group who illegally voted. Those involved in the scheme “represent multiple levels of both the organizations, from upper management to the street level canvassers.” The task force report found many ineligible voters had cast ballots, ineligible felons not only had voted but also worked at the polls, transient college students had cast illegal votes along with day-trippers from nearby Chicago, and homeless voters may well have voted more than once.

 The Milwaukee police report explained just how easy it is to cast an illegal vote without ever being detected., “Michael A. Smith can become Mike Smith, M.A. Smith, or Mickey Smith, depending on the person reviewing the Same Day registration card, and unless a specific allegation is made against one of those name variants, the new name would just be added to the overall database. Even if the new system were capable of discerning the differences in recorded names, the finding would not be discovered until after any multiple ballots had been cast and recorded.” Indeed, the task force found that 1,100 registration cards filled in by voters were declared invalid or untraceable by election officials.

 Another way that fraudulent registrations can be converted into illegal votes is when groups like ACORN either purposely or recklessly sign up visitors from out-of-state or felons who are ineligible to vote. The New York Daily News reported in August, 2004 on how some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, what it called a “shocking finding” because it “found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election, a federal offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine,” and noted that “efforts to prevent people from registering in more than one state rely mostly on the honor system.”

For answer number three, we can’t forget granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.  Aka giving criminals given an easy path to citizenship.  While it has been reported that House members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have threatened to vote against any health care bill that doesn’t allow illegal (criminal) immigrants access, word is slipping out that they’ll back down if they get an agreement from Obama that health care coverage for criminals who “earn” a path to citizenship will be addressed in an immigration bill.  A bill rumored to be already in the planning stages.  Then beholden to their savior, the Democrats are counting on their votes.

But there is a small sliver of hope.  Business Week reports that America’s “misery index” (the sum of a country’s unemployment and inflation rates)  has reached 11.8% and there is no reason to think it will not continue to move higher over the next year.  This is its highest point since May 1991, and more than 3 percentage points higher than its average since then.  It topped out at 22% in 1980 – helping to usher in the Reagan era.

It can be another case where misery loves company.  In this case, the company can be found at the polls.  And in such numbers the Democrats’ attempts to steal any election will be so blatant they are put away for good.

Coddling Criminals Continues

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The Wall Street Journal notes today that enforcement of immigration laws is now starting to succumb to the pitiful, “Why me?” cries of the liberal agenda on behalf of their criminal voter-wannabes, in preparation for the big, sucking sound of President Obama’s next reform push.

The 287g program was designed by the Bush administration to train local police to help federal immigration authorities locate criminal aliens.  But apparently its success and the support of those participating in it are its downfall.

“I think the program is working great,” said Wake County, N.C., Sheriff Donnie Harrison. “If the highway patrol brings someone to our jail, and they say they are foreign born, then they are flagged for 287g. They have committed a violation of some sort to be brought to our jail…from broken tail lights to murder and rape.”

Raleigh, N.C., resident Maria Hernandez was booked into a Wake County jail after failing to show up for her 6-year-old son’s truancy hearing, according to her account and that of her attorney, Marty Rosenbluth.

Ms. Hernandez, a cleaning lady who came to the U.S. illegally nine years ago, is now in deportation court. “I don’t understand why they come after people like me,” she said.

I’ll tell you why, Ms. Hernandez.  Usted es un criminal.  You are a criminal.  You broke the law when you entered this country deliberately and illegally and the consequence of your law-breaking is deportation.

Adios.