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"1965 Immigration Reform Cost Blacks Minority Primacy"

This long article discusses the declining status of blacks as America's chief minority, focusing on Katrina and mentioning 'La Nueva Orleans' from Gregory Rodriguez of the Los Angeles Times.

Note that Teddy Kennedy was responsible for that 1965 legislation.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

Is the New York Times a Mexican newspaper?

I'm left with the distinct impression that the New York Times is a Mexican newspaper after reading "Way North of the Border" by Eduardo Porter and Elisabeth Malkin.

Here's the paragraph on which they construct the rest of their story:

The location of Mexico's latest American consulate [in St. Paul] provides a stark illustration of how economically improving groups of Mexican immigrants are establishing themselves across the country, in ways that experts say point to the futility of current attempts to plug the border and stem the flow of illegal migrants in search of a better life.

Rather than respond directly to the NYT's propaganda, let's think up some questions they could have asked but did not:

1. Aren't they misleading their readers into thinking that the only way to "stem the flow of illegal aliens" is by "plugging the border"? There's nothing in the article about cracking down on employers or reducing public benefits. Wouldn't those stem the flow? Why didn't the NYT discuss those?

2. Could the NYT tell us more about those "hometown associations" they mention? Don't they result in "Americans" who also represent Mexicans? Don't they result in people with divided loyalties? Why didn't the NYT discuss that issue? (To see the Las Vegas Sun ignoring this issue, read up on Alan Torrez).

3. What exactly do those hometown associations have to do with the emergency declarations of Napolitano and Richardson?

4. The NYT seems to be implying that it's good that those declarations didn't stop Mexico. Why is that? Are they confused about something or other?

5. When "J. Edward Taylor, a professor at the University of California, Davis" refers to "too big to be counteracted by enforcement", isn't he only referring to "border enforcement"? Why didn't the NYT point that out in order to avoid misleading their readers?

And, that's just from the first screen! Here's two final questions:

6. Even if the NYT doesn't think massive illegal immigration is bad public policy, shouldn't it give at least a paragraph near the end of the article to those who don't share its views?

7. Is the New York Times in effect supporting the Mexican government rather than the wishes of the vast majority of Americans and what's best for this country? Is the NYT confused about something or other?

Please send an email to public *at* nytimes.com and suggest that, at the very least, they reconsider assigning these two reporters to the immigration beat.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

Jeb: Dubya wrong about federalizing relief

Internecine triangulation? Jeb Bush has (apparently) come out against Bush's plans to grab more powers for the military. From "Think Locally On Relief":

As the governor of a state that has been hit by seven hurricanes and two tropical storms in the past 13 months, I can say with certainty that federalizing emergency response to catastrophic events would be a disaster as bad as Hurricane Katrina.

There must be something else going on. Perhaps he's trying to portray himself as the more conservative one or something.

Posted to Politics at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

FCC moves to install Internet backdoor for wiretapping

Sep 29 - Quietly last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a 59-page document outlining new rules forcing broadband internet and voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone service providers to open up their systems to federal, state and local law enforcement officials.

In releasing the rules, the FCC opened up a 30-day public comment period. The regulations, which are planned for implementation in 2007, were decided upon in the beginning of August and made public Friday without a news release or other announcement.

Opponents of the proposed rules argue that the "backdoor" requirements pose the opportunity for privacy rights violations and will be prohibitively expensive for companies and the consumers they will ultimately pass the cost along to. In addition, Internet phone companies allege that the FCC rules are designed to prop up faltering traditional telephone companies, which are losing ground in competition with the relatively versatile and inexpensive VoIP services...

UPDATE: See also "FBI to get veto power over PC software?"

Posted to Miscellania at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

The Akaka Bill, Hawaiian secession and... bingo? Follow the money!

The Akaka Bill - from Senator Daniel Akaka, Democrat Hawaii - seeks to give that state some self-determination. Unfortunately, their self-determination stops at the point where our property could fall into the hands or sphere of influence of China or some other country.

Phyllis Schlafly doesn't mention that country in "Does Hawaii Want To Secede From The Union?", but she does have some interesting info on the possible ulterior motives:

Does Hawaii want to secede from the Union? That sounds like a preposterous question, but the official Office of Hawaiian Affairs advertises on its website that the legislation scheduled to be voted on soon in the U.S. Senate will give Native Hawaiians "self-determination" to choose "total independence" or any other form of government.

Hawaii is asking the U.S. Senate to create a Hawaiian race-based government for persons with Native Hawaiian blood living anywhere in the United States. I'm not making this up; it's real...

So, to be a Native Hawaiian, you don't need to have lived in Hawaii or ever had any affiliation with Native Hawaiian culture, language or politics. You just need to have one drop of the right kind of blood.

That reminds me of the greatest musical ever written, Jerome Kern's "Show Boat," where an essential part of the story line is that one drop of Negro blood made a man an American Negro. I thought we had put all those racial notions behind us and moved on, but S. 147 is trying to bring them back.

S. 147 would create a racially separate government that would operate like an Indian tribe with its own laws and racial voting restrictions anywhere in the United States. This new "tribe" would include about 20 percent of Hawaii's residents plus some 400,000 Americans nationwide, making it the largest Indian tribe...

Now, recall that Akaka is a Democrat. So, you've got the race-based rights. And, you have this very interesting information as well:

Follow the money to search for motives behind this odd-ball legislation. The clue to the mystery is Section 8(b) of S. 147, which ensures that the new Native Hawaiian government can negotiate gambling rights with the state of Hawaii and the federal government.

It appears that some politically well-connected Hawaiians want to cash in on the profitable casino privileges that have been given to American Indian tribes. Another possible motive is that a small group of Native Hawaiians is trying to grab some of the high-priced real estate in the beautiful islands and claim it as their tribal heritage...

Previously: "Hawaii governor lobbies for Akaka Bill; tell your Senators no".

Posted to Politics at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)

Wisconsin Assembly passes pro-American driver's license bill

The Wisconsin state Assembly has passed a Republican-sponsored bill requiring proof of citizenship in order to get a driver's license. And:

Applicants from other countries would have to show proof of legal permanent or conditional residency, a valid visa, an application for asylum, valid refugee status or an application for legal permanent residency. Their licenses would expire when their residency runs out.

In other words, no Cracker Jack IDs, like Mexico's Matricula Consular card.

The bill still has to pass their Senate, and their governor is Democrat Jim Doyle, a supporter of illegal immigration.

In other news, illegal immigration supporter Rep. Pedro Colon, D-Milwaukee played the race card and Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison backed him up.

Posted to Immigration_dls at 02:04 AM | Comments (0)

Petula Dvorak of Washington Post whitewashed ANSWER

That is the charge in "Liberal Media Again Whitewashed the Colorful, Leftist, Kook Fringe", about the MSM coverage of the recent peace protests.

It concentrates on the Washington Post piece by Petula Dvorak, the front-pager "Antiwar Fervor Fills the Streets."

...Dvorak's story didn't get to the unifying message of the rally -- pure Bush hatred -- until paragraph 23, and she only managed to relate that "Bush and Cheney were depicted on posters, T-shirts and makeshift costumes. Several demonstrators wore masks of Bush's likeness and prison jumpsuits. They were often asked to pose for photographs."

There was one story on counter-protesters at the bottom of this big spread. But on the next page, there was another story on grumpy peaceniks who were stranded at a New York train station over an electrical outage. "This has Rove's fingerprints all over it," said one protester, and the Post considered that credible enough to use.

Once again -- and this is nerve-wracking because it's the standard MO for the liberal press -- nowhere in this storyline was any focus on who the protest organizers are. International ANSWER is a project of the Stalinist Workers' World Party. United for Peace and Justice believes it's opposing an America that is perpetually at war in pursuit of a world empire. Kooky? No doubt. Radical? Unquestionably. Anti-American? You bet. Is this important to the Washington Post? Nah...

In fact, the Washington Post's reporter Petula Dvorak took the whitewash to a whole new level before the march. She profiled "novice protester" Patrice Cuddy of Olathe, Kan., who "said she had to pull off her gardening gloves each time a neighbor interrupted her yardwork" to sign up for her protest bus to Washington.

There was a big problem. Cuddy is no novice. A quick Google search for the NewsBusters blog found that the Kansas City Star reported on Cuddy protesting the Iraq war before it even began, in a Jan. 16, 2003 news report. She was quoted as warning Iraqi children were about to be crushed by American bombs. One blogger joked she was a "lifelong novice," since he found Cuddy touting herself on the Internet as a "Life long Labor Democrat, arms-control, peace, environmental activist since the mid-1970s."

10/9/05 UPDATE: The WaPo has corrected Dvorak's piece, as described here:

A Sept. 23 Metro article about people coming to Washington for the Sept. 24 demonstration against the war in Iraq described ^ (don't want to say "incorrectly" in this case) Patrice Cuddy, 56, of Olathe, Kan., as a novice protester. Cuddy had participated in three other large rallies against the war, two in Washington and one in New York.

That's the extent of their correction; the bit in parentheses was apparently put there by an editor. They'll get around to discussing ANSWER's communist links at some unspecified date in the future. Soon!

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 12:56 AM | Comments (2)

Oz: Uni appoints "Heterosexuality Officer"

The University of New England in Australia (huh?) has appointed law student Dave Allen to be their new "Heterosexuality Officer". Even in an Oddly Enough report, the AP can't help but show their biases:

He's a little vague on what his official duties will be. But it looks like the student association is trying to make a point about gay rights and supposed special treatment for homosexual students.

Allen says he has nothing against gays. He tells The Australian newspaper they should come down to the local pub and have a few beers with him.

Posted to MultiCultiCult at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)

Do Connecticut McDonald's discriminate in favor of Hispanics?

The Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control did a bit of a study and determined that most employees of McDonalds in America's drive-throughest state are Hispanic. The study is available at their website in a PDF file, and it's not exactly an academic study, although it appears they visited all or almost all the Mickey D's in the state, many in one long day. (Here's a similar feat involving CT's county highpoints). They counted the people working there, and they wonder whether some of them are illegal aliens. In New Haven and Fairfield counties, almost all the employees are Hispanic.

A news report is here:

But activists say his research methods were unsound and motivated by racism. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has rejected Streitz's call for an investigation, saying the study is not reliable or relevant.

Obviously, the race baiting can and should be ignored. As for whether the study is unsound, I personally don't consider it an academic-level study. Also, there's the question of whether all the workers are Hispanic because managers want that, or because they are the only applicants.

That would need to be determined through other means, and I get the impression that Blumenthal is too PC to conduct such an investigation.

For that, I'd suggest contacting that state's Senators or Reps and encourage them to look into this.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 09:43 PM | Comments (3)

Danish Air Force pays Santa Claus after killing Rudolf

Wacky but true news, as the Air Force of Denmark has paid off a part-time Santa (not the real one, he doesn't exist) for a jet flyover that scared his reindeer to death. Sadly, the victim was Rudolph; Donner and Blitzen were under a nurse's care for a while but have now fully recovered.

Spokesman Capt. Morten Jensen says:

"We got a letter from Santa complaining about his reindeer's death and looked into it seriously."

Apparently some countries have more time than others; if this had happened in Germany they would have just thrown him on the pile. In France, well, never mind.

The Air Force reviewed their records, and decided in favor of St. Nick, paying him $5000 in compensation.

Posted to WackyHumor at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)

Deep inside the mind of a defense lawyer

Obviously, defense lawyers are a key and necessary part of our justice system (etc., etc., etc.) However, sometimes there's justice, and there's "justice."

From defense lawyer, TalkLeft proprietor, and occasionally HuffPost contributor Jeralyn Merritt comes this:

I just found out that Tom DeLay has got himself the best lawyer in Texas and one of the best trial lawyers in the country - Houston's Dick DeGuerin... Dick has also been a very good friend of mine for 20 years. You may remember him as David Koresh's lawyer in WACO, or Kay Bailey Hutchinson's lawyer, or the lawyer... who got Robert Durst acquitted of murder even though he admitted hacking up the body.

Just let that wash over you and sink in.

But, wait, no, really, he had a good excuse.

(nofollow tags in place because her comments have them)

Posted to Miscellania at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)

Jeb Bush wants more legal immigration

The brother of Our Lider wants changes to our visa and immigration policies.

Speaking at the Miami Herald's annual Americas Conference, he said:

"It is a good thing to have people who want to come to set up their business, to invest here, to use this as a platform for the expansion of their business, whether they're from Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil or Texas."

Yet another data point in favor of the they-took-a-wrong-turn-at-Honduras theory.

Previously, Jeb Bush supported driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Some in the Kool Aid Krew think he should be president. And, his son P. dissed the Border Patrol a while back.

Posted to Politics at 12:51 PM | Comments (1)

Pew: more illegal aliens than legal immigrants during 2000-2004

From this:

More immigrants came to the United States illegally from 2000 through 2004 than the number who were granted legal status in those years, according to a study released yesterday that attributed much of the historic shift to visa slowdowns since 2001 and to the nation's strong job market before that.

The study by the Pew Hispanic Center said that immigration to the United States -- legal and illegal, from all regions of the world -- totaled about 1.1 million each year during the 1990s, peaked in 2000 at 1.5 million and declined substantially since 2001 to earlier levels. The number of new arrivals increased in 2004, the study said, though it is too early to say that the rise will last.

Now, let's get even scarier:

A spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the government agency that oversees the granting of green cards, said he could not comment on the study in detail because officials had not examined it closely. But Bill Strassberger questioned its conclusion that new illegal immigrants outnumber legal ones.

"I don't know that there are any indications that the undocumented population is growing faster than the legal population," the spokesman said.

"Undocumented"? The correct legal term is "illegal alien". One would hope that someone from the federal government wouldn't speak newspeak.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 08:59 AM | Comments (1)

GiveEmHellHarry.com from illegal immigration supporter Harry Reid

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has launched a new website entitled GiveEmHellHarry. It features a petition encouraging the oppressed masses to protest obscene oil company profits, and it features a "blog". I believe that the blog is actually written by the politician himself, since if it were written by an aide the posts wouldn't have that charming "I typed this in as I dashed out the door" quality.

In previous news: Harry Reid wants amnesty for illegal aliens who are taking jobs that could go to Katrina victims.

UPDATE: I added the picture. His site will be promoted with billboards, just not ones like that.

Posted to Politics at 05:59 AM | Comments (1)

Anti-American, violent, racist report from the Pacific News Service

For future reference: Pacific News Service.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:20 AM | Comments (0)

Now that's a money-making hoax!

I'm going to spell this site's name out since I don't want to link to bad neighborhoods: rent - a - d i l d o.com. If you remove the spaces from that string, you'll find a nicely designed site that might fool a fair number of people. It appears to offer a Netflix-style service, complete with a neat graphic showing how it all works.

Note that you can't subscribe to their $19.99 a month service, indicating that they a) aren't scammers and b) it's a hoax.

However, note that there are links to other sites where you can buy those items.

This looks to me like a nifty form of viral marketing: get large numbers of people who want a laugh coming in, and send them to another site to sell them stuff.

Posted to Bloggage at 02:09 AM | Comments (0)

Puerto Rico: city building UFO landing strip

The Puerto Rican city of Lajas wants to build a landing strip... for UFOs! The mayor of that town insists it will be for tourist dollars, and that no city money will be spent on the project, he's just helping it along.

A bright green sign along a lonely country road in southwestern Puerto Rico proudly displays a silhouette of a flying saucer and two words: "Extraterrestrial Route."

Most Puerto Ricans laughed when a horse farmer installed the sign on his property at the request of Reynaldo Rios, a local elementary school teacher who says he's been communicating with alien visitors to this U.S. territory since he was a child...

Rios, who leads a group called "UFO International" that holds nighttime vigils to search for signs of alien life, lets Negron worry about details like investment costs and permits while he envisions the design. The landing strip would be 80-feet (24-meters) long and have pyramids as control towers because aliens are attracted to the shape.

(Lonewacko notes: 80 feet? Many ET craft require at least a couple miles for a full landing; not all are VTOL as you might have seen in the movies.)

The mayor hopes that UFO enthusiasts will flock to Lajas as they have to Roswell, New Mexico, the site of a supposed UFO crash in the 1940s. Hundreds of visitors have come to check out the Extraterrestrial Route since the sign went up, Irizarry said...

...But it's a little-known aerostat off the Extraterrestrial Route that inspires UFO lore in Lajas. The U.S. military uses the aerostat, a tethered blimp with a radar system, to detect low-flying drug smuggling planes.

But many Lajans don't believe that. Even Irizarry has suggested that the aerostat's true purpose is to detect UFOs.

A paved road leading to the blimp curves out of sight between two hills. Two signs warn against trespassing. Rios claims he was once briefly detained while trying to see the aerostat...

Posted to WackyHumor at 10:57 PM | Comments (1)

Babs blasts border watchers!

Reliable sources indicate that Barbra Streisand recently flew into a rage:

"Those Minutemen are EVIL! How dare they march around on the border and cause the supply of gardeners, maids and nannys my friends and I use to dry up... If we don't do something about it, before you know it we will have to pay someone a decent living wage for these services, and I cringe to think about how that would dip into my investment portfolio."

It's true! I read it here.

Posted to WackyHumor at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

Steve Cooley has unkind words for David Dreier

Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), along with Adam Schiff (D-CA), is the author of the "Justice for Peace Officers Act" that seeks to do something about cop killers who've fled to Mexico.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley says that newly-modified bill ends up helping those suspects:

...On Tuesday, Cooley and [Los Angeles Police Protective League President Bob Baker] both said they still weren't satisfied with the changes and that Congress needs to force the administration to impose sanctions against Mexico until the country changes its policy of refusing to extradite criminal suspects who could face the death penalty or life in prison without parole...

Speaking on KFI, Cooley says the bill "does nothing except cause problems, inject the federal authorities into an area they aren't familiar with, and just provides political cover for Dreier... the law's not protecting us..."

Cooley accuses Dreier of advocating for either Mexico or for those who want to appease that country, and in the linked article talks about capitulating to them.

For more on temporary House Majority leader, start here. More posts on him will be coming later.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)

Are we headed towards a Banana Republic?

From "Bush seeks to federalize emergencies":

President Bush yesterday sought to federalize hurricane-relief efforts, removing governors from the decision-making process. "It wouldn't be necessary to get a request from the governor or take other action," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday. "This would be," he added, "more of an automatic trigger."

And, from the AP's "Hurricanes Spawn Debate on Military Role":

In the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita _ and the federal government's sluggish response to the first _ President Bush is raising the possibility of putting the Pentagon in charge of search- and-rescue efforts for catastrophic natural disasters. The U.S. Northern Command, which began operations in October 2002 as the first command with the United States in its area of responsibility, assists the Federal Emergency Management Agency in disaster relief and has the organizational skills... The armed forces' unique chain of command would prove difficult to impose on elected civilian officials...

In both articles, about the only dissenting voices are from people widely regarded as loons, which tends to make me think that both the WashTimes and the AP support this Banana Republic-style power grab.

In the WT case, they turn to the ACLU. Their spokeshole at least has something interesting to say:

"Using the military in domestic law enforcement is generally a very bad idea... I'm afraid that it will have unforeseen consequences for civil liberties... The Posse Comitatus Act is sometimes criticized as some sort of obscure, centuries-old law... But you know, most of our liberties are centuries old. So that would be like saying the Bill of Rights is obscure and old... Our strict separation between military and civilian power is one of the things that separates us from Latin America, for example... Changing that would put us on a huge slippery slope."

As I briefly mentioned about 1.5 years ago, there seems to be a bit of a Latin American flavor to the Bush family, like they took a wrong turn at Honduras and wound up ruling this country instead of "San Marcos".

And, from the AP's report:

In a letter to Bush on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D- Calif., said she was disturbed by the notion of rewriting laws that could result in active duty military operating as "police officers in America." She asked the president to clarify his comments.

Surely, both the WashTimes and the AP could find several people with more credibility to oppose this oh-so-convenient move by the Bush administration.

Previously: "Domestic Militarization: A Disaster in the Making" and "DC, media pushing greater military control for "safety" reasons".

Posted to Politics at 04:40 PM | Comments (1)

African-American Rep. wants to join Tennessee's White Caucus

This article is extremely shocking:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A black Tennessee lawmaker lamenting his exclusion from the state's White Legislative Caucus claimed Tuesday the group was less accommodating that even the Nation of Islam.

"My understanding is that the NoI doesn't even ban members by race," said Rep. Stacey Campfield, adding that the NoI "has less racist bylaws" than the white lawmakers' group.

The freshman Democrat from Knoxville was rebuffed earlier this year when he asked for the White Caucus' bylaws and inquired about joining. There are 18 white state lawmakers in Tennessee.

Caucus chairman Rep. Johnny Shaw, a Republican, dismissed Campfield's request and called him a "strange guy" who was simply interested in stirring up trouble.

"He is using this as a joke. This is an insult coming from him," said caucus member Rep. Larry Miller, also a Republican. "Why he chose to focus on the White Caucus, I have no idea other than he is crazy and a racist."

If you've heard of this story, you'll notice that I switched things around above. Rep. Stacey Campfield is actually white, and he inquired about the bylaws of TN's Black Caucus. That prompted the expected "liberal" reaction.

For instance, the WaPo prints the above modified AP article by Matt Gouras under "White Lawmaker Likens Black Colleagues, KKK". And, Gouras turned to a usual suspect to provide more smears:

Experts on race and hate groups said Campfield hit a nerve when he used King's words to take on a black institution. It's the same tactic white separatists often use, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"Very typically these days we see white supremacists, hate groups, trying to use the words of King and other civil rights leaders to try to advance their agendas," Potok said.

Question "liberal" racism, get called a racist. Not only that, but on his blog he says he's received threats of violence. Ah, the peace-loving, non-racist left.

Let's take a look at an earlier AP report, here under "White lawmaker 'just curious' about joining Black Caucus":

...As he was talking to [Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Johnny Shaw] about these questions, the possibility of Campfield joining the Black Caucus came up.

By Campfield's account, Shaw was against it.

"I said, 'Why?' and he said, 'Because you're white.' I thought, 'What? Whoa!' " Campfield said...

...Shaw said he thought Campfield had brought up the possibility of membership in the Black Caucus in "a kidding sort of way."

"He's an oddball, and I didn't take him seriously," Shaw said. "I felt like he was trying to do something that was, well, not good."

"We don't have anything going on in the Black Caucus that anyone wants to hide. There's nothing out of the ordinary in the bylaws," Shaw said. "We are strictly legit and up front."

The bylaws [provided to the reporter but not to Campfield] say, "The regular membership shall consist of those black elected officials serving in the state Senate and House of Representatives."

Another provision says that "honorary membership" can be granted to "those persons whose belief and actions contribute to the purpose for which this caucus was formed."

"We still want to make sure the black community gets the representation it needs," Shaw said. "But it's not just the black community. We represent people as a whole. When you start dividing people up into race, if you're not careful you can get yourself into a lot of trouble."

Perhaps Gouras should have read - and referenced - the earlier AP report containing that zinger. And, needless to say, if I switched things around in that article it would sound like something from the 50s or before.

Posted to MultiCultiCult at 11:50 AM | Comments (1)

Martin Sandoval, Illinois senator, wants to represent Mexicans too

Martin Sandoval is a state Senator from Illinois. He's also running for a seat on Mexico's "Institute for Mexicans Abroad" advisory council:

Sandoval would be the first elected official in the U.S. to serve on the advisory council. That raises the peculiar prospect of the Cicero Democrat offering policy advice in an official capacity to Mexican Cabinet members while creating laws in Illinois...

As it turns out, no law or rule prohibits it, in Mexico or in Illinois. Mexican officials call it an honorary position...

... "I see no conflict at any point. There are always people who will have questions," [Sandoval] said. "I have looked at the four corners of this. I see upside all over the place."

Sandoval said his participation is especially logical because a large share of his constituents were born in Mexico. More than 42 percent of Sandoval's Senate district is foreign-born, the second-highest rate in the state...

Apologists continually claim that all those millions of illegal aliens are "just here to work." [1] While that might be true for individuals, when you have millions of them it forms a political base that the Mexican government - as well as people like Sandoval - are trying to take advantage of.

If those apologists are allowing Mexico to establish a political beachhead in the U.S. - and possibly influence our laws - shouldn't we question whether they have the U.S.'s best interests at heart?

And, just because no current laws prevent him from serving two countries at the same time doesn't mean that legislation can't be introduced to either prevent that or to strip him of his office. Please contact (non-conflicted) representatives in Illinois and urge them to introduce such legislation.

[1] From president Bush's O'Reilly interview:

"Now look. People are comin' 'cause they wanna work ya' know. Family values don't stop at the border... If you can make fifty cents in the interior of Mexico and five dollars in the interior of the United States, you're comin' for the five bucks and, therefore ... and so long as moms and dads feel the necessity to feed their children, they're gonna come and try to make a livin'."

5/14/07 UPDATE: Martin Sandoval won his election some time after this was posted, and, among other things, he's now pushing for discounted college educations for illegal aliens (see the link). You can see his name on the Mexican government's list of CCIME advisors here: www.ime.gob.mx/ccime/directorios/dir_ccime_06_09.htm

Posted to Immigration2005b at 10:40 AM | Comments (3)

Los Angeles Times on Matricula Consular cards

Jennifer Delson and Anna Gorman of the Los Angeles Times cover the latest on Mexico's Matricula Consular cards (aka "IDs for illegals") in "Mexico's ID Makes Major Gains in U.S.".

They report that other countries are getting into the act, including Colombia, Argentina, El Salvador and Honduras. They don't offer word on whether, for instance, Yemen has similar plans.

It features quotes from James Ballentine, outreach director for the American Bankers Association and a Blue Cross spokeshole ("They were wage earners who had money... a great source of potential customers").

And, College of William & Mary professor George Grayson says that Bush refuses to do anything because he doesn't want to alienate Latino voters. Of course, there's also the fact that he's corrupt, but I guess the LAT ran out of space.

Now, let's deal with the LAT's biases:

The matricula's growing acceptance... also highlights the contradiction between immigration laws, which forbid the presence of undocumented workers, and immigration reality, which encourages them to spend their paychecks here...

Well, actually, that's wrong. The conflict is between what the U.S. citizens and many legislators want, and what corrupt politicians are able to do. In Bush's case, he simply refuses to enforce the immigration laws. In the case of other corrupt legislators, they push through laws giving rights to people who shouldn't be here in the first place. There's no "contradiction"; there's a conflict between Americans and those with "conflicted views."

They also provide this quote:

It "is a de facto amnesty," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors tighter immigration controls. "It's a way of incorporating illegals into our society. It allows [the immigrant] to embed himself in our institutions."

I believe that the LAT takes that as the basis for their inaccurate subtitle:

Use of the matricula consular is helping many to assimilate, which is one reason those against illegal immigration oppose the card's use.

Somehow I don't think Krikorian was refering to the same kind of "assimilation" that the LAT headline writer is; perhaps they should consider whether they're lying to their readers for future articles.

They also report on corrupt local officials:

Several local governments across the state — including Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and Ventura counties — accept the identification cards as valid identification for county services and programs. The cards can be used for admittance to a hospital, to obtain a federal tax identification number and to borrow books from libraries.

Now, if the LAT wanted to do some real reporting, they'd look into that in a bit more depth. Why would those localities do that? Is it because the local Boss Hoggs profit off that illegal labor, and the local officials do what they want? Is it because those local officials stand in solidarity with people of their same race, putting their race above their country? The LAT also doesn't mention that Mexican consults attend local council meetings pitching such laws.

I look forward to reading some real reporting from the Los Angeles Times in the near future.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 01:59 PM | Comments (1)

You've endured three years of this?

A few days ago, this site quietly celebrated its third anniversary. Very shortly thereafter, traffic picked up markedly, due to a bit of a fluke involving people searching for the picture provided here. Slightly good for my gigantic ego, but a) this is a news and politics blog, and b) celebrity sites aren't usually as big an earner as sites involved in products people want to buy.

Nevertheless, I was happy to see the graphic above, in which I am currently the 87th most highly-trafficked web site. Among blogs that use sitemeter and that are monitored by the ecosystem, that is.

I believe one of the major reasons why this site doesn't get as much traffic as it should is because, let's face it, most bloggers are partisan hacks. They only link to people who confirm their beliefs rather than challenge them.

Needless to say, this site has a different perspective and, while it has a definite right-ward tilt I have no problem with calling things as they really are.

Posted to Bloggage at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

Far-lefties pushing Gramscism on 5-year-olds in Massachusetts

Here's a test. Is the following report from Massachusetts in 2005, or from the Soviet Union in 1965 and I've just changed the names and locations? You decide:

While the trial of a Massachusetts parent arrested while attempting to secure a promise from school officials to notify parents before teaching about homosexuality in his son's kindergarten class has been postponed until next month, the school district is taking a hard line against such notification.

Paul Ash, the superintendent of schools in Lexington, has announced his instructions to all teachers in the district to give no notice to parents of efforts to teach "diversity" lessons about "alternative lifestyles" – even in primary grades.

In April, David Parker of Lexington spent a night in jail and was charged with criminal trespassing after refusing to leave a scheduled meeting with officials [over the policy]...

What kind of lessons were involved?

...Parker's then-5-year-old son brought home a book to be shared with his parents titled, "Who's in a Family?" The optional reading material, which came in a "Diversity Book Bag," depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners.

The illustrated book says, "A family can be made up in many different ways" and includes this text:

"Laura and Kyle live with their two moms, Joyce and Emily, and a poodle named Daisy. It takes all four of them to give Daisy her bath."

Another illustrated page says:

"Robin's family is made up of her dad, Clifford, her dad's partner, Henry, and Robin's cat, Sassy. Clifford and Henry take turns making dinner for their family."

Answer: no, this is actually from Massachusetts in the United States. If it had been the Soviet Union, Parker would be in Siberia by now, and "liberals" haven't gotten to that point yet.

Posted to MultiCultiCult at 11:48 AM | Comments (3)

"Domestic Militarization: A Disaster in the Making"

Due to an extremely rare space anomaly, the Cato Institute and I agree on something for once:

Having already wrecked a legendary American city, Hurricane Katrina may now be invoked to undermine a fundamental principle of American law;.that principle, enshrined in the Posse Comitatus Act, is that when it comes to domestic policing, the military should be a last resort, not a first responder...

[...Bush's speech, John Warner, "very archaic law",...]

...What [Posse Comitatus] does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role. That reflects America's traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that's well-justified.

There are very good reasons to resist any push toward domestic militarization. As one federal court has explained, "military personnel must be trained to operate under circumstances where the protection of constitutional freedoms cannot receive the consideration needed in order to assure their preservation. The Posse Comitatus statute is intended to meet that danger." Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, commander of the federal troops helping out in New Orleans, seemed to recognize that danger when he ordered his soldiers to keep their guns pointed down: "This isn't Iraq," he growled...

...The Katrina tragedy ought to be an occasion for rethinking a number of federal policies, including our promiscuous use of the Guard abroad. Instead, Washington seems poised to embrace further centralization and militarization at home. That has the makings of a policy disaster that would dwarf Hurricane Katrina.

For my highly similar take, see DC, media pushing greater military control for "safety" reasons.

On a side note, it's highly unusual that I, Cato, and TalkLeft all posted similar things on the same day. I didn't see theirs before I wrote mine, and I'd imagine the same is true for them as well.

Posted to Politics at 07:39 AM | Comments (4)

Why does the Burlington Free Press hate the Minuteman Project?

Vermont's Burlington Free Press discusses the plans of the Minuteman Project to patrol that state's border with Canada in "Just a minute, Minutemen; Vermont says 'No thanks'".

It's a downright nasty editorial, ayup. Nasty like sour maple syrup, Cyris. In fact, it reads more like something one of those people from New Hampshire might write, ayup.

A preliminary search only showed two articles from that paper discussing either "illegal aliens" or "undocumented", and Vermont isn't a big illegal immigration state. Now, VT is certainly a "liberal" state, in fact they're the ones who inflicted Howard Dean on America. Is this lack of neighborliness due to "liberalism" or something else?

The virtually unanimous message from Vermont residents and leaders alike is, "Stay home." ...If common sense won't deter these silly plans, let's hope Vermont's winter will do the trick. After all, the temperature drops well below zero along our border on a winter night, a shock to anyone used to the Southern desert... The Minutemen shouldn't come where they aren't wanted. But if they do, let's hope that along with those lawn chairs and binoculars they bring their long johns.

What xenophobia! Could someone who's familiar with the Burlington Free Press provide a clue why they might say things like this?

Posted to Immigration2005b at 06:07 AM | Comments (5)

Hugo Chavez (D-Venezuela) accelerates land reform; disses Bush

Lider Chavez is accelerating his plan to seize underused ranch lands:

"We are not carrying out expropriation, this belongs to the nation, to the state," he said at the Marquesena farm [that had just been seized]... "We can't stop with the Marquesena, we have to accelerate all of this," said Mr Chavez, who was accompanied by members of Brazil's Landless Movement... "I extend my hand to the supposed landowners to find a constructive solution," he added.

The non-owners have been offered part of the land; the rest will be used to build a state-owned co-operative. And, all the peasants will live in peace and harmony.

In other news:

"In Cuba, when they know a hurricane is coming, chickens, hens and people are all evacuated," Chavez said in an interview with The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine, stepping up his rhetoric against the US government. "A hurricane recently destroyed many towns in Cuba but not a single person died because no one was there. The government prepared its people and took them to shelters, whereas here (in the United States) they left the poor without protection, especially the blacks."

Posted to Miscellania at 02:46 AM | Comments (1)

Mexicans demand citizenship rights... in Aurora, Illinois

"Nearly" one thousand people - many or most of them illegal aliens from Mexico and other countries - marched through Aurora IL demanding that House Speaker Dennis Hastert support the Kennedy-McCain massive amnesty scheme. The march was organized by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. See the link for more information on that organization. They're also supporters of the AgJobs amnesty.

Maybe we should give them what they want. And, let's bring in several million more illegal aliens and give them citizenship too.

Of course, all those new voters might have... different ideas about things. In fact, they might end up supporting politicians who are even further left than people like Gil Cedillo or Fabian Nunez. And, those far-left politicians might pass even more restrictions on businesses, like banks. In fact, maybe someone close to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez might be elected and start on some kind of "land reform", American style...

Gosh, do you think those business leaders and the "conservative" politicians that they pay off would find those events a little discomforting?

Along the same lines, see "Will illegal aliens get voting rights because of corrupt Republicans?"

Posted to Immigration2005b at 11:06 PM | Comments (8)

"English bypassed in L.A."

The L.A. Daily News offers several anecdotes of immigrants to Los Angeles not bothering to learn English: "English bypassed in L.A.". Koreans learn Spanish, Hispanics learn Korean, and all don't need to learn English:

"To an outside person, it looks like something nice. There's an ethnic exchange going on. But the reality is that it's an exchange of necessity [because of commerce]," said Vy Nguyen, a lead organizer for the Korean Immigrant Worker's Advocate...

Well, to some outside persons, such as "liberals", it might be nice. But, to those who think about this it's just another byproduct of Gramscism, otherwise known as multiculturalism.

"In California, Spanish is more important than English," said [Korea Times columnist Martin Paik], a Seoul native. "I haven't found any inconvenience because I don't speak English. ... I don't need to speak English. If you can speak Spanish, you can drive, employers can have clients, you can order in restaurants, you can do anything."

And:

Paik admits he often gets funny looks from Spanish speakers who at first glance are surprised by his fluency. But once the tongue starts wagging, Latinos - especially immigrants - quickly let down their guard. They are accustomed to seeing Asians in their homelands. Mexico City boasts a robust Chinatown and Argentina is home to thousands of South Korean immigrants.

How high-minded of them.

["Yoon Seong, a 60-year-old Korean - by way of Spain" says:] "For me being here, the Hispanic community is the only world for me. I don't need English here. All that you need in California is Spanish."

Obviously, without knowing English they aren't prepared to be Americans. Their news will always be filtered through one ethnic lens or another, and they won't be exposed to as wide a spectrum of viewpoints. Somehow I think that that's one of the side-effects that the multiculturalists want. While those who only look at economic matters might rejoice in their economic benefit, from a civil standpoint this is not a good development.

Posted to Los_Angeles at 07:47 PM | Comments (2)

SaveTheSeal only has three days left, please sign petition

SaveTheSeal is trying to turn back the damage the ACLU did to the Los Angeles County seal. Please visit their site to find out where you can sign their petition. Signatures are needed immediately since the have to be turned in on Friday.

Posted to Los_Angeles at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

Pentagon inspector general under scrutiny... by the Los Angeles Times?

The article "The Scrutinizer Finds Himself Under Scrutiny" from T. Christian Miller reports that some are raising questions about the activities of the recently resigned Pentagon inspector general, Joseph E. Schmitz.

In light of posts such as "Watchdog [Clark Kent Erwin] details confrontations with Ridge", this certainly sounds interesting. However, in the skillful hands of the Los Angeles Times, it turns into sleazy tabloidesque reportage:

["liberal" sleaze deleted...] Schmitz's sister is Mary Kay Letourneau... [...more tabloid junk deleted...]

Holy moley! I'm ready to pronounce guilt already.

As near as I can figure it out, there are a few slightly substantial allegations. However, most are made by unnamed sources and only one has some slight heft:

When confronted later by congressional staff about the accuracy of the release, Schmitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee in August 2004 that the release was "technically correct." But this year, when asked again, he acknowledged that the release was "inaccurate." The Department of Defense has also acknowledged that the information in the press release "may not have been accurate."

I'm not going to bother repeating the sleazy yellow journalism in the rest of the article or the subtext of their coverage of that. Perhaps they should look inward for a clue.

Posted to Politics at 12:07 PM | Comments (1)

Lawyer objects to legally correct term "illegal alien"

Westchester County NY's Reeducation Roadshow - more formally known as the "Stop Prejudice Now listening tour" - visited Spring Valley and discussed immigration matters. Based only on the report available in "Immigrant activists speak" I'm going to assume that this is a far-left, Gramscian attempt to open up the borders. It does however includes this humorous bit:

[Westchester Human Rights Commissioner S. Ram Nagubandi] received a number of thoughtful replies and practical suggestions, in addition to the idea that county employees be trained. One, from [attorney Vicki] Cohen, was straightforward.

"One thing that we can certainly do is try to eliminate the phrase 'illegal alien,'" she said. "It's an outrageous phrase."

Needless to say, the term "illegal alien" appears multiple times in the U.S. Code, something which (I'd hope) Cohen is familiar with. On the other hand, "undocumented" does not appear.

Posted to MultiCultiCult at 09:30 AM | Comments (1)

Gregory Rodriguez supports illegal aliens taking rebuilding jobs from Americans

Los Angeles Times contributing editor Gregory Rodriguez offers "La Nueva Orleans". That discusses how illegal aliens from Mexico and other countries will help rebuild New Orleans. He says that they will then settle there, displacing the original population of blacks and whites.

Of course, if we were talking about whites displacing blacks and Hispanics that would be considered racist, but - of course! - "liberals" will be quick to explain that encouraging Hispanics to displace black and white Americans is not racist.

Rodriguez covers the points previously discussed here in Will Bush give Katrina rebuilding jobs... to illegal aliens?, Illegal aliens doing rebuilding jobs in Biloxi, and they want visas, Vicente Fox's offer to make money off Katrina spurned, this post about Senator Harry Reid, and others.

If you've been following along, the only new thing is this:

Former President Clinton recently hinted as much on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he said New Orleans will be resettled with a different population.

This scheme that our leaders have is obviously un-American; it's not good public policy and it's not the direction that we as a country should be heading in. Consider this little history lesson:

Charles Crocker, head of construction for Central Pacific railroad, recognized that the Civil War was creating a labor shortage. So he turned to Chinese immigrants to do the job.

It's so rare nowadays to find a defender of the Coolie system, but the Los Angeles Times is just lucky I guess.

Just so you know where he's coming from, here's the last paragraph:

Last week, the White House said it will push its plan to allow illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to become legal guest workers. Good. Hurricane Katrina exposed the nation's black-white divide. Post-Katrina reconstruction will soon spotlight the hypocrisy of refusing to grant legal status to those who will rebuild the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.

If we don't allow illegal aliens there, we won't have such a problem. But, if our leaders succeed with their anti-American goals, we will have problem after problem. First it will be driver's licenses, followed by local voting, followed by demands for citizenship, followed by dual citizens representing both Americans and illegal aliens, followed by Mexico suddenly discovering that New Orleans was once their territory, and on and on. It's much better for all concerned not to have to deal with more of this same junk.

He even says that New Orleans will end up like Los Angeles, and I'm absolutely positive that the people there would not want that.

Please take a few moments now to contact your representatives and urge them to make sure that rebuilding jobs go to Americans. And, if there's anyone out there who still subscribes to the LAT, please just stop.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 05:55 AM | Comments (3)

Pete Seeger, "America's Most Successful Communist"

Where have all the flowers gone indeed:

The politicization of American pop dates from the 1960s, but it grew out of a patient leftist political strategy that began in the mid-1930s with the Communist Party's "Popular Front" effort to use popular culture to advance its cause.

One figure stands out in this enterprise: the now-86-year-old singer, songwriter, "folk music legend," and onetime party stalwart, Pete Seeger. Given his decisive influence on the political direction of popular music, Seeger may have been the most effective American communist ever...

...The Popular Front Left saw such homespun music of poor rural Southerners - eventually labeled American "folk" music - as perfect for molding into a new Marxist cultural vernacular. "[W]hen the Communist Left and its intellectuals . . . tried to sink roots in American tradition, radicals turned a new ear to traditional folk tunes," notes Dunaway. They could cast folk music as the politically pure art of America's noble rural proletariat-plus, because this non-commercial music wasn't copyrighted, they could adapt it freely.

Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax took on this project with gusto. Lacking a real tradition of social protest in American folk music, the pair set out to create one. The music served as the crucible of Seeger's own style: "Folk songs, radicalism and patriotism blended in his mind," Dunaway observes. Through Lomax, Seeger met Woody Guthrie at a March 1940 New York benefit concert for California migrant workers... Made to order for the Popular Front, Guthrie was a middle-class Oklahoman with a calculated aw-shucks cowboy manner, who just happened to be a Communist Party sympathizer and had written for communist newspapers. As Lomax later put it: "Go back to that night when Pete first met Woody Guthrie. You can date the renaissance of American folk song from that night."

The Almanacs/Weavers also dressed the part of authentic jes' plain folks, sporting farmer's overalls on stage. Anticipating the fashion affectations of later pop stars, in which studiedly grungy clothing often serves as both costume and political statement, they suffered from what biographer Dunaway calls "a bad case of proletarian chic."

Seeger-whom critics dubbed "Khrushchev's songbird"-made ends meet largely by playing children's concerts at such venues as the Little Red Schoolhouse in Greenwich Village and its upper school, Elisabeth Irwin High, which, as historian Ronald Radosh recounts, was known for hiring former New York City public school teachers unwilling to sign a loyalty oath...

Others mentioned include Joan Baez (now washed-up and touring with Cindy Sheehan), and other songs you might vaguely recall include "This Land Is Your Land" and "If I Had a Hammer". Note that one of the Little Red Schoolhouse's alumni includes Angela Davis...

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

DC, media pushing greater military control for "safety" reasons

Keep a very watchful eye peeled for those who will try to use the response to Katrina to grab more power for the Office of the President and for the military. The President was never intended to be as central a figure as he is now, and restrictions on the use of the military inside the U.S. have been in place for well over a hundred years.

The latest attempt to gain more power is described in "Bush Told U.S. Needs Post-Disaster Plan":

Bush got an update about the federal hurricane response from military leaders at Randolph Air Force Base. He heard from Lt. Gen. Robert Clark, joint military task force commander for Hurricane Rita, and Maj. Gen. John White, a task force member, who noted confusion in search and rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina.

With Katrina, "we knew the coordination piece was a problem," White said. "With Rita, we had the benefit of time. We may not have that time in an earthquake scenario or similar incident."

"With a national plan, we'll have a quick jump-start and an opportunity to save more people," White said.

Needless to say, Bush said he welcomed their input and will discuss it in Washington.

And, from the earlier "Military May Play Bigger Relief Role":

President Bush's push to give the military a bigger role in responding to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina could lead to a loosening of legal limits on the use of federal troops on U.S. soil.

...Bush did not define the wider role he envisions for the military…

[Pentagon spokesman Lawrence] Di Rita said Rumsfeld has not made recommendations to Bush, but among the issues he is examining is the viability of the Posse Comitatus Act. Di Rita called it one of the "very archaic laws" from a different era in U.S. history that limits the Pentagon's flexibility in responding to 21st century domestic crises.

Another such law, Di Rita said, is the Civil War-era Insurrection Act...

Both Sen. John Warner, R-Va and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are in favor of reevaluating these "very archaic laws".

Key military help for victims of Hurricane Katrina was delayed reveals that Bush had all the powers he needed to deal with the hurricane, he (apparently) just failed to understand what powers he had. And, "DOD: No New Rules Needed" has more along those lines.

This latest attempt is a bit of a flashback: Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) said that he'd support allowing American soldiers to arrest American civilians back in 2002. And, from that same year, see "Northern Command General Endorses Posse Comitatus Review".

For that small number of people who would trust Bush with more powers, I'd suggest applying the President Hillary Clinton test in this case. In the case of disasters on the scale of Katrina, the thing to do is to make sure that the states and localities are prepared.

Posted to Politics at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)

Ronald McDonald has gender realignment surgery

The Japanese version of Ronald McDonald is now a sexy female, Media Guardian reports:

...In the Japanese TV commercial the foxy female version, with shoulder-length straight auburn hair in place of Ronald's frizzy mop, smoulders at the camera in a flowing yellow dress, and later a red and white striped bikini with thigh-length leggings and red high heels...

"We devised the costume and took the red and white stripes and the yellow, which were recognised and converted them into a stylish dress," [perpetrator Hidekazu Sato, known by his nickname Kazoo (?)] said via a translator.

"We were assuming that even if we didn't include the McDonald's logo and even if the model was a beautiful caucasian just those colours of the mnemonic design would wake up people's association with McDonald's."

Posted to WackyHumor at 05:39 AM | Comments (0)

Main reason for poverty: massive illegal immigration

Robert J. Samuelson offers "Discovering Poverty (Again)":

...Given these trends, the overall poverty rate should be drifting down. It isn't. The main reason, as I've written before, is immigration. We have uncontrolled entry of poor, unskilled workers across our southern border. Although many succeed, many don't, and many poor Latino immigrants have children, who are also poor. In 2004, 25 percent of the poverty population was Hispanic, up from 12 percent in 1980. Over this period, Hispanics represented almost three-quarters of the increase in the poverty population...

Posted to Immigration2005b at 12:40 AM | Comments (2)

"American Legion Makes Illegal Immigration Major Priority"

Details here:

Pointing to the current huge resident population of illegal aliens and the estimated 500,000 new illegal aliens that enter the country each year, the Legion finds a clear threat to the fabric of American society. The resolution also recognizes the increasing public frustration with the "federal government’s failure to stop the invasion and the actions by some states to provide taxpayer funded services and other benefits to illegal aliens..."

I wonder if Poppy is a member?

Posted to Immigration2005b at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)

Loony Texans oppose Minutemen; Perry offers lukewarm support

"Minuteman border patrol raises opposition in Texas" has a roundup of the open borders types that oppose the Minuteman Project.

Those include Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen and 10 other state senators as well as U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat. Plus:

In Brownsville, the Cameron County Commissioners Court unanimously passed a resolution opposing civilian border patrols, citing respect for immigrants, confidence in federal law enforcement and a shared history with Mexico.

"The safe and legal passage of immigrants and foreign visitors to Cameron County is important to the civic life of our county," the resolution said. "The future growth of Cameron County depends on the continued good will of our brothers in Mexico."

Officials in Laredo also voted unanimously to oppose the Minuteman project, saying they were "not welcome here." The Laredo City Council called on citizens and property owners along the border to refuse to cooperate with the Minutemen, referring to them as "spies" on suspected illegal aliens.

For more on Brownsville, see "Howard Dean to embarass self August 5 2005". Now, if Karl Rove went to visit party reps who just a few days before had welcomed a paramilitary, racist group to speak at a Republican Party headquarters, I'm sure we would never hear the end of it. But, when Howie goes to a similar situation, we never heard a peep about it except from me.

As for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, here's what he says:

"I fully understand and can appreciate the frustration that many Texans and others across the nation have with illegal immigration... The federal government can and must do more to close the border to illegal immigration... Until that happens, these kinds of citizen-initiated efforts likely will be the result. If you want to send the Minutemen home, I urge you to make sure we have enough federal agents on the border to secure it."

Posted to Immigration2005b at 03:18 PM | Comments (1)

Arianna Huffington in a Sierra Club SUV: picture available!

As previously discussed, Arianna was driven out of the Sierra Club's summit meeting in a massive Chevy Suburban.

Now, you can bid on a picture of Arianna Huffington in the gas-guzzling SUV. It's personally signed by Doug from Upland, so click the link to bid on this souvenir of failed limousine liberalism today:

Arianna Huffington, the force behind "The Detroit Project," which demonized SUVs, was keynote speaker on Sept. 11 at the Sierra Summit 2005 in San Francisco. How did she get to the event at the Moscone Center, you may ask. Did she take BART? Did she take a cab? Did she carpool? Did she take her Prius? Did she rent an environmentally friendly vehicle at SFO? None of the above. Arianna and her driver arrived at the Moscone Center in a giant Chevy Suburban, one of the biggest and most powerful gas guzzling vehicles on the planet. Why did Arianna do that? Well, it should be obvious if you ever read George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM. Yes, indeed, some animals are more equal than others...

UPDATE: Bidding has ended; it went for $41.

Posted to Celebrities at 06:25 AM | Comments (0)

CFR: Ship seniors to Mexico

Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations says we should send retirees to Mexico and other Latin American countries: "Make it easier for retirees to move south of the border". The idea is that they'll bolster those countries' economies and reduce illegal immigration.

Of course, another way to reduce illegal immigration would be for almost everyone in the U.S. to start a collection that would buy our elites some nice country like, just as an example, Honduras. The only condition: they would have to promise to move there and not to bother us ever again.

Posted to Politics at 05:35 AM | Comments (1)

70% of OTMs detained this year were released into the U.S.

"OTMs" are "other-than-Mexicans": illegal aliens who are from Honduras, Brazil, Yemen, Communist China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and other fun countries.

"DHS lets go 'other' illegals" gives us this fun statistic:

Nearly 70 percent, or 68,000, of the more than 98,000 OTMs detained so far this year were released almost immediately because of the government's inability to return them to their home country and a lack of detention facilities to hold them while here, federal authorities said.

Nevertheless, we're informed that our homeland "security" administration is working on doing a better job.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 02:31 AM | Comments (0)

Jupiter Florida's illegal alien hiring hall coming soon

From the Palm Beach Post:

JUPITER — Town and church officials are on the verge of negotiating a deal that would establish the first day-labor hiring center for immigrant workers in Palm Beach County.

The town council's approval on Tuesday of two proposed neighborhoods in Abacoa — Windsor Park and Mallory Creek — has allowed the town to pursue buying the LifeSong Community Church building near town hall. Once the two neighborhoods are built, the church will move to Abacoa.

The church building is expected to cost the town $1.95 million and will be leased to Catholic Charities to open the Neighborhood Resource Center, which among other things would be a day-labor hiring center...

Previously: Jupiter Florida's seamy, corrupt, "liberal" underbelly and "Palm Beach Post prints PIIPP on home loans for illegal aliens".

Posted to Immigration2005b at 08:26 PM | Comments (1)

Video of the California Teacher's Association thuggery

There's video, audio and statements about the incident here.

Previously: "30,000 public school teachers in California are not CTA members".

Posted to California at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)

GAO: ICE all but ignores workplace enforcement

From "Homeland security action against illegals lacking":

The agency charged with interior immigration enforcement all but ignores going after illegal aliens in the workplace, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released yesterday.

The GAO found that an antiquated system for businesses to verify employees' right to work has hindered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in its mission of tracking and deporting illegal aliens in the nation's interior. In addition, the widespread use of fraudulent documents has made it difficult for both employers and ICE to detect illegal workers.

GAO investigators also said ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, is devoting more attention to preventing terrorism, but that has meant less attention to illegal immigration in general...

A spokesman promises that targets will be set, etc. etc.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)

30,000 public school teachers in California are not CTA members

As previously discussed, Union thugs shout down teachers suing over union electioneering.

The SacBee discusses that press conference in "Suit challenges union fundraising bid", which contains this interesting bit:

About 30,000 public school teachers in California have chosen to not join the CTA and instead are listed as "agency fee payers" rather than union members. Fee payers are still charged to support the union for its contract bargaining function, but they are not assessed any charges to help finance the CTA's political goals.

I was unable to find out how many total public school teachers there are in CA, but 30,000 sounds like it would be a good percentage of them.

Posted to California at 02:12 PM | Comments (1)

Most Americans support the Minuteman Project

Despite the media's countless attempts to smear them - and despite Our Leader calling them "vigilantes" - 54% of Americans support the Minuteman Project, a Rasmussen poll reports. Only 22% have an unfavorable view of them.

A little under half support the government encouraging volunteers to patrol the entire Mexican border. A little over half think that if that happened illegal immigration would be reduced.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 01:58 PM | Comments (2)

$500 million to observe the entire Mexican border with military technology?

Sounds like one heck of a deal. From "Renzi wants military technology to track immigrants at border":

Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., says state-of-the-art military technology should be employed to help the U.S. Border Patrol peer into Mexico to locate and track the movements of immigrants, smugglers and potential terrorists before they cross the border.

Aerostat balloons, equipped with night-vision capabilities and other intelligence equipment, already are in use by the Defense Department in various other regions, Renzi said in an interview Wednesday...

He wants to look into Mexico, which prompts an embassy spokesman to say that could conflict with Mexican law. Of course, one way around that would be to refer to the balloons as "undocumented observation platforms". Remember: no balloon is illegal.

...Renzi estimates the cost of putting this technology in place along the entire 1,951-mile U. S.-Mexico border at about $500 million. Arizona's 389-mile share of the border with Mexico includes remote, treacherous expanses of desert and well-established smuggling corridors.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank based in Alexandria, Va., said Renzi's plan to use military technology to peer across the border for potential undocumented immigrants and smugglers does not, in his view, raise any privacy concerns.

After all, he said, those individuals, if spotted, are clearly "out in the open."

But Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said a build-up of law enforcement and equipment along the border has not worked so far in stemming the tide of illegal immigration. He said ideas to improve or tighten border security, such as Renzi's, must still be combined with the creation of more legal channels for people to come to this country and work.

Click the link to find out more about that fine American organization. While I don't want balloons or similar monitoring U.S. cities, on the border that's perfectly acceptable.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

Conyers, McKinley attending September 24 Washington DC Cindy Sheehan protest

Knight-Ridder informs us that "Top Democrats won't attend anti-war rally in Washington". (For the backstory, see "ANSWER, UPJ, Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, MoveOn to protest at White House September 24".)

However, two lesser lights will be attending: Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-Saturn) and John Conyers (D-Neptune).

Those staying away include: Howard Dean, Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-Pantsuiton), Russell Feingold (D-Dairyland), and John Kerry (D-Martha's Vineyard, Aspen, and Vail).

It's surprising that they won't be showing up:

Today's leading Democrats head a party divided over the war, and many leaders are wary of standing with anti-war activists, who represent much of the party's base...

Even I won't go so far as to say that A.N.S.W.E.R. represents much of the party's base. Maybe 30% or even 40%, but in all likelihood not that much more than half. Although, three-quarters might be a possibility.

"The Democratic Party has an identity crisis on this issue. We need voices. We need leadership," [Tom Andrews, a former Democratic House member from Maine who's now the national director of Win Without War] said. "But fear is driving them."

Yes, it's called not wanting to be associated with North Korea supporters.

"[Howard 'The Scream' Dean's] views on the president's handling of the war in Iraq are well documented," [spokesman Josh Earnest] said. The anti-war rally, he said, is "not something the party was involved with."

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

The David Safavian, Grover Norquist, Chris Cannon connection

From "David Hossein Safavian: From the White House to the Jail House":

Last Monday, David Hossein Safavian, a high-ranking White House official and pal of GOP powerbroker Grover Norquist, was arrested in a federal corruption case involving lobbying bad boy Jack Abramoff. According to the FBI, Safavian repeatedly lied to federal investigators in order to cover up Abramoff's shady dealings. He not only bent ethics rules to accompany Abramoff on a 2002 golf junket to Scotland; he also used his position as chief of staff at the General Services Administration to deliver GSA-managed land into the lobbyist's hands.

For more on Norquist, see "Will Bush give Katrina rebuilding jobs... to illegal aliens?" and "Chris Cannon, Grover Norquist, WSJ, Fox News all linked together?"

But Safavian's not just tied to a dirty lobbyist. He's also tied to a convicted terrorist and a suspected terrorist supporter. Lobbying disclosure forms revealed last year that he has been in the employ of Abdurahman Alamoudi, an avowed supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah. Prosecutors have discovered evidence that he has links to al-Qaeda. At the time, Safavian waved aside any affiliation to Alamoudi. He insisted that he was really lobbying for a client named Jamal al Barzinji. That revelation did little to clear Safavian's name: A federal affidavit identifies Barzinji as the ringleader of a group suspected of aiding terrorists.

What's worse, Safavian has demonstrated a pattern of concealing all these ties in order to gain access to sensitive positions in the government; and despite this pattern of dishonesty and despite serious security concerns, both the Senate and the agencies that have hired him have given him a pass...

..."I think he will do a great job for the American people in this job," testified Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, who had previously employed Safavian as a top aide. "I would like to second what Chris Cannon has said," added Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, who brought along his chief of staff and two lawyers to add to his cheering section...

Extensive coverage of Cannon starts here.

Posted to Politics at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

NRO, Miami Herald oppose Julia Myers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement

In the NRO editorial "Withdraw Myers", they suggest that Bush finds someone a bit more qualified to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement than the current pick of Julia Myers since she has no immigration experience:

[ICE is] a vast bureau with more than 20,000 employees and a budget of $4 billion. As head of ICE, Myers would be in charge of detaining and removing illegal aliens; investigating alien smuggling, illegal arms exports, and money laundering; fining the employers of illegal aliens (well, actually they don’t bother with that any more); plus many, many other responsibilities. She would be the officer chiefly responsible for protecting the nation against terrorist threats once they have succeeded in infiltrating our borders, which are guarded by a different bureaucracy. Her most relevant previous experience was managing only 170 employees and a $25 million budget while at the Commerce department...

...The response of House Republicans to any talk of new immigration programs has been "Enforcement First." Replacing Myers with a more suitable candidate would signal that the White House takes these concerns seriously. Obstinately sticking to the nomination would send the opposite message.

I seriously doubt that immigration enforcement or competence are anywhere near the top of the administration's priorities. If they withdraw her nomination, the only reason will be because of the heat they've received.

Previously: "More on Bush's pick to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement".

UPDATE: I changed the title because the Miami Herald has joined in with "An unqualified nominee for a top job".

Posted to Politics at 08:26 AM | Comments (1)

"Bush Extends National State of Emergency - Military in Streets of DC"

Snug down your tinfoil and take a look at this DU post. On September 21, Bush extended the National State of Emergency that he declared after 9/11.

That links to "Today in DC: Commandos in the Streets?"

The latter should send you to the store to stock up on extra heavy tin foil:

Today [9/21], somewhere in the DC metropolitan area, the military is conducting a highly classified Granite Shadow "demonstration." ...Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.

...That's where Granite Shadow comes in. U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), the military's new homeland security command, is preparing its draft version of CONPLAN 0400 for military operations in the United States, and the resulting Granite Shadow plan has been classified above Top Secret by adding a Special Category (SPECAT) compartment restricting access.

The sensitivities, according to military sources, include deployment of "special mission units" (the so-called Delta Force, SEAL teams, Rangers, and other special units of Joint Special Operations Command) in Washington, DC and other domestic hot spots. NORTHCOM has worked closely with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), as well as the secret branches of non-military agencies and departments to enforce "unity of command" over any post 9/11 efforts.

Further, Granite Shadow posits domestic military operations, including intelligence collection and surveillance, unique rules of engagement regarding the use of lethal force, the use of experimental non-lethal weapons, and federal and military control of incident locations that are highly controversial and might border on the illegal...

Posted to Politics at 06:55 AM | Comments (0)

Governor Bill Clinton... of California?

This rumor mill site says that sources say that someone else says that their sources heard from someone else that major donors (probably including George Soros) are encouraging "Bubba" Bill Clinton to run for governor of California.

"On first blush, it might sound nuts" they quote a Democratic strategist. It sounds the same way on second, third, and subsequent blushes too.

Other possibilities mentioned include: Magic Johnson, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and Rob Reiner. Only the last played a character named "Meathead", although all four are meatheads.

Posted to California at 06:08 AM | Comments (2)

Katrina: was Chertoff misled by an inaccurate weather forecast?

The unsourced and unconfirmed report here (or here) says that the DHS was using the private company AccuWeather to obtain their forecasts of Katrina. A report was compiled using their data and presented to DHS head Michael Chertoff.

Meanwhile, NWS meteorologists working at the "NOAA Desk" in the "DHS Ops Center" prepared another report based on the reports from the National Hurricane Center. That report might not have been presented to Chertoff:

To make matters worse & even more confusing, FEMA relies solely on NWS products, which includes those issued by the National Hurricane Center. So FEMA (which only uses NWS) and the DHS (which uses Accuweather) are not even looking at the same forecasts! The NWS NHC's track for Katrina was significantly different & more accurate than Accuweather's. Just recently, Accuweather's track for Ophelia brought it across Florida & into the Gulf. In both cases, Accuweather's forecast was dead wrong. The end result is that the head of homeland security & DHS & FEMA received conflicting forecasts.

Sen. Bill Nelson also asked Max Mayfield about consolidation and downsizing of WFOs and Max Mayfield unequivocally said it was a very bad idea, and that he hopes that it doesn't happen and that the local\ WFOs are an essential part of NWS. Senator Nelson also trashed Accuweather and, without naming Santorum, blasted those who would try to take NWS off the air and off the internet to help commercial interests.

Since this was apparently discussed at Congressional hearings, it shouldn't be too difficult to confirm whether this is accurate or not.

Posted to Politics at 04:16 AM | Comments (1)

National Enquirer stands by Bush booze story

As previously discussed, the National Enquirer says that Bush is hitting the bottle again.

From this (completely unverified and consider the source) post:

Ed Schultz just interviewed an editor with the National Enquirer. The editor said the paper stands by its story "150%" and would go to court over it if they had to. He said that they have 2 different sources for the story, and that the sources had been informing the National Enquirer about this story for about the last month or so. Notably, the editor said that a "highly respected" newspaper has also been working on the story and could well publish something on it in the next week or two.

Of course, as can be expected, there are other DUmmie posts speculating that this could all be a Rovian plot:

Ok. So why the hell are liberals believing the National Enquirer?

So AAR shows like Randi spent their time on the Enquirer/Booze story

Did another poster guess that Rove might have planted the Enquirer story?

The last one posits that the story might be true, but that it's been presented in the most sympathetic-to-Bush light. Alternatively, that Rove planted the story in the Enquirer in order to debunk it.

Posted to Politics at 03:03 AM | Comments (0)

Jimmy Carter: Al Gore is my president

He didn't say that exactly, but former prez Carter thinks Al Gore is the real winner of the 2000 elections:

There is "no doubt in my mind that Gore won the election," the erstwhile President declared, saying the 2000 election process "failed abysmally."

Posted to Politics at 11:57 PM | Comments (1)

Union thugs shout down teachers suing over union electioneering

The National Right to Work Foundation has filed a lawsuit on behalf of six teachers and professors against the California Teachers Association. The suit concerns a $60 fee that the union is charging them in each of the next three years. That money is being used to mount the CTA's campaign against Arnold Schwarzenegger's Propositions 74, 75 and 76.

The NRWF held the press conference outside the union's office.

One hundred teachers and others succeeded in shouting them down and drowning out the press conference: screaming "Shame on you" over and over.

Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks says:

"This is an example of the kind of intimidation, bullying and thuggery that our public school teachers are enduring (from the union) every day"

They're seeking class action status for the suit.

Posted to California at 06:53 PM | Comments (1)

ANSWER, UPJ, Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, MoveOn to protest at White House September 24

And, before you go you might want to read "War protesters linked to radical left-wing groups":

The groups gathering in Washington this weekend to protest President Bush and the war in Iraq have ties to radical left-wing groups and communist organizations and have enjoyed the support of the left's biggest financial supporter, George Soros.

United for Peace and Justice (UPJ) and International Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) are the two main organizers of the weekend of events -- the first major public protest allowed to surround the White House in more than 10 years -- and expect 100,000 people from dozens of smaller left-wing and liberal organizations.

A highlight of Saturday, the first day of protests, is an appearance and speech by anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan...

The leaders of ANSWER, founded three days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, are connected to the Workers World Party, a Marxist group that has expressed support for such dictators as North Korea's Kim Jong-il, Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic and Iraq's Saddam Hussein...

Other groups associated with ANSWER are the Free Palestine Alliance, U.S.-Mexico Solidarity Foundation and the Muslim Student Association of the U.S. and Canada.

UPJ, founded by liberals who say they were concerned about the radical tactics and smorgasbord of issues trumpeted by ANSWER, says it organized the "S24," or Saturday (Sept. 24) protest first, but Mr. Dobbs said there's "a big overlap" between the protests and "the major point is that we're in D.C. to stop the war in Iraq."

Among the nearly 1,000 groups in the UPJ coalition are Punks for Peace, Queer to the Left, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and Historians Against the War.

California-based Code Pink, which has established a reputation for aggressive protesting, and MoveOn.org will also be out in force this weekend...

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 07:45 AM | Comments (2)

DUmmies' childish view of illegal immigration

The best and brightest minds of the left have contributed their wisdom to the DU threads "East Coast cold to Minuteman Project" and "Minutemen planning national action at U.S. borders".

You might be tempted to think that some of those posting the childish remarks are COINTELPRO-style operatives designed to assist in reducing the wages of American workers. But, you'd be wrong. Those are real lefties there:

Those maids and gardeners and masons aren't hurting anyone, and make great neighbors, by and large, bringing with them their traditional, earthy family values.

Well, millions of the maids and gardeners and masons can certainly have an effect on many aspects of American life, but no one said DUmmies were smart.

Further, while I don't think the poster was joking, his comment is very similar to... an article from The Onion. From "Man Who Thought He Was On Date Actually Just At Work-Related Get-Together":

"Thinking I was covering my tracks, I said I had a thing for our supervisor, Michaela [Torres]," Rolen said. "I started babbling about how I like to date Hispanic women, because I find them very 'earthy' and 'spiritual.' I was out of control."

Perhaps I should start a new subcategory: "DU, or The Onion?"

However, not every single last one of them are dumb, as there's one intelligent reply:

This is not a race issue, it's an economic issue.

Everyone of those landscapers, maids and clerks are taking jobs from American citizens.

When every American in the job market is gainfully employed, then let's throw the doors open to our neighbors.

And please no racist rhetoric about how nobody wants the jobs they take. Talk to the 400 people who applied for 12 McDonald's jobs in my city.

The influx of illegals is depressing American wages and in the long run helping very few except CEOs who are only too happy to oblige.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 03:35 AM | Comments (1)

Mexican bishop in "hot water" over accepting drug money

Oddly enough, Reuters has placed the news that the bishop of Mexico's Aguascalientes accepted donations from drug runners in their Oddly Enough category.

The bishop says:

"You don't have to burn the money just because it's bad. It's better to transform it ... I've known of cases (where) it's been purified."

Our wacky funny friends from the south! We're also informed that:

Bishops in northern Mexico said earlier this year that the multibillion-dollar cross-border trade in cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines went against church teaching.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to have the same prohibition on massive illegal immigration.

If you think this is a wackily funny report, you might also enjoy "Illegal Immigration and the Mexican Archbishop" (about the archbishop of Mexico City), "Catholic workers for open borders", "Catholic Church & Charities Illegally 'Aid and Abet' Aliens", "Yet another Bishop for Open Borders", "The Bishop is a cheap labor pimp", "Mexican archdiocese criticizes Arizona law limiting migrant benefits", or "Bishop: Keep America Great!"

Posted to Immigration2005b at 09:33 PM | Comments (2)

Linda Chavez supports illegal immigrants take Katrina rebuilding jobs

Linda Chavez offers "Hispanics and Hurricane Katrina". She was watching TV and looking for others of her race:

...Most are immigrants -- often illegal -- from Honduras and Mexico. Then, just when I thought they were nowhere to be found, I spotted a few Hispanic men in the television footage this week of crews cleaning up the debris... Wherever they went to escape the storm, they're back -- because there is work to be done, and they are eager to do dirty jobs that many others shun...

Well, Linda, perhaps those aren't Louisiana natives or even residents. Perhaps, oh I dunno, they're from Texas.

And, I wonder who might be those "many others" she's refering to. Now, clearly, those "many others" are not Hispanics. Which race would they be? Whites? Blacks? Asians? Asian-Pacific Islanders?

I wonder if these images will sink in with the anti-immigrant crowd that imagines that Mexicans come to the United States looking for a handout.

Wow, that's quite a load of straw she's got there. While abuse of public services is part of the opposition to illegal immigration, isn't there a whole lot more? Like, just as one example, corrupt corporations getting massively subsidized labor and ripping the rest of us off? Say, did you know that Linda Chavez is a signatory to the "Conservative" Statement of Principles on Immigration as well as a supporter of Bush's guest worker scheme?

My suspicion is that few of New Orleans' Hispanic immigrants -- especially the illegal ones -- stuck around for the hurricane to hit. Immigrants in general tend to have strong initiative and good coping skills.

Yes, they're so much better than the lazy natives. As for me, I suspect that many of New Orleans' illegal immigrants have no real ties to that city and got out because they had as much at stake as Linda Chavez does to Nanking. Then, they - as well as their co-workers from other states and from Mexico - came back to make a buck.

There will be plenty of jobs to go around, and, as always, immigrants will be among the first lining up to do them.

Unfortunately for Chavez, the American thing to do is to make sure that - one way or another - those jobs go to Americans. It's explicitly un-American to allow illegal aliens to underbid Americans for those jobs.

But, at least we know whose side Linda Chavez is on.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 08:10 PM | Comments (5)

Arnold: Bush always welcome in California, but...

Arnold Schwarzenegger wants George Bush to avoid fundraising in California until after the special election. I'm sure there's the matter of only so many donations to go around, but I'm sure that Arnold is also able to read polls.

Posted to California at 05:29 PM | Comments (1)

BUSH IN BOOZE CRISIS

The ever-credible National Enquirer has the scoop:

"When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!"

But, what does a shrink think?

Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, told The National Enquirer: "I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any program, like the President, have a hard time when stress gets to be great... I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening."

Posted to WackyHumor at 03:23 PM | Comments (1)

Phil Angelides for Governor, Part 1

Welcome to the first edition of our coverage of Phil Angelides' attempt to be Governor of California. We'll be highlighting his accomplishments and his goals.

In today's news, he's just received an endorsement from Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.

And, in a flashback to last year, in June he toured campuses of California universities to complain about fee hikes. His companions included... Arianna Huffington and Randy Jackson from American Idol.

Posted to California at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

Chinese company sells Kelitun and Laiwensiji condoms

Think about those names for a second...

Yes, that's right! Clinton and Lewinski. Those wacky Chinese!

A 12-pack of Clintons is expected to cost $5.00, with Lewinskys selling at a discounted price of just over $3.00.

The manufacturer's general manager, Liu Wenhua, told Sky News that naming his condoms for Clinton was perfectly legal, explaining that "trademarks of two foreign surnames and can't be seen as a violation of rights."

I don't know about that, at least in America where we've got rights of publicity, but I'll let the real lawyers weigh in. Hey! I know who would know!

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was unavailable to comment on her husband's latest achievement.

Posted to WackyHumor at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

"What is blocking my tv antenna?"

Of all the DU threads I've linked to, this is probably the most beautiful and zen-like in a minimalist, outsider outsider art kind of way or something:

I use an antenna which gives me 2 network channels. I also get the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. I don't get NBC. Q is this... does anyone know why a solid, black "box" keeps covering the screen? You can still hear the program and see around the perimeter of " the box" but that is it.

Why would an antenna be blocked?.... Anyone?

Let the speculating begin.

Posted to WackyHumor at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)

Citizenship and Immigration Ombudsman is fmr prez of AILA chapter

The Ombudsman of the Department of Homeland Security's Citizenship and Immigration Services is a former President of the Central Florida Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association:

...the AILA is directed by approximately 100 associates who also serve as members of the pro-Communist National Lawyers Guild... AILA has joined with other leftwing groups to denounce, in their entirety, the security measures taken by the U.S. government in the wake of [9/11]... Before [Jeanne Butterfield] was elected to head AILA, [she] was executive director of the Palestine Solidarity Committee... Besides excusing PFLP terrorist attacks and campaigning against U.S. aid to Israel, the PSC under Butterfield also supported Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and was active in the antiwar movement opposing American intervention to liberate Kuwait. The PSC and PFLP are Marxist organizations... However, when one looks at specific issues, AILA embraces illegal entry into the United States as well. The AILA "solution" to the illegal immigrant problem is to legalize everyone. "People who work hard, pay taxes, and contribute to the U.S. should be allowed to obtain permanent residence," says an AILA issue paper...

Read the link for more on that organization.

As footnote 1 here shows, they're deeply integrated into the open borders network. They support the Agjobs amnesty, which they allegedly helped Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) write (also here). They support illegal aliens counting towards congressional representation.

Now, you might wonder, how did this all happen?

Prakash I. Khatri, Esq. was appointed by Secretary Tom Ridge in July of 2003 to serve as the first Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Ombudsman at the Department of Homeland Security. He will identify areas in which individuals have problems dealings with the CIS, assist individuals and employers in resolving service or case-related difficulties, and propose changes in the CIS administrative practices to mitigate identified problems. In addition, Mr. Khatri will provide policy, planning and program advice to the DHS Secretary, Deputy Secretary and other key officials regarding immigration matters.

How soon before even the most KoolAid-besotten BushBot is forced to admit that the Bush administration is just on the other side?

(I just found out about this via this post on Julie Myers, President Bush's nominee to head the the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security. I covered her starting here.)

Posted to Immigration2005b at 06:39 AM | Comments (0)

Malta invaded by refugees via Libya

The island country of Malta is somewhere between Martha's Vineyard and the Chattanooga, Tennessee metro area in size, with about 400,000 inhabitants. But, they've got a problem:

Libya has said that there are 1.5 million sub-Saharan Africans on its territory and many have their sights set on Europe.

Specifically, they're trying for the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Sicily, thence to mainland Italy. However, they frequently run out of fuel and wind up in... Malta. And:

Under European Union law, asylum seekers must stay in the European country they first arrive in. Although Malta is no bigger than the Isle of Wight, it is a sovereign member of the EU, so anyone who lands is stuck there.

But, wait, their screwing gets worse:

Five years ago Malta received only 24 illegal migrants. This year's total stands at more than 1,100 so far, with about 30 arrivals a night - the equivalent of 165,000 asylum seekers reaching Britain.

Some 4,000 asylum seekers have arrived since the crisis began in 2002. More than half are eventually granted refugee status or humanitarian leave to remain. Most of those refused asylum also stay on the island, in a limbo that is miserable for all involved. It is hard to prove where they are from; harder still to deport them to home countries that are sunk in anarchy.

Malta's tradition of hospitality is being slowly poisoned by the crisis. New hard-line nationalist groups are springing up, while politicians from the two mainstream parties talk of "putting national interests before human rights".

They go on to provide a few quotes and a poll that doesn't exactly put the Maltese in a good light. (The picture above is of the ever-attractive actress Justine Bateman who is of Maltese descent. Because of my good memories of Family Ties I'm going to give the Maltese the benefit of the doubt. I'm sorry, I know this is a news story, but I just couldn't resist.) And, other Europeans countries are trying to pass the buck, and the EU rules aren't working in Malta's favor.

Whatever the other factors involved, Malta shouldn't have to deal with this situation. There are two ways to do that: ensure that those in Libya stay where they are, and ensure that they know that there's no work or benefits for them in Europe. Malta - like the U.S. - has a right to determine whether they're going to admit people or not.

Posted to Immigration_euro at 10:12 PM | Comments (2)

Illegal alien advocates want special rights because of Katrina

From "Group Wants Special Status for Illegals Affected by Katrina":

Illegal immigrants affected by Hurricane Katrina should have "protected humanitarian status," representatives of Latin American and Caribbean communities said Tuesday in an appeal to the White House.

The groups said the protection is needed because immigrants fearing deportation, including some with U.S.-born children, are not seeking help at shelters because officials are asking for Social Security numbers in order to enter.

"The immigrants are the invisible victims of the hurricane," said Gloria Saucedo, of Hermandad Mexicana of Los Angeles, Calif., whose group is a member of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, which is pushing for immigration reform...

I'm sure our "American" president would love to give those kind-hearted cheap laborers as much assistance as he can sneak by the American people. It's our job to make sure that doesn't happen: we need reconstruction jobs to go to Americans, not to illegal aliens. This article also includes a quote from the National Council of La Raza.

Previously: "Vicente Fox's offer to make money off Katrina spurned" and Harry Reid wants amnesty for illegal aliens who are taking jobs that could go to Katrina victims.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:14 PM | Comments (1)

National Council of La Raza: illegal aliens are its "constituents"

National Council of La Raza has made quite an interesting admission. This shouldn't be shocking, but it does tell you where they're coming from:

"If federal authorities are using [Katrina] as an enforcement opportunity, it creates a moral dilemma for us in how do we advise our constituents," Cecilia Munoz, vice president of policy for the National Council of La Raza, the largest U.S.-based Hispanic advocacy group, said Monday.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 02:05 PM | Comments (3)

Bill would prevent illegal aliens' cars from being impounded

Our "American" legislators in Sacramento continue thinking up creative new ways to give rights to illegal aliens. Consider, for instance, a bill from Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont that's now sitting on Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk:

The bill requires the police to return vehicles to their registered owners who present a valid registration and driver's license. So if police stop a joyriding teenager or an illegal immigrant who is borrowing a friend's car, they cannot impound the vehicle if the owner shows up with a valid license, as they can under current law.

Gil Cedillo and other supporters of driver's licenses for illegal aliens continue to attempt to insult people's intelligence by saying those bills are for public safety. Likewise:

"The bill is intended to address situations where basically the licensed owner is unfairly punished because of the actions of someone else, perhaps a minor child in the family, someone who steals a car or takes it for a joy ride," said Sam Delson, a Torrico aide. "The licensed owner under current law faces a severe penalty."

Arnold hasn't made his feelings clear, but we're informed that the following have asked him to veto it:

California Highway Patrol Commissioner M.L. Brown, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca; the San Fernando Valley Traffic Advisory Council; and San Fernando Police Chief Anthony Alba.

A similar bill from Cedillo is still pending in the legislature.

Posted to California at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

More on Bush's pick to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement

As previously discussed, Bush has selected someone with little or no immigration experience to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Her name is Julie Myers, and she's never managed a large bureacracy.

On the other hand, Myers is not, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the former head of a horse show association. So, she's at least got that going for her.

The previous report said that George Voinovich (R-OH) had questions about her qualifications, but according to the WaPo's "Immigration Nominee's Credentials Questioned" he's since changed his mind.

They also reveal this:

Myers worked briefly as chief of staff to Michael Chertoff when he led the Justice Department's criminal division before he became Homeland Security secretary.

Myers also was an associate under independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for about 16 months and has most recently served as a special assistant to President Bush handling personnel issues.

Her uncle is Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She married Chertoff's current chief of staff, John F. Wood, on Saturday.

It all sounds like one big cozy family. Yet, some people still have questions:

"It appears she's got a tremendous amount of experience in money laundering, in banking and the financial areas," said Charles Showalter, president of the National Homeland Security Council, a union that represents 7,800 ICE agents, officers and support staff. "My question is: Who the hell is going to enforce the immigration laws?"

I. Michael Greenberger, a former Clinton administration official who heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, said the Myers appointment represents "pre-Katrina thinking, where political relationships were a very large factor."

"Post-Katrina, we now see that people need to be eminently qualified," Greenberger said.

I don't know whether she can do the job or not, but - even just in the interests of looking good - shouldn't the Bush administration - just once - choose someone who's overqualified? I mean, don't they have a tiny little wee bit of a fiduciary duty to we the populace?

Of course, there's also the question of whether the Bush administration really cares whether the head of the immigration agency will enforce the immigration laws, or, as we've seen in the past, whether they'll work to sidestep them.

See also "Poor leadership at ICE cited as security threat" for more on the issue of choosing the best people for the job.

UPDATE: There's much more on Myers here. Meanwhile, over in the Democratic Party's fantasy world:

[Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.] threatened Tuesday to block approval of a Homeland Security Department nominee until he receives a secret FBI memo about terror suspect interrogations that he's been seeking for months.

Of course, if he gets that then he'll probably just go ahead and approve her, rather than considering all the reasons why he shouldn't.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 10:28 AM | Comments (2)

Geraldo Rivera supports illegal immigration, opposes Minuteman Project

If, in the past, you've just laughed at Geraldo Rivera, now's the time to send an email to Fox News suggesting they find someone else:

Geraldo Rivera, senior correspondent for Fox News, told a group of Hispanic journalists vigilantes had created "hysteria along the borders" and advised his colleagues not to "let your newsroom push you around on the issue of immigration."

[He uttered:] "Bust them on their hypocrisy... In vast sections of the country, there would not be a lawn mowed or a dish washed but for illegal immigrants... I'm for not being embarrassed about who we are. If we make it, you can't forget where you come from."

Lest you think Geraldo is Chicano or Mexicano:

His mother is of Russian Jewish ancestry and his late father was a Puerto Rican of Spanish ancestry.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 08:53 AM | Comments (2)

Should the Sierra Club's Carl Pope resign?

Kristen Gelinau of the AP offers "Sierra Club member calls for director's resignation over immigration debate". The Sierra Club's executive director, Carl Pope, was speaking in Richmond VA. Outside, two protestors were calling for his resignation because of his immigration stance:

James McDonald, a 60-year-old Springfield attorney, said Carl Pope accepted more than $100 million from California donor David Gelbaum in 2001 only after promising Gelbaum the club would stay out of the immigration debate.

As previously discussed, here's what the donor, David Gelbaum, told the L.A. Times:

"I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me..."

Here's what Pope says now:

"I personally, and subsequently the membership of the Sierra Club, voted that we would remain neutral on immigration, years before Mr. Gelbaum made those large gifts... It is true that Mr. Gelbaum said that if we had taken the opposite position, he would not have given us the gifts, but we had already taken that position."

An SC spokesperson says:

"Our members overwhelmingly rejected a change to our policy, so any allegations of wrongdoing here with regard to that policy are just totally unjustified."

Not entirely accurate, as the AP would know if they were trying to do their job. Only a small number of SC members voted; see "13% of Sierra Club members support massive immigration".

As for the AP, they get in a few "liberal" zingers:

Like most of the club's members calling for immigration control, McDonald insists he has nothing against immigrants, adding that his wife is from the Philippines...

Obviously, in the AP's mind anyone who supports proper public policy can be suspected of having something "against immigrants".

At the end, the AP also gets in the the SC's founder was an immigrant himself. Can it be assumed that that mention was just an accident?

This isn't the first time I've caught the AP doing things like this.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 05:30 AM | Comments (0)

Palm Beach Post prints PIIPP on home loans for illegal aliens

One of the sub-category of PIIPPs ("pro-illegal immigration puff pieces") is that which promotes illegal aliens getting home loans using ITINs instead of SSNs. The Palm Beach Post has printed the latest in this long line, entitled "New mortgage rules help open doors for immigrants". They've found a twist: the sympathetic subjects in this case are here on a temporary visa. If that expires, are they going to go home to Venezuela, or are they going to become illegal aliens?

A snippet:

"We think we deserve the right to homeownership as well as other decent, taxpaying citizens who live in this country," said Pablo through a translator. He asked that his last name not be used in this story.

There seems something a mite fishy about that. Pablo's not a citizen and he's been here four years already and you think he'd know enough English to say the above. Call me mean-spirited, but perhaps we don't need people like Pablo here. Just working isn't enough, and perhaps we should make a few more demands of "immigrants" other than just contributing to our economy.

As for the article, it's very similar to other ITIN articles, which tends to make me quite suspicious. Who's behind all these stories from various newspapers? Are the banks or immigration lawyers sending press releases? Are the banks using an "in" at the paper to get things like this printed? Are these basically advertorials? Are these articles basically propaganda?

If a newspaper prints propaganda, should you trust the other articles they print?

Here's the first paragraph from this article:

Like many immigrants, Pablo and his wife, Eudalis, work hard, pay taxes and dream of owning a home.

And, from March 15, 2005's "Banks Find Mortgage Clientele in Undocumented Immigrants" by Katherine Reynolds Lewis of the Newhouse News Service:

Dalila and William Timal look like any other couple signing a home mortgage. They've picked out paint colors for their new four-bedroom house in Indianapolis and can't wait for their 18-month-old son to play in the yard.

And, from August 17, 2005's "Bank Calumet opens home ownership to illegal immigrants" by Keith Benman of NWTimes:

For years and years Javier Palacios Perez worked hard in the factory, paid taxes and made sure he and his wife, Josefina, were able to raise their three children properly.

And, from August 24, 2005's "Count Them In" by Dan Frosch of the Santa Fe Reporter:

Maria sinks into the soft cushions of the living room couch, hoping to catch a few moments of quiet.

I don't know about you, but I'm not going to put much trust in other articles from those sources.

If you want to contact the reporter, her email is susan_miller *at* pbpost.com. Their managing editor is bill_rose *at* pbpost.com.

Posted to Immigration_piipps at 10:34 PM | Comments (4)

Latinos: the new Model Minority to keep Pittsburgh strong!

Richard Delgado is university distinguished professor of law and Derrick Bell fellow and Jean Stefancic is research professor of law and Derrick Bell scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where they teach courses on race and civil rights.

Now, they offer us a slice of all-American thinking entitled "Let's welcome Latinos to Pittsburgh". If you thought George Bush talks like he's in the fifth grade, step back a grade or two and enjoy the racialist thinking from the cream of academia:

Pittsburgh needs more Latinos. Pious, industrious, roll-up your-sleeve immigrants from Mexico and Central America, raring to work at jobs like construction, food processing, restaurants and old age homes, save their money, send their kids to school, move up the ladder and relive the American dream...

...Latinos love working in the construction industry...

...Imagine what it would do for this region if you could remodel your house for $23,000, not $30,000; or eat a fine restaurant meal for $14, not $18; if your kids could go to a neighborhood school instead of one a mile away because the local one closed...

...Construction foremen, restaurant owners and hotel managers love Latinos, who enjoy a reputation for working hard, not complaining and showing up on time...

...In some parts of the country, every work site features Latino and non-Latino workers working together to build houses, repair roads, and make things grow. Wouldn't it be nice if Pittsburgh had more of this? [Oh! What a wonderful dream, even if it sounds like it was written by and for five-year-olds -- LW]

...Latinos, with their strong work ethic and traditional respect for elders, are the logical choice, both nationally and here.

The authors are literally race pimps, demeaning not only those of the same race as they, but other races as well. Now, let's try an alternate version of their article. Tell me what you think about this:

Pittsburgh needs more Whites. Pious, industrious, roll-up your-sleeve immigrants from Europe, raring to work at jobs like construction, food processing, restaurants and old age homes, save their money, send their kids to school, move up the ladder and relive the American dream...

...Construction foremen, restaurant owners and hotel managers love Whites, who enjoy a reputation for working hard, not complaining and showing up on time...

...Whites, with their strong work ethic and traditional respect for elders, are the logical choice, both nationally and here.

Now, of course, if Richard Delgado said that he'd be a racist, now wouldn't he?

Posted to MultiCultiCult at 01:00 PM | Comments (4)

Border watchers attacked; L.A. Times downplays incident, gloats

From "Border watchers attacked during training session":

A group called Gente Unita confronted volunteer border watchers in San Diego yesterday with obscenities, shoving and U.S. flag desecration, causing Friends of the Border to abandon a planned deployment and an apology by the group's leader for not having police protection for senior citizen and other members of the group...

One eyewitness told WND he saw members of Gente Unita assault four members of the border-watch group, including organizer Capt. Drew Johnson, a retired Navy officer.

"Gente Unita stole an American flag, ripped from its staff and trampled it, as captured on film by cameraman Larry Morgan," said Roger Canfield, a former Republican congressional candidate...

"Shouting obscenities and slogans, Gente Unita shoved, jostled, and twice pushed their way into the center in 32 minutes of disorderly conduct as also witnessed by center staff and others at the center to take a state notary exam," Canfield said.

One man allegedly shouted, "We''re going to shut you the f--- down," in the face of several volunteers.

Others, he said, broke off from the group to attack the check-in table located under a flag pole. While the larger group was charging the entryway of the Scottish Rite Center, two others grabbed a U.S. flag on a wooden staff, a confidential list of names, knocked over the table, knocked a hat off Johnson and roughed up volunteer Beverly Crawford...

Needless to say, if the SD sheriffs had been there in the first place, there's a possibility that they might have done something. However, there have been past reports of them not being sympathetic to pleas for help from other border watchers.

But, if they had been informed, no one could say that there's the possibility that the FOBP intended this to happen the way it did. So, in the future they need to let the cops know where they're going to be.

Now, turning our attention to the Los Angeles Times, how do you think they handled this matter? Certainly, if Minutemen had attacked lefties, wouldn't they highlight that? Of course.

Instead, we get "Minuteman-Style Border Patrol Is Over in No Time" from Anna Gorman and Richard Marosi.

Senior citizens attacked by violent far-lefties, and that's what the LAT offers?

They refer to what WND described above as a "minor scuffle":

...Pushing and shoving broke out early Saturday after about 20 counterdemonstrators marched into the Scottish Rites Center in San Diego, where Border Watch volunteers had come to register for training, according to witnesses and police. One counterdemonstrator was cited for battery after he allegedly knocked down someone unaffiliated with either group.

Pushing and shoving broke out early Saturday after about 20 counterdemonstrators marched into the Scottish Rites Center in San Diego, where Border Watch volunteers had come to register for training, according to witnesses and police. One counterdemonstrator was cited for battery after he allegedly knocked down someone unaffiliated with either group...

[On Friday, FOBC] were drowned out by a mariachi band and about 30 jeering counterdemonstrators waving Mexican flags and chanting in Spanish for the "caza migrantes" — migrant hunters — to go home...

I'd imagine that about the only differences between the LAT report and that offered by, for instance, the CPUSA would be that the CPUSA report would have even more triumphalism, and it would also be more accurate. The L.A. Times might as well be a Mexican newspaper for all their support of the U.S.

UPDATE: There are purported videos of the "scuffle" at these addresses, but I haven't watched any of them:

media.putfile.com/scene2
media.putfile.com/scene147
media.putfile.com/scene3

Posted to Immigration2005b at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)

Guess the political quote, a new, fun, game. With Chang!

Which political figure said the following:

"Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down."

Hint: he's a national figure, but he's not in the federal government.

Need another hint? His son just might be a future president, as long as the U.S. is really really really unlucky.

OK, how about this? He's supposed to be the smart one.

Posted to Politics at 09:18 AM | Comments (1)

Vicente Fox's offer to make money off Katrina spurned

Last week, George Bush's amigo Vicente Fox offered to help us out with the Katrina rebuilding, specifically saying that "if there is anything Mexicans are good at, it is construction." Of course, as readers of this blog know, that would translate into millions or billions of remittances for Mexico: the money that illegal aliens send home.

Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) responds to Fox:

"Rebuilding our Gulf Coast with labor from Mexico would divert a large part of the estimated $200 billion cost to rebuild -- paid for by American taxpayers -- out of our economy and into 'foreign remittances,' the monies sent back to Mexico from the U.S. by illegal immigrants... While we appreciate the disaster aid assistance Mexico is providing by sending a military convoy across our southern border, we cannot afford to pay them back with the jobs of our hurricane victims."

And:

Mr. Norwood said at least half a million Americans from the affected areas have permanently lost their jobs, suggesting that it "makes perfect sense" that as many of them ought to be employed as possible in the rebuilding efforts -- "for their personal good and the good of the country."

And:

"We should not allow our national tragedy to become Mexico's gain. The time for talk is over. The time for pleas for the administration to simply enforce the law is over... Hardship has a way of bringing families together... If there is anything positive that can come from such an incomprehensible disaster as Hurricane Katrina, it could likely be in forcing us to come back together to help defend each other, instead of letting potential taxpayer-funded jobs for storm victims to be looted by illegal immigrant labor cheered on by Mexican President Vicente Fox."

Hello!

Of course, the problem is that our putatively American president and the "liberals" are probably going to end up helping Fox with Plan B: just sending the illegal aliens anyway. See "Harry Reid wants amnesty for illegal aliens who are taking jobs that could go to Katrina victims".

Every chance we get, let's ask them whose side they're on.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 06:53 AM | Comments (2)

Tess Smith gets the Emmy on TV's big night

Actress/screenwriter Tess Smith at the Emmy Awards. She's not a 10, but she is showing a lot of skin, so...

In more important news, I did Mts. Lowe and Markham and San Gabriel Peak today. I skipped Mt. Disappointment since it's an antenna farm.

And: a cell phone thief "ended" up hiding her stolen "booty" in her "butt", Ananova informs us.

UPDATE: Now, you can bid on Tess' dress. The auction says it's for charity, but I have no way of knowing whether that's true and whether that's really her dress. But, it certainly looks like it, so check it out.

UPDATE 2: Did you know that in addition to occasional celebrity coverage, this site mainly covers the very important topic of illegal immigration? Check out our homepage for the latest posts or see this brief intro to illegal immigration.

Posted to Celebrities at 12:04 AM | Comments (28)

Arianna Huffington for Governor? No!

I've heard some outlandish liberal ideas, but the idea of running Arianna Huffington against Arnold Schwarzenegger is insane. Arianna? The environmentalist? The one who's against good corporations that give jobs to Californians? No! Somehow, we conservative Arnold supporters must stop her from intruding on our dream. Perhaps we could get her to run for governor of some other state or something.

To be frank, Arianna could really give Arnold a run for his money, and, frankly, she's the only candidate that I fear out of all the other alternatives. Just between you and me, Arianna is the only Dem who could beat Arnold. (P.S. Please don't tell the DUmmies I said that!)

Posted to WackyHumor at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)

Heinz learns about Venezuela's liberal wonderland

The headline tells you all you need to know: "Seized Heinz processing plant in Venezuela illustrates hazards of global operations".

Posted to Miscellania at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)

CSU Monterey Bay: Marxist boot camp

There's a long article here on California State University Monterey Bay. The author is disgruntled former professor there, but it doesn't exactly sound like such a wholesome American place.

CSUMB could as easily have been named CSU-Affirmative Action. CSUMB is unique among American state colleges in that it was conceived as an Affirmative Action university and officially oriented as an institution of leftist political indoctrination... Students must also fulfill the "Community Participation" (formerly "Service Learning") ULR...

A "ULR" is a "University Learning Requirement". In case you think the author is overselling this, here's how CSUMB defines the ULRs:

These ULRs will give you deep multicultural and community awareness and a broad knowledge base.

OK, I'm game. Let's look at the "Culture and Equity ULR":

The Culture and Equity ULR requires you to comprehend your individual cultural identity in relationship to other cultures and lifestyles, and to demonstrate critical awareness of power relationships as well as the means for creating greater equity and social justice.

Hmmmm.... Do Californians know about this?

What about the "Democratic Participation ULR":

The Democratic Participation ULR requires you to use the tools of political action in a political project.

Obviously, there's a very good chance that the vast majority of those projects will be left-wing. Moreover, those projects that are not left-wing will probably be discouraged or downgraded in some way.

OK, continuing our tour with the "Creative and Artistic Expression ULR":

The Creative and Artistic Expression ULR requires you to produce works of art that communicate to diverse audiences through demonstrated understanding and fluency of expressive forms. Through your works of art you must show that you comprehend the significance and expression of culture in a variety of ways. Each Creative and Artistic Expression ULR course imparts thorough knowledge of the given discipline and offers you the opportunity to develop creatively through engaged and reflective work.

In short, CSUMB looks like CSU Basket Weaving for Far-Lefties. The idea that we'd spend money on Indoctrination U. is not very comforting at all.

Please contact your representatives and urge them to look in to this school.

Posted to California at 08:58 AM | Comments (1)

CalInsider: Arnold should just say driver's licenses for illegal aliens is a bad idea

Rather than continuing to come up with excuses for not agreeing to Mexican-"American" legislator Gil Cedillo's constant attempts to give California ID cards to Mexican citizens who are here illegally, Daniel Weintraub has a alternate suggestion for Arnold:

...At this point the only honest reason to oppose giving licenses to illegal immigrants is because the state should not be giving its blessing to illegal behavior. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that position. Maybe the governor should try it on for size.

Posted to Immigration_dls at 03:02 AM | Comments (0)

Hugo Chavez (D-VZ) sends oil, bashes Bush, claims there's an invasion plan

Democratic Rep. Hugo Chavez (D-Venezuela), said on Nightline that the U.S. has plans to invade his country.

He also wants the United Nations to move out of the U.S. A destination country was not mentioned, but strong contenders could be Libya, Myanmar, Jerusalem, or Togo:

In a speech to the U.N. world summit, he also said the United States had failed its own people in its response to Hurricane Katrina, accused Washington of fueling terrorism and faulted it for its doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes.

"Today we know there were never weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but despite that, and going over the head of the United Nations, Iraq was bombed and occupied. So the United Nations must be pulled out of the United States," Chavez said...

Chavez noted bitterly that U.S. television evangelist Pat Robertson, a strong supporter of President George W. Bush who called for Washington to assassinate him, remained a free man. Robertson later apologized for his remark.

"This is an international crime, terrorism," Chavez said...

And:

World leaders at the summit had been asked to speak for five minutes but Chavez ran long and when the presiding diplomat passed him a note saying his time was up, he threw it on the floor. He said if Bush could speak for 20 minutes, so could he.

When he finally stopped, he got what observers said was the loudest applause of the summit...

Chavez has also sent 300,000 barrels of oil to the Gulf Coast:

The President as confirmed that before traveling to New York to attend the UN summit, Louisiana State Governor Kathleen Blanco phoned the Venezuelan President accepting his offer of help.

Posted to Miscellania at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

Report on Mexico's San Antonio encampment

No, not the century before last, this century, in relation to Katrina relief. A report is here, disclaimers apply:

...The Officer said he has friends and family throughout the United States and has traveled here extensively. He admitted his children will be attending the last two years of high school and college in the United States, because they will have more opportunity here. The officer admitted that Mexico only requires its children to attend school until the 6th grade. Many families are so poor they need their children to work to help support the family and the Mexican Government endorses it by allowing 6th graders to stop the education.

The officer agreed with Tully that Mexico is a wealthy nation, has numerous resources, but provides little or no opportunity to Mexican citizens. The officer stated that it is difficult to get Mexicans to work in Mexico even though jobs exist. He said they prefer the United States dollar to the peso, and they find it easier to enter the United States then to live with a lesser wage...

Posted to Immigration2005b at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

Obscenity mowed into lawn; officials powerless to do something

This is partially humorous, but it also has some overreaching city employees bits to it. Apparently an Omaha man was warned by the city about excessive grass and weeds. In response he mowed a two-word expletive into said grass.

We are not informed what that expletive is, but apparently it contains a capital "U", leading this reporter to speculate it says "Up Yours". That is just conjecture however.

Now, here comes the state:

City prosecutor Marty Conboy said little can be done legally about the yard.

"There really is no criminal law that covers these kinds of vulgarities," Conboy said...

"As much as you might shake your head at what kind of reasoning is involved, it's not prohibited," Conboy said. "A person who wants to make a statement in public, that doesn't invoke a violent response, is protected by the constitution."

Conboy said he is "disappointed" that someone would use his 1st Amendment rights in such a manner.

City codes dictate that lawns taller than 10 inches can be ticketed, but Parks and Planning officials said that unless the grass that formed the expletive met that criterion, there was nothing they could do to force its removal.

Posted to WackyHumor at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

Is Bush's pick to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement qualified?

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) wants to know. And, I'm sure that both he and I mean "qualified" in the normal sense, not in the Bush administration sense.

Julie Myers was nominated by President Bush to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency that is charged with hunting down money launderers, sanctions busters and human traffickers and that is the sole enforcer of U.S. immigration laws.

Yesterday, she faced a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

"I'm really concerned about your management experience," Sen. George V. Voinovich, Ohio Republican, told her, pointing out that ICE, with 20,000 employees, is the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government.

"I think that we ought to have a meeting with [Homeland Security Secretary] Mike Chertoff ... to ask him ... why he thinks you're qualified for the job," Mr. Voinovich said. "Because based on your resume, I don't think you are."

Posted to Immigration2005b at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

Victoria man builds up static electricity, discharges, burns things

Only in Australia!

Victorian authorities believe a man built up at least 30,000 volts of static electricity in his jacket simply by walking around the western Victorian city of Warrnambool yesterday.

The man left a trail of scorch marks and molten plastic behind him...

...The [Country Fire Authority] has Mr Clewer's jacket and says it is continuing to give off voltage.

Posted to WackyHumor at 06:06 AM | Comments (0)

"Terrorism's New Operating System"

Monsoor Ijaz:

What if terrorism's global operating system has evolved into a much more sophisticated nexus — untraceable state sponsorship acting in concert with highly intelligent, well-trained, and carefully chosen foot soldiers who Western analysts would never conceive as partners? What if its new operating software is like the AIDS virus, constantly mutating from one nameless, faceless protocol address to another, transmitting its deadly code without need for regeneration or further direction, and with the necessary but well-camouflaged logistical and planning support states can offer?

Imagine that a state seeking to redress strategic imbalances in the quantifiable military threats it faces from larger powers trains a new, heretofore completely unknown battery of terror masters. They move as businessmen and women, as mothers with families, as low-level functionaries in embassies — in short, as people not worthy of intelligence monitoring by the West's traditional antiterror infrastructure...

...Once willing local proxies are identified, they are injected with a viral code of highly specific intelligence data about potential targets, methods of attack, how to assemble and deploy locally the weapons required to carry out their deadly missions and a philosophically sustaining message from the messianic figures who inspire them from afar.

The foreign agent then disappears, untraceable and unlikely to ever be seen again in the infected environment, or to even be used by the state sponsor for future missions...

Posted to Terrorism at 03:58 AM | Comments (1)

North Korea introduces credit card

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea announced on Friday the introduction of the Stalinist country's first credit card, but just how it would work was unclear.

"The North East Asia Bank of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has introduced (an) IC credit card ... in order to modernise its settlement business," the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

"The IC card ensures the safety of the data registered in it. And it is impossible to counterfeit it so as to prevent money from being lost," KCNA said...

Posted to Miscellania at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

How many members of the Bush Administration does it take to change a light bulb?

OK, most of these are funny and many are mostly true, even if this is a "liberal" joke:

How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to change a light bulb?

The Answer is TEN...

1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed,

2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed,

3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb,

4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the light bulb or for eternal darkness,

5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb,

6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner Bulb Accomplished,

7. One administration insider to resign and in detail reveal how Bush was literally in the dark the whole time,

8. One to viciously smear #7,

9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along,

10. And finally, one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

Posted to WackyHumor at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)

Arianna Huffington in a Sierra Club SUV

There's a picture of Arianna Huffington on a Sierra Club-supplied SUV here.

Previously: "Al Gore, Arianna Huffington attend Sierra Club Summit; drive off in massive SUVs". See also the related "Huffington Post is scared".

UPDATE: Place a bid on a picture of Arianna in the SUV. It's personally signed by Doug from Upland, so click the link to buy this momento of failed limousine liberalism today.

Posted to Celebrities at 04:50 PM | Comments (1)

Jessie Mangaliman sits, listens to loonies decry Minuteman Project

Jessie Mangaliman of Knight Ridder offers us "Immigrants, leaders rally to decry Minutemen" which could have been written by the "immigrants" themselves. He basically just repeats their claims without any analysis. Then, as with other articles, he turns to the object of those groups' hate for their denial of the obviously false charges.

I need a new name for this type of propaganda, perhaps "Have you stopped oppressing immigrants" or similar.

This paragraph is typical:

In East Oakland, about 60 people, many of them immigrants, held a vigil in front of Centro Legal de la Raza, an immigrant legal advocacy organization. The group expressed solidarity with immigrants and attacked citizen border patrols as "hate-filled, white supremacists."

Let's all speculate on what a real reporter would do. In fact, let's contact the S.J. Merc and ask them.

Perhaps a real reporter would translate that group's name: "Legal Center of/for the Race". Or, they might wonder where those people came from: were they bused in by some other group? Where does the funding for the Center come from? And, of course, is calling them "immigrants" accurate, when what they want are benefits for illegal aliens?

And, there's this news:

A county resolution, recommended this summer by the county's Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission, is pending in committee and waiting recommendation for a vote later by the board of supervisors. If it is approved by the board, Santa Clara County could be the first municipal government in the state to take a formal stand against the Minuteman Project.

Other participants mentioned:

Rev. Jon Pedigo, "a San Jose pastor and member of People Acting in Community Together"

Salvador Bustamente, "regional vice president for the Service Employees International Union, Local 1877"

Larisa Casillas, "policy director for Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network"

Maria Jimenez, "director Mujeres Unidad e y Activas, a Latina women's group in Oakland"

Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:14 PM | Comments (1)

Illegal aliens arrested at Nebraska nuclear power plant

Three kind-hearted undocumented friends from Vicente's country were stopped from entering a NUCLEAR POWER PLANT in Nebraska. It's bad enough when good-hearted folks end up workin' at Navy bases, but when they work at something that could lead to a "China syndrome", perhaps even our "American" president might consider waking up.

Three illegal aliens were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents this week when they reported for work as outside contractors at a secure area of a Nebraska nuclear power station.

ICE spokesman Dean Boyd yesterday said the men, all Mexican nationals, had been hired by an independent contractor to perform maintenance work at the Omaha Public Power District's Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station.

As they attempted to enter a secure area of the plant, Mr. Boyd said, the men presented identification documents that raised the suspicions of Omaha Public Power District employees. They, in turn, contacted ICE agents for assistance. The men were arrested after agents determined they were in the United States illegally...

Posted to Immigration_terror at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

Open borders groups to harass border watchers

From "Border friends, foes to face off":

...Friends of the Border Patrol, organized by Andy Ramirez, 37, of Chino, begins its monitoring today with an estimated 130 volunteers, he said...

Jesse Diaz Jr., 41, of Ontario, is an organizer of La Tierra es de Todos, a coalition of groups formed in Riverside in May to oppose such Minuteman spin-off groups. Coalition members will caravan to the border Saturday for a rally in Calexico and to join an attempt to close the border at Tecate, to deny California retailers business from Mexican shoppers, Diaz said...

Diaz said opposition groups would go out at night looking for Minutemen border-watch groups in order to confront them with light and noise and video cameras and to disrupt their efforts at stealthy monitoring...

Posted to Immigration2005b at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

Kind-hearted, undocumented U. of Memphis student just wants to be airline pilot

Mahmoud Maawad has been in the U.S. for six years, working for cash at a convenience store. He's undocumented. And, he's a student at the University of Memphis.

With that information, both George Bush and Nina Bernstein would probably start feeling their compassion welling. But, hold off for a second, you two:

When FBI agents walked [his] spartan apartment [on Sep 9]... they found a desk, chair, computer and a Koran.

They also found an airline pilot's uniform, a chart of Memphis International Airport, and instructional DVDs, including one called "How an Airline Captain Should Look and Act."

...Between April and August, the penniless student ordered $3,000 in aviation materials, DVDs titled "Ups and Downs of Takeoffs and Landings," "Airplane Talk," "Mental Math for Pilots" and "Mastering GPS Flying," FBI agent Thad Gulczynski testified.

He also ordered a pilot's coat and hat, and a chart of the Memphis airport terminal area from Spotty's USA in San Diego...

He's currently in jail awaiting trial on non-terrorism charges. According to Asst. U.S. Atty. Steve Parker:

"we don't know either way" if Maawad is a terrorist or connected to any terror groups

Posted to Immigration_terror at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

White House unveils guest worker scheme

On Wednesday, Karl Rove discussed Bush's scheme to bring in millions of kind-hearted folks with select (U.S.) representatives:

The White House is preparing to unveil an immigration-reform plan that would allow millions of undocumented residents to remain in the United States as guest workers, two Arizona congressmen said...

[...our "guests" get a three-year visa...]

As explained to the congressmen, the plan gives workers the opportunity to renew that visa for another three years before requiring them to leave the country. They could then apply again to return.

Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., one of the congressmen who spent an hour and 15 minutes with Rove and other administration officials Wednesday, said he was taken aback by the "comprehensive" nature of the plan.

"I was surprised to find that they have gone as far as they have in preparing a specific proposal," said Kolbe, who has long championed a guest-worker plan as a way to control the tide of illegal border crossers. "We thought we were just going down for a discussion of different proposals."

Rep. Jeff Flake, also at the White House meeting, was struck by the level of detail. "I was impressed with the time and effort they put into it," said Flake, also from Arizona. "I expected more of an outline. We got more flesh than expected."

I'm a bit confused. What should Americans do? Impeach Bush now? Or, wait until his plan fails miserably and his popularity plummets even further, thus rendering impeachment unnecessary?

UPDATE: There's a little more info here, which will be put into its own post.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 01:16 PM | Comments (1)

Schwarzenegger supports levee repair, wants fed money

Details here.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday joined Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and other federal lawmakers in urging Congress to help California repair its aging system of levees.

Schwarzenegger, who is expected to announce today his bid for a full term as governor, wants an additional $90 million for levee repairs from a federal government that has a history of failing to show California the money...

[...century-old earthen levees need to be repaired...]

The money Schwarzenegger is asking for represents a down payment on a $2 billion repair bill -- what the state Department of Water Resources has estimated a complete overhaul would cost.

Schwarzenegger's letter outlines 10 critical repair projects, most of which are in the Sacramento Valley, to get the $90 million. Raising Folsom Dam would get the most cash, at $24 million.

A massive Department of Water Resources study mapping weaknesses in the Delta's levees would get $3 million.

State Resources Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman said officials are hopeful they can convince Congress to include the money in a special flood-relief bill intended to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina...

Mmmm... smells like pork. While the money would be nice and is probably needed, it would probably be better not to encourage Katrina bills to be bloated with off-topic stuff.

Posted to California at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

Trans-Texas Corridor: "there's something wrong going on in Texas"

I-NAFTA is rolling right along, but some plucky Americans are trying to put up some roadblocks:

Trans-Texas Corridor critics denounced the state's handling of the project on Tuesday and called on McLennan County residents to organize against the proposed transportation network.

In a meeting at Tours Hall in eastern McLennan County, speakers urged the roughly 200 attendants to slow down or stop the Texas Department of Transportation's plan to build a network of tolled highways, railways and utility infrastructure from San Antonio to Dallas.

"We have to raise the political cost, and how you raise political cost is you organize," said Chris Hammel, chairman of the Bell County anti-corridor group Blacklands Coalition.

The McLennan County group DERAIL, which opposes the corridor, scheduled Tuesday's meeting to update people on the corridor project, said Rick Wegwerth, a group organizer.

Hammel said next year's gubernatorial primary and general elections will be the "beachhead at which we as people who are opposed to this can send a very clear signal to both parties that are in office that there's something wrong going on in Texas."

Gov. Rick Perry proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor in 2002 as a way to handle current and future trade traffic and population growth by providing an alternative to the state's interstate system...

More information starts in "Gov. Rick Perry's vision of the Trans-Texas Corridor".

Posted to Miscellania at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

Mike Tyson in Chechnya, will not stay

"Iron Mike" is in Chechnya to unveil a boxing tournament. Despite pleas from world leaders, he says the visit is only temporary.

"Mike Tyson is a real athlete and fighter, he immediately accepted the invitation of Ramzan Kadyrov to visit Chechnya and become an honoured guest at the boxing tournament," the press secretary said. "We shall welcome him as dear guest in accordance with Chechen traditions and will treat him to our ancient meal, zhizhik-galnash (meat with sauce and boulettes)".

Good one!

Posted to WackyHumor at 06:31 AM | Comments (0)

Inventor disputes reports; dead cats "inefficient, don't burn clean"

I'm sure you all remember that Oddly Enough! story about the inventor who's made a new process to turn waste materials like paper, rubbish, plastic goods, and dead cats into fuel. (Ananova v4 i43 p34, "Inventor turns dead cats into diesel").

Well, now he's saying that the "dead cats" part is... dead wrong!

It turns out that he did experiment with both dead kittens and puppies, but he decided that they were too "inefficient" and not "clean-burning" enough. Now he's concentrating on inanimate objects, including rubbish like discarded child's toys and old photograph albums.

Full story on this plucky inventor here.

Posted to WackyHumor at 02:13 AM | Comments (1)

Morrow responds about Carlsbad heckler's veto suit

State Rep. Bill Morrow held an anti-illegal immigration forum in Carlsbad a while back, and first the city tried to cancel it. They rescinded that after being threatened with a suit; at issue is whether a "heckler's veto" is able to block First Amendment rights. The event when through as scheduled, but Carlsbad then came back and sent Morrow a bill for security.

Morrow has in turn sued Carlsbad, and he says the suit is necessary to protect everyone's right to free speech. Details in this letter.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 07:57 PM | Comments (1)

VA: Kilgore, Kaine pledge to crack down on illegal alien employers

On Tuesday, Virginia gubanatorial candidates Jerry W. Kilgore and Timothy M. Kaine debated with Tim Russert as moderator. One of the main topics was illegal immigration.

They both pledged to crack down on businesses that knowingly hired illegal aliens, but somehow I trust Kilgore's pledge quite a bit more.

Kaine wants localities to determine what's best for their communities. That would allow, for instance, Herndon to establish a day laborer hiring hall knowing full well that most of those using it were here illegally.

Kilgore doesn't think that's right.

In a perfect display of Democratic thinking, Kaine called that "mean-spirited." That light-weight response appears to be the best that the Democrats can do when asked to discuss important policy matters.

Reports from WaPo in "Virginia Candidates Push Hot-Button Topics From Debate" and WashTimes in "Kilgore urges penalties for employers of illegals".

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:49 PM | Comments (1)

Harry Reid wants amnesty for illegal aliens who are taking jobs that could go to Katrina victims

It's important to read between the lines of this report:

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid today urged Congress to press for immigration reform this year, citing Hurricane Katrina as the latest, high-profile illustration of the need to help Hispanic immigrants who are "living in the shadows." [he means illegal aliens, not "immigrants" -- LW]

Reid said some immigrants whose lives were devastated by Hurricane Katrina aren't seeking government aid.

"They're afraid to ask the government for help for fear of what the government will do," Reid said today. "The one entity that should be helping them, they are afraid to ask."

...Reid backs legislation introduced by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., that would allow undocumented workers to apply for a work visa. If they keep working, break no laws, and study English, in six years they would qualify to apply for citizenship, according to the bill...

..."All over America, we have people who are living in the shadows, unable to contribute to society," Reid said.

To see where Reid or his handlers might have gotten their ideas, see the post "AP: Illegal aliens who shouldn't be here hardest hit by Katrina". That, the similar NYT article it links to, and Reid's comments about "immigrants" sound almost identical in their description of these "immigrants'" plight.

Clearly, Harry Reid and the Democratic Party think people who've entered our country illegally deserve a better break than our own citizens who've been left unemployed by hurricane Katrina.

Posted to Politics at 01:41 PM | Comments (4)

Huffington Post is scared

It used to be that the Huffington Post approved almost every comment I left on the blog side of things.

Then, after they started their Katrina coverage, there were very few comments on the blog side, and what there were were complimentary. While some brave souls appeared to let most or all comments through, most of the HuffPo's pseudo-pundits appeared to be massively deleting comments. I say that because controversial posts had almost no comments, and that's certainly strange.

Now, the HuffPost has disabled auto-linking of URLs. That means that the URL you leave beside your name is not linked to any URL, bare URLs left in comments aren't turned into active links, and HTML links are stripped out.

They apparently can't stand the heat.

Not only that, they appear to want people to build content for them for free. One of the prices you pay for people leaving comments is giving them a link. Leaving a comment builds up a page in a way that search engines like. So, if you leave a comment there expecting to get a link out of it, you're getting ripped off.

Solution: ignore that site.

UPDATE: This site says that the Greek beauty has over 15,000 comments needed to be moderated, so, if that's to be believed then it's not that they've been deleting them they just haven't been able to deal with their absurd policy. They're "liberals", what did you expect?

Also, note that that last link contains a nofollow tag. I left a comment there, which may or may not get moderated. But, if it does, it will have a nofollow tag in my URL. Why should I give him a real link if he's not going to return the favor?

Posted to Bloggage at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

Schwarzenegger to run again; will he face the iPod candidate?

The Los Angeles Dog Trainer-Enquirer-Times announces that "Schwarzenegger All But Declares Reelection Bid" and that fine paper has no doubt already prepared itself to act once again as little more than a mouthpiece for the Democratic candidate.

...Speaking at a special election campaign event in this Central Valley town near Fresno, Schwarzenegger was asked by an audience member if Californians would get "a chance to vote for you again."

The governor then revealed what his campaign staff had been hinting for several days: "I'm going to make an official announcement on Friday, this Friday. I believe very strongly in follow-through. Follow-through is the most important thing. If you start something, you've got to finish it."

So, who - other than unknown political wonks - might he run against?

The San Francisco Chronicle said comedian Robin Williams and actor Warren Beatty are on the list of possibilities being discussed in Democratic circles.

The list also includes San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and business executive Steve Jobs, the Chronicle said -- but none of those mentioned has said anything publicly about making the race.

We've already had Governor Moonbeam, how about Governor iPod? I don't know which of those fine choices would be best, they're all quite terrific.

Posted to California at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

FAIR on border security

FAIR has a new report entitled Code Orange: Diminishing the Terrorist Threat to America.

The WashTimes offers an overview in "Watchdog says borders still unsecured".

Posted to Immigration2005b at 06:29 AM | Comments (0)

Bill: No benefits for illegal aliens in Georgia

ATLANTA - There will be no welcome mat in Georgia next year for illegal immigrants if Republicans in the Georgia Senate have their way. A bill they are backing as a top priority would block taxpayer-funded benefits for individuals who are not citizens...

"We cannot afford to take care of everybody," Johnson said in a news conference with Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, whose bill to prohibit benefits to illegal immigrants is pending in the upper chamber. "Our priorities should be on Georgia's neediest citizens ... (and) our neighbors, our friends who are hurting - the evacuees from the Gulf," Johnson said. "Those should all be a higher priority than somebody who has broken the law and come to this country illegally."

See, this is what happens when you don't use the correct terminology. In the first paragraph, they imply this could extend to legal residents who aren't citizens. But, in the second paragraph they say it only includes illegal aliens.

Sen. Sam Zamarripa, D-Atlanta, said the measure will only accelerate the black market in false ID papers and documents. "If you really want to fix this, you need to go audit the biggest employers in the state. You're going to discover inappropriate documentation for people that work. If they want to stop it, find the people that hire people," he said.

That's a good one! Click his name to find out more about that fine legislator.

And, for more on his colleague Pedro Marin, see "Mexican agents in the state houses? Part 2". That case is something everyone should be very concerned about.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:13 AM | Comments (0)

Britney has child, now MILF

Keeping you informed on China's view of the American chronicle.

Posted to Celebrities at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)

Al Gore, Arianna Huffington attend Sierra Club Summit; drive off in massive SUVs

Arianna Huffington and Al Gore recently spoke at the Sierra Club Summit in San Franciso.

According to this report, they drove off in massive SUVs.

For Big Wooden Al, it was a Cadillac Escalade.

For the Greek siren, it was a less bling-blingy Chevy Suburban. She had a driver.

However, please note carefully that it doesn't really matter what they personally drove. Inside the Summit, they inspired dozens of other, smaller people to drive smaller cars, and that's what matters.

UPDATE: Arianna has been completely, positively exonerated. According to the HuffPost webmaster:

While the reporter was absolutely right that Arianna arrived at the meeting in an SUV, he didn't get the whole story. Namely, that the SUV had been sent by the Sierra Club to bring Arianna from the San Francisco airport to the Sierra Club conference at the Moscone Center, that she had been stunned when it arrived, and had raised the point with the organizers about the inappropriateness of the vehicle. This wasn't a case of hypocrisy... but rather a bad choice made by an otherwise worthy organization.

Damn the Sierra Club!

UPDATE 2: Now, you can bid on a picture of Arianna in the SUV. The pic is personally signed by Doug from Upland, so click the link to bid on this souvenir of failed limousine liberal thinking today.

Posted to Celebrities at 08:50 PM | Comments (4)

Bush to wall off 3.5 miles of border near San Diego

From this:

The Bush administration said Wednesday it will fortify the westernmost stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border over the objections of environmentalists and California regulators, who feared the project would harm a refuge for endangered birds. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff signed an environmental waiver Tuesday night that expedites the Border Patrol's long-standing plans to fill in canyons and erect additional fencing along the final 3 1/2 miles of the border before it meets the Pacific Ocean...

Chertoff said the fortifications would help reduce illegal border crossings, while Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told reporters the project was "not directly related to illegal immigration," but a broader effort to close gaps that terrorists and others could exploit. "This is about border security," Aguilar said...

Aguilar said the Border Patrol may move to fortify the border in other areas, although both he and Chertoff said the administration had no plans to wall off the entire 2,000-mile Southwest border with Mexico.

Concern over illegal immigration led Congress to pass legislation in 1996 requiring the Border Patrol to strengthen the westernmost 14-mile stretch of the border. Nine miles were fortified, but environmental concerns and lawsuits held up construction on the last 3.5 miles leading to the ocean and 1.5 miles farther east. Earlier this year, Congress gave Chertoff the power to sign a broad environmental waiver to finish the job, citing fears that terrorists could slip through an unsecured border...

Posted to Immigration2005b at 05:55 PM | Comments (2)

Bush's UN speech shows he doesn't understand how refrigerators work

Dear Prez:

Hey, nice speech you made before the United Nations ("Bush vows to 'tear down walls' between rich and poor nations").

Unfortunately, you seem to have failed to grasp certain basic concepts, not the least of which is that which we call "America".

But, let me explain it to you in simple terms. Let's say it's hot out. You're sweaty. Ah ha! You have an idea: you'll open up your refrigerator to cool down.

The problem with that idea is that your refrigerator is only designed to cool its own small, sealed space. It's not designed to cool a large room.

So, if you leave the door open for a long length of time, the refrigerator can't keep up. Even if the motor doesn't burn out, it won't be able to cool the room, and it'll even have trouble keeping your food cool.

Now, opening the refrigerator door occasionally is OK. But, you don't leave it open because all that coolness is a valuable commodity.

Hopefully you'll be able to understand that example using the emboldened passages from your remarks:

We have a moral obligation to help others -- and a moral duty to make sure our actions are effective. At Monterrey in 2002, we agreed to a new vision for the way we fight poverty, and curb corruption, and provide aid in this new millennium. Developing countries agreed to take responsibility for their own economic progress through good governance and sound policies and the rule of law...

...A successful Doha Round will reduce and eliminate tariffs and other barriers on farm and industrial goods. It will end unfair agricultural subsidies. It will open up global markets for services...

...Doha is an important step toward a larger goal: We must tear down the walls that separate the developed and developing worlds. We need to give the citizens of the poorest nations the same ability to access the world economy that the people of wealthy nations have, so they can offer their goods and talents on the world market alongside everyone else. We need to ensure that they have the same opportunities to pursue their dreams, provide for their families, and live lives of dignity and self-reliance...

What wonderful ideas! Perhaps you should buy another country and conduct the experiment there instead of inflicting it upon this country.

Posted to Politics at 03:19 PM | Comments (2)

A smear from Eugene Tong and Patricia Farrell Aidem of L.A. Daily News

Recently a Canyon Country (L.A.) paramedic was killed by an illegal alien driver. According to the CHP:

[The driver] is an illegal immigrant who has been arrested a dozen times and was deported once to Mexico. He has been convicted of four felonies, drug charges, thefts and a count of willful cruelty to a child, for which he served five days in jail...

The Sep. 13 L.A. Daily News article "Governor meets widow, sons of dead paramedic" from Eugene Tong and Patricia Farrell Aidem discusses a visit from Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not available on the web, but a very large (over 2 Meg) picture is here. The article includes the following:

The [accident] has become a focal point for groups battling to deport illegal immigrants and, in particular, to deny them driver's licenses. While the state Legislature approved licensing immigrants, the governor has vowed to use his veto power.

Conservative web sites, as well as white-power sites, are rocking with posts about the case.

Hey! I can do that too!

Nancy Pelosi, as well as the CPUSA, support illegal immigration.

Let's try another one:

Joe Lieberman, as well as the Berkeley Socialist Solidarity with North Korea Friendship October 10th Committee for World Peace and Liberty, both advise not nuking North Korea.

Think I can get a job at the Daily News?

Posted to Los_Angeles at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

Los Angeles City-mandated illegal alien day laborer centers?

There's a proposed L.A. City ordinance that would require big box home improvement stores to have an attached center for day laborers. As previously discussed, the great majority of those workers are illegal aliens.

There's a bit of an update in "Making a place for workers", but it doesn't have much more beyond "...and our day laborer sites won't encourage illegal immigration" and Home Depot, Antonio Villaraigosa, Fernando Guerra, and Microsoft.

Read the last two links, and let me know if you think there's something a bit... questionable going on.

The current article includes this more-honest-than-I'd-expect admission:

"It's an incredible issue for urban California," said Fernando Guerra, a lobbyist for Home Depot and professor who heads Loyola Marymount University's Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

Guerra, who said he was speaking for himself and not Home Depot...

And, this:

Home Depot officials said they have yet to review the recently proposed city ordinance.

"Day laborers are not a Home Depot issue alone," said Kathryn Gallagher, a spokeswoman for Home Depot. "It's a community issue. It needs to be a community effort. We are happy to sit down at the table and be part of the solution."

Posted to Los_Angeles at 08:07 AM | Comments (0)

Chandler, Arizona tries to divert illegal aliens to day laborer center

The article "Chandler deters day laborers" starts out with the good news that city workers have been posting "No Stopping" and "No Parking" signs on streets in Chandler AZ where day laborers congregate looking for work. "Specially-assigned" police even gave out warnings to potential employers.

Then, it goes downhill fast:

...But still, at least 100 day laborers [were on those streets] on Monday morning waiting for work instead of going to a nearby day labor center city officials encourage them to use.

...Police and city workers are also handing out fliers that explain the new restrictions and advertise the day labor center...

The cost: $30,000 to start, and $14,000 per month for the cops. While this is a privately-funded center (as the city website informs us), local government money is still being used to assist rather than stop illegal behavior: hiring illegal aliens.

From the city's website:

The privately funded and operated Center meets several needs in the community. It provides laborers a safe place to negotiate a fair wage, while contractors and residents are provided with a one-stop shop for the help they need. The Center is open from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily. For safety reasons, those needing the assistance of day laborers are asked to refrain from stopping along the roadway.

I'm vaguely reminded of this, but that would never fly outside rural Nevada. But, perhaps as a Swiftian satire someone in Chandler should propose something similar.

Alternatively, someone should look into who's profiting from this scheme.

Previously: "Arizona tries to stop public funding of illegal alien day laborer centers" and "Arizona legislators move to cut off funding to day laborer centers".

Posted to Immigration2005b at 06:40 AM | Comments (0)

"Why Some Would-Be Immigration Reformers Don't Have the Answer"

Mark Krikorian discusses the "reality" of those who are pushing for immigration "reform":

The Senate is again considering various proposals to address our massive illegal-alien problem, and the competing bills have one thing in common: They claim to offer "realistic" solutions to the supposedly unrealistic desire to enforce the law. Writer Tamar Jacoby, perhaps the most energetic salesman of the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, used some form of "realistic" ten times in her testimony at a July Senate hearing. Senators Kennedy, Cornyn, Brownback, and Feingold all touted the realism of their preferred solutions at the same hearing, and the New York Times and Washington Post have done the same in numerous editorials.

The problem, of course, is that no one has checked whether our very real immigration bureaucracy is capable of implementing any of these proposals...

...The point is not that these requirements are inappropriate; if you're going to be registering illegal aliens, you'd certainly want to know about their health status and involvement with terrorism. But the most pressing question remains: Is it achievable? What would happen, in the real world, if one of these "realistic" solutions were to become law?

Two words: "fraud" and "paralysis."

...So, if an immigration package anything like McCain-Kennedy or Cornyn-Kyl were to pass, the following would almost assuredly occur: Immigration offices would be deluged by millions of applications that would need to be approved under a tight deadline; harried DHS employees would be forced to put aside their other duties to meet the onslaught; candidates for citizenship - foreign spouses of Americans, refugees, skilled workers sponsored by employers - would effectively be pushed to the back of the line; political pressure would force DHS to cut corners in adjudicating the applications; and huge numbers of ineligible applicants would be approved (in addition to the huge numbers of eligible applicants)...

...Instead, the illegal population needs to be decreased via muscular, across-the-board immigration enforcement over a long term. Rather than wait for a magic solution, we can implement an attrition strategy right now, using available resources. We could, for instance, immediately reject fake Social Security numbers submitted by employers on behalf of new employees (the government currently looks the other way). Or the Treasury Department could instruct banks that the Mexican government's illegal-alien ID card is no longer a valid form of identification. Or a small portion of enforcement resources could be devoted to random raids at day-labor gathering spots. This has an added advantage: As more resources become available - be they monetary or technological - they could easily bolster the attrition approach, as opposed to current proposals, which from the get-go require vast and untested programs...

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:27 AM | Comments (2)

Gavin Newsom to citizens: you're on your own

Shocking news out of Frisco. Mayor Gavin Newsom has informed his subjects that in the case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack, they should be prepared to be on their own for up to 72 hours.

At a press conference, he uttered:

"If Hurricane Katrina didn't prove it to you, I don't know what will... I'm not waiting, in the event of an emergency, for Air Force One."

But, isn't the government supposed to take care of us? Shouldn't we expect help within a few hours?

Apparently not to the mean-spirited anti-human mayor of Frisco, who also informs us that he's created a web site to promulgate his near-Rethuglican views: 72hours.org. It has lots of tips on those 72 hours, including creating a series of "Go Bags" containing necessities. (On DU, those are called "Bug Out Bags" and contain Canadian-American dictionaries.)

But, wait, it gets worse:

The city also is running an advertising campaign focusing on what's "nice to have" versus what you "need to have" in your home or car. One poster features sushi as "nice to have," but canned tuna and a can opener as a "need to have."

Posted to California at 02:38 AM | Comments (0)

Avoid Chinese skin-care products: IT'S PEOPLE!

A special investigation by al Guardian has revealed that a Chinese cosmetics company is exporting skin care products that are made from the skin of prisoners who were shot.

No, I'm not kidding: "The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners":

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

Al Guardian has not identified the company, and they may in fact be a supplier for other companies...

"We are still in the early days of selling these products, and clients from abroad are quite surprised that China can manufacture the same human collagen for less than 5% of what it costs in the west." Skin from prisoners used to be even less expensive, he said. "Nowadays there is a certain fee that has to be paid to the court."

There's more at the link. Print it out and read it at your favorite Chinese restaurant.

Posted to Miscellania at 11:00 PM | Comments (2)

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich gets a $720,000 heated driveway

"Taxpayers To Pick Up Tab For Governor's Driveway" (warning: loads video) informs us that the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is spending almost three-quarters of a million dollars to install a heated driveway at the governor's mansion, "even though he doesn't stay there much." The state is picking up the cost with a 25 year bond, making the final tally well over $1 million.

In news from 2003:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich has signed legislation entitling illegal aliens who live in Illinois to subsidized in-state rates at public universities. The law is expected to cost Illinois taxpayers about $3 million a year and affect some 2,000 illegal aliens attending Illinois' public universities. In signing the bill, Blagojevich acknowledged that mass illegal immigration is a problem, "But that's no excuse to deny an American dream..."

Someone with oversight powers should look into his dreams in a bit more depth. Perhaps it's the relatively small things that could lead to him being replaced. From the driveway story:

A road builder we spoke to laughed at the project's cost, saying that for the same price, the governor could have either built a mile of concrete highway or more than three miles of asphalt road.

A Chicago area firm that installs the heating mechanism quoted us a price of $30,000 for a 100-yard driveway. The actual contractor – R.D. Lawrence of Springfield – is billing the taxpayers half a million just for the heating mechanism.

Posted to Politics at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

El Centro Sector apprehensions decline

From this (also here):

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol agents said apprehensions of illegal immigrants have been on a decline in the El Centro Sector compared to last year due to an increase in Border Patrol specialty units.

[A spokesman said...] fiscal 2004 apprehensions were at 72,000 by the end of September.

"This year we have 51,000 apprehensions thus far," he said.

[The spokesman] said a number of different things could have contributed to the decline in apprehensions, including a shoring up of the sector's infrastructure...

Of course, it could also mean that they're just crossing in other sectors along the border.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

Illegal aliens doing rebuilding jobs in Biloxi, and they want visas

Isn't it wonderful in Bush's America?

From "Undocumented aliens rebuilding Biloxi, say they deserve visas":

As Biloxi rises from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, it is doing much of it on the backs of undocumented foreign workers. Some are starting to suggest that their contributions are worth at least a temporary visa.

"If we are working and helping to raise this city, at least they should give us a work visa," said Manuel Armenta, a 44-year-old Mexican who came to Biloxi five months ago to do cleaning work at a hotel...

So far, there's been little risk [of getting deported]. The Department of Homeland Security has announced a 45-day period in which employers would not be fined for hiring undocumented workers. It said that was because many people had lost their proof of citizenship or legal residence in the storm...

Previously: "Give Illegal Aliens' Jobs to Unemployed Katrina Victims".

Posted to Immigration2005b at 03:00 PM | Comments (2)

Los Angeles Dog Trainer-Enquirer-Times fires Michael Kinsley

The L.A. Times has forced out recently-demoted editorial page editor Michael Kinsley. He's issued the following voluntary confession:

"...For whatever reason... [publisher Jeff Johnson] isn't merely uninterested in any future contribution I might make, but actively wants me gone. So I'm off, with some regret and some excitement, to the Washington Post, duties TBD but including the column. I hope it will continue to appear in the LA Times as well, but that is beyond my control... I'm sorry this has ended on a bitter note. I've loved my brief time at the Los Angeles Times. I've learned a lot, and made (I hope) some friends for life. Even the frustrations have been fascinating frustrations. And I think I've done some good for the paper, though others may not agree. The LA Times has some of the nicest people and finest journalists I've ever worked with, starting at the top with Dean (Baquet). And even Jeff will have to give me credit for bringing in [Kinsley's replacement Andres Martinez]. I expect great things from him, and from you..."

Posted to Los_Angeles at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

"Give Illegal Aliens' Jobs to Unemployed Katrina Victims"

Phyllis Schlafly:

Katrina has displaced hundreds of thousands of Americans who now need food, housing, and cash. Relief for those necessities will have to be temporary and it will be many months before they can return to New Orleans, if ever, so what they need most of all is jobs.

Our government should act immediately to put these displaced Americans in the jobs now held by illegal aliens. Some 10 million illegal aliens are now working in our country, so there is no excuse for not replacing a million of them with unemployed American citizens...

Of course, it's going to be difficult to get our American president to favor American citizens over "kind-hearted people" who've entered our country illegally.

There's also the matter that many victims of Katrina have been brought up in the Welfare State. Perhaps "leaders" like Jesse Jackson could encourage refugees to take low-wage jobs even if they think they're below them. From his "Hurricane looting not over yet":

...President Bush characteristically issued an executive order effectively lowering the wages of reconstruction workers -- and hiking the profits of their companies. He wiped out the requirement to pay prevailing wages in the disaster region, apparently thinking that $9 an hour for construction workers was too high a price to pay. The government can save money, no doubt, by exploiting illegal immigrant labor...

OK, so it looks like The Right Reverend Jesse Jackson and the pant-suited ERA opponent Phyllis Schlafly have something in common.

Let's build on that: get Jesse Jackson to join with the Democrats to ensure that rebuilding jobs are going to American citizens.

It just makes common sense, which is why the Democrats won't do anything about it.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 01:25 PM | Comments (1)

Corrupt California employers: the cost of your labor is about to go up

The L.A. Times article "State Helps Domestic Workers Who Are Fighting for Fair Pay" describes how:

[Domestic workers] and their advocates are confronting employers, forming collectives and pushing for legislation to guarantee more rights. They also are filing wage claims with the labor commissioner's office, part of the state Department of Industrial Relations, which is responsible for enforcing labor laws.

And, as the Dog Trainer informs us, we're discussing illegal aliens here:

Nannies, housecleaners and caretakers work in a largely unregulated industry, usually without contracts, timecards or any other detailed records. There are pluses for both sides: Employers can generally count on employees' flexibility and willingness to work cheaply, and employees readily find work even if they don't have immigration documents. Frequently, neither side pays taxes.

But the deal can go sour. Because the arrangements are unofficial, labor violations are common, according to employees, their advocates and academics. Workers have few protections and often are hard-pressed to prove they were wronged.

Such a wonderful deal for (almost) all concerned, it's so terrible that it might go sour. Of course, it's not such a good deal for society as a whole, but, at least those in the same weight class as L.A. Times editors get nice, compliant maids and nannies.

But, the bottom line is that moves like those described in the article will end up driving the cost of employing illegal aliens up. Now, corrupt employers might counter that by bringing in new illegals from Mexico, or even illegals from, say, Yemen. But, eventually they'll wake up too. (Before that happens, the L.A. Times will be there to support our newcomers from the Arab Emirates).

The article has a few more stomach-churning bits, including a mention of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (my coverage of their links to the City of L.A.) and CA state Assemblywoman Cindy Montanez.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

"L.A.'s schools bleed red ink"

Gosh, what could be causing the Los Angeles Unified School District to be in such a financial bind? This current story appears to have many culprits, including the beloved teachers' union. But, there's only so much money to go around, and any money spent on educating a citizen of another country is money that could be spent on our own citizens and on health benefits for teachers and such.

Meanwhile:

Acknowledging that their effort will probably lead nowhere, Los Angeles Unified school board members will try again today to figure out how to pay for billions of dollars in retirement health benefits and workers' compensation costs - a burden that weighs heavily on the district's future.

...unfunded debts: $6 billion to provide health insurance to retirees and their families, as well as half the district's $685 million in workers' compensation liability...

... In 2002, the LAUSD spent a record $148.5 million on workers' compensation claims, and the projected cost to pay all outstanding claims is about $627 million by June 2006.

The district pays the bulk of its workers' compensation and retiree benefits out of its $5.8 billion general fund - the same fund used to pay for teachers' salaries, textbooks and school supplies...

...United Teachers Los Angeles officials said their members will not compromise on health benefits...

"The best possibility might be (for) the federal government or the state to intercede or to give the district a long-term payment plan to make it as painless as possible," said Sam Kresner, executive assistant to the UTLA president...

Posted to Los_Angeles at 10:31 AM | Comments (1)

Up to 140,000 of Mass.'s driver's licenses may be fraudulent

Up to 140,000 driver's licenses issued to Massachusetts residents have unverifiable social security numbers and "may be in the hands of thieves, illegal immigrants or even terrorists", the Boston Herald reports in "Registry probes 140,000 licenses: Identity thievery suspected".

There are 5.4 million people with licenses in Mass., and the 140,000 number does not include licenses issued after the year 2000. They've been instantaneously verifying SSNs since that date.

[Kim Hinden, the registrar of motor vehicles] said many of the discrepancies may have innocuous explanations, such as a name change due to marriage or a simple typographical or inputting error, but officials remain concerned about the possibility of identity theft or "licensed" terrorists.

Aw, pshaw. Gil Cedillo isn't worried about that happening in California, so everything's going to be OK.

Posted to Immigration_dls at 07:41 AM | Comments (0)

WaPo Virginia poll: only 8% support illegal alien hiring halls

WaPo conducted a poll of registered voters in Virginia, and the results are discussed in "Immigration's Impact Is On the Minds Of Va. Voters".

I'd like to find the complete set of questions and results, but I've been so far unable to do so. However, from the graphic here:

Question: Would you support or oppose using public money to help pay for designated places where day laborers could gather while they wait to be hired?

All: 56% against, 42% for
NoVa: 47% against, 50% for

Question: (Only if they said they were supporters..) What if some of these day laborers were in the country illegally. In that case, would you support or oppose using public money to help pay for places where day laborers could gather to look for work?

All: 78% against, 19% for
NoVa: 61% against, 34% for

("NoVa" means Northern Virginia; they broke out the results for that area.)

Most or almost all workers at these centers are illegal aliens. And, in Herndon, they have no intention of checking immigration status.

So, let's do some math. Among all Virginians, only 19% of 42% support centers for illegal aliens.

In other words, if you include all respondents, that means that only around 8% of Virginians would support what Herndon and other locations are proposing: hiring halls for illegal aliens.

And:

33 percent of registered voters think "the growing number of immigrants" has been bad for their communities, compared with 21 percent who say it has been good. In Northern Virginia, where most of the state's immigrants reside, residents split almost equally on whether immigration has been good or bad for their communities.

The article discusses this in the context of the race for VA governor. The pro-borders candidate is former Atty. General Jerry Kilgore. Given the massive numbers on his side, you might think anyone would be crazy to support massive illegal immigration. Well, you'd be wrong. See "Dems crazy enough to downplay danger of violent Central American gang" and, from the article:

State Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr. (R-Winchester), who is running for governor as an independent, called Kilgore's actions "the worst form of pandering." Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, the Democratic candidate, said Kilgore is trying to find a wedge issue in what was an attempt by local officials to solve a difficult problem. "I think that's kind of slimy," he said Thursday.

See also "Herndon VA approves illegal alien hiring hall" (although that's since met some resistance from the neighboring county).

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:06 AM | Comments (1)

Jim Oberweis for Illinois governor

Last year, the GOP decided it was better to lose a Senate seat to Barack Obama than to run a candidate who's opposed to illegal immigration: Jim Oberweis. Despite finishing second in the primary, he was basically ignored by the GOP leadership because of his pro-borders views. Details here.

Now, he's running for governor, and expect the same forces to oppose him:

ROCKFORD — Republican governor hopeful Jim Oberweis, resurrecting the anti-illegal alien theme he used in an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate in 2004, has condemned the increasing use of "matricula" cards issued by the Mexican and other governments to people who are in the U.S. illegally.

Illinois lawmakers have passed and Gov. Rod Blagojevich has signed a law that recognizes matricula cards as valid IDs in the state.

Oberweis, an Aurora businessman, said Sunday at a Greater Rockford Airport news conference that if he's elected governor, he will strictly enforce the new federal REAL ID Act, which would render the matricula cards useless...

Oberweis is one of a growing number of Republicans who want to be governor. Other candidates are cosmetics heir Ron Gidwitz, businessman and state Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, and state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, R-Elgin. The "thinking about running" list includes State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett and former Gov. Jim Edgar.

Blagojevich, a Democrat, is expected to seek a second term in 2006, although he has not announced his candidacy.

Previously:

Is the Illinois GOP making sense?

"GOP Immigration Idiocy In Illinois"

"Back to Reality" for the Illinois GOP

The Ted Nugent era

The Mike Ditka era

Illinois GOP cedes senate race to Democratic challenger

The Jeri Ryan issue

Posted to Politics at 10:19 PM | Comments (1)

Is "color is cool and white is washed out" racist?

The L.A. Times offers us "Networks Have an Ear for Spanish". After several other disturbing quotes, it ends with this wonderful statement:

["Gary Bassell, chief executive of the Bravo Group, a New York advertising agency that specializes in reaching Latinos"] predicts that if handled deftly, such themes could appeal not just to Latinos, but to young people of all ethnicities "who've been shaped by an American pop culture today that increasingly proves that color is cool and white is washed out."

In the world of "liberalism", that is not an extremely racist statement. Therefore, if you object to that extremely racist statement, don't support "liberals".

Posted to MultiCultiCult at 06:11 PM | Comments (2)

Massive Los Angeles power outage; your blogger OK; morbid sight seen

Earlier today a massive power outage knocked out power to about half of the city of Los Angeles, as well as parts of the County, the Dog Trainer informs us.

I know, I was there! Since I couldn't either blog or surf for midget pr0n, I decided to go for a slow jog in Griffith Park. Yesterday I did top-of-Lake to Echo Mountain in about 1:45, but I decided I could stand another workout. As I was lumbering down Crystal Springs Road, at the junction near the Ranger Station I saw something that I really didn't want to see.

Did you know that the L.A. County coroner has very large trucks, about this size? I'd say it's good to know that someone is prepared, except it's not good to know. It didn't appear to be in a rush, so I guess he was just cruising.

The slow jog soon turned into a hike as I went up a trail and came back along Crystal Springs to the station, thence back to the Zoo parking lot.

While I had a nice jog/hike, it's not too good to know that our power system is so fragile.

Say, did you know that the IBEW will begin renegotiations with the City Council concerning a contentious pay raise tomorrow? And, back in the 80s apparently there was some sort of suspicious short out around the time of some other contentious issue? (source: caller "Charlie" to KFI). See "DWP's Power Surge" for the details on the pay raise.

UPDATE: It should be mentioned that, AFAIK, there was no looting. Nor did Angelenos resort to cannibalism. But, I'm still searching.

UPDATE 2: Pasadena Pundit weighs in (no permalink):

...the blackout occurred exactly one week after a Field Opinion Poll was released on Sept. 5 showing that public opinion was divided on Proposition 80, which would re-monopolize electricity in California... Prop 80 is dubbed the "Anti-Blackout" proposition by its supporters, which include the So Cal Edison Company, the Democratic Party, municipal utilities, and government employee unions. Oddly, the only areas in the state that have thus far experienced major blackouts involve Los Angeles DWP and Edison customers...

Hmmmm....

Posted to Los_Angeles at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)

The Clinton Global Initiative?

Bored by Bilderbergers? Want a new group of elitists to worry about? Welcome to Bubba's New World Order!

...This week, Clinton will take the concept of an activist post-presidency to another level when he convenes up to 1,000 world leaders at a Sheraton Hotel in New York. His aim, in what he grandly calls "the Clinton Global Initiative," is to bring together the best and the brightest in government, nonprofit organizations, science, religion, and business to accomplish a fourfold mission: End extreme poverty around the world, lessen religious conflict, reduce global warming, and promote good government in new democracies. The initiative will revolve around a series of discussion groups, many of them led by Clinton. Among the expected participants are British Prime Minister Tony Blair, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, General Electric Chairman Jeff Immelt, and investor George Soros...

Posted to Politics at 02:31 PM | Comments (2)

No Sharia law in Canada

The Premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, has decided to abolish religious tribunals completely. Thus, there will be no Sharia law tribunals:

"I've come to the conclusion that the debate has gone on long enough," he said.

"There will be no Shariah law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians."

McGuinty said religious arbitrations "threaten our common ground," and promised his Liberal government would introduce legislation "as soon as possible" to outlaw them in Ontario.

"Ontarians will always have the right to seek advice from anyone in matters of family law, including religious advice," he said. "But no longer will religious arbitration be deciding matters of family law."

I'm oddly impressed; I was expecting them to declare themselves part of Saudi Arabia or something (in order to avoid appearing mean-spirited, eh). Did someone spike his Molson or something?

Previously: Women marching against Sharia law in Canada.

Posted to Terrorism at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

Mexico has a Matricula Consular brochure

The article "Controversy roils over Mexican ID" has a detail-rich roundup of Mexico's Matricula Consular cards, aka "IDs for illegals". It includes this bit that I didn't know:

A glossy brochure handed out at the Mexican Consulate in San Diego promises Mexicans that having one of the cards "can make your dreams come true," allow Mexican citizens to open bank accounts, get credit cards and even "own the home of (their) dreams."

And, all aided and abetted by our "American" banks and "American" politicians.

Related past stories include: "Guide for the Yucatecan Migrant", "The Everymigrant's Guide to Crossing the Border Illegally", and "A partial translation of Colorado's guide for illegal aliens".

Posted to Immigration_consul at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

Will Bush give Katrina rebuilding jobs... to illegal aliens?

Recent actions by our American president will make it easier for illegal aliens to take Katrina rebuilding jobs. Now, in our America, those jobs should go to American citizens, with those affected by the hurricane at the front of the list. That's just proper public policy.

But, of course, in the America of the GOP elite, things are a little bit different.

First, from this comes word that "U.S. officials have suspended for 45 days a requirement that employers check workers' identification." Some survivors of the hurricane will have lost their IDs, but that will also make it even easier for illegal aliens to gain employment.

And, Bush has suspended the Davis-Bacon Act. Federal contractors in the affected region now don't have to pay the prevailing wage, which is around $9 an hour. That Act was suspended in a wide Gulf Coast region including... three counties in south Florida: Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe.

There's already competition in Houston, as the WaPo says in "Trying to Absorb the Newly Unemployed":

About 250,000 of those displaced by Katrina have come to Texas... "Skilled people will certainly find jobs, [but] in terms of unskilled jobs the labor market is pretty tough," [Daniel S. Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin] said.

...Over the past few years, the state's unemployment rate has remained around 5 or 6 percent, but that figure does not reflect the increasing competition in the market for low-skill jobs, Hamermesh said. In Texas, those jobs -- mainly in hotels, restaurants, manufacturing and construction -- often are filled by the state's large population of first-generation immigrants from Mexico, he said...

Of course, a very large part of those "immigrants" are actually illegal aliens.

Who, besides Bush, is responsible for lifting Davis-Bacon? Sep. 9's "Bush Suspends Prevailing Wage Laws for Katrina Clean Up" has the details:

Last week, Americans for Tax Reform, an organization founded by long-time Republican activists Grover Norquist, sent Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao a letter [PDF file] asking that she suspend the Davis-Bacon Act in order to free taxpayers from paying too much for the disaster clean up and management. Wednesday, Representatives Tom Feeney (R-Florida), Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colorado), sent Bush a similar letter, stating that the Act drives costs up and "effectively discriminates against non-union contractors."

Posted to Immigration2005b at 09:46 AM | Comments (1)

Is California ready for a levee break?

The SacBee wants to know:

"Even the most thorough planning will be defeated somewhere," said Jeffrey Mount, a state Reclamation Board member. "You expect to have failures, you expect to have surprises, but not total, complete breakdown."

The Central Valley, while as much in danger's path as New Orleans, is closer to higher ground and has more escape routes, said Mount, a geology professor who has written a book about California's rivers.

It also has had practice. More than 120,000 fled high water in Yuba and Sutter counties in 1997, in what state disaster officials believe probably stands as California's largest evacuation.

The region also drills and plans with a sometimes ruthless precision for the bigger disasters that it so far has escaped.

Yolo County, for example, has a contractor ready to send forklifts to each side of the Yolo Causeway to keep traffic flowing during a mass evacuation. Their sole mission: Lift up any stalled car and drop it off Interstate 80 into the waters below.

In other ways, preparations still are fumbling. While census figures show about 51,000 people in the city of Sacramento alone live in households with no car, no one knows if they're clustered on high ground or low, and no one has planned how best to get them aboard buses...

I've "climbed" the highest point in Sacramento County, all 828' of it. IIRC the area has some rolling hills, but it's more or less the flatlands.

Carole Hopwood, Sacramento County's emergency manager, has agreements in place that let her call on all Regional Transit buses to get people out, but so far her grasp of the details is sketchy...

Much more at the link.

Posted to California at 06:35 AM | Comments (0)

"Levee monitoring sinks in Legislature"

I'm not familiar with the upsides and downsides of this bill. If it wasn't passed by our legislators in Sacramento, that probably means there's something good about it. But, it's also supported by the Sierra Club, meaning there's probably something wrong with it. Nonetheless:

A bill that some called a "baby steps" effort to deal with California's colossal flood risks did not pass out of the Legislature this week, prompting concern that there is little appetite to deal with the messy, expensive problem of neglected levees.

Images of a submerged New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina helped revive the bill from a months-long slumber. But those pictures of death and despair did not prompt enough votes in the state Senate to bring the bill forward as an urgency measure before the session closed Thursday night.

The bill, AB 1665 by Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, would have renamed the state Reclamation Board as the Central Valley Flood Management Board. It would have assigned the board the task of assessing 1,600 miles of aging levees on the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, mapping flood-hazard areas on those rivers, and annually notifying property owners in those hazard zones.

The bill was sponsored by the state Department of Water Resources...

"Even with any urgency that may have happened with Katrina and the levees in New Orleans, trying to do anything ambitious is really hard," said Jim Metropulos, a legislative analyst for the Sierra Club, which supported the bill. "Flood issues get to be very contentious."

..."We think it was a very modest effort," said Mike Hardesty, president of the California Central Valley Flood Control Association, which represents 80 levee maintenance districts...

Posted to California at 07:52 AM | Comments (0)

Women marching against Sharia law in Canada

Canadian and European women are going to march against the use of Sharia law tribunals in Canada on Thursday, the BBC reports:

Islamic law could be used to settle civil and marital disputes under a proposal made by former Ontario Attorney General Marion Boyd.

Roman Catholic and Jewish arbitration tribunals already operate Ontario.

Opponents of Sharia law say allowing Islamic tribunals could lead to discrimination against women.

A protest march is scheduled for Thursday in Toronto, which is the capital of Canada's most populous and multi-cultural province...

The DUmmies confront Gramscism, aka multiculturalism, in this response.

Previously: "Stoned in Canada", which also has surprisingly common sense British response to a similar proposal there.

Posted to Terrorism at 03:23 AM | Comments (0)

Will illegal aliens get voting rights because of corrupt Republicans?

The Santa Barbara News-Press article "Latinos feel let down by governor" by Melinda Burns contains the following quote from "Carmen Herrera, an organizer for PUEBLO, a Santa Barbara-based group that advocates on behalf of the poor":

"The governor has always said he does not support immigrants, and he never misses an opportunity to remind us of that... I don't understand why. He, too, was an immigrant once. He has been through what many of us have been through. But he has forgotten... A license is not a luxury; it's a necessity and it's our right. We wash dishes and clean houses and take jobs many Americans won't take. And we pay taxes."

Obviously, the first sentence above is a lie. And, as far as I know Arnold did not sneak over the border nor did he get a visa with the intention of overstaying it.

And, as they say over and over, a driver's license is a privilege and not a right. In this organizer's world, anyone can sneak over our border and, as long as they get a job as a dishwasher, immediately obtain legal California ID.

And, after everyone in the world is given California ID, what's next? Obviously, voting rights. There's nothing in the organizer's "logic" that couldn't be equally applied to such rights. Think it won't happen? Consider this:

A UCLA study says California's constitution should be amended so the state's four and a-half million non-citizen adults can vote in local elections...

The author of the study - a former president of MALDEF - even compared not giving voting rights to apartheid. If the Santa Barbara News-Press is going to print pro-illegal immigration propaganda like this article designed to put driver's licenses in the hand of illegal aliens, do you think they - or all the other propaganda organs that print PIIPPs - won't consider voting rights just the next beachhead in the struggle?

We're starting down a very slippery slope here, and those corrupt Republicans that support massive illegal immigration are giving the U.S. a mighty push.

As for the article itself, if the muted photograph of the "organizer", the subtitle ("Local groups say driver's license veto is dismaying"), and the overall tone weren't enough, consider the first paragraph:

Local Latino groups expressed dismay but not surprise on Friday after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would veto a bill allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain legal driver's licenses.

Normally, wouldn't you expect that to read "allowing illegal immigrants to obtain legal driver's licenses"? Do you think this was changed, and, if so, was it done manually or automatically?

Let's ask Joe Cole, president and publisher: jcole *at* newspress.com

Posted to Immigration_dls at 10:01 PM | Comments (2)

The National Youth Rights Association's link to socialism

The NYRA has been featured here in the past because of their campaign to lower California's voting age: "CA Dem Party supports lowering voting age to 17".

In that post I thought it likely that they were just being used by racial demagogues seeking racial power. So, when I saw a hit from someone looking for 'National Youth Rights socialism' I got interested and tried that myself.

I didn't find anything of particular note, only that someone on their Executive Staff appears to be in the movement:

[Research & Education Director] Svend la Rose, a longtime citizen of the Bay Area, joined NYRA in May 2004 after leading his student union throughout high school. He led the student body population in mobilizing not only for "children's rights", but also for their Constitutional rights. He is currently active in the community through Chabot College, where he is continuing his studies, and through the ACLU, NARAL/Pro-Choice California, the Socialist Party USA, and various other causes. He joined NYRA's staff in March 2005 and was installed as Research and Education Director in July 2005.

More on him here. An abandoned blog here. A poll of their members' political affiliations here.

It doesn't appear that the NYRA is a socialist organization, only that they appear to be open to people with different ideologies. However, if anyone knows better or has any other information, leave a comment.

Posted to Politics at 05:42 PM | Comments (1)

Reason Magazine's Hit & Run now using idiotic nofollow tag

The loony libertarians at Reason Magazine's Hit & Run are now using the braindead nofollow tag on links in comments.

See this for just some of the reasons why that's an idiotic idea.

Pending clarification, I'm going to put Reason's decision in the "psychological affliction/what else do you expect libertarians to do/cut off nose to spite face" category.

UPDATE: In case you aren't familiar with this issue, here's what it means:

- If you've left comments at their site in the past, and you've left a link in your comments, you've now been retroactively stabbed in the back.

- If you leave a comment at their site in the future, you're being ripped off.

Here's an example of what that means: as it is right now, this post has less than two hundred words. But, search engines ("SE") just love lots of text, they gobble it up and like returning results containing pages that have 300 to 500 (or more) words.

But, I can only write so much. So, that's where you come in. If ten people leave comments here, it increase the value of this page, meaning the SEs will send more people here.

So, in effect, you're creating content for me. If you include an on-topic, non-spammy link in your comment, well I guess that's the price I pay for having you create content for me.

So, Reason has basically just told all those unpaid content creators to go fuck themselves. And, they did it after all those creators created that content for them.

While I might still leave comments there in the future, I strongly advise you to only do it in the rarest of cases. Why spend the time creating something for them if they aren't going to return the favor?

On the plus side, one of the ways that SEs find out what a page is about is by looking at what it links to. Reason is reducing the chance that a SE will be able to find out what their posts are about, which will probably end up hurting them far more than any benefit from using the nofollow tag. When wikipedia started using that tag, they started tanking in the search results. So, hopefully, we'll have that to look forward to.

And, of course, if you link to them, perhaps you should remove that link. Or, just change it to use nofollow.

Posted to Bloggage at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

California driver's licenses for sale at Oakland DMV, no questions asked

There have been several posts about corrupt DMV employees here, including from Arizona, Michigan, Connecticut, and other states. But, this tale is different in a few ways:

Veronica Rivera's scam was simple. She would park her luxury sedan at Oakland's Claremont Avenue DMV, whip out her cell phone, chat a bit in Tagalog, and the cash would flow. Her clients were illegal immigrants desperate for a driver's license. For a hefty price, she got them one, no questions asked. The operation apparently netted her and her partners inside the DMV several hundred thousand dollars. Then the money came to an end. She and her main partner, Frances Aliganga, were arrested and indicted by a federal grand jury on twelve felony charges, and now each face up to 55 years in prison.

The early-August arrests made headlines around the Bay Area, but a closer look at recently unsealed documents reveals that flaws in the DMV's policies and computer system made it startlingly easy for Aliganga to issue real drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants. The documents also raise serious questions about how many other California DMV employees also may have sold IDs to people here illegally. While investigating Rivera and Aliganga's operation, the FBI also uncovered two similar -- but apparently separate -- scams operating out of the same office. The presence of three fraudulent-license rings in one office, along with the ease with which they were able to operate undetected, suggests the statewide scope of such fraud could be vast...

[...details of the undercover investigation...]

They didn't even have an exclusive? Now, here's where it gets a little... strange:

Aliganga's attorney would not comment on the investigation, and Fifer's attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment. Rivera's attorney, Paul Delano Wolf of Oakland, would neither admit nor deny the evidence laid out in the FBI affidavits. But he defended Rivera's actions, portraying her as someone who was providing a service to undocumented Latino immigrants who are barred by law from obtaining drivers' licenses and California IDs. "This case is about their plight in this country," he said. When asked whether his client was really just exploiting the immigrants for financial gain, he said evidence in the case will show that "DMV employees" -- presumably Aliganga -- set the prices they charged for the licenses and IDs. He also said of his client: "I don't think the folks she helped believe they were being exploited."

Maybe he could contact the Mexican government and get their help. And, of course, there's always Gil Cedillo, he might be interested in signing on to this worthy cause.

Posted to Immigration_dls at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

Indicted U.S. terrorist wanted to bring Al Qaeda over Mexican border

WaPo:

An American student was charged yesterday in an al Qaeda plot to kill President Bush, with prosecutors alleging that Ahmed Omar Abu Ali and his confederates planned to use multiple snipers to shoot Bush or to blow him up in a suicide bombing.

The expanded indictment of Abu Ali, returned by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, also claimed for the first time that he proposed a plan to bring members of an al Qaeda cell into the United States through Mexico. They would then link up with Abu Ali to conduct terrorist operations in this country, the indictment said...

Abu Ali was arrested by security officials in June 2003 while studying at a university in Saudi Arabia. His family mounted a highly public campaign in the United States for his release. He was held until he was flown back to the United States in February to face charges.

Defense attorneys and Abu Ali's family have contended that any statements he made in Saudi custody were obtained through torture. Two doctors who examined Abu Ali found evidence that he was tortured in Saudi Arabia, including scars on his back consistent with having been whipped, defense lawyers have said in court papers.

Prosecutors have denied that Abu Ali was tortured. But if a federal judge concludes that he was, much of the evidence against him could be thrown out because it was obtained under duress. The torture allegations are expected to play a key role in a hearing scheduled to start Sept. 19...

Regarding the high-profile nature of this case, this page says:

CAIR director Omar Ahmad wrote a letter to then Secretary of State Powell demanding [Abu Ali's] "immediate release.

Also according to CAIR, Abu Ali's accomplice in this plot was killed in a 2003 shootout with Saudi police. His lawyer says that was the only witness to the plot. There's more on CAIR's support of Abu Ali in this search.

For more, see "The NY Times' Wahhabi Apologists" and "[The Abu Ali Case and] Balancing Liberties, Security".

Posted to Terrorism at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

81% of Californians extremely or somewhat concerned about illegal immigration

A Field Poll of registered California voters reveals that:

49% are "extremely" concerned about illegal immigration...
32% are "somewhat" concerned about illegal immigration...

And, asked if Arnold should declare a "border emergency", these percentages said yes:

44% overall
62% among Republicans
35% of Latinos

On the downside, 56 percent oppose civilian border patrols, and 41% support. However, support grows the closer to the border you get.

And, many more might support a California border patrol.

Posted to California at 02:35 PM | Comments (1)

Illegal aliens doing the jobs American hurricane victims could do

From the AP propaganda piece "Illegal immigrants afraid to get storm aid":

Rumors of deportations are rife, although U.S. officials have suspended for 45 days a requirement that employers check workers' identification. [Vicente] Fox also said the United States has promised not to send people home in the immediate aftermath, although Washington has not confirmed that.

From the WaPo's "Trying to Absorb the Newly Unemployed":

The one-day job fair here attracted about 3,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees settling into Dallas. It also enticed a few local unemployed residents, some of whom worry that the inflow of new workers will intensify competition for work in an area where jobs -- particularly in low-skill sectors -- are already tough to come by...

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 400,000 jobs were lost throughout the Gulf Coast due to Katrina...

...Fewer positions for general labor were available. A recruiter for $10-an-hour meat-packing positions at Tyson Foods said that he often places people in jobs at one of the company's plants in rural Kansas but that fewer positions have been open in Texas.

Over the past few years, the state's unemployment rate has remained around 5 or 6 percent, but that figure does not reflect the increasing competition in the market for low-skill jobs, [Daniel S. Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin] said. In Texas, those jobs -- mainly in hotels, restaurants, manufacturing and construction -- often are filled by the state's large population of first-generation immigrants from Mexico, he said. [those are no doubt mostly or almost all illegal aliens -- LW]...

[...The League of United Latin American Citizens, a "national Latino advocacy group", thinks things are going to work out A-OK. Uh-huh...]

...Ramona Rayford, 25, lives in Dallas and has been looking for retail positions for six months. She said her last job was in a clothing warehouse without air conditioning and with low pay.

..."It's like [employers] push us out [of] the way. They know the Hispanics will do it and take $7 an hour or $5 an hour," Rayford said. "I know they have it hard, too..."

So, to summarize:

The Bush administration and the GOP leadership have a distinct cheap labor policy, designed to benefit employers at everyone else's expense.

Meanwhile, over the Democratic Party's fantasy world, it's all sugarcanes and ice cream. We can have both millions of "undocumented immigrants" and jobs for all!

But, over in reality, thousands of those who survived the hurricane will now have to deal with tremendous job competition from millions of illegal aliens. We need a political party that isn't corrupt to straighten all this out.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

AP: Illegal aliens who shouldn't be here hardest hit by Katrina

The post "NYT: Devastating hurricane hits Gulf Coast; illegal aliens hardest hit" was such a big hit, let's now discuss the AP's "Illegal immigrants afraid to get storm aid" from E. Eduardo Castillo:

Some sneak into shelters at night and then slip out in the morning, praying they won't be noticed. Others avoid government help altogether, preferring to ride out the chaos and destruction alone in a foreign land... For illegal immigrants, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has meant not only living without a home, money or belongings, but also steering clear of the government officials who have flocked to the area, for fear of deportation...

Now, let's pause here for our "liberal" visitors, who are busy building up their strawman arguments.

First of all, please engage whatever critical facilities you have, and read the article. Note also the inescapable fact that the reporter is Hispanic. Now, do you think this article qualifies as pro-illegal immigration propaganda? Isn't this article like something you'd read from a group that favors illegal immigration?

Since that's probably not too clear to "liberals", let's try this: do you think Katrina and other disasters give groups a chance to push their own agendas? So, for instance, some libertarian group might point to the Katrina aftermath as an example of why we need a smaller, leaner government.

Likewise, do you think the AP is taking advantage of Katrina to push their own pro-illegal immigration agenda? Sure, the article does have news in it, but, isn't it correct to say it's written from a certain mindset? Unless you want to be intellectually dishonest, you're going to have to admit that this is indeed pro-illegal immigration propaganda.

Now, dear "liberals", let's think for a moment what's the best way to prevent things like those described in the article from happening.

Is it to give illegal aliens all or many of the same rights as legal residents and citizens?

Can you think what would happen if we did that?

C'mon, really think this through. Think hard!

Yes, that's right. If we did that, we'd have millions more illegals come here, and they'd be even more of a drain on our country than they now are.

On the other hand, if there were no illegal aliens in the U.S., none of this would be an issue. Wouldn't that be the best solution of all? Isn't that the adult, grown-up, American way to do things?

Remember: millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., problems like those in the article. No illegal aliens in the U.S., no problems like those in the article.

So, while we shouldn't deny emergency aid to illegal aliens now, in order to avoid problems in the future, we need to start reducing the numbers of illegal aliens here.

Really, think hard about this. Think things through, and imagine what all the side effects of your decisions are.

If you don't do that, well, you end up looking like a "liberal".

Posted to Immigration_piipps at 12:23 PM | Comments (3)

The Simpsons on the Democratic Party

Remember the Simpsons episode The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show? One of the scenes does a good job of reflecting the thought processes of the current Democratic Party.

Bart, Lisa, Ralph, Milhouse, and other kids from the Simpsons were at a mall and invited to join a focus group to discuss a new cartoon:

Man: How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real-life problems, like the ones you face every day?

Kids: [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it!

Man: And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?

Kids: [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want!

Man: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?

Kids: [all agreeing, quieter this time] That's right. Oh yeah, good.

Milhouse: And also, you should win things by watching.

Posted to WackyHumor at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

CA Dems reject Arnold's choice for DMV head; what's it mean?

The far-lefties in the California legislature have rejected Arnold Schwarzenegger's choice to be head of the DMV, Joan Borucki.

Given their continued attempt to give California ID to citizens of Mexico and other countries, one wonders exactly what's going on here.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, said the nominee, Joan Borucki, had had a "very solid career with the state of California."

"(But) this is not a job for a bureaucrat," he added. "This is a job for a political leader ... someone who knows how to marshal forces of political clout to make sure we are safe."

So, they want someone to make sure we're safe... as they give legal IDs to illegal aliens.

Schwarzenegger's press secretary, Margita Thompson, accused Democrats of rejecting Borucki because of Schwarzenegger's refusal so far to sign a bill allowing illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses. Borucki also is a Democrat.

"The Democratic legislators are going to have to explain why they took out a competent, Democratic ... director purely because they are focused on getting this driver's license bill for undocumented workers," Thompson said. "It's a prime example of Democratic lawmakers playing politics as opposed to focusing on good public policy."

Maybe someone who's more familiar with this issue can weigh in with what this means. Do the Dems have their own candidate? And, is he related to Vicente Fox?

Posted to California at 06:37 AM | Comments (0)

MALDEF, League of Women Voters, Asian-Pacific American Legal Center ripped new ones over Proposition 77

Well. CalInsider smacks some loony lefties upside the head:

This position paper [PDF file] out today from three groups that claim to represent the interests of women and minorities gives their reasons for opposing Proposition 77, the redistricting reform initiative...

Some day we will outgrow the notion that we need to draw political boundaries that pack members of particular ethnic groups together under the repugnant assumption that the color of your skin or the shape of your eyes dictates how you think about public policy...

The truth is that the real opponents of 77 are the far left and the far right who want to maintain their grip on power in the California Legislature and protect the ability of incumbents to pick their voters rather than letting voters pick their politicians. Maldef, the League of Women Voters and the Asian-Pacific American Legal Center are aiding and abetting that plot by their opposition to this measure.

If 77 goes down, don't hold your breath waiting for the League's friends in the Legislature to propose the perfect reform these groups say they would support.

Posted to California at 11:29 PM | Comments (2)

California Democrats support illegal immigration, lie about motivations, and pass driver's license bill

The California Assembly and Senate have passed Gil Cedillo's SB60, which would give driver's licenses to illegal aliens. That bill now goes to Arnold for either a veto or his signature. He has until mid-October to decide. Around 70% of Californians are opposed to that bill, so, if Arnold signs it don't expect him to win any other elections. He might even get recalled, although whether there's enough time to mount such a recall is unclear. However, there's a good chance he'll veto it.

Most of the illegal aliens who would get licenses under this bill are from Mexico, and - surprise! - many of the legislators who voted for it are Mexican-"American". Despite that obvious linkage, all the quotes from legislators say they voted for it out of "public safety" grounds. And, of course, none of the reporters bothered to ask if their race or divided loyalties had anything to do with it.

So, bear in mind that this bill has absolutely nothing - nothing! - to do with racial power, or with legislators who are more or less Mexican politicians, or with getting Motor Voter forms into the hands of likely Democratic voters.

Beginning our tour of the loony bin, from "Assembly passes illegal immigrant driver license bill":

Referring to President Johnson's signature on the Voting Rights Act and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace's rejection of school integration, [Sen. Gil Cedillo] said: "The governor has a choice. He can either be an LBJ or a George Wallace."

In addition to being a Democrat, Cedillo is a former member of the racial separatist group MEChA, which wants to "liberate" Aztlan, currently known as the Southwestern U.S.

The AP article "Assembly OKs bill allowing illegal immigrants to get licenses" has some very choice quotes:

"It's vital that we all take responsibility for ensuring that all drivers are educated, tested and licensed," said Assemblyman Ron Calderon, D-Montebello. "Trained, tested and insured drivers enhance public safety for all of us."

But opponents said the bill amounted to rewarding illegal behavior by immigrants who burden the state's schools and hospitals.

"We're talking about people who broke into this country," said Assemblyman Jay La Suer, R-La Mesa.

"The reward is not the driver's license," replied Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont. "People come to this country for the jobs and a better opportunity."

Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia, claimed the purpose of the bill was to register illegal immigrants to vote on forms available at Department of Motor Vehicle offices.

"One doesn't have to be a mental giant to figure out who they might vote for," he said. "I would think they would register Democratic."

But Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez, D-Norwalk, said the law bars the immigrants from voting.

Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton, said the California economy needs illegal immigrants to fill many jobs.

"These people pay taxes, Social Security. We benefit by their presence here," he said.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Joe Coto, D-San Jose, said they were offended by opponents using terms like illegal aliens.

"The hatred and bigotry in this room is palatable," said Assemblywoman Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach. [whether she meant 'palpable' or whether she was saying that that coming from her own side was tasty is not known -- LW]

"Is it racist to want your borders to be secure?" La Suer asked. "Is it racist to want people to obey the law?"

And, the L.A. Times has a few more in "Immigrant License Bill Is Sent to Governor":

In Santa Ana, Adolfo Sierra, president of Casa Guanajuato, a nonprofit that promotes culture of that central Mexican state, said he has mixed feelings about the proposal. "It's not fair. We should all be treated equally," he said. "I'm an immigrant and I feel this could increase prejudice against all of us."

Even if we're going to have open borders, we really need to do something about people who sound like they're either hustling us or have 75 IQs. Perhaps we could pass out "Logical argumentation for dummies" at our entrance stations. Also, while I don't know anything about that Casa, I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever the L.A. Times was trying to say, someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

Leo Bravo, of the Hispanic Center of Cache Valley in northern Utah, said the card is helping undocumented immigrants in his state.

"We are better off than other states in the Union. People will drive even if they don't have licenses," said Bravo. "They don't have insurance. They are not protected and we are not protected. If we are worried about national security, it's better to know who we have driving on the roads."

..."This is a good bill because I believe it's the right thing to do because individuals are here and they're driving and that's the reality," said Assemblyman Jerome Horton (D-Inglewood)...

...Assemblyman Alberto Torrico (D-Newark) argued that undocumented workers, through taxes taken from their wages, "put in more than they're taking out..."

You have to wonder which country Cedillo, Nunez, and the rest represent. Are they really Americans? Until the DNC renounces their California branch, I'm going to assume that the above thoughts reflect those of the Democratic Party.

Posted to Immigration_dls at 07:15 PM | Comments (1)

Green Bay Press-Gazette supports illegal immigration

From the Green Bay Press-Gazette's "Editorial: Give non-English-speaking residents a lift":

"Non-English-speaking drivers face linguistic roadblock," a headline in Tuesday's Green Bay Press-Gazette said.

"Many continue to drive illegally because they need to earn a living and take care of their families," the accompanying story explained.

About a quarter of the non-English-speaking Hispanics living in the Green Bay area drive without licenses, most of them because of the language barrier and because they aren't legal residents and need to take care of their families...

There's something very wrong with this picture...

Yes, indeed there is. Why are there so many illegal aliens in Green Bay, Wisconsin? Wait, don't answer that, I know. Because there are corrupt employers there. And, those corrupt employers are no doubt a major part of the economy and the business community. And, the Press-Gazette is part of that business community too...

So, obviously, the thing we should do is help out those corrupt employers by giving their employees driver's licenses. Maybe the P-G could even translate this editorial into Spanish and release it to the Mexican newspapers, just to get the word out.

On the other hand, perhaps the P-G could learn from the Commisioner of Minnesota's Department of Public Safety:

...advocates argue that they want to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants so they will be safer drivers. This argument is completely without merit and is a transparent attempt to turn the illegal immigrant problem into a public safety issue... The Department of Public Safety will not facilitate illegal immigration...

Posted to Immigration_dls at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

Hawaii governor lobbies for Akaka Bill; tell your Senators no

HONOLULU (AP) - A delay in a U.S. Senate vote on a bill that would grant federal recognition to Native Hawaiians is giving Hawaii's governor a chance to lobby senators who fear it could lead to Hawaii's secession from the union.

"That's a ridiculous claim and a ridiculous argument," Gov. Linda Lingle said. "We have over 500 recognized Indian tribes in America. They don't secede. They simply get a federal recognition that allows them to avoid these kinds of lawsuits that Hawaiians have faced."

...Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the bill's sponsor, has also said the measure has nothing to do with independence or secession...

...Critics call the bill vague and suggest that one day Hawaii could host two governments - the state and a new sovereign Hawaiian government. Pro-independence advocates say the bill doesn't go far enough in ensuring Native Hawaiians self-governance and control over their land...

Now, for the truth, see "Tell the Senate: No on the Akaka Bill".

Posted to Politics at 05:46 AM | Comments (2)

Iowans get exotic treat: Central American gangs

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa The Midwest seems an unlikely hideout for Osama bin Laden's hired hands. But an ongoing federal crackdown shows an increasing presence of a violent gang with suspected links to al-Qaida. The gang, M-S-13, was founded in El Salvador and is known for smuggling drugs and immigrants into the U-S. [...and there's a possible terrorism connection...]

Iowa was part of nationwide sweep of gang members last month in "Operation Community Shield." At least ten M-S-13 members were arrested in Marshalltown, Perry and Des Moines.

Marshalltown is home to a meatpacking plant that in the last decade has drawn Hispanics seeking work. Police Chief Lon Walker says that growing population is a draw for M-S-13 members looking to "hide and operate."

Walker was one of five police chiefs who met in Washington last month to talk with homeland security officials about the crackdown on M-S-13 and other gangs. He says it should be a concern because of the terrorist situation.

From this sociology article:

Marshalltown hosts a Swift pork packing plant that employs about 900 Mexican workers, and Villachuato supplies more than half of these employees. The plant would shut down without a continued supply of workers from this community-documented and undocumented-and the workers, their families, and their home town would suffer without the plant.

And, from "Meatpacking industry brings change to Iowa town":

Swift & Company — a predecessor to Dakota Pork Industries in Huron - "has always been here," said Ken Anderson, president of the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce for the past 12 years.

"Meatpacking has been here for 100 years," he said. With the local labor market tapped, Swift, which processes more than 15,000 hogs a day, began reaching out to Hispanics and members of other ethnic groups. Marshalltown's 1990 census showed less than 300 Latinos in the community. But the latest count in 2000 indicates there are now more than 3,200...

In the late 1990s, Gov. Tom Vilsack announced he would select three Iowa cities to be model communities. He provided state resources to help them develop models for the state on how to deal with rapidly changing demographic profiles.

The governor picked Marshalltown, Fort Dodge and Mason City...

Here's more information on Iowa's problems.

And, you might not believe that one person could be wrong on so many things, but there's actually a Tamar Jacoby connection. From a letter discussing one of her articles:

[She] claims that the meatpacking industry in the Midwest would have collapsed without an influx of illegal alien workers.

The cure for these problems is simple, albeit very difficult to implement: start charging those responsible for the problems they cause. If you don't want a super-violent Central American paramilitary gang relocating to rural Iowa, demand that the BICE start conducting sweeps of the workers at the Swift meatpacking plant. And, the local officials should start cracking down on the plant before their community goes down the drain. And, the residents of Iowa should start a recall of Tom Vilsack.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 03:33 PM | Comments (2)

Politically correct Oregon DMV fires employee trying to fight ID fraud

An Oregon DMV worker spotted what appeared to him to be suspicious activity relating to someone who was applying for an Oregon ID card. He did an ad hoc investigation, and put a mark on the applicant's record. The mark was later removed and she got her ID. And, he was fired.

"DMV worker fights firing":

Last month, Dallas DMV office manager LaVay Jeffries was accused of racial profiling and fired.

He says that he was doing his job, trying to keep someone from obtaining an Oregon driving permit under false pretenses.

DMV administrator Lorna Youngs said she regards Jeffries' actions as "outside the scope of his position," saying that it is not the responsibility of DMV employees to "conduct independent criminal investigations."

On May 4, 2005 Jeffries became suspicious of a woman, Jimenez Mesa, who was attempting to get an Oregon learner's driving permit.

She spoke little English and had a man with her, presumably to translate. According to Jeffries' testimony, that is not unusual, given the large Spanish-speaking population in Polk County.

Jeffries said that he only started to suspect Mesa when the woman claimed a Beaverton address and presented a Colombian passport and visa as ID...

Between the woman coming all the way from Beaverton to get a drivers license, the man's constant activity on his cell phone (He used it regularly throughout his interview with Mesa, Jeffries said), the brand-new van and the lack of employment by the driver, Jeffries' curiosity was aroused.

"I became suspicious, as this was beginning to look like someone possibly engaged in illegal activity, perhaps drugs or helping people get false Oregon ID," Jeffries wrote in an affidavit.

At this point, DMV Administrator Lorna Youngs says, Jeffries should have called his supervisor, William Halsne. Instead, Jeffries took note of the van's license plate and went inside to pull up its record...

This was not the first time Jeffries has called police when he suspected customers of criminal activity. On April 27, 1999, Fereja Seifu was arrested after Jeffries called police because he suspected Seifu of trying to obtain false Oregon ID cards for Abdulah Ahmed K. Alqubaisi, Hamad Sayah Al Mazrouei and Mansour Almulla.

Seifu stood trial later that year, and he was convicted of the sale of documents for purposes of misrepresentation.

But the three Saudi nationals who'd been with him fled the country...

Posted to Immigration_dls at 01:10 PM | Comments (1)

"Nativo American"

Nativo Lopez is California's Mexican-"American" alternative to Al Sharpton (who, bad as he is, is at least an American). Lopez gets featured in the Weekly Standard:

Here's a suggestion for [the Mexico-traveling Fabian Nunez]: In order to bridge California's illegal-immigration divide, [Nunez] should start on the northern side of the border, with the more militant elements of California's Hispanic community, who shamelessly interject race into the public discourse--and whom Democratic leaders dare not offend.

And that means standing up to the likes of Nativo Lopez.

LOPEZ IS PRESIDENT of the Mexican American Political Association and a leading force behind Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (Mexican National Brotherhood), a tax-exempt non-profit formed to aid undocumented workers which nevertheless dabbles in partisan affairs--so much so that it's been the subject of an election-fraud investigation.

Until last year, "Nativo" (his real first name is Larry) was a Democrat. Then he switched to the Green party to join the Nader-Camejo presidential juggernaut. Lopez's own brush with elected office was even more calamitous. Elected a decade ago to a seat on the Santa Ana school board of trustees, Lopez was recalled by residents of Orange County (just months before Gray Davis met the same fate) for his refusal to comply with California's Proposition 227, which ended bilingual education in public schools. The recall vote wasn't close: Lopez lost by a 40-point margin. He said he wanted to make Spanish California's primary language; he was rejected in every precinct of the most Spanish-speaking city in America.

Normally, that would be the end of the story--gadfly gets swatted. However, Lopez continues to write new chapters in the art of race-baiting...

...Lopez's approach to the sensitive topic [of driver's licenses for illegal aliens] is to liken it to the Holocaust. When asked by La Opinion newspaper about an alternative that would place a special mark on California drivers' licenses to distinguish between legal residents and illegal aliens, Lopez declared that the latter "do not want to be the Jews of Nazi Germany in California" and "will not be the new black slaves of the sureños states of the United States in this state." He added, "We will not be the Palestinians either that in their own earth undergoes an oppression. We are pioneering in California, a creative town of values, peace and fighters..."

Posted to Immigration2005b at 09:25 AM | Comments (1)

NYT: Devastating hurricane hits Gulf Coast; illegal aliens hardest hit

No, it's not a parody. With all the possible coverage of Katrina, the New York Times actually wrote an article on the plight of "undocumented" immigrants in the disaster zone.

From Ian Urbina's "Foreign Workers Are Caught in a Double Trap" (abbreviated version here):

BILOXI, Miss., Sept. 5 - Like so many other people here, Pedro, a landscaper from Chiapas, Mexico, is desperately trying to get out of Biloxi. He wants to take his wife, Anna, who is eight months pregnant, someplace cleaner and safer, wherever that might be. [Whereever it might be, it will probably be in the U.S. After all, he's just one month from an anchor baby, and why spoil that opportunity? -- LW]

But aside from being low on gas like everyone else, Pedro, who would not give his last name because he is undocumented, is nervous about traveling in a city swarming with police officers and National Guard troops...

I repeat: this is not a joke. This is an actual NYT article.

Please send a short, polite email to public *at* nytimes.com suggesting they not print self-parodies.

UPDATE: For those who aren't familiar with this subject, various newspapers including the NYT have published an endless list of pro-illegal immigration puff pieces. The fact that the NYT found the time to print yet another pro-illegal immigration article during Katrina is the point here.

"Liberal" visitors might want to spend a few minutes or hours thinking about this comment from another "liberal":

Do you really want to toil in unsanitary, unsafe, underpaid fields to feed your family?

Why is that something that "liberals" like the NYT should support?

Why not support ending illegal immigration and all of its associated abuses and public and private corruption?

By supporting illegal immigration, "liberals" end up supporting the Bush administration and its corporate backers' desire for cheap labor. They also end up supporting ethnic nationalists and the Mexican oligarchy's desire to pawn off their excess population.

Hopefully I'm not asking too much to expect "liberals" to be able to think things through.

UPDATE 2: Apparently it is asking too much. The NYT article is a news report with propagandistic components. That propaganda is designed to make illegal immigration respectable, even desirable.

As for the "such a preposterous assertion venomously" etc. sentence, that's in a comment. It was never in the post.

While I've now added two updates to this post, I haven't modified it or deleted parts of it, and I haven't deleted or modified any comments. No, I think the comments from the "liberals" below are quite informative. Like Howard Dean, let them speak.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 06:16 AM | Comments (28)

Montgomery County's Douglas Duncan paying price for supporting illegal immigration

From WaPo's "Gang Attacks, County Troubles Cloud Duncan's Introduction to Md. Voters":

It wasn't the kind of summer Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan had in mind when he set out to introduce himself to the rest of Maryland as their best hope for governor.

Duncan's strategy to defeat Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley for the Democratic nomination next year has been to match his rival's telegenic glamour by presenting himself as the man of substance. His calling card is his 11 years at the helm of The County That Works.

But this summer, he has had to contend with gang violence and a planning department in which documents were altered to cover up violations by developers...

Previously: "Hey, illegal aliens! Head to Douglas Duncan's Montgomery County!" and "Martin O'Malley, Douglas M. Duncan support illegal immigration".

Posted to Immigration2005b at 04:30 PM | Comments (1)

DHS to support illegal aliens over citizens?

The previous post discussed the article "Migrant tuition break blasted", which also contains this shocking statement:

...The Homeland Security Department said it received the complaint about Texas from the Washington Legal Foundation and was reviewing it. But a department official, who requested anonymity, went further, noting that the department may not act on the request because the foundation has not exhausted all other legal avenues.

One judge may have ruled against the group in Kansas, but the issue has not yet been raised in Texas courts, the official said. And it remains unclear whether Homeland Security has jurisdiction over this matter, the official said...

The way I read that, the DHS is going to refuse to do anything about this on a technicality. Clearly, to many of those in the federal government illegal aliens - or their corrupt employers - have more rights than U.S. citizens.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)

Robert Zeigler, Raymund Paredes support illegal aliens getting better deal than citizens

The article "Migrant tuition break blasted" discusses the Texas law that gives illegal aliens who (illegally) reside in Texas a discount on college tuition. Meanwhile, U.S. citizens who live in another state but who want to attend college in TX are forced to pay the higher rate:

...A complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security charges Texas is violating a 1996 federal law that says if public colleges offer discounted rates to undocumented students, they must do the same for U.S. citizens from out of state. Students who live out of state typically pay significantly higher tuition than in-state students at public schools.

Lamar Smith, the Republican congressman from San Antonio who wrote and sponsored that federal law, said he supports the foundation's effort.

"States shouldn't treat illegal immigrants better than American citizens," Smith said.

Educators don't see it that way.

"These are members of our community," [San Antonio College] President Robert Zeigler said. "We want to encourage them to get an education and better their lives. We do not want to make it more difficult for them."

SAC, part of the Alamo Community College District, enrolls the second highest number of undocumented immigrants in the state, after the Houston Community College System...

But, wait, it gets worse:

"It's absurd to claim these students are taking money away from legal residents," said Raymund Paredes, the state's higher education commissioner.

The foundation's complaint comes at a time when Texas is struggling to enroll more Hispanic college students, and as Paredes said, "We count all students who go to college," whether they're documented or not.

Paredes said the law is intended to assist undocumented immigrants who unknowingly broke the law when their families brought them to Texas as youngsters. Those who take advantage of the law's benefits typically are high-achieving students and must prove they are taking steps to become legal citizens, he said...

Obviously, there's only so much money to go around. Any money spent giving a discount to someone who's here illegally could be spent giving a discount - or a greater discount - to citizens.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 12:35 PM | Comments (2)

Gil Cedillo's driver's licenses for illegal aliens passes. Urge Arnold to veto it!

Unfortunately, it appears that CA state Sen. Gil Cedillo's bill to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens has passed the Assembly, and will now go to Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is the original bill, SB-60, and the voting breakdown is here.

Note that that vote took place on Friday, Sep. 2 in the morning. Despite that, the Sep. 6 AP article "Lawmakers face crowded agendas in final week of session" says the vote is yet to occur. However, I believe that this latest vote means that this bill's next stop is the governor.

Please contact Arnold and urge him to veto this bill. His phone is 916-445-2841 and the FAX is 916-445-4633. You can send an email here.

In related news, see the Sep. 2 article "DMV said to need OK to act on fed driver-license rules":

The Legislature's top lawyer says the Department of Motor Vehicles must secure permission and funding from state lawmakers before implementing programs to comply with identification standards for driver licenses ordered by Congress.

Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine's opinion could give more clout to Democrats pushing to provide a distinguishable "driving only" certificate to those applicants who cannot prove they are in the United States legally, said Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to veto any legislation passed before the Bush administration releases nationwide guidelines, such as requiring a birth certificate or passport, as part of the Real ID Act.

Cedillo acknowledged that the legislative counsel's opinions are routinely greeted with skepticism because she works for the majority Democrats.

"(Congress) told us to do this," he said. "The lawyer simply says (that) to do it legally and orderly, you must have legislation."

In other Cedillo news:

...Other Democrats on the committee were even more hostile to [eminent domain] reform. Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, questioned whether this was a real problem, and added, according to published reports, "Too often we legislate by hysteria." Well, the senator, who has used overheated rhetoric to promote driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and other fringe legislation, certainly knows what he's talking about there...

Posted to Immigration_dls at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

Bank Calumet giving home loans to illegal aliens is protested

Indiana's Bank Calumet gives home loans to illegal aliens. On Saturday, about 15 Americans protested outside one of their branches:

Organized by the Indiana Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, the protest drew honks and shouts of encouragement as well as jibes and insults from people driving past...

[The leader of the protest] accused the bank of aiding and abetting illegal immigration by extending such loans, which allow a borrower to use Internal Revenue Service-issued Individual Taxpayer Identification Number on loan applications in place of a Social Security number...

Bank Calumet Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Cal Bellamy, contacted by phone Saturday, said the bank respected the protesters' right to express their opinions.

"What makes the community strong, people can disagree about that, but Bank Calumet is coming down on the side of home ownership," he said...

Awww. Why, you could almost say he's a humanitarian, as he gives home loans to people who under our laws shouldn't be in our country.

Previously: Indiana's Bank Calumet gives home loans to illegal aliens

Posted to Immigration2005b at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)

Three advertising aircraft crashes in three weeks. Odd?

In the past three weeks, two airplanes and a helicopter have crashed in the Long Beach/Los Angeles area. All three aircraft were towing advertising banners. The latest crash was today:

...Long Beach Fire Battalion Chief Jeff Reeb says the ad banner apparently became snarled when the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter crashed.

The pilot, who was alone in the helicopter, was taken to Long Beach Memorial Hospital. Reeb says he is expected to survive.

Last month a pilot who was towing a banner walked away from a crash-landing when the high-wing Piper P-A-18 came to rest upside down near Rancho Palos Verdes.

The next day an ad banner came off a plane in Long Beach and landed on power lines, causing a power outage.

If that isn't odd enough, all three aircraft were (according to KFI) owned by the same company.

At this point in time I'm going to assume that something else is going on. The only question is why the FAA or some similar agency has not stepped in and started an investigation to find out exactly what that is.

Posted to Los_Angeles at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)

Tell the Senate: No on the Akaka Bill

From this:

The U.S. Senate is scheduled tomorrow to decide whether to clear the way for the most odious, anti-American piece of legislation in memory: S. 147, the "Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act." Incredibly, as of now, more than 61 senators are expected to vote to begin a process that would ineluctably unravel the United States as a nation.

This legislation has been advanced in the spirit of pandering that has come to characterize all too much of our national political life. In this case, the pandering is on behalf of an ethnic community that is largely a figment of some politicians' imaginations -- a once-sovereign, identifiably blooded race of "Native Hawaiians" that are, if S. 147 were to become law, to be given the right to govern themselves as they see fit. This could involve creating a new Hawaiian monarchy and perhaps lead to the islands' secession from the Union...

Hawaii's longtime Democratic Sens. Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye are leading the charge for S. 147. The latter has considerable influence within his party and across the aisle as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. They are joined by the State's Republican Gov. Linda Lingle. Her political ambitions and appeals for support from the Bush White House have borne Republican fruit. In particular, the administration again has demonstrated its willingness to subordinate national interests to playing for ethnic votes...

Posted to Politics at 11:16 AM | Comments (4)

Al Qaeda group in Argentina?

From this:

Members of Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamist missionary group that the United States accuses of links to Al-Qaeda, are in Argentina with the possible aim of recruiting local Muslims for terrorist activities, a newspaper has said.

Citing sources in the intelligence community and the foreign ministry, the La Nacion said the 26 Islamists arrived in Argentina in five groups over the past few months.

The militants, from Pakistan, Malaysia, South Africa, Qatar and Egypt, came into the country to possibly contact and recruit Argentine Muslims to train them abroad to conduct terrorism, the newspaper said on Friday.

The Argentine government, which will host the Summit of the Americas November 4-5 in Mar del Plata in the south, did not immediately comment on the report. US President George W Bush is to attend the summit.

La Nacion reported that Argentine intelligence received information from their Spanish and Italian counterparts. Spanish counter-terrorism experts gave the Argentine government details on Tablighi Jamaat, saying it was under investigation for the alleged role of some of its members in the March 11, 2004, bomb attacks in Madrid, the daily said.

The original report is here.

Posted to Immigration_terror at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)

Katrina: Jesse Jackson does bad, Rudy Giuliani could do good

I've been saving off the various comments made by "liberals" concerning Katrina. While I could discuss them here now, I think it's more appropriate to wait until the situation settles down somewhat.

However, one of the low points should be pointed out now: Jesse Jackson seems to be trying to incite a riot. While it's good of him to take in supplies, he really should concentrate on that. The fact that he'd make statements like those at this time shows what a low opportunist he is. And, instead of making excuses for the looters, perhaps he should show his leadership by encouraging them to stop.

On the bright side, perhaps someone like Giuliani, Powell, or Franks could step in and offer leadership in this situation.

Posted to Miscellania at 01:57 PM | Comments (2)

"Census Bureau: American Living Standards Now Seriously Impacted By Immigration"

The numbers are crunched over here.

...This implies that more than half of the decline in native income last year was due to immigration.

These are averages. Among natives without a high school education, the impact will be larger. Similarly, the negative effect of immigrants on black workers will be greater than average, because they are in direct competition.

Immigration enthusiasts to the contrary, there was always a tipping point at which the impact of immigration on the living standards of native-born Americans would start to show up seriously in the data.

Looks like we reached that point in 2004.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 01:06 PM | Comments (4)

Does Catholic Charities respect our laws?

Unfortunately, it appears that the Catholic Charities USA has no respect for our laws, prefering instead a world where anyone who's having troubles in their own country can come here. Once here, they should be allowed to obtain all the rights of citizens. In other words, a continual amnesty for illegal aliens.

On Saturday, September 17 in Phoenix, they'll be holding their annual meeting to set their social policies. This year's topic: "Justice for Newcomers: A Call for Solidarity and Reform". That page has a PDF to their policy paper, as well as an email address that their members can use to comment on it.

The term "newcomers" is their word for refugees, asylum seekers, legal immigrants, and illegal aliens. However, the document mainly concerns illegal aliens (who are not, of course, refered to by that legally correct term). From the PDF:

Migrants and newcomers possess all the rights and corresponding responsibilities recognized by the Church. These do not derive from membership in a state or from immigration status, but from the inherent dignity of every person. In our view, citizenship does not confer rights, personhood does...

...[The Church] recognizes a human right not to have to leave one's nation. If a person's rights cannot be realized at home, however, he or she can migrate to seek conditions consonant with human dignity. The right to migrate applies to persons fleeing persecution, violence, natural disaster and other refugee-like conditions. It also extends to the economic migrants who increasingly characterize our inter-dependent world. While international agreements allow for the free flow of goods and services, states do not provide sufficient legal avenues for the movement of people in search of work. This anomaly lies at the heart of much "illegal" migration...

...We do not trivialize "rule of law" concerns. However, U.S. immigration policies deny many immigrants a legal way to meet their most solemn responsibilities, particularly to their families.

...Migrants also have a right to humane treatment on their journeys. At the very least, government policies should not contribute to the separation of families, to human rights abuses or to crossing deaths. Receiving states should normally embrace newcomers as full members, allowing them to assume the rights and responsibilities of their adopted country.

...Critics of immigration reform legislation dislike the idea of "rewarding" those who have violated our immigration laws. Yet as the Bush Administration has recognized, expanding the legal avenues to immigration - to reflect labor and family realities – will reduce illegal migration, a result that enhanced immigration measures cannot achieve on their own. [65] While effective reform must go beyond a temporary worker program, we would note that the "bracero" program – a "guest worker" program for agricultural laborers from Mexico from 1942 to 1964 - significantly diminished illegal migration to the United States. [Actually, illegal immigration increased during the bracero program, and that program created the networks that allowed subsequent illegal immigration --LW]

65 Statement of Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Jul. 13, 2005), available at http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/speech/speech_0255.xml. ("A second imperative is the need to strengthen border security and interior enforcement, as well as to improve our immigration system .... We are developing a new approach to controlling the border, one that includes an integrated mix of additional staff, new technology and enhanced infrastructure investment. But control of the border will also require reducing the demand for illegal border migration by channeling migrants into regulated legal channels to seek work.")

It says so much that they rely on the Bush administration and even Tamar Jacoby to make their argument.

The bottom line is that they want McCain-Kennedy, together with many other socialism-style "reforms". Hopefully there are some Catholic organizations that respect our laws and our sovereignty and can answer what I hope is just an extremist group.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 06:44 AM | Comments (9)

Residents sue Herndon VA over illegal alien day laborer center

Six residents of Herndon, VA have sued that town over its plans to build an illegal alien hiring hall. Judicial Watch is representing them in the suit.

Herndon officials have acknowledged that the center would likely provide help to day laborers who are in the country illegally, but said they are not equipped to sort out individuals' immigration status, which can at times be murky.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that no matter the problem, facilitating the hiring of illegal immigrants is not an acceptable solution.

"The Town Council understands it would be helping illegal aliens" by establishing a day laborer site, Fitton said Thursday during a news conference at the group's Washington headquarters. "It has essentially admitted it in some proceedings."

Herndon Mayor Michael O'Reilly said in a statement Thursday that Judicial Watch is misdirecting its concerns over federal immigration policy at the town.

"Clearly the national immigration issue needs to be handled by Congress and the executive branch and not by small local governments such as Herndon," O'Reilly said...

Clearly, buck passers like O'Reilly need to be recalled.

Previously: Herndon VA: illegal alien hiring hall won't check immigration status.

Posted to Immigration2005b at 03:29 AM | Comments (3)

When peace-lovin' Cindy Sheehan supporters attack

Last week one of Cindy Sheehan's bodyguards allegedly physically "attacked" a KGO cameraman who was walking in her fake field of crosses:

I asked Mark Matthews of KGO about the alleged assault, "I'm not happy about it. We're happy to abide by the rules when we know what the rules are. But there was no message communicated to us to stay out of the crosses. And last night, photographers, supporters of Cindy Sheehan, people praying, clapping and singing were here amongst the crosses. 13 hours later, it's off limits without any notification to us."

I asked one of Sheehan’s spokeswoman if she condoned Key's assault of the cameraman. She would not answer my question directly, instead saying, "I think if we all do our fair share, we'll work to keep everybody out of the way... That's all we need is to have people stay out of the crosses... I think that's all being worked out privately. I think the cameraman and the Iraq veteran was doing his best to honor the fallen will work it out."

Uh huh. There's more on that Iraq veteran, Jeff Key, here. He's a gay Marine who even did his own one-man show. And, he's quite the photographer too.

Now, just yesterday, a fight broke out at a Sheehan rally in Wichita. She wasn't there, but it looks like one of her supporters started it, although the video isn't that clear.

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 12:49 AM | Comments (1)

EU: Immigrants should pledge loyalty to EU instead of Britain

The EU's "Commissioner for justice and security", Franco Frattini, wants all future EU immigrants to take an "oath of faithfulness" to the European Union. Recent immigrants to Britain already go so far as to swear allegiance to the Queen, but swearing allegiance to Brussels is even worse.

Frattini says: "One can get every immigrant to somehow declare they will respect national law, EU law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights."

As for the latter:

The charter is seen by its supporters as representing the basic values of the EU. It goes considerably further than the old European Convention on Human Rights, offering, for example, the right to parental leave if you adopt a child, the right to continuous training, the right to social security benefits and the right to strike. It has no legal force because it was part of the European constitution, which was rejected by French and Dutch voters...

What are Britain's options?

The oath of allegiance to the EU — which could be in addition to or in place of the oath to the Queen — would be subject to negotiation, but the Government cannot veto it because it gave up its national veto on EU immigration law last year. Britain does have an opt-out, but it would have to reject the entire package of immigration measures...

An EU diplomat said of the proposal: "It's loony."

Timothy Kirkhope, the leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, and former immigration minister, said: "I am amazed. You can laugh, but it worryingly shows the views of people who should know better. I swore an oath of allegiance to the Queen. I am not going to take kindly to an Italian gentleman telling me to swear allegiance to unelected people, or to swear allegiance to something I don't agree with — a unified European state."

Mike Nattrass, deputy leader of the UK Independence Party, said: "An allegiance to something with no single culture, no agreed history, no common language and packed with fraud and corruption? The EU must be joking."

Of course, if Americans let their guard down and the globalists get their way, an EU-style system could be coming the U.S.'s way.

Posted to Immigration_euro at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

Bush making the Border Patrol even less effective because of Katrina

The Bush administration has ordered the Border Patrol to move some personnel and equipment from the border to deal with Katrina, NewsMax reports:

...According to [the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency], however, plenty of its scarce resources are now committed to rescue and law enforcement support in the multi-state areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Its fixed wing aircraft are used for transportation and for surveillance/reconnaissance efforts to identify anyone in peril. CBP helicopters are also used in transport and in search and rescue efforts.

The air support efforts are being coordinated through an airborne command center, which includes airborne radar and traffic management capabilities. Marine support is also providing transportation and rescue assistance. And CBP is sending over one hundred Border Patrol agents to provide law enforcement support to the impacted area. As CBP pointed out to NewsMax, its relief teams in the New Orleans area are not by any means gratuitous. The proliferation of ports of entry in the area means that the agency has a large number of CBP personnel regularly on the ground. Many of these CBP personnel were hit by the storm and are in need of relief...

While Katrina was obviously not an attack, perhaps this article might shed a tiny little bit of light on why this is a very bad idea.

Posted to Immigration_terror at 02:49 PM | Comments (1)

Hugh Hewitt on CA's 48th district

A favorite BushBot, Hugh Hewitt, has a column entitled "Kiss of Death" about the 48th District race in Orange County. It starts out like this:

IN MAY OF THIS YEAR, John McCain teamed with Ted Kennedy to propose a new bill to "solve" the illegal immigration problem. The McCain-Kennedy bill was DOA with Republicans in the House and the Senate.

Which may explain why Senator McCain has endorsed Marilyn Brewer in the special election to replace former Congressman Chris Cox (who has been confirmed as the new chair of the SEC) in California's 48th Congressional District. McCain wants to push through a liberalization of the immigration law and he needs some help in the House. Brewer, a pro-abortion rights Republican, has no other GOP figure of note endorsing her. It looks like a match made in heaven. McCain can count on Brewer being soft on the border. Brewer can count on McCain being soft on life issues.

Except for the fact that Republicans of all political stripes, from the centrist Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the conservative Congressmen Dana Rohrabacher and Ed Royce, have endorsed GOP State Senator John Campbell in the October 4 balloting. The entire party has unified behind Campbell (including me--full disclosure, I contributed to Campbell's campaign). Brewer hasn't even gotten the endorsement of the liberal "New Majority" Republicans who gently support abortion rights. The Club for Growth is behind Campbell, and he will almost certainly win the primary in a walk. He may well even garner 50 percent of the votes, which would prevent a costly second round of balloting in the coastal Orange County district...

Since the article is not just about the 48th District but about immigration "reform" as well, it's a bit surprising that Hugh doesn't mention another candidate in the race: Jim Gilchrist. Not even once, not even in passing. Of course, Gilchrist probably has no chance, and, according to a local blog which wants to turn that district "blue", might even serve as the spoiler in the race. Nevertheless, it's informative that Hugh can't even mention someone who dares to challenge Our Leader's immigration policies.

Posted to California at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

"Charging 'racism' easier than facing issues"

Jim Trageser discusses just about the only argument that "liberals" are able to come up with when discussing illegal immigration:

...The only saving grace of the current proliferation of charges of racism in our community is that the charge is being made so often and so emptily that it's losing its impact.

...In a way, you can't really blame those who choose to defend illegal immigration for playing the racism card. What other ammunition do they have in their arsenal?

...So pro-illegal immigration activists don't argue for an open border. Instead, they criticize Border Patrol sweeps, assail efforts to deny benefits to those who break the law to get here, ridicule those who would watch the border voluntarily. And when they are called on the emptiness of their arguments, when they are asked why immigration law shouldn't be enforced in a logical, even-handed manner, they resort to a burned-ground campaign of character assassination against anyone who openly advocates in favor of fuller enforcement of our immigration laws.

Who cares if it's true or not? The purpose of calling someone a racist isn't to change his mind or heart, not to convince others of the veracity of your position. The point is to distract. To intimidate.

To silence...

Posted to Politics at 12:12 PM | Comments (4)

The Democratic Party isn't serious: Ray Buckley of New Hampshire on illegal aliens

As further proof that many of those in the Democratic Party just aren't up to the task of leadership, consider the case of Ray Buckley, vice chairman of New Hampshire's Democratic Party. Responding to the arrest of illegal aliens in that state on trespassing laws, he plays the race card:

...Buckley was quoted in Sunday's State House Dome column as saying that New Ipswich Police Chief W. Garret Chamberlain and Hudson Chief Richard Gendron "are trying to scare the bejesus out of brown-skinned people who are minding their own business."

When we called to ask if he could elaborate, he said that the chiefs targeted Hispanics because the chiefs are racist.

...Ray Buckley has a history of saying outrageous things, but this just might take the cake. Buckley's only evidence of "racism" is the arrest of a few illegal immigrants. Moreover, our porous borders are an obvious national security threat...

That it is a concern the No. 2 official in the state Democratic Party does not share says plenty about the party's priorities.

Posted to Politics at 02:06 AM | Comments (1)

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All Posts(links to each post by title)

• "1965 Immigration Reform Cost Blacks Minority Primacy"
• Is the New York Times a Mexican newspaper?
• Jeb: Dubya wrong about federalizing relief
• FCC moves to install Internet backdoor for wiretapping
• The Akaka Bill, Hawaiian secession and... bingo? Follow the money!
• Wisconsin Assembly passes pro-American driver's license bill
• Petula Dvorak of Washington Post whitewashed ANSWER
• Oz: Uni appoints "Heterosexuality Officer"
• Do Connecticut McDonald's discriminate in favor of Hispanics?
• Danish Air Force pays Santa Claus after killing Rudolf
• Deep inside the mind of a defense lawyer
• Jeb Bush wants more legal immigration
• Pew: more illegal aliens than legal immigrants during 2000-2004
• GiveEmHellHarry.com from illegal immigration supporter Harry Reid
• Anti-American, violent, racist report from the Pacific News Service
• Now that's a money-making hoax!
• Puerto Rico: city building UFO landing strip
• Babs blasts border watchers!
• Steve Cooley has unkind words for David Dreier
• Are we headed towards a Banana Republic?

My trip to Alpine County What not to do, again (September 1-2, 2002)

Boston Market Cornbread Temperatures Please help contribute to this important study (August 28, 2002)

Did The Gap Put Celebrities at Risk? An Open Web Letter to The Gap (May 20, 2002)

Humphreys Peak Arizona's highest point (May 19, 2001)

Go Heavy, Go Slow, Get Lost Bay Area highpoints (December 14, 2000)

Hubris in New England The highpoints of RI, CT, and MA (October 8, 2000)

Let's go to Utah Zion, Bryce, and Grand Canyon (August 14, 2000)

Your host, climbing Monkey Face (5.14d)

Your host's arm (circled)

Your host's hopelessly outdated conditioning progress

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