1/14/2008
Wow! I cannot believe how many e-mails and messages I received from you, my dear readers, when I suggested that this little border-blog had run its course. I would like to say it was deeply gratifying, except it means I have to keep writing it! ha ha ha.
Immigration: It's So Last Century
I hope your holidays were full and happy. I truly enjoyed some time off. How dismal it is to not only spend your time contemplating the nightmare of the border itself, but the cascade of raw sewage that is the debate, the propaganda war, and the lying idiocy that prevails.
For example, I was recently led to the ponderings of a Mung-Munching Moron on the web; someone thought I should see this guy's political thoughts. The columnist was thrilled to be visiting a European country with NO MEXICANS. He made winking comments about the "whole Mexican not-working thing" they have going on in the US. Aside from the dumbth of that comment--one thing the "illegals" and "legals" both are here for is to WORK, by a vast landslide avalanche of a percentage--were his strange suggestions that Mexicans, in particular, somehow damage the American grain. The fabric of what makes this country great, under assault by those freakin' swarthy little foreigners!
OK, I can see the Nativist argument. My own mother made that angry Goldwater GOP announcement to me almost every day. Along with the brilliant Right Wing comment: What This Country Needs Is A Good Dictator! Take that, Beaners, hippies, queers, and commies! But do you know what this guy, this critic of all that harms good Americans, does for a living? He edits a website dedicated to porn, upskirt videos, videos of people defecating and vomiting, and graphic videos of people being tortured and killed. YES! God Bless America! But at least he's white.
Let's begin the Mung-Munching Moron of the Month Awards! Send me your candidates.
I digress.
#
Have you looked in your paper lately? Have you noticed something missing? Here's a hint: today, after days and days of NO IMMIGRATION NEWS AT ALL, both the Chi Tribune and the NY Times ran immigration stories...about the problems in Germany and Italy.
Hate to say I told you so, but...well, you know.
Did the paradigm shift? Is immigration yesterday's news? Let us look at some facts.
All the hard-core anti-immigrant candidates in the election have been kicked to the curb. Did you notice? Tom Tancredo, the immigrant hating son of immigrants: gone. Duncan Hunter: gone. Mitt Romney ran his anti-immigrant TV ads over 12,000 times in the last few months--and he got hi ass whupped. (See www.immigrantslist.org for figures and numbers and interesting writings on the subject by Drew Seman.) Hmmm.
So who is leading the GOP pack right now? Good ol' John McCain. Derided by the brave warriors of anonymous call-in radio as being SOFT on IMMIGRATION. (You already know my opinion on this fabu propaganda of SOFTNESS, but I delight in bringing it up--pun intended--ALL THE VIAGRA-NAUTS WHO NEED CHEMICAL 24 HOUR ERECTIONS HUNT DOWN AND CRUSH ANYONE OR ANYTHING THAT IS "SOFT" ON ANY SUBJECT. Lou Dobbs tells them who is the bad guy, and his commercials tell them how to get big pulsating silos of manhood so they can go root 'em out! We need a...gasp...we need a...oh yes yes...we need a big...gulp...a strong...do me do me...HARD MAN.)
McCain, of the derided appeasing put-terrorism-first Beaner-loving McCain/Kennedy Immigration Bill. He's #1.
Hey, it ain't just me noticing. Look at your paper. Watch CNN. Where did all the films of nasty brown criminals scuttling across the desert go??? Perhaps they all work on the landscaping crew at Mitt's mansion!
Look here, if you don't believe me:
www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/andres_oppenheimer/story/373555
That's a _ between andres and oppenheimer. In case you're typing it in.
The right was rcently appalled that Hillary Clinton (SOFT! No, wait, we don't like her because she's too HARD. NO! Wait. She was hard, and we hated her, but then she showed some softness, and we hate her for that. Hard to keep up) said, publicly, that "No woman is illegal."
Hey, at least one of the dems said something about immigration. Mostly, they don't dare. By the way, where did Iraq go? Where did Global Warming go? What's the next hot issue--Killer Bees?
#
Last week, the New York Times ran a fascinating op-ed piece in its Sunday edition. Written by Joshua Hoyt (an executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights), it points out some fascinating data. I quote:
"...In 20 of 22 separate public opinion polls conducted between March and December, somewhere between 55 percent and 83 percent of the respondents favored some form of earned legal status. In the remaining two polls, the majority favored this option."
In other words, the immigrant-bashing doesn't work. So they drop it. But wait, you say--wasn't it the burning issue last month? Did it resolve itself? If it mattered so much in November, and has not changed since then on the ground, how can it be that those who banged that drum so soundly have gone silent?
Is America itself soft on immigtaion? I'm telling you--friggin' Americans are so un-American.
Could it be that our fear, our frustration, our dread, our national insecurity and--hate to say this, but you know it's true--our racism, are tools? Hmm? To be used to move product? Even if the product is a candidate or a political party? We certainly know it works on talk radio and populist TV shows. (According to figures I've been reading, the number remains steady over time: 20-25% of Americans remain hard-core anti-immigration Nativists...more than enough to lend ratings magic to the airwaved patriots babbling away out there.)
When those tools don't work, do we put them back in the tool box amd grab some new tool? Is that, by any stretch of the imagination, possible? Remember when Manuel Noriega was the greatest threat to America? Remember when Rosa Parks was a danger to the status quo? Do you remember when we were going to be killed by Global Cooling? New slogan for Big Brother: FEAR WORKS! WORK THE FEAR!
All the while, the border is begging for a savior.
It's up to you and me.
Ah, 2008. It's going to be the most amazing year. I have more immigration material piled up than I know what to do with. I think I can sell some Viagra ad space here and make some good money.
I close with a personal note. Perhaps the most patriotic man I have met in a long time, and certainly a far more conservative political creature than I, and--I must add--one of the kindest and most warm men I have met in a long time, is an FBI agent I hung out with recently. This man, as he said to me, "Bleeds red, white and blue." He doesn't speak of "the" American flag; he speaks of MY American flag. You know what he said about the issue? He said, "I don't care if you're documented or not. I care about two things: are you working hard, and are you not breaking my laws. That's it."
Sure, it was over beer and chili, and does not represent the agency or the federal government or blah blah blah. Just a good man talking about a bad scene among friends. If I do anything with this blog in the months ahead, it will be to talk about things nobody seems to want to address. Let's see where it goes.
Guest columnists are lining up!
WWJD--Who Would Jesus Deport!
"Republicans like their cheap labor, Democrats like their cheap causes." --Edward Abbey
Adios, Amigos.
L
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Immigration: It's So Last Century
I hope your holidays were full and happy. I truly enjoyed some time off. How dismal it is to not only spend your time contemplating the nightmare of the border itself, but the cascade of raw sewage that is the debate, the propaganda war, and the lying idiocy that prevails.
For example, I was recently led to the ponderings of a Mung-Munching Moron on the web; someone thought I should see this guy's political thoughts. The columnist was thrilled to be visiting a European country with NO MEXICANS. He made winking comments about the "whole Mexican not-working thing" they have going on in the US. Aside from the dumbth of that comment--one thing the "illegals" and "legals" both are here for is to WORK, by a vast landslide avalanche of a percentage--were his strange suggestions that Mexicans, in particular, somehow damage the American grain. The fabric of what makes this country great, under assault by those freakin' swarthy little foreigners!
OK, I can see the Nativist argument. My own mother made that angry Goldwater GOP announcement to me almost every day. Along with the brilliant Right Wing comment: What This Country Needs Is A Good Dictator! Take that, Beaners, hippies, queers, and commies! But do you know what this guy, this critic of all that harms good Americans, does for a living? He edits a website dedicated to porn, upskirt videos, videos of people defecating and vomiting, and graphic videos of people being tortured and killed. YES! God Bless America! But at least he's white.
Let's begin the Mung-Munching Moron of the Month Awards! Send me your candidates.
I digress.
#
Have you looked in your paper lately? Have you noticed something missing? Here's a hint: today, after days and days of NO IMMIGRATION NEWS AT ALL, both the Chi Tribune and the NY Times ran immigration stories...about the problems in Germany and Italy.
Hate to say I told you so, but...well, you know.
Did the paradigm shift? Is immigration yesterday's news? Let us look at some facts.
All the hard-core anti-immigrant candidates in the election have been kicked to the curb. Did you notice? Tom Tancredo, the immigrant hating son of immigrants: gone. Duncan Hunter: gone. Mitt Romney ran his anti-immigrant TV ads over 12,000 times in the last few months--and he got hi ass whupped. (See www.immigrantslist.org for figures and numbers and interesting writings on the subject by Drew Seman.) Hmmm.
So who is leading the GOP pack right now? Good ol' John McCain. Derided by the brave warriors of anonymous call-in radio as being SOFT on IMMIGRATION. (You already know my opinion on this fabu propaganda of SOFTNESS, but I delight in bringing it up--pun intended--ALL THE VIAGRA-NAUTS WHO NEED CHEMICAL 24 HOUR ERECTIONS HUNT DOWN AND CRUSH ANYONE OR ANYTHING THAT IS "SOFT" ON ANY SUBJECT. Lou Dobbs tells them who is the bad guy, and his commercials tell them how to get big pulsating silos of manhood so they can go root 'em out! We need a...gasp...we need a...oh yes yes...we need a big...gulp...a strong...do me do me...HARD MAN.)
McCain, of the derided appeasing put-terrorism-first Beaner-loving McCain/Kennedy Immigration Bill. He's #1.
Hey, it ain't just me noticing. Look at your paper. Watch CNN. Where did all the films of nasty brown criminals scuttling across the desert go??? Perhaps they all work on the landscaping crew at Mitt's mansion!
Look here, if you don't believe me:
www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/andres_oppenheimer/story/373555
That's a _ between andres and oppenheimer. In case you're typing it in.
The right was rcently appalled that Hillary Clinton (SOFT! No, wait, we don't like her because she's too HARD. NO! Wait. She was hard, and we hated her, but then she showed some softness, and we hate her for that. Hard to keep up) said, publicly, that "No woman is illegal."
Hey, at least one of the dems said something about immigration. Mostly, they don't dare. By the way, where did Iraq go? Where did Global Warming go? What's the next hot issue--Killer Bees?
#
Last week, the New York Times ran a fascinating op-ed piece in its Sunday edition. Written by Joshua Hoyt (an executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights), it points out some fascinating data. I quote:
"...In 20 of 22 separate public opinion polls conducted between March and December, somewhere between 55 percent and 83 percent of the respondents favored some form of earned legal status. In the remaining two polls, the majority favored this option."
In other words, the immigrant-bashing doesn't work. So they drop it. But wait, you say--wasn't it the burning issue last month? Did it resolve itself? If it mattered so much in November, and has not changed since then on the ground, how can it be that those who banged that drum so soundly have gone silent?
Is America itself soft on immigtaion? I'm telling you--friggin' Americans are so un-American.
Could it be that our fear, our frustration, our dread, our national insecurity and--hate to say this, but you know it's true--our racism, are tools? Hmm? To be used to move product? Even if the product is a candidate or a political party? We certainly know it works on talk radio and populist TV shows. (According to figures I've been reading, the number remains steady over time: 20-25% of Americans remain hard-core anti-immigration Nativists...more than enough to lend ratings magic to the airwaved patriots babbling away out there.)
When those tools don't work, do we put them back in the tool box amd grab some new tool? Is that, by any stretch of the imagination, possible? Remember when Manuel Noriega was the greatest threat to America? Remember when Rosa Parks was a danger to the status quo? Do you remember when we were going to be killed by Global Cooling? New slogan for Big Brother: FEAR WORKS! WORK THE FEAR!
All the while, the border is begging for a savior.
It's up to you and me.
Ah, 2008. It's going to be the most amazing year. I have more immigration material piled up than I know what to do with. I think I can sell some Viagra ad space here and make some good money.
I close with a personal note. Perhaps the most patriotic man I have met in a long time, and certainly a far more conservative political creature than I, and--I must add--one of the kindest and most warm men I have met in a long time, is an FBI agent I hung out with recently. This man, as he said to me, "Bleeds red, white and blue." He doesn't speak of "the" American flag; he speaks of MY American flag. You know what he said about the issue? He said, "I don't care if you're documented or not. I care about two things: are you working hard, and are you not breaking my laws. That's it."
Sure, it was over beer and chili, and does not represent the agency or the federal government or blah blah blah. Just a good man talking about a bad scene among friends. If I do anything with this blog in the months ahead, it will be to talk about things nobody seems to want to address. Let's see where it goes.
Guest columnists are lining up!
WWJD--Who Would Jesus Deport!
"Republicans like their cheap labor, Democrats like their cheap causes." --Edward Abbey
Adios, Amigos.
L
# posted by Luis @ 11:56 AM 
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