Such is the plight of the race obsessed that in the absence of any George Wallace rhetoric Democrats are inventing new racist rhetoric. Four years ago I wrote about how Dallas city Commissioner John Wiley Price claimed that the term “black hole” was racist. What? Racism is real, it exists, and the nation (and the world) has an embarrassing history in regards to race. It’s one thing to be sensitive and it’s another to be obsessed.
I’m all for exposing racial bigotry. It shouldn’t be tolerated in politics today. That’s why I don’t have time for Jesse Jackson. When Jackson goes around telling people they’re “not black enough” there’s a problem. In October, 2011, Juan Williams was fired from NPR for making “insensitive” comments about Muslims. Shouldn’t Mr. Williams be cognizant about the stupidity of “veiled racism?” Apparently not…
The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”
The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans.
But the code sometimes breaks down.
I didn’t know that blacks didn’t respect the Founding Fathers. Or that the “entitlement society” was racist. Most people on food stamps are white as are most people who make up the “entitlement society.” Also, the Republicans in this race have gone through painstaking detail about immigration. It would be very difficult to characterize Romney’s or Gingrich’s position as anti-immigration. Mr. Williams finishes his rant with this head scratcher:
The problem is not a lack of work ethic on the part of the poor, who are disproportionately minorities. The problem is there are few good jobs for blue-collar people with the best work ethic.
The problem is a lot more complicated than the lack of good jobs. There will never be “good jobs” for unskilled and uneducated people. I wish people like Juan Williams would get over all this racist crap and start talking about real problems. There’s an increasing number of unskilled and uneducated people. The common denominator with most of these people isn’t race, it’s family, or more accurately, the lack of it. Out of wedlock births are the underlying cancer of our society. For every feel-good story you see on CNN about a single mother who raised her kids there are 15 stories of tradegy.
Racism didn’t create this problem. Racism isn’t perpetuating the problem.
Gossip Girl or serious journalist? After watching the Republican debate on MSNBC last night I'm leaning toward Gossip Girl.
As usual, Henshaw made some good points about last night’s Republican debate, though I’m not sure I agree with his winners and losers. Alas, it is quite difficult to come up with an objective list of winners and losers since a debate isn’t quite as easy to score as, say, a boxing match. And even boxing matches that declare a winner without a KO are sometimes controversial.
Even so, here’s my list of winners, losers and those who fought to a draw… Winners: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. Losers: Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. Draw: Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.
Part of my problem scoring and declaring a winner is that these debates don’t allow for much explanation by any one candidate, thus they tend to stick to rhetoric and key words. Even when it’s narrowed down to two candidates during the Presidential race, debates don’t offer much substance.
Still, the candidates could make a move away from the pack by better articulating core principles. In the case of a conservative candidate, one of these core principles, and what is perhaps the most important one, is the role of the Federal government.
Ron Paul and Herman Cain came closest to hitting the mark on this, though no one’s really listening to them. The others danced around it and the moderators probably don’t know the difference between Federalism and oligarchy, though they certainly know how to gossip (“A friend of your campaign manager said that Rick Perry is a wussie. Why is he a wussie?”)
There was a golden opportunity at this debate to point out that the governors in the debate did the best they could with the circumstances specific to their states and the needs of their constituents. And that’s the point. Who best to make decisions for the welfare of its citizens than local and state government? And, who is more accountable to their voters than local and state government?
You can yammer on and on about this and that you did as governor, or that this governor had this much or this little job growth in his state, but it’s just a waste of time. Just once I’d like to see a candidate point out that an ever-encroaching Federal government endangers the individual and his liberty. The growth of the Federal government is, in fact, a move toward oligarchy; rule by the few over the many. Moreover, it’s an oligarchy that favors certain people and groups over others, destroying the concept of equality before the law. The bailouts, stimulus and health care bamboozles are striking examples of this inequality created by cronyism.
Still, I don’t know how much you can blame the candidates for their shallow answers. The moderators made it quite difficult to provide any depth by purposely pitting one candidate against the other and framing the questions to make it sound as if they were defending the indefensible. “Rick Perry, Romney said or did this. Respond,” or, “Why are Republicans so heartless?” Bullshit. Ask them a real policy question.
Speaking of BS, how about that brief foray into “science”? The Charlie Crist-like Huntsman took a sideways swipe at Perry, playing the ever-so-reasonable-and-moderate Republican card. He’s pro-science because he has not an ounce of skepticism about the wild-eyed lunatic-fringe claims of a madman (Al Gore)?
Meanwhile, Perry’s response was less than adequate. Once again, a golden opportunity to put the nail in the coffin of the climate change debate wasted. Will anyone rise to the occasion and point out simple logic? As a reminder, logical and thought-provoking arguments Perry could have made include:
- The sun may have something to do with our climate, given that it accounts for 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system
- The climate has been changing for more than four billion years; it always has and it always will. This would mark the first time in the history of earth that a species was willfully unable to adapt to a changing climate. Who’s more stupid, the dinosaurs who simply didn’t know they needed to adapt, or human beings who drown in extremely slow-rising water because they thought the government was going to do something about it?
- Do Climate Changelings/Global Warmongers really believe that we have the power to regulate the earth’s thermostat, and if we did, what is the proper setting?
- Further, if we had the power to regulate the climate, who makes the decision about where to set the thermostat and who benefits from the settings? Will the entire earth be like San Diego, or will only those parts the enviro-nitwits care about live eternally in San Diego’s climate?
- Global warming is far better for life on earth than is global cooling. You can look it up. But the beauty of “climate change” is that you can claim the climate’s changing no matter what’s going on globally or locally. A little warmer this year? Climate change! Unusually cold another? Climate change! No change? Climate change!
The whole thing is absurd, as is the case for a larger and more meddlesome federal government, and yet it’s nearly impossible to get a cohesive, coherent and concise answer on either subject from the candidates. Immigration? I know that Rick Santorum’s grandparents were immigrants, but that doesn’t tell me jack diddly about his plan.
Perhaps most absurd, and also the best part of the debate, was the commercial produced by Californians for Population Stabilization, which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there’s a special interest group for anything and everything these days.
Californians for Population Stabilization is against legal immigration. That’s right, legal immigrants are taking jobs away from Californians and Californians for Population Stabilization wants to end this travesty. What’s next? Californians against Seeing Eye Dogs and other Working Dogs?
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryd1-xco9cg
1996 was a simpler time. Back then, billing the federal government for incarcerating illegal immigrants wasn’t controversial. Rick Perry billed U.S. Department of Homeland Security for nearly $350 million to cover the costs he says Texas has incurred incarcerating illegal immigrants in state prisons and county jails.
I’m so happy President Clinton solved this problem for the United States.
Soccer is to sports as boycotting Arizona is to politics. All of the sudden, lots of people are ignorantly jumping on those respective bandwagons simply because they’ve been told it’s hip and cosmopolitan to do so.
What is soccer, really, but Barbie foosball on grass?
The nation is inexplicably caught up in both World Cup and Boycott Arizona fever. Even citizens in our extreme northern regions, who are normally high on hockey, are packing bars and making official statements about Arizona’s immigration law. They may not know exactly where Arizona is or what a yellow card represents, they just know it’s cool to watch the World Cup and call Arizona a racist, fascist state.
Just today I picked up a six-pack of delicious Sunshine Wheat beer and the proprietor asked me if my purchase was made in preparation for today’s World Cup games. I mumbled something about foosball and got the hell out of there. Sometimes I feel like Will Smith in I Am Legend.
This is simply another sign of the coming Apocalypse, but it also shows how the nation’s education system has betrayed entire generations. Busily teaching multi-cultural sensitivity and relativism, rather than logic and the three Rs, our schools are churning out hyper-ecumenical adults who don’t even know what ecumenical means, much less that soccer sucks or how to read words printed on a piece of legislation.
There really are true soccer fans in the U.S., but most are of the faux-fan persuasion. With all due respect, the true fans are certainly misguided, but it must be frustrating to have been infected with this disorder for years and years only to find their abnormal world suddenly populated with legions of USA/gooooooaaaaal-chanting know-nothings.
It’s time to add Boulder, Colorado to the list of city governments that would rather ignore the law than enforce it. Boulder joins San Francisco in banning all city-sponsored travel to the state of Arizona. I can’t remember another issue where the Left has been so woefully ignorant. The Arizona law reinforces a law that Franklin D. Roosevelt passed while he was president. Every time I read “controversial Arizona immigration” law I want to scream. It’s only controversial because, to put it frankly, people are stupid. The city leaders in Boulder are stupid.
“The city is taking this action to demonstrate our opposition to Arizona’s new public policy, signed into law April 23, to require documentation for all persons who may be suspected of being in that state without official status or approval,” Boulder City Manager Jane Brautigam said. “Such a policy is contrary to Boulder’s commitment to diversity and is a violation of our community’s core values.”
Citizens of the City of Boulder be aware that a commitment to law enforcement isn’t a core value for your city leaders. When did “illegal immigration” become synonymous with diversity? Would liberals be prepared to enforce the law if white people (or I should say European descendants not from Latin America) were illegally immigrating to the nation?
Give Me Amnesty or Give Me Your Tax Dollars
I’m all in favor of legal immigration and there are millions of people around the world on lists waiting to come here legally. Why should people who are coming here illegally get to jump in line? This whole debate has almost become pointless because so many “progressives” refuse to read the “controversial bill” or look at immigration logically. It’s just easier to be ignorant and draw fake comparisons to Nazi Germany.
Check out these racist Nazis who had the gall to play by the rules and become legal U.S. citizens. People like this are leading us toward a fascist police state in which an American Gestapo asks for our papers just for standing on a street corner!
We will never get past race in this country as long as the race hustlers on the left continue to play identity politics. I’ve grown quite weary of being told I’m a racist or a Nazi because I support this law or oppose this other law.
Is it possible that I have a logical and rational reason for doing so that has nothing to do with race? According to the race hustlers and those on the progressive left who mindlessly parrot their views, no! I’m a Nazi!
Cathy Areu, publisher of CATALINA magazine, was a guest on one of the talking head pundit shows last night spewing the ignorant leftist talking points about the new immigration law in Arizona. Areu had the usual litany of simulated complaints revolving around “racial profiling” that have no basis in the text of the law itself.
Like most of the knee-jerk left, Areu has not actually read the text of the law. Why bother with the facts when you can just make stuff up? But what do I expect when our so-called Commander-in-Chief says that cops are going to stake out ice cream shops and terrorize women with small children who look like they might be Hispanic? Obama’s either dumb as a post or thinks Americans are.
By the way, CATALINA is a magazine dedicated to Latina women, a.k.a., the print version of racial profiling. I’m still waiting for my copy of Angry White Male magazine to arrive in the mail. I think that kid with the goatee who sold me the subscription for his “Cub Scout troop” took the money and ran. The racist bastard!
Anyway, it is so easy to scream Nazi or Racist or Fascist and not so easy to engage in rational debate, particularly when it’s painfully obvious that you don’t have any logic or facts to back up your position on the issue. Sure, you have emotion and passion, and I suppose that’s all that counts these days.
The people I feel sorry for in this pointless “debate” are those who play by the rules. They’re people of color from all over the world yet they’re being discriminated against because they’re not Mexican, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan or Honduran. If that isn’t racial profiling in the extreme, I don’t know what is.
In fact, the more radical elements of the open borders immigration crowd call for the annexation of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California back to Mexico. You might recall that the United States was able to extract all this territory from Mexico after winning the Mexican-American War in 1848.
Basically, this “pro immigrant but only if you’re an immigrant from directly south of the United States” element, represented most prominently by La Raza, wants to take back the states lost 160 years ago, but only after hard-working Americans have made them into what they are today. That’s convenient.
What if Mexico had won the war and kept that territory? Where would our border problem be instead? That’s right: Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Oregon. Why do progressives and their separatist allies insist that “social justice” means turning the United States into a banana republic?
La Raza, by the way, is Spanish for “the race,” but please don’t pay attention to the fact that the organization’s very name is racist. There’s nothing to see here, particularly if you’re a “reporter” with a traditional news outlet, so please move along and investigate the racist, neo-Nazi element in the Tea Party movement.
There aren’t many places in the United States more liberal than San Francisco. The city by the bay’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, has reacted to the immigration law in Arizona like any illogical liberal would: by creating a moratorium on official travel to Arizona. What’s next? Fining citizens for traveling to Georgia? We all know traveling to Georgia is a racist act, if not just downright foolish. The San Francisco Chronicle has more:
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally.
The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including for law enforcement officials investigating a crime, officials said. It’s unclear how many planned trips by city workers will be curtailed [emphasis added].
Before I delve into the ridiculousness of the moratorium I have to applaud The Chronicle for its horrendous journalism. Their summary of the law in Arizona is a complete distortion. The law in Arizona doesn’t direct local police to arrest those suspected of being illegal immigrants. What hope is there for liberals in San Francisco to understand anything if the newspapers can’t cover this issue correctly?
As far as the city of San Francisco is concerned it’s amazing to see a liberal city embrace totalitarianism. So heads up, San Francisco; that’s totalitarianism. I know, I know, it’s a dry totalitarianism, but it’s still totalitarianism.
The new immigration law in Arizona has been greeted with the typical uninformed outrage on the left. You know the drill. Supporters of the bill are racists, fascists, and backward isolationists. But have these emotional critics actually read the bill? Given the amount of uninformed rhetoric going around it seems as if the left has ignored the content of the bill. Byron York asks the same question in his op-ed.
The law requires police to check with federal authorities on a person’s immigration status, if officers have stopped that person for some legitimate reason and come to suspect that he or she might be in the U.S. illegally. The heart of the law is this provision: “For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.”
Basically all this law requires is an immigration background check if someone is pulled over. The shocking part is there had to be a law passed for this. The left might as well complain that the police check for outstanding warrents if you get pulled over for a missing tail light. If it happens to me I’m just out of luck. If we do it to an illegal immigrant it’s racism.
Meanwhile there’s reletive silence from the press about. the May “Che” Day protests coming up. The stance is clear on the left: anarchists and socialists are cool but don’t you dare advocate small government. The playbook is clear as well. If you disagree with the progressives on any issue you’re a radical racist who is in love with fascism. What ever happened to law enforcement?
This week’s Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment briefly discussed Arizona’s new immigration law. The law has been declared “divisive” by the left because it actually enforces the law. Here is Seth Myers take on the law:
Seth Meyers: This week, Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country which will allow police to demand identification papers from anyone they suspect is in the country illegally.
I know there’s some people in Arizona worried that Obama is acting like Hitler, but could we all agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying “Show me your papers”? There’s never been a World War II movie that didn’t include the line “show me your papers”. It’s their catchphrase. Every time someone says “show me your papers”, Hitler’s family gets a residual check.
So heads up, Arizona; that’s fascism. I know, I know, it’s a dry fascism, but it’s still fascism.
Obviously this is satire, but comparing this law to fascism isn’t funny or even logical. Requiring every driver in the United States to carry papers (a.k.a., a Driver’s License) must be a dry fascism. Requiring every worker to have a Social Security number must also fascist. Every time Club Soda is stopped for speeding, the local Gestapo asks for his “papers”. Every time I get a new job the Gestapo asks for my “papers”. This whole time, apparently, I’ve been living in a police state!
The left’s indifference to illegal immigration continues to puzzle me. Or maybe not. The Democrats seem most excited by the prospect that these illegals will become a voting bloc.
There will also be political repercussions. While Republicans may pick up a few more percent of the angry white vote in November 2010, they can kiss the Hispanic vote goodbye — and not just in Arizona. That may not have meant much in 1935, but in the years to come, it could seal the Republicans’ fate as a minority party. That’s at least one price they’ll pay for being mean and crazy.
According to John B. Judis, enforcing the law is crazy and mean. Forcing healthy citizens to get health insurance against their will, however, is perfectly fine. This is how the illogical progressive thinks. Judis would rather give illegal immigrants amnesty and free health care so they vote for Democrats forever. The law wouldn’t even be necessary if Democrats would get off this amnesty train and commit to common-sense reform. There’s nothing remotely fascist about enforcing immigration laws.
It’s odd that Saturday Night Live would highlight this piece of news and ignore what happened on South Park this week. Comedy Central’s capitulation to death threats from Islamic fundamentalists was easily the most disgusting development this week. When it comes to satire everything is fair game except Mohammad.
There isn’t a lot of common sense when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration. The two major camps on the issue fall into an isolationist policy vs. an amnesty policy. Neither one of those choices is intelligent. The Democratic party views illegal immigrants as a potential new voting bloc, though I’m not so sure that’s really the case in the long run. Senator Harry Ried of Nevada is still beating the “immigration reform” drum despite the fact it’s killing his reelection chances.
“We are going to pass comprehensive immigration reform,” Reid told the crowd. “We need to do this this year. We can’t let excuses like a Supreme Court nomination get in the way.”
Reid promised the legislation would include provisions to secure both the north and south borders, revisions to a guest worker program, and provisions to deal with illegal immigrants already in the country.
“There are no excuses. This is something America needs,” Reid said. “We’re going to do immigration reform just like we did health care reform.”
Yikes, just like health care reform? Is that a threat or a promise. I don’t even think the Democrats are crazy enough to push amnesty through Congress. I don’t understand why we can just crack down on illegal immigration and create a lawful way for Mexicans to become citizens. However, I don’t understand the isolationist position either.
The isolationist portion of the GOP don’t want anyone to move here. These people don’t understand free trade or basic economics. This is the more populist position at the current time, but it’s not one that should be encouraged. With the Democrats in power this is the best chance for immigration reform, but no one on the left is talking about creating a legal path to citizenship without amnesty.
If Harry Ried and company decide to push this over the summer the elections in November could be a bloodbath. I’m talking a Republican super majority. The Democrats decided to lose the majority by passing ObamaCare, but I don’t think that amnesty is worth the political fallout.
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