Comments Posted By crosspatch
Displaying 61 To 70 Of 70 Comments
THE SPOILED BRAT WING OF THE GOP
A two-pronged attack would get rid of the incentive for most illegals anyway and a third prong would just about make all the other provisions moot. What caused the current wave of gate crashers was word getting around of "catch and release". Word filtered back to the home country that we weren't deporting people if they were caught so they loaded up the truck and head for Beverly, Hills that is. Home Depots, landscaping companies.
Ending catch and release, which the President has already done by executive order (doesn't require congress), is going to put a serious crimp on those arriving now. We are going to arrest them, hold them, and deport them.
The second prong is in the additional border enforcement. Adding some 300 miles of fence is less important that doubling the number of Border Patrol agents and adding surveillance technology. Now we have the ability to spot more crossers and arrest more crossers to hold and send back.
Now what about those already here? Tough question. Our law requires a deportation hearing. To hold 100 deportation hearings a day for 11 million people would require over 30 years. Now comes a third prong. You need to crack down HARD on people that hire anyone under the table. That is difficult because the number one employer of illegal aliens is the average US homeowner. You know, the guy that goes by Home Depot and picks up some labor to install that new sprinkler system or build that new deck. You have to start arresting Joe Sixpack. Then when the supply of jobs dries up coupled with the end of catch/release coupled with increased chances of getting caught at the border to begin with .... it starts making entering the legal system of getting a work permit look better.
Until we start arresting people that hire cash labor (and that includes ALL cash labor, not just migrants) we are never going to stop the flow because supply of jobs always meets supply of labor. If we build a fence, they will tunnel under it or hang-glide over it, or take a boat around it. They will still come as long as their OWN country is so screwed up.
Say, whatever happened to that "giant sucking sound" of US jobs that were all supposed to go to Mexico with NAFTA? Perot was so, so wrong.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 22.05.2006 @ 19:07
If the Republicans aren’t worried about losing US, their base, then they have carte blanche to do whatever they want, with no one holding them accountable.
Cutting off one's nose to spite their face isn't exactly up there in my list of intelligence responses. Ok, I get the part about people are upset that they didn't get everything they wanted. But politics is give and take. The Republicans don't have enough of a majority in the Senate to just shove stuff down the throat of the opposition. You have to get what you can get and try for more next time around. Things are different in the House and whatever comes out of Congress is going to have to be reconciled between the two houses. People are getting upset about what the Senate votes as if it's 100% sure thing that it will be in the final version presented for signing. It isn't.
Sure, anyone has a right to be upset but the action of refusing to vote to "punish" someone is going to end up punishing the far right of the party more than anyone else. Putting Democrats into office will do more to hurt the position of "the base" than it will the more center positioned part of the party. So what they are threatening to do actually punishes them the most and punishes those they would want to punish the least.
What could be more effective is to vow to work in future primary cycles to unseat the more centerist Republicans and replace them with those more to the right. That would be an intelligent and constructive response. What I am seeing is a childish destructive response.
Also, in considering a response such as this, one might wonder what the reaction of the party might be. It might decide that there is a huge pool of voters in the center that have abandoned the Democratic Party but have registered Independent rather than Republican. If the party thinks the far right is not going to vote, it is offered little choice but to move to the center to capture those votes. In other words, not only is there a risk that the result might be very damaging to the right wing's agenda if Democrats are elected, there is also the risk that the Republican Party itself might be moved further left.
If you want to have influence, you have to stay engaged. Playing a passive-aggressive game of disengagement might result in that subset of the party making itself irrelevent. In other words, those playing that game have more to lose than to gain.
You don't always get what you want. If the Senate had tried to put the House bill through as-is, the Democrats would still be filibustering. We would end up with nothing at all. Even 20% of something is better than 100% of nothing. I am going to call it like I see it and I see the reaction of a small but vocal minority of the party as doing more damage to their own agenda than to the rest of the party.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 22.05.2006 @ 18:02
By staying at home, you are making a choice just as surely as if you pull the lever in the voting booth for the Democrats. There is absolutely nothing intellectually sophisticated about withholding your vote for “strategic†reasons. It is, in fact, simple minded to have faith that you can effect change by not participating in the process.
It is a childish strategy of "since you didn't do what I wanted you to do, I am going to punish you by not voting". "I am going to make you as upset as you have made me". "I didn't get my pony for Christmas so I am not going to mow the lawn until you give me one".
Large groups of people such as political parties have members of that group of many different positions and many different emotional states of maturity. While there might be many people that wanted, say, zero amnesty, deport all illegals, and rebuild the Berlin Wall on the Mexican border, only a subset of those people would react in this childish manner when they didn't get what they want. Most would be mature and balanced and say something like "well, I didn't get what I want but we did get some of what we wanted" and continue working with the party to move their agenda further the next time the issue comes up. But there is going to be a subset of emotionally retarded individuals that will become passive-aggressive, stamp their feet, yell and scream, and hold their breath until they pass out when they don't get what they want. In a large group like a political party, there might be thousands of these types.
I further suspect that this subset of foot-stompers has these same problems and uses this same response in other aspects of their lives. I'll bet a lot of them just seem like they are always angry about something most of the time. I might suggest therepy.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 22.05.2006 @ 15:11
SO MUCH FOR PLAYING THE "CORRUPTION CARD"
One thing is for sure. Unless Congress is able to start policing itself, the people will do it for them.
The day that happens is the day this happens:
Hey, I think something just flew out of my butt! Look, it's a monkey!
Term limits are there for a reason. Most people don't know who their representatives are. When it comes time for elections, they look at the list and say "hmm, I've heard of this guy before, I'll vote for him" and then the next day it's all "Doh! I voted for the same guy again!" so term limits serve to remove the old guy from the ballot so the average person can't make that mistake. They want to vote the guys out of office but that is hard to do if you forget who is in office to begin with. Not all states mark the ballot with "incumbent" next to the guy's name and probably only 30% of average voters know what incumbent means anyway.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 21.05.2006 @ 21:41
BUSH BASHING 101: WHEN IN DOUBT, RECYCLE
What I take away from this posting is that what we should learn is that when all our indicators are "blinking red" like they were for Perl Harbor and for 9/11, we should consider ourselves already under attack. The only problem with my reaching that conclusion is that I have no way of knowing how many times everything was showing red and nothing happened.
But if we are getting that volume of indicators that something is up, from now on that should be our signal to get agressive and not wait for the attack to materialize. We had plenty of vague warning and it is only by a miracle that Japan didn't launch the final planned wave of bombers (because they didn't know where our carriers were) that would have taken out the oil tank farms at Perl Harbor (and would have stopped our Pacific operations out of Perl for years) and it was a miracle that the passengers on flight 93 prevented another disaster in DC and it was a miracle that United flight 23 in Newark got the message just before takeoff and returned to the gate.
We can't rely on miracles. I think history has shown us that when we have that level of indication, we are generally correct.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 19.05.2006 @ 00:30
ARE PARTS OF THE NSA TELEPHONE RECORDS STORY BOGUS?
So let's see, we have unconfirmed reports from unnamed sources of alleged activities. Sounds to me like someone could have made it all up.
What upsets me is that they get a story wrong so they start grapsing at staws. Now they are trying to make an issue out of legitimate intelligence collection. Remember Iran just a week or two ago came out and said they had terrorist cells here just waiting to be "activated".
It is NOT the job of the media to expose intelligence programs that are designed to root out domestic terrorist cells. The media seems hell bent to get more Americans killed.
Information on legal domestic intelligence collection operations MUST be kept secret. Just because someone tells a reporter, I am having a hard time understanding why the reporter feels obligated to report it. Doesn't the reporter have a greater responsibility to their community? Don't they feel any obligation to be part of the force that helps protect their neighbors and fellow citizens? Apparently these reporters believe that it is okay to put the lives of the population at risk in order to do political damage to the President. Maybe they think people will blame the government if we (God forbid) have another attack go undetected. I for one am going to blame the media for enabling the terrorists by informing them of our collection sources and methods.
To the journalism trade: What the hell is wrong with you people?
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 17.05.2006 @ 11:11
THE HYSTERICAL DRAMA QUEENS OF THE LEFT
The government already has the information to link all landline numbers to names and addresses, it's called the 911 system. When you place a call to 911 from an landline telephone, they know exactly what address the call is coming from. Even if the number is unlisted and you have caller-id blocked. I don't see Specter getting is panties twisted about that. In other words, our government at various levels has access to a huge amount of information concerning phone numbers that can be obtained instantly and without warrant.
Come on people, it's just phone numbers. The government can do a whowhere.com search on my phone number and find my address, they don't even need their own database for that. Also, 10 million numbers is a small subset of the total numbers out there. Our family has 4 phone numbers associated with it including mobile numbers. If the government wants our names and numbers and address, I will glady give it to them. But they could find it in the White Pages of our local phone book if they wanted to.
All of this uproar over what is practically public information anyway. Jeez.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 12.05.2006 @ 13:13
JUST HOW DYSFUNCTIONAL ARE OUR INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES?
"The Cia has to be totally revamped or disbanded."
It looks as if a revamp is certainly in the works but I would caution that it is possible that what we are experiancing is an exaggeration of the reality. Yes, there obviously are leaks and some problems but it is possible that it is a smaller number of people doing more leaking and getting a LOT of press exposure for it. This would make the problem appear much larger than it really is and cause people to get emotional and react without thinking things through. Actually, that is one of the goals of the "narcissistic force" is to cause an emotional response while they remain calm and calculated.
One thing I found encouraging in one of the articles was the idea that some CIA functions weren't going to be move wholesale, that the people were going to be dispersed among the various intelligence agencies. Or rather, the FUNCTION might move but the people won't move with it. That might be a good move, or it might cause a bunch more leaky buckets at other agencies. Time will tell.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 6.05.2006 @ 17:38
I'm not going to pretend to know what the situation is inside CIA nor am I going to give much weight to anything Priest writes on the issue as she is clearly biased and has an agenda to push. What I find highly disturbing, though, is that there seems to be a small rotten bunch of apples in there that are very vocal and have direct access to media giving the appearance that their views are more widespread than they really are.
As was stated in the article, I didn't elect any CIA analyst to shape policy to their world view. I don't want some analyst spinning information to the leadership and I certainly don't want people in there that let their egos get in the way of their professionalism. We apparently still have some people in there that have a world view that they would want to help bring about through their work. That isn't what they get paid to do. It isn't patriotism.
They are paid to present honest analysis. If they get upset of their analysis isn't accepted in policy decisions and would want to take that policy debate pubic or exact revenge for not having been listened to, then they are not emotionally fit to serve in that position. They have let their opinion of themselves grow larger than life and given themselves power they are not entitled to. That we are still having this debate tells me there is still some dead wood to cut out of the agency.
Another thing I find disturbing is that Dana Priest is still "reporting" for the Washington Post. She is obviously a propagandist and not a journalist. She has an agenda. She would like to see a certain vision of the world come to be and is trying to act as a tool in the realization of that vision. While that is fine in many professions, it isn't when it comes to reporting. Journalists are the intelligence analysts for the American public and when we get fed distorted analysis, it distorts our decision making process. At least it does until we recongize that we have been fed propaganda and stop listening. Priest isn't doing the Post any favors. While the chior might love her preaching, the congregation is headed for the doors.
I believe that all of this fuss is over a very small number of individuals, maybe no more than a dozen or two, and their direct access to journalists who are sympathetic to their crusade and share their world view. The saddest part to all of this is the the vast majority of professionals at that agency are never going to say anything in public. We are never going to hear the other side of the story aired in the press. They are too dedicated to their profession to do that. The net result is that we hear only from the rotten ones and through people like Dana Priest, get the impression that the problem is more widespread than it really is.
It isn't patriotism, it's closer to narcissistic personality disorder in my opinion.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 6.05.2006 @ 14:19
THE INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY OF THE OPEN BORDERS CROWD
What bugs the living devil out of me is even the ones we call "Native Americans" are immigrants. The only thing that separates us is the timing of the migration.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 3.05.2006 @ 17:25
