Says Senator Lindsey Graham, who is retaliating by withdrawing his support for the climate change and energy bill.
Progress on an energy and climate bill in the Senate has relied heavily on Mr. Graham’s active participation and support. He is the only Republican to have formally endorsed a broad approach to dealing with global warming and energy issues and is needed to try to bring in support from other Republicans.Bipartisan. That treasured principle. If you've got one person from the other party, you can try to assert that you're pursuing it. Without even one... people might notice the exaggeration.
Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate policy, said that the administration would work to secure bipartisan agreement on both energy and immigration measures this year....
[Senator Harry] Reid said that Mr. Graham was under “tremendous pressure” from fellow Republicans not to cooperate with Democrats on either energy or immigration. In a swipe, he added, “But I will not allow him to play one issue off of another, and neither will the American people. They expect us to do both, and they will not accept the notion that trying to act on one is an excuse for not acting on the other.”I love Reid's purported channeling of "the American people," which, it seems, he needs to do really quickly, before actual Americans get to the polls in November and tell him what we really think.
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Maybe Lindsey knows what a bust immigration will be for Rebuplicans.
Senator Lindsey Graham,RINO asswipe extraordinaire.
Speaking from experience along the border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas I can say without hesitation that the illegal situation is out of control. The feds do nothing because the democrats are counting each illegal as an entitlement prospect who will vote democratic in the next election.
With that theme in mind I will add the following observations; California has signs at the immigration stop on I-5/101 with pictures of illegals running across the freeway. You see, they don't want us to hit them or stop suddenly causing a pile-up. Better to drive slow and let them cross onto Camp Pendleton or along the beache to be picked up later, probably by the same car that let them out.
Arizona has the distinction of being the kidnap for ransom capital of world as mexicans prey on mexicans usually drug cartel related. The illegals who don't die in the desert discard their inbound clothing/detritus in various arroyos south of the city before mingling with the citizens of Tucson. Recently bus companies using stretch vans have been busted running illegals into the interior as a continuation of the "coyote express." Crossing the border at Lukeville and Nogales we are searched for weapons going in and drugs coming back. I might add that with a few exceptions the drug cartels buy their heavy weapons on the black market south of the border not in the U.S.
New Mexico provides a relatively short walk through wilderness desert to link up with I-10 and are busy getting picked up at the San Simon truck stop. From there it is a short trip to Tucson, Albuquerque and El Paso.
Texas is the worst of the lot with Juarez and Nuevo Laredo as the main arteries for violence and illegal penetration of U.S. soil. Even if they have visas they can overstay the visa, hide in the barrio of a sanctuary city and live like citizens using the underground economy.
The Arizona law that goes into effect in around 90 days is a cry for help and real politik to address the serious problem illegals cause. The situation is all the more dire given the increased demand for services they cause and the 10% unemployment rate causing decreased revenues and unfunded federal mandates. In any case, law enforcement will not pull folks over for questioning without just cause. By the way, I support Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his activities to keep us safe.
Do I sympathize with the plight of mexican nationals fleeing a corrupt country? Yes. Do I want to support them? NO. My insurance premiums cover uninsured motorists, underinsured motorists and vehicle theft coverage. While driving in Los Angeles at the I-5/605 interchange we were rearended by a mexican truck with 30,000 pounds of tomatoes heading for Oregon. Our RV was destroyed. We are lucky to be alive. The truck driver provided and insurance card from a front organization in San Ysidro on the border. I called the information in to my insurance company who immediately ascertained that it had been cancelled upon receipt of the proof of insurance card. The CHP representative wouldn't file a report saying the insurance companies would settle it and turned the truck loose. On the way back to Arizona I stopped at the Banning truck inspection and asked them if they checked for "papeles por favor!" They said they did but rarely verified that the papers represented a policy in force. Not enough time (wink wink) don't you know. Seems the DOT does not want to raise a ruckus with NAFTA which, in my opinion, looks the other way politically.
Enough is enough. My standard of living is deteriorating for home-grown entitlements and under attack for illegal entitlements.
NO MAS!
This is it. They must force their agenda on us before we can vote them out. They deliberately broke the system when they forced "HC reform" through, and now they need to grab what they can before the natural checks and balances are restored.
I expect that both of these issues will be treated a lot like HC reform. A refusal to allow the public to see the text, lies about the cost, bribes, class/race warfare rhetoric being used to silence opposition, etc.
Not sure how much more of the Obama Method America can stand, but these two attempts at "transformative change" will test us to the max.
Thank God. Maybe this will put an end to Obama's 'everything is a crisis and must be done NOW or the world is going to end' diatribes.
Like every issue he foments hasn't been around forever.
Even if you buy his notion that SOMETHING - ANYTHING must be done - It's not a crisis if you can see it coming.
There's time to think it out rationally, to take small and measured steps.
There's also time to say, "No."
Soon Reid will resurrect the great "Silent Majority" meme.
The liberals in the blue states that are not feeling the heat yet from illegal Mexicans will force Arizona to go back not not checking papers or busting illegals in general.
Lindsey Grahamnesty refusing to reach across the aisle to his friends in the Democratic Party?
Glory, glory, hallelujah!! The Millennium has come!!!
On a less frivolous note, Brietbart has been talking about the National Socialists trying to ram through the rest of their agenda by November by a variety of ploys, including doing away with the filibuster. Losing Arlen Graham is a real blow to that, though possibly not insurmountable.
Immigration is the key to RahmBO's wet dream of a Permanent Democratic Majority and vet66's first paragraph expresses it very well. Of course, ramming this through might very well cause the Law of Unintended Consequences to kick in and The Zero administration is having a rough time with it already.
I hope this doesn't have anything to do with him being a lesbian.
Lindsey said "I know from my own personal experience the tremendous amounts of time, energy and effort that must be devoted to this issue to make even limited progress."
And you have spent a lot of time and made minimal progress. So what is your point.
I think Arizona making it illegal to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona will be more about trying to embarass Washington into doing something to alleviate the situation than the State trying to do it by themselves.
The Hispanics I know are much more upset about "the illegals" than the Anglos.
The fooferaw about "Papieren,bitte" is nonsense. It is a long time ago, but I had a plastic encased "green card," which I was most emphatically warned that I were to carry on my person at all times. There is nothing new about this.
The cops are not going to look for "Hispanic appearance" in an area where 50% or more, of the population is Hispanic. It is going to take something like Chihuahua license plates where they had not ought to be, or a Chiapas accent and haircut and mode of dress, none of which are "racial" as such.
My personal feelings are somewhat nostalgic for the way things were 50 years ago, when we were roughly equally poor on each side of the border, and people pretty much drifted back and forth without anybody paying much attention one way or the other, but those days are gone forever.
The argument that the Democrats expect the "illegal immigrants" to vote Democratic, is silly. The "illegals" are not going to unnecessarily attract attention to themselves by registering to vote. Their children in 20 years and more forward, yes, but what politician thinks farther forward than the next election?
Election frauds are committed by the folks who run the "system" and count the votes; not by newcomers.
We do need to get a handle on the situation which will necessitate "amnesty" by that or any other name, since the majority of the immigrants are not going back no matter how much some folks huff and blow, and then we need a fairly liberal (small "l", please!) immigration policy with Mexico. The Mexican immigrants are obviously wanted in this country, or something would have been done to stem the influx long ago, but we do need some assurance that Cela Guttierrez from Las Palmas actually is that Cela Guttierrez and not some other nefarious sort of person.
Dear Senator Reid:
Doing nothing is an excellent option. You fuck up everything you touch. Do nothing or you're fired.
Your Boss,
The American People
I love Reid's purported channeling of "the American people," which, it seems, he needs to do really quickly, before actual Americans get to the polls in November and tell him what we really think.
Despite losing by 5 percentage points in 2008, and holding only 40% of each house of Congress, the GOP has been claiming to represent the American people ever since. I don't recall our hostess casting doubt on their hudspeth-filled claims.
The only thing that "amnesty" will assure is that illegal immigration will become far more prevalent than it already is. If a nation is unwilling to secure it's own borders, and it rewards those who break it's laws it just gets that much more attractive (has anyone put a dollar amount on all the benefits these newly "legal" immigrants will likely receive over their lifetimes?).
The increased demand to enter the U.S. will, of course, lead to further violence among the human smugglers. And whatever policy we have in regards to Mexico becomes our de facto policy for the rest of the world. Amnesty is tempting (and by far the easiest "solution" for pols to embrace), but it's also a horrible mistake that will do nothing to address the problems of today while guaranteeing much worse problems in the future.
Hagar: We do need to get a handle on the situation which will necessitate "amnesty" by that or any other name, since the majority of the immigrants are not going back no matter how much some folks huff and blow, and then we need a fairly liberal (small "l", please!) immigration policy with Mexico. The Mexican immigrants are obviously wanted in this country, or something would have been done to stem the influx long ago...
The large influx of Mexican (and points south) immigrants of recent decades was wanted by the people who benefit from that influx, and not wanted by people on whom the influx has had a negative effect. This conflict isn't going to settled by an amnesty or more liberal legal immigration policy, any more than Reagan's "just this one last amnesty, folks" in the '80s kept the conflict from growing to the proportions it has now assumed, or any more than any amnesty anywhere in the developed world in the last few decades has "fixed" anything.
The problem with your solution is that beneath its superficial reasonableness it's really just another round of "let's do what we did last time and the time before that and the time before that and expect different results." Control has already been lost; there is no "getting a handle on", in a nice, bland, no-pain-to-anyone fashion, a situation that is the result of decades of insidious corruption and policies that have damaged Joe and José 6P alike. The PTB, both Democrat and Repbulican, thought, and still idiotically believe, apparently, that they can spend decades winking at their favored categories of lawlessness, but everybody else is going to go on forever following the rules in a state where they get ever diminishing rewards for doing so.
Doesn't work that way. Though I guess some uninformed pol's conviction that "one more amnesty" will fix the problem is slightly less insane than the belief that screeching "xenophobe", "redneck", or "racist" at distraught citizens will magically "disappear" all the ill consequences of their decades' long dereliction of duty.
Well, Moira, The ones that are here now are not going back any more than the Indians can make us squareheads go back where we came from, and we do need to get them "regularized" somehow so that they pay taxes, especially payroll taxes, which are going to be sorely needed to support all the new entitlements we have voted ourselves lately.
Hagar,
... The ones that are here now are not going back any more than the Indians can make us squareheads go back where we came from ...
That's only true if we allow it to be true.
I haven't tried to verify the statistic, but some say that the illegal immigrant population of AZ is down 14% over last year.
If they understand they will be arrested and deported, many will leave voluntarily.
I read somewhere that 60% of Mexicans say that they would emigrate to America if they got the chance. Isn't that the greater scandal? That America produces more opportunity than their own country. Whatever the prejudice of the anglos, it is less detrimental than the corruption of their own jefes. They already had their glorious revolution and now the children of that glorious revolution want to come here and establish another state based on those same principles of social justice that worked so well in the past.
10-12 million people, a great many of whom have been here for 20-30 years or more and have "native born" children are not going to be arrested and deported. That just is not going to happen.
Mexico is a part of North America.
It is true, I think, that this migration has lot to do with the PRI running the Mexican economy off the rails - kind of like Congress is doing to the U.S. economy now, and the "immigrants" are trying to escape that, not re-create what they are running from.
The general run of "Mexicans" I know - native born or latecomers - have a work ethic that makes the Japanese look like a lazy bunch of bums and certainly puts us Anglos to shame, and they are generally very good people.
Hagar,
If these un-lazy people would just get un-lazy about applying and getting themselves legal there would not be a problem and they could forget about their lack of a green card. That is the solution and it is up to them to do the solving. I see no reason why all the other immigrants are able to get themselves legal and only this one group has not. Seems to me that it has nothing to do with the rest of us and we should not have to put up with their failure to do what is legally required.
Hagar: Well, Moira, The ones that are here now are not going back any more than the Indians can make us squareheads go back where we came from, and we do need to get them "regularized" somehow so that they pay taxes...
Sure, Hagar, and once they're regularized the problems that "regularization" was supposed to address will go right on metastasizing. I guess the bit about "doing what you've done in the past and expecting different results" went in one ear and out the other. The cheap labor addicts are not going to go clean and sober just because we run one more "last amnesty ever, honest!". Amnesties always result in new, larger waves of more exploitable illegal labor.
...especially payroll taxes, which are going to be sorely needed to support all the new entitlements we have voted ourselves lately.
Whaddaya mean "we", white man?
Believing that mass non-stop immigration of low-skill Third Worlders, willing to work for below-native-level wages, and who therefore, along with their children, draw disproportionately on social services, are somehow going to be the salvation of our ever more demented inter-generational Ponzi schemes, is deeply delusional.
Mexico is a part of North America.
And? Look, Hagar, if you want to argue that national sovereignty is meaningless and that the mere fact of being in North America gives us all some special right to swan all over the continent as the spirit moves us, sublimely indifferent to silly notions of citizenship and borders, I suppose you could cook up some consistent position. Obtuse. Insane. But consistent. However, Canada, and even more so Mexico, are not so tolerant about other "North Americans" sneering at their laws and borders, as we are.
It is true, I think, that this migration has lot to do with the PRI running the Mexican economy off the rails -
Hey, don't just blame the PRI. Lots of gringos had a hand in creating the conditions that forced people north. Not that you shouldn't blame the Mexican elites, mind you. Just not only the Mexican elites.
...kind of like Congress is doing to the U.S. economy now, and the "immigrants" are trying to escape that, not re-create what they are running from.
Actually "re-creating what they're running from" is what tends to happen under current conditions of "too many, too fast", and a host culture run by venal cretins.
The general run of "Mexicans" I know - native born or latecomers - have a work ethic that makes the Japanese look like a lazy bunch of bums and certainly puts us Anglos to shame and they are generally very good people.
So I'm inferring here that you believe that people unhappy about uncontrolled immigration are that way because...what?...the Mexicans they know must be, like, lazy and jerky or something? They don't think Mexicans are nice and hard-working? Huh? I'm at a loss to see what your point is here.
(And btw, speak for your own lazy ass, Hagar. I'm sick and tired of hearing lazy-ass Anglos like you projecting your own lazy-assitude onto the rest of us. If you're ashamed of your character flaws go do something about them instead of sitting around insulting the millions of people out here getting up every morning and working their tails off.)
I don't think I understand this one. There seems to be genuine outrage that Arizona has taken a serious position that *illegal immigration" is illegal. If *illegal immigration* is not illegal - what is it?
Is is unconstitutional to secure the border? I'm not getting the deeper arguments here.
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