"Illegal" Immigration + English Our "Official Language" = Bait and Switch Number... Oh My God I've lost Count!

Last month ago I asked the question, "Immigration? Where the hell did this issue come from all of a sudden?" Now I can ask the question, "Legislation to make English our official language? Where the hell did that come from?" Answer:

The Senate on Thursday approved an immigration-bill amendment sponsored by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would declare English the national language. ~The Chicago Tribune

In other words, the same place: The Republican Party. Why?

Answer: The Democrats (God help them. Please.) are positioned to spank the Republicans in November, although there's more than enough time for the Demos to tangle their tongues in their feet.

...And by taking this foolishness seriously they are well on their way to doing just that.

Let's look at some defining Republican issues:

1) Fiscal conservatism. The only way the Bush Administration can make the federal deficit look halfway acceptable is to over-project then be pleased as punch at the lower increase. No one, however, is buying. Also, China has passed Japan in floating our national debt which Bush is pushing into numbers only astronomers use.

2) Smaller Government: This from the CATO Institute in 2003, "...we have mounting deficits because George W. Bush is the most gratuitous big spender to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter. One could say that he has become the "Mother of All Big Spenders." LINK

3) Roe v. Wade: It's still there.

4) Marriage "Protection" Amendment: It's still not there.

5) School prayer: Not yet.

Now some Republican problems:

1) Iraq: No flowers. No WMD. No oil. Big mess.

2) Katrina and Rita: Big bumble. Big mess.

3) Jack Abramoff: So much for good, conservative Christian values.

4) Tom DeLay: See Jack Abramoff.

5) Lewis Libby (and maybe Karl Rove? Maybe... Big Dick "Shoot Before You Look" Cheney?): Indictments for perjury and obstruction in a case about outing a covert CIA agent working on WMD and Iran? Ouch!

6)Randy "Duke" Cunningham: See Jack Abramoff, but add one defense contractor named Brent Wilkes hosting weekly parties at the Watergate Hotel (oh delicious irony) with friendly poker games, hookers and bribes with one Kyle “Dusty” Foggo (number three man at the CIA) and you get one CIA Director, Porter Goss, suddenly deciding to spend more quality time with his family.

Did I leave anything out? Of course I did. I'd need staff to get it all down straight before the sun burns out.

So what does the Republican Party have left? Poor, Spanish speaking Mexicans crossing the border to do things like take care of rich Republican's children, manicure their lawns or pick fruits and vegetables.

Of course, these people carry "Spanish" like a disease that's likely to make even you speak with an accent any day now.

This is all, of course, called "changing the subject." It's all the Repubs have left while their beautiful world crumbles around them, and people, especially the all important independents, are buying it.

What no one is asking anywhere is why those who hire these people aren't being taken to task. No. The criminals are poor people trying to send some bucks home to their families.

Those are the kind of conservative, Christian values they can depend on every time.

But more important, the public discussion over all those other big mess issues has been diluted.

Come on, America. Stop being the idiot they take you for.

Cheers,
Clemsy

PS: Does this mean George is going to have to learn English now?


QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

You want to shut down illegal immigration? You want to use the military as police? Make it illegal to hire undocumented workers and put the National Guard into enforcing that. Then rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement and invest in Mexico.

Meanwhile, further proof that the GOP is cuckoo comes to us with the passage of another $70 billion tax cut for the rich. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the average middle-income household will get a $20 tax cut, while those making more than $1 million a year will get nearly $42,000. ~Molly Ivins from The Politics of Lunacy


QUOTES FROM THE HIVE MIND

The president has never supported making English the national language. ~Alberto Gonzales

As you know, there were actually a couple of amendments that came up yesterday, an Inhofe amendment and also a Salazar amendment. And what has come out of that is a description of English as the national language. And I think — and we have supported both of these. ~ White House Press Secretary Tony Snow


OCCUPATION: IRAQ

The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves. ~The Independent (Thank you Gertrude Bell.)


RELIGION

Evangelical Christians are not all white people living in the suburbs and only concerned with abortion and same-sex marriage. ~Jack Pannell, spokesman for Sojourners (Thank god.)

Trawling for Leakers Part 2

FBI Acknowledges: Journalists' Phone Records are Fair Game

"It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration," said a senior federal official.

This wouldn't be a problem if so many people in the intelligence community didn't think what is going on is so horribly wrong.

Do we give a corrupt government free reign to control what we hear because we've let them convince us of some phony war on terror?

Do we believe their transparent lies about the legality of their behavior?

Bush sends the National Guard to the Mexican border. How about having them inspecting shipping containers in New York Harbor? Or guarding chemical depots?

War on terror. A fairy tale to scare children at night. A sound bite for votes.

If he believed in it he'd start conscription. If we believed in it we'd let him.

There's your proof. As long as someone else is fighting and dieing, "Bring it on!" No sacrifice here. No rationing. No raising taxes to pay for the troops.

War on terror. It's a war on our minds.

Phone tapping reporters is a big step toward brown shirts and jackboots. When it's too late what are you going to do?

I'll tell you what you'll do. You'll say, "Keep quiet and go along with them. It's safer."

As long as George Bush stays in office, we are a nation of cowards.

Zeig heil, George.

Trawling for Leakers

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation. LINK

So you thought the NSA was just looking for terrorists? The above story is a significant tick of the clock that will turn America into a fascist state on the stroke of midnight. Of particular note are the comments posted to this story. There's one or two horrified posts followed by a string of winger "all you reporters belong in jail" fascist blather. A little lower down there's this comment by one Dawn Howard:

You do realize people are being paid by the Bush administration to attack the press publically on comment pages like this. I personally was offered a job doing it.

Look at the similarities in the comments.

She's quite right about the similarity of the comments. I'd be surprised if this is a White House operation. More likely the RNC or some other right-wing group that wouldn't know liberty from a hangman's noose.

Cheers,
Clemsy

National Guard to Chase Mexicans Through Desert

Desperation (n.): Sending the National Guard to protect the country from poor Mexicans coming across the border to pick tomatoes.

How about sending them to the Port of New York to inspect shipping containers?

Not that our Guard wouldn't prefer the American desert to the Iraqi desert!

Basically the president's poll numbers have reversed. Toward the end of 2003, his approval hovered around 70%, now they're flirting with the 30% mark.

That 40% that blows with the wind? Hitler depended on them to get a good grip on Germany during the 1930's. I'm sure they all mean well and are very patriotic, but the grouch in me keeps thinking,

"Morons."

The 30% who still support Bush contains a few, stubborn Blind Faithers and Willful Ignorants and all the FDA's in the country, impatiently awaiting permission to don brown shirts.

Cheers,
Clemsy


QUOTES OF THE WEEK:

We all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cause he might be all that stands between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. ~Jack Cafferty, CNN

Many Americans have simply lost faith in the administration's ingenuity. Only a quarter of those polled had much confidence in W.'s ability to handle a crisis; a mere 9 percent are sure he can successfully end the Iraq war, and a paltry 4 percent think the administration has a clear plan to keep gas prices down. ~Maureen Dowd

If Democrats and, for that matter, Republicans let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install yet another second-rate sycophant at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A., someone should charge those senators with treason, too. ~Frank Rich


THE ENVIRONMENT

While Washington Slept

These are just some of the reasons why David King wrote in Science in 2004, “Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of terrorism.” King’s comment raised hackles in Washington and led a top press aide to Tony Blair to try to muzzle him. But the science adviser tells me he “absolutely” stands by his statement. By no means does King underestimate terrorism; advising the British government on that threat, he says, “is a very important part of my job.” But the hazards presented by climate change are so severe and far-reaching that, in his view, they overshadow not only every other environmental threat but every other threat, period.


RELIGION

So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

That's what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back. ~Andrew Sullivan

Help your government! Make a phone call today!

Doesn't matter to whom or to where. Your assistance is required in aiding the National Security Agency compile the "largest data base in the world of every phone call ever made."

Although they are not necessarily recording your calls, it is strongly recommended that you trust the NSA with your deepest darkest secrets. Please don't feel threatened in any way, or consider using some 'code' to discuss personal matters you erroneously feel is none of the NSA's business as such behavior may bring you undesirable attention from men in suits wearing dark glasses.

Read all about it: NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

Also, praise the Lord! The NSA has finally gotten that childish Justice Department probe off its back:

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter. LINK

There! Don't you feel safe and secure knowing Big Daddy (who needs a Big Brother?) is watching?

Those of you who do may find this quote from Judgement at Nurenberg enlightening.

But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs... The murder of children... How easily that can happen. There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the protection of the country. Of survival. The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult. Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth... and the value of a single human being.~Spencer Tracy as Chief Judge Dan Haywood in Judgement at Nurenberg

>

At the risk of repeating myself let me end with:

What? No revolution yet?

Cheers,
Clemsy


QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period. After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. ~Doug McIntyre, right-wing radio host in LA


WOOPS! OF THE WEEK

SOME 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday.

The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished. LINK

For Gays, Iraq Returns to the Middle Ages

One item ignored in the lead up to the Iraqi invasion was the type of government Iraq was hardwired to form with the elimination of Hussein's secular, Stalinist regime. Two years a go the local NPR affiliate asked, during a call-in segment, whether or not the U.S. should pull its troops out immediately. I said something to the effect that I felt as if troop withdrawal shouldn't be precipitous, but that I also felt that regardless of how quickly the troops are withdrawn the question is really how many people will die before Iraq becomes an Islamist state (and possibly a few Islamist states) to one degree or another.

A quick look at the Iraqi constitution confirms this:

SECTION ONE: FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

Article 1:

(The Republic of Iraq is a single, independent federal state with full sovereignty. Its system of government is republican, representative 61/27Parliamentary63/47 and democratic. This Constitution is the guarantor of its unity)

Article 2:

First: Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation:

A. No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.

B. No law that contradicts the principles of democracy may be established. LINK

We are already seeing signs of the easily expected conflict between 2A and 2B. I offer for your consternation:

Iraqi police 'killed 14-year-old boy for being homosexual'
By Jerome Taylor
Published: 05 May 2006

Human rights groups have condemned the "barbaric" murder of a 14-year-old boy, who, according to witnesses, was shot on his doorstep by Iraqi police for the apparent crime of being gay.

Ahmed Khalil was shot at point-blank range after being accosted by men in police uniforms, according to his neighbours in the al-Dura area of Baghdad.Campaign groups have warned of a surge in homophobic killings by state security services and religious militias following an anti-gay and anti-lesbian fatwa issued by Iraq's most prominent Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Ali Hili, the co-ordinator of a group of exiled Iraqi gay men who monitor homophobic attacks inside Iraq, said the fatwa had instigated a "witch-hunt of lesbian and gay Iraqis, including violent beatings, kidnappings and assassinations".

"Young Ahmed was a victim of poverty," he said. "He was summarily executed, apparently by fundamentalist elements in the Iraqi police."

Neighbours in al-Dura district say Ahmed's father was arrested and interrogated two days before his son's murder by police who demanded to know about Ahmed's sexual activities. It is believed Ahmed slept with men for money to support his poverty-stricken family, who have fled the area fearing further reprisals.

The killing of Ahmed is one of a series of alleged homophobic murders. There is mounting evidence that fundamentalists have infiltrated government security forces to commit homophobic murders while wearing police uniforms.

Human rights groups are particularly concerned that the Sadr and Badr militias, both Shia, have stepped up their attacks on the gay community after a string of religious rulings, since the US-led invasion, calling for the eradication of homosexuals.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani recently issued a fatwa on his website calling for the execution of gays in the "worst, most severe way".

The powerful Badr militia acts as the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which counts Ayatollah Sistani as its spiritual leader. Another fatwa from the late and much revered Ayatollah Abul Qassim Khoei allows followers to kill gays "with a sword, or burn him alive, or tie his hands and feet and hurl him down from a high place".

Mr Hili said: "According to our contacts in Baghdad, the Iraqi police have been heavily infiltrated by the Shia paramilitary Badr Corps."

Mr Hili, whose Abu Nawas group has close links with clandestine gay activists inside Iraq, said US coalition forces are unwilling to try and tackle the rising tide of homophobic attacks. "They just don't want to upset the Iraqi government by bringing up the taboo of homosexuality even though homophobic murders have intensified," he said.

A number of public homophobic murders by the Badr militia have terrified Iraq's gay community. Last September, Hayder Faiek, a transsexual, was burnt to death by Badr militias in the main street of Baghdad's al-Karada district. In January, suspected militants shot another gay man in the back of the head.

The US State Department has yet to document the surge in its annual human rights reports. Iraq's neighbours, however, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are often criticised for their persecution of gays.

Darla Jordan, from the US State Department said: "The US government continues to work closely with our Iraqi partners to ensure the protection of human rights and the safety of all Iraqi citizens." LINK

One wonders whether the wonder boys who helped create this care or not given 'Enduring Bases' and the somewhat elaborate embassy under construction.

Perhaps all this chaos is the perfect screen for other plans? In my more cynical moments I wonder if everything is going precisely according to plan.

Cheers,
Clemsy

...'Enduring'. I wonder how much spinning synonyms at the Pentagon pays?