Last night, around 6:30 or so, there was a knock at my door.  AM wasn't home yet, so it was just me and the dogs.  They of course went completely batsh*t crazy, as they are wont to do when someone dares to knock at the door.  Glancing through the peephole, I see a young lady with a clipboard. 

“Probably someone raising awareness about tomorrow's election.”

I thought I had both dogs in check when I opened the door.   I know that I had grabbed one of them.  Unfortunately, when I opened the door, I found that I had grabbed the wrong one.  Rather than having a hold on Leo, the escape artist, I had Dina, who is too paranoid to go running off on her own.  You can guess what happened next.  If you can't, I'll just sum up and say that I spent the next 20 minutes outside watching my dog carefully measure the distance between the two of us so that there was at least 50 feet of running room.  Finally, he tuckered himself out.  Unfortunately I had lost him at this point, so I was unaware that the damn dog had wandered back to our door BY HIMSELF.  I was about ready to kill my dog and the person whom I had irrationally blamed for the whole mess, the political activist. 

This got me thinking.  Stu's wife called him at work yesterday, asking if there was any sort of physical device they could purchase to block calls.

Apparently by around 1 or so in the afternoon, they had gotten 18 prerecorded political messages on their home line.  18!  What's worse, the messages didn't release your phone line until after they ran through the whole thing.

I have to wonder if this is really the way that politicians wish to endear themselves to the voting public.

I mean, I understand that it's a primary during a non-presidential year.  I realize that the only people showing up at the polls today are the pollworkers themselves.  I comprehend that politicians exist in a world where they're competing with an overwhelming barrage of information and noise coming from the umpteen dozen electronic devices that each person carries around on their bodies.  And I get that people just don't like politicians…any of them…these days.

But 18 calls?  Seriously?

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“How far we've come…”

Those are the words stuck in my head as my eyes remain stuck to the television which is of course stuck to the news.

How far we've come.  Sixty years ago, the Jewish people were rising from the ashes of their most publicized disaster .  (I'm not sure if it really was the worst.  The Inquisition was pretty nasty.  Plus there were all those times we were run out of a country at the point of a sword.  But there were no cameras back then.)    After thousands of years, we had stopped wandering in the desert and had come home.  Home, of course, was a small island in the middle of very stormy seas.  Surrounded on all sides by enemies, the state of Israel persevered.

And now, in order to show our strength to an insane group of people in Lebanon the Israelis have become the demons of fire and destruction.

I do not excuse the actions of Hezbollah.  For months, they planned an act of war.  For months, they planned to perform actions that would destroy the tense calm the existed on the border of Lebanon.  And they did this knowing…KNOWING…that the Lebanese people, their countrymen, would suffer the consequence. 

But still, my heart is broken.  

Just some thoughts.

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On May 1st, if all goes according to plan, the United States of America will simply…stop.

Or at least, that's what organizers of a massive nationwide protest on behalf of illegal immigrants hope will happen.  They hope that businesses will close, that major cities will shut down, and that America will capitulate.

Personally, I believe that the effects will be more negative for these protesters than they can believe.  I believe that there will be a tremendous backlash against illegal immigrants by “Middle America”.  After all, Americans don't like to be bullied.  (We actually prefer to be the bullies, but that's a whole different can of worms.)

Don't get me wrong.  I support immigrant's rights and immigration/border reform in order to create a better, more responsible system that allows us to have accountability at our borders while still allowing people to enter and take part in our society.  I believe that immigrants are a vital component of our economy and of our continued development as a nation.  However, these protests started over the strengthening of our borders, and the prosecution of those who enter our country illegally and those who enable those people to live here illegally. 

You can wrap it up in as many pretty, politically correct terms as you want.  You can re-term and rephrase the hell out of the issue.  But it's still about illegal immigration.  It's still about people going over, under, and through our Mexican and Canadian borders.  It's still about people shipping themselves into our ports.   It's still about people disappearing into the woodwork with expired visas.    It's still about people breaking the law.

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My wife and I have had a conversation or two on the subject of illegal immigrants.   One of her statements that caught my mind and merged with some other statements that I had heard on WSB 750 and NPR was that though the immediate image that emerges when someone mentions illegal immigration is of a poor Latino scurrying through the desert or stuffed into the lining of a car while crossing the border, a huge percentage of our illegal immigrants do not, in fact, enter the country illegally.

Somwhere between one third and one half of the estimated twelve million illegals in our country entered the country legally on a visa and stayed past the expiration date.  (article)

To paraphrase my wife:  “Why favor a big ol' honkin' fence instead of increasing the resources available to agents to address that problem?”  Of course my wife would never use the words “Big Ol' Honkin'”.  She argues with grace, passion, and eloquance, usually on the side opposite of my own.  But I place them in there for emphasis and humor value.

And she has an excellent point.  If you are in favor of addressing the problem of illegal immigration, why not address the issue of expired visas first?  More than likely you'd have a better grasp on where people might be and what they might be doing. 

I've been toying with this concept in my mind (as there's precious little else going on up there), and I have to say that I still feel strongly that illegal border crossing is the larger problem for me.  My reasoning is that addressing the problem of our borders not only begins to address the problem of illegal immigration, but also begins to address the problem of illegal (and very possibly dangerous) products coming into our country (such as radioactive materials, or something more mundane like narcotics).  It's a safety thing for me, moreso than an immigration thing.

Of course, the counterpoint to that argument is that all of the 9/11 hijackers were in the US on expired visas.  It has obviously been shown that we are just as likely to receive harm from those who overstay their welcome as those who get no welcome at all.  Yet in my mind, I keep thinking how much worse it could have been if they had knocked down the Towers with a tactical nuke smuggled over the border rather than airplanes. 

Just a thought or two.

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Normally I stay away from political debates. This is not to say that I do not have opinions. I just know who my primary viewing audience is and I really don't want to field phone calls from my mother where she tells me how I'm breaking her heart while simultaneously fending off the slings and arrows of my wife and my friend Huda. And I do mean slings and arrows.

My thoughts tend to run in more conservative circles around my head than my family and friends. And given that they're the ones who read this site, I tend to keep my mouth shut. After all, the only thing that I can hope for is that they might forget my conservative viewpoints. A permanent web-record does not lend itself to that goal.

And yet, my friend Huda posted on her site today a self-written article about immigration that I fine myself to be more or less in agreement with. This has given me courage to write my own little opinion, however poorly it may be received.

Anyone who is not aware of the immigration debate currently engulfing our nation has, of course, been doing their best to surpass Helen Keller as the most disconnected person on the face of the planet.  At least she could sign into your hand.  So I don't really need to go into the nitty-gritty details.

Today in Atlanta, some 50,000 people (overwhelmingly of Latino descent) marched to protest local and national movements to “Do Something About the Immigration Problem.”  This is the continuation of the massive protests that have been staged around the country in the towns and cities.  Actions such as these, and in another corner of the debate the border watch by the Minutemen have given rise to numerous calls for legislation.  Some call for absolute criminalization.  Others call for absolute amnesty.  Some point out the millions who have been through the years of Process and Bureaucracy to become legal citzens.  Others point out the huge effort and hard-working ethic of our illegal neighbors.  There are chants of “We Love America” that sing out in dissonant harmony with “Los Angeles is ours”.

And it seems necessary that I add my voice to the cacophony.  In fact, it is altogether necessary that all citizens of this nation weigh the issue and put forth their opinion.

My personal feeling on the matter aligns itself with stronger, better, more complete border security for the United States.  I believe that we need accountability and security along our many thousands of miles of sparsely patrolled borders.  As Huda points out, recent tests of our borders by our own government found our border crossing points, even where they are manned and patrolled, are at best an open door for illegal and dangerous goods such as the dreaded Weapons of Mass Destruction.  At worst they are a red-carpet invitation.  

It is not the two hundred thousand latino workers who come across our borders to work our fields, clean our streets, and care for our children and elderly that I fear at night.  It is the small number of drug and gun runners that frighten me.  It is the small but fanatically determined group of terrorists that turn my innards cold.  After all, if a poor Mexican worker wtih little-to-no-education and even less means can smuggle himself across some of the harshest territory on the planet, surely a well-connected, well-backed fanatic can do the same.

So I do not believe in criminalizing the illegals that are already here.  We have neither the capacity nor the will to do so.  I believe that I believe (sic) that the correct solution is to offer these people a place at the back of the long long line to acheive citizenship, along with a just fine for breaking our laws.  (There are actual laws on the books, people.  It's amazing how many otherwise law-abiding citizens are willing to dismiss this.)  I believe  that we should look to our borders and increase the security both on land and sea and in the air to stem the flow of new illegal immigrants coming into the country.

So there it is.  My own, malformed, horribly conservative opinion.  I probably didn't express the whole of the sentiment as there is still some viewpoints that have not yet crystallized in my mind.  At least I said something, though.

Speak up people.  It's the only way things will work.

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I know….I haven't really been paying attention to politics that long, so it's easy for me to say that I've never seen anything like this.

I have to say, I almost feel sorry for poor ol' Harriet Miers.  If you look around the rubble of the landscape of her nomination process, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who was enthusiastic about her chances of getting on the Supreme Court.  Heck, at times you'd be hard pressed to find anyone, on either side of the political spectrum who was nice about the whole damn thing.

Now, conspiracy theorists will like to say that the White House didn't want to withdraw her nomination.  That is to say, they did, but they didn't want to be the ones doing the withdrawing.  It had to come from her so as to preserve the seemingly dwindling amount of political clout that the President still maintains.  So they put some behind-the-scenes pressure on her and there you go.  She withdraws.  It's probably not an unreasonable assumption.

Of course, Bush-bashers will state that our Prez was too…uhmm…let's use the word stubborn and be nice…to see that the nomination was dead in the water and actually didn't want to withdraw her nomination.  Maybe she just didn't want to be the person that seemingly everyone hated. 

I dunno.  Either way, it's a good thing that she's withdrawn.    My advice to her would be to take a nice long break, away from the public eye and possibly the American people.

Maybe she should do the same thing Al Gore did after the 2000 election:  disappear into the wilds of Europe for a few months and just relax.  Granted, she can't grow out a beard like he did, but maybe she can grow out her hair and wear some nice, loose-fitting clothes.

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…read this article.  The commercial is linked in on the article.

Shame on CNN for agreeing to air this commercial.  It's one thing
for NARAL to come out against Roberts for his stated positions, but
it's another thing to produce a commercial that lies and misleads on
this level.

EDITORS NOTE:  To be
absolutely fair, the reports that CNN had agreed to air the spot are
coming from blogs and conservative websites, so my “shame on you”
condemnation may be a little premature.

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[Editor's Note:  Oops.  Forgot the link]

Did you hear about the guy who immediately filed suit after last
week's disasterous decision over emminent domain?  The guy who's
actually trying to seize Justice Souter's land to put up a hotel and
cafe (The Lost Liberty Hotel and the Just Desserts Cafe) on the land?

Yeah, apparently he has a lot to say on other issues as well.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you might enjoy the
commercial where a monkey picking stocks actually beats the rate of
return of the current Social Security system.

It's kind of interesting.  Take a look.

(Oh, and the press releases contain the details of the lawsuit…)

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A truly tragic day in American history.

I cannot formulate a response that sufficiently expresses the anger and
sorrow I hear at the sheer stupidity and evilness of this
decision.  I really can't.  I've tried.

I think I'm going to write more about this later tonight, when I'm not at work.   'Cause I've got a lot to say.

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I meant to post this yesterday, but for whatever reason I couldn't access my own site last night.

In any case, an interesting concept

I sort of feel like posting something lamenting the complete fiasco
that has developed around the concept of Social Security Reform and the
idea of Personal/Private (depending on if you're “fer it” or “agin it”)
accounts, but my blood pressure is high enough.

If any politicians are out there reading this:  I hate you all.

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