Tag: Immigration

Kirk Douglas on the Road Ahead

These are not the American values that we fought in World War II to protect.

From Kirk Douglas, now 100 years old, yet newly relevant again:

A few weeks ago we heard words spoken in Arizona that my wife, Anne, who grew up in Germany, said chilled her to the bone. They could also have been spoken in 1933:

“We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. It is our right as a sovereign nation to choose immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish here…[including] new screening tests for all applicants that include an ideological certification to make sure that those we are admitting to our country share our values…”

These are not the American values that we fought in World War II to protect.

Read more at Huffington Post.

Jon Stewart Takes Over the Late Show to Rant About GOP and Fox News Trump Contortions

Jon Stewart Takes Over the Late Show to Rant About GOP and Fox News Trump Contortions

a few of the topics covered:

The Republican convention, Donald Trump, Fox News, the GOP, Jon Stewart, republican gymnastics, the Roger Ailes resignation, Sean Hannity, The Late Show, twists, teleprompters, Ivanka, narcissists, blue collar billionaires & how that’s not a thing, elitism, who’s a Christian, Religion, PopeX immigration

Arizona Illegal Immigration Law Fixed

…and how I stopped being a tool.

In  a last minute move after seeing a huge media and blog outcry Arizona has altered the vague sections of their Immigrant law that were crafted by a hate group lawyer, and now it’s more reasonable. Indeed, it’s something similar to what I suggested in 2006.

Lawmakers on Thursday night changed the language to require scrutiny only of people who police stop, detain or arrest. They also changed a section of the bill that barred officers from “solely” using race as grounds for suspecting someone is in the country illegally; opponents had argued that that would allow race to be a factor. The legislators removed the word “solely” to bar race from being used by officers enforcing the law.

Note that since that 2006 post and others like it, I’ve moved more to the center on immigration. I’ve seen it become the wedge that split the Republicans apart as I predicted, and I saw moderates leave and extremist groups like the Birchers swarm in to fill that vacuum. Here’s something else I wrote along that path – the more I researched the less I could support the Xenophobic fears driving the debate.

If treatment of the illegals is too harsh this will backfire as well. Many who feel firm now will quail before the hordes of MSM and liberal deportation horror stories to come. For make no mistake, in many cases enforcing this will drive a wedge into one of conservativism’s key values: Family Unity. Some families will be torn apart. The father or mother will be deported — so whatever the outcome of the conference committee two major conservative values will clash. With that said I refer you back to the quote at the start, and remind you that in the end all problems are solvable if one factor is patience, and the other persistence.

It was after this — when I saw large segments of the party really turn on Bush, McCain, Graham and others that I realized this this was the issue that would split us. I saw partisans full of bile attacking Republicans harder than any Demagogue from the Democrats would and began to research. My queasiness about recognizing the need for immigration just due to the sheer demographics of the aging baby boomers (who is going to care for and nurse all of the gray hairs in a few short years? ) turned to outright alarm when I saw that many of the cheerleaders, like Michelle Malkin, were aligned with Peter Brimelow and the Pat Buchanan tea cup racist crowd at the odious VDARE site. I began to realize that “Culture” and “Identity” weren’t just code words for the Eurofascists, they were code words for the racists here as well.

Do you suspect some of the legislators in Arizona started looking into things like Kris Kobach’s background and actually realized what tools they had been, like I did? I can only hope so.

AZ Immigration Bill: Kobach’s and Pearce’s Roots in White Supremacy

I’ve experience with seeing Kobach speak myself – with coded anti-immigration nativist dog whistling in many speeches; and his crowing over creating this legislation and association with FAIR speaks for itself.

Rachel is not making this up, I’ve researched these groups and this background myself. If you need confirmation on Russell’s nativist and White Supremacist ties, you can reference the long history at The Feathered Bastard. (While Lemmons is definitely partisan and goes over the top sometimes, he is factually correct in the background to the articles and that’s really what matters.)

I’ve experience with seeing Kris Kobach speak myself – with coded anti-immigration nativist dog whistling in many speeches and his birtherism he’s not a mainstream Republican, he’s also fixated on Acorn and whatever the conspiracy outrage of the day is on the right; and his crowing over creating this legislation and association with FAIR speaks for itself. Kobach also seems to be one of Fox New’s “go to guys” anytime the issue of immigration comes up, and he’s worked to promote the Nativist cause for Arpaio, and in Nebraska.  This all boils down to the fact that Kobach is really a single issue candidate for an insidious lobby with roots in eugenicist movements, he’s not running for Kansans, he’s running for Nativists.

Of course, Kobach is listed as an attorney with the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of FAIR, as its “national expert on constitutional law.” Aside from doing legal work for FAIR, when Kobach was running for Congress in Kansas’ 3rd District in 2003 and 2004, he took $10,000 from a FAIR-related political action committee, the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC, formerly FAIR PAC.

The president of the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC is Mary Lou Tanton, wife of John Tanton, the founder of FAIR. Tanton still sits on FAIR’s board of directors.

FAIR is a pretty nasty anti-immigrant enterprise, having taken $1.2 million in the past from the eugenics-loving Pioneer Fund, a group founded on the idea of scientific racism.

I’m still registered R for now, and I will be voting against the wingnuts like Kobach in the primaries. If the wingnuts win, I will switch parties.

UPDATE: As can be seen here, Kris Kobach has a vested interest in this bill.

The Proof of the Pudding is the Eating

The Proof of the Pudding is the Eating

While some in the NY Conservative party and in the Right Wing blogosphere are trying to portray Tuesday’s historic defeat in NY-23 as a victory, the proof is really in the pudding.
Immediately past the election the House Democrats and Nancy Pelosi are scrambling to clear some hot button issues for a rare Saturday vote on Healthcare.

Here’s what Nancy says on the election from The Hill:

Although the Democrats lost two governors’ mansions in Tuesday’s election, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) picked up two more votes: John Garamendi, who replaced a Democrat in California, and Bill Owens, who won a GOP-held seat in upstate New York. Pelosi said Owens called his win a “victory for healthcare.”

“From our perspective, we won last night,” Pelosi said Wednesday. “We had one race we got involved in.”

The “Twooooo Konservatives” are such geniuses, this reminds me of the time they defeated Immigration Reform during the only period in which Republicans could hold sway over the shape and form of it. So this matches exactly with my final election tally yesterday for NY-23:
* +1 vote for public option
* +1 vote for cap and trade
* +1 vote for immigration reform
* +1 vote for Speaker Pelosi.