Immigration

Sort of like what has been happening to the leftists lately. Especially noticeable has been the public’s tepid response to the LSM’s instantaneous and vitriolic attacks against the conservative right.

They’ve pulled out all the stops. They’ve cranked up all their cranks, of whom they have such a delightful variety. They have Marxist members of Congress strutting around proclaiming new anti-gun legislation, which means nothing and will go nowhere.

This entire sad episode has backfired on the DeMarxists in ways they haven’t even figured out yet. Even some LSM types are a little disturbed at the way the leftist press and the political left have colluded to turn the heinous Arizona shootings into a political circus maximus with all the trimmings, including an out-of-control political hack sheriff, running around spouting outrageous, over-the-top rants at conservatives.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik is as radical a partisan hack politician as it is possible to be. He had his other moment of fame with his vocal opposition and refusal to enforce the immigration law that Arizona passed. The left’s appeal is ebbing. Well over 60% of the people of the United States of America identify with the Tea Party Patriot movement.

The left is lashing out with all the fury of a jilted lover. The more the American people reject them and their lies, the more desperate they become.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

Wherever you live on the planet, the jolly red-faced gentleman, hitching up his pants around his portly frame, will have visited you by now. Er… no, I’m not referring to Barney Frank! The Christmas holiday is a time to chill out (or perhaps ‘freeze’ would be a better description, Mr Gore!) and try to forgive those that have done us wrong throughout the year.

There’s certainly a lot to forgive this year. The year started with the news that the number of long-term unemployed was the highest since official records began, back in 1948. While the country suffered the effects of high unemployment, low consumer confidence and failing businesses, the Obama administration was engaged in a war.

This was not the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, not even the generalized ‘war on terror’. This was their private war on Arizona. Forced into taking action at state level, due to the inaction of federal agencies, Governor Brewer was informed that her actions were unconstitutional. An amazing statement, given that the state legislation was, in most respects, a copy of the federal immigration policy.

The administration’s lame excuse was that it promoted racial profiling, even though the Arizona bill prevented such actions. This denial of the facts is the same as that shown by the powers granted to the TSA. Humiliate obviously innocent Americans with naked images and ‘sexual assaults’ (that’s what it is, folks), while allowing groups that are most likely of misdemeanor to conduct their own pat-downs.

Obama’s reluctance to comment on the folly that was the planned Ground Zero mosque was further proof of his fear of alienating his remaining support base. He knew that if he lost the support of the black, Hispanic, muslim and gay sectors (and, dare I say it, the illegal voters), his days would be numbered.

Never mind the unemployment figures and dying businesses – we can fix that with new, clean technology industries (Obama’s fixation with batteries); Don’t worry about the threat on the southern border – we’ll look at giving citizenship to the children of illegals; There’s no reason to be concerned about the spiraling federal deficit – we’ll introduce a VAT-style tax to give us more money for earmarks… after all, your money is the government’s money!

As the year approaches its end and we look forward to a new Congress in 2011, hopefully all this will will vanish like a bad dream… the nightmare before Christmas!

A Merry Christmas to our readers, from Skip and myself.

(Editor Dee is in for Skip today)

Immigration is a problem longing for a fix. Unfortunately, it has been accorded leper status in Washington. Too broken to leave alone but too politically perilous to touch with a ten-foot pole. One need look no further than Arizona to realize the incendiary nature of attempting to come up with an immigration solution. Where there is much to lose, there is also much to gain. That is why Republicans must take the initiative, outflank their political opponents, and craft an immigration reform plan that not only preserves conservative values but potentially captures a new bloc of conservative voters.

Republicans have long been labeled as xenophobes when it comes to immigration. It is largely the result of a debate that has been couched in between two equally unattractive views. The word “immigrant” at its worst conjures up images of people who are stealing American jobs and living off our social welfare system without paying a dime in taxes to support it. At its best, they are unskilled laborers, doing the jobs Americans won’t do while living off our social welfare system without paying a dime in taxes to support it. Either way, not exactly a rosy picture. With this mindset, Republicans are doomed to forever fight an uphill battle when it comes to standing behind a viable, working option for immigration reform.

Sadly, without such reform Republicans will be doomed to wander the political wilderness. The fact is Hispanics will be a majority in this country by as soon as 2050. To remain a viable political party you will eventually have to capture this growing voting pool. Fortunately, and many Republicans don’t understand this, Hispanic-Americans tend to be conservative. In 2006 pollster David Winston asked registered voters to rate themselves on a 1 to 9 scale from very liberal to very conservative. Winston found that Hispanic Americans viewed themselves were more conservative than the rest of an already center-right country.

They are a natural source of votes but we’ve got to wise up to capture them.

This is where I’m going to lose some of you. But let me go ahead and say, wising up does not equal selling out. I understand that a party is about more than politics, it is about principle. Fortunately, reforming our stance on immigration isn’t just good politics, it meshes perfectly with conservative principles. But, it will require a change in mindset.

We’ve all heard the melting pot argument. That the United States is a nation of immigrants, melting together to form the essential fabric that binds us to this nation. All true, but very blah. Even with this argument immigration bas become a convoluted issue, existing as the enormous elephant in the room. Grasping the “melting pot” argument relies on a sense of history and fairness – concepts that are intangible and don’t really come with any personal benefits. Today, with unemployment staying stubbornly high and deficits clouding our fiscal future, it is a much easier to argue that illegal immigrants are taking our jobs and eating up our taxes. So what can we do to reframe the debate?

Republicans should put forward an immigration reform package that promises to increase jobs, lower the number of unskilled immigrants, and boosts the number of taxpayers. Sounds conservative. Now, what if I told you it could be done in a way palatable to Hispanic voters.

The first step is to change the make-up of our immigrant population. “Unskilled” and “immigrant” are too often viewed as inseparable. It needn’t be this way. After all you wouldn’t view Albert Einstein this way. But imagine how many fewer jobs America would have without people like these:

• Jerry Yang – Taiwanese founder of Yahoo
• Sergey Brin – Russian founder of Google
• Andrew Grove – Hungarian founder of Intel
• Andrew Carnegie – Scottish business mogul
• Levi Strauss – German inventor of blue Jeans
• John Kluge – German owner of Metromedia – one of largest privately held companies in the US

Immigrants success extends much deeper. A study by Harvard researcher Vivek Wawha found that “one in four engineering and technology companies founded between 1995 and 2005 had an immigrant founder. We found that these companies employed 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in revenue in 2006.” Moreover, foreign nationals residing in the United States represented 25.6 percent of all patent applications. In Silicon Valley, one of the primary entrepreneurial centers in the United States, 52 percent of tech and engineering companies were founded by an immigrant.

Immigrants do not have to be the job takers. They can be the job creators. But first we have to create an immigration policy capable of attracting and harnessing their talents. One way to do that would be to change the H-1B visa system. The visa, which is provided for immigrants that want to work in the U.S., has helped draw the top talent in the international work force. Unfortunately, as Darrel West argues in the Wall Street Journal,

“[O]nly 15% of our annual visas are now set aside for employment purposes. Of these, some go to seasonal agricultural workers, while a small number of H-1B visas (65,000) are reserved for “specialty occupations” such as scientists, engineers, and technological experts.”

65,000. That’s it. Applications for this type of visa are normally gone within the first two days of the application period. In other words, while the H-1B visa should be luring the best and the brightest international talent, we are shutting off the tap. The Cato Institute argues that such a low cap “is hampering output, especially in high-technology sectors, and forcing companies to consider moving production offshore.” The expansion should not be limited to H-1Bs. Other skilled worker visas such as the L-1, which allows foreign workers to relocate to a multi-national corporation’s US office, and O-1, which allows aliens with “extraordinary abilities” in a particular field, should also be emphasized and revised.

Given the inherent power of these visas to actually create jobs why has the government been so slow to change it? Partially because of the misperception of so many voters who believe that increasing quotas will take away jobs from Americans. This logic doesn’t have a basis in fact. As Cato explains:

“Fears that H-1B workers cause unemployment and depress wages are unfounded. H-1B workers create jobs for Americans by enabling the creation of new products and spurring innovation. High-tech industry executives estimate that a new H-1B engineer will typically create demand for an additional 3-5 American workers.”

This is the chance for Republicans to take the lead on immigration. Republicans have long been thought to have lost the debate – and have the lack of minority support to prove it.  The key to winning the support and turning the debate around is to focus on immigrants as realistic and viable solution to the economic trouble. Immigration reform could be the jobs bill we’ve all been waiting for and with a price-tag much cheaper than the so-called stimulus.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

http://speakout.crnc.org/blog/2010/07/26/republicans-must-outflank-democrats-on-immigration-reform/

Yet again there is a connection between an attempted terrorist attack and Britain. Another ‘home grown’ would-be mass murderer whose plot fortunately went awry. There is precious little good news in the press these days and every item regarding the so-called ‘United’ Kingdom seems to be another nail in the coffin of a once proud, honorable nation.

After World War II Britain was lacking in manpower to rebuild a war-torn country, cities and seaports having been all but decimated by constant bombing raids and assaults by the dreaded nazi V rockets. Many of the male population had been killed or severely injured during the conflict, a factor that drove the government to import labor, principally from the British colonies, later called the Commonwealth.

1948 - The Start Of Large-Scale Immigration To Britain.

Most of these new ‘Britons’ assumed roles essential to the infrastructure of any developed country, transportation being one example. The newcomers were happy to be in a country which, although virtually bankrupt after years of turmoil and still enduring food rationing, was a pretty good place to be after the total poverty that many had known before. Aside from the usual verbal and sometimes physical attacks from a bigoted few, they now had a chance to advance and create a better life for themselves and their children.

So why, then, does it seem that fifty or so years later, a sizable number of immigrants, or their descendants, would like to destroy a culture that afforded them so many opportunities in the past? In a 2007 survey, the results of which were well covered by the media at the time, it was shown that one in eleven of all British-residing moslems agreed that suicide bombing was acceptable. Doesn’t sound a lot, but that equates to about 140,000 people. If it ever really hits the fan, that many ‘fifth columnists’ could do a lot of damage.

The Legendary British 'Bobby' Amid Scenes More Akin To The Third World.

It is hardly surprising that Britain is a magnet to this sort of person. While the government is constantly blathering on about equality for all minority groups and preaches tolerance toward those of other beliefs, those they seek to help are plotting their, and our, destruction. This ‘religion of peace’ is using its mosques to recruit Jihad activists and spread the word that anything that stands in their way, or does not conform to their sense of ‘morality’ must be eliminated.

While the British intelligence agencies and New Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Unit are doing their utmost to protect the public on both sides of the pond, the weakness of the government and questionable affinities for organizations like Hamas are counter-productive. The Prime Minister, ‘Flash’ Gordon Brown, seems more concerned about saving the world in fifty days from a mythical threat.

Unlike many countries, England still has an official ’state’ religion, Protestantism under the Church of England. Regardless of this, the formation of Sharia civil courts has been given approval in some cities. The Church does not have such a system, its members having to adhere to the laws of the realm, as is only right and proper.

With the inception of Islamic Sharia courts, the pro-Palestinian stance of the government, the unwillingness to prosecute those who verbally threaten its citizens and promote civil unrest, not to mention the immigration bans on Americans and Europeans who warn of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism – I wonder why Britain finds favor with Jihadists? As they used to say on radio quiz shows, answers on a postcard, please!

(Editor Dee is sitting in for Skip today)

Where to start? Our undefended  southern border with Mexico. We have 1969 miles of common border with our ‘neighbor’ to the south. You know the one I mean. The one governed by the drug cartels? The cartels whose private militias are at least as potent as the Mexican military? Our Immigration and Customs Enforcement has LESS than 700 miles of the border in what they term “under control”. This is a statement which is obviously open to interpretation…ask the Border Patrol officers on the ground how much control they have…but do it when their politically motivated supervisors are not around. Ask the ranchers in rural areas of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas how much control there is over the depredation of the illegals to their land, their property and their livestock. These ranchers have to go armed in defense of their lives and their families’ lives on their own property. It’s not just Mexican and Central American illegals coming over either. Items left behind are evidence that middle eastern infiltration was and is occurring across that border. Excuse me for believing that these people don’t have our best interests in mind. Captured documents indicate that Al Qaeda infiltrators are told to learn Spanish to more easily blend in. Well-financed middle eastern illegals utilize coyote smugglers regularly. It’s also real hard to imagine that these fine folks just want to come here to practice their “Religion of Peace”. I’d like to stick Obama with the southern border issue, even though he surely will do little or nothing to improve the situation down there, and in point of fact has ordered the removal of four hundred Border Patrol agents for reassignment elsewhere. But for sure it didn’t start with him. The border has been a sieve for a very long time. The Clintons saw it as a cheap sure-vote getter. George Bush gave it lip service behind the impetus of 9-11 at best. His fancies of appealing to the Hispanic voting block were foolish. Besides, mid western meat packing companies needed that cheap labor. This is a shameful connivance by both Democrats and Republicans, which by the way is another major reason the Conservative electorate in this country abandoned the Republicans this last cycle. Americans are sick to death of paying the freight for illegals. Our hospitals are overwhelmed by US GOVERNMENT MANDATED CARE FOR ILLEGALS. Emergency trauma centers, some of the finest medical facilities in the world, have been forced to close or sharply curtail their activities. Here in the border states in particular, our educational systems are inundated with the children of illegal aliens filling our classrooms and reducing the level of the curriculum in order to cater to the special needs of these illegals’ kids, thereby ruining the quality level of education for our own children. Our prisons have a population of illegals approaching 30%. Many incarcerated for very violent offenses. Our state is virtually bankrupt. If this were not enough to make you reach for the migraine tabs consider this…Every one of our air and rail transportation hubs has been and is being cased on a virtually daily basis by middle eastern types who are free to roam pretty much as they please. Once, when I had been hired by a company as a project manager, I had a couple of weeks to kill before my start date. I have a friend who owns a high end cab company and he was short a driver so I went to work for him for two weeks. My travels took me in and out of an international airport frequently. One thing that came to my notice was the proliferation of little independent taxis driven by obviously middle eastern men. Ask me if I’m profiling? OH HELL YES! These guys were all over the place. Not working out of any dispatch center they operated off of cell phones…generally they were a surly bunch. The liberals among you by now are wringing their hands and sniveling “but they’re just trying to work and be part of the American dream”. Ok and so were the three thousand souls that were murdered in the twin towers. If I was in Homeland Security I’d seriously consider the threat posed by hundreds of middle-easterners, accountable to no one, who knew these hubs intimately and are able to access many areas of them. But then, I’m sure that all these folks are just hard working members of the “Religion of Peace”.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

Many know that I was never a big fan of Mitt Romney. After running for years as a liberal Republican in Massachusetts, with private assurances well beyond his public statement.

That said, I have long thought that he was poorly served by advisors that recommended he run to the right as a candidate of the conservative movement rather than as a pragmatist. He didn't have to call himself a 10 out of 10 like Reagan.

Anyways, Mitt is tacking back to the center on a number of issues in an interview with The Hill's Reid Wilson. On regulation, the stimulus, TARP, and immigration, he says things that I mostly agree with but are out of touch with the "conservative base".

It would not surprise me to see more of this, with both Romney and other candidates. If Romney runs to the center in some form, while trying to keep his connection with the conservative movement represented by CPAC and other groups (although the reach of their power is unclear). Furthermore Mike Huckabee is another kind of tack to the center. And John Huntsman has another.

Anyways, after the jump, some of the things he says.

Regulation:

In an interview with The Hill, Romney said, “We as Republicans misspeak when we say we don’t like regulation. We like modern, up-to-date dynamic regulation that is regularly reviewed, streamlined, modernized and effective.”

Mitt is right. But the voicing of this is ... odd. Similarly on stimulus:

Similarly, Romney is among the many Republicans who support a stimulus plan, but not in the form Congress passed in February.

“The best stimulus with the highest multiplier effect is one which gives money back to people rather than having government spend more, and so I think they got it wrong. It’s too much weighted toward spending, too little weighted toward tax reductions,” Romney said.

And immigration:

Romney believes that one way to attract more minorities to the GOP is to pass immigration reform before the next election, saying the issue becomes demagogued by both parties on the campaign trail.

“We have a natural affinity with Hispanic-American voters, Asian-American voters,” he said.

Speaking in his Ritz-Carlton room with a pair of blue jeans on the dresser, Romney declined to criticize immigration hard-liners like former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who backed Romney after he dropped his own presidential bid. Romney argued that all 2008 GOP candidates — including Tancredo — strongly favor legal immigration.

This is the one that blows my mind. Jeb Bush, who seemed to support Romney, accused him of "pounding his chest" on the issue. And one has to ask how the GOP would get any credit for immigration reform now.

There remain only a few hours left in the presidency of  George W. Bush. For eight years he has given us his best. There were some low points but there were fewer than the media and liberals would have you believe.

Katrina was a low point but even that, President Bush really can’t take all the blame for himself . But for liberals, President Bush was there scapegoat.

Hurricane Katrina ravaged Mississippi every bit as much as it did Louisiana, yet Mississippi, under the leadership of Republican Governor Haley Barbour, did not encounter the same long duration of recovery or mishandled evacuations that  Louisiana  did.

Mississippi’s local leaders did not decide to park their buses on low lying surfaces as did New Orleans’ Democrat Mayor, Ray Nagin.

No, Mississippi’s first line of defense in natural disasters, their local governments, the governments closest to the people, came through and were every bit as prepared as they told the federal government that they were. Not so in New Orleans though.

But a liberal bias from the media helped to make Hurricane Katrina President Bush’s fault.

Shortly after the events of Hurricane Katrina many left leaning conspiracy theorists also claimed that Hurricane Katrina and a few of its devastating predecessors were the product of Japan where the Japanese government was inventing a new weapon that increased the intensity of tropical storms into category 5 hurricanes and directed them to land masses that they targeted.

Many of the same people who made this claim gave blame to George Bush. That should tell you something.

Although Katrina may not have been Bush’s fault, the recovery effort in Louisiana does get blamed on him and to a degree that is acceptable. But I guess, on the other side of the coin, the successfully rapid recovery in Mississippi warrants some credit for President Bush?

Putting aside the blame game of Hurricane Katrina, there are two things that when grading this presidency, bring his average down.

The first is his delay in approving the surge that his own Secretary of State urged for a year before he finally accepted it.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  had been advocating for more troops in Iraq. It was a strategy called “clear, hold and build”. It was also the same strategy that Senator John McCain called for.

Clear, hold and build was successfully used by Col. H.R. McMaster in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. The strategy called for door to door operations that cleared insurgents from the city along with an ongoing troop presence in each neighborhood that was cleared. Once this was achieved residents felt secure, and U.S. troops were able to begin rebuilding there. Wherever this strategy was conducted, it worked. The resurgents were gone and our continued presence there, prevented them from returning. As a result, citizens no longer lived in fear and life began to flow unimpeded by terror and violence. To carry out clear, hold and build, more troops were required. But increasing the number of troops was not something the administration wanted to advocate for. Although it was required in order to successfully carry out clear, hold, build the administration was afraid of the reaction to such a call.

The President flinched in this area. It was one of the few instances where he allowed public perception to make him second guess his policy judgment. After Viet Nam, we should have learned that if you are going to enter into a fight, throw everything you have into it from the onset. Otherwise don’t get into the fight.

In the case of Iraq, we held back. Had we went along with the surge from the beginning, we would have avoided the upsurge in violence that led to the waning of support for the war effort.

The other area of deep negative impact on this administration was the financial collapse that brought on the current economic crisis.

President Bush does not get blamed for causing the collapse, but it happened under his watch and it should not have.

The President, through his advisers, should have seen this coming and helped to avoid it.

He should have aggressively turned back some of the policies which led to the overextended loan practices which ultimately tied up loans and the markets.

Many of the policies that brought us to this point were from Bill Clinton’s administration.

Clinton‘s National Homeowners Strategy was a financial scheme that promoted insanely low down payments and coerced lenders into giving mortgage loans to first-time buyers with unstable financing and incomes.

It was a way to increase home ownership. That is an admirable motive but as usual, the liberal mentality, forced government to do that which it should not have done. Essentially, the Clinton era initiatives that forced government action on private sector interests led to the need for government to take over FannieMae and FreddieMac. This is not to say that private sector greed and bad business practices did not add to the wrong minded government policy, it did, but what happened here is that government solutions to one problem, created another . Now, ironically, the government which helped to create this problem is having to solve it.As for George Bush, this all came to a head under his watch. For that he must be blamed.

So we have the recovery effort in Louisiana, delaying the surge in Iraq and not avoiding the economic crises that we are in, all helping to lower the average of this administrations grade.

I have two more things to add though.

One is immigration.

On immigration President Bush was most inept. On this issue his positions were no where near appropriate for the leader of a sovereign nation.

The Presidents refusal to accept that illegal immigrants are participating in illegal conduct that needs to be prosecuted was a horribly blundered policy and it is one that has not helped to solve our border security problem or alleviate the continued problem of illegal immigration.

The other issue I hold against President Bush is his administrations inability to articulate their cause in a way that appealed to the people convincingly.

The administration had been doing quite well in it’s first two years when the voice of the President came from then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Once Ari Fleischer left and Scott McClellan entered the picture, the White House lost any sway with the press or the public.

This President was great with messages when we were in crisis and he had the people’s attention, but in between crisis his message was jumbled and unconvincing. That, for this administration, was half of the battle and after Fleischer left they lost it.

On the upside President Bush has many, much wrongly maligned, initiatives to help bring his grade up.

Their was his “Faith Based Initiative” which allowed government to accept the involvement of religious institutions in helping out. Faith based initiatives were no longer penalized or denied by the federal government because of religion. It was something long over due in America, especially in an America where religion is not to persecuted against.

There was “No Child Left Behind”.

This policy was one which had universal support except for some extremist fringe players and teachers union.. But not willing to give credit where credit was due, liberals charged that President Bush backed out of his No Child Left Behind policy by under funding it.

Truth be told, federal education spending is at record levels so that argument doesn’t swim.

There are many other policies such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It triggered competition between drug companies and wound up costing less than expected.

The Bush tax policy is also to his credit. He didn’t ask for lips to read on this issue, he simply created no new taxes and when he did not reduce them he held the line on them. I only wish he could have added drastic spending cuts to that.

Another high point in this administration was the appointment of two supreme court justices, one being the chief justice.

The appointments of  John Roberts  and  Sam Alito  were remarkably good choices. Neither had any judicial or personal blemishes and neither see the role of the judiciary to be one that makes law but rather interprets it. Add to that their relative youthful ages and the Roberts and Alito appointments to the bench will have a profound on our great nation for decades to come.

The next greatest achievement of the administration was twofold. It involves The War On Terror and Iraq.

Despite charges that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, the two are entwined together as violent threats.

Pre-Saddam Hussein Iraq did not send to us the pilots that took nearly 3,000 Americans in one day but it had intentions just as dire.

Saddam did not have any tangible links to 9/11 but he did have links to terrorist, including several who dabbled with Al Quaeda and he did continuously break and defy the cease fire agreement that he signed after the first Gulf War. Combine that with the fact that everyone from  Bill Clinton  and  Al Gore  to  John Kerry  and  Ted Kennedy  swore that Saddam was a threat and you had every reason in the world to eliminate Saddam Hussein.

After 9/11 George W. Bush realized that we must eliminate threats before they eliminate us and so he took out the threat known as Saddam Hussein.  In doing so not is democracy being brought to the Middle East but the power and richness of freedom is being delivered to a people that have long since forgotten what independence offers.

Add to that that you can say what you want, but we no longer have to worry about any threat Saddam intended, and for that I thank the President.

I also Thank him for the second part of this  War On Terror  effort.   Under his watch not another single attack occurred on mainland territory since 9/11.

Now if you want to blame Katrina on Bush because it happened during his watch you must also credit him for there being no more attacks under his watch. And when you think about, more attacks occurred under Bill Clinton then George Bush, so I thank President Bush for that as well.

The final most valuable thing brought to life under President Bush goes back to exactly four years ago.

In his inaugural address , after being sworn in for the second time, President Bush stated:

“America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home – the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty.”

He went on to articulate a policy that directed the United States to end tyranny in the world as we know it.

Now some may have seen that as a declaration of war by him but most read it the right way.

He went on to say………“We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.”

“All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.:”

The speech has since been forgotten by most but it has not been forgotten by me and hopefully President Barack Obama will also remember it..

In its entirety, the address presented the essence of what it means to be an American and it captured the most important role that America must play in this world as its current, last remaining superpower.

For me it Bush’s second inaugural address was the foundation for our greatest doctrine ever, the doctrine to achieve and true freedom and peace.

When you have the time, click here and read the speech. You will be moved and you will understand our place in this world.

The bottom line…….

President Bush is a good man and was a good President. He will not go down in history ranked along side of Washington or Lincoln nor will he be lumped together with Franklin Pierce or Jimmy Carter.

Ultimately, I believe George W. Bush warrants a B-.

Many on the left will now assault me for giving that grade but I base George Bush’s presidency on the truth of reality not on the lies and distortions that they have spent the last eight years perpetuating and when you add that to the retrospect of history, I believe George W. Bush’s name  will slowly rise to its proper placement among American presidents.

That is something that will take time.

As President Bush recently put it, “they’re still debating and writing about how good or bad George Washington was, so I assume the same will happen to me”.

Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers…

… that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. ‘Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.’

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.

Submitted by Dick, Williamsport, Md.

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Going in to the first year of his Presidency is something that any President needs to handle delicately. Jimmy Carter failed to do it, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did it almost flawlessly, and Bill Clinton went with the flow of Congress and it cost Congress. For all the things that the United States is facing in economic policy, foreign policy, and cultural divisions, President-elect Barack Obama needs to act as if he is walking on eggshells. If not, the first year could take away his aura of almost messianic appeal. 

I have begun the difficult but exciting process of carefully thinking about what specific issues a new Republican party can run on in the future (planning for 2012, but we may be ready for 2010).

Steps for Success

Our problem is the party's race relations. For decades now Republicans (and even conservatives in general) have very successfully been labeled as racists and bigots. Yes, this is very largely because our opponents have driven this message to the public, but ultimately it is our fault for not working hard enough to selling ourselves and our accomplishments in this area.

• This starts with our history as the party that ended slavery under President Lincoln, but continues right up to President George W. Bush's very racially diverse administration. We must build grassroots marketing campaigns to make sure the public (especially young people) know that the Republican party is the historical party of racial liberty and opportunity. These grassroots campaigns should start on popular Internet social networking sites and conservative blogs, but could eventually create multimedia advertisements to be picked up and distributed on broadcast stations by political organizations with money. We will receive much ridicule from the left at first, but if we stick to these campaigns we can at least get this out into the "public consciousness" so it isn't such a strange idea when 2012 comes around.
• Reach out more to an ethnic population very often overlooked by both conservatives and liberals: Native Americans. With the power of charities and grassroots fundraising, we can take the message of self-reliance and hard work to the communities that are trapped in alcoholism and welfare. People may scoff at this, but it would go a long way not only to helping Native peoples, but also our reputation among the public. And assuming initial success we could expand the message to immigrating Hispanics, who oftentimes identify themselves with mixed Native heritage depending upon the region they come from.
• And the hardest, but most important one: we have to take a long, hard look at our traditional stance on immigration. Does this mean accepting "Amnesty"? No. But it does mean being willing to come up with creative solutions to the problem and packaging those solutions in digestible ideas for sound bites and campaign slogans to persuade people. Below are ideas on how a Republican immigration plan can look and be marketed. The bottom line is that we have to be willing to bend a little on this issue and heavily market this in order to ever overcome our unfair reputation as the anti-immigration party.
• We have to also work harder at digging up hard examples of how welfare and big government nanny-ism hurts immigrant families in the long run. Counter that with hard evidence of how entrepreneurship and learning English in these families leads to greater success. And when we have these examples and raw information, we need to package and market deep inside ethnic communities (Spanish-language television stations, newspapers, churches and other organizations).

Legislative Leadership

Assuming Senator John McCain decides to stay in office after this election, he would be a tremendous asset to this immigration campaign. He has championed borderline Amnesty immigration reform, but if we come up with solutions that are less strict than we traditionally have pushed, we could convince him to meet us half way. He has also been a huge advocate for Native Americans in his time in the Senate (which is something I am sad never was brought up during any of his stump speeches or television spots), and his reputation in this could lift up other Republican politicians that work with him (legislators or governors) and provide them a foundation to build on.

Are there any other Republican politicians that are working on immigration reform or relations within the Native American communities?

Possible Features

Some ideas for this future immigration reform, for your consideration to get discussion started:

• Whatever programs for helping educating and integrating immigrants into America must come from charities and other private sources, not the federal government (although state governments would be free to partner with these programs, of course). The federal government may help co-ordinate these disparate organizations so that people in need of the services have a single website and phone number to get information from, but that is the extent of government involvement. We can start here by making a list of existing charities that are in this field already.
• It may be necessary for some federal taxpayer money to be used to help these programs with their expanded administrative costs at first, but even if this is true any annual financing should have an automatic expiration date that fades away over a set number of years.
• A combined guest worker and academic study program with a defined path to citizenship. Allow a certain number of people from all over the world to come to the U.S. for 2 year blocks of time to work or go to school. They would never be eligible for the welfare programs, so if they loose their job and can't find another one to buy food or health care, their guest permit is revoked. They must show some level of English, although wouldn't have to be fluent (that should come while they work or learn here). If they break any significant crime they would loose their guest permit (drunk driving would be enough, but a speeding citation may not).
• The above guest worker/student program can be used to funnel all potential citizens into our country. Therefore, there would not be any hard line between foreigner one day then full-blown citizen the next. Everyone would come in to work or learn while proving to the government they can follow the laws and become fluent in English in order to attain full citizenship.
• I do not think the guest worker/student program should cost the foreigner much money. It should be cheap and easy to become a "guest" for at least 2 years. Their presence in the country by paying taxes and being productive would be benefit enough to our economy. However, the costs for becoming a full citizen should pay for themselves through application fees. Even at most I don't expect that to be more than $2,000, and even that may be high.
• Give all applicants in our current system that have been waiting more than 2 years a priority treatment to become guests as soon as possible, and waive their application fees to become citizens when they are ready (assuming they meet all qualifications).
• To become a guest worker, the individual must apply through a U.S. Embassy in their native country (or an auxiliary office of the Embassy in large countries). There would not be any way to apply within the USA, therefore encouraging immigrants who are here in the U.S. illegally to return home first. We would allow them to leave in peace, and in fact may even set them up with charities or other programs to help them pay for the trip back. Once they properly apply, they may be given a priority treatment to become guests because of the prior experience with the U.S., but it would not be greater treatment than those immigrants who are grandfathered in from the old system.
• And of course, securing the border is an absolute requirement. Leaving it open and unguarded is a huge national security risk as we all know. I believe we can successfully sell this to the public if our plans for legal guests and immigrants is seen as accepting and humanitarian enough. The only real questions are whether this secured border would be a physical wall (sorry, a "fence" isn't going to cut it), or a virtual one of cameras and UAVs patrols in the air. I'm leaning towards the virtual one. And also whether the National Guard would be involved by activation by the federal government on short term rotations (3 months would be best).

Consequences

If we fail to reclaim the label of racial liberators, then the Republican Party will fade away, faced with a Democrat Party constantly growing off of changing ethnic demographics all over the country. The two party Republican/Democrat dynamic would eventually be replaced by a split in the Democratic party between their far-left and left-of-center factions. Yes, the core conservative heart of the American public will live on, but an organization large and sufficiently funded enough will not be there to empower them.

A disclaimer: I am a conservative, but registered Libertarian, not Republican, although that may change in the future depending where the party goes.

Crossposted at Right Minds