America has an immigration problem. In short, the problem isn’t Mexicans. The problem is two-fold; cost and complication. The Statue of Liberty has a tablet, upon which is written:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

However, when you determine the cost to immigrate to the U.S., the poor cannot afford the price!

Perhaps you believe that illegal aliens are just trying to sneak in because they are lazy and don’t feel like filing the legal paperwork to be naturalized. Perhaps you think that they are all criminals. But before you decide, have you looked at any Immigration paperwork? Check out the link:http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=db029c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=db029c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

Yup, the link is as complicated as the forms and fees. I will be presenting a number of blogs on solutions to our immigration problem.  Like the ideas?  Hate them?  Comment!  Also, present your own ideas!

So, it’s election time again, and time for candidates to pander to the masses with cliches about being tough on crime, and of course, make absurd statements to prove their toughness.  Bullshit.

I received a mailing from Judge Orie Melvin for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  One phrase on her advertisement struck me as so awful that I cannot in good conscience vote for her.  “Fighting Criminals…protecting our Families”.  Judge, in case no one informed you during your legal career, the role of the judge is NOT to fight criminals.  That is why we have the police departments.  Your sole job as a judge is to be an impartial advocate for justice, to be the trier of LAW in court, and provide the means for justice to be accomplished.  Your advertisement shows that you believe yourself to be an advocate instead of an impartial proponent of justice.

Justice is blindfolded for a reason, Your Honor.  Perhaps you need to return to the roots of our system before tying to pander your way into the highest court of our Commonwealth.

I am a Right-Wing Extremist. Do not doubt my resolve. I am dangerous, I am volatile, I am a threat. At least that is what the Obama Administration would say about me.
The truth? I vote Republican, attend Catholic services and am a practicing Catholic. I am pro-life, not just because the Church tells me I should be, but because science itself testifies to when life begins. I support other Republican causes such as free market solutions to problems, reforming the IRS, supporting and equipping a strong military, limited government and minimal government intrusion in our daily lives. I believe that the Constitution should be understood as the Founders intended, yet one can only do that if they read The Federalist Papers and writings of the Founders. I believe that the average citizen of the US has devolved into a state of “pop-culture emulation”, and is incapable of making a reasonable choice unless instructed to by the media or their favorite idiot celebrity. (Remember, celebrities are paid to recite words written by others, nothing more or nothing less). So, according to Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi, that makes me dangerous and a right wing extremist.

I am also dangerous because I am educated and I vote. I oppose the nationalization of the auto industry. I oppose bailouts of companies with taxpayer money. I don’t believe that the US is causing climate change anymore than I believe that being bad prevents Santa Claus from bringing me toys on Christmas Eve. I believe that ACES, the Waxman-Markey Bill is a crime against our middle class. I believe that Obamacare, the latest in a line of bad health care issues, is simply a closeted version of state sponsored genocide against the elderly (most of whom vote against Obama and liberal policies).

Yes, the truth is, because I can vote and I am educated, I am very dangerous.

Hmmm….so our president believes that Cambridge Police acted stupidly, then admits that he doesn’t have all the facts in the case.

Isn’t that typical Obama? Let’s see, what other areas of his job does this apply to as well?

Mr. Obama is trying to inflict health care on all of us without all the facts about costs and ramifications.

Mr. Obama pushed the Climate Change bill through Congress without any real evidence of global warming or how this bill will raise energy costs on Americans.

Mr. Obama is closing Guantanamo Bay without all the facts about the terrorists or all the facts as to where they will go when the prison closes.

Mr. Obama pushed through two stimulus plans without all the facts as to how that money will be spent and how it will impact the economy.

Mr. Obama is trying to push another stimulus package without all the facts how the others impacted our recession.

Mr. President, when do you EVER have the facts?

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Boris Kodjoe owns a mansion in Atlanta. But when he goes to answer his door, the black actor knows what it’s like to be an outcast.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested last week on a charge of disorderly conduct.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested last week on a charge of disorderly conduct.
Click to view previous image
“When I’m opening the door of my own house, someone will ask me where the man of the house is, implying that I’m staff,” said Kodjoe, best known for starring in Showtime’s “Soul Food.”

It’s a feeling some African-Americans say is all too common, even to this day in America: No matter your status or prominence in society, you’re still typecast. That’s why the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s most prominent African-American scholars, has stirred outrage and debate.

Jelani Cobb, an author and professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, says it’s troubling on many levels when “one of the most recognizable African-Americans in the country can be arrested in his own home and have to justify being in his own home.” Video Watch arrest of a Harvard scholar »

“It’s really kind of unfathomable,” Cobb said. “If it can happen to him, yeah, it can happen to any of us.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by Jimi Izrael. “If a mild-mannered, bespectacled Ivy League professor who walks with a cane can be pulled from his own home and arrested on a minor charge, the rest of us don’t stand a chance,” Izrael wrote Tuesday on The Root, an online magazine with commentary from a variety of black perspectives that’s co-founded by Gates.

“We all fit a description. We are all suspects.”

In an interview with The Root, Gates said he was outraged by the incident and hopes to use the experience as a teaching tool, including a possible PBS special on racial profiling.

“I can’t believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me; and more importantly I’m astonished that it could happen to any citizen of the United States, no matter what their race,” Gates said. “And I’m deeply resolved to do and say the right things so that this cannot happen again.” Voices of black America: What it’s like being black in America
‘Moment of Truth-Black in America 2′
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will join the countdown to Black in America 2, in his first TV interview since his run-in with police at his home.
Gates was arrested last Thursday in broad daylight at his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home for disorderly conduct — what the arresting officer described as “loud and tumultuous behavior in a public space.” The charge was dropped Tuesday on the recommendation of police, and the city of Cambridge issued a statement calling the incident “regrettable and unfortunate.”

Gates had just returned from a trip to China when a police officer responded to a call about a potential break-in at his home that was phoned in by a white woman. According to the police report, Gates was in the foyer when the officer arrived.

The officer asked Gates to “step out onto the porch and speak with me,” the report says. “[Gates] replied, ‘No, I will not.’ He then demanded to know who I was. I told him that I was ‘Sgt. Crowley from the Cambridge Police’ and that I was ‘investigating a report of a break in progress’ at the residence.

“While I was making this statement, Gates opened the front door and exclaimed, ‘Why, because I’m a black man in America?’ ” Have race relations improved since the election of President Barack Obama?

According to the report, Gates initially refused to show the officer his identification, instead asking for the officer’s ID. But Gates eventually did show the officer his identification that included his home address.

“The police report says I was engaged in loud and tumultuous behavior. That’s a joke,” Gates told The Root. “It escalated as follows: I kept saying to him, ‘What is your name, and what is your badge number?’ and he refused to respond. I asked him three times, and he refused to respond. And then I said, ‘You’re not responding because I’m a black man, and you’re a white officer.’”

Known as Skip by friends and colleagues, Gates is the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, and an acclaimed PBS documentarian.

While Gates’ arrest lit up talk radio and blogs, it prompted others to defend the police against charges of racial profiling.

“I’d be glad if somebody called the police if somebody was breaking into my house,” neighbor Michael Schaffer told CNN affiliate WHDH.

For others, the incident symbolized something more. Seeing the police mugshot of Gates brought some African-Americans to near tears.

Kim Coleman, a Washington radio host, cultural commentator and blogger, said she grew numb when she saw the mugshot.

“I was not prepared for that,” she said. “To see one of my heroes in a mugshot was not something that I was expecting. … It just tells me we’re not in a post-racial society.”

She said there’s a reason why you don’t hear about prominent white people arrested in their homes: “because it doesn’t happen.”

It’s time for America to have a long overdue national conversation about race, Coleman said. “When are we going to have that,” she said. “When are we really going to sit down and strip down and say, ‘This is what I feel about you and this is what you feel about me. Now, how are we going to get over that?’ “

Rebecca Walker, an award-winning author, said the arrest was devastating to scholars, writers, and artists “who work so hard to keep a free flow of information.”

“It seems eerily ironic Mr. Gates was returning from China, where surveillance is so high and freedom of speech and ideas so curtailed,” Walker said. “To see the mugshot of Skip was a blow to all of us who feel some sense of safety based on our work to try to mend all of these broken fences in America — to make ourselves into people who refuse to be limited by race and class and gender and everything else.”

“To end up, at the end of the day, treated like a criminal, unjustly stripped of our accomplishments and contributions even if only for a moment, is profoundly disturbing. We must ask ourselves what it means, and to allow ourselves to face various scenarios regarding power and freedom and how these will intersect in the coming years.”

Last week, President Obama spoke at the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, saying that while minorities have made great strides “the pain of discrimination is still felt in America.”

“Even as we inherit extraordinary progress that cannot be denied; even as we marvel at the courage and determination of so many plain folks — we know that too many barriers still remain,” the president said.

Kodjoe, the actor, said Obama “has affected a change in people’s consciousness regarding such issues as racism and prejudice.” But he said the arrest of Gates underscores that there’s more work ahead.

“I think we’re moving in the right direction. But no doubt, there still is a lot of work to be done,” Kodjoe said. “It’s not just a problem here. It’s a problem worldwide. Racism is universal.”

Gates said he has a newfound understanding of exactly what that means. “There’s been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama,” he told The Root. “But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

RESPONSE:

Hold on a minute. Someone reported a break in, police responded, an unidentified man answered the door, became verbally abusive, refused to show ID, yet the POLICE were wrong?
I don’t know how this pathetic professor brought race into this issue, unless of course he is the racist. It seems race was his problem, not the responding officer who is REQUIRED by department policy to CONFIRM the ID of the homeowner. If the officer didn’t follow policy, he would have been liable for any damage or stolen goods at the professor’s house and potentially lost his job.
When a person pursues racial issues for too long, as a W.E.B. DuBois professor would, their entire world view becomes racecentric. I believe that the professor should step outside his racial worldview long enough to understand that the officer was doing his best to protect the professor’s property.

A simple, “Here is my ID officer – I am the homeowner” would have sufficed. In order to confirm that he truly is the homeowner, the officer will obviously have follow up questions. Our professor friend immediately played the race card, and for some reason is being treated like a hero.

I for one am tired of the race card. During the last election, 95% of black Americans voted for Obama. This shows very clearly that race was the motivating factor. Yet, there is no clear racial factor for whites voting for McCain. Where is the racism? When this professor was questioned by the police officer, his immediate cry was about being a “black man in America”. Yet the officer was never accused of making any racial comments, and in fact only arrested the professor following his refusal to fully cooperate. There is racism in America. On the white end, it is mostly limited to rednecks who can’t admit the Civil War is over. They hide under sheets or behind pathetic swastika tattoos. However, it is clearer to me every day that the real racism lives in the hearts of minorities who apply a racial world view to their everyday lives. Why are segregated organizations that base their membership in race still allowed in this nation? I don’t mean all white golf clubs or white only social groups. I mean groups like The Congressional Black Caucus, or Black Student Unions on the campus of most colleges and universities. Why is racism tolerated in ANY form in our nation?
If we are to make any gains in race relations in this nation, it is time to let color go away. Questions regarding race should be eliminated on all government forms, job applications, and any other official or quasi official form. Organizations that require a certain race to qualify for membership should be deemed illegal and discriminatory. Scholarships that base their endorsement upon race, not merit, should be eliminated. If equality is what minorities want, equality is what they should get.

As Theodore Roosevelt believed, when you hyphenate American you denigrate us all. Perhaps that is the racial history you should begin to study, professor. In the meantime, perhaps your next step should be to apologize to the officer who was just trying to protect your property and do his job.

Regardless of one comment by a Republican, the health bill as it stands is flawed. MoveOn is too liberal to admit that even Obama didn’t intend the Frankenstein monster that health care reform has become.

Applying failed California policies to the Federal Government will lead to the same result: failure on a massive scale and higher taxes. Even the OMB auditor stated this fact. Now Blue Dog Democrats are revolting against the plan due to the same problem.

The solution? Not the MoveOn plan of simply rubber stamping the President and using an internet bully pulpit to motivate the “sheeple” incapable of thinking independently. Obama must stand up to his own party and remove the fraud that is currently being debated in Congress. A simple program to reduce the cost of health care and increase availability would be to cap malpractice suit payments by applying a potential earnings standard. That would lower malpractice insurance, allowing fairer and more affordable prices to be charged in the health care market.

In the meantime, I would love to see MoveOn MoveOver a bit away from the fringe left. Start looking at the realities of important legislation, not just the politics. Cap and Trade was a joke. This health care plan isn’t even funny. And MoveOn? You have become as pathetic as David Letterman’s apologies.

Climate war could kill nearly all of us, leaving survivors in the Stone Age

We need a climate change ‘Churchill’ to lead us away from planet-wide devastation, writes James Lovelock in the latest edition of Conservation magazine, part of the Guardian Environment Network

* James Lovelock, from Conservation magazine, part of the Guardian Environment Network
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 June 2009 12.18 BST
* Article history

‘We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from a glacial age to an interglacial one,’ says Lovelock. Photograph: NASA/Corbis

In a small way, the plight of the British in 1940 resembles the state of the civilized world now. At that time we had had nearly a decade of the well-intentioned but quite wrong belief that peace was all that mattered.

The followers of the peace lobbies of the 1930s resembled the environmentalist movements now; their intentions were more than good but wholly inappropriate for the war that was about to start. It is time to wake up and realize that Gaia, the Earth system, is no cozy mother that nurtures humans and can be propitiated by gestures such as carbon trading or sustainable development.

Gaia, even though we are a part of her, will always dictate the terms of peace. I am stirred by the thought that Gaia has existed for more than a quarter the age of the universe and that it has taken this long for a species to evolve that can think, communicate, and store its thoughts and experiences.

If we can keep civilization alive through this century perhaps there is a chance that our descendants will one day serve Gaia and assist her in the fine-tuned self-regulation of the climate and composition of our planet.

We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from a glacial age to an interglacial one. Before long, we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers. The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone Age existence. But in several places in the world, including the U.K., we have a chance of surviving and even of living well.

For that to be possible, we have to make our lifeboats seaworthy now. Back in May 1940, we in the UK awoke to find facing us across the Channel a wholly hostile continental force about to invade. We were alone without an effective ally but fortunate to have a new leader, Winston Churchill, whose moving words stirred the whole nation from its lethargy: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

We all need modern Churchills to lead us from the clinging, flabby, consensual thinking of the late twentieth century and to bind our nations with a single-minded effort to wage a difficult war.

• From Conservation magazine, part of the Guardian Environment Network

LETTER FROM THE ACLU ABOUT IMMIGRATION REFORM (My response follows.)

Jay-

Big news today.

This afternoon, President Obama is meeting with Members of Congress at the White House to talk immigration. Just yesterday, Senate leaders said that they are ready and able to move real immigration reform forward. This is great news, and it’s about time!

For the extreme, anti-immigrant groups that have blocked reform for years, however, any talk of real solutions must be shut down. These groups are riled up and angry. On their websites they claim to have already sent 693,437 faxes to Washington this month opposing reform.

At a time when Minutemen track human beings in the desert like animals, Latinos are pulled over for “looking illegal,” Sheriffs march chain gangs of immigrants through the streets of Phoenix with a smile, and unscrupulous employers openly exploit “under the table” workers and don’t pay their fair share of taxes, real reform is more crucial than ever. Comprehensive immigration reform ensures that everyone in America has the same rights and responsibilities and that no one has second-class status. If we want it, we have to speak up and drown out the anti-immigrant lobby that opposes solutions!

If we want it, Washington needs to hear from us right now.

Tell the President and our leaders in Congress to stand up to the noisy anti-immigrant lobby and show us a real Road Map to Reform:

http://www.AmericasVoiceOnline.org/RoadMap

It’s no surprise that, in the face of progress, extreme, anti-immigrant groups are doing what they do best: sending angry faxes, lashing out at immigrants, and trying to intimidate Congress into doing nothing. Their only “solution,” after all, is to forcibly round up and deport the 12 million immigrants who are living and working in this country without legal status. Sound good?

Meanwhile, public support for reform is at an all-time high. A nationwide poll conducted last month revealed that an astounding 86 percent of voters support comprehensive immigration reform when they hear the details. A clear majority, 64 percent, support it even before hearing the specifics. Activists like you made 20,000 phone calls to the White House supporting immigration reform last week alone. You helped send over 200,000 faxes last month.

Thank you — but we can’t stop here.

Ask President Obama and Congressional Leadership to show us the Road Map to Real Immigration Reform:

http://www.AmericasVoiceOnline.org/RoadMap

The good news is that the tide is turning in Washington — but we can’t let these extreme voices turn it back. Today is a big day.

Thanks for everything you’re doing, and for forwarding this message widely.

Sincerely,

Adam Luna
America’s Voice

MY RESPONSE TO THIS LETTER

Adam,

I believe that the best immigration reform available was President Bush’s Guest Worker Program, which died due to Democrats putting politics before compassion. It was a fair program that did not force Americans to supply health care to citizens of another country who do not pay into our system. As a result of this program being unapproved by the Democrats, we now struggle with dealing with illegal immigrants. The key word here is illegal. If I am in “illegal status” as an American, I am arrested and put into jail. Why do we allow ANYONE with illegal status to get better benefits than hard working Americans?
It is time for the ACLU (to whom I donate) to remember that Mexican illegal immigrants are citizens of the nation of Mexico. It is up to Mexico to provide for them, and if Mexico cannot, then those Mexican citizens MUST APPLY FOR VISAS TO WORK IN THE US LEGALLY, just as my great grandparents did. They learned English, moved to the US, went through our immigration system, and did it all legally.
Do we somehow believe that the Mexicans are too stupid to figure it out, or is it easier for liberals to coddle everyone because doing things the right way is too hard?
The only fair way to help the illegals is to bring back the Bush Administration Guest Worker Program. It is fair to them, and it is the only fair way to treat our own hard working citizens. Some of these “fringe” groups you refer to are not “fringe” or “extremist” at all. You are using rhetoric to inflame your constituents. Give it a rest. Many of these groups represent AMERICAN CITIZENS (many of whom are Hispanic) living in the border states and being impacted by the waves of illegal immigration. I for one oppose Nancy Pelosi and her plan to pay for illegal immigrant’s health care by taxing my 401K. I’m glad that Nancy can afford that, but the rest of us out here in American cannot and WILL NOT! I for one am FOR IMMIGRATION AND IMMIGRANTS – as long as they do it legally. You seem to leave that out of your email – most Americans are not “anti-immigration”. We are ANTI ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION! Why the propaganda and dishonesty? Is it because most liberals have immediate visceral responses to rhetoric and you are using that to your advantage to avoid the truth?
Stop using racism, rhetoric, and political Obama love fests to get out messages that are clearly not Constitutional. The US Constitution serves AMERICAN CITIZENS, not the whole world. Don’t forget that inconvenient truth.

Jay Burkos – ACLU Member at Odds

Recently, Senator Barbara Boxer ranted to a Brigadier General in the Army Corps of Engineers that she didn’t want to be called “ma’am”. She wanted to be called “Senator”, a title she worked very hard to achieve. Thanks to Senator Boxer, we have an inkling of the problem with our career politicians. The original men and women who founded our nation were true to the definition “servants of the people”. By signing the Declaration of Independence, all signatories condemned themselves to the death penalty for treason against England in the event that they were captured or we failed in our bid for independence. They laid their lives, families, and fortunes on the line for our fledgling nation and the rights (still to be enumerated) of our citizens. Their perks and privileges included meeting in secret locations, going about in disguises, running for their lives from their homes, and hoping a Tory didn’t turn them in to the British military. Not one of them received exorbitant salaries, premium health care, unmeasured power, spin doctor aides, or anything like our current “servants of the people”.
Congress, regardless of which wing of the building you serve, is a posh job with every whim and desire satisfied by aides and staffers jockeying for precedence. Perks are to be had at every hand, from fellow members looking for legislative support, to corporations wanting friendly statutes, and not to mention cowed voters who need real assistance begging on bended knee for just a touch of help. No, this isn’t what the Founders fought to achieve. This is what the Founding Fathers fought AGAINST. We have created a serving ruling elite class akin to royalty, and that feeling of lord and ladyship has gone to the heads of most of them. A perfect example would be Senator Barbara Boxer, who recently chided a hard working Brigadier General who called her ma’am, which is perfectly acceptable in any case. She demanded to be called Senator, in case anyone forgot that she was one. (Hard to when you are testifying in front of a Senate committee on which she sits). This perfect arrogance and egotism would be anathema to the men and women who founded our nation. As far as servant of the people is concerned, what servants receive such luxurious pay, health care, and precedence? What servant can chide a serving General Officer in the military? No, it is time to take away some of the prestige and power from our politicians. IF everyday Americans are losing jobs, homes, and rights at a staggering pace, perhaps our politicians need to cede some of their perks. As servants of the people, perhaps they need to seek the meaning of that phrase, come off their gilded thrones, and start acting the part.

Senator Boxer,

Having served for 13 years in the military, I am quite an expert on protocol. I am also an expert on overactive egos.

The term “sir” or “ma’am” is a perfectly acceptable substitute for rank when addressing a person who is senior to you. There is no disrespect intended when addressed this way, and to construe it so shows a dire lack of knowledge about the military and displays a problematic ego to the one offended.

It seems to me that when a Senator or Representative develops such an overactive ego, it is time for them to retire. Frankly, your example of ego is the perfect reason for instituting term limits. Our Founding Fathers fought the Revolution to ensure that no man or woman bowed to royalty or lordship again. Somehow, you have forgotten that you are not royalty or a peer – you are simply a employee of the people of the United States and the State of California.
When entering your office or the halls of government, ma’am, please check your ego at the door. Egos have caused a majority of the problems we suffer in this nation. Yours could do with some mitigation.