Senator George Allen: I’m Thoroughly Unimpressed
by Bill Simon
I watched Senator George Allen on Meet the Depressed this morning with Tim Russert. I have to say, for my first impression of the man, I am thoroughly UNIMPRESSED with his grasp of issues.
Allen completely avoided having to answer the truth when Russert asked him twice to confirm that Allen stated he voted for the Iraq War because “to not do so would be disloyal to the President.”
Right…that’s a great reason for voting for such an act for our military to undertake…shows a complete ability to think independently (NOT!).
This guy is a Republican candidate for President in 2008? What a squishy guy.
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September 18th, 2006 at 11:04 am
We don’t need squishy - we’ve got plenty of that already in DC. Perhaps Allen’s squishiness has led to his tight race with Webb?
We desperately need someone to step up to the plate and lead the GOP into 2008. Hopefully such a person will emerge after the ‘06 elections are over.
September 18th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
His poor debate performance is the least of his problems.
September 19th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Buzz,
WHO ??????
September 21st, 2006 at 4:30 am
Jeb Bush, Cheney and Rice insist they are not interested in an ‘08 run. McCain, Giuliani, Romney and Pataki are all too liberal to win the primaries. Frist is becoming a joke, and when he loses his Senate seat this November, Allen will be too. That leaves (of people I’ve seen mentioned as ‘08 contenders) Newt Gingrich, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo. Does anybody see any of those four winning?
September 21st, 2006 at 6:59 am
Charley,
I think Romney would be the best.
His bill may not be perfect on healthcare but the concept of everyones pays I support.
He has been good on immigration and spending.
I do not know his stance on trade.
He also seems like a guy who can work with all sides to get things done.
In fact , I think you would vote for him over the current Dems so far.
September 21st, 2006 at 8:39 am
Romney will never get the nomination because he’s a mormom. With the fundamentalists controlling the primaries, just the mention of his religion will doom his chances. Sorry, but it’s true.
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:50 am
John,
No way will the GOP nominate someone who is or has been pro-choice on abortion. That includes Romney. That is probably more incapacitating than the religion issue, though it too is a hurdle.
I supported John Kerry in 2004, and would do so again happily. My second choice is Wesley Clark, and my third is Bill Richardson. Any of the three would immediately get my vote over any Republican, including Romney.
Besides, I would be very surprised if he were not a total free-trader. Socially moderate Republicans usually are.
September 22nd, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Charley,
The party will go with Ms. Clinton the pro-trade and big business candidate. The Dems will talk about abortion and not jobs.Ans call anyone a racist he gets in the way of Walmart.
That is why Paul Hacket got whack in Ohio. The first time he dare said something about immigration they called him racist.This is why the Democrats will not get working class people back.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060120/NEWS09/60120046/-1/NEWS
September 22nd, 2006 at 12:32 pm
John Konop,
Sherrod Brown is leading Mike Dewine in the OH senate race. Brown led the charge against CAFTA but Dewine voted for it.
The problem with the immigration issue is that the issue is being coopted by racists like Tom Tancredo. People like that have ruined the immigration debate.
No one has done more for big business than the GOP in the past 6 years. Wal Mart donates heavily to the GOP not Dems John.
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Charley,
Read about Ms. Clinton.
http://legalsoapbox.freeadvice.com/n13272_Wal-Mart_controversy_pits_Clintons_political_ambition_against_her_past.htm
With retail giant Wal-Mart under fire to improve its labor and health care policies, one Democrat with deep ties to the company _ Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton _ has started feeling her share of the political heat.
Clinton served on Wal-Mart’s board of directors for six years when her husband was governor of Arkansas. And the Rose Law Firm, where she was a partner, handled many of the Arkansas-based company’s legal affairs.
Hillary Clinton had kind words for Wal-Mart as recently as 2004, when she told an audience at the convention of the National Retail Federation that her time on the board “was a great experience in every respect.”
Hacket was in front of Brown in the polls when the money guys in the party forced him out.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/6/12495/7492
Also the reason Brown is up is due to all the Republican scandels in Ohio. A few examples.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20050707_tokaji.html
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2006/05/01/67742.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14842775
September 24th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
John,
Please note that I did NOT list Hillary Clinton among my preferences for the Democratic nomination. Indeed, she is near the bottom.
As for Ohio, you are correct. Democratic party regulars did force Paul Hackett out in favor of Sherrod Brown in the Senate race. It seemed a shabby deal to me, but Hackett is still supporting the Democratic ticket.
September 24th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
John Konop,
Hackett left because he couldn’t get funding. Are you admitting that CAFTA isn’t a salient issue? I would think that you would be glad to see a campaign putting that issue front and center. Ken Blackwell is losing by 20 pts because of the OH GOP scandals and it is hurting some of the house races but I don’t think that it’s an issue with him like it is with people like Conrad Burns.
September 24th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Charley and caroline,
The Democrats have a problem with talking about homeland security issue and being anti-illegal immigration reform.
Do not get me wrong , because much of the Republican party is not much better.To talk about security and the boarder and not employeers is just racist.
I think the Democrats message is vote for us we are not Republicans. With the districts being fixed by both parties you need over a 6% advantage to beat to get seats in Congress. Can you get seats with no message, it will be tough.
If Bush keeps polling between 44% to 46% it will not happen in my opinion.
BTW, the other big issue both parties are wrong on is education. Democrats lets spend more money on a failed No Child Left Behind plan. And Republicans are to tell us it is working.
BTW, I still like you even after you heard me and did not vote for me. And thanks for being nice to my son.
September 24th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
caroline,
The problem is if you are anti-CAFTA but pro illegal immigration you are still killing the middle Class.
If you are for CAFTA and against illegal immigration you are killing the middle class.
At the end , we need to stop flow in the U.S. with cheap legal and illegal labor and we need to stop promoting overseas child and slave labor.
The reason money stop for Hacket is the liberal money side of the Democrat party. If they felt so bad about the illegal hired help why not buy them healthcare and give a living wage.I wonder how they would feel if wages drop 8% for them over the last 12 years because cheap labor was taking wages and jobs from them?
September 25th, 2006 at 5:43 am
John,
Democrats do have a message. We want to balance the budget by reinstating pay-as-you-go budget rules. We want to fully implement the 9-11 Commission findings. We want to allow Medicare to do what the VA does now; bargain for lower drug prices through bulk purchasing. Fourth, we want comprehensive lobbying reform. That is the four-point plan offered by Howard Dean, and fully endorsed by our Congressional leadership.
Beyond that, there are many differences among Democrats, but there is a general committment to working class families. You will find MOST Democrats, including Steve Sinton, oppose NAFTA and CAFTA, and would vote to pass restrictions on, if not repeals of, current rotten trade deals. Unlike Steve, most Democrats do support the Senate immigration bill. Sadly, there is hardly any Democratic consensus on Iraq, though anymore, one could say the same about Republicans.
In that vein, John, I must take issue with the figure you cite. Bush is polling 44% at best. Others have him down at 37%. I beleive a fair average is 40% job approval for Bush, well below where Clinton was in 1994. Further, approval ratings for Congressional Republicans are well below 40% in all surveys.
The only thing preventing this from being a total tidal wave for Democrats is that our approval ratings aren’t that good. Yet, I feel that is an indicator of how much in a quagmire we are. There are no politically palatable solutions left, be the issue Iraq, immigration, or entitlements. Whichever way one goes, the downside is crushing. A most unpleasant situation in which to be if one is in the incumbent party.
September 25th, 2006 at 6:04 am
Who is pro illegal immigration? You keep saying this but as far as I know, no one is saying “let’s let illegal immigrants run the country.” The problem is that the laws ARE NOT being inforced by the Bush administration. The immigration laws have been on the books for 20 years.
Apparently you don’t want to listen to what the other side has to say. That’s okay but I wish you would just admit it. Don’t make excuses. Do you support scientific medical research? Dems do but the GOP doesn’t. There’s one thing for you and there’s many more.
Man, you are making crazy stuff up about Hackett.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:56 am
caroline,
My brother is a Democrat and it was his event in Ohio that the article was about with Hacket going against the party on Illegal immigration.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060120/NEWS09/60120046/-1/NEWS
The Senate immigration plan will flood the Country with cheap labor and hurt the middle class.
It was Ceasar Chavez who said immigration was a tool to drive wages down.That is what the Senate plan would immigration plan would do.
BTW,
In the plan workers have limited rights and no mandatory health insurance ie slave labor program.
Read for yourself.
The most effective recourse for workers in abusive employment relationships is to change jobs. But under U.S. law, these workers’ visas are tied to their employers and in most cases they cannot legally change employers. If they leave, they lose immigration status and can be deported.
In about ten percent of the cases that Human Rights Watch reviewed, workers were trafficking victims. Employers lured the workers to the United States with false promises about their employment conditions and then held them in servitude. These women worked long hours, up to nineteen per day, and were often paid less than $100 per month. They were rarely allowed outside and were prohibited from speaking to strangers. Some were physically or sexually abused.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2001/06/14/usdom176.htm
September 25th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
John Konop,
Massive deportation is not a practical solution. It sounds like he shot off at the mouth. There is nothing in that article that makes it sound like Democrats (all of them anyway) agree with what you are saying. They quoted “one gasp” and two other people’s comments. I seriously doubt that is representative of the party as a whole. You are extrapolating that comment to a whole bunch of people who may or may not agree with that statement. I could say that the GOP is a racist party because of George Allen. He has been exposed to be a notorious racist and there hasn’t been one condemnation of him from anyone in the GOP that I’ve seen. (He’s been found out to be a member of the “uptown Klan”).
We can’t have a serious debate about the immigration issue because it is being run by racists like Tom Tancredo. I would recommend that the GOP do a “sister souljah” on the racists and then maybe we can have a national discussion.
Equating immigration is trade is fallacious. The illegal immigrants are at least working for minimum wage while the countries that are dumping goods here are paying what? 50 cents an hour
September 25th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
caroline,
You said,”Equating immigration is trade is fallacious”
The sales pitch that Clinton , Gore and Republicans and Dems in Congress gave us when they passed NAFTA.
Read for yourself From Ross Perot.
[It is a myth that] NAFTA will reduce illegal immigration. As manufacturing in northern Mexico expands, hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers will be drawn north. They will quickly find that wages in the Mexican maquiladora plants cannot compete with wages anywhere in the US. Out of economic necessity, many of these mobile workers will consider illegally immigrating into the US. In short, NAFTA has the potential to increase illegal immigration, not decrease it.
Source: Save Your Job, Save Our Country, by Ross Perot, p. 72 Jan 1, 1993
NAFTA lets Mexican professionals work in the US legally
Today, foreign professional workers can enter the US labor market, but only “temporarily” & only if an employer gets a certification that a qualified US worker cannot be found. Also, the existing US immigration laws place a numerical limit on the number of temporary workers. Put another way, American workers have priority for American jobs.
NAFA radically alters this entire concept. Under NAFTA, Mexican and Canadian workers in 63 designated categories may be hired in the US, even if qualified American workers are available.
Under NAFTA, Mexican and Canadian entrepreneurs will be able to provide US drug stores with pharmacists, hotels with managers, and so on. As a result, hundreds of thousands of professional American workers are going to be put under intense pressure to cut their wages and benefits. [Lower-skilled workers] are going to lose their jobs to low-paid foreign contract workers. While no one was watching, US NAFTA negotiators radically revised the nation’s immigration laws.
September 26th, 2006 at 5:10 am
Crops rotting in the fields and de facto orphaned American children (remember, if they’re born here, they’re citizens) is not my idea of a successful immigration policy. It’s too late for deportation, or ANY simplistic solution, including unconditional amnesty.
September 26th, 2006 at 6:41 am
John Konop,
You missed my point. People from the Mariana Islands are not walking across the border and that just one instance of the slave laborers we trade with.
I figured you were a Ross Perot fan.
How is it helpful that the immigration debate is being run by racists? Conservatives are using the Hitler analogy as far as mass deportation. Saying things like “well Hitler mass deported millions of Jews so we should be able to get rid of these Mexicans?
I’m with Charley. There is no simple solution. I wish it were so but it isn’t.
September 26th, 2006 at 7:04 am
FROM WILLIAM THOMAS
Preface - Made In China.
Fateful decisions made by China’s leaders, limiting births to mostly males and forbidding farmers to tap shrinking reservoirs diverted to smog-choked cities could lead to internal strife and foreign conquest as this economic powerhouse reaches the limits of explosive growth. But US consumers continue to fund China’s military modernization, even as they erode their own economy and employment at home. Even worse, Wal-Mart shoppers are supporting forced labor camps where the healthiest inmates are executed for “organ harvesting”. Wal-Mart also buys heavily from slave labor manufacturing zones, where women workers are typically paid 3 cents an hour or less for 70 to 90-hour work weeks. See smuggled photos here. And please don’t buy any products “Made In China”.
“When the natural way is lost…
When goodness is forgotten…
When the people are no longer kind…
When this is lost…
May be the beginning of confusion,
The beginning of great folly.”
-Way of the Tao by Lao Tzu
http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/China.htm
September 26th, 2006 at 7:06 am
caroline,
You could write same stuff about most are trade deals now !
The Chinese Ministry of Labor admitted that the child labor situation was very serious throughout the country. It stated that exploiting child laborers has become a common occurrence. In some coastal areas and particular economic zones, such as Fujian and Guangdong, as well as Zhejiang, Sichuan, and Hubei, there are reported to be approximately four to five million-child laborers under the age of 16. Child laborers under 12 years of age are also found in Whenzhou and in some areas of Guangdong and Hainan. The children usually work 10 to 14 hours a day with half the wages of an adult
http://ihscslnews.org/view_article.php?id=57
September 26th, 2006 at 7:10 am
caroline& Charley,
I never said Massive deportation is a solution. But the reason illeegal immigrants come here is for jobs. If you go after employeers many will just go home.
September 26th, 2006 at 11:03 am
John Konop,
I basically agree with you with regards to the solution. I know you aren’t a racist by your posts but the racist tinge to a lot of immigration debate bothers me.
You should hope that Sherrod Brown wins in OH. It would send a message that NAFTA, etc need to be changed.
September 26th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Caroline,
I do agree with you about the racist tinge. That is why I have said in public that boarder control and not go after employeers is racist!!!
September 30th, 2006 at 8:19 am
John, many will go home as well if NAFTA is renegotiated so that Mexico has wages comparable to the U.S. That said, what if the political muscle to do that is not there? If illegal immigrants lose their jobs because their emloyers are RIGHTFULLY arrested for violating our labor laws, how do they and their families make it back? What will they have to go back to? If immigration is handled incorrectly over the next decade, our society will have a logistical nightmare on our hands; Katrina times 10,000! This, in turn, could lead to anger and radicalization.
It is in the interests of all to have a set of policies in place (not neccesarily implemented) to begin the integration of our immigrant population into society. I agree with you that the status quo is unsustainable, that maintaining a ’shadow’ labor force will inevitably lead to disaster. IF, on the other hand, this population will be with us for a while, incentives to peaceful and productive participation in society must be formulated.
Requiring steady work and no criminal history is a good start. A good-faith effort to pay back taxes should also be mandatory. Joining a labor union or participating in a PTA should also be encouraged. I’m somewhat ambivalent regarding language requirements. A SUR13 gang member could say “Hello, how are you?”. A construction worker could say “Ola, como am estad?” (sp) I’ll deal with the latter.
In the end, the best possible first step is to raise Latin American wage, labor, and environmental standards through renegotiated trade deals. That, in turn, will ease (not eliminate) the other logistical difficulties. Without that first step, we could still survive as one nation, but with far more wrenching changes and requirements of sacrifice.
September 30th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Charley,
I do not disagree about labor issue . But now it must happen in all the trade deals.Because, all that will happen is the investment will go to the country with no legal or enviormental rights for workers.It has to be a level playing field !!!
September 30th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Neo-liberalism has a patchy Mexican record
By J. Bradford DeLong
Saturday, Sep 30, 2006,Page 9
`We can no longer repeat the old mantra that the neo-liberal road of NAFTA and associated reforms is clearly and obviously the right one.’
Six years ago, I was ready to conclude that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a major success. The key argument in favor of NAFTA had been that it was the most promising road the US could take to raise the chances for Mexico to become democratic and prosperous, and that the US had both a strong selfish interest and a strong neighborly duty to try to help Mexico develop.
Since NAFTA, Mexican real GDP has grown at 3.6 percent per year, and exports have boomed, going from 10 percent of GDP in 1990 and 17 percent of GDP in 1999 to 28 percent of GDP today. Next year, Mexico’s real exports will be five times what they were in 1990.
It is here — in the rapid development of export industries and the dramatic rise in export volumes — that NAFTA made the difference. NAFTA guarantees Mexican producers tariff and quota-free access to the US market, the largest consumer market in the world.
Without this guarantee, few would have invested in the capacity to satisfy the US market. Increasing trade between the US and Mexico moves both countries toward a greater degree of specialization and a finer division of labor in important industries like autos, where labor-intensive portions are increasingly accomplished in Mexico, and textiles, where high-tech spinning and weaving is increasingly done in the US, while Mexico carries out lower-tech cutting and sewing.
Such efficiency gains from increasing the extent of the market and promoting specialization should have produced rapid growth in Mexican productivity. Likewise, greater efficiency should have been reinforced by a boom in capital formation, which should have accompanied the guarantee that no future wave of protectionism in the US would shut factories in Mexico.
The key word here is “should.” Today’s 100 million Mexicans have real incomes — at purchasing power parity — of roughly US$10,000 per year, a quarter of the current US level. They are investing perhaps a fifth of GDP in gross fixed capital formation — a healthy amount — and have greatly expanded their integration into the world (that is, the North American) economy since NAFTA.
But the 3.6 percent rate of growth of GDP, coupled with a 2.5 percent per year rate of population and increase, means that Mexicans’ mean income is barely 15 percent above that of the pre-NAFTA days, and that the gap between their mean income and that of the US has widened. Because of rising inequality, the overwhelming majority of Mexicans live no better off than they did 15 years ago (indeed, the only part of Mexican development that has been a great success has been the rise in incomes and living standards that comes from increased migration to the US, and increased remittances sent back to Mexico).
Intellectually, this is a great puzzle: we believe in market forces, and in the benefits of trade, specialization and the international division of labor. We see the enormous increase in Mexican exports to the US over the past decade.
We see great strengths in the Mexican economy — a stable macroeconomic environment, fiscal prudence, low inflation, little country risk, a flexible labor force, a strengthened and solvent banking system, successfully reformed poverty-reduction programs, high earnings from oil, and so on.
Yet successful neo-liberal policies have not delivered the rapid increases in productivity and working-class wages that neo-liberals like me would have confidently predicted had we been told back in 1995 that Mexican exports would multiply five-fold in the next 12 years.
To be sure, economic deficiencies still abound in Mexico. According to the OECD, these include a very low average number of years of schooling, with young workers having almost no more formal education than their older counterparts; little on-the-job training; heavy bureaucratic burdens on firms; corrupt judges and police; high crime rates; and a large, low-productivity informal sector that narrows the tax base and raises tax rates on the rest of the economy. But these deficiencies should not be enough to neutralize Mexico’s powerful geographic advantages and the potent benefits of neo-liberal policies, should they?
Apparently they are. The demographic burden of a rapidly growing labor force appears to be greatly increased when that labor force is not very literate, especially when inadequate infrastructure, crime, and official corruption also take their toll.
We neo-liberals point out that NAFTA did not cause poor infrastructure, high crime and official corruption. We thus implicitly suggest that Mexicans would be far worse off today without NAFTA and its effects weighing in on the positive side of the scale.
That neo-liberal story may be true. But it is an excuse. It may not be true. Having witnessed Mexico’s slow growth over the past 15 years, we can no longer repeat the old mantra that the neo-liberal road of NAFTA and associated reforms is clearly and obviously the right one.
J. Bradford DeLong, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, was assistant US Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration.
October 1st, 2006 at 12:32 pm
John,
With regards to all trade deals, especially those with China, I think successful modification so unrealistic that it is not worth pursuing. The best hope is to have establish a hemisperic trade pact that addresses the faults of NAFTA/CAFTA, then protect the hemisphere from Chinese imports. Together, we would have the labor force, technology, resources, etc. to stand successfully against Communist China, and basically wear them down.
October 1st, 2006 at 12:33 pm
One thing is for sure; Georgia Allen ain’t gonna do any of us any good, right?
October 1st, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Oops….George Allen
October 1st, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Charley,
I am not a big George Allen fan.
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Caroline
Is it because Tancredo has led the way (to his own detriment) on the immigration issue that you call him a racist?
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Charlie Levinson
A mother who would leave their child behind who may have only had the child for the benifits of having an “anchor baby” is an unfit mother. And you’re wringing your hands that some of them may wind up in an Orphanage?
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:02 pm
this whole debate Caroline is deeper than just being mean to illegal aliens. It’s about trying to stop the North American Union.
October 2nd, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Robert Pastor, a vice chairman of the CFR task force that produced the report Building a North American Union, has suggested that a hypothetical common currency might be called the “Amero”, which would be similar in concept to the Euro, the common currency of the EU. [3]
Many proponents, however, see calling such a common currency the “Amero” as needlessly generic, since two of the three countries (Canada and the USA) already use a common name, the “dollar”, for their respective currencies, along with many Caribbean nations which could also be candidates for accession to a future NAU. [citation needed]
The third major country, Mexico, uses the peso, which is also a dollar-like currency (although it is currently trading at an exchange rate significantly lower relative to the dollar currencies of both Canada and the USA). (At one time, one silver dollar equaled exactly one peso, which was in turn based on the Spanish dollar.)
The three nations that make up the NAU would either significantly diminish or else erase remaining trade and travel restrictions with each other, making entry into their countries from the other two nearly as easy as crossing state or provincial lines within each of said countries (as is already the case within the EU). Because of this, the NAU is seen by many in the United States as an end run around Federal immigration laws. which would also eliminate any need for actual amnesty for illegal immigrants (as is currently being debated in the US Congress). [citation needed]
This proposed supranational government is also seen by many as surrendering US sovereignty, which undermines the United States Constitution. Because of these and other provisions that would be enacted if the NAU was put in place, it is considered to be nothing more than an illegal international treaty by many in the United States. [citation needed]
The Full Disclosure Network(tm) coverage of the July 2006 National Council of La Raza Convention in Los Angeles offered this video blog debate on the concept of a North American Union. NCLR delegates and Hispanic leaders offered their opinions. Available for viewing 24/7, on demand, at this URL: http://www.fulldisclosure.net/flash/VideoBlogs/VideoBlog32.php as a public service of the Full Disclosure Network(tm)
Opponents of the current government in Canada, such as Jack Layton of the NDP, see the North American Union proposal, referred to as deep integration, as compromising Canadian sovereignty, potentially paving the way for Canada’s total annexation by the United States. [4]
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:16 am
This North American Union, Nafta Superhighway, security and prosperity partnership, (and CAU?)and some other acronyms, are all dirty, stinking, rotten, filthy, secretive, means for the global elitists to centralize power. It boggles my mind to still see so many christians support these neocons in power. I’m not going to be hoodwinked by all the “soft talk”. Lou Dobbs is bitch-slapping these jackasses.http://youtube.com/watch?v=6RNfL6IVWCE
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:34 am
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6RNfL6IVWCE
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:44 am
wrong link. sorry. hehe. Here it is.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2kjsy2Z3kdI
October 3rd, 2006 at 8:39 am
bill,
Willful abandonement is not the issue. When mothers and fathers are being arrested for crossing our border illegally to find work, and they have American-born children, what happens to the children? What happened to the premise that only a heterosexual couple is capable of raising balanced children (as opposed to single parents, gay couples, institutions, etc.)? Like it or not, the standard right-wing answers lead only to one giant contradiction.
With regards to the proposed NAU, deep suspicion is definitely warranted. There is no reason to expect that such a union, given the current poliitcal structure in all three major countries involved, would lead to better wages, labor standards, or environmental standards. If, however, it COULD be made an agency for such positive changes, then it might be worthwhile. When Democrats are in charge here, the Liberals in Canada are in charge there, and Senor Obrador is the recognized President of Mexico, maybe then we could talk.
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:47 am
So they’re crossing the border and they’ve got kids already here? Why did they leave them in the first place? Who’s taking care of the kids meantime? relatives? There’s your solution to the orphanage. Or I guess immigration could make a detour to pick up the kids if the parents requested. How often does THAT happen? Sorry I left out Mexican fathers, gay Mexicans, and Lesbian Mexicans. They should get treated the same.
October 6th, 2006 at 3:22 am
bill,
I’ve never seen anyone deliberately miss the point with more gay abandon than you. When ICE raided Emanuel County, Georgia, children were left behind, crops were left unharvested, and businesses closed operations. In a way, I’m glad it happened, because now we have proof positive what would happen on a national level if Tancredo and his ilk prevailed.
The hard-line solution will not work. We are way past the point where it ever could.
October 6th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Charley
First off I think GA. needs a “Sonny Don’t” program. (Don’t listen to you)
Gay abandon? Wow. You sure got me nailed. I just like to spend my time skipping through life with “gay abandon”. Or did you mean to say, “gay disregard”? I got nothing but love for gay AMERICANS!!!!!!!!I only draw the line at sexual predators gay or straight. And if they’re American they all deserve equal rights.
“Tancredo and his ilk”? If you really want some good advice “ilk” is one of those tired words from like the ’80s.
October 6th, 2006 at 8:12 am
Charlie,
I’m prescribing 500cc of Inject-o-tinge.
I’ll adress the bludgeoned federal action in Emanuel County later. I have to go to work.
October 6th, 2006 at 8:35 am
(The prescription is to help you look at reality first, what people think a distant second)
October 6th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Charlie
Perhaps I should put some sexy women on my blog so you will get an idea of what I’m into when it comes to sex. EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN’T HAVE A DAMN THING TO TO WITH MY POLITICS!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 9th, 2006 at 5:35 am
bill,
By all means, keep working. You couldn’t possibly be accomplishing less there than here.
That walking fraud Perdoodoo does not deserve my counsel. That’s fine, too.
I did not say you were gay, nor did I use the word in a sexual context. Your sexual proclivities are completely irrelevent to me. Why are you making them an issue?
October 9th, 2006 at 6:34 am
Charlie
I really hate getting off subject but analyzing people’s words is just too fun. I had never heard that phrase before but to me it resembled “wreckless abandon” Abandon means unbound enthusiasm, exuberance. Hence “gay exuberance”.
The “Sonny Don’t” thing was over the top. Sorry. But I don’t work for him if that’s what you’re implying.
The ICE deal: (WHEW!)I think it was overdone. And why try to criple such a small community like this? I think this group has the best approach. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qiw85f5fYGY
October 9th, 2006 at 6:40 am
http://www.numbersusa.com/index
October 9th, 2006 at 6:58 am
Does anyone else feel like they’re getting assaulted (by ads and e-mails) by this Hillary vs. Rice ‘08 concept?
October 10th, 2006 at 4:52 am
Not at all. The Democratic machine is focused on this year, as we should be.