Jobs Growth vs. Fed Growth

Becket Adams' chart deserves a "plus," but the Google+ button didn't show up on the ad-cluttered page as this computer opened it, so I'm plussing it the oldfashioned way. Check these numbers:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/19/the-jobs-growth-vs-govt-spending-chart-that-should-put-everything-into-perspective/

Cory Booker's Talent for Fiction...

Cory Booker, currently a mayor, is running against Steve Lonegan for a U.S. Senate seat. Lloyd Marcus summarizes that race:

"National conservative and Republican leaders are lining up to help propel Conservative Republican Steve Lonegan to victory in the upcoming Special Election for U.S. Senate.

If we win this race it will be extremely difficult for Harry Reid and the Democrats to maintain their majority in the U.S. Senate.
 

The key issue in this race is money.  The liberal Democrat candidate, Cory Booker, has been endorsed by Barack Obama and is raising millions of dollars for his campaign.
 

We must pool together the contributions of thousands of patriots such as yourself to level the playing field.  To pitch in, simply make a contribution of any amount from as little as $5 up to the maximum allowed contribution of $5,000 - CONTRIBUTE HERE.
 

"

And what are Mayor Booker's qualifications? I've not been in New Jersey for many years and don't know either of these gentlemen, although Lloyd Marcus has been campaigning on Steve Lonegan's behalf, and as Marcus readers know, Rand Paul has also expressed support for the Lonegan campaign. However, Becket Adams has some details about Booker's potential talent for writing fiction:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/29/did-newark-mayor-cory-booker-get-busted-for-telling-detailed-stories-about-a-drug-dealer-who-doesnt-exist/

Composite characters, especially the ones that differ by only 1 to 2% from a stereotype every reader could draw, are the stuff of which commercially successful fiction is made...but New Jersey voters may want to ask one another whether that's the talent they want in the U.S. Senate.

Is James Clyburn Lapsing in the Heat?

Gentle Readers, I'm sitting here in the cool green mountains...well, they really are green, anyway. The temperature's been in the eighties all day; the humidity's been in the nineties. Any two things that aren't supposed to stick together, e.g. clothes and skin, are sticking tight. Any two things that are supposed to stick together, e.g. shoe tops and shoe soles, are falling apart. And I know that, due to the similar weather pattern plus the local warming effect, the air in Washington and Baltimore is equally humid and hard to breathe, but the temperature is probably fifteen degrees hotter. I've been there. I survived, by staying in fully climate-controlled buildings all day. I know this is not the kind of day when anybody's brain has been running at its best...

Well, I hope for his family's sake that U.S. Representative James Clyburn (D-MD) is at least in some relatively cool place like Clarksville or Frostburg. In D.C., people who looked younger than he does have died in this kind of weather. And although poor Mr. Clyburn seems in the photo to be standing up all by himself, according to Becket Adams, he isn't making a lot of sense...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/22/conservative-blogs-are-like-nazi-propaganda-dem-rep-says/

Like Nazi propaganda? We are like Nazi propaganda? How, exactly, Mr. Clyburn, could you try to tell us how? We certainly are not "Pure Aryans." I'm multiracial, and the writers cited, linked, and published here are a mixed group. We're anti-censorship. We post things that aren't "conservative" and things that aren't Christian and all sorts of other things that reflect viewpoints different from mine, or Grandma Bonnie Peters', or Gena Greene's. Sometimes we don't even bother to mention how different. We're opposed to all violence, all totalitarianism, and nearly all interference with whatever other people choose to do as long as it's not materially harming someone else. Nazi propaganda? ???

No. I have to be fair--after all I'm not a Nazi. Propaganda is propaganda. All successful propaganda works partly by exploiting and incorporating the basic properties of gossip and chatter. Blogs are electronically published gossip and chatter. What you're reading here is the kind of thing you might hear me say in a coffeehouse, if I still hung out in coffeehouses. It's not deliberately manipulated; I welcome corrections; how many times do I have to type here that, if you catch me in an error of fact, I want you to shout it out? It's as accurate as I know how to make it, and that's not all that much less accurate than the standard for even decent newspapers--I've caught plenty of errors of fact in the Washington Post over the years too. But it's certainly not perfect. It's chatter. It's what I saw this afternoon, and what somebody told me, and what somebody sent me in the e-mail. It's dedicated to the Highest Good of all--which does not preclude, in the case of certain politicians who don't seem to understand our Constitution, their being happier and more productive in non-political jobs. It's talk, Gentle Readers.

Nazi propaganda also included talk, although in their case the talk was deliberately manipulated by deliberate Big Lies. If Mr. Clyburn wants to say that talk resembles Nazi propaganda, he's right, as far as that goes. But he might at least acknowledge that his talk resembles Nazi propaganda at least as much as mine does.

How Yelp Protects Corporate Interests Against Private Shoppers

Becket Adams makes it sound as if Yelp's uncensored "business review" pages are allowing corporate interests to destroy small businesses left and right. Who knows...maybe they are...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/02/the-dark-side-of-internet-freedom-how-bogus-online-reviews-can-sink-small-a-business/

But here I stand to testify that Yelp aggressively defends big corporations' outlets from unfavorable reviews by mere individual shoppers. How dare we ordinary people imagine that a big-chain store is there to please customers, the way our own little ventures are.

When I joined Yelp, I wrote several favorable reviews of local businesses, and one very mildly unfavorable review of the Food Lion store in Gate City. Trust me, Gentle Readers, unless you've spent a very long, hot summer without a refrigerator, walking more than three miles to buy any fresh or frozen food you can't pick in the back yard, every day, and then instead of appreciating your loyalty the store employees have scolded you for buying one refrigerated item at a time and wrapping it up so you could carry it three miles in 95-degree heat, you have no way to imagine how mild this review is:

"

4/4/2012

This must be one of the Food Lion stores scheduled for closing this year. Item after item has disappeared from the shelves; in some cases all that's left on the shelves are inferior store-brand substitutes. (How inferior are the store brands? I checked six cans of store-brand salted peanuts. ALL SIX smelled moldy.) Prices on groceries that are still in stock are 50% to 100% higher than they were within the last two years. And the staff are overtly rude.

"

I checked back in two weeks. Big surprise--none of my reviews of any business was visible. I investigated further. Yelp had decided I wasn't a real local shopper...although I'd supplied them with a link to this web site, which is, whatever else you may think of it, obviously written by a responsible adult who has interests other than annoying people. They were hiding everything I'd written. Isn't that special. So someone else "friended" me on Yelp, and posted this review:

"

5/5/2012

What's this foreign-owned business doing here? Last time I was there, a manager was telling a customer that they were NOT there to please customers. Only their European overlords. Maybe that explains the growing prices, shrinking selections, and stale food!

"

Nobody had posted any favorable comments on this store. Not then, and not ever. The legitimate way for businesses to defend themselves against hostile reviews is to encourage satisfied customers to write favorable reviews. Other Food Lion stores have received favorable reviews. Not this one.

Anyway, since my favorable reviews of other stores had been uncovered, I wrote an even more mild review of our local Food Lion store to see whether that one would show up:

"

People who drive to Thriftway and Food City have asked why I go to this store. One reason: location--this is the shortest walk from home. And sometimes they do still have the lowest price on something that's not a store brand...but that's becoming very rare these days. This week's top Food Lion story was that they gave out lots of coupons on a new name-brand item (cake icing) and then didn't have any of the name-brand item, but they had a big display of the store-brand substitute, for which of course the coupons weren't applicable.

"

What happened? As of today, Yelp's still hiding all three reviews: this web page probably won't open for you on the first three attempts...

http://www.yelp.com/filtered_reviews/SbTYQg5iBH0jHsbCmooMOg?fsid=Uo5xKgQk_tUMDDpe4Z4A1Q

So, what can I say about Yelp? I no longer bother with it, nor does the blogger known as Ronia. It's not what it pretends to be. It's not real.

 

I can tell you a whole lot more about our local Food Lion, the store that has yet to issue an apology or a refund for selling me the tin of beans that had the long-drowned cockroach floating in it. I've been mulling how much of this to share with you for about as long as this web site has existed. I really think this store deserves to die; I've been hoping to persuade a rich relative to buy the building and lease the supermarket space to saner people. (If you have rich relatives, you know the drill--you don't ask them for money, but you can, from time to time, recommend investments that'd be good for them.)

Basically this store is run by a timid little man who's nominally supervising two extra-large females who couldn't look more like a really bad stereotype of a lesbian couple if they tried, and a bunch of children (plus one senior citizen) hired for their shallow, stupid, "outgoing" personalities rather than ability to do their jobs. The first time one of these females loomed up in my face and physically threatened me, I thought her behavior was just that old bullies-are-cowards syndrome (I'm 5'4" and not obese), but I realized she really is a victim of a biochemical disorder after seeing her physically threaten a big, healthy-looking young man. These characters realize that their market consists of about 90% local people for whom trading with less obnoxious people is physically difficult for one reason or another, and they think they can get away with as much price-gouging, overt cheating, and insolence toward customers as they want, since after all the people to whom they are nominally accountable are never going to see their faces. All the "improvements" to the front side of the store that have been made in the last five years are the kind stores make for the purpose of enabling employees to ring up purchases dishonestly.

Would Food Lion headquarters care to sue me for posting this information on my web site? Let'em try it. If, as Food Lion staff claims, the store maintains videotapes of everything that goes on, those tapes can be used to prove that everything I've said, and more, is true.

Well...last summer I talked to several other people who don't appreciate the behavior of the crew at our local Food Lion. Some of them were personal friends of mine, some weren't. One was a bisexual man, and one had publicly expressed an intention to vote for Obama. Some were related to me, and some were strangers I met in the store or on the road--usually while walking one more mile in order to spend my grocery money somewhere other than Food Lion. Car pools were organized. Although I'm car-free and believe in shopping locally, I joined the hundreds of Scott County residents who drive out of Gate City to avoid buying groceries from Food Lion. I did most of my grocery shopping in Kingsport, in Duffield, in Norton, and even in Jonesville, in 2012. I am still doing most of my grocery shopping on car-pool trips outside my home town, and buying other things from small stores or in the Friday Market; let's just say that I've connected with enough people who share my opinion of Food Lion that I've not had to walk that extra mile to buy groceries in Weber City in 2013.

Meanwhile, Yelp management are sitting on their wimpy hands in San Francisco, claiming to doubt what they could easily verify online even from their office, about Food Lion's inflated prices, store-brand merchandise, and non-local ownership. Hah.

I suggest adding yelp.com to the list of Businesses That Deserve To Die.

Cost Per Calorie: Where McLogic Breaks Down

I can't even Google+ Becket Adams' article...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/29/could-the-mcdonalds-mcdouble-actually-be-the-greatest-cost-per-calorie-bargain-ever/

...Too many McDonalds employees are overloading the system, plussing this article like mad. But I'd like to call attention to the breakdown of the company spokesman's McLogic in the actual article. A cheeseburger contains nutrients, yes, if you can digest them. (I can't; the best thing about a plain greasy hamburger, no cheese and no bun, is that the fat has a laxative effect on me.) If you need two thousand calories per day, and you eat one real meal and one snack per day, then a cheeseburger might be a viable part of your diet plan. But, er, um...if your ideal weight is 125 pounds, you'd have to be a full-time professional athlete to use two thousand calories per day!

Desperation: The Video

Becket Adams shares a video of what are probably illegal "immigrants" fleeing from a truck. These people reportedly scraped up the equivalent of about US$4,500 to cross the border in this opposite-of-comfort. If they fit the stereotypical pattern, they scattered into the desert, where some may have met friends or helpers, and others may have been robbed, raped, or murdered.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/12/wild-video-wait-until-you-see-how-man-suspected-illegal-immigrants-flee-from-this-one-truck/

The United States does not actually need more people; we have more able-bodied adults than we have decent jobs, already. Few of this kind of "immigrants" are going to get decent jobs, although that may be what they're hoping will happen, and although some of them might be good workers if hired. If lucky they'll be illegally hired as laborers for ridiculously low wages and no benefits. More likely they'll end up in vice, crime, or welfare-cheating...unless they're able to go back to the place where, although good jobs were probably scarce, it was at least legal for employers to offer good jobs to them.

This web site has tried to avoid taking sides, although we've received partisan e-mail that contains facts in support of either side of the immigration issue. By way of illustration of the kind of thing I mean...these sample e-mails are going to make this a looonnnng post, and if I were posting it at Live Journal I'd use the infamous "lj-cut" code here. If you're totally uninterested in this issue, please go to the right side of this page and click on a different title now. Here's Patricia Evans' article (she signs off with the Thomas Jefferson quote):

"

Steve King: We're on 'suicide watch' over GOP

Amnesty expected to create millions of new voters for Democrats

“About half or so of the [House Republican] Caucus understand we are on suicide watch over the Republican Party,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, following a caucus meeting Wednesday. King’s comments came after the House Republican Caucus finished a much-anticipated closed door meeting Wednesday, a meeting that  would make Wednesday “the most important day for immigration reform.” According to reports from attendees, the House remains split on the issue. According to CNN, House Speaker John Boehner warned Republicans that they would face political attacks if they failed to deal with the issue. Rep. Paul Ryan said that doing nothing was not an option. Read more: http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/steve-king-were-on-suicide-watch-over-gop/

Please read: "GOP immigration plan devised by Communist Party" by James Simpson, author of
Cloward Piven Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

Goal: Use amnestied illegals to build 'permanent progressive majority'

http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/gop-immigration-plan-devised-by-communist-party/

James Simpson  is an investigative journalist, businessman and former economist and budget analyst for the White House Office of Management and Budget. Best-known for his exposé on the Cloward Piven Strategy of Manufactured Crisis,  and is featured in Curtis Bowers' award winning documentary "Agenda: Grinding America Down."

The U.S. Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration-reform plan, as well as a strikingly similar plan now being backed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and a bi-partisan House “Gang,” both offer the “roadmap to citizenship” originally conceived and carefully developed by members of the Communist Party USA working within the Democratic Party and the radical left activist network for the purpose of using amnestied illegals to build a “permanent progressive majority.”

That is the inescapable conclusion readers will draw after reading the forthcoming book by acclaimed researcher and blogger Trevor Loudon, titled “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress.” Although not yet published, Loudon agreed to allow WND readers to preview one chapter, titled “Latino Immigrants: Tools to Ensure a ‘Governing Coalition’ for the Left.”

In the book, Loudon exhaustively documents the Left’s longtime agenda regarding illegal aliens and how its activists have gone about implementing it. He provides irrefutable proof that the entire immigration-reform movement was the brainchild of American communists and that their goal has long been to establish unchallengeable political supremacy.

According to Loudon, the Communist Party USA has influenced U.S. policy toward illegals since at least the 1960s. He traces the history, showing how communists and communist-founded organizations slowly built the movement from the ground up. While other groups certainly joined the effort, the communists were always at the center.

For example, he tells the story of CPUSA member Bert Corona, the “Communist Father of the ‘Immigrants Rights’ movement.” In 1964, Corona, Cesar Chavez and future Democratic Socialists of America member Dolores Huerta forced Congress to end the guest worker “Bracero” program. Later, Corona sought ways to address “problems confronting Mexicans in the United States who had no visas or citizenship documents” – in other words, illegal aliens – including “how to defend persons detained by immigration authorities and how to help immigrants acquire disability and unemployment insurance and welfare.”

Along the way, Corona founded and/or led numerous organizations, such as the Mexican American Political Association, or MAPA, Centro de Action Social Autonoma, or CASA, and La Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (the National Mexican Brotherhood), all influential in the “immigrant rights” movement. The Communist Party still has strong influence in MAPA, which acts as a king-maker for Democratic Party candidates in the Los Angeles area.
Antonio Villaraigosa, former Los Angeles mayor and 2012 chairman of the Democratic National Convention, got his start with CASA. He was also a former member of the Communist Venceremos Brigades and worked with the Brigades in Cuba. As mayor of Los Angeles, he was “the most pro-illegal immigrant mayor the city has ever seen.”
Lorenzo Torrez, a long-time organizer of the Arizona Communist Party, paved the way for Communist-backed Congressmen Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva to win congressional seats in Arizona. He organized opposition to Southwestern states attempting to prevent illegal immigration and also helped change voting patterns across the entire region.
Loudon’s book identifies many influential communist and socialist politicians holding positions of influence in Congress and state and local governing bodies. For example, Rep. Judy Chu, D.-Calif., writes Loudon, has “a thirty-year history with the now defunct pro-China Communist Workers Party (CWP) and its surviving networks.” Chu is an advocate for “progressive” immigration reform and was a co-sponsor of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez in 2010. In 2012, Chu served as co-chair of President Obama’s reelection campaign.
Today’s Communist Party USA cites the current amnesty effort as its top legislative priority. Its official position is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Democratic Party:

As Congress begins to draft legislation, immigrant rights groups and the labor movement including the AFL-CIO and its constituent organizations, SEIU, Change to Win, and many faith-based groups are mobilizing for comprehensive immigration reform with legalization, a path to citizenship and workers’ rights …
This legislative and political battle is also at the top of the agenda of the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League. Our program includes stopping deportations now as legislation is being adopted, and calling for legalization with a clear and speedy road map to citizenship for all 11 million. Future workers who come should have the same opportunity.

But it was left to Eliseo Medina to let the cat out of the bag. Medina, writes Loudon, “is both the country’s most influential ‘immigration reform’ activist and a Marxist. He is an Honorary Chair of Democratic Socialists of America”:

Medina learned voting strategies from Fred Ross, a Saul Alinsky-trained activist and the brains behind Cesar Chavez. Ross was to eventually have an impact on the national stage. Fred Ross conceived the voter outreach strategy that not only elected Communist Party affiliate Ed Roybal as Los Angeles’ first Latino Council member in 1949, but also laid the groundwork for the Obama campaign’s Latino voter outreach campaign in 2008 …
Medina worked hand in hand with UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm, to change AFL-CIO immigration policy at the 1999 Los Angeles Convention. Then, claiming U.S. immigration policy is “broken and needs to be fixed,” the AFL-CIO on February 16, 2000, called for a new amnesty for millions of undocumented workers and the repeal of the 1986 law that criminalized hiring them …
According to the SEIU website, Medina has played the leading role in uniting Change to Win and AFL-CIO behind the immigration reform movement …
In 2009, Medina said, “We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three? If we have eight million new voters … We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle …”

Republican support
But why would Republicans get behind such a plan? Some astute political observers advise that when politicians appear to be promoting agendas against their own interest, follow the money. As Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian put it, “It’s no surprise that the Republicans supporting this thing are the ones with ties to the Chamber of Commerce, not ordinary voters.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and others have also stuffed the Senate bill with special perks for their backers – in Graham’s case, a provision granting more visas to workers for South Carolina’s meat industry. Rubio supposedly sought an amendment to assist Florida’s cruise-ship industry although he insists this is untrue.
But even if big business benefits, the cheap labor advantages are only temporary. Once illegal aliens are fully legalized, businesses will be required to provide just as much in pay and benefits as they pay American workers. In the meantime, however, it is widely assumed those workers will take jobs from American citizens, depress wages and increase unemployment. Moreover, in many key swing states, projected amnesties will swamp the rolls of the unemployed (see table).

Proposed Senate legislation delays full citizenship for 13 years, but if a bill passes, follow-on legislation is expected to accelerate that timeframe.
However, it is not even necessary for illegal aliens to achieve citizenship to significantly impact the vote in key districts. As a recent report for Capital Research Center detailed, Democrats are already employing illegals to boost get-out-the-vote efforts among Hispanics and won a major victory in a local Arizona election in 2011. They hope this strategy will win them key swing states, especially Texas, whose electoral votes will, many calculate, provide guaranteed Democratic presidents for the foreseeable future.
House Speaker John Boehner, R.-Ohio, has made much of his intention to ignore the Senate proposal and “do our own bill.” What the House has come up with, however, is considered by most to be “Rubio Lite.”
Boehner has enlisted former Republican VP candidate Ryan to promote the House plan. Ryan and the Republicans are working with some far-left House Democrats, including Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a former member of the Marxist-Leninist Puerto Rican Socialist Party, and Xavier Becerra, both members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and both longtime amnesty activists.
In an interview following Senate passage of the Gang of Eight bill, Fox News’ Sean Hannity pounded Ryan on the issue of border security:

HANNITY: So, my sources have been telling me, Congressman, that you guys are considering a five-year temporary legal status, and then [if] the border security measure is not met in five years, that that would be revoked.
RYAN: That’s right. That’s right.
HANNITY: I don’t believe that would ever happen.
RYAN: Well, look, they can’t get – what a person would want to have, is they would come out of the shadows, they get put on probation, they pay taxes, pay fines, learning English, learning civics. If they break the terms of their probation, they can be deported. And if the border is not secure by that time, if the verification system is not up and running, they can’t get – not only does that status go away, they can’t legal permanent residence …

So, illegal aliens would be granted legal status immediately, but five years down the road, if the fence still isn’t built and e-verify still isn’t being used, then their legal status would be revoked. Given that the Department of Homeland Security is already allegedly ignoring border security –with immigration and customs agents suing their own agency for failing to enforce the law – many voters place little confidence in political promises of future enforcement.
Boehner has announced a closed-door meeting with the entire Republican caucus, scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday, July 10, to decide the immigration issue, a meeting Politico calls “the most important day for immigration reform.”
Although this meeting was originally requested by Rep. Steve King, R.-Iowa, to air grave concerns shared by many Republicans over this “reform,” it is unclear if this meeting was the House speaker’s answer to King or his own idea. In either case, many fear Boehner will use the meeting as a vehicle to impose the plan as though it were a done deal.
In the meantime, Senate and House opponents have been painstakingly highlighting what they consider to be glaring flaws in these proposals:

• Every single border security provision in the Senate bill, including the hire of 20,000 Border Patrol agents, denying amnesty to criminals, building fences and installing surveillance devices, can be waived by the Homeland Security secretary.
• Both the House and Senate proposals emphasize the path to citizenship – the centerpiece of communist efforts – while making border security both vague and secondary.
• Both bills provide a $5,000 incentive for companies to hire the newly legalized illegal aliens instead of Americans, since the aliens would not be subject to the Obamacare coverage mandate.

Although politicians and the media have settled on the claim that there are 11 million illegal aliens, the actual number may well be closer to 20 million to 30 million. There were 10 million in 1996, a mere 10 years after Reagan’s amnesty, and it is doubtful only one million more have been added in the ensuing 17 years. Since 1990, Border agents have apprehended on average more than 1 million illegal aliens per year, almost all from Mexico.
When the Reagan amnesty became law, the intention was to naturalize only 1.2 million people, but the actual figure turned out to be 2.7 million. Statistics on illegal immigration have longed tended to be underestimated, sometimes vastly so.
Thus, current proposals provide a path to citizenship for as many as 20 to 30 million illegal aliens here now, plus relatives who will be brought in through chain migration and at least 75 percent of those who will come in the future – virtually endless amnesty – while efforts to secure the border are almost certain to be insufficient.
Representatives Steve King, R-Iowa; Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.; Trey Goudy, R-S.C.; Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; and others – 70 House members in all – as well as senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.; Mike Lee, R-Utah and others have sought to highlight the dangers of this legislation, with Rep. King recently stating:

If the House passed border security and interior security and sent that over to the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to take that up. Chuck Schumer has said that citizenship has to be part of the deal. It’s not going to go to the president’s desk, so why would the House take up anything if there’s no prospect that we’re going to improve the immigration situation, just the prospect that they’re going to jam amnesty on us?

With polls showing more than two-thirds of Americans don’t believe “immigration laws would be enforced in the future if illegal aliens were given amnesty,” it is clear that passage of the current Republican-backed bill may indeed fulfill the agenda of its communist originators – the creation of a permanent Democrat voting majority, guaranteeing permanent control of the United States government by leftist progressives.

--
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."  - Thomas Jefferson "

And here's a well-designed graphic from Cecilia Munoz (we'd like to give it equal space here, but it won't paste into Blogspot, so right-click to open the graphic while staying on this page):

http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/immigration-economic-benefits

So where do we stand? Because Senator Marco Rubio has been asked to talk about the immigration issue many times, in different contexts, where he's provided different-sounding sound bite answers, I can't just say we agree with him any more. We agree with what he said in An American Son. No single policy works for all the people who want to come to these United States. We don't want to encourage more people to come to these United States (unless some people who are already here can be persuaded to leave). We don't want to be too lenient about people who've come here illegally, but their cases should be reviewed on an individual basis--drug runners have made a different contribution to our society than underpaid laborers have--and we don't need to waste tax money to treat the hardworking dishwashers and baby-sitters like criminals, either. And for a better solution to the illegal immigration problem, we could consider making it easier for U.S. citizens to hire U.S.-born laborers.

How many people should receive "immigration amnesty" in the next year? How would I know? A lot of them are going to, in any case, and this web site will continue to recommend that conservatives stop wailing and start planning ways to make these new voters educated voters. Note the way the White House Blog actively courts the brand-new Mexican-American voters. That number-intensive graphic doesn't tell the whole statistical story, but it does say, loudly and clearly, "We understand that being unfamiliar with the English language doesn't mean you are stupid. Check out these numerals that look exactly the same in English or in Spanish." And then there's the translation page. Nice job. I'd like to see more conservative blogs doing this. I'd like to recruit a regular contributor, as it might be somebody in Texas with a name like Sandoval, to help this blog do it.

Conservative bloggers and contributors, may I suggest that you check out the selection of used books in Spanish at your favorite big-city used-book store. Note the principal topic of interest...political theory. Note the range of opinions and the quality of research. Although many immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries are young ignorant people who can barely read anything in any language, others are sophisticated and intelligent, may have read lots of books in English, and do not appreciate reading political material in English that stereotypes them as ignorant left-wing tools.

Said it before, and I'll say it again: Don't agonize. Strategize.

Michigan, Where Some People Are Just Too Nice

While one small part of Michigan is quite properly described as Hell, in the not all that nearby city of Grand Rapids, it seems the biggest problem the city officials have to deal with is people being too nice. Too polite. Too generous. Instead of dumping used items like the sink that didn't go with the new decor, or the saggy sofa whose perfectly good frame somebody could always reupholster, in landfills, or beside dumpsters, or on the street corner, or on the sidewalk for the garbage crew to haul away...these nice people in Grand Rapids are setting up collection bins so charitable organizations can refurbish and sell their discarded furniture for good causes.

And that just bugs the livin' daylights out of the rest of the city,'cos Michiganians are supposed to be like wolverines, they have a reputation to maintain, and all this orderly, kindhearted, private recycling--good causes, private property--is causing certain residents of Grand Rapids to look like Canadians or hillbillies or some such thing, and the others Will Not Have That.

Right. That's not the exact wording Becket Adams quotes. You have to read between the lines.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/02/mich-city-moves-to-ban-charitable-collection-bins-on-private-property/

Do we have any readers in Michigan? (Oh come onnn, she whines, we've given'em so much free publicity, we ought to be getting comments from Hell.) If we do...don't say I've insulted you. The city of Grand Rapids has insulted you. Please send them complaints. Please fill their e-mail, pack their mailboxes, and jam their phone lines. And please offer the nice people of Grand Rapids a selection of alternative sites where they may "recycle" old furniture.

Being a First Lady Is Like...

Those currently blaming Mrs. Obama for wailing that "being First Lady is like being in a really nice prison" are out of line. Not to gloat, but this web site recognized the quote Cokie Roberts correctly attributed to Martha Washington.

We've received at least three reports with commentary about the speech. We recommend the one from Becket Adams because at least some readers will be able to open and read the full official text of the First Ladies' remarks through the link at the bottom of BA's article.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/02/michelle-obama-living-in-white-house-is-sometimes-like-being-in-a-really-nice-prison/

Sharyl Atkisson on Being Hacked

Becket Adams reports, with links to a recorded interview:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/17/cbs-sharyl-attkisson-recalls-creepy-details-regarding-her-computers-being-hacked/

Dancing Divas of D.C. Honor Dingell

Becket Adams shares a video proving that Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, and other prominent female federal officials do have a lovable, whimsical side...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/13/heres-a-video-of-nancy-pelosi-and-kathleen-sebelius-singing-and-dancing-to-stop-in-the-name-of-love/