I believe that quote was Jefferson, not Ben.

That’s why you have to COMPROMISE. I have major problems with the legislation, but I don’t know that doing nothing will work any better than making an ass backwards attempt at doing something.

In the least, the half measure will expose the lie of… half measures. If you put up half a wall, and the troubles continue, voila.. obviously then, next time, full wall.

As for those who suddenly regret voting for Bush, I am actually relatively satisfied, and for some reasons previously pointed out.

The Good:

1) He appointed two good names to the Supreme Court. A major a reason why I vote for who I vote for is for who gets appointed. Bush did well.

2) He quickly invaded Afghanistan without any fear, and handled a country that Russia could not.

3) During two wars and the greatest natural and man-made distasters to hit this country (Katrina and Twin Towers), our economoy has maintained a low unemployment rate. One of my best friends, and ubber liberal, is unable to respond when I occassionally reminded her that George’s economy made her about $50K richer (over only a 3 year period) when she sold her house. She usually responds with articles about Guantanemo.

4) NCLB has a component that people completely overlook, and that’s the heightened restrictions on who is qualified to teach. I noticed this first hand when applying for certain positions, where in the past emergency waivers would have been more readily given. This actually directly affects the quality of kids’education.

The only fault with Bush, given the variable factors that he had no control of (terrorism, natural disaster), is that he could not make hard choices on tax reform, immigration or reforming social security.

But all those things cannot be resolved by one man, or one party. It takes two.

As for Iraq, the jury is still out. I tend to think in retrospect that the invasion might represent such a massive shift in how the future world will appear that we cannot even conceive or judge its impact now. Five, ten years down the road we will be able to sufficiently say, “Oh, bad move” or “Well done”.

George Bush, idiot? I have to disagree with Lashawn here. It’s not the brightest light when Christians are calling each other idiots.

Respect those who are set above you to rule indeed, although I understand the disappointment of LaShawn and many other conservatives. But Bush has had to work through a long string of hate and ridicule from non-liberals that quite proceeds him. He was hated coming in, and all along the way. (As was his father).

I think part of Bush’s problem, and a large Republican problem, is that they don’t really know how to market, to talk to the average person.

It’s like in church when you ask people, “How are you?” (really asking it) and they feed you, “I love you with the love of the lord” or some nonsense that makes you want to slap them. Christianity has so many people that speack in cliche, that is masks the fundamental beneficial qualities of being a Christian (to the casual observer). Same with Republican spokespeople.

Republicans have never been able to spread the message very well and put up vibrant, intelligent sounding voices. Hopefully Fred Thompson will be part of changing some of that.

Now let me go back to listening to “The One Thing”, by Paul Colman.

Here we go with chastising Christians for calling other Christians idiots. So tiresome. I could just as easily drone on about the “brightest light” when other Christians come on to my blog to publicly criticize me for something I’ve written that they don’t agree with. But I don’t because it’s stupid. I can’t speak for anyone else, but there is nothing “sudden” about my regret for having voted for Bush. I’ve felt this way for a long time. I don’t blog about it often, which probably gave you the false impression that it’s sudden. I tried to make a case for his impeachment last year:

… to the conserntation of other conservative bloggers. I didn’t care what they thought of the post then, and I don’t care what they think of the “Bush is an idiot” post now. Whatever good Bush has done is canceled out because of how he’s destroying this great country. And don’t get me started on the totally unworkable NCLB… – Admin

http://are.berkeley.edu/APMP/pubs/i9news/noraids3900.html

You know what else? I learned to speak Portuguese (and Spanish), didn’t curse my adopted nation (which I loved), followed their laws (some of which were goofy), paid my taxes and generally enjoyed my 3-1/2 years there. I have a deep, abiding affection for Latinos.

As for the illegals that are here, well, okay, I realize it’d be hard to deport them all even if were were of that mind. But, to me, the issue is control – we MUST regain control of our immigration before we can even think about granting amnesty to anyone. Without that, any policy we can come up with is no more than ink on paper…it will be overwhelmed by events.

This was approximately 20 years apart.

Then why not say ‘gentile’ instead of goy or goyim?

Enough happened since that made me think he also walked it so I voted for him in 04. Suffice to say, Bush has proved to be less than stellar.

In fact, Bush is representative of the case where the whole is less, far less, than the sum of the parts. To wit, the prescription drug plan, NCLB, keeling over on SS reform, and now this amnesty rammed thru with ‘bi-partisan’ support from Ted (hic) Kennedy.

All those pathetic failures blot out what partial success he’s had in naming two to SCOTUS, taking down the Taliban & Saddam and um, what else?

Don’t forget he sold out Toomey in order to preserve Arlen Specter, among other up & coming conservatives. Talk about maintaining the status quo.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Ted was Bush’s Daddy. The shame is that Bush managed to do more for the dem platform than Gored or sKerry could ever have hoped to do.

More than ever, the GOP needs to clean house if they want to be the party of conservative, limited government. However, it seems the Rockefeller RINO wing has taken over. Meanwhile, the DNC is run by nutjobs.

What was it that old Ben said about revolting every 200 years? If this nonsense keeps up, there won’t be just a backlash, it’ll be a bloody revolt. Sigh!

Thankfully no situation has arisen involving me with one of them yet (knock on wood because I have a bad temper and have the physique to back it up). I have had an alarm installed in my home and have purchased a Glock pistol for home protection. I already pay the highest real estate taxes of any city in the entire state of Virginia and it keeps going up to pay for these dregs and their drain on this town. The town of Herndon which is about 10 miles to the North got smart about a year ago and kicked out the mayor and town council for coddling illegals and has since started majorly cracking down on them. Fairfax is also starting to get fed up and the big money in Virginia lives in Fairfax.

I hate to see this destroying our great country and as far as I am concerned, any politician whether it be local or federal, who is supporting this amnesty bill and the non-enforcement of our laws, should be arrested, tried for treason and jailed.

Yeah I just picked construction as an example as a good living can eventually be made from it. But I could have mentioned every fast food joint, at least in So. Cal. I had a family member recently tell me he was in shock because a Mcdonald’s he patronized in Oregon had white kids working in it.

They will also close out “Whitey” if they can. A friend of mine works in the oil business doing rig repair etc. He’d been having a difficult time with his supervisor. Eventually, he quit, as he had the opportunity to work elsewhere in a less stressful environment. When he quit, he had words with his shop boss, who basically told him that he already had his replacement lined up, and the reason he’d been giving him a hard time was that he(my friend) was the only white guy in shop, and he wanted to hire another hispanic and the pressure had been deliberate to make him quit. My friend recorded this incident. He asked me if I thought he had any legal recourse..I said no…he said why…I said “because you quit, dummy!” I don’t know – he should have a case of harrassment, I think, but I doubt he’d win. Reverse bias and all that.
What do you think about McDonalds etc…do you think they’d hire someone who didn’t speak Spanish?? Bet you not…! Now – isn’t that discriminatory???

You mean like you do?

Even if a younger person wants to work his way up by getting one of these jobs, he’s competing against people who will work for less have more experience and speak another language. The language barrier alone makes it unlikely you would be hired as an employer would need you to be able to communicate with your co-workers…who only speak Spanish.

Taxpayers will be paying legal fees for newly-amnestied Agriculture workers as noted in the Comprehensive bill (S. 1348). I believe the legal fees will be for Immigration lawyers but I’ll need to check that.

Amazing. What do all those stereotypes have to do with enforcing the law? I’m totally against the immigration sell-out that Kennedy/Bush are pushing, but let’s not go to far.

In fact, I’d hazard to say that I can understand a Hispanic better than a black person from the ghetto.

I’d also trust the Hispanic to do a better job, whether that includes mowing my grass, or any other odd job around the house. Blacks are lazy and uneducated and more prone to violence and crime than any other group in America.

I’d also trust the Hispanic more than an Eastern European, especially one from Russia. I have no idea whether they are spies or Communists.

Loiter outside stores? They do that to find jobs. Why do blacks loiter outside stores? Oh yeah, that’s right – to rob someone or panhandle. Gotta buy some Thunderbird!

Urinate in public? My, my. Someone needs to visit a nice college, any college, and stroll down fraternity row during a weekend. You’ll see lots of public urinating – and I bet you won’t find an illegal hispanic in sight.

Until the next morning when they clean up the messes left by all those rich white kids.

Yawn.

Do yourselves a favor – fight this issue with facts, not stereotypes.

I expected more out of you Barber. As a black woman, you’ve spent your life facing and fighting stereotypes. Now you’re slinging the same.

“So, as these workers come “out of the shadows,” be prepared for a massive hit on goverment services – much greater than the think tanks are telling us, as they are not factoring in the entitlement mentality and the desire to get something for nothing!”

I can tell you from experience that not only will the first-generation newly-amnestied workers feel entitled but ensuing generations of “american citizens” will feel entitled as well. This entitlement mentality passes on to each generation.

My husband has his own small medical practice. He hired two legal and qualified second generation Hispanic-American women who at the time seemed nice and pleasant to work with. One of these women was hired at a very good rate of pay for the Bay Area: $18/hour as a medical assistant who had plenty of experience but just a high-school degree. The other received the standard pay for a receptionist with a high-school education.

Within a year, the woman who was making $18/hour was given a raise to $18.50/hour by my husband, but she felt this wasn’t enough, and that she was worth $25/hour based on some information she found but had completely misunderstood. (Apparently her California public high school education hadn’t taught her to read English very well.) The salary survey she cited was based on all jobs in the area (including doctors, lawyers and engineers) and the median rate was thus $25/hour. The median pay for her job was actually $16/hour and she was paid well above that.

My husband pointed this out to her but she refused to believe the facts in the survey. Because her demand for an even bigger raise wasn’t met, she suddenly wasn’t nice and pleasant anymore. She thankfully gave my husband her notice to quit but, before she left, ganged up with the other Hispanic woman to make the work environment miserable. One of them called CAL-OSHA who made an obligatory visit to my husband’s worksite and came up with about $1000 in fees for him to pay.

Then both women claimed my husband had discriminated against them by (are you ready for this?) hiring them BECAUSE they were hispanic so that he could pay them lower wages. (In their minds their wages weren’t good enough but in reality my husband paid at or above the going rate). They also tried to intimidate him by saying they would sue him for hostile work environment. My husband hired an attorney and spent about $5000 dealing with these women. In the end, they had no grounds to file a suit but all the tension caused much financial and psychological stress to my husband, me and our family.

After the first woman left, the second woman suddenly developed a mysterious wrist injury and sought workers compensation. My husband could not legally fire her since the state claims that that is considered retaliation (for filing the CAL-OSHA complaint and for filing the workers comp claim.) If he fired her before a certain period of time, he could be sued for retaliation and the State of California would impose some kind of punishment. All he could do was wait for her to quit which she thankfully did months later.

After all this had passed I joked to my husband that there seems to be an underground school that immigrants and their families attend for bilking the system. These two women seemed very well-versed in methods to obtain money or vengeance, from calling CAL-OSHA to claiming a workplace injury via workers compensation.

Both these second-generation Hispanic-American women retained their ties to Mexico by the way. They traveled back there once or twice a year to visit relatives. They spoke Spanish during office lunch breaks as well which seemed pretty rude to me.

One other observation about them: They were pretty ignorant but arrogant about not knowing much, and they didn’t bother to check the facts. One of the women told my husband that certain federal holidays are mandated as holidays by law. She was trying to force my husband to give at least 12 paid holidays off per year including Cesar Chavez day here in california. He checked and found that paid holidays are up to the employer and not mandated by any federal or state laws.

My husband has since hired other second-generation hispanic-americans who have given him no trouble, but he first had to screen them extensively via a human resources firm. He has no choice but to hire spanish-speakers since many of his patients only speak Spanish.

So the point of what I’ve written here is this: If this Comprehensive aka Amnesty bill passes, get ready for a never-ending stream of new immigrants and their descendants demanding a never-ending series of entitlements. And if businesses don’t give them the entitlements “they deserve,” get ready for mucho lawsuits by these new “americans.”
And by the way, taxpayers will be paying for many of those lawsuits as noted in the Amnesty bill (S. 1348).

So the Dis-United States will face two options: go bankrupt or raise taxes. And since Democrats will be the new political class in charge (thanks to the demise of the GOP due to Bush’s incompetence), it looks like taxes will be raised.

At that point, perhaps we can opt to ignore tax laws and stop paying our taxes. Hey, can we then get an amnesty for being lawbreakers too?

Around 2003 all of the custodial workers were fired and immediatly replaced with workers who look hispanic and do not appear to speak English. I don’t know whether they are here legally or illegally but my guess is they are not all legal immigrants.

It’s a little ironic that my university prides itself on its “Ethics Center” while at the same time exploiting the cheap labor of illegal immigrants.