Blog Chez Jacq'

The L A Times wonders why the prez wants guest workers...

"In interviews this week, nearly three dozen current and former agents across the nation called Bush's proposal an insult to the thousands of men and women who have devoted their careers to fighting illegal immigration, including wave after wave along the California-Mexico border.

The agents -- many of whom otherwise support the White House -- savaged the Bush proposal as a grab for Latino votes and a favor to the business community, factions of which rely on cheap immigrant labor. And they say they are bracing for a rush of people trying to sneak into the United States.

'We get rocks thrown at us. We get shot at. We get spit on,' said James Stack, a representative of the agents' union and a 16-year veteran who patrols the border near El Paso.

'There have been many agents who have given their lives in the line of duty,' Stack said. 'This seems to say that those deaths were for nothing, and that this administration is not truly concerned about immigration.' "

What on earth are Bush and/or his advisors thinking? Is Atzlan accepted policy?

Brad Edmonds exclaims:

"Patrick Henry and his ilk went to war -- risked the financial security, even the lives, of their wives and children -- over such things as a 1% income tax rate. While spending hundreds of billions bombing other countries; while attempting to commit a trillion dollars of our wages to government colonization of planets by a government department that can't even get astronauts around our own planet safely; and while never vetoing a single spending bill in his three years as president, Bush wants us to believe he's some kind of conservative. This is only part of the proof that Bush is a socialist and a liar."

Lyn Nofziger mused:

"Republican candidates can never outliberal Democrats but they often try and in doing so have on occasion moved so far left in their efforts to pick up liberal votes that they lose more on the right than they gain on the left.

As the nation goes into an election year the Bush people may think all they have to do is stay a little to the right of the Democratic presidential nominee in order to keep the conservative vote while broadening their base on the left.

They could be right, but then again they could be wrong. And they will be if they convince too many conservatives that they might as well stay homr on election day because on the issues they care about there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties."

Jim Grichar:

"Apparently willing to bribe virtually any possible voter in order to get re-elected, George Bush has decided to go after the Star Trek and scientist vote with his proposal for launching more robotic satellites into space, sending men to the moon again and subsequently sending them on a mission to Mars. But neither the President nor supporters of this revamped NASA space program have come up with any real justification for continuing a multi-billion dollar boondoggle other than saying that it is our destiny to explore the solar system and beyond. As that appears to be the only reason to continue funding NASA, taxpayers should demand that the whole program be abolished to reduce the federal budget deficit."

Hey, ya gotta buy them votes whereever they are, eh?

Thomas Sowell:

"Senator John Kerry's political victory in Iowa means far less than the character flaws he revealed in getting that victory."

Dr. Sowell hits another home run.

7 PM at White Hall / Auditorium:

"Immigration policy is a vital issue for Kansas and Missouri residents. (For instance, Kansas City residents should note that city manager Wayne Cauthen recently made the unilateral decision to have the city accept the Mexican matricula consular card for identification and for city services--without a vote of elected officials and without public hearings or an opportunity for public comments.)"

There's another "debate" in the cafeteria of the Law School at the same time. The Missouri Supreme Court will have already heard the oral arguments. Professor Rostron is acknowledged and dedicated gun prohibitionist. We should show up in support of Kevin Jamison, but Professor Kris Kobach may be really good at the immigration shindig.

Please attend a public debate on the future of immigration policy being held at the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), on Thursday, January 22.

The debate, hosted by the Mid-America Immigration Reform Coalition and the UMKC student chapters of the Federalist Society and the ACLU, will examine President Bush’s recent immigration proposal, as well as the matricula consular card and other current immigration issues. The event is free and open to the public.

Featured in the debate will be UMKC law professor Kris Kobach (who led the Department of Justice reforms of the immigration court system in 2002); retired INS special agent immigration enforcement expert Michael Cultler; immigration attorney Mira Mdivani; and Dolores Arce-Kaptain, director of Program Alianzas, an organization that assists communities with growing Latino immigrant populations.

Date: January 22, 2004
Time: 7:00 p.m
Location: White Hall
University of Missouri-Kansas City
4949 Cherry St.
Kansas City, Mo.

I will probably show up at both of these events...though not simultaneously.

Joseph Sobran:

"I was reading a little book called The Law -- a long pamphlet, really -- by the nineteenth-century French legislator Frédéric Bastiat, when I was riveted by a single sentence: "Look at the law, and see if it does for one man at the expense of another what it would be a crime for the one to do to the other himself."

Mr. Sobran has told this story before. It is well worth hearing again. Read it here. Perhaps we can also take some action -- or would it be called inaction?.

Incidentally, I have extra copies of Bastiat's The Law. If you're in the Kansas City area and need one drop me a line.

Barbara Simpson:

"The president says post jobs on the Internet and if citizens don't apply, hire illegals. The entire country is online? Another farce. So is the line that Americans don't want to work. I always thought an empty stomach was a work inducement. Prices may go up. So?

We're lectured that our country, (with troops across the world and engaged in democracy formation in Iraq) simply can't stop illegals from crossing the border.

Really? What about terrorism?

Maybe George Bush and his immigration supporters should admit it and throw in the towel. Get rid of the border, U.S. citizenship and the Constitution.

Get rid of our country, our freedom, our culture -- because that's the price.

Thanks, George."

I do miss the Babe in the Bunker on Coast to Coast AM.

Bill O'Reilly:

"This is my second attempt in this space to convince the Democratic Party that it is committing political suicide by aligning with the far left.

So listen up: This country needs two strong political parties and should have more. If the Democrats self-destruct, the Bush people will run wild. They are already taken with themselves and largely unavailable to the folks. With no competition, Dick Cheney might never be seen again.

A poll by the Pew Research Center says that just 20% of Americans consider themselves liberals, and you have to assume half of that crowd is somewhat moderate. That leaves only 10% running around calling the President a Nazi and worshiping at the altar of secularism.

But that 10% is making a lot of noise and has a ton of influence on the Democratic establishment. Billionaire George Soros is the big money man for the Democrats this season, and old George is one far-out character. He wants to legalize pretty much every vice, sees merit in euthanasia and is moaning there isn't enough 'income redistribution' in the world. Maybe that's because the Soviet Union collapsed, George. Get a clue.

Soros is pouring millions of bucks into radical movements like Moveon.org, a Web site that never saw a left-wing issue it didn't embrace. Recently, here in New York, the Moveon people held a contest to see who could come up with the best anti-Bush ad.

...

Julia Stiles said: "I was afraid Bill O'Reilly would come with a shotgun at my front door and shoot me for being unpatriotic."

Good grief! I don't even own a shotgun. No worries, Julia, just enjoy the land of Oz.

Exactly what are everyday Americans supposed to think when they see the likes of Soros and these showbiz people launching into the most far-out political discourse in memory? And Carville and Brazile are right in the middle of it?

So I am sending a final warning to the Democratic Party, which my family belonged to for more than 100 years: Wise up before it's too late. People do judge you by your associates. To paraphrase a protest song from the '60s: "You don't believe you're on the eve of destruction?" Well, you are.

I cannot understand why the O'Reilly show is the most watched. Nevertheless ol' Bill makes good points here.

Intaxication

Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

Harry Browne writes the fourth piece picked from the vine of LewRockwell.com today. The theme is the insanity of war. The theme is the necessity of war. Are we listening?:

"Whenever the U.S. goes to war somewhere, the politicians tell us that diplomacy was tried and failed -- and that war was the very, very, very last resort.

But the truth is that the politicians didn't try much at all to avoid war. And the diplomacy was bound to fail, because it involved our politicians making insensitive demands on a foreign country -- demands we had no authority to make and were known in advance to be unacceptable to the foreigners.

In the few cases that America has been attacked, it's been because our politicians were trying to dictate to other countries -- countries that represented no threat to us at all. The foreigners attacked either to try to gain an advantage against the stronger U.S. when our government had made war seem inevitable (as at Pearl Harbor), or because attacking seemed the only way to strike back at a country that was throwing its weight around in other people's business (as in 9/11)."

shows pragmatic thinking in this article, Everything Is Hyped. Is it all about power? S'pose so. That is what the propagandizing is about, eh?:

"We have been tricked by propagandists into focusing our attention on what they mislabel as weapons of mass destruction, when what we should oppose is war. War causes mass destruction. Dresden and Tokyo were destroyed, with massive loss of civilian lives, using just conventional incendiary bombs.

Whenever it comes to assessing risk, we should always start with the proposition that we are all going to die. As the Buddhists say, when a child is born the only certainty is that the parents will bury the child or the child will bury the parents. Mortality is 100 percent. Everything, including us, is temporary.

Once you accept that, what's to worry about? It's much better to concern yourself with how you live than with how you will die. There are lots of people trying to scare you these days in order to sell you something -- a pill or a policy or a war or a politician. Don't let them do it.
If you wake up in the morning, then smile, you're ahead of the game. Live that one day as if it were your last. You don't need a near-death experience to teach you to enjoy life as long as you have it. Most of us don't know when our string will run out, and it's just as well."

... it's just as well.

A book review in The Spectator.co.uk reveals an unfamiliar name. It seems that Willi Münzenberg was the Communist Josef Goebbels, from whom Goebbels learned his trade, or at least helped refined his skills. The review indicates that Münzenberg conceived front organizations and other propagandastist tools. The reviewer, John Laughland, opines:

"In fact, it is the Western powers, and the United States in particular, which have now established a huge network of non-governmental organisations, front organisations and friendly media outlets (especially television) which influences not only public opinion but also the crucial events of political change itself. The end of the Cold War may have turned former communists into capitalists, but it has also allowed much of the activity of Western governments to be devoted to covert operations of which the original communist propaganda wizard would have been proud."

THE RED MILLIONAIRE: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF WILLI MüNZENBERG By Sean McMeekin
Yale, pp.397, ISBN:0300098472

William S. Lind:

"You are the commander of the Marine Corps unit that will take over Fallujah in March; what will you do?

Army and Marine Corps participants agreed that your first task is to tell the locals, 'We're not like the guys who just left' -- the 82nd Airborne. Wear the new Marine Corps utilities that look different from the Army desert uniforms. Don't 'relieve in place;' instead, move into new areas, not the Army's old billets. Patrol on foot, not in vehicles. Wear soft covers, not helmets and body armor. Don't wear sunglasses. Teach your troops a bit of Arabic, so they can say, 'We're different.' Teach them enough Arab culture so they avoid gross insults, like stepping on the heads of people they detain. Don't do raids, breaking people's doors down in the middle of the night.

Make sure you have plenty of money, and pass it around. Maybe the first thing the Marines should say is, 'We are here to pay the blood money' -- compensation to families who have had members killed by Americans. Without blood money, the locals' honor requires that they fight you to avenge their dead. Here, Washington is a major obstacle, because it requires peacetime accounting rules for any money our forces spend. Commanders need a generous slush fund."

Intriguing thoughts in this piece. Sure doesn't sound like any Marine Corps doctrine of the past. Perhaps it is a new world militarily. If so, we had best learn quickly.

Jay Bryant:

"White Republicans have no problem whatsoever voting for black Republicans, when they can find one to vote for. Black Democrats won't vote for a black Republican. White Democrats won't vote for a black Democrat. Which is the racist party?"

Huh? Mr. Bryant's point is well taken and something I've never really pondered. He closes saying:

The massahs were Democrats. The whip-toting overseers were Democrats. The Klansmen were Democrats. The filibusterers of the Civil Rights bills in the 1960's were Democrats. The liberals whose welfare-state policies destroyed families in post- Great Society inner cities were Democrats. That such a party gets to claim the allegiance of so many African-American voters is one of the great con jobs of all time.

Now I recall why I am not a Democrat.