“In response to CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux’s concern that the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, has made “a lot of people very angry, very upset” [a life threatening condition, apparently], the upstanding Antenori demanded: “What about my constituents whose homes are ransacked? What about the ranchers who’re shot at while patrolling their fence lines; whose cattle are being slaughtered ? there are millions of dollars of economic damages ? what about them? What about their civil right?”
Bad move.
Although not as rude as Chris Matthews and his malevolent MSNBC colleagues, Malveaux was only mildly interested. To grab her attention, Antenori ought to have begun what to Malveaux was a white, hot, racist rant with the story of a dog ? a dog that was shot by one frequent “visitor” to Arizona.
The same marauder who beat a retreat to Mexico killed the dog’s faithful companion, Rancher Robert Krentz. A pillar of the Cochise County community, Krentz had for decades raised cattle along the Arizona-Mexico border.
The violent death of a dog on the border is more likely than that of his owner to rate a mention in mainstream media.
State Senator Russell Pearce might also have mentioned a mutt—or even better, a Mulato family member—to justify the ‘racist’ law he sponsored
Washington does not want immigration laws enforced. And it matters not that its open-house policy is costing American lives and livelihoods. This applies to Barack Hussein Obama as well as to his predecessor, George W. Bush. …
Put more accurately: Arizona is doing the work Washington doesn’t want done. …”
Update II (May 1): In my column, I mentioned that “One of the finest minds on matters pertaining to immigration and the Constitution is Kris W. Kobach.” The NYT, no less, ran an op-ed by Kobach, “Why Arizona Drew a Line,” refuting the misinformation put out by bimbos and politicos who’ve not read the law—the former because they can’t read (Shakira); the latter (American Civil Liberties Union/The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) because they can get away with lying. He concludes:
President Obama and the Beltway crowd feel these problems can be taken care of with “comprehensive immigration reform” — meaning amnesty and a few other new laws. But we already have plenty of federal immigration laws on the books, and the typical illegal alien is guilty of breaking many of them. What we need is for the executive branch to enforce the laws that we already have.
Update III (May 2): While the activists make demands, patriotic residents of the “The Grand Canyon State” “Clean up our trashed border.” Via Michelle Malkin.
If democracy means anything, it is the right of localities to a measure of autonomy over how and with whom they live their lives. How wrong were the residents of Arizona to imagine that they would be granted that luxury. Polls show Arizonians do not want the crime and lawlessness associated with hordes of illegal immigrants streaming into their state. Her constituents support “Gov. Jan Brewer signing of a bill that requires police to question people about their immigration status – including asking for identification – if they suspect someone is in the country illegally.”
The murder last month of Arizona Rancher Robert Krentz—he had raised cattle in the area of Cochise County for decades—by one peaceable, illegal invader shook that community.
Another overreacting, overreaching law-enforcement activist, Russell Pearce’s motives are suspect, hints the NYT, because “his son, a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy, was shot and wounded in 2004 by an illegal immigrant and Mr. Pearce, a former sheriff’s deputy, was shot and wounded while arresting gang members 20 years ago.”
Only the Times would construe the sobering effects of experience as a bias. What will we do when the Pearce kind of patriot; tough old-timers, die out?
What won’t die out any time soon are the powerhouse advocates for illegals immigrants converging on the Grand Canyon State. They won’t be dying out as long as they can use the political machine to bilk the politically powerless (you and me) for the benefit of their clientele. sadly, Arizona will be tied up in the courts by the proxies for the powerful (open-border advocates).
The Arizona law, SB1070, resembles the law the federal branch of government has chosen to flout. SB1070 is a species of negative law that takes back from the federales the right to accept or repel invaders. By default, the Bush/Obama-run federal government had decreed that the states ought not be permitted to repel invaders and must assume the costs in blood and treasure of the invasion. The central government did so by way of ignoring laws only it was permitted to enforce.
Arizona has repossessed its sovereign right to determine if it wants unfettered immigration with Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
State sovereignty? Naturally, our illiberal president would take the most severe tone with such notions, supplemented by stern actions to curtail this show of independence from his outlying territories.
Earlier Friday, President Obama called the Arizona bill “misguided” and instructed the Justice Department to examine it to see if it’s legal. He also said the federal government must enact immigration reform at the national level — or leave the door open to “irresponsibility by others.”
“That includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe,” Obama said.
Update I (April 25): David Smith (see Comments Section) points out another instance in which Glenn Beck has gone wrong in exhorting a sitting-duck pacifism. Via WikiAnswer:
“… taken from a letter Jefferson wrote to William Smith in 1787 in reference to an uprising in Massachusetts after the American Revolution. A more full quote:
“Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s [sic] motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s [sic] rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
Jefferson is referring, specifically, to the Shays’ Rebellion. If you look at the context of the quote, it appears that Jefferson actually believed the men who took arms were essentially wrong about the facts, but he still considered them patriotic for making their voices heard. Jefferson felt it was important that the government be kept in check, even if those keeping them in check were not necessarily in the right. It wasn’t being in the “right” that kept the people free, but rather the fact that they had a voice and used it.
Update II (April 26): “You run into civil-rights issues whenever you try to enforce any law,” says Tucker Carlson. “That’s just the nature of enforcing laws.” Too true. And, “This Bill asks law enforcement officials to enforce the law. If by so doing you undermine basic notions of fairness, as the president alleged, let’s just give up on enforcing any law. It’s an absurd thing to say.”
Update III: The god-awful Chris Matthews, who makes no pretense at objectivity any longer, pummeleda mild-mannered John Huppenthal, a senator from Arizona. The Republican state senator explained that since the get-tough-on-illegals policies were implemented the murder rate in Arizona went from 250 in 2006 to 125 (the following year?). Half.
But what’s a hundred or so lives among liberals?
Matthews then went from bombastic to farcical. After being told that his guest has documented an association between illegality and crime, he demanded to know how did stopping a person because you think he is here illegally reduce crime. Patiently, Huppenthal explained that given the causal connection just mentioned, deporting a person caught in the act tends to do the trick.
Poor Huppenthal, clearly a good fellow working to make his community more tolerable, was then insulted andcalled. … a racist.
Is there anything more repulsive than a liberal man?
“…Al Sharpton threatens to go to Phoenix and march in the streets against the new Arizona law. Let him go.
Let us see how many African-Americans, who are today frozen out of the 8 million jobs held by illegal aliens that might otherwise go to them or their children, will march to defend an invasion for which they are themselves paying the heaviest price.
Last year, while Americans were losing a net of 5 million jobs, the U.S. government – Bush and Obama both – issued 1,131,000 green cards to legal immigrants to come and take the jobs that did open up, a flood of immigrants equaled in only four other years in our history.
What are we doing to our own people?
Whose country is this, anyway?
America today has an establishment that, because it does not like the immigration laws, countenances and condones wholesale violation of those laws.
Nevertheless, under those laws, the U.S. government is obligated to deport illegal aliens and punish businesses that knowingly hire them.
This is not an option. It is an obligation.
Can anyone say Barack Obama is meeting that obligation?”
Update V (April 27): BROTHER BUSH. Jeb “Bush … opposes the Arizona immigration bill, too.” WaPo: “Right after his not-so-secretly preferred U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio comes out against Arizona’s new immigration reform law [and for amnesty, or as it’s called in political locution: comprehensive immigration reform], Jeb Bush lends his name to an under-the-radar conservative campaign for federal immigration reform this year.”
One of our readers prefers that I remain mum about the Republican treason lobby. Sorry. Truth will out. With my help.
Update VI: AZ State Senator Frank Antenori fighting for his community. “What about my constituents,” he asks. He was responding to the CNN Woman’s idiotic question: “There are a lot of people who are very angry, very upset [a life threatening condition, clearly] that if they drive into Arizona [read, enter it illegally], they will be pulled over. How do you convince them not to be worried?” Apparently, laws in defense of life and private property must be tailored to suit the trespassers.
Antenori: “What about my constituents whose homes are ransacked? What about the ranchers who’re shot at while patrolling their fence lines; whose cattle are being slaughtered; there’s millions of dollars of economic damages… what about them? What about their civil right?
I have one correction to Sen. Antenori (a veteran): the rights he is trying to protect are not civil rights; they are the right to life, liberty and property. In defense of Suzanne Malveaux, she let it rest there, rather than give more time to the opponents, or try and humiliate the man, as is the habit of the hacks at MSNBC. [Look at how this dogmatic dodo insists on getting her opinion in.]
As long as the Democrats continue to control Congress, we’ll have to endure an endless procession of initiatives for the federal government to take over industry after industry. Health insurance and college loans went under federal hegemony with passage of a single bill, known as “ObamaCare.”
Now, a new bill, referred to by the name of its chief sponsor, the ethically challenged Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, aims to consolidate a federal takeover of the nation’s entire network of financial institutions.
As Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute notes:
Does the bill, as [Republican Senate leader Mitch] McConnell said, “institutionalize too big to fail?” Of course. There can’t be any reasonable doubt about this. The bill authorizes the Fed to regulate all non-bank financial institutions that are “systemically important” or might cause instability in the U.S. financial system if they failed. . . .
The market will see immediately that the government has created Fannie Maes and Freddie Macs in every sector of the financial system where these large companies are designated for Fed regulation, including insurance companies, hedge funds, finance companies, bank holding companies, securities firms, and any other kind of financial institution the government wants to regulate. Since these firms will be too big to fail, they will be seen in the market—as Fannie and Freddie were seen—as ultimately backed by the government and thus safer firms to lend to than small firms that are not government backed. This will permanently distort the financial market, favoring large companies over small ones, and eventually force a consolidation of each market where these firms exist into a few large competitors operating under the benign supervision of the government.
In other words, this is another huge step toward fascistic corporatism, completing a de facto government takeover of today’s nominally “private” financial firms. These corporations would be reduced to the status of politically managed public utilities.
Professor Brad Smith of Capital University Law School stressed that latter point to me:
It’s important to note that this is not just about more bailouts, but it will be bailouts for the politically connected and favored. If the President and Congress think you are a “savvy businessman” (which means you support his party) you’ll be in the pink. But if you are a “corrupt Wall Street Titan” (meaning you don’t support his party) well .
Absolutely true. This is not only a federal takeover, but more specifically a political takeover of major financial corporations. Smith adds: “Republicans can rally public opposition if they get this message out there consistently.”
Ah, but therein lies the rub. The Dodd bill faces a cliffhanger vote in the Senate, perhaps as early as next week. And whether it passes in its current form may come down to the vote of a single Republican “centrist,” Susan Collins of Maine, who could thwart a successful GOP filibuster.
The repercussions of this legislation are as significant as ObamaCare. But even some Democrats are wavering on it. It can still be defeated.
I urge you to contact your two U.S. senators today. (And while you’re at it, make sure to send a copy of your message to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.) Tell them to oppose the pending financial reform legislation, the so-called “Dodd bill.” Tell them it represents “crony capitalism” at its worst, putting taxpayers on the hook for guaranteed bailouts of any and all financial institutions deemed “too big to fail.”
Tell them that this will give unfair market advantages to big, politically connected corporations over smaller, politically unfavored competitors. And that, in turn, will completely distort the financial-services marketplace, creating the false impression that large, government-backed institutions—like AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac—are inherently safer for investors and lenders than their smaller rivals. That can only encourage the consolidation of the financial-services sectors into a few gigantic monopolistic institutions, adding to the “moral hazard” problem of rewarding irresponsible businesses at the expense of their responsible competitors.
And you might want to add that we, the voters, will have the last word if power-craving members of Congress continue to imagine that they are “too big to fail” in November.
Update (April 19): Glenn Beck’s next milestonewill be to quit the ranks of American Sinophobes, who “are fond of saying that the strength of the Chinese economy is derived from that government’s exploitation of its people.”
The Chinese are ditching Mao for Milton, as Americans trust Oprah to pick their literature and leaders. Indeed China is changing. It is “out of the red” in more ways than one. The US is changing too: It’s in the red and getting redder. …
China has undergone considerable economic restructuring and market reforms, the consequence of which is a 300 million strong Chinese middle class. Poverty levels have receded from “53 percent in 1981 to 8 percent in 2001. Only about a third of the economy is now directly state-controlled. [Like the US] As of 2005, 70 percent of China’s GDP was in the private sector.” The Chinese financial system is duly being liberalized—banking is diversifying and stock markets are developing. Protections for private property rights are being strengthened as well.
DEBKAfile: “Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s last-minute decision to cancel his attendance at the US-sponsored summit on nuclear terror, opening in Washington Monday, April 11” has made the White House furious. The Summit would invariably see the “Egyptian, Turkish and other Muslim rulers slam Israel for its presumed atomic arsenal.”
“DEBKAfile’s Jerusalem sources say the prime minister acted out of two motives:
1. Israeli government circles were advised to read two reports leaked to US newspapers ( Washington Post: Obama weighs new peace plan for the Middle East and the New York Times: Should US design Mideast peace plan?) which appeared to herald the White House’s intention to impose a peace settlement on Israel.
Our sources in Washington and Jerusalem named National Security Adviser James Jones as the source of the leaks.
One senior source said the leaked reports were serious because “President Obama has his mind set on getting the borders of Israel and the future Palestinian state negotiated and settled in four months. This process leaves no room for any discussion on the security frontiers promised Israel for decades, yet the US president expects the Netanyahu government to accept Washington’s borders-cum-Palestinian state package without demur. His planners have shaped a Palestinian state within borders that make no provision for Israeli security. That is something the Netanyahu government will never accept.”
2. At the end of their stormy conversation in the White House, Obama handed Netanyahu a list of 11 issues on which he asked Jerusalem to respond. The prime minister continues to withhold his replies having been convinced from close study of the issues/queries that they were clever formulations designed to trick him into endorsing the new American plan for the Middle East.
Without answers to Obama’s eleven puzzles, Netanyahu does not feel his trip to Washington is necessary…
B. Hussein Obama has hatched a plan to impose “peace” on Israel.” Word has it that the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees is in the mix, as is the status of Jerusalem.
The Right of Return for any self-styled, United-Nations-Relief and Works-Agency-sponsored “Palestinian” agitator will entail absorbing millions of self-styled Arab refugees into Israel proper, and is, of course, a euphemism for the destruction of the Jewish State.
Update I (April 12): BHO Honors Zuma. The farce continues. America’s president hangs with and honors (unjustly) the president of South Africa. Obama, who loves the futility, pomp and splendor of summits, “appeared with South African President Jacob Zuma in Washington.” This, after dissing Bibi Netanyahu.
Boorish Barack called South Africa a “‘moral leader’ on the nuclear issue, since it began — and then dismantled — a nuclear program during the apartheid era.”
Now Zuma Zulu is being credited for the sacrifice.
Update II (April 13): BHO PERFORMS MIRACLES. “Obama: We’ve Made the World Safer.” Is there anything this guy can’t achieve? All it took was the power of His presence and a verbal agreement between the 47 nations which partook in His Nuclear Security Summit in Washington to make the miracle of nuclear disarmament materialize.
Wait a sec: “Pressed by CBS News’ Bill Plante, he also acknowledged that there was no enforcement mechanism to the communique that came out of the conference.”
