Why Is Rubio in the Gang of 8?

Contrary to popular opinion, both in the national press and in the Republican Party, the conservative movement is split on the amnesty issue.  Just cast your mind all the way back to…last year.  During the Republican Primary battles, all of the conservative candidates were in favor of some version of amnesty.  The single hold out?  Mitt Romney, the “moderate.”

English: Former Speaker of the Florida House at CPAC in . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So it’s a confusing battle space that has anti tax activist Grover Norquist on the same side as liberal Senator Chuck Schumer, and moderate, establishment Republican columnist David Frum on the anti amnesty side while traditional conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer is pro amnesty.  On the talk radio side the views are more what you would expect, Rush Limbaugh  and Mark Levin are reliably anti-amnesty, however Sean Hannity switched sides after the election and now supports amnesty (although he is still cagey about it).  Otherwise, things are more what you would expect from a conservative split on immigration.  The neo-cons are pro amnesty (think William Kristol) and the paleo-cons are anti (think Pat Buchanan).

So where does that leave Tea Party darling Marco Rubio?  Square in the middle.

Rubio is a real conservative.  I’ve listened to enough politicians talk to know when they are the real deal and when they are just using the conservative movement to advance their own careers  *cough* Newt Gingrich* cough.

Rubio has long been a supporter of some variation of the Dream Act, which are a series of proposals to legalize illegal aliens brought over as children.  Given that as children they didn’t really have a choice about crossing the border illegally; it’s fairly easy to make the moral case to anti-amnesty conservatives for creating some mechanism for them to stay, after border security.  But it was a shock when he joined in with a group of liberal Senators and pro-amnesty Republicans, the Gang of 8, to craft a comprehensive immigration bill.

First, it was a shock that after the disaster of Obamacare, any Republican Senator would try to make common cause on a bill that intends to be “comprehensive.”  For conservatives, comprehensive is code word for cramming as much crap as possible into a massive bill and hope no one notices what’s in it.  The purpose of comprehensive bills is to slide revolting items through the process that would never pass on their own.  Of course, in the case of the immigration bill, the sole purpose is to get amnesty through.  Everything else in the bill is a sweetener to buy votes for amnesty, even though there are plenty of real, needed issues that need to be worked on.  Instead, nothing is more important than amnesty.  Steve Jobs found this out while trying to convince President Obama to loosen up on the H1-B Visa program.  From the Wall Street Journal:

According to Mr. Isaacson, Jobs “stressed the need for more trained engineers and suggested that any foreign students who earned an engineering degree in the U.S. should be given a visa to stay in the country.” The president reportedly replied that this would have to await broader immigration reform, which he said he was unable to accomplish.

“Jobs found this an annoying example of how politics can lead to paralysis,” Mr. Isaacson writes. “The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can’t get done,” Jobs said. “It infuriates me.”

A simple bill to allow graduates of US schools to get a Visa would enjoy large bipartisan support and would pass easily.   So therefore we can’t allow it until we make sure we drag 11 million other people along with them!

So now Rubio is stuck riding this tiger all the way to completion.  Meanwhile, his reputation will be marred by every little crazy line item that is stuck in the bill, such as the one creating a biometric data base of all US adults.  So why would he join in with the Gang of 8?  How could this benefit him?

Just a couple of ideas and I don’t know if any of them are close to the mark:

+             He knows it won’t pass and just wants to build up some “moderate cred” for 2016.

+             He’s inexperienced and doesn’t realize  that Schumer and his gang are taking him for a ride.

+             He’s extremely experienced (a former Speaker of the House in the Florida legislature) and he’s playing the Gang of 8 by trying to “cooperate” up to the point that he can exploit the weaknesses of the bill and then blame the Senate Democrats and the Obama administration for sabotaging the bill with poison pills to keep the bill from passing and keep it as a political issue.

I’m sure there are probably many more possible reasons, but I don’t see any way for this to end well for Rubio’s political future other than at some point he disowns the bill.  If he doesn’t and ends up voting for whatever monstrosity slithers out of the Senate, than Rubio’s reputation will be damaged.  To conservatives, he will be a traitor, and to liberals he’ll be a gullible fool.

Which pill will he choose?  The red or the blue one?

Holder’s Comment Gets No Coverage

English: Eric Holder, Attorney General Nominee (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since immigration has once again reared its ugly head as an imminent issue, complete with a “comprehensive” bill designed to keep the pesky details hidden from the great unwashed, I’ve been discussing it online in political web forums.  It’s an interesting issue since its almost invisible until some legislation brings it from the back to front burner, and I have to wonder how an issue that causes such explosive passion and interest can then shut itself off and go dark until… well until the next time.  I’m guilty of it myself.  Unless there is some legislation, like the current bill, the Arizona legislation, or the 2007 immigration reform attempt, I don’t think about it much either.

But back to the online political forums.  One thing I’ve noticed that’s different now from previous occasions when immigration has been a hot issue is that the proponents are now so cagey about their amnesty support.  They’re not demure about supporting amnesty, but they have become much shyer about the why.

Now of course partisan Democrats want the new voters and new customers for social services and some Republicans want a steady flow of cheap labor, but the philosophical underpinnings seem to be a bit hazier.  Generally I’ve discovered on forums, at the least from the left, is that when you chase them down, eventually you find out that many believe that immigration to the United States is a civil right.

That’s an idea that’s even crazier than it sounds once you break down what that actually means.  Does anyone in the world have a right to come to the US to live and work?   Yes.  Even if 2 or 3 billion people want to come here?  Yes.

That’s a political position which seems insane, but our Attorney General, Eric Holder, just subscribed to that very position.  Last week, during a speech to the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, he gave a speech, in which he made that very point, stating, that he believed a path to citizenship was a matter of civil and human rights.  Since that is such an off the wall position for the Attorney General to have, since it has no basis in US law, you would think that would have been a well reported on speech, consuming newspaper headlines and hours of cable news gabbing.

You would be wrong.

Oh it’s been well covered in the conservative blogosphere.  I’ve seen articles in the National Review Online and the Powerline blog, as well as many others, but as far as news goes, I’ve searched and I’ve not seen the speech reported in an actual news site except as an opinion piece. So if you’re the average person who only catches the news from a network news show or the occasional newspaper headline, you’ll never know that the chief law enforcement officer in the United States thinks that a brand new, just made up civil right, is the reward for breaking actual US law.  The left really seems to believe this.  I recall reading decades ago an article in a leftist magazine that recommended a wet foot-dry foot immigration policy.  Actually we’ve more or less had that for decades.  But I doubt that’s what the American people would want, nor would they agree with Holder if they knew his immigration views.

But they’re not going to know.  It won’t be reported, and reporters are not going to question Holder on it.

Related articles

• Eric Holder’s Reckless Assertion

Lefties Get It Wrong Again

My thoughts on first hearing about the Boston Marathon Bombing besides the shock of the tragedy, wasn’t on the particular motives or identifying which group the actual culprits were; my worry was on catching the culprits.  Given how long the investigation went before there were any suspects, I was worried that the terrorists had gotten away clean.  But for millions of others in the country, there was quite another worry.

For David Sirota, writing at Salon, the hope was that the Boston Bomber was a White American.  The worry was that the bombers would be anyone else.  Sirota’s argument was an extremely distorted version of White Privilege.  But the fact that the identity of the a- that-time still unidentified culprits was of vital importance to the left is as good an explanation for the divide that exists in this country as any.  On that basis, I highly recommend Sirota’s column.  If you want to know why conservatives are from Mars and liberals are from Venus, it’s all there.

So Sirota and millions of liberals can take some solace that yes, the Bombers were White, and in the case of at least one of the bombers, an American citizen.  Naturalized on 9/11; how about that.  But this isn’t the kind of white American that the readers of Salon, or liberals in general, were hoping for.   They wanted the bombers to be right wing Tea Party types.  Actually, more than hope; many of them were expecting it.

I discovered that this week online, via Twitter and on Political Message boards.  I spend a fair amount of time on political forums.  I like to see and hear other arguments and hone my own.  But I also like to be aware of the political worldview of my political opponents.  It’s hard to keep in touch with that unless you constantly immerse yourself in their ideas and arguments, which I do.  But I admit even I was surprised by the reaction of some the left leaning members of the web forums I hang out at.

Before the victims had even all been taken to the hospital, posts denouncing the bombers as right wing conservatives filled the internet.  One even made the point that April was filled with right wing violence, including the Battle of Lexington and Concord.  If the left wants to include Lexington and Concord as an example of right wing militia violence, I find myself fairly comfortable with that.  But that merely shows how the left is becoming less and less moored to our country and history.  If the first thing that comes to your mind when thinking of the founding fathers is white male slaveholder, you might be a liberal.

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.

But the leftist mindset of hoping for the right kind of terrorist doesn’t seem to have an equivalent on the right.  I don’t recall any sort of twitter messages or forum posts of righties hoping that the bombers were Occupy Wall Street types.  Of course, Occupy Wall Street types have committed terrorist acts, but I think most on the right just don’t consider them motivated enough to be the type of terrorists that radical Muslims are…oops!  Did I just use the “M” word?

That’s a big no no!  Here, conservatives can plead guilty.  There were many posts along the lines of, “I guess Muslim terrorists did it.”  Not hoping for it, but it just seemed likely.  And that was in fact what the Boston Marathon bombing was, a terrorist attack committed by radicalized Muslims.  But that is the sort of clear eyed reality the left avoids.  For them, it’s as if every new terrorist attack, it’s as another chance to blame Sarah Palin.  The Gabby Giffords shooting set the ugly template for the left blaming the right with zero evidence.

But trying to argue with the left on this point seems to be fruitless.  It didn’t matter on the web forums this week.  It didn’t matter that Sarah Palin was not the shooter at the Tucson shooting, when I found myself criticized by a famous science fiction author for expressing skepticism that the Tea Party had anything to apologize for when Gabby Giffords was shot, and I might as well have been Sisyphus pushing the boulder of reason up the hill of the Ft. Hood massacre  trying to explain that Major Hasan was in fact a terrorist, not someone who cracked under the constant discrimination of being a Muslim American.  In fact, for an excellent example of how unmoored from reality the left can be, check out this thread where I make the simple point that Hasan was a Muslim terrorist.

In other terrorism news, the left gets a lift.  The ricin letter writer Paul Kevin Curtis, turns out to be both White, Male, and Christian!  It’s the leftie terrorism wish list come true!  And yes, it does get even better, he’s a Southerner!  This is the most perfect news imaginable except…

…aww he’s a Democrat!

There goes that narrative.  Well, at least he’s crazy as a bedbug too.

Related articles

• The ‘Co-exist’ Bombers This must disappoint David Sirota.
• Boston Bombers: Salon Writer Sirota Gets His Wish…Sort of
• The Irresponsible Search for Bomb Scapegoats
• Oh, those nutty Leftists

The Associated Press will no longer use the term ‘Illegal Immigrant’

I just wondered what took so long:

The Associated Press will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant,” its executive editor said Tuesday, a decision that comes as negotiations over a deal on comprehensive immigration reform are continuing.

The AP – which has about 1,400 daily U.S. newspaper members – made the change to reflect labeling of behavior, not people, executive editor Kathleen Carroll wrote.

“The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person,” she wrote. “Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

Carroll acknowledges that the new guidance will “perhaps just a bit at first” make writers’ jobs more difficult. “But while labels may be more facile, they are not accurate,” she writes.

Under the heading “illegal immigration,” the AP’s Stylebook will list acceptable variations including “living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.”

The article doesn’t say what they will replace it with; probably undocumented immigrant or some variation.  But I’ve noticed the gradual push on news shows when illegal immigration is the topic, invariably the pro illegal representative will either not use that term or will state he doesn’t accept the legitimacy of that term.  You know, along the vein of “no human being is illegal.”  The goal of course, is to make the term un-PC so as to delegitimize the political opposition by delegitimizing the term.

Really, I’m surprised this didn’t happen during the 2007 immigration battles.  But now that the AP has made this move, I expect the New York Times, Gannett, and basically everyone else in the main stream media to follow suit.  Eventually, even ICE will have to scrub its website of the soon-to-be racist epitaph

In a way, they have a point.  The term illegal immigrant isn’t really descriptive of who these people are.  They are not immigrants since they don’t even have a right to be in the country, let alone settle down here.  So I’ll do my part and refer to these border crossers and visa over-stayers as illegal aliens.

Related articles

• AP drops ‘illegal immigrant’ from Stylebook

Revenge of the Dollar Store Diva

Sometime during the early 1980’s I was reading a speculative science article about a concept called hypertext.  Now of course you can just click that helpful link to find out what it is, but chances are, you won’t have to.  If you’ve been on a computer at all, you know what hypertext is and if you are like me, you click on hypertext links maybe a hundred times a day.  But in the early 1980’s, when computer screens were small with green text, I couldn’t see the utility of a hypertext, let alone wrap my head around the concept.

Image via CrunchBase

And now I’m having another hypertext moment, and it’s called Playlist Live.  You can click on the (hypertext) link if you like to peruse the website as I did, but once again, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.  It appears to be a Comic Con for YouTube video bloggers.  Why there would be such a thing I can’t imagine.  What would be the point?  But apparently it’s some sort of big deal since my daughter wanted to go.  I farmed out the entire enterprise to her mother, since every time she would beg for Playlist Live tickets I would have to ask, “What is that again?”

So I’m not going to get the concept anytime soon.

So last weekend was the big event.  I guess.  I have to take my daughter’s word for it that it was a big deal.  It seems she went from booth to booth collecting autographs from these YouTube stars.  To me, that doesn’t seem to be much of a collectible.  On the other hand my parents wouldn’t have understood that my comic books that they threw out as when I was a kid could ever have any collectible value either.

Anyway, one these You Tube pseudo-stars, Tyler Oakley, created a video that I mocked in a post last year, The Real Dollar Store Diva.  I just didn’t believe, and still don’t, that some punk kid is a better shopper than I am.   So when my daughter got around to his booth, she told him that her Dad was the real Dollar Store Diva.  His reply?

“You’re dad is such a queen.”

As insults go, that ranks somewhere below, “I know I am but what are you?”  But I think my shopping accolades are still intact.  Now excuse me while I go load e-coupons on my Winn-Dixie Rewards card.

It Starts with Deportation…

English: United States Senate candidate , at a town hall meeting in Louisville, . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it comes to immigration, I’m hearing this phrase echoed more and more by Republicans, “Let’s start that conversation by acknowledging we aren’t going to deport” the millions of illegal immigrants presently in the country.“

However I was really disappointed to hear that from Rand Paul.

Rand, as the most libertarian member of the Senate, may have come to his open borders ideas honestly.  Open labor markets are fundamental to libertarian thought, but the rote, we are not going to deport 12 million people (or 11 million, fill in your own number) is the first line in virtually any conversation with an establishment Republican about immigration.  In other words, we are going to have amnesty no matter what, so deal with it.

It’s clear that we are never going to have an equivalent of Operation Wetback.  That Eisenhower era program forcibly repatriated illegal aliens from California to Texas back to Mexico.  Although the estimates of the success of the program vary wildly, from 50,000 to 1.3 million, the estimates are much higher for the numbers of illegals who voluntarily left to avoid being detained and sent back by Operation Wetback.

However we don’t really have to go to such extremes.  Normal enforcement would take care of the illegal problem in a few years after we successfully sealed the border.  Don’t believe me?

According to ICE:

400,000 aliens were deported in 2011

392,862 aliens were deported in 2010.

390,000 aliens were deported in 2009.

So if the borders were sealed, using normal enforcement measures, illegal aliens would be largely gone in a little over 25 years.  However they would cease to be a major concern long before that. And that assumes there would be no self deportation, which has been occurring since the start of the financial crisis.  That’s certainly a quicker pace than the one we were promised after the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986.  We are still waiting for the borders to be closed as promised with that bill.

So yes, we can deport millions.  We already deport hundreds of thousands every single year.  With an open border however, it’s just bailing out the ocean.  If we ever got serious about closing the border the numbers of illegal aliens in this country would start to reduce immediately.

So as soon as I hear, “well we are not going to deport millions of people…” I know the speaker is not interested in actually dealing with the problem of illegal immigration.  They are only interested in getting those illegals amnestied; the quicker the better.  That tells me who in Washington is serious about the problem and who isn’t.  Right now, it seems that virtually no one is interested in doing anything other than amnesty.

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• From Hero to Zero: The Right Trashes Rand Paul for Supporting Immigration Reform

Jeb Bush and the Path to Citizenship

Jeb Bush started his book tour this week to promote his new book, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, with Clint Bolick, and immediately ran into a brick wall.  On Morning Joe, Jeb almost immediately walked back on one of the central premises of the book; that illegal immigrants would be allowed to become legal residents, but not US citizens.

“So going forward — we wrote this last year — going forward, if there is a difference, you can craft that in law where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn’t an incentive for people to come illegally, I’m for it… I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t see how you do it, but I’m not smart enough to figure out every aspect of a really complex law.”

In other words, Bush pulled the legs out from under his own book.  That was the quickest retreat from a book since former Bush Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill did a 60 Minutes interview promoting his book, which criticized the Bush administration; then went on the Today Show the very next day and backtracked on every single point from his book.

Jeb Bush has always been one of those open borders-let-every-illegal-in guys like his brother and most of the Republican establishment. So he’s always been in favor of a path to citizenship. So it was very odd that he came up with this book in which he supports merely legalization (like Newt Gingrich), rather than full citizenship.

Of course, the book was written last year, and what was the news about immigration last year?  It was the Republican primaries, and the guy with the toughest immigration policy, Mitt Romney, won the Republican primaries.  So it seems pretty obvious to me that Jeb was writing a book to appeal to Republican Primary voters.  My suspicion is that he never really switched positions, and that the purpose of the book was to present him as being in favor of a position to the right of what he actually expected to happen. By the time we get to the 2016 race, Immigration will more than likely be a done deal, and probably along the lines that Obama wants. No border security (to keep the illegal’s coming) and a path to citizenship. So Bush could claim to have opposed (using the book as proof) Obama’s plan, but hey, it’s already passed, Whatcha gonna do?

Jeb was the former governor of my State of Florida, so the man is no stranger, and as a governor, he was a very good governor; one of the better ones that Florida has had.  But as governor he had no control over Federal immigration policy.  As President (and this book seems to be step one for the 2016 race), no matter what he has written in his book, he would be as open borders / full citizenship on the issue as President Obama is.

In other words, he is totally untrustworthy on the issue of immigration.  No matter what he says, if he gets the chance, he’ll knock the fences down and shoot green cards over the border with T-Shirt cannon.