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DAnneMarc: Rolling over in his grave, no doubt! Rosebud...or Crusader? (You have to slow the movie Citizen Kane down to Frame by Frame (or, maybe read the book) to see the word "Crusader" on his sled when he was a poor boy.) And one can further hypothesize just what that word means in considering what they believe the Crusaders did during the middle ages..especially, the Children's Crusades (but I digress)!
Instead of being invaded by extraterrestrial bug-eyed monsters from space we are being destroyed from within by even more destructive bug-eyed monsters of the sort called the Koch Bros and their bought-off politicians.
Many of these greedy termites have hogged out the infrastructure of our country by taking it all and giving back little in return. Sure some may have given the illusion that they give to various charities (although, many of these "charities" help support their Ayn Randian religion) but that is just cover for their rapacious greed and selfishness and total disdain for humanity..and provides tax shelter for their billions.
Maybe, if we had a real alien invasion and takeover, and all that wealth was confiscated from those who have been lucky enough to have largely inherited all their wealth (or those who have used sneaky and ruthless tactics, that they like to call good business practices, to amass their fortunes), we would all be better off.
Really, what difference would it make whether the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Mexican drug cartels, or Extraterrestrial Aliens invaded us and took us over? Those 1 or 2 percent of Americans who own and control 98% of the wealth of our nation are really just as heartless and ruthless and ALIEN as any other potential invader. These tempestuous and insidious connivers have invaded us from within and are no better or worthy to lord over us than any "outsider". To whom do we owe our loyalty when our country has been undermined by greedy financial manipulators and gutless corrupt politicians.
thanks for thinking of us DAnne but it has already happened. Canada though offers short term work visa's to workers from all over the world when we these large projects come up. That way they come make there money and go home. The big difference is we have a shortage of workers here and the US has massive unemployment. kind of shows it works.
I don't like the fact that you have no punishment for the ones breaking the law. Reagon gave them a free pass now Obama. It's kind of like catching a bank robber five years after he did it and telling he can keep the money if he starts paying bank fees.
This militirization of our southern border will be like Northern Ireland's and yes N. & S. Korea's. Now there will be many more deaths, people put in jails (more jails built), etc. Mexico won't stand for this and neither will the rest of the America's! We are starting another war and therefore more billionaires made through the "war machine" which we have become. Next will be drones in our skies watching people (the poor) through their windows, yards, acerage, you name it. The Republicans stand for the rich and their corpporations and that is what our country now stands for. Anyone who isn't rich will feel the weight of the Totalitarian change to our nation. The Democrats in Congress simply layed down and let The Republicans walk all over them and US. We are no longer a respected nation--we no longer respect our immigrants for all the hard work they do and have done to try to build a free society for the people. That is why they came here --for freedom, not tyranny.
The private prisons get their fodder and corporations will surely continue to get their slave labor. I'd say Obama did his job.
Mr & Mrs Kend ~ You might want to keep a close eye on what is going on down here. Cancer has a way of spreading. If you are right about there being vast oil reserves in Canada and this assault on American citizens succeeds, it is only a matter of time before this scenario plays itself out again on your side of the border. Of course, you are probably already aware of that, aren't you?
Barb Njos ~ I agree! $40 Billion is a lot of money. However, our border is hemorrhaging, and any amount of money spent to stop the bleeding is money well spent. A "path to citizenship?" For law abiding illegals this may work out just fine. For law breaking irresponsible welfare cheats a "path to citizenship" is a crime and an insult to American citizens. Whatever the procedure is involved to seek a legal citizen status we should know by now that two wrongs do not make a right. We should also know the law of supply and demand. If we increase our legal labor market we will drive down wages, benefits, and tolerable working conditions; also, we will increase poverty, unemployment, and the burden on welfare.
It is intolerable that the American people should be intentionally subjected to further labor difficulties, competition, and unemployment when the real causes of these issues goes unaddressed. NAFTA and free trade are behind all our economic woes in this country; yet, our government only acts to worsen these conditions. This immigration bill's intent has nothing to do with any compassionate desire to help poor foreign illegal immigrants. It has everything to do with flooding an already unstable labor market with desperately poor immigrants who will happily work any job, without any benefits, at any wage, under any conditions, for the sole purpose of driving down the cost of labor, destroying the middle class, and intentionally plunging the average innocent citizen into a labor market of abject poverty where they have no labor union representation or ability to do anything other than what they are told. These Congressmen are merely tools of the elite who only want to keep We the People powerless, desperate, and under control. This is treason of the highest order and a national disgrace. I pity any citizen who does not have the cognitive ability to see this for what it is--including Thom Hartmann.
Palindromedary ~ What Max Keiser really knows is that if you offer Aliens an easy path to citizenship they will flock to our country from everywhere! Where is Orson Welles when you need him?
Was it a bird? A Plane? Superman? Max Keiser knows....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICqqoPTO3nU
Wouldn't it be fun to take a Geiger Counter inside of the supermarkets and wave it over all of the food to see which one was radiating isotopes? I guess if they can arrest and possibly imprison some guy in San Diego for writing, in washable chalk, on the sidewalks in front of BofA anti BofA slogans then they might use a riot team on you before you got to the fish. But I have to be very careful what I say on the internet because now the FBI is trying to say that the Boston bombers were heavily influenced by the internet. Just a minute...I think I hear one of those drones approaching...
Pleased to make your aquantence Mrs. Kend. Thanks for identifying yourself.
I might add, shouldn't the US Government act responsibly to protect the security, civil rights, well being, and general welfare of its own law abiding, tax paying, legal American citizens above all else; especially, from foreign threats? If not, why have a Department Of Defense?
I am against the surge. I do not see that adding another 20,000 border guards is going to solve immigration problems. When I looked for a house on the border, one of the houses was owned by a grizzled border guard who said the problem wasn't with the wetbacks, it was with the druggies. I am also against The Fence and what will become of the animals who migrate across the border -- jaguars, deer, pronghorns? I have seen deer trapped when a new subdivision sprung up across their migration route. The deer wouldn't seek a way around the subdivision but simply milled about against the wall that surrounded the subdivision. After a week of watching this herd or about 15 deer, I called the Fish & Wildlife Dept to rescue their deer. I know jaguars winter in Mexico but summer and raise their young in the U.S. What will become of them?
As for the Dreamers, we should give them amnesty. Not all undocumenteds are Hispanics. We have Koreans, Vietnamese, Russians, Thais, etc., who were brought here as children but did not apply for citizenship when they turned 16 because they didn't know they had to or they wound up in this country under different circumstances. I view the way we treat these people to be deplorable....reminds me of how we treated the Chinese and Japanese who we brought to this country to work in the goldfields and then, when the mines died, we denied them citizenship and we forbade them employment. They opened Chinese laundries, restaurants, flower shops, tea houses; many became fishermen, flower growers, herbalists because we denied them employment. I can't help equate the way we are treating the Hispanics to the way we treated the Japanese-Americans in WWII. What we forget is that many of these Hispanics were escaping civil wars and oppressive regimes in their own countries -- such as Guatamala, Honduras, Panama -- and were seeking a life in a peaceful place no different from the thousands of Syrians today who seek refuge in Jordan and Turkey or the Sudanese seeking refuge in neighboring countries. Maybe the time is near when Canada will erect a border fence to keep the Americans out.
No one talks about the billions of dollars the undocumented pour into our treasury in the form of FICA taxes for which they will never collect. According to an article in the NY Times published in 2005, some $50Bn in the previous decade were poured into the treasury by the undocumented. Most of these wages were generated in businesses such as restaurants (17%), construction (10%), and farming (7%). I was raised on a farm. We could not get locals to pick our fields so we contracted with an agency who imported farm workers to pick our fields. Picking is a back-breaking job where a person toils from sun-up to sun-down under a hot sun for piecework pay. Yes, they are fast and can make a decent wage and, when multiplied by many family members, can make a decent living.
Yes! I am for giving these people who have lived amongst us for decades a path to citizenship.
The amount that will be spent on border security is outrageous. Not necessary. The path to citizenship is way too long & the requirement that a person can't be out of work longer than 60 days in a 10 year period is unrealistic. The Dreamers will be o.k. but the deal is a bad one. Schumer offerred way too much at the beginning & left to room for a decent compromise.
So are the majority of you saying you agree to have all of the illegals automatically become citizens? Should there not be some penalty for living in the US illegally? Should there not be some test of worthiness before they are allowed to become citizens?
Where oh where has my Palindromedary gone? Oh, where, oh, where can he be? You too, Ken Ware. How about MMmmNACHOS, David Abott, Outback, Historywriter, Vegasman56, and 2450-10K? How about anyone else? Come on, I'm most interested as to how you all stand on this most controversial issue. Do you too agree or disagree with mua? ...and why?
WOW me and DAnne Marc agree on something. I said it here many times these illegals drive wages way down. Up here construction, labour, landscaping, etc pay very well. My son earns 60 to 70 thousand a year paving. He only works 6 months a year.
It's hard to believe that the people who put these "secret" programs together understand so little about human nature. They need to read the book Tom Jones. The simple fact that one company, Booz Allen, had so much access to so much information is the first problem. This program should either be brought in-house, meaning get rid of private contracts, or broken up. This means that each private company (NOT individuals within the company) be given discrete pieces that are completely without meaning and value alone. Only when those pieces are put together -- at the end -- can anything be made of it all. It is also troubling that the people at the top of these private companies do not have the same patriotism and concern for the well-being of our Constitution and our democracy. These people should have MORE sensitivity to these issues than any grunt worker in their organization. Where are the leaders who used to be sensitive and aware when they were asking their people to do unethical and very possibly illegal things? Wall Street leaders didn't care that they were asking their grunt workers to write worthless derivatives. Now, apparently, CIA contractors are "surprised" that their grunt workers had deep feelings of conflict over the unethical things that were happening on a daily basis. How is it that these stupid men are the CEOs of multimillion dollar companies and I can clearly see that I could do a better job than they are doing? Of course the idiot method of dealing with this is to threaten firing if you talk about the inner conflict you are feeling. That's why I can't understand why idiots are earning so much money. If there is even one smart person working in the CIA, they better get to work and explain things to the idiots. Threats and intimidation cannot overcome a poorly designed program. Too much power in the hands of any human being will ALWAYS be abused. Stop giving public information to private companies.
First of all, listen to your people. If one person is conflicted about spying on Americans, maybe you should listen. Maybe some of your people are taking the information and doing questionable things. We know about Edward Snowden, but we don't know about other people who might be doing even worse things with this information -- just not publicly and not to respected journalists. In the end, the real problem is that Edward Snowden wasn't the only person who felt the "thrill" of having access to such personal information on so many people. Those other people don't want to let go of that power.
Yeah! Yeah! Ronald Wilson Reagan (666=The Number of The Name of The Beast) also said, "Government is the problem!" Maybe he was right then, too? Even a broken clock is right two times a day.
Out/our? Another Thom Harmann typo? Opinion??
As Ronald Reagan said, "Tear down this wall".
Oh, isn't this just peachy? Complaining about $40 Billion on border security. What about the $70 -$326.7 Billion tax burden the illegals who are already here cause real American citizens? Some sources say that estimate is low:
http://one-simple-idea.com/BorderSecurity.htm#Burdens
Sure some of these burdens might be alleviated by a "path to citizenship;" but, lets be real! All this "path to citizenship" is really is a "pass to work and reside legally" for illegally invading foreign fugitives. Now "illegals" won't have to have children to receive welfare benefits. Expect the burden of welfare to double or triple:
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1998/he98030.pdf
One nice note for illegals is now they don't have to work under the table for scraps. Now they will get a SSN and official permission to work. That means they can work above the table for scraps. That's right! Are you pissed-off at your boss because he/she hasn't given you a "cost of living" wage raise in 3 years? I bet you would be more pissed-off if he/she offered you a 50% pay cut wouldn't you? Well, now you don't have to worry about any of that. Now, Raul, who just got his "path to citizenship papers" will be happy to do your job for 50% of your current wages. I sure hope you and your loved ones have a skilled job that requires fluency in English or you might get called into the office in the near future and handed your 30 day notice with a assignment of training Raul in your job in your last few days. You might even be offered a bonus in severance pay for teaching Raul some English. Isn't that a nice thought? Don't forget to contribute to your Representative and Senator to thank them for making all this possible when it happens. Oh, the American Dream--Wherefore art thou?
A 0% cut in the rate of spending would have ruined the economy. 2% makes it just a little worse. We need a balance of aggregate demand vs supply. We need the federal reserve to try to live up to its goal of balancing inflation (too much demand) and unemployment (too much supply). As Ravi Batra has pointed out every time (like 100% correlation) the deficit gets small (AKA balancing the budget) the market crashes.
Instead of $40 billion on the border, spend $1 billion on e-verify and arrest a couple dozen employers. When the jobs stop, the undocumented traffic goes southward at almost no expense to the taxpayer. We will never seal the border no matter how much we spend. Get a fourteen foot ladder or a bulldozer to bend a few pylons. I would prefer an improved version of the Bracero program (1942 - '64) so the workers can go back and forth to keep up family relationships and they don't have to take up residence here to keep sending money back home.
In keeping with 'anything goes Friday' here are two thoughts:
The Supremes have set a new low by a seizure of an amazing, additional unconstitutional power by declaring the 'voting rights law' nul, not on the basis of unconstitutionality but simply because the court's conservatives didn't like it.
Assume that in 1959 the government secretly began to open and copy the U.S. mail with that newfangled photo copier machine and filed it all away so that it could be examined later pursuant to a legal warrant.
We don't need another fence, we need to get those EMPLOYERS who hire illegal immigrants! They need to be punished and if their repeat offenders, jailed/imprisoned.
We need a national ID card that can't be forged to get a job, housing, aid, education or any taxpayer supported aid. If illegal immigrants can't find work, housing, education or any other taxpayer help, they will leave on their own and they will stop sneaking in illegaly.
We do not need to import more people, we are too overpopulated, we need to END ALL IMMIGRATION NOW. Automation, free trade and outsourcing has removed millions of jobs but the number of people needing a job keeps growing and adding more people to a country with high unemployment, high homelessness and poverty will only make things worse. We are at the END OF GROWTH, we can no longer grow our way into prosparity, instead we are going to decline and the decline has already happening. Things will continue to get worse in spite of the lies of the government, corporations and investment businesses because resources are declining while the excessive populaton continues to grow.
The recent mention of the Borda count in the newsletter made me come up with something: http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/mathboy/blog/2013/06/reverse-instant-runoff-voting