We here at TRS have discovered a great Iowa blog/website, The Iowa Brigade. Iowa Brigade has a series of questions for Iowa’s Senate and Congressional candidates. The questions are fair and clearly focused on the critical issues of the day.
Since we here at TRS try to hold candidates feet to the conservative fire, it seems only fair that we toe that same line. So, here goes:
1. Illegal immigration has been in the news quite often in the last year, what steps would you take to curb the flow of illegal immigrants from all US borders.
TRS says:
A. Very tight border beginning with Mexico and then, as resources permit, Canada as well. Our goal should be to identify every non citizen who enters this country. Don’t care where you come from just want to know who you are and what you are doing in my country. This means a literal and metaphoric fence. Capturing illegals in the interior is part of the metaphoric fence.
B. Very large gates. We need to approve much larger numbers of immigrants; our population simply does not produce enough children domestically.
C. Reform the system. Hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million, “illegal immigrants” are illegal simply because the bureaucracies that administer national immigration policy are as inefficient as almost every other federal bureaucracy. It really doesn’t serve the nation to deport the 25 year old math genius because a loose cog in a rackety machine didn’t produce the correct result. It isn’t very fair either. We also know that lots of bad guys slip through these same cracks, so fixing the bureaucracy is certainly of the highest importance.
D. Eliminate birthright citizenship. It is 2008 not 1808.
E. Enforce every existing law. If you’re here unlawfully, go home and get in line. We want you, but we don’t want you more than we want the people in your home country who are patiently and legally awaiting admission to the land of Coca Cola. Prosecute the hell out of unions and employers who pervasively enroll or employee illegal immigrants.
F. Fund the needed programs. Immigration is issue number three. Only national security, of which immigration is in part an important subset, and energy are more important. That means less federal money for non federal functions like education.
See, it’s not hard to say what you think.
Since we here at TRS try to hold candidates feet to the conservative fire, it seems only fair that we toe that same line. So, here goes:
1. Illegal immigration has been in the news quite often in the last year, what steps would you take to curb the flow of illegal immigrants from all US borders.
TRS says:
A. Very tight border beginning with Mexico and then, as resources permit, Canada as well. Our goal should be to identify every non citizen who enters this country. Don’t care where you come from just want to know who you are and what you are doing in my country. This means a literal and metaphoric fence. Capturing illegals in the interior is part of the metaphoric fence.
B. Very large gates. We need to approve much larger numbers of immigrants; our population simply does not produce enough children domestically.
C. Reform the system. Hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million, “illegal immigrants” are illegal simply because the bureaucracies that administer national immigration policy are as inefficient as almost every other federal bureaucracy. It really doesn’t serve the nation to deport the 25 year old math genius because a loose cog in a rackety machine didn’t produce the correct result. It isn’t very fair either. We also know that lots of bad guys slip through these same cracks, so fixing the bureaucracy is certainly of the highest importance.
D. Eliminate birthright citizenship. It is 2008 not 1808.
E. Enforce every existing law. If you’re here unlawfully, go home and get in line. We want you, but we don’t want you more than we want the people in your home country who are patiently and legally awaiting admission to the land of Coca Cola. Prosecute the hell out of unions and employers who pervasively enroll or employee illegal immigrants.
F. Fund the needed programs. Immigration is issue number three. Only national security, of which immigration is in part an important subset, and energy are more important. That means less federal money for non federal functions like education.
See, it’s not hard to say what you think.
20 comments:
sporie:
You remind me of a guy who puts on his letter sweater every chance he gets to show it off to adoring fans.
WTF Art?
Do you hate TRS so much that a picture bothers you?
You're damn right Richards!, Damn right!. Lay off Sporer right now Art, you pinko. It's not like he's some behind the lines fink, playing dress up, wearing fatigues, and spouting off loud and profane uber patriotism to hide his ultimate cowardice. Hell no, baby, Sporer is on the front lines and at the broken end of bottle every day defending you from these political gad flies and all their talk of "freedom". Yeah, well, we've come to know that code word and the likes of "diversity" and all these other little catch phrases you leftist punks use. So kiss my ass with this Socialist health care for everybody bullshit, it's survival of the fittest (and for my money whoever can draw the quickest). And don't give me any of this egg headed "every body has a right to education" crap neither. Everything that a man needs to know is contained in the Second Amendment and the King James Bible. You pointy headed Liberal slob, when was the last time you even picked up a bible? Shit, I suppose you even support Women's Suffrage, equal rights, and all that civil rights shit too, huh? And don't give me this "I think, therefore I am" New York Times bullshit neither. Why clutter up your mind when there's men like Sporer out there to do the thinking for you? So cut off CNN and get on board for the big kill. One Country, One way of thinking, one News Channel, one God, one religion, one Party, and one President for Life, George W. Bush! Now is our time! And that's one thing you commies ever got right, suppress all this "alternative thought" bullshit and teach people how they should think and act the right way. Uniformity now, tomorrow, and forever! Mission Accomplished!
kennie:
Why is it that because I like to poke fun at sporie you continue to think I hate him.
Why would I hate him? Yes, he's a pompous ass. He tends to think his sh-- don't stink. But hell, isn't that part of the conservative psyche.
There's nothing personal in my gibes. I'm sure he is a wonderful husband and father and that is the true measure of a man.
When he mounts the podium and pontificates as if his words and thoughts were some sort of manna from heaven, it is for we little people to remind him that he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.
Before I retired I worked in an environment, where my boss, his boss, and his boss, along with some of my peers were conservative nuts, much like you find here. There were a couple other liberals but given their concerns for career growth they tended to avoid too much political discussion. I, mostly alone, had to take on the conservative biases of our heirarchy and did so regularly. Often I got as good as I gave.
These were a great group of people and I loved working with them, arguing with them, and thoroughly enjoyed going to work with them everyday and was personally fond of each of them.
Perhaps, after posting here for awhile, I feel a certain kinship with sporie that leads me to post to him the same way I would talk to anyone else that I have a dialogue with from time to time.
Do I disagree vehemently with his political views? Is the Carolina sky blue? Do I think that he often doesn't employ his intellect when he shouts his absolute truths? Do I believe that he frequently fails to display the level of logical argument that in my experience is the hallmark of the legal profession? Are we not all in the long run dead?
I don't know sporie so I can't, I guess, truly say whether I like him or not. I can state unequivocably that I do not hate him because I do not hate anybody. For the most part, not hating, is part of the liberal psyche.
anon:
Priceless!!!!
I don't disagree with everything in your immigration policy. I do however have one major sticking point.
Here's my question - if we take away birthright citizenship how do we prove we are citizens of the United States? Does this mean that little Joey from Waukee would have to pass a 'citizenship test?' And, what happens if Joey fails? Also, would every American born after the law was enacted be forced to prove their citizenship somehow? I would be willing to be that some of our elected leaders would fail the 'citizenship test.' What happens to them?
Perplexed I am.
If you people don't like what Ted says why don't you just not read it?
The anonymous poster writes like an 8th grader testing the limits of his parents' willingness to tolerate foul language.
Art Layment just sounds like a creepy old liberal that is now retired and has nothing to do but relive the 60s, over and over and over.
daisy:
How else do we learn if we don't read? Like children in the wilderness, many of us continue to read sporie in the hopes that we will finally encounter wisdom. Alas, to date, none!
We all are, sweet lady, the sum and substance of all that has gone before. That some of us were fortunate to have lived through the sixties provides us a much better base with which to analyze the inane rumblings of the younger set, who had no such advantage.
Have a good day and go back to grading English tests.
So, Daisy, what you are really saying is what? That you agree with the anonymous poster up there?
Interesting.
My name is Richard Roma.
No Richard, I'm not.
I'm saying he is a buffoon.
Art, this country won't improve until the hippies who think anything much good came out of the 60s are dead. You are simply a cynical old fool who hasn't matured intellectually since age 21.
daisy:
Hell I'm only 22. I'm in the process of straightening out my birth certificate as we speak.
Art,
Daisy represents someone in the workforce contributing to society rather than counterculture hippies who did their best to screw up our society forty years ago. That element seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.
Daisy,
I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks and Art is among those who believe communism only failed because the wrong liberals were in charge.
kennie:
Most of the so-called hippies as well as those who were not hippies went on to join the workforce and contribute to our society. So I'm not sure just what that's worth.
We have this paradigm in our economic model that suggests, if you want to eat and marry and raise a family, then you best get a job. Most of us who did that contributed less to our society than many of those hippies.
Cultural movements are built on countering what proponents feel are the failings of the current culture. Often some of their views are right and others are wrong.
I am not knowledgable enough to completely analyze all of the good and bad of the hippie's culture nor the good and bad they saw in the mainstream culture of the time. I do know that this was a generation who grew up in their schools with weekly exercises teaching how to dive under a desk if they heard the sirens wail. It was a time when the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was more than just an old news clip. Not having grown up during that period you would not know the real, honest to God, concern about a nuclear holocaust.
Living with the thought that civilization as we knew it could be destroyed in a moment would tend to lead many of us to seek simplicity, freedom and pleasure as our swan song.
There was also a backlash against the hypocrisy of their elders. We were all taught that four letter words were unacceptable in our society and many of us were punished when caught using them. We were taught that "Goddamn" was taking the Lord's name in vain and therefore a mortal sin. No one explained that in the original context of taking the Lord's name in vain using a word like "Goddamn" had nothing to do with it. As we entered the adult world we came to find out that four letter words were everywhere. They were a part of the adult lexicon. We also came to realize that they are just words the use of which did not cause God to reign terror on the world, let alone each of us.
We were besieged with teachings that premarital sex was bad; from our churches; our parents; our teachers; even our neighbors. We were taught that this behavior should not and does not happen in good families. Then we attain adulthood and find out that Aunt Janie had a child out of wedlock. That one of the most vaunted of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, and many others of his time, had bastard children with their slaves. Adultery was never, ever to be countenanced but then we learn that adultery has existed throughout the history of mankind; that many of the world's greatest historic figures had practiced adultery. Those truths were a far cry from the moral lessons of George Washington's, "Father I cannot tell a lie".
Looking at our little section of the world we saw our fathers and those of our friends, going about the daily drudge of going to work everyday, coming home, eating dinner, then retiring to the easy chair to listen to the radio and read the newspaper. It seemed there ought to be more to life.
We saw a growing habit of an existence, not concerned with the welfare of community; with the betterment of mankind; but rather an increasing interest in self and family. We, dutifully, went to church every Sunday and listened to the fire and brimstone sermons with all the "Amens" from the congregation and then saw those same congregants, daily, violate those very things they exclaimed "hallelujah" to just last Sunday.
These are snippets and the hippie movement, I'm sure, was based on many other issues extending far beyond these, but they were a part of the movement, especially for those of us who didn't buy into the whole program but did find solace and reason in some of what they espoused. Much of the move to evangelical religiosity, in more current history, had its foundings in the hippie culture.
Cultural change is seldom all good or all bad. As a phenomenon it just is. It happens. By its nature it seldom reverses but modifies, over and over and over again.
The real dilemmas we now face were not borne of the hippie culture or the babyboomer generation. There may be issues that some find abhorrent that finally saw the light of day during the sixties but most of those issues have existed and have been struggled with since man started walking upright.
It is the conservative bent to always find something or someone to blame for their frustration. They have no solutions but to turn back the clock to their myopic view of what our society was or should have remained. Progress means always testing the limits; always pushing the envelope, seeking a better and more peaceful evolution of community, freedom and economic security. Liberals carry that banner far better than conservatives.
A minor note: In a communist society, the hardliners, those supporting strict adherence, are conservatives not liberals.
It can be best to avoid subjects that can lead to one of my dissertations but that could mean never blogging again.
Art,
Could you repeat all of that, I stop listening after
"Most of the so-called hippies as well as those who were not hippies"
Oh yeah, absolutely there Richards. Why bother reading when there's a man like Sporer capable of doing the thinking for you. Better yet, why read when there's always a 30 second sound bite out there to guide you in your "thinking".
Laughable, a complete farce.
kennie:
We have long been aware that your attention span is directly proportional to your comprehension ability.
But Art, we love you so much and can you please post more online books because I missed Oprah's book club this week? I'm outta here.
-My Name is Jim Rome
anon:
You know I will try my best.
sporie:
I should mention, referring to your closing remark, that most of us here would agree you have the "saying" part, down pat. It is the "thinking" part you need to work on.
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