Chris Roach has an essay about Texas that's well-worth reading.
A couple of things about Perry:
Being governor of Texas isn't that hard a job. It has an odd constitution where the Lt. Governor is surprisingly powerful.
Perry and Bush hate each other, but Perry seems like the guy Bush was always pretending to be.
Regarding Texas in general:
Regarding Texas in general:
Since the first oil gusher in Texas 110 years ago, Texas has benefited from a whole lot of competent Americans moving in. The oil industry brings in people who can get stuff done. Other parts of the country, such as West Virginia, have been hurt by the more effectual moving out on average. Texas isn't like that. At least as far back as 1960's Project Talent national post-Sputnik tests, Texas schoolchildren were outscoring California schoolchildren, despite California having a lot more Nobel Prize winners.
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84 comments:
Ron Paul (also from Texas) is obviously smarter than both of them (especially put together), as he understands what America was, and is supposed to be, about. How hard is it to read and understand the Constitution, anyway?
Much of the document is administrative stuff, and I could explain the Bill of Rights to someone in detail in about a half hour. Everyone can free up a half hour for this sometime. An hour before an inauguration would work just peachy.
Come to think of it, it's probably just a matter of backbone. Ron Paul's got it. The rest of these bozos don't.
isn't that hard of a job
Steve, please, I've asked you before. There's no need for the 'of.' I've been a contributor.
"Being governor of Texas isn't that hard of a job"
"that hard A job", surely?
Mel, I agree with your assessment of the Bill of Rights and I also like Ron Paul a lot [more perhaps than any other nationally recognizable presidential hopeful]. But I'm not sure "backbone" is what separates the Pauls from the Perrys and Bushes.
A concise way of defining their difference would be this: it seems to me Ron Paul is in politics because he believes in America, while Bush and Perry are in politics because they believe in themselves.
Ron Paul thinks building a border fence would be bad, because it would stop all those Americans fleeing to Mexico.
Definition of stupid: Ron Paul.
"How hard is it to read and understand the Constitution, anyway?"
Pretty hard, actually, because it is often vague, or combines irrelevant clauses in its amendments.
Think of the 1st Amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
What a mess that is. The first clause -- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" -- is basically meaningless. I know the current interpretation is that the country won't have an official religion, but that isn't what the amendment actually says.
Or think of the 2nd Amendment:
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The first clause just muddies the waters. You can have a well-regulated militia where all the arms are kept centralized in an armory, and members are not free to bear them outside of being called up to active duty -- that's exactly what today's National Guard and Army Reserve do (though the opposite of what army reserves in higher-trust countries like Switzerland or Israel do).
And the second clause of the 2nd amendment is violated all of the time. The right of the people to bear arms is infringed in many parts of America that have strict gun control laws.
George Bush was never really as "Texan" as he positioned himself. His family are blue blood WASPs from the northeast who moved to Texas temporarily to drill for oil. He lived in Midland when he was a child, but Bush spent his high school (in prep academy) and college years (in the Ivy League) outside of the state. As an adult, he spent quite a bit of time traveling and lived a good chunk of his life out of Texas, especially when his father was running for elections.
Even while living in the state, the family spent most of their time in an affluent enclave of his Houston. Houston is culturally, demographically, and socioeconomically pretty different from the rest of the state. For many decades, it's drawn a lot of affluent and educated professionals and businessmen from across the country. Lots of immigrants too. Houston is to rural Texas as Atlanta is to the rural south.
In the 1988 election, there was a worry that Bush-Quayle could lose Texas to Dukakis-Bensten (Bentsen was a Texan Senator and beat HW Bush in a previous Senate race). In his own election for Congress in the 1970s, W. Bush lost to a Democrat due to the perception that he was an east coast carpetbagger.
Sure Bush bought a ranch in Crawford before his run for the presidency (in 1999), but then he recently sold it and moved to an exceptionally affluent enclave called Highland Park (in Dallas County). That tells you everything you need to know.
The Bushes have also been moderate establishment types for most of their history. More Rockefeller/Scott Brown/east coast Republican than anything hard right. HW Bush criticized Reagan's tax cuts as "voodoo" economics. In his Senate run, HW Bush (Republican) got endorsed over Lloyd Bentsen (Democrat) by liberal economist John Galbraith. Clinton beat HW Bush in quite a few southern states due to his more authentically southern/Arkansas appeal. I should also mention that the Bush daughters are Democrats, which is amazing when you think about it.
George W. Bush claiming to be a conservative Texan is just ridiculous. His opponents calling him a "bible belt cowboy" is equally foolish. As recently as back in the 1980s and early 1990s, they were derided as "preppy" and out of touch with real Americans.
I don't know how anybody could be fooled by the act. Given their background, it's also not surprising that Bush II was never all that conservative.
I'll believe Ron Paul's "got it" when he stands in front of a microphone and says that the rule of law and limited government are Anglo-European ideals and, more immediately, Anglo-American ideals, and that is sufficient reason to restrict immigration and abolish birthright citizenship.
He can't bring himself to do it. He gets uncomfortable and starts talking about welfare.
I think this genial synergy (i.e., cheap labor) plays out everywhere, whether it's Texas oilmen, California vintners, New York media executives, Mario Batali's restaurant staff, etc. The old WASP elite used to feel so inclined toward Negros, but then they got too uppity to pick cotton. So now the benevolent patrician countenance shines on the Meso-American.
It is well known that TX elites are soft on immigration. Has anyone seen a poll of what ordinary TX voters think about immigration?
Rick Perry is TEXAN for "Charlie Crist"
Perry revealed his treasonous colors in the last debate when he said that those who refused his DREAM Act hispandering did not "have a heart."
What about the children who,through no fault of their own,were born to African American parents?
What about the children who,through no fault of their own,were born to white parents?
What about the children who,through no fault of their own,were born to American parents?
Who is heartbroken about a kid from Oklahoma having to pay out of state tuition to go to school in Texas?
Why are our elites ONLY worried about the children of illiterates who illegally come to America to take advantage of free benefits?
Is Rick Perry and the Mexican government "racist against" native born American children?
"Perry seems like the guy Bush was always pretending to be"
This is the kind of insight we come to iSteve to read. Best sentence ever. At least since your Obama fisking.
Public figure psychologist should be a recognized profession.
I bet you don't pay for yoru NYTIMES subscription
Yes, Texas brings in a lot of competent people. But some of them are starting to realize the implications of demographic change.
I spoke with a wealthy businessman over the weekend, an engineer who has made several fortunes. Unprovoked by me, he ranted like an HBD realist, complaining that his peers in the business community won't bring their businesses to heavily Hispanic areas in Texas because they -- the Hispanics -- lack the education and discipline to be good employees. He said the blacks in Ohio are more reliable, particularly when you have to bring the hammer down. The Hispanics, he said, think of SNAFUs as an opportunity to get more hours, not as a cost to the bottom line.
"Come to think of it, it's probably just a matter of backbone. Ron Paul's got it. The rest of these bozos don't."
Paul is good on the money issue (and the ability to print money out of thin air is the only thing that ever made the Welfare State possible) but he's gone squishy on the immigration issue, to my immense dismay.
Since I'm a single issue voter -- toss the imminvaders out and put troops on the border to KEEP 'em out, I can't donate to Ron Paul anymore, either.
White people from middle America are looking for a leader who will stand up for their interests, not the interests of illegals, or banks, or multinational corporations, the United Nations, the military-industrial complex or the CIA.
It will be ironic if the political leader who seems most willing go advance the interests of American whites is Herman Cain.
Alex Jones is also from Texas.
Here he is confronting Perry and Vincente Fox when they had one of their powwows, protesting against immigration, amnesty that globalists like Perry have been pushing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dp8ch8WZqo
I agree about Ron Paul. I'm a single issue voter, and I am crushed that Paul has been pushed (somewhat) towards open-borders lunacy.
The irony is that there are at least a few Austrian-School thinkers like Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
A quote from Hoppe about left-libertarians:
A second motive for the open border enthusiasm among contemporary left-libertarians is their egalitarianism. They were initially drawn to libertarianism as juveniles because of its "antiauthoritarianism" (trust no authority) and seeming "tolerance," in particular toward "alternative" — non-bourgeois — lifestyles. As adults, they have been arrested in this phase of mental development. They express special "sensitivity" in every manner of discrimination and are not inhibited in using the power of the central state to impose non-discrimination or "civil rights" statutes on society. Consequently, by prohibiting other property owners from discrimination as they see fit, they are allowed to live at others' expense. They can indulge in their "alternative" lifestyle without having to pay the "normal" price for such conduct, i.e., discrimination and exclusion. To legitimize this course of action, they insist that one lifestyle is as good and acceptable as another. This leads first to multiculturalism, then to cultural relativism, and finally to "open borders."
Twice in the last couple days, I've had people bring up Ron Paul's name as an example of someone who is talking sanity on both monetary/fiscal issues and the ongoing wars.
It's certainly a long shot for him to get the nomination. But he does seem to be having more impact on the national conversation than, say, Santorum.
Dave Miller in Sacramento
Oil industry brings in competant people? Where did you get that idea?
Trash disposal brings in competant people if they are allowed to do their job unmolested. Today I saw interviewed (on the business channel) some "medical records on the cloud" businessman. Host asked how important a governemnt subsidy to doctors who put their records on computer was to the business plan. the subsidy was ten to twenty thousand dollars for the typical doctor and was in danger of expiring. The businessman said that it was not very important; that there were something like forty other programs and subsidies. That business would attract rent seekers who could read legislation and seduce government officials.
Any normal business would reward competence.
ron paul is from pittsburgh. though he lived in texas long enough to be considered from texas. kind of like how obama is "from" chicago.
not a bad article on texas, but the thing is, anybody is better than obama, by a huge margin. even somebody clueless like rick perry or sarah palin would be dramatically better. any democrat would be better. he's really that much of a disaster for the US should he be re-elected.
Off topic: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/26/BACG1L9CP3.DTL
Many commenters here reside in the Bay Area and not an insignificant number of them went to Cal. Please imagine the plague of political correctness that afflicts that over-rated institution as described in this San Francisco Chronicle article.
I'm agonizing over Ron Paul, too, but he is the only one of the bunch (correct me if I'm wrong) who's questioned the validity of birthright citizenship. But I'm afraid he's going to fall into the libertarian open-borders meme with the usual childish backasswards libertarian argument that all we have to do is get rid of the welfare state and the problem will go away, and my answer to that is that all we have to do get rid of gravity and nobody will fall down anymore. Here's some relevant stuff.
"Steve, please, I've asked you before. There's no need for the 'of.' I've been a contributor."
Double thanks.
Yes, those genius Texans.
"There are more Mexicans here than ever before," Villagran, a buyer for a scrap metal company, says of Pasadena. "We've kind of taken over."
(That's Pasadena, TX; I didn't know there was a Pasadena in Texas.)
Two facts are quite clear: Hispanics are disproportionately criminal, as well as enormous academic underachievers. Yet in Texas the number of Hispanics (Mexicans, whatever) has increased greatly over the last decade, to the point where they're now about 40% of the population.
So I have to ask: How smart is it to allow that to happen?
Ron Paul thinks building a border fence would be bad, because it would stop all those Americans fleeing to Mexico.
Definition of stupid: Ron Paul.
Whiskey damn near every comment you make is the definition of stupid. We all know you don't like Paul because you don't think he is 120% pro Israel.
Funny how you never dismiss any other candidate like Perry who wants to cater to illegals, but is firmly behind Israel. So I guess we know what is really important to you.
The US was never inundated with Mexicans before and we never had a fence. Take away the social welfare goodies like in-state tuition, birthright citizenship, and bring back our forces from your endless conflicts in the mideast and they can patrol the border like they did prior to WW2.
"Perry and Bush hate each other..."
Bush and Perry are like the Bloods and the Crips. They may hate each other, but there is no real difference between the two.
"I don't know how anybody could be fooled by the act."
H.L. Mencken said it best.
Baloo said, "But I'm afraid he's going to fall into the libertarian open-borders meme with the usual childish backasswards libertarian argument that all we have to do is get rid of the welfare state and the problem will go away,..."
Baloo, they will self-deport if they can't make a living and if they can't get assistance. Building a fence while still offering birthright citizenship, employment, free health care, welfare, assistance in their native languages and other goodies won't work. It is more important to cut off the incentives for them to come than to build a 'Maginot Line'.
The same goes for legal immigration too. A border fence won't do diddly to stop so-called legal immigration. If we are not prepared to stop the insanely large numbers of legal immigrants, especially through family unification, then we won't even begin to address the incentives that bring in the illegals. Which means a fence would be completely useless.
Whiskey said...
Definition of stupid: Ron Paul.
Whiskey's beef with Ron Paul is that Paul calls Israel and it's US lobby on their BS.
swingslow said...
Steve, please, I've asked you before. There's no need for the 'of.' I've been a contributor.
Anonymous said...
"that hard A job", surely?
Mmm, I was in a former British colonial high school, I'd leave the "of" in there.
I will be lobbying to have you removed from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is like the gatekeeper of what's notable.
In general, the more important someone is, the longer their Wikipedia page.
Bush and Perry are like the Bloods and the Crips. They may hate each other, but there is no real difference between the two.
That was a good comparison.
So who should we vote for anyway? I'm thinking Bachmann.
Whiskey likes Perry because Mr. Perry is an "alpha." Dr. Paul is merely "beta."
By the way, this is the only explanation for the Texas Miracle I've seen that makes any sense. Texas didn't have a housing bubble like California and Arizona, which also have plenty of land and Hispanics. But why? Basically, credit matters. Turns out Texas of all places, had regulations preventing some of the most irresponsible lending practices. Oh the irony.
"Texas got hit badly by the Savings and Loans crises from 1987-1991. 729 banks were closed, that's 38% of the banks that closed across the country.
The Fed points out that after the disastrous consequences of the S&L crises, Texas lawmakers decided to regulate their banking industry-- and even got involved ironing out the housing market. From the report
Following the 1980s collapse, Texas regulators bolstered rules governing loan-to-value ratios on residential real estate loans and limited or delayed implementation of home-equity lending, reverse mortgages and home-equity lines of credit. Given this oversight and other factors such as ample land availability and fewer development and zoning restrictions, Texas housing stock increased during the national boom without the rapidly rising home prices and lax lending standards found elsewhere. Burdened by less housing fallout, and consequently less household leverage, the Texas economy remained relatively healthy, with greater job-creating capability. The state also avoided a major wealth shock and loss of collateral value underpinning loans, allowing the asset-price and wealth channel of monetary policy to remain relatively unblocked. Additionally, Texas sustained relatively fewer credit card and other consumer loan delinquencies."
http://www.businessinsider.com/it-turns-out-rick-perry-owes-his-texas-miracle-to-two-things-he-hates-2011-9#ixzz1Z6RK8GXW
For what it's worth, I don't necessarily think this mean the only solution is "regulations". If we had something resembling a free market in banking, things would never get that bad in the first place. But in the absence of market mechanisms to enforce sanity, a regulatory regime that seek to restrict lending apparently works better than one that promotes debt. Whoda thunk it?
It should also be said that Ron Paul despite being a "libertarian" voted against Gramm's banking deregulation bill. Unlike his opponents, he is *not* an idiot. He's tried to understand the economic history and the credit monster.
The economic thinking of other Republicans, and most people who call themselves libertarians, goes something like this-
Government/Regulations bad.
Free market enterprise good. (The banking sector is considered a proper business.)
All we need to do is get rid of Obama's high taxes and regulations and we'll be on our way to recovery.
The financial crisis never happened.
What have we learned?
Republicans learned that liberals are bad, capitalism is good. (Some people here learned that immigration is bad.)
In their minds the great recession is somehow Obama's fault. He's just the poor shmuck who happened to take over once the house of cards collapsed. Sure he's not helping things. What the he'll does he know about anything?
Why all this anger at the poor bastard.
"The first clause just muddies the waters."
The first clause is a dependant one, and it doesn't mean anything without the preceding part, nor does it change the meaning of the preceding part.
"And the second clause of the 2nd amendment is violated all of the time."
Before incorporation, the bill of rights applied only to the federal government. If a locality wanted stricter gun laws, that was their business. Obviously they have to spin in circles to explain why incorporation doesn't expand the second amendment to a blanket right to bear arms.
As for the first amendment, it doesn't really define what a religion is, or more importantly what is not a religion. Even something like holy church doctrine/materials shall be public domain would be a benefit.
Steve, are you going to reply to Ron Unz's gargantuan anti-Sailerian immigration article?
i'm still reading the unz article, it's pretty long, but the idea seems to be, anything other than total surrender to mexico is not only stupid, but counterproductive. not only is everything going to be fine, your grandchildren will not know the difference and will love be outnumbered by mexicans.
Ha, I got people talking about the Constitution and it's not even my own blog! Sorry, Steve, for bringing this off topic, but at least Ron Paul is from TX, which is part of your topic.
As to Paul's views on immigration (lately, I mean), I do agree completely with JSM on his major flaw. Ron Paul is very principled. He does know that the US government, of all the crap it gets into that's not Constitutional, does have a duty to protect the country at the borders. I don't think Ron understands this basic point: If we are a diverse county, full of people whose culture has no history of fairness and liberty like the people who settled here from 1600's through 1850's, these new "Americans?" are not going to be libertarians and will NEVER see your point of view.
It's all downhill once you replace the people who have the original American spirit.
It's up to us to convince Congressman Paul of this, when we see him in person.
"Steve, please, I've asked you before. There's no need for the 'of.' I've been a contributor.
"that hard A job", surely?"
Do yall fey twinks realize just how fucking prissy you sound?
"Ron Paul thinks building a border fence would be bad, because it would stop all those Americans fleeing to Mexico.
Definition of stupid: Ron Paul."
Whiskey, he's talking about a worst case scenario here. I'm in favor of a real border (fence, wire, soldiers every 500 yards, etc., whatever it takes), but he's got a point. If this country gets really bad off, and more police-state-like than now even, it may not be easy for someone to leave.
Try leaving with a half-million dollars right now (oh, wait, I guess this doesn't apply to you;-). If you do it the legal way, they've got the Swiss all under their thumb now to rat you out on your accounts for taxes. See what customs does at the departure airport when you declare the cash.
Mexico or a Cuban cigarette boat out of Miami may be your best option if you want to leave the US if/when the police state decides to clamp down like East Germany on Roids.
Oh, but, "It can't happen here." I didn't think the greatest, free-est nation ever seen on Earth could be turned into a diverse third-world $hithole in a matter of 40 years, but it's been happening here.
A couple of things about Perry:
Being governor of Texas isn't that hard a job. It has an odd constitution where the Lt. Governor is surprisingly powerful.
Well, Perry was Lt. Governor too. What's your point, Steve?
Refusing illegal immigrants who've lived in the state since they were kids in-state tuition is an idiotic policy. The short-term problem with large-scale immigration is that it depresses wages, especially at the bottom. The long term problem is that the kids of the immigrants may not assimilate to white middle class or working class norms. Making it harder for the immigrants' kids to go to college makes it less likely they'll assimilate, thus making the problem worse.
I'm beginning to wonder whether Perry is actually a little more sensible than I've given him credit for. Both on this and on the HPV vaccine, he seems to be being attacked for doing something sensible. Probably, this is more about his opponents being even worse than he is, but it's kind of encouraging to see him sort-of half-assedly defending doing something sensible, (The right response to Bachman's antivax nonsense is a point blank comment that she's a damned fool talking about stuff she's not bright enough to understand, but then, I'd be a disaster as a political candidate.)
Anon:
The problem is, many of the benefits of running a welfare state go away if you limit it to citizens and then let in ten million illegal immigrants. Like, part of the point of a social safety net is that I don't want kids starving in my country. Decent public health involves stuff like vaccinating all the kids in the country against common diseases so we don't have measles or whooping cough or chickenpox outbreaks sweep the country every few years. Free public education is there so get to live in a country where most everyone can at least read a little bit, and where the brighter kids are funneled toward doing useful things with their brains, rather than being the smartest drug dealer or garbage gatherer in the favela. Even social security and Medicare are ways for me not to see improvident or unlucky old people sleeping in cardboard boxes. This stuff is how you get a first world country.
We need to get control of immigration. But excluding immigrants from social safety net programs makes sense only when you don't have many immigrants. In modern America, with ten million or so illegal immigrants here, a lot of them poor and most of them living paycheck to paycheck, doing that destroys a lot of the value of those programs in the first place.
"Republicans learned that liberals are bad, capitalism is good. (Some people here learned that immigration is bad.)
In their minds the great recession is somehow Obama's fault. He's just the poor shmuck who happened to take over once the house of cards collapsed. Sure he's not helping things. What the he'll does he know about anything? Poor bastard "
Well, he's never been poor. The last word has been suggested, however.
All presidents "inherit" what was left. Terms only last 4-8 yrs., and one person is not expected to do much good in any logical sense in that amount of time. His constituents do expect that he at least appear to be on the side of the American citizen regardless of race, creed or color, and advocate for their interests, unlike "My People", "Atty Gen" Eric Holder. Obama has signed over taxpayer money to special interests and Wall Street bailouts without a peep of protest, even to seem decent. He has done so on a scale that dwarfs any similar deeds by previous presidents. He should go down in history as the facilitator of the greatest theft in history, and don't tell me doesn't get a cut.
I know an intelligent woman who really believes those silly little internet ads promising college tuition to "moms" is Obama giving "women" money. Women (except for slumlord/lady Valerie Jarrett) are not his thing, esp white ones like Palin and Hillary. I don't care for those ladies either, but the attacks on them during the "race" (good word) were despicable. White people are absolutely delusional and I can only attribute it to brainwashing. The illusions that some whites still have about this man are among the great nexuses of current life.
The most telling picture of B.O. was at that "beer" meeting with the white cop and the black professor, agrieved because the white cop had thought he was a burgler and tried to take him in. And B.O.'s first words, without even hearing the full story, were something about white racism. So, they met. The black prof is sort of feeble and has trouble getting down the steps. Obama strides in front for his photo op, not noticing anyone but himself, as usual; and that ol' racist white cop instinctively helps the black professor down the steps.
So -- typical somehow, of the hypocracy of this administration.
He advocates somewhat for blacks because they're the only bloc he's definitely getting, but otherwise it is obvious he could care less about his "constituency." He even turns down photo ops if they don't promote him triumphing over white "racism" such as when he would not meet with the mothers of the interracial couple murdered by 4 black marines. I absolutely could not respect as a thinking human, any white person who votes for this man. He has vacationed, golfed and partied more than any president in history, and in the midst of a depression.He knows he likes to take million dollar vacations at taxpayer expense, with 20% of the country out of work and most of the rest scared to death; he loves fly around in Airforce One as The President with that wife who was ashamed of being American; he gets to inflict his portrait as the --some number POTUS. I can't remember the number. I totally lost interest in the presidency as being worth anything since he's been in it.
"Refusing illegal immigrants who've lived in the state since they were kids in-state tuition is an idiotic policy."
indeed. give them the in-state tuition, then when they show up for the first day of freshman orientation, have INS arrest them and deport them.
moron goverment employee: "But we don't know where they all are! We could never possibly find out where they're all at! We simply can't find millions of people."
somehow, the government can always find nearly every last one of them when it's time to give them some special, racially explicit handout.
@Fred et al.
The phrase, "law respecting an establishment of religion" would read in modern language, "law respecting the establishment of an official state religion."
The COE is the Established Church--meaning the official state church--of England. Hence "disestablishmentarianism," "antidisestablishmentarianism," etc. That's what that part of the First Amendment refers to, and it's very clear indeed. Evidently the Signers were antiestablishmentarians.
A lot of people don't want to point that out, as they enjoy preventing prayers at public ceremonies and so on. I don't particularly want prayers at public ceremonies either, by the way, but the Constitution doesn't seem to ban them if you read it as its authors meant it to be read. It prohibits the establishment of an official state religion, and it prohibits the state from interfering in the free practice of religion.
It's true, cutting welfare won't stop immigration, particularly if there are real wage differences to be exploited.
Exhibit one: Singapore.
I'm afraid the open-border libertarians are dead wrong on this issue.
Ron Paul is Hispandering just like Perry. Like Perry, they both want to avoid any border enforcement, Perry in a naked Hispander, Paul because of idiot ideology. Paul is the definition of a Libertardian, someone who thinks a nation is a set of notions, independent of the people who live there. While Paul is right about the Gold standard (prevents government from creating money by fiat and eroding debt/living standards by printing money) ... I'm not too worried about the plight of billionaires unable to move cash to the Dominican or something.
I worry more about being an absolute discriminated, third class minority (White + Affirmative Action/Civil Rights + Mass Mexican Immigration = third class citizenship everywhere). Whites have no civil rights (indeed that was the whole purpose of the Civil Rights movement.
Yes Paul is a moron about Israel too, figuring all of America's problems would end if "it weren't for those meddlesome, troublesome Jews!" America has interests in the ME, cheap oil, which guarantees US involvement and the need to dominate that area.
I'm not a fan of Romney, but he's been demanding an end to illegal immigration for two Presidential election cycles and as a RINO establishment guy disliked by the base he's got less room than a Perry or Bush. Both of whom were total disasters.
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/05/helmuth-nyborg-on-the-genetic-decline-of-western-civilization-denmark-as-a-cast-study/?show=comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsoFf7cDtwc&feature=related
George Bush does not live in Highland Park, Texas. He lives in the even more affluent enclave of Preston Hollow. His immediate next door neighbor (and long time crony) Tom Hicks lives in the largest home in the city of Dallas. http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/2009/07/01/The_100_Most_Expensive_Homes_in_Dallas.aspx
By the way, with a creek separating his property from Hicks's plus a gate and armed guard at the entrance to his cul-de-sac, Bush is living no differently than the royals of the Middle Ages.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion""
It makes more sense when you remember that there were state-level establishments of religion at the time. Basically that whole section of the Constitution is defunct now, which is why we have to make up what it means.
-osvaldo M.
OT. A white Christian couple murdered by two black thugs. Watch 5:50 of the video: the suspect is actually interviewed as an 'innocent bystander' and feigns shock(playing the liberal Hollywood dream of a 'good decent negro'). It made the local news but not national news. If it makes it to the NY Times, maybe the editorial page will ask if the killers were responding to the 'racism' of strangers. Who knows? Maybe jogging in the park is a 'racist' since whites do it more often than blacks. Reporters use the word 'brazen', and from my personal experience, no people are as brazen and shameless in telling lies are blacks are.
NOTA hetero
Bachmann is the ONLY candidate to mention the 1965 immigration act.
I realize that mentioning her name will bring a torrent of abuse from people who disagree with her Evangelical Christianity but please consider how vital this issue is.
Her bold stand on the 1965 Act that fundamentally destroyed the America that defeated Hitler and replaced it with Mexifornians booing the national anthem.
Peter Brimelow points out Michelle Bachmann saying this, during the September 7 Reagan Library Debate:
"But one thing that we do know, our immigration law worked beautifully back in the 1950s, up until the early 1960s, when people had to demonstrate that they had money in their pocket, they had no contagious diseases, they weren't a felon. They had to agree to learn to speak the English language, they had to learn American history and the Constitution.
"And the one thing they had to promise is that they would not become a burden on the American taxpayer. That's what we have to enforce."
[The Republican Debate at the Reagan Library, September 7, 2011, NYTimes Transcript]
See more at https://www.vdare.com/articles/bachmann-right-washington-post-and-treason-lobby-wrong-about-pre-1965-immigration-system
the thing is, anybody is better than obama, by a huge margin
I don't think so. IMO, four more years of Obama with a Republican Congress would be better than a repeat of Geo. W. Bush's first term.
I know most conservatives are skeptical of him, but Mitt Romney is conservative on immigration, and he'd be the best president on that issue in many decades. Plus, he has the best chance of any Republican of actually GETTING elected.
Don't miss a chance to both elect a smart, competent, man and help solve the illegal immigration issue.
Rick Perry denies evolution. What a dummy .
Whitey, anti-illiteracy is not twinky. Elimination of superfluous words is pussy-poundingly masculine. Plus, it avoids sounding ghetto.
Making it harder for the immigrants' kids to go to college makes it less likely they'll assimilate ...
Unfortunately, the dynamic is pretty nearly the reverse. When dark-skinned kids attend college, especially with gov't help, they just get captured by the radical race lobby. If you pay for your own education, you're less likely to want to spend it with special pleaders. Someone above mentioned the AA bake sale brouhaha at Berkeley, which is a perfect example. All the subsidized brownskins straightfacedly asserting that speech must be "controlled" (their words) to preserve "respect" for the "less privileged" (i.e. the kids with the state favors). The next kid interviewed, black, says that the Constitution doesn't deserve respect because Huey Newton is still considered a terrorist. Get it?
"Refusing illegal immigrants who've lived in the state since they were kids in-state tuition is an idiotic policy."
No, it isn't.
"The short-term problem with large-scale immigration is that it depresses wages, especially at the bottom."
This has become quite the long term problem.
"The long term problem is that the kids of the immigrants may not assimilate to white middle class or working class norms. Making it harder for the immigrants' kids to go to college makes it less likely they'll assimilate, thus making the problem worse."
As Steve has posted before, we've had mexicans here for nearly 2 centuries, and they are no better educated than the children of the newest arrivals. Why should we waste dwindling resources for zero gain, on the behalf of foreigners to boot?
"Like, part of the point of a social safety net is that I don't want kids starving in my country."
We have an obesity problem, not a kids starving one. Those "hard workin people" would have to spend some of the 50 billion they remit to their home on food without the welfare system to drain.
"Decent public health involves stuff like vaccinating all the kids in the country against common diseases so we don't have measles or whooping cough or chickenpox outbreaks sweep the country every few years."
How does mass immigration/encouraging mass immigration help public health?
"Free public education is there so get to live in a country where most everyone can at least read a little bit, and where the brighter kids are funneled toward doing useful things with their brains, rather than being the smartest drug dealer or garbage gatherer in the favela."
They can go to our free public highschools, this is about College, which isn't for everyone(and which hispanics and blacks need AA preferences to have a shot at). And despite that, they are no better educated than those whos ancestors were north of the border in 1850. As an aside, before I was even allowed to set foot on one of our public school institutions, that my forefathers built, it was demanded that proof of my vaccinations would be provided to said school. Are the children of immigrants being held to that very same standard?
"This stuff is how you get a first world country."
No, you get it by not having a 3rd world people, which is a bit more difficult and time consuming.
"We need to get control of immigration."
But heaven forbid we do anything to discourage it.
"In modern America, with ten million or so illegal immigrants here, a lot of them poor and most of them living paycheck to paycheck, doing that destroys a lot of the value of those programs in the first place."
They live paycheck to paycheck so they can remit everything that they earn home, which hurts our economy by the way.
“Has anyone seen a poll of what ordinary TX voters think about immigration?”
In 2008, voters were asked in large representative survey to choose between two views on immigration; if their view is closest to amnesty or “arrested and deported”.
Nationally, of those answering, the split was 59% deportation, 41% amnesty. Texas was square in the middle, with 60% deportation, 40% amnesty.
White Texans are more anti-immigration than whites are nationally. 68% of white Texans support deportation, vs. 63% of whites nationally. The centrist position of Texas is entirely due to the large Hispanic population.
"Oil industry brings in competant people? Where did you get that idea?"
From my uncle.
He is from New York, jewish, came to Texas to work in the oil patch via the engineering office and one of the lead engineers on The Big One
"So I have to ask: How smart is it to allow that to happen?"
Well, if you have prosperity greater than Mexico and no barrier with Mexico, then tell us genius, how are you going to stop it?
Texas didn't give free education to illegals until a federal judge forced them to. Texas didn't give welfare to illegals until the federal agencies forced them. The elites in Texas hire them and the elites in Washington tax us to subsidize them and no one enforces the border except ... wait for it...
Texas law enforcement.
it isn't enough, man
Refusing illegal immigrants who've lived in the state since they were kids in-state tuition is an idiotic policy. The short-term problem with large-scale immigration is that it depresses wages, especially at the bottom. The long term problem is that the kids of the immigrants may not assimilate to white middle class or working class norms.
Neither of those things are "the problem with large scale immigration".
Making it harder for the immigrants' kids to go to college makes it less likely they'll assimilate, thus making the problem worse.
Your faith in the power of the American educational system to make Hispanics economically identical to whites is touching.
And by touching I mean hopelessly naive.
then tell us genius, how are you going to stop it?
Not giving illegals tuition breaks would be a small start. That's something Texans could do by themselves.
Etc etc.
Jesus H. Christ, it's not like this is the proverbial "rocket science." Make it the law that every employer has to certify that each employee has a valid SS account (with a simple system in place to check on the genuineness of documents submitted), grant such accounts only to those who can prove citizenship, and impose massive fines on employers that don't comply. How frigging hard is that?
Isn't Ron Paul the only candidate who served in the Armed Forces? Herman Cain was hired by Navy out of college as a mathematician, which legitimately qualified him for a defense worker deferment, beyond that, I don't think any of the rest have military experience.
Of course Ron Paul ended up in the Air Force for the same reason my uncle ended up in Korea with the Army and his (my uncle's) college roommate at the South Pole with the Navy; until the end of the draft(or rather suspension, it'll be back sooner or later) 38 years ago, young male doctors almost automatically got a Selective Service letter.
Ron Paul says he received a draft notice telling him he could be drafted as a buck private, or volunteer and become a flight surgeon. So he was forced to volunteer (drafted).
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?270160-Was-Ron-Paul-drafted-when-he-was-in-the-Air-Force
Ha Ha, I guess that might turn anyone into a libertarian!
Oh sorry, even I sent that post I remembered that Rick Perry did a stint as an Air Force cargo pilot-- which is sort of the "vocational school" track of AF flight training.
I bet Perry's officer exam scores were worse than even John Kerry's.
Anonymous, I am a libertarian, and I'm well aware of the big gaping hole in most libertarian thought about immigration. They all buy into equality, ignore HBD, and, as somebody else said, think the US is propositional without giving thought to the ethnic group who thought up the proposition and understands it. Every illegal who comes in reduces the possibility of approaching a libertarian society. I'll go Friedman one better — you can't have a FREE society and open borders both. That's what I mean by backasswards. Of course they'll stop coming if you cut of the freebies, but you have to stop them before you CAN cut off the freebies.
I think Ron Paul knows this stuff — the others, except Bachmann, certainly don't or don't care. A normal open-borders libertarian would get no support from me. I agree that libertarians are loopy in general on the borders question. However, so are the common run of Dems and Reps. The libertarian position is based on a principle taken to a ridiculous extreme and they are capable of thinking it through if you force them to. The Dems and Reps are mostly hopeless, since they don't have any principles to begin with. There's some stuff about how libertarians think by Ex-Army HERE.
UNIVISION reports"Texas, where the new map establishing districts for the U.S. Congress and state House faces a legal challenge from the Justice Department, as well as Latino groups and Democrats, who argue that it makes it too difficult for minority candidates to get elected.
“It’s really about fairness,” Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), told Univision News on Monday..."
Make it the law that every employer has to certify that each employee has a valid SS account (with a simple system in place to check on the genuineness of documents submitted), grant such accounts only to those who can prove citizenship, and impose massive fines on employers that don't comply. How frigging hard is that?
This is where the big-business/big government crowd masquerading as libertarians pipe up with "So you want a police state?
"four more years of Obama with a Republican Congress would be better than a repeat of Geo. W. Bush's first term."
4 more years of obama could possibly bring a liberal majority to the supreme court. this alone ends the united states, permanently.
it will also bring an all-out identity politics assault from the justice department, which will attempt to put into place as many group specific laws and special rules as possible. think going after arizona for daring to protect itself was an outrage? you ain't seen nothing yet. bu bu bu bu baby you just ain't seen nothing yet.
having created obamacare and rammed gays into the military, something a third bush would not have done, an amnesty for the mehicans is not at all out of the question. obama has already declared one for practical purposes.
speaking of, the ass clown in charge of homeland "security", who is openly hostile to the founding and majority group of the US, would carry on in her ways, releasing public service videos identifying straight white christian males as america's most likely threat, while keeping that border WIDE open. 4 more years of napolitano? seriously?
and then there's another 4 years of obama spending and obama debt creation, a giant mountain of US government debt, putting a near permanent dent on the financial capabilities and future of the federal government. don't forget, the ben bernank will likely stay on in his role as primary screw up in charge of money policy. the president appoints that position...
he also appoints the director of NASA, a direct report to the US president. obama will have fun diverting space exploration funds to HUD and various other wealth transfer programs, while chuck bolden runs day to day operations. chuck's not a bad guy, but he's not the right guy, either.
obama will also go after guns, because he'll have nothing to lose. but he'll lose on that issue, the only one the republicans actually fight and win on.
seriously though. four more years of attorney general holder? seriously? not as bad as bush the third? really?
"Not giving illegals tuition breaks would be a small start. That's something Texans could do by themselves."
Just plain stupid.
There aren't enough illegals who can even graduate HS let alone stay in college more than one semester for it to even matter.
Illegals don't come for higher ed. They come for food stamps, welfare, free first world health care, etc, etc.
beowulf, rick perry served. i'm not sure the extent or details of his service.
my dad went through about the same thing as ron paul. he was in college at the beginning of vietnam and was informed that was going to be drafted, so he enlisted instead, so he could control his own path. he decided to be a green beret. he was a bad student in high school, a Cs and Ds guy, but when he took all the US army intelligence tests and aptitude tests, they came back high. he also found out he was a great shot when he qualified as expert in every small arm the US military was fielding at the time. so his options were sniper or intelligence, and he turned down the sniper school guys flat.
he also (and i have no idea how) came in first in his entire basic in PE. this comes as a shock to me as the guy was a 2 pack a day smoker in the 60s. he told me many stories about being deployed and running out of his precious marlboros, and having to smoke other brands and getting tremendous tobacco headaches in the field. i'm not sure if you're even allowed to smoke anymore in the army, at least not in training.
Anon:
They overwhelmingly come here for work. They get some of the benefits of living in a first world society on the side, but the main draw is jobs. Similarly, their employers are motivated lmost entirely by economics. That suggests a solution--make it a bad business decision to hire illegal immigrants, by making the expected fines and other costs bigger than the expected wage savings and side benefits like not having to worry about OSHA violations or unions so much. Scale the fine with the cube of the number of illegal immigrants hired, so that one or two guys slipping past the hiring office is a survivable annoyance, but fifty guys working illegally puts your company out of business.
But if we are going to have millions of illegal immigranrs living in the US, I want them going to school and getting vaccinated and all the rest of the first-world package.
My sense is that we are very unlikely to get tough on large employers (also known as campaign donors), and so we are very unlikely to get any substantial fraction of that 10-12 million people here illegally to go home. So the choice is either to try to let as many assimilate as can, or to try to make sure they stay as cheap labor forever. That seems like a really stupid policy, to me.
Also, I think you have the liberal disease w.r.t. IQ differences between racial groups, just in reverse. To say that the average IQ among Hispanics is lower than among whites doesnt mean no Hispanics (or illegals) are smart enough to belong in college. If you want to understand what the differences in IQ distributions are telling you, you have to think in terms of distributions, not individuals. There are plenty of second generation immigrants from Latin America who are doctors and engineers, and far more who are nurses or teachers--with college degrees, and adding something to the world thanks partly to getting an education. That doesnt contradict the IQ differences, or the rather dismaying statistics on nth generation kids of Immigrants from Mexico.
@NOTA
Radical Islam is terrible. Those who practice it and promote must NEVER be allowed into the USA.
Rick Perry would grant them citizenship and give their children special DREAM Act advantages over Jewish and Christian children of US Citizens- all they need to do is enter ILLEGALLY
Why no media indictment of Perry and Obama’s Open Borders TREASON?
Open Borders ALLOWS TERRORISTS into America
The 9/11 terrorists were ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS
The DREAM Act can not legally be limited to just illegal aliens from Mexico,Guatemala and others who our media seem to believe will behave in a passive manner and assimilate into English speaking culture.The DREAM Act,by law,must extend to the offspring of anyone who comes into our country illegally.
It is a magnet to jihadis from Pakistan and Iran who easily sneak across the Rio Grande .
A US citizen can be killed fighting muslim terrorists in Iraq or Afghanistan and the children of muslim who killed him will receive preference over the American's children.
This is the inescapable logic of Obama,Rick Perry and California Governor Jerry Brown's DREAM Act treachery.
ELVISNIXON.com: Radical Islam is terrible. Those who practice it and promote must NEVER be allowed into the USA...Open Borders ALLOWS TERRORISTS into America...The DREAM Act can not legally be limited to just illegal aliens from Mexico,Guatemala and others...It is a magnet to jihadis from Pakistan and Iran who easily sneak across the Rio Grande...
DARN tootin'!!!
Them thar Mohammaddanite terr'ists are just waitin' for the DREAM act to pass Congress so's they can sneeeek 'cross the our OPEN BORDERS and study Nukulear Physikcs at our 'Bama State College on our TAX DOLLARS and then BLOW US ALL UP just like that there college-smart Whiskey feller is always sayin'...
My sense is that we are very unlikely to get tough on large employers (also known as campaign donors), and so we are very unlikely to get any substantial fraction of that 10-12 million people here illegally to go home. So the choice is either to try to let as many assimilate as can, or to try to make sure they stay as cheap labor forever. That seems like a really stupid policy, to me.
You've managed to construct an argument for doing the things you wanted to do in the first place. Well done! That's an unusual achievement!
if we are going to have millions of illegal immigranrs living in the US, I want them going to school and getting vaccinated and all the rest of the first-world package
Which, of course, is the magnet which draws them here in the first place. So why the "if we are going to have millions of illegal immigrants living in the US" formulation? We will have them, and you want them.
grammar nerds: kill yourselves
"The Hispanics, he said, think of SNAFUs as an opportunity to get more hours, not as a cost to the bottom line."
Boy if this doesn't sum up the Mexican worker I don't know what does.
There attitude is 1)I'm only illegal because you have a law against me being here. 2)I'm not responsible for my actions. 3)Rich (white) people owe me because you stole this land from me. 4)Pointing out that I did something wrong is mean and you should be put in jail for it.
Before incorporation, the bill of rights applied only to the federal government. If a locality wanted stricter gun laws, that was their business.
Not so. The Second Amendment has always applied to all levels of government. It's in the passive voice with no passive subject: "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
By whom? By anyone. The drafters knew how to write "Congress" when that's what they meant. They did it elsewhere in the Bill of Rights. It's elementary statutory construction.
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