January 2, 2014

Don't worry, Americans, Boehner's got your back

A few weeks ago we noted that amnesty was dead in the water for 2013. But now 2013 is over, so it's back to work as Everybody Who Is Anybody immediately begins conspiring anew to put one over on the American people. The NYT announces:
Boehner Is Said to Back Change on Immigration 
WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio has signaled he may embrace a series of limited changes to the nation’s immigration laws in the coming months, giving advocates for change new hope that 2014 might be the year that a bitterly divided Congress reaches a political compromise to overhaul the sprawling system.

Mr. Boehner has in recent weeks hired Rebecca Tallent, a longtime immigration adviser to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has long backed broad immigration changes. Advocates for an overhaul say the hiring, as well as angry comments by Mr. Boehner critical of Tea Party opposition to the recent budget deal in Congress, indicates that he is serious about revamping the immigration system despite deep reservations from conservative Republicans. 
Aides to Mr. Boehner said this week that he was committed to what he calls “step by step” moves to revise immigration laws, which they have declined to specify. 
But other House Republicans, who see an immigration overhaul as essential to wooing the Hispanic voters crucial to the party’s fortunes in the 2016 presidential election, said they could move on separate bills that would fast-track legalization for agricultural laborers, increase the number of visas for high-tech workers and provide an opportunity for young immigrants who came to the country illegally as children to become American citizens. 
Although the legislation would fall far short of the demands being made by immigration activists, it could provide the beginnings of a deal.

I.e., an even bigger cave-in.
For Mr. Boehner, hiring Ms. Tallent suggests a new commitment to confronting an issue that has long divided the Republican Party. Ms. Tallent is a veteran of more than a decade of congressional immigration battles and fought, ultimately unsuccessfully, for comprehensive overhauls of the immigration system in 2003 and 2007.

I don't recall 2003. I recall playing some small role in beating back big offensives in 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2013. Back during the 2001 battle, I made the hopeful suggestion, based on an analogy to military history, that defeating an immigration offensive now would allow the good guys to go on the offensive soon. For example, in March 1918 the German army in France went on the offensive to take Paris before the American army arrived in bulk. But they were stopped short and the effort exhausted them so badly that Entente offensive later in the year was far more successful than expected, winning a war that had been assumed would not be determined until the big campaigns of 1919 at earliest.

But I was wrong. It doesn't work like that because there isn't much cost to losing an offensive. Look at it from, say, Rebecca Tallent's perspective: either she wins this year, which would be good, or she fails and gets promoted to an even better job doing the same thing all over again, which is good, too. It's not a war, it's a career.
Although Mr. Boehner’s aides say she was brought on to carry out his views and not her own, advocates of immigration change say the only reason for Mr. Boehner to have hired Ms. Tallent is his desire to make a deal this year. ...
The most likely legislative approach, according to lawmakers, White House officials and activists, is a push to pass legislation in the House by May or June — after most Republican lawmakers are through with their primary campaigns — with the goal of reaching a compromise that Mr. Obama could sign before the 2014 midterm election campaigns intensify next fall. ...
"This guy is our leader?" wonders Arnold Palmer.
If a comprehensive overhaul is not completed by summer, strategists say they could make another push during a lame-duck session at the end of the year, after the November elections. If it did not happen then, lawmakers could wait until 2015, although advocates would have to start again in the Senate because the legislation would expire at the end of 2014. ...

In other words, many Republican candidates are planning to lie to voters and then, right after the primary or general election, stab them in the back. You might think this sounds like a blatant conspiracy, but that shows you are just some conspiracy theorist wacko.
House Republicans have a retreat scheduled this month, and are unlikely to make any strategic decisions about immigration before then. Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chief House negotiator on the budget compromise, is expected to play a large, if behind-the-scenes, role.

Uh-oh.
“I would bet money that it will be done before the presidential election of 2016, but I think there’s a very good chance it will get done considerably sooner than that — in 2014,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and one of the architects of the immigration legislation in the Senate [Sen. Schumer pictured here discussing details of their mutual immigration bill with Republican Senators Rubio, Graham, and McCain.)
The advocates say they are in no mood to wait for something else to interfere. “I’m going to be pushing hard to try to get it done early next year,” said Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican who is a proponent of an immigration overhaul. “The earlier the better, I think.” [See photo of Rep. Diaz-Balart here.]

70 comments:

  1. There are rumors floating around that Boehner is going to retire.

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  2. On a more serious note, I love how this entire thing always boils down to pandering to get votes. No wonder folks are so cynical about government these days.

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  3. Why is it so important that the Republican Party survive? The anxiety that its' anti-immigration members feel while we are trying to steer it away from the path that it seems to be, happily and inevitably, inclined, is hardly worth the stress. It is time to give up on it, like a junkie kid, who is still walking the razor's edge into his 30s. What we have now is so close to a single party, why not just hope that a democrat picks to run on a restrictionist platform?

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  4. ...they could move on separate bills that would fast-track legalization for agricultural laborers, increase the number of visas for high-tech workers...

    There is the source of your immigration conspiracy right there: Big Agriculture and Big Tech. You buy heads of lettuce, tomatoes, FemPhones and Dingleberries from these guys and they give big campaign contributions to clowns like Boehner to flood the labor market with stoop laborers and code monkeys. I'm buying Mexican or local produce whenever I can to do my part in putting these California corporate farms out of business. I'd rather import the products than the labor.

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  5. I love the pictures.

    "I recall playing some small role in beating back big offensives in 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2013. "

    Hmmmm....and since 2001, the illegal alien population has grown by how much?

    And I wonder how many of these illegals would be here if they weren't literally imported by Big Business, which is (or used to be) the backbone of the Republican Party?

    Now someone please mind me how all this is the fault of Sheldon Adelson.

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  6. O/T, but i was thinking about the specter of robots replacing unskilled labor. What's going to happen if we have "immigration reform" yet have machines to do the jobs "Americans demand a living wage to do" and "immigrants become too expensive to do?" Or do you think it'll become a black market, with people working $3/hr to compete with robots?

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  7. I was in a library in Manhattan last week (Grand Central on 46th and Lexington) and accidentally wandered into the teen room. I was appalled to discover they have a temporary exhibition featuring photos of teenaged illegal immigrants. They have captions like"We're not illegal, we just lack the papers we need to work and live safely." Another one says, "Some of us have been here a very long time." My husband is a legal immigrant who I brought here at great expense and seeing these made me so angry I walked out the door without getting any books, which must be a first for me.

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  8. It's absolutely not about work anymore. It's about welfare, votes, crime.

    And getting rid of white people.

    VIX

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  9. Like I said, gop is better off dead.

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  10. I'm not too worried as any amnesty would mean the amnestied could apply for government jobs. Those are in short supply, and the people who want them for their children do vote.

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  11. That's easy. Robots are the fantasy, immigrants the reality.

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  12. http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/top-ten-lists-of-2013-from-our-contributors

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  13. A lot of people listed Spring Breakers as one of best films of 2013. I barely lasted 30 min of it.

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  14. "It's not a war, it's a career."

    That's different from Sailer and the NPI crowd because ... ?

    Just kicking the tires.

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  15. Perhaps Deep State intel has pictures of more politicians than just LindseyGraham? Reasons for Boehner's tears? He cries an awful lot.

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  16. How can this topic be broached in a civil, polite, well-mannered, well-regulated society without even mentioning the fact that Boehner's very own daughter is Selachimorpha * caenosus?!?

    In an HONORABLE Republic, led by men of HONOR, the dude would automatically recuse himself from any possible discussion involving the question of citizenry-replacementism.

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  17. Ms. Tallent is a veteran of more than a decade of congressional immigration battles and fought, ultimately unsuccessfully, for comprehensive overhauls of the immigration system in 2003 and 2007.


    Only in DC is a record of failure seen as grounds for further advancement.

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  18. Steve, at the movies New Year's eve, I saw a trailer for an upcoming movie about Cesar Chavez. It is clearly intended as a goad to immigration "reform," and as cheerleading for the new, "diverse" America, notwithstanding that the real Chavez was an immigration restrictionist. One scene shows a truckload of migrants being sent "back to Mexico" by sinister Anglos in cowboy hats. Sickening - almost as sickening as Boehner and Ryan.

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  19. I wonder if Boehner´s pipolar... Would that explain his antics?

    Or does he use tears to counter some other nasty symptom of an unknown condition? (Tourette...)

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  20. This immigration push will cement Boehner's place in history - as the last Republican House majority leader ever.

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  21. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/2014-latin-americas-big-year-9629

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  22. Hi Steve,

    Congratulations on 1378 articles last year.

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  23. What I find interesting is one of the trade agreements that Obama is having problem getting through. Oddly enough there is an interesting coalition between the left George Miller and the right Rand Paul. Its an agreement that has to do with the pacific 12 and might include Vietnam and the Philippines. Miller is opposed because more jobs will get outsource and environmental standards are comprise. Paul is opposed because it takes trade away from being decided by Congress. In fact its a shame that a coalition like this can't be done on immigration. During Bush's presidency some of the left with lots of right wing politicians who didn't want to be voted out defeated the Amnesty. Now, you just have Bernie Sanders not liking the Guest Worker parts of a bill. Another odd left-right coalition like there is current against the TPP Trade agreement might be a better solution than thinking all the Tea party Right will save the day on their own. In fact it is usually oddly enough like the TPP agreement strange bedfellows like a George Miller and a Paul Rand instead of a total Right wing front that destroys these things anyway.

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  24. People just do not get it – the US government MUST have more economic tractions that they can tax. It is a life and death matter. Without more money the central government will go belly up!

    The baby boomers are coming. The US government cannot pay its obligations without a larger populous – end of story. The US government has become a Ponzi scheme that needs ever more suckers.

    The Republican and Democrat parties are pro US government – one has to be fool to think that these parties are for We the People.

    These parties are bought and paid for by the oligarch bankers and the corporations they partially own and control – the US government is THEIR government.

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  25. And I wonder how many of these illegals would be here if they weren't literally imported by Big Business, which is (or used to be) the backbone of the Republican Party?

    Now someone please mind me how all this is the fault of Sheldon Adelson.

    This is true, and while some of the Tea party Republicans are not gun ho on illegal immigrants, the H1b Vista could open more immigration of the future of the so-called high tech variety. I predict if H1B's were bump up to 320,000 a year like a certain Republican name Ted Cruz wants that Asian immigration could be more a threat than Mexican immigration. Mexcians do low skilled jobs that could be replaced by some automation or robots while Indians do the tech jobs that the H1B is set up to replaced white and some times Asian Americans with or shipped the jobs to India. In fact H1b has shipped a lot of jobs to India when the workers are train.

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  26. Why is it so important that the Republican Party survive? The anxiety that its' anti-immigration members feel while we are trying to steer it away from the path that it seems to be, happily and inevitably, inclined, is hardly worth the stress. It is time to give up on it, like a junkie kid, who is still walking the razor's edge into his 30s. What we have now is so close to a single party, why not just hope that a democrat picks to run on a restrictionist platform?

    I basically agree with you there, I'm not a right winger or a left winger, so the survivial of the Republican Party or a right wing movement that has betrayed me for about 30 years doesn't matter to keep going. Right now their are a few like Jeff Sessions on the right that do care somewhat for the workers, so they can be use against other Republicans like John Boehner who wants the illegal immigrants and Ted Cruz who wants the tech workers. Also, there might be an odd centralist democrat that might come out of this but one can't depend upon that happening either.

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  27. As long as Sheldon Adelson is happy, that's the main thing.

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  28. "Don't Worry, Americans, Boehner's Got Your Back"

    A true friend stabs you in the front.

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  29. We have to maintain constant vigilance and win every time. They only have to win once.

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  30. So the Republican platform is now pretty much just wars for Israel and tax breaks for billionaires? They can't die off fast enough. Here's a post at Free Republic on the Republican Party and the Duck Dynasty kerfuffle. Note the bitterness of the responses from these normally robotic Republicans.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3106319/posts

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  31. Spychiatrist1/2/14, 10:32 AM

    I hope the Republican party dies a quick death. So long suckers. You turn coats have been sticking it to us for decades.

    We all know the Democrats hate traditional European peoples, but we need to dispatch with the pretense that the republicans care about white people any longer too.

    The sooner they're gone, the better off we'll all be. Screw you cry baby Boehner. Now where's my cup o' tea?

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  32. Steve, the ONLY way to stop this is to punish people. By ending careers and ruining reputations. And making explicit examples of people like Paul Ryan and Boehner.

    This means digging into the dirt and ugly deals and corruption and decadent behavior that are part of the environment of a professional politician. Boehner and Ryan are both decades long politicians who have not had much private sector experience (they are not say the equivalent of a Meg Ryan or whatnot) and thus extremely likely to have all sorts of conflict of interest, campaign violation, and other scandals lurking around. If an average person cannot go through the day without violating at least five federal laws in the course of ordinary business, that goes double for Congressmen and Senators lives through the decades.

    To stop this betrayal Paul Ryan and John Boehner have to be ruined. Their careers over, their lives in public disgrace. FEAR not carrots is the only way to counteract the Donor Class of big business and the money primaries.

    Anon 3:26 -- There is zero, zilch, nada possibility that the Democrats will run on immigration restriction. They'd sooner endorse Christianity, guns, a strong military, and abolishing affirmative action. Democrats DEPEND on a non-White majority to make White voters into tax serfs to serve the non-White welfare dependent class and the Oligarchs.

    I'd also go further and note that the Oligarchs themselves need to suffer. A guy like Zuck needs to be made an example of as well. And by that, I mean publicizing every dirty deed, every illegal deal, every violation of the law he and his cronies have done.

    Information technology is a two-edged sword. The ability of big business and government to track everyone is as Oligarch-sided as the restraint of ordinary people around the globe from not hacking into systems and publicizing ugly secrets.

    An Oligarch illegally screw investors out of money on an IPO? Visiting prostitutes? Has a drug addiction? A secret lover? Before PRISM and the rest of this, it would have been hideously expensive to dig this out. Now, with data brokers in Russia selling information by the Terabyte for pennies, on the Black market, all it takes is one eager buyer and some analysis on a laptop.

    Runnymeade and the Magna Carta was not the result of freedom loving Barons deciding to save traditional Saxon definitions of liberty. But rather the need for Barons to stand up to a bad and brutal King who threatened them all. A new Magna Carta is possible but the Oligarchs need to feel the pain as ordinary people do. And that means fear and pressure.

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  33. But other House Republicans, who see an immigration overhaul as essential to wooing the Hispanic voters crucial to the party’s fortunes in the 2016 presidential election...

    This is just not true. There is far greater potential for the GOP to pick up votes at the margin among whites than among Hispanics. A nationalist/populist message would do far more for the GOP than cheap labor politics wrapped in pathetic Hispandering.

    But suppose it were true that a new people has effectively been elected, that these Johnny-come-latelys have an effective veto power over American policy. The sentence quoted above still betrays nothing short of full-throated contempt for the American people as well as triumphal glee that the nation's fortunes have been hijacked.

    Why doesn't more Americans' blood boil when the same people who foisted these "Hispanic voters" upon the country now somberly intone that electoral demographics require the GOP to do this or that.

    Personally, I don't care if the Republican Party survives. (Hell, at this point I don't care if the Union survives, if the nation's survival requires its dissolution.) The GOP certainly doesn't deserve to endure. Ideally a third party would make it impossible for the GOP as currently oriented to win. Whether the result would be a dead GOP or a reformed, unified GOP is all the same to me.

    One thing is clear to me: the sooner the decisive confrontation occurs within the right, the better.

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  34. Crybaby has held off killing the Republican party for the past couple of years, but I suppose the heat is finally getting to him. He must have a golden parachute ready, because this will not go over well in his district. Ohio has been feeling the economic pain long before the 2007-? recession.

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  35. "Don't worry, Americans, Boehner's got your back."

    Isn't Obama always saying that he's got Israel's "back"? Of course, in Obama's case, the pretense of manly comradeship is enhanced by the president's dry-eyed demeanor.

    I wonder if Boehner bursts into tears at his fund-raising events.

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  36. quality photos of the orangest man in congress.

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  37. Tuesday, on a SF Muni bus going toward GGB, I witnessed this:

    Six 20-something Indians seated toward back, one of whom is holding a Wilson soccer ball. Through rear door steps 40-ish looking like an affable Yeltsin. He puts big paw on soccer ball and says, "You are Indian? I am Russian. Russian and India friends now, no more communist. I hhhhet communist!" Indians all giggling - what's this guy on about?

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  38. But other House Republicans, who see an immigration overhaul as essential to wooing the Hispanic voters crucial to the party’s fortunes in the 2016 presidential election, said they could move on separate bills that would fast-track legalization for agricultural laborers, increase the number of visas for high-tech workers...

    How does increasing visas for high-tech workers woo hispanic voters?

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  39. You might think this sounds like a blatant conspiracy...

    Doesn't it have to be sort of hidden to be a conspiracy? These guys are pretty up front about what they want to do, and unless there's a political price to pay they'll just keep at it until they succeed.

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  40. I regret the fact that Tom Tancredo dropped out of the 2008 Republican primary race for President.

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  41. The baby boomers are coming. The US government cannot pay its obligations without a larger populous – end of story. The US government has become a Ponzi scheme that needs ever more suckers.

    Wait until everyone finds out that immigrants aren't coming here to pay taxes for old white strangers.

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  42. Romney was the last chance to turn back the tide and folks, White folks, didn't do their part. There was no excuse for Romney to lose Ohio for example a state that is 85%+ White.

    Pennsylvania even with Philadelphia is about 80% non-Hispanic White. He should have won there as well. Both states Blacks outperformed Whites in terms of turnout.

    These two states alone wouldn't have sealed the deal for Romney but it's safe to say if they flipped others probably would have too.

    While the importance of the Hispanic vote is overstated folks can't expect the GOP to continue to get beat up in the national media if folks won't support them at the polls.

    We can whine all we want but Whites still make up nearly 70% of the country. Evidently a majority of Whites simply don't think illegal immigration is important enough to sway their votes even if they may disagree with it.

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  43. "People just do not get it – the US government MUST have more economic tractions that they can tax. It is a life and death matter. Without more money the central government will go belly up!

    The baby boomers are coming. The US government cannot pay its obligations without a larger populous – end of story. The US government has become a Ponzi scheme that needs ever more suckers."

    This is often said by the left, but I don't think it's true.

    Most of the immigrants we are importing are a net tax tax drain and won't contribute to saving the baby boomers.

    We could escape the Ponzi scheme by raising the retirement age. It's increased by 20 years since Social Security was instituted. The boomers could take care of their elders. Eventually we have to reache the steady-state where retirement comes at the point where all the essential tasks in the society are performed by those still working.
    Robert Hume

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  44. Semi-employed White Guy1/2/14, 5:48 PM


    Romney was the last chance to turn back the tide and folks, White folks, didn't do their part. There was no excuse for Romney to lose Ohio for example a state that is 85%+ White.

    Pennsylvania even with Philadelphia is about 80% non-Hispanic White. He should have won there as well. Both states Blacks outperformed Whites in terms of turnout.


    White hetero men did their part. But it's the damned white women! They can't wait to give away what white men have built. But we deserve it anyway for giving them the vote. What did we expect to happen?

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  45. As long as the Plutocracy and the Jewish lobbby are running the Republican party, there's no chance of getting any sane immigration policies in this country. Heck, there's no chance of getting any sane policies on much of anything.

    Let's also set the record straight on one thing. The Republican party isn't supporting an immigration overhaul to get "Hispanic votes." The purpose of an amnesty and guest worker programs is to enrich their donors, who will later offer very high paying corporate positions and lobbying jobs to Republican politicians and activists. It's the revolving door, with Hispanics being used an excuse.




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  46. "White hetero men did their part. But it's the damned white women! They can't wait to give away what white men have built. But we deserve it anyway for giving them the vote. What did we expect to happen?"

    This is bait.

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  47. Romney was the last chance to turn back the tide and folks, White folks, didn't do their part. There was no excuse for Romney to lose Ohio for example a state that is 85%+ White.

    A month before the election, many Democrats were openly predicting that Obama's opposition to and Romney's support for attacking Iran ensured that Obama would carry Ohio by at least two percent.

    Many working-class Whites in states such as Ohio were turned off by Romney's constant promises to attack Iran, to stand by Israel no matter the cost, to exclude antiwar Republicans from party functions, and to turn American foreign policy over to Benjamin Netanyahu. It was, after all, working-class Whites from places such as Ohio who died in Iraq, not wealthy Jewish neoconservatives. And it will be working-class Americans who will bear the “shared sacrifice” required to pay for the war through, for example, cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The more Romney and his surrogates insisted that critics of attacking Iran and subordinating the interests of average Americans to those of Israel had no place in the Republican party, the less many White voters wanted to support him.

    How many Whites would have lost their lives, their reproductive capacity, their minds, and their limbs if Romney got his war against Iran?

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  48. Re: Mitt “Mittens” Romney

    Where was Mitt Romney's loyalty to American workers?

    He got rich from outsourcing and off-shoring American jobs, from orchestrating leveraged buyouts that left once profitable companies hopelessly encumbered with junk-bonds, and by ensuring that the companies he “restructured” aggressively “shed” pension obligations and retiree healthcare benefits.

    Why would a man whose career embodied sociopathic indifference to workers and retirees suddenly oppose using mass immigration as a tool to drive down wages and undermine labor unions?

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  49. We can whine all we want but Whites still make up nearly 70% of the country.

    No, it's 57-58% at this point.

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  50. If these fudge packer RINOs sell us down the river on this, I say to hell with them and anything attached to the Republican name. Vote Dem, let the whole thing crumble down like Obamacare. At least we limit the build up of even more future damage by dealing with it now instead of kicking this can down the road for another decade.

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  51. >Romney was the last chance to turn back the tide.<

    Sweet creeping Jesu. Where to begin?

    Maybe with the fact that amnesty would already be a done deal by now, if Rob-Me had swept to victory?

    Maybe with the fact that Mittens is a stone-cold vulture capitalist whose living came from destroying companies?

    We needed Romney like we needed a hole in the head.

    Just because a guy is pasty doesn't mean he's an ally.

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  52. Wait until everyone finds out that immigrants aren't coming here to pay taxes for old white strangers.

    That will be quite an unpleasant epiphany. Welfare and Medicaid or SS and Medicare? Which of these two are on the Wrong Side of History?

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  53. I wouldn't say Free Republic is a site for robotic Republicans. Robinson actually refused to endorse Romney for a while, even after he clinched the nomination. FR is more like a Tea Party or Palinite site that used to have more intellectual posters with a greater variety of opinions.

    wiseguy

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  54. "I wouldn't say Free Republic is a site for robotic Republicans"

    LOL. yeah, ok.

    jim robinson is a huge moron, and his LEGIONS of republican robots are not much smarter.

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  55. "David said...

    We needed Romney like we needed a hole in the head.

    Just because a guy is pasty doesn't mean he's an ally."

    Quite so. Policy-wise, Romney is no different than G.W. or McCain. Except that, being smarter, he would be better at ramming his lousy policies through. Romney was not our savior - he was just another example of our decline.

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  56. Where was Mitt Romney's loyalty to American workers?

    He got rich from outsourcing and off-shoring American jobs, from orchestrating leveraged buyouts that left once profitable companies hopelessly encumbered with junk-bonds, and by ensuring that the companies he “restructured” aggressively “shed” pension obligations and retiree healthcare benefits.

    Why would a man whose career embodied sociopathic indifference to workers and retirees suddenly oppose using mass immigration as a tool to drive down wages and undermine labor unions?


    This should be obvious. You shouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out, you just need a little life experience in American industry. Yet some folks still can't figure out why Ohio and Pennsylvania dumped Romney.

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  57. Boehner cries so much because he is inebriated. His immigration stance is due to donor wishes.

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  58. http://wealthydebates.com/top-10-greediest-people-of-2013/

    And for us, it's regression to the beans.

    Gracias, jefe Cowen.

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  59. These house members do understand that we can still not vote for them in the general election, right?

    Why havent all patriotic conservatives united to develop a strategy to take lindsey graham, the most despicable republican senator, out of office? If we unite, fund his opponents, and take him out, we'll have a scalp and amnesty will die.

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  60. Robinson IS a moron who squandered what he had in Free Republic. But Free Republic posters have been railing against the mainstream GOP for years, so their dismay over the party's lack of support for Phil Robertson is nothing new. Now, that doesn't mean most freepers are paleocons, iSteve types, or even particularly bright, but it does mean that the linked thread doesn't indicate that mainstream Republicans are turning against the party leadership.

    While I DO think most Republicans are upset with their supposed leaders, that thread is not good evidence for that.

    wiseguy

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  61. WSJ, 01/03/14, U.S. Weighs Tech Fixes After Health-Site Woes

    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303640604579298261976125606

    The Obama administration, stung by the failures of the HealthCare.gov rollout, may loosen hiring rules for technology specialists and create a new federal unit dedicated to big tech projects, officials said..."We don't have enough people inside of government to make good sound technology decisions"...Longtime observers cite two root causes for poor performance: rigid practices adopted by risk-averse officials and the government's inability to attract top-notch technology talent..."The government is lagging well behind the private sector in the competition for skills"...

    Thousands more Indian & Chinese H1B tech workers?

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  62. >You shouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out, you just need a little life experience in American industry.<

    Life experience is ideology's principal antagonist.

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  63. Anonymous said: “Where was Mitt Romney's loyalty to American workers?

    He got rich from outsourcing and off-shoring American jobs, from orchestrating leveraged buyouts that left once profitable companies hopelessly encumbered with junk-bonds, and by ensuring that the companies he “restructured” aggressively “shed” pension obligations and retiree healthcare benefits. “

    I agree completely that Romney gave working-class whites very little reason to vote for him. However it is possible to make this point without being either hysterical or comically uninformed. Please cite a single example of a Bain deal that left a “once profitable” company that was left “hopelessly encumbered with junk-bonds”.

    If you're going to use terms that have a specific meaning, you should trouble yourself to learn those meanings.

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  64. In 2007 we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.

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  65. "White hetero men did their part. But it's the damned white women! They can't wait to give away what white men have built. But we deserve it anyway for giving them the vote. What did we expect to happen?"

    It's bait. I'll bite.

    http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/obama-v-romney-demographics-draw-your.html

    Click on the link above and look at Steve's graph.

    Married White Women, at 63%, voted for Romney in greater percentage than Single White Men, at 52%.

    Also, Single White Women at 44%, if averaged with Married White Women at 63%, assuming a 50 / 50 representation, means that 53.5% of White Women voted for Romney.

    Which is a majority of White women.

    Which belies your assertion.

    -- And, in fact, since single people are far less likely to vote than marrieds, the percentage of voting White Women who voted for Romney is probably MORE than 53.5%.

    So, we White Women DID SO do our part!

    ...Something that is verrrrrry interesting, by the way, is just how shockingly, abysmally low is the percentage of Single White Men who voted for Romney; only 52%.

    Because, consider: with all the anti-White and anti-Men policies of modern libtardism, all of the negatives fall hardest on the necks of young, just-starting-out, unmarried or divorced White men, who have to compete for scarce jobs with not only Affirmative-Action-advantaged non-White men, but also their own sisters and would-be girlfriends.

    If ANY group ought to, if they had the sense God gave a goose, ought to have voted in droves against Obama, it is Single White Men. Yet that demographic could muster only a MERE 2% spread over Obama. That's pathetic.

    Had those Single White guys voted 59% for Romney, a mere 7 percent more, the 6 percent deficit of Single White Women would have been rendered moot.

    So, feller, instead of pointless hissy-fitting at the voting patterns of Single White Women, who, after all, ARE voting their own economic interests (because socialism benefits them), how about talking some sense into your single White guys -- who, if they'd voted like they ought, we'd be having a whole different conversation right now. (Quite possibly how that sumbitch Romney just sold us out re: amnesty, with the lapdog Republicans in Congress climbing over each other in their eagerness to assist him in his treasonous exertions -- but that's a whole 'nother topic.)

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  66. "There are rumors floating around that Boehner is going to retire."

    If Boehner retires after stabbing GOP voters & the ~50% of GOP house members who oppose amnesty in the back, his future as a lobbyist is screwed. He will have pissed off the very people for whom is connections are valuable.


    "If a comprehensive overhaul is not completed by summer, strategists say they could make another push during a lame-duck session at the end of the year, after the November elections."

    Maybe. At this point our best hope is that Boehner is one of the good guys and is trying to run out the clock on amnesty - pretending like doing something is always just around the corner, when it never is.

    The closer we get to the generals, the less and less likely Republicans and even Democrats are to want to vote for an amnesty, no matter how safe they are from primary challenges.

    They started pushing this amnesty at the beginning of this session of Congress - one year ago. Now come the primaries, then the generals. If there were a convenient time to vote for amnesty, that time has passed.

    Amnesty in a lame duck session is an ominous possibility, but I doubt there would be time to hammer out all the details. The bill would have to pass the House, then go to conference, then pass both the House and Senate again. Possible? Yes. But likely?

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  67. "In other words, many Republican candidates are planning to lie to voters and then, right after the primary or general election, stab them in the back."

    Where would they have gotten such an idea? Certainly not from lying sons-of-bitches like Jeff Flake, Orrin Hatch, or Marco Rubio?

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  68. Relevant, I think
    http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/02/justice/california-immigrant-lawyer/

    Illegal, but did pass the bar. Interesting.

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  69. "But Free Republic posters have been railing against the mainstream GOP for years"

    for years = since about 2010.

    freerepublic posters were one MILLION percent behind absolutely every policy of GW bush. they are robots. 8 years of their bullshit we had to put up with. it was truly astonishing stuff. defending G-Dub with near religious zeal. i actually think there was a religious element to it, to be honest.

    they were behind mccain all the way. all the way. defended that guy to death. you couldn't believe how hard they defended john mccain from every attack.

    whatever the republican president wants or does = good to them, worth spending several THOUSAND hours on the internet defending, not matter how idiotic.

    eventually guys like me and steve got tired of bashing our heads against the wall at freerepublic and left. me during G-Dubs first term. sometime in 2003. occassionally i dropped in to see how mind bogglingly stupid jim robinson and his followers were. it's staggering stuff.

    defending the invasion of iraq with near religious zeal, while it was happening, was really only the second most infuriating thing they did. that was nothing compared to the personal nature of jim robinson's scorn to any single poster who said anything about mexicans or the mexican invasion. robinson personally went far, far out of his way to smash and obliterate any discussion of the topic and pretty much banned it permanently.

    until about 2010, of course. after supporting mexican invasion maniac john mccain, defending him to the death, then watching him lose. suddenly, after 10 years of attacking any poster who brought up the mexicans as THE SINGLE biggest threat to the united states, it was kind of OK to be against amnesty. but only because mccain had lost, and a democrat was president.

    if mccain had won, moron robinson and his merry band would have been one thousand percent behind amnesty and the mexican victory over the united states.

    jim "biggest retard on earth" robinson lives in california, so it's hard to rectify the conflicting information that a person smart enough to run a website of that size is also so incredibly stupid that he can't see what lots of mexicans do to the politics of an area. has california voted for the republican any time recently, jim? what would you say is the difference between 1980 and now, jim? idiot.

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  70. jody, not idiocy, controlled opposition.

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