Jun 04 2007

Race To The Bottom

Published by at 10:47 pm under 2008 Elections,All General Discussions

Dems have used up all their political capitol and now have approval ratings in the tank with the rest of the DC Cuckoo’s Nest:

The Democrats in Congress have lost much of the leadership edge they carried out of the 2006 midterm election, with the lack of progress in Iraq being the leading cause. Their only solace: President Bush and the Republicans aren’t doing any better.

Six weeks ago the Democrats held a 24-point lead over Bush as the stronger leadership force in Washington; today that’s collapsed to a dead heat. The Democrats’ overall job approval rating likewise has dropped, from a 54 percent majority to 44 percent now — with the decline occurring almost exclusively among strong opponents of the Iraq War.

Yet the Democrats’ losses have not produced much in the way of gains for Bush or his party. The president’s approval rating remains a weak 35 percent, unchanged from mid-April at two points from his career low in ABC News/Washington Post polls. The Republicans in Congress do about as badly, with just 36 percent approval.

Can the pols find a way to screw things up any more? Yeah – they could fail to pass immigration legislation and deal with the illegal aliens here now. They could continue to call for surrender to al Qaeda. The nation is having a crisis of confidence – they have had it with the left and the right. Now is the time for the center to rise above the partisan fringe and get back to working for America. It will start with the immigration Bill. Incumbants should be very afraid right now. 2008 might be the year we clean house and elect ALL freshmen (which means Rudy Guiliani and others who are not tainted by the DC madness). America is ready to dump them all and start over. How nice would that be!

48 responses so far

48 Responses to “Race To The Bottom”

  1. For Enforcement says:

    Not all uses of an SSN our fraud I believe.

    Absolutely amazing!!!!!!!!

    Well, I suppose if I use my own SSN, it’s not fraud.
    But I would think if I were claiming someone else’s SSN were mine, it Might?……… be ….. fraud….

    Surely not….

  2. For Enforcement says:

    For those of you that DON’T think the little phrase ‘subject to the appropriation of funds’ and for you that THINK that just ‘because it’s in the bill” means anything. here is a snippet from 2005 about that very thing. and here is a link to the full article:
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/02/09/MNGOKB837T1.DTL

    Michael Hedges, Houston Chronicle

    Wednesday, February 9, 2005

    * Printable Version
    * Email This Article

    delicious del.icio.us
    digg Digg
    technorati Technorati
    reddit Reddit slashdot Slashdot
    fark Fark
    newsvine Newsvine
    google Google Bookmarks
    Georgia (default)
    Verdana
    Times New Roman
    Arial
    Bush’s Budget

    Plan lights flame under Congress (2/9)

    Proposed budget may help state’s highways (2/9)

    Budget scraps 9,790 border patrol agents (2/9)

    Domestic programs slashed (2/8)

    Pros, Cons for state: Bad for Medi-Cal, good for high-tech (2/8)

    Analysis: Intangibles like war costs, Social Security revamp muddle deficit forecast (2/8)

    Budget highlights (2/8)

    (02-09) 04:00 PDT Washington — The law signed by President Bush less than two months ago to add thousands of border patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border has crashed into the reality of Bush’s austere federal budget proposal, officials said Tuesday.

    Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year.

    But Bush’s proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents.

    The shrunken increase reflects the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them, officials said.

  3. For Enforcement says:

    Sorry, I meant to include this paragraph, from that same source:

    The White House referred questions about the border agents to the Homeland Security Department.

    The law signed by Bush had a caveat that went virtually unreported at the time. A summary, published by the Senate Government Affairs Committee, required the government to increase the number of border patrol agents by at least 2,000 per year, “subject to available appropriations.”

    the last few words were made bold to highlight the phrase.

  4. scaulen says:

    What a mess, lets sell tickets at the border like Six Flags does. Buy a ticket to enter, then buy more when you need to use certain institutions. Like Health Care would be a E ticket ride, Welfare could be an F ticket ride, and price them all accordingly. If we turned border control over to the theme parks and guaranteed them a percentage of the gate I’m sure the influx would be slowed to a trickle.

  5. apache_ip says:

    FE,

    You may want to go back and catch up on the “58+%” thread. It is a real eye opener. AJ had this to say in that thread –
    Silly question. I was for the one strike your out component. Of course, identity theft can be a misdemeanor or a felony. Only felonies are considered worthy of deportation. If someone used the number but never took any benefits, seems he was actually paying into the person’s SS account – not stealing from it. Hard to say that is a felony. Case-by-case on this one. Misdemeanors are not sufficient crimes to bar work. Pay the fines, do the time in those cases.

    I think we are completely wasting our time on this blog.

  6. For Enforcement says:

    Apache, yea, I’m caught up there also, in fact have a couple comments there.

    I thought you would especially enjoy my link above emphasizing the “subject to Appropriations” I know you’ve pointed that out numerous times.

    But, Hey, it’s in the bill, so it must mean something…. Yea, right.

  7. apache_ip says:

    I thoroughly enjoyed the link and your quotes above. You and I both know that the “subject to availability of appropriations” means that they will fund it if they feel like, and they won’t fund it if they don’t feel like it. It is as simple as that.

    But we are wasting our time pointing that out to the proponents. They don’t care. Heck, some of them don’t care if illegals are using someone else’s SSN. Why the heck would they care if the border patrol gets funded?????????????

  8. For Enforcement says:

    Scaulen: too funny

    lets sell tickets at the border like Six Flags does. Buy a ticket to enter, then buy more when you need to use certain institutions. Like Health Care would be a E ticket ride, Welfare could be an F ticket ride, and price them all accordingly. If we turned border control over to the theme parks and guaranteed them a percentage of the gate I’m sure the influx would be slowed to a trickle.

    but that would depend on their ability to require you to pass thru the gate and buy a ticket wouldn’t it?

    If you went to DisneyWorld and they had no fence and you had the choice of just walking in, or going thru the gate and paying. Which option would you take.

    You might want to give that a lot of thought, I’m sure you would agonize on that decision. Now you gotta assume that going in without paying is considered completely ok, nothing illegal about it. They recognize that you only want yourself and your family to enjoy everything everyone else is, without paying for it, of course.

    and if you can’t afford to eat there, just get in the line where the other admission paying customers are paying for your food for you. After all they have enough money to pay and they don’t want you to go hungry. Just raise the ticket prices a little more for those that go through the gate, they won’t mind.

    And if someone were to say to you, hey, maybe we should put up a fence so we can control the crowds here and keep some of the freeloaders out, you can raise your voice to a shrill level, call them jerks and hypochrondiacs and tell them they are insignificant and they are the problem, not the freeloaders.

    I’m not talking illegal aliens here. we’re discussing Amusement parks.

  9. apache_ip says:

    The only portion of the bill that is dependent upon the so called “triggers” is the part of the bill concerning changes to the guest worker program. And since the triggers will more than likely never be met, it is a pointless section of the bill.

    The changes to the guest worker program are nothing more than a clever distraction. It is a ruse. It is there to distract everyone.

    So while all of the talking heads are discussing the changes to the guest worker program, the politicians in the know are LAUGHING THEIR A*SES OFF.

    This bill is solely about making all of the illegal immigrants legal. That happens as soon as the bill is signed. Everything is governed by the triggers, and meeting the triggers is governed by “availability of appropriations”.

  10. apache_ip says:

    the last sentence in my post above should say, “Everything else is governed by …”

  11. apache_ip says:

    FE,

    I like this line from the article you linked to –
    Democrats were unhappy that the proposed budget used the escape clause so soon after the president approved the huge boost in border agents.

    Notice what is says. It says the “Democrats were unhappy that the proposed budget used the escape clause so soon after the president approved the huge boost in border agents.”

    It does NOT say that they were upset that the “escape clause” was used. It says that the Democrats are upset that the “escape clause” was used so soon.

    That really says it all, doesn’t it?

  12. Bikerken says:

    Terrye, you said,”someone will demand that the federal government “do” something about illegals, but they will not support any legislation that might actually result in anyone “doing” anything.” This illustrates the difference between beltway thinking and outside the beltway thinking, passing legislation is not DOING something! Cracking down on the border is doing something, not giving federal funds to sanctuary cities is doing something, putting employers in jail for breaking the law is doing something. Thinking that every problem can be solved by a new government program is liberalism.

    Have any of you noticed that when the pro bill crowd talks about, they are already here and we can’t deport them all, that they don’t mention the fact that these people are not assimilating. If they were actually assimilating, I don’t think there would be near as much resistance to a bill like this. These people are not becoming Americans and have absolutely no will or intention of doing so no matter what law you pass. This is the essence of the problem, they are colonizing, and not blending. This is not the same as things were before with prior immigration problems simply because of the size of numbers we are talking about. The question here is do we want to accept anarchy or not?

  13. For Enforcement says:

    Apache, Welllllll…. yea, hell they knew what they put it in there for. They just didn’t want it used so soon that it would blow their secret. Just like in this new draft bill…. They know it’s in there, they know why, they just don’t want us “regular folks” finding out about it.. Not too soon anyhow…

    And they, of course, count on no one reading it and ‘discovering’ it, as few have.

    So we’ll all just get frustrated by the ‘arguing’ over it and just scream , enuf already ……DO SOMETHING….EVEN IF IT’S WRONG.

  14. Bikerken says:

    Apache, you are dead right man, this bill is about total legalization and that is it!! Plain and simple, all the rest of this crap is window dressing. None of it will every happen, the govt’s own agencies are telling them that it is technically impossible to do whats in the bill, but they don’t care because they don’t intend for it to happen anway. That’s why I keep repeating that this bill is a big freaking LIE! It is an intentional deception and those people who are for it are pissing all over our legs and trying to say it’s raining. They need to look themselves hard in the mirror and ask why they are supporting a hugh deception on the American people.

  15. For Enforcement says:

    I apologize for this “out of place comment, but there is no appropriate place for it right now.

    Followed a link from Drudge with this good news:

    British scientists aim to deliver the world’s first stem-cell treatment for blindness within five years, it was announced today.

    A team of researchers and clinicians will develop the use of embryonic stem cells to repair damaged retinas.

    More….

    * Q&A: Stem cell treatment

    Their target is a disease called age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness among the elderly in the developed world.

    Around a quarter of people over the age of 60 in the UK have some degree of vision loss caused by AMD. In Europe as a whole, an estimated 14 million people suffer blindness because of the condition.

    The London Project to Cure AMD will use a £4 million donation from a US private donor to fund the research and attract leading experts from around the world.

    I got kinda excited about the prospects until further on down I read:

    AMD is associated with defects in ‘RPE’ cells which support the light-sensitive photoreceptors of the retina. Without these RPE cells, the rod and cone cells that respond to light cannot survive.

    The new project aims to generate RPE cells from embryonic stem cells in the laboratory and transplant them into the eyes of patients.

    Stem cells are immature, dormant cells with the ability to turn into different cell types. Embryonic stem cells, among the most potent, are obtained from early stage embryos the size of a pinhead.

    So they plan to do it with embryonic stem cells. Which so far has developed exactly zero cures for anything.

  16. apache_ip says:

    FE said –
    They just didn’t want it used so soon that it would blow their secret.

    PRECISELY!!

    They have been planning this sham immigration reform for a long time. And they don’t want the public to get wise to their tricks before they get their new voters.

    This whole thing is nothing more than a sham.

  17. apache_ip says:

    BikerKen said –
    If they were actually assimilating, I don’t think there would be near as much resistance to a bill like this. These people are not becoming Americans and have absolutely no will or intention of doing so no matter what law you pass.

    Very well said. And an excellent point!

  18. apache_ip says:

    BikerKen said –
    Apache, you are dead right man, this bill is about total legalization and that is it!! Plain and simple, all the rest of this crap is window dressing. None of it will every happen, the govt’s own agencies are telling them that it is technically impossible to do whats in the bill, but they don’t care because they don’t intend for it to happen anway. That’s why I keep repeating that this bill is a big freaking LIE! It is an intentional deception and those people who are for it are pissing all over our legs and trying to say it’s raining.

    Everything EXCEPT the legalization portion of this bill is a DIVERSION. You are exactly right when you call it “a big freaking LIE”.

    And I don’t know about you, but I am tired of people, as you characterize it, “pissing all over our legs and trying to say it’s raining”. I am sick and tired of it.

  19. apache_ip says:

    –begin quote–
    A group of former Border Patrol Agents convened on Monday to warn U.S. senators that the current immigration bill would compromise national security if signed into law.

    Chairman of the National Association of Border Patrol Officers Kent Lundgren said, “First and most dangerous, is the fact that there will be no meaningful criminal or terrorist record checks of the applicants. If the amnesty passes, we will legalize them despite what past history they may have. Despite what the Administration and Congress say about record checks to ease voters’ minds, they are lying about it.”
    –end quote–

    source for the above –
    http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2007/06/05/border_agents_warn_immigration_bill_will_compromise_national_security

    It is a very good article and I recommend everyone read the entire piece.

  20. apache_ip says:

    Guys,

    We can’t sit here wasting all of our time whining and moaning on a blog. We have to write letters, write emails, send faxes and get on the phone. And we have to strongly encourage that everyone we know do the same thing. Dial the phone for them if you have to.

    We will lose this if we don’t keep the pressure on. Mark my words. The forces behind this thing are not to be underestimated.