Congressional Record: April 2, 2008 (House)
Page H1944
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr02ap08-128]
PRESIDENT BUSH INSULTS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WITH HIS SELECTIVE PARDONS
AND COMMUTATIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, on March 25, President Bush pardoned 15
people and granted one commutation to crimes that ranged from
falsifying records, conspiracy, bank embezzlement, dealing in firearms,
distributing marijuana, conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud,
heroin importation, selling migratory bird parts in violation of the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act, aiding and abetting the escape of a
prisoner, distributing more than 50 grams of crack cocaine, and a
variety of other crimes.
This brings to about 157 the number of pardons and/or commutations
that President Bush has distributed in his administration in his term
in office. And although that number is fewer than other presidents, it
in fact is reflective of something that I consider to be a serious
problem, and that is this, that although the President has been
compassionate or for whatever reason chosen to commute or pardon 157
people up to this point in time, he leaves two Border Patrol agents in
jail today because I believe of the misbehavior of the U.S. Attorney in
that particular district. And this is unconscionable.
This House actually voted last session unanimously to in fact deny
funding to the Department of Justice to continue to hold Border Patrol
agents Ramos and Compean in the Federal prison where they have been
incarcerated now for well over a year. And their terms are for 11 and
12 years. This is because they have been sentenced because of the
testimony of a known drug smuggler by the name of Osvaldo Aldrete-
Davila, who was given immunity from prosecution by U.S. Attorney
Sutton.
The SUV that Aldrete was driving was found to contain 743 pounds of
marijuana. The jury in the Ramos-Compean trial was never told of
Aldrete's criminal background. They were led to believe that Aldrete
was a one-time smuggler trying to make money to help a sick relative.
In fact, he was a professional drug smuggler, and his history was known
to the DEA and to Johnny Sutton, who was the prosecuting attorney, at
the time of the trial, but this history was kept from the jury.
It has been revealed in documents since the trial that U.S. Attorney
Johnny Sutton deliberately delayed the arrest of Aldrete for a
subsequent drug smuggling incident that occurred while Aldrete was
under the grant of immunity but before the trial date. All of this
information, of course, was withheld because it would have revealed
Aldrete as a professional smuggler, not an innocent victim of the
Border Patrol agents. This is a flagrant abuse of prosecutorial
discretion.
These mistakes were compounded by asking for a mandatory 10-year
sentence for Ramos and Compean for the use of a firearm in the
commission of a ``crime.'' The law was never intended to apply to law
officers who use their weapons in the performance of their jobs.
The key question at the trial was whether the drug smuggler Aldrete
had a weapon and had pointed it at one of the Border Patrol agents. Mr.
Aldrete denied having such a weapon. It was his word against the
testimony of the Border Patrol agents, so the credibility of each
witness was critical to the jury's evaluation of the incident, yet the
jury was kept in the dark about Aldrete's other arrests and his history
as a drug smuggler.
The mistakes made by Ramos and Compean in trying to apprehend Mr.
Aldrete should have been handled as a violation of agency rules, the
failure to write and file a report of an incident involving Aldrete,
and punished by a 5-day suspension, not by criminal prosecution. For
that reason alone, this conduct rises to the level of reprehensible,
the conduct I believe of the U.S. Attorney in this case and of the
President of the United States.
To compound the injustice in this case, it is widely known that the
U.S. Attorney is a friend of the President, going back to his days as
Governor. But Bush's refusal to issue a pardon or a commutation amounts
to a coverup I believe of this misconduct in this trial.
Ramos and Compean have appealed their conviction to the U.S. Circuit
Court and a decision on that appeal is due shortly. At the very least
they deserve a new trial. President Bush has it within his power to end
this injustice now by issuing a pardon or a commutation. I sincerely
hope that he takes that responsibility seriously and offers this to Mr.
Ramos and Mr. Compean, who are languishing in prison for literally no
good reason.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Sunday, April 06, 2008
REMEMBER JOHN McCAIN?
REMEMBER JOHN McCAIN?
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FOXNews.com on April 4, 2008.
He’s the guy who was running for president before all the national attention shifted to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Now, McCain seems to be only an afterthought, at best, or an anachronism, at worst. He has got to get back into the game, otherwise he will never be in contention.
Forget that he leads in the polls. That means nothing. His lead is only the consequence of the division among Democrats. Supporters of Hillary are quite incapable of uttering the “O” word to a pollster and Obama backers won’t admit that they’d ever back Hillary. But once the they settle on a nominee — provided there is no super delegate larceny involved — Democrats will be Democrats and McCain’s lead will vanish. He has got to use this period, when he is not under attack, to flesh out his image and begin his campaign.
To do that, he can’t wait on the sidelines and only put out carefully controlled stories — like his biographical tour which he has just begun. He has to wade into the midst of current controversy, carve out his message, demonstrate his relevance, and make the headlines he needs to become a center of attention and interest.
What should be his message? Populism. Many will urge that he fortify his base. But with Republican Party identification at an all time low, there isn’t enough base out there to win. He needs to attract swing voters. Not by going to the left of the Democrats, but by transcending their liberalism by attacking the forces of privilege their party is bent on protecting.
Here are a few choice targets:
• McCain should go after those who have caused the subprime crisis and demand justice. He should press for recapture of the fees and commissions they made by making loans they knew were no good. He should demand that their licenses be ended, their institutions closed, and their ill gotten gains confiscated.
• He should attack credit card companies for their abuse of consumers through usurious interest rates, high penalty fees imposed at the drop of a hat, and interchange fees that add to the cost of everything we buy.
• McCain should take up the case against Congressional perks, building on his efforts to curtail earmarks, cracking down on Congressional ethics, and taking aim at the day to day practices (as opposed to the speeches) of his two fellow senators who are running for office.
• He should go after regulators who don’t regulate, beginning with those who let unsafe toys into the U.S. He should condemn the FAA for its weaknesses. He should go after the Fed and other regulators for their laxity in the face of the emerging credit crisis.
• McCain should blast China for its abuse of Tibet. While governments are cowed into silence, McCain should speak out for human liberty and against the repressive tactics of Beijing even as China wants us to celebrate their Olympic games.
Strong, vigorous, populist advocacy can bring the spotlight back to McCain, draw attention to the integrity and strength which has always made him a unique public figure.
As he sought the GOP nomination, this muckraking McCain had to be bottled up inside a national security conservative façade. But no matter how deeply McCain believes in national security, it is his populism that has earned him the plaudits that got him to where he is today.
It’s time for the bleached out McCain to exit and for the hearty, embattled, opponent of falsity and privilege to take center stage. And, to show the Democrats how to do it.
Go To DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FOXNews.com on April 4, 2008.
He’s the guy who was running for president before all the national attention shifted to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Now, McCain seems to be only an afterthought, at best, or an anachronism, at worst. He has got to get back into the game, otherwise he will never be in contention.
Forget that he leads in the polls. That means nothing. His lead is only the consequence of the division among Democrats. Supporters of Hillary are quite incapable of uttering the “O” word to a pollster and Obama backers won’t admit that they’d ever back Hillary. But once the they settle on a nominee — provided there is no super delegate larceny involved — Democrats will be Democrats and McCain’s lead will vanish. He has got to use this period, when he is not under attack, to flesh out his image and begin his campaign.
To do that, he can’t wait on the sidelines and only put out carefully controlled stories — like his biographical tour which he has just begun. He has to wade into the midst of current controversy, carve out his message, demonstrate his relevance, and make the headlines he needs to become a center of attention and interest.
What should be his message? Populism. Many will urge that he fortify his base. But with Republican Party identification at an all time low, there isn’t enough base out there to win. He needs to attract swing voters. Not by going to the left of the Democrats, but by transcending their liberalism by attacking the forces of privilege their party is bent on protecting.
Here are a few choice targets:
• McCain should go after those who have caused the subprime crisis and demand justice. He should press for recapture of the fees and commissions they made by making loans they knew were no good. He should demand that their licenses be ended, their institutions closed, and their ill gotten gains confiscated.
• He should attack credit card companies for their abuse of consumers through usurious interest rates, high penalty fees imposed at the drop of a hat, and interchange fees that add to the cost of everything we buy.
• McCain should take up the case against Congressional perks, building on his efforts to curtail earmarks, cracking down on Congressional ethics, and taking aim at the day to day practices (as opposed to the speeches) of his two fellow senators who are running for office.
• He should go after regulators who don’t regulate, beginning with those who let unsafe toys into the U.S. He should condemn the FAA for its weaknesses. He should go after the Fed and other regulators for their laxity in the face of the emerging credit crisis.
• McCain should blast China for its abuse of Tibet. While governments are cowed into silence, McCain should speak out for human liberty and against the repressive tactics of Beijing even as China wants us to celebrate their Olympic games.
Strong, vigorous, populist advocacy can bring the spotlight back to McCain, draw attention to the integrity and strength which has always made him a unique public figure.
As he sought the GOP nomination, this muckraking McCain had to be bottled up inside a national security conservative façade. But no matter how deeply McCain believes in national security, it is his populism that has earned him the plaudits that got him to where he is today.
It’s time for the bleached out McCain to exit and for the hearty, embattled, opponent of falsity and privilege to take center stage. And, to show the Democrats how to do it.
Go To DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!
Help Bring the SAVE Act to the House Floor!
Help Bring the SAVE Act to the House Floor!
Call Your Representatives Now!
For over five months, House Leaders have ignored the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088), an important piece of enforcement-only legislation introduced by Congressman Heath Shuler (D-NC). Even though the legislation has 149 co-sponsors from both parties, House Leaders refuse to give it a hearing in the Judiciary Committee!
The reason the SAVE Act has such wide support in Congress is because it both provides more resources to secure the border and contains critical interior enforcement measures. These include:
Mandating that all employers use the E-Verify electronic employment verification program mandatory within 4 years of enactment (SAVE Act §201);
Requiring employers who receive no-match letters to inform employees that they must correct the no-match within 10 days or be terminated. (SAVE Act §202(a)); and
Prohibiting employers from deducting wages paid to illegal aliens. (SAVE Act §211).
To learn more about the SAVE Act, click here.
Now, a growing group of Representatives who support enforcement of our immigration laws are trying to force a vote on the SAVE Act by using a discharge petition filed by Congresswoman Thelma Drake (R-VA). Under House rules, if a discharge petition receives at least 218 signatures, the bill will bypass the normal committee process and go directly to the floor.
Currently the SAVE Act discharge petition has 185 signatures—meaning only 33 more are needed to bring the bill to the floor! To see if your Representative has signed the discharge petition, click here.
Please call your Representatives now and urge them to bring the SAVE Act to the floor immediately!!!!
If your Representative has signed the discharge petition, please thank him/her and let them know you will be watching its progress.
If your Representative has not signed the discharge petition, tell him/her you want enforcement first and that Congress must pass, fund, and implement enforcement legislation before entertaining guest worker amnesty legislation that rewards special interest groups.
Call Your Representatives Now!
For over five months, House Leaders have ignored the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088), an important piece of enforcement-only legislation introduced by Congressman Heath Shuler (D-NC). Even though the legislation has 149 co-sponsors from both parties, House Leaders refuse to give it a hearing in the Judiciary Committee!
The reason the SAVE Act has such wide support in Congress is because it both provides more resources to secure the border and contains critical interior enforcement measures. These include:
Mandating that all employers use the E-Verify electronic employment verification program mandatory within 4 years of enactment (SAVE Act §201);
Requiring employers who receive no-match letters to inform employees that they must correct the no-match within 10 days or be terminated. (SAVE Act §202(a)); and
Prohibiting employers from deducting wages paid to illegal aliens. (SAVE Act §211).
To learn more about the SAVE Act, click here.
Now, a growing group of Representatives who support enforcement of our immigration laws are trying to force a vote on the SAVE Act by using a discharge petition filed by Congresswoman Thelma Drake (R-VA). Under House rules, if a discharge petition receives at least 218 signatures, the bill will bypass the normal committee process and go directly to the floor.
Currently the SAVE Act discharge petition has 185 signatures—meaning only 33 more are needed to bring the bill to the floor! To see if your Representative has signed the discharge petition, click here.
Please call your Representatives now and urge them to bring the SAVE Act to the floor immediately!!!!
If your Representative has signed the discharge petition, please thank him/her and let them know you will be watching its progress.
If your Representative has not signed the discharge petition, tell him/her you want enforcement first and that Congress must pass, fund, and implement enforcement legislation before entertaining guest worker amnesty legislation that rewards special interest groups.
San Francisco launches outreach for illegals
San Francisco launches outreach for illegals
From: Grassfire.org (alert@grassfire.net)
From the Desk of:Steve Elliott, President, Grassfire.org Alliance
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is launching an $83,000outreach campaign designed to attract illegal aliens. Using television, radio, posters and brochuresin five different languages, Newsom says, "We'regoing to spend resources, time and energy to doPSA's, to do campaign outreach into community clinics,into public schools, into our police stations tolet people know what a sanctuary city is all about... Newsom says illegal aliens answering his call need not feardeportation. "We are doing the right thing," he said. ed, this arrogant thumbing of the nose by SF Cityofficials to the established laws of our land and the blatantdisrespect for those citizens who will be required to footthe bill for these illegals is reprehensible, and demandsa strong reaction! That's why I'm asking ALL members of our Grassfire team to takea few minutes to contact Mayor Gavin Newsom and City SupervisorTom Ammiano.
Action Item--Contact SF City Leadership Mayor Gavin Newsomphone: 415-554-6141Email: gavin.newsom@sfgov.org Tom Ammiano, City Supervisorphone: 415-554-5144Email: tom.ammiano@sfgov.org Please contact both of these city leaders and express youroutrage over their public outreach effort welcoming illegal aliens. Let them know that their plan is a "ringing dinner bell" thatwill attract even more illegals--increasing the burden forthose living in San Francisco legally! Urge them to do the right thing by enforcing our laws.
++Action Item #2--Alert your friends Forward this message to 30-40 friends and familymembers urging them to follow your lead bycalling city officials as well. Also encourage them to sign our national petitionto secure our borders by clicking here: http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?u=5796&PID=16048556 Thank you for taking immediate action. Steve ++Help Grassfire Secure the Border: http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?U=5793&CID=242&RID=16048556 + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + +
(Note: Please do not "reply" directly to this e-mail message. Thise-mail address is not designed to receive your personal messages.To contact Grassfire.org with comments, questions or to changeyour status, see link at the end.)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Feedback or comments on this update? Go to FireSociety.com and post your comments so that the Grassfirestaff along with thousands of citizens can benefit from yourthoughts and opinions: http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?U=5794&RID=16048556 + + Technical questions only: For technical questions regarding this email, go here:(Not for comments/feedback on this update) http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?U=5795&CID=242&RID=16048556
From: Grassfire.org (alert@grassfire.net)
From the Desk of:Steve Elliott, President, Grassfire.org Alliance
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is launching an $83,000outreach campaign designed to attract illegal aliens. Using television, radio, posters and brochuresin five different languages, Newsom says, "We'regoing to spend resources, time and energy to doPSA's, to do campaign outreach into community clinics,into public schools, into our police stations tolet people know what a sanctuary city is all about... Newsom says illegal aliens answering his call need not feardeportation. "We are doing the right thing," he said. ed, this arrogant thumbing of the nose by SF Cityofficials to the established laws of our land and the blatantdisrespect for those citizens who will be required to footthe bill for these illegals is reprehensible, and demandsa strong reaction! That's why I'm asking ALL members of our Grassfire team to takea few minutes to contact Mayor Gavin Newsom and City SupervisorTom Ammiano.
Action Item--Contact SF City Leadership Mayor Gavin Newsomphone: 415-554-6141Email: gavin.newsom@sfgov.org Tom Ammiano, City Supervisorphone: 415-554-5144Email: tom.ammiano@sfgov.org Please contact both of these city leaders and express youroutrage over their public outreach effort welcoming illegal aliens. Let them know that their plan is a "ringing dinner bell" thatwill attract even more illegals--increasing the burden forthose living in San Francisco legally! Urge them to do the right thing by enforcing our laws.
++Action Item #2--Alert your friends Forward this message to 30-40 friends and familymembers urging them to follow your lead bycalling city officials as well. Also encourage them to sign our national petitionto secure our borders by clicking here: http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?u=5796&PID=16048556 Thank you for taking immediate action. Steve ++Help Grassfire Secure the Border: http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?U=5793&CID=242&RID=16048556 + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + +
(Note: Please do not "reply" directly to this e-mail message. Thise-mail address is not designed to receive your personal messages.To contact Grassfire.org with comments, questions or to changeyour status, see link at the end.)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Feedback or comments on this update? Go to FireSociety.com and post your comments so that the Grassfirestaff along with thousands of citizens can benefit from yourthoughts and opinions: http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?U=5794&RID=16048556 + + Technical questions only: For technical questions regarding this email, go here:(Not for comments/feedback on this update) http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?U=5795&CID=242&RID=16048556
10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don't
10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don't):
1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1
2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."2
3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3
4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."4
5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.5
6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.6
7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."7
8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8
9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."9
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10
John McCain is not who the Washington press corps make him out to be. Please help get the word out—forward this email to your personal network. And if you want us to keep you posted on MoveOn's work to get the truth out about John McCain, sign up here:
http://pol.moveon.org/mccaintruth/?id=12407-3006548-q2Trs2&t=232
Thank you for all you do.
1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1
2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."2
3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3
4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."4
5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.5
6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.6
7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."7
8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8
9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."9
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10
John McCain is not who the Washington press corps make him out to be. Please help get the word out—forward this email to your personal network. And if you want us to keep you posted on MoveOn's work to get the truth out about John McCain, sign up here:
http://pol.moveon.org/mccaintruth/?id=12407-3006548-q2Trs2&t=232
Thank you for all you do.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
heads up: If dems get a look at senator John Mccain record as a pilot...
heads up: If dems get a look at senator John Mccain record as a pilot...
I think Mccain could crash and burn the whole Republican party this November.
He gets a lot of passes because he was a pow, but his nickname from fellow naval flyers was "crash".
He did trash 5 planes in total, but daddy was a admiral.
www.mccainalert.com
I think Mccain could crash and burn the whole Republican party this November.
He gets a lot of passes because he was a pow, but his nickname from fellow naval flyers was "crash".
He did trash 5 planes in total, but daddy was a admiral.
www.mccainalert.com
Thursday, April 03, 2008
John "crash" McCain returns to Jacksonville,please keep him away from the planes!
John "crash" McCain returns to Jacksonville,please keep him away from the planes!
I think Mccain crashed his 1st plane off of Florida, this was the 1st of 5 planes lost.
I think Dems will focus on his military performance or lack of it. should be some interesting 527 tv ads based upon Mccain military career.
www.mccainalert.com
see more commentary on Mccain lack luster military performance
I think Mccain crashed his 1st plane off of Florida, this was the 1st of 5 planes lost.
I think Dems will focus on his military performance or lack of it. should be some interesting 527 tv ads based upon Mccain military career.
www.mccainalert.com
see more commentary on Mccain lack luster military performance
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Homeland Security Releases Revised "No-Match" Rules
Homeland Security Releases Revised "No-Match" Rules
On Friday, March 21, the Department Homeland Security (DHS) released revised rules for employers who receive "no-match" letters from the Social Security Administration (SSA). Homeland Security issued the revised rules in response to a federal court injunction that stopped an earlier version from taking effect. No-match letters are notices sent by the SSA to employers, warning them that an employee's name and social security number do not match the Administration's records.
In August 2007, DHS first promulgated no-match letters requiring that employers who receive them take affirmative steps to have the employee resolve the no-match or terminate the employee. The rule was barely in place when several organizations, including the ACLU, the AFL-CIO, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, challenged them and persuaded the federal district court in San Francisco to issue an injunction, barring the rules from taking effect. That federal court decision determined that Homeland Security has the authority to require employers to ensure that listed employees are not illegal aliens, but held that the agency had made several technical errors in promulgating the rule. These three errors identified by the court were that Homeland Security:
Failed to adequately explain its change of position on "no-match" letters;
Established anti-discrimination standards outside of its authority; and
Failed to review and determine the impact of the new regulations on small businesses.
After this ruling, DHS announced it would comply with the court injunction, but also intended to revise the regulations to meet the court's objections.
On Friday, March 21, the Department Homeland Security (DHS) released revised rules for employers who receive "no-match" letters from the Social Security Administration (SSA). Homeland Security issued the revised rules in response to a federal court injunction that stopped an earlier version from taking effect. No-match letters are notices sent by the SSA to employers, warning them that an employee's name and social security number do not match the Administration's records.
In August 2007, DHS first promulgated no-match letters requiring that employers who receive them take affirmative steps to have the employee resolve the no-match or terminate the employee. The rule was barely in place when several organizations, including the ACLU, the AFL-CIO, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, challenged them and persuaded the federal district court in San Francisco to issue an injunction, barring the rules from taking effect. That federal court decision determined that Homeland Security has the authority to require employers to ensure that listed employees are not illegal aliens, but held that the agency had made several technical errors in promulgating the rule. These three errors identified by the court were that Homeland Security:
Failed to adequately explain its change of position on "no-match" letters;
Established anti-discrimination standards outside of its authority; and
Failed to review and determine the impact of the new regulations on small businesses.
After this ruling, DHS announced it would comply with the court injunction, but also intended to revise the regulations to meet the court's objections.
Dan Stein on Immigration Enforcement Methods
Dan Stein on Immigration Enforcement Methods
Dan Stein Testifies Before House Subcommittee on Immigration Enforcement Methods
The modest increase in interior immigration enforcement over the past 18 months has led to the expected protests from the illegal alien advocacy network. Alleging isolated instances in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been heavy-handed in its enforcement efforts, these groups are seeking to limit interior enforcement. The lack of any meaningful form of interior immigration enforcement contributed mightily to the growth of America’s illegal population, as people knew that once they entered the country, little or no effort would be made to find them and remove them.
Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law, on February 13, FAIR’s president, Dan Stein, urged Congress to take corrective action when and if ICE does not follow proper procedure. However, he stressed the importance of maintaining a vigorous interior enforcement effort. FAIR has long argued that border security the first line of defense against illegal immigration cannot be the only line of defense. Stein rejected the idea that the remedy for the alleged isolated excesses by ICE should be curtailment of serious interior enforcement efforts.
Speaking on behalf of FAIR, Stein encouraged the subcommittee to continue to add detention facilities for illegal aliens apprehended by ICE and ending the so-called “catch and release” policy. Lacking adequate detention facilities to hold illegal aliens they have already apprehended, ICE has been forced to turn people loose with an order to appear for a hearing at some future date. An audit by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that over a three-year period ending in 2006, 280,987 deportable aliens were released due to lack of detention beds, and that some 600,000 aliens who had been ordered deported had absconded.
Stein also called upon “Congress and the national political leadership of this nation to demonstrate the political will to dramatically increase the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in a manner consistent with credible deterrence.” Increasing the likelihood of apprehension and detention would deter many potential illegal immigrants from making the expensive and often dangerous journey to the U.S., Stein told the subcommittee.
Dan Stein Testifies Before House Subcommittee on Immigration Enforcement Methods
The modest increase in interior immigration enforcement over the past 18 months has led to the expected protests from the illegal alien advocacy network. Alleging isolated instances in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been heavy-handed in its enforcement efforts, these groups are seeking to limit interior enforcement. The lack of any meaningful form of interior immigration enforcement contributed mightily to the growth of America’s illegal population, as people knew that once they entered the country, little or no effort would be made to find them and remove them.
Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law, on February 13, FAIR’s president, Dan Stein, urged Congress to take corrective action when and if ICE does not follow proper procedure. However, he stressed the importance of maintaining a vigorous interior enforcement effort. FAIR has long argued that border security the first line of defense against illegal immigration cannot be the only line of defense. Stein rejected the idea that the remedy for the alleged isolated excesses by ICE should be curtailment of serious interior enforcement efforts.
Speaking on behalf of FAIR, Stein encouraged the subcommittee to continue to add detention facilities for illegal aliens apprehended by ICE and ending the so-called “catch and release” policy. Lacking adequate detention facilities to hold illegal aliens they have already apprehended, ICE has been forced to turn people loose with an order to appear for a hearing at some future date. An audit by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that over a three-year period ending in 2006, 280,987 deportable aliens were released due to lack of detention beds, and that some 600,000 aliens who had been ordered deported had absconded.
Stein also called upon “Congress and the national political leadership of this nation to demonstrate the political will to dramatically increase the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in a manner consistent with credible deterrence.” Increasing the likelihood of apprehension and detention would deter many potential illegal immigrants from making the expensive and often dangerous journey to the U.S., Stein told the subcommittee.
Al GORE ROLE REMAINS A MYSTERY TO ALL BUT AL
GORE ROLE REMAINS A MYSTERY TO ALL BUT AL
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Even as the rest of the Democratic Party around him takes sides in the epic struggle of Clinton vs. Obama, Al Gore remains inscrutable, silent, above the battle.
His gigantic but unspoken presence is raising rumors and fueling speculation. Joe Klein, writing in Time Magazine, even suggested a scenario where a deadlocked convention turns its lonely eyes to Al.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson comes out for Obama, and so do Ted Kennedy and Bill Bradley. Govs. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Jon Corzine of New Jersey back Hillary. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while avoiding an endorsement, speaks out to ask superdelegates to respect the will of the voters.
But barely a peep from Big Al, except to say, "I think it's going to resolve itself. We'll see."
What's his game?
A source close to him confirms that he does not plan to make any endorsement until after the primaries are over on June 3. And then? All they'll say is "stay tuned."
For what? Our guess is that Al is keeping his powder dry to lead the superdelegates in accepting the will of the voters. Perhaps in concert with a Gang of Five that might include former president Jimmy Carter, Pelosi, Party Chairman Howard Dean and former candidate John Edwards, Gore may act as the elder statesman in the party, stepping in after all the voters have spoken, asking the Clintons to accept the will of the people and give way.
He might quell the credentials battles, giving Florida and Michigan some representation in return for a recognition that Obama should be the nominee.
He could be the one who brings closure to what could be an open-ended summer bloodbath.
What about the chances that Al would go the other way and urge a Hillary nomination?
Seeing himself as the victim of one stolen election, we don't think Gore will be anxious to switch sides and help the Clintons steal this one.
He knows that all hell would break lose if the nomination goes to Hillary after the voters give Obama a lead of over 100 votes among elected delegates, and he realizes that the Democratic Party might never recover from the resulting bitterness.
But if Al acts as the honest broker, he can have a great influence and earn the everlasting gratitude of his party for leading the way in avoiding a civil war.
Go To DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Even as the rest of the Democratic Party around him takes sides in the epic struggle of Clinton vs. Obama, Al Gore remains inscrutable, silent, above the battle.
His gigantic but unspoken presence is raising rumors and fueling speculation. Joe Klein, writing in Time Magazine, even suggested a scenario where a deadlocked convention turns its lonely eyes to Al.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson comes out for Obama, and so do Ted Kennedy and Bill Bradley. Govs. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Jon Corzine of New Jersey back Hillary. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while avoiding an endorsement, speaks out to ask superdelegates to respect the will of the voters.
But barely a peep from Big Al, except to say, "I think it's going to resolve itself. We'll see."
What's his game?
A source close to him confirms that he does not plan to make any endorsement until after the primaries are over on June 3. And then? All they'll say is "stay tuned."
For what? Our guess is that Al is keeping his powder dry to lead the superdelegates in accepting the will of the voters. Perhaps in concert with a Gang of Five that might include former president Jimmy Carter, Pelosi, Party Chairman Howard Dean and former candidate John Edwards, Gore may act as the elder statesman in the party, stepping in after all the voters have spoken, asking the Clintons to accept the will of the people and give way.
He might quell the credentials battles, giving Florida and Michigan some representation in return for a recognition that Obama should be the nominee.
He could be the one who brings closure to what could be an open-ended summer bloodbath.
What about the chances that Al would go the other way and urge a Hillary nomination?
Seeing himself as the victim of one stolen election, we don't think Gore will be anxious to switch sides and help the Clintons steal this one.
He knows that all hell would break lose if the nomination goes to Hillary after the voters give Obama a lead of over 100 votes among elected delegates, and he realizes that the Democratic Party might never recover from the resulting bitterness.
But if Al acts as the honest broker, he can have a great influence and earn the everlasting gratitude of his party for leading the way in avoiding a civil war.
Go To DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!
GAO Finds Real Holes in the Virtual Fence
GAO Finds Real Holes in the Virtual Fence
Ever since Congress and the Bush administration agreed to construct hundreds of miles of security fencing along our southern border, immigration enforcement opponents have worked diligently to ensure that it gets built as slowly as possible, if at all. Earlier this year, we reported about provisions in the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill that will hamper further construction. There has also been talk from some congressional leaders of substituting “virtual fencing” for the actual fencing called for in the 2006 legislation.
A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that virtual fencing may be virtually useless in our efforts to stop real illegal aliens and, potentially, real terrorists who attempt to enter our country. Moreover, the GAO concluded that $20.6 million spent to construct virtual fencing along the Arizona border has turned out to be an actual waste of taxpayer money. Because of problems with the first 28-mile segment, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that completion of the first phase of the technological initiative to secure the border will be delayed from late 2008 until 2011.
The Boeing Corporation was contracted in 2006 to implement a series of nine security towers equipped with night vision cameras, radar and sensors, along with a variety of communications systems and software to monitor activities along large stretches of the border. The technology was supposed to have been in place by June 2007, but the software system failed to distribute the information gathered by the detection devices. In December, Boeing submitted plans to CBP that were supposed to fix these problems. CBP accepted these “fixes” and began training personnel on the system’s use on February 22, just five days before the GAO reported that the virtual fence did not work.
In response, the CBP conceded that they do not expect the virtual fence to substantially improve the Border Patrol’s ability to capture illegal border crossers. Rather — in the virtual reality that exists only inside the Beltway — the value of the failed project is expected to be a lesson learned. The GAO was a little more blunt about the lessons learned. The virtual fence “was never what [the Border Patrol] wanted, it never will be. They’re going to have to replace all the equipment,” Richard Stana, GAO’s director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues told Congress.
In his testimony before Congress in March, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued that the GAO’s conclusions about the virtual fence were overstated. Chertoff assured Congress and the public that Boeing would be absorbing the costs associated with the system’s defects.
FAIR has supported the use of technology that has been proven to work to help monitor activities in more remote areas of the border. However, we have long contended that technology should complement, not replace, actual fencing and manpower. Real fencing, where it is in place along our borders, has proven to be highly effective in controlling illegal entries. But even when technology works as it is supposed to, it is useless without adequate manpower and equipment to apprehend illegal border crossers when they are detected.
Ever since Congress and the Bush administration agreed to construct hundreds of miles of security fencing along our southern border, immigration enforcement opponents have worked diligently to ensure that it gets built as slowly as possible, if at all. Earlier this year, we reported about provisions in the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill that will hamper further construction. There has also been talk from some congressional leaders of substituting “virtual fencing” for the actual fencing called for in the 2006 legislation.
A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that virtual fencing may be virtually useless in our efforts to stop real illegal aliens and, potentially, real terrorists who attempt to enter our country. Moreover, the GAO concluded that $20.6 million spent to construct virtual fencing along the Arizona border has turned out to be an actual waste of taxpayer money. Because of problems with the first 28-mile segment, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that completion of the first phase of the technological initiative to secure the border will be delayed from late 2008 until 2011.
The Boeing Corporation was contracted in 2006 to implement a series of nine security towers equipped with night vision cameras, radar and sensors, along with a variety of communications systems and software to monitor activities along large stretches of the border. The technology was supposed to have been in place by June 2007, but the software system failed to distribute the information gathered by the detection devices. In December, Boeing submitted plans to CBP that were supposed to fix these problems. CBP accepted these “fixes” and began training personnel on the system’s use on February 22, just five days before the GAO reported that the virtual fence did not work.
In response, the CBP conceded that they do not expect the virtual fence to substantially improve the Border Patrol’s ability to capture illegal border crossers. Rather — in the virtual reality that exists only inside the Beltway — the value of the failed project is expected to be a lesson learned. The GAO was a little more blunt about the lessons learned. The virtual fence “was never what [the Border Patrol] wanted, it never will be. They’re going to have to replace all the equipment,” Richard Stana, GAO’s director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues told Congress.
In his testimony before Congress in March, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued that the GAO’s conclusions about the virtual fence were overstated. Chertoff assured Congress and the public that Boeing would be absorbing the costs associated with the system’s defects.
FAIR has supported the use of technology that has been proven to work to help monitor activities in more remote areas of the border. However, we have long contended that technology should complement, not replace, actual fencing and manpower. Real fencing, where it is in place along our borders, has proven to be highly effective in controlling illegal entries. But even when technology works as it is supposed to, it is useless without adequate manpower and equipment to apprehend illegal border crossers when they are detected.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Chelsea: if you to get a "head" in the world of politics, its helps
Chelsea: if you want to get a "head" in the world of politics, its helps answering the questions.
Hillary is got Chelsea working the public...
www.mccainalert.com
Hillary is got Chelsea working the public...
www.mccainalert.com
Robert D. Novak on Mccain
McCain's Payroll Prize By Robert D. Novak
A major strategist in John McCain's campaign was asked privately this week whether his candidate might propose cutting the payroll tax. "Yes," came the reply. "No problem. Not a big deal." He was wrong on both scores. Cutting the payroll tax, which funds Social Security, is not easy but offers a rich economic prize in this lean Republican year.
Republicans have been wary of touching the Social Security third rail of politics, ever since a re-elected President George W. Bush abandoned his reform under withering Democratic fire. Moreover, Republicans talk about offsetting payroll tax revenue loss by cutting future Social Security benefits, which contains seeds of electoral catastrophe.
Neither McCain nor his advisers seem to realize the value of the political prize that they can grasp. The regressive payroll tax oppresses most Americans, especially young men and women, and burdens small businesses that must match the tax that their employees pay. With dogma-bound Democrats unable to remedy this, the GOP has an opportunity to reach out beyond top-bracket taxpayers, big business and high finance.
About 41 percent of Americans have no income tax liability or do not file a return. But every wage-earner is hit by the payroll tax, amounting to more than they pay in income taxes for 86 percent of them. Young people are stunned when they find out how much is withheld from their first paycheck, labeled FICA. As they marry, have children and earn more money, they hate the 6.2 percent taken out of their first $97,500. In 1990, then-Sen. Robert Kasten, R-Wis., wrote, "These excessive taxes have struck at the heart of the American family."
A major strategist in John McCain's campaign was asked privately this week whether his candidate might propose cutting the payroll tax. "Yes," came the reply. "No problem. Not a big deal." He was wrong on both scores. Cutting the payroll tax, which funds Social Security, is not easy but offers a rich economic prize in this lean Republican year.
Republicans have been wary of touching the Social Security third rail of politics, ever since a re-elected President George W. Bush abandoned his reform under withering Democratic fire. Moreover, Republicans talk about offsetting payroll tax revenue loss by cutting future Social Security benefits, which contains seeds of electoral catastrophe.
Neither McCain nor his advisers seem to realize the value of the political prize that they can grasp. The regressive payroll tax oppresses most Americans, especially young men and women, and burdens small businesses that must match the tax that their employees pay. With dogma-bound Democrats unable to remedy this, the GOP has an opportunity to reach out beyond top-bracket taxpayers, big business and high finance.
About 41 percent of Americans have no income tax liability or do not file a return. But every wage-earner is hit by the payroll tax, amounting to more than they pay in income taxes for 86 percent of them. Young people are stunned when they find out how much is withheld from their first paycheck, labeled FICA. As they marry, have children and earn more money, they hate the 6.2 percent taken out of their first $97,500. In 1990, then-Sen. Robert Kasten, R-Wis., wrote, "These excessive taxes have struck at the heart of the American family."
Jesse Ventura Running for President?
Jesse Ventura Running for President?
reat ideal vs a wimp and a vagina ?
Jesse Ventura could be a sleeper ?
www.mccainalert.com
reat ideal vs a wimp and a vagina ?
Jesse Ventura could be a sleeper ?
www.mccainalert.com
Penn's Catholic Vote Critical
Catholic Vote Critical for Dems in Pa.
Understanding Pennsylvania's rich Catholic tradition and responding to it is an article of faith for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama as the April 22 primary looms in the still unsettled and intense Democratic presidential race.
It's a way of life -- and of thinking -- well-known to the people of Scranton, a working-class city nestled in northeast Pennsylvania where earlier generations worked in the factories, mills and coal mines -- and kneeled in prayer in Catholic church pews on Sunday morning.
Understanding Pennsylvania's rich Catholic tradition and responding to it is an article of faith for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama as the April 22 primary looms in the still unsettled and intense Democratic presidential race.
It's a way of life -- and of thinking -- well-known to the people of Scranton, a working-class city nestled in northeast Pennsylvania where earlier generations worked in the factories, mills and coal mines -- and kneeled in prayer in Catholic church pews on Sunday morning.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
HILLARY'S LIST OF LIES
HILLARY'S LIST OF LIES
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on March 25, 2008.
The USA Today/Gallup survey clearly explains why Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is losing. Asked whether the candidates were “honest and trustworthy,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won with 67 percent, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) right behind him at 63. Hillary scored only 44 percent, the lowest rating for any candidate for any attribute in the poll.
Hillary simply cannot tell the truth. Here's her scorecard:
Admitted Lies
• Chelsea was jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (She was in bed watching it on TV.)
• Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (She admitted she was wrong. He climbed Mt. Everest five years after her birth.)
• She was under sniper fire in Bosnia. (A girl presented her with flowers at the foot of the ramp.)
• She learned in The Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the futures market. (It didn't cover the market back then.)
Whoppers She Won't Confess To
• She didn't know about the FALN pardons.
• She didn't know that her brothers were being paid to get pardons that Clinton granted.
• Taking the White House gifts was a clerical error.
• She didn't know that her staff would fire the travel office staff after she told them to do so.
• She didn't know that the Peter Paul fundraiser in Hollywood in 2000 cost $700,000 more than she reported it had.
• She opposed NAFTA at the time.
• She was instrumental in the Irish peace process.
• She urged Bill to intervene in Rwanda.
• She played a role in the '90s economic recovery.
• The billing records showed up on their own.
• She thought Bill was innocent when the Monica scandal broke.
• She was always a Yankees fan.
• She had nothing to do with the New Square Hasidic pardons (after they voted for her 1,400-12 and she attended a meeting at the White House about the pardons).
• She negotiated for the release of refugees in Macedonia (who were released the day before she got there).
With a record like that, is it any wonder that we suspect her of being less than honest and straightforward?
Why has McCain jumped out to a nine-point lead over Obama and a seven-point lead over Hillary in the latest Rasmussen poll? OK, Obama has had the Rev. Wright mess on his hands. And Hillary has come in for her share of negatives, like the Richardson endorsement of Obama and the denouement of her latest lie — that she endured sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia. But why has McCain gained so much in so short a period of time? Most polls had the general election tied two weeks ago.
McCain's virtues require a contrast in order to stand out. His strength, integrity, solidity and dependability all are essentially passive virtues, which shine only by contrast with others. Now that Obama and Hillary are offering images that are much weaker, less honest, and less solid and dependable, good old John McCain looks that much better as he tours Iraq and Israel while the Democrats rip one another apart.
It took Nixon for us to appreciate Jimmy Carter's simple honesty. It took Clinton and Monica for us to value George W. Bush's personal character. And it takes the unseemly battle among the Democrats for us to give John McCain his due.
When Obama faces McCain in the general election (not if but when) the legacy of the Wright scandal will not be to question Obama's patriotism or love of America. It will be to ask if he has the right stuff (pardon the pun).
The largest gap between McCain and Obama in the most recent USA Today/Gallup Poll was on the trait of leadership. Asked if each man was a “strong, decisive leader,” 69 percent felt that the description fit McCain while only 56 percent thought it would apply to Obama. (61 percent said it of Hillary.) Obama has looked weak handling the Rev. Wright controversy. His labored explanation of why he attacks the sin but loves the sinner comes across as elegant but, at the same time, feeble. Obama's reluctance to trade punches with his opponents makes us wonder if he could trade them with bin Laden or Ahmadinejad. We have no doubt that McCain would gladly come to blows and would represent us well, but about Obama we are not so sure.
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on March 25, 2008.
The USA Today/Gallup survey clearly explains why Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is losing. Asked whether the candidates were “honest and trustworthy,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won with 67 percent, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) right behind him at 63. Hillary scored only 44 percent, the lowest rating for any candidate for any attribute in the poll.
Hillary simply cannot tell the truth. Here's her scorecard:
Admitted Lies
• Chelsea was jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (She was in bed watching it on TV.)
• Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (She admitted she was wrong. He climbed Mt. Everest five years after her birth.)
• She was under sniper fire in Bosnia. (A girl presented her with flowers at the foot of the ramp.)
• She learned in The Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the futures market. (It didn't cover the market back then.)
Whoppers She Won't Confess To
• She didn't know about the FALN pardons.
• She didn't know that her brothers were being paid to get pardons that Clinton granted.
• Taking the White House gifts was a clerical error.
• She didn't know that her staff would fire the travel office staff after she told them to do so.
• She didn't know that the Peter Paul fundraiser in Hollywood in 2000 cost $700,000 more than she reported it had.
• She opposed NAFTA at the time.
• She was instrumental in the Irish peace process.
• She urged Bill to intervene in Rwanda.
• She played a role in the '90s economic recovery.
• The billing records showed up on their own.
• She thought Bill was innocent when the Monica scandal broke.
• She was always a Yankees fan.
• She had nothing to do with the New Square Hasidic pardons (after they voted for her 1,400-12 and she attended a meeting at the White House about the pardons).
• She negotiated for the release of refugees in Macedonia (who were released the day before she got there).
With a record like that, is it any wonder that we suspect her of being less than honest and straightforward?
Why has McCain jumped out to a nine-point lead over Obama and a seven-point lead over Hillary in the latest Rasmussen poll? OK, Obama has had the Rev. Wright mess on his hands. And Hillary has come in for her share of negatives, like the Richardson endorsement of Obama and the denouement of her latest lie — that she endured sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia. But why has McCain gained so much in so short a period of time? Most polls had the general election tied two weeks ago.
McCain's virtues require a contrast in order to stand out. His strength, integrity, solidity and dependability all are essentially passive virtues, which shine only by contrast with others. Now that Obama and Hillary are offering images that are much weaker, less honest, and less solid and dependable, good old John McCain looks that much better as he tours Iraq and Israel while the Democrats rip one another apart.
It took Nixon for us to appreciate Jimmy Carter's simple honesty. It took Clinton and Monica for us to value George W. Bush's personal character. And it takes the unseemly battle among the Democrats for us to give John McCain his due.
When Obama faces McCain in the general election (not if but when) the legacy of the Wright scandal will not be to question Obama's patriotism or love of America. It will be to ask if he has the right stuff (pardon the pun).
The largest gap between McCain and Obama in the most recent USA Today/Gallup Poll was on the trait of leadership. Asked if each man was a “strong, decisive leader,” 69 percent felt that the description fit McCain while only 56 percent thought it would apply to Obama. (61 percent said it of Hillary.) Obama has looked weak handling the Rev. Wright controversy. His labored explanation of why he attacks the sin but loves the sinner comes across as elegant but, at the same time, feeble. Obama's reluctance to trade punches with his opponents makes us wonder if he could trade them with bin Laden or Ahmadinejad. We have no doubt that McCain would gladly come to blows and would represent us well, but about Obama we are not so sure.
McCain: Collaborate More With Allies
McCain: Collaborate More With Allies
Republican John McCain on Wednesday called anew for the United States to work more collegially with democratic allies and live up to its duties as a world leader, drawing a sharp contrast to the past eight years under President Bush.
''Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed,'' the likely presidential nominee said in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. ''We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies,'' McCain added.
Coming days after his trip to the Middle East and Europe, McCain's speech was intended to signal to leaders abroad -- and voters at home -- that he would end an era of what critics have called Bush's cowboy diplomacy. McCain never mentioned Bush's name, though he evoked former Democratic Presidents Truman and Kennedy.
Republican John McCain on Wednesday called anew for the United States to work more collegially with democratic allies and live up to its duties as a world leader, drawing a sharp contrast to the past eight years under President Bush.
''Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed,'' the likely presidential nominee said in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. ''We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies,'' McCain added.
Coming days after his trip to the Middle East and Europe, McCain's speech was intended to signal to leaders abroad -- and voters at home -- that he would end an era of what critics have called Bush's cowboy diplomacy. McCain never mentioned Bush's name, though he evoked former Democratic Presidents Truman and Kennedy.
overdosed on all the Clinton bullshit ?
overdosed on all the Clinton bullshit ?
I feel that the public may have overdosed on all the Hillary and Bill bullshit.
everything from
I never had sexual relations...........
I was under sniper fire...........
it's non of your business from Chelsa( while out pimping her mother)
www.mccainalert.com
more news and comment s at mccainalert.com
I feel that the public may have overdosed on all the Hillary and Bill bullshit.
everything from
I never had sexual relations...........
I was under sniper fire...........
it's non of your business from Chelsa( while out pimping her mother)
www.mccainalert.com
more news and comment s at mccainalert.com
Friday, March 28, 2008
Senator John Mccain wants to legalize hookers?
John Mccain wants to legalize hookers?
Mccain wants to legalize hookers?
is Mccain suggesting legalization of prostitution ?
did you hear the voice on the new Mccain TV spots?
it's the voice of the pimp in the HBO's Deadwood series.
Powers Boothe is the actor who played role on pimp/inn keeper
business man in the Deadwood series
sounds pretty scary to me........
yet another presidential race.
see more thoughts on senator John Mccain
Senator John Mccain wants to legalize hookers?
Mccain wants to legalize hookers?
is Mccain suggesting legalization of prostitution ?
did you hear the voice on the new Mccain TV spots?
it's the voice of the pimp in the HBO's Deadwood series.
Powers Boothe is the actor who played role on pimp/inn keeper
business man in the Deadwood series
sounds pretty scary to me........
yet another presidential race.
see more thoughts on senator John Mccain
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Monica Lewinsky to vote this November ?
Monica Lewinsky to vote this November ?
I can see the network coverage of Monica ariving and walking to the voteing booth.
How about the same site that Bill Clinton and Hillary will vote at ?
Maybe the Obama people can pick up the tab for Monica ?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Bush said: "Small business owners are dreamers and doers.r
President Bush Says Tax Rebates Will Make Economy 'Stronger Than Ever Before'
President Bush says the sagging economy will "come out stronger than ever before" with the help of rebates from the recently enacted economic stimulus package.
Speaking at the ColorCraft printing company in Sterling, Va: Bush made his comments after touring the plant
He said that beginning in the second week of May, "a lot of folks are going to be getting a sizable check. I'm looking forward to that day and I know they are as well."
The president said his administration had taken "decisive action" by getting money for taxpayers and businesses, which are to receive tax incentives to invest. He said that will create new jobs.
Bush said: "Small business owners are dreamers and doers. We want to watch them and help them expand."
President Bush says the sagging economy will "come out stronger than ever before" with the help of rebates from the recently enacted economic stimulus package.
Speaking at the ColorCraft printing company in Sterling, Va: Bush made his comments after touring the plant
He said that beginning in the second week of May, "a lot of folks are going to be getting a sizable check. I'm looking forward to that day and I know they are as well."
The president said his administration had taken "decisive action" by getting money for taxpayers and businesses, which are to receive tax incentives to invest. He said that will create new jobs.
Bush said: "Small business owners are dreamers and doers. We want to watch them and help them expand."
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Hillary Clinton mis - spoke or old fashion bullshit ?
Hillary Clinton mis - spoke or old fashion bullshit ? how often does she get sniper fire?
puffing herself up???????????
www.mccainalert.com
www.mccainalert.com
see more on senator mccain
puffing herself up???????????
www.mccainalert.com
www.mccainalert.com
see more on senator mccain
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Hillary Clinton caught in her own bullshit again
Hillary Clinton caught in her own bullshit again........oh...hogwash....
Hillary recalls her trip to Bosnia
"I remember landing under sniper fire," Clinton recounted.
Clinton has declared on the campaign trail
that a welcoming ceremony for the March 1996 arrival was canceled,
and she had to run from the airplane into an airport building for safety.
Felllow travelers included the comedian Sinbad and singer Sheryl Crow and daughter Chelsea
see more photos at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=59567
Hillary recalls her trip to Bosnia
"I remember landing under sniper fire," Clinton recounted.
Clinton has declared on the campaign trail
that a welcoming ceremony for the March 1996 arrival was canceled,
and she had to run from the airplane into an airport building for safety.
Felllow travelers included the comedian Sinbad and singer Sheryl Crow and daughter Chelsea
see more photos at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=59567
Friday, March 21, 2008
Obama's 'typical white' remark offends all crackers ?
Obama's 'typical white' remark offends all crackers ?
Barack Obama's use of the phrase "typical white person" on a local radio station yesterday wound up making waves from Huffington Post to YouTube to Larry King Live.
King, with Obama as a guest, asked: "Do you think all this might hurt your campaign?"
In the speech, the Democratic candidate spoke of his white grandmother "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
On WIP, Obama said: "The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away, and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society."
Obama's 'typical white' remark on WIP offended some
Barack Obama's use of the phrase "typical white person" on a local radio station yesterday wound up making waves from Huffington Post to YouTube to Larry King Live.
King, with Obama as a guest, asked: "Do you think all this might hurt your campaign?"
In the speech, the Democratic candidate spoke of his white grandmother "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
On WIP, Obama said: "The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away, and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society."
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Mccain stumbles as a foreign policy expert, or is he senile ?
Mccain stumbles as a foreign policy expert, or is he senile ?
Obama, references Mccain's "half century" of service to his country,
Senator McCain confused Sunni and Shi'ite, Iran and al-Qa'eda" on
his current presidential campaign in Iraq today.
"Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war
in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic
choice that we have made in decades."
www.mccainalert.com
www.mccainalert.blogspot.com
Obama, references Mccain's "half century" of service to his country,
Senator McCain confused Sunni and Shi'ite, Iran and al-Qa'eda" on
his current presidential campaign in Iraq today.
"Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war
in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic
choice that we have made in decades."
www.mccainalert.com
www.mccainalert.blogspot.com
American Public Rejects Tax Rebates for Illegal Aliens
American Public Rejects Tax Rebates for Illegal Aliens
With the economy apparently headed toward recession and elections looming, the House of Representatives acted swiftly in late January to approve President Bush’s economic stimulus package. The crown jewel of the package is a tax rebate that the White House and congressional leaders hope Americans will spend and stimulate economic expansion.
Read the full story
Use of E-Verify Law Upheld by Arizona Judge
Just one week after a federal judge in Missouri upheld the right of local governments to suspend or revoke the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, the decision was supported by a second federal judge.
Immigration Reform Law Institute Wins Precedent-Setting Decision
While Congress continues to defy the public’s demands for enactment and enforcement of sensible immigration reform, progress continues to be made at the state and local levels.
With the economy apparently headed toward recession and elections looming, the House of Representatives acted swiftly in late January to approve President Bush’s economic stimulus package. The crown jewel of the package is a tax rebate that the White House and congressional leaders hope Americans will spend and stimulate economic expansion.
Read the full story
Use of E-Verify Law Upheld by Arizona Judge
Just one week after a federal judge in Missouri upheld the right of local governments to suspend or revoke the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, the decision was supported by a second federal judge.
Immigration Reform Law Institute Wins Precedent-Setting Decision
While Congress continues to defy the public’s demands for enactment and enforcement of sensible immigration reform, progress continues to be made at the state and local levels.
PASTOR WRIGHT: THIS TOO SHALL PASS
PASTOR WRIGHT: THIS TOO SHALL PASS
By DICK MORRIS
Will the Gospel According to Jeremiah Wright sink the Obama candidacy? Not very likely.
Let's start with two basic facts:
(a) Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) has already won the Democratic nomination. It's over. Regardless of how the remaining primaries and caucuses go, including Michigan and even Florida, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) can never catch Obama in elected delegates. His current lead of 170 pledged delegates will not be overcome no matter what happens. Even if Clinton beats him by 10 points in each of these primaries, he will still lead among elected delegates by over 100. The superdelegates will not override the will of the voters unless Obama is in jail. They will not let themselves in for a civil war by overruling a black man who is beloved by the young by going over the heads of the electorate and naming the candidate that lost the primaries as the nominee. Regardless of how damaged Obama may be by the Wright tapes, it will not provide sufficient cover or cause for them to do so.
(b) Wright's rantings are not reflective of Obama's views on anything. Why did he stay in the church? Because he's a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard. Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected. If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him. But obviously, he can't say that. So what should he say?
He needs to get out of this mess with subtlety, the kind Bill Clinton should have used to escape the Monica Lewinsky scandal — but didn't. As the controversy continues, Americans will gradually realize that Obama stuck by Wright as part of a need to get ahead. They will chalk up to pragmatism why he was so close to such a preacher. As they come to realize that Obama doesn't agree with Wright but used him to get started, they will be more forgiving.
While he lets this fact sink in, he needs to continue to distance himself from Wright by characterizing that kind of anger and animosity as a thing of a generation past. He needs to compare the progress of which whites are proud in discarding the racism of our forebears with his own pride at being a post-racial candidate. He needs, again and again, to reject what Wright says and emphasize his belief in America and the validity and morality of the American Dream.
As the controversy matures, he can increasingly depict those who fan its flames as trying to live in the past and re-fight the civil wars of race that have divided America.
All these themes were evident and articulately presented in Obama's Tuesday speech on race.
What Obama needs not to do is to resort to the kind of Clintonian fudging that animated his interview with Keith Olbermann. By saying “I wasn't there” and “I didn't know” and “I didn't hear him say it,” he will invite contempt and derision. If he were to continue in that vein, he would buy himself a controversy akin to that which drowned John Kerry in the facts and allegations of his service in Vietnam. People will surface to say, “I sat next to him, and Wright said such and such,” and Obama will be hostage to everybody's subjective memory.
But if he handles the situation with subtlety and lets what he cannot say — that it was opportunism that led him to stay in that church — sink in among the electorate, he can and will survive this battle.
And let's remember one other thing: The Democrats will increasingly realize that he will be their nominee and, in continuing this battle, they are eating their own.
By DICK MORRIS
Will the Gospel According to Jeremiah Wright sink the Obama candidacy? Not very likely.
Let's start with two basic facts:
(a) Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) has already won the Democratic nomination. It's over. Regardless of how the remaining primaries and caucuses go, including Michigan and even Florida, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) can never catch Obama in elected delegates. His current lead of 170 pledged delegates will not be overcome no matter what happens. Even if Clinton beats him by 10 points in each of these primaries, he will still lead among elected delegates by over 100. The superdelegates will not override the will of the voters unless Obama is in jail. They will not let themselves in for a civil war by overruling a black man who is beloved by the young by going over the heads of the electorate and naming the candidate that lost the primaries as the nominee. Regardless of how damaged Obama may be by the Wright tapes, it will not provide sufficient cover or cause for them to do so.
(b) Wright's rantings are not reflective of Obama's views on anything. Why did he stay in the church? Because he's a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard. Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected. If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him. But obviously, he can't say that. So what should he say?
He needs to get out of this mess with subtlety, the kind Bill Clinton should have used to escape the Monica Lewinsky scandal — but didn't. As the controversy continues, Americans will gradually realize that Obama stuck by Wright as part of a need to get ahead. They will chalk up to pragmatism why he was so close to such a preacher. As they come to realize that Obama doesn't agree with Wright but used him to get started, they will be more forgiving.
While he lets this fact sink in, he needs to continue to distance himself from Wright by characterizing that kind of anger and animosity as a thing of a generation past. He needs to compare the progress of which whites are proud in discarding the racism of our forebears with his own pride at being a post-racial candidate. He needs, again and again, to reject what Wright says and emphasize his belief in America and the validity and morality of the American Dream.
As the controversy matures, he can increasingly depict those who fan its flames as trying to live in the past and re-fight the civil wars of race that have divided America.
All these themes were evident and articulately presented in Obama's Tuesday speech on race.
What Obama needs not to do is to resort to the kind of Clintonian fudging that animated his interview with Keith Olbermann. By saying “I wasn't there” and “I didn't know” and “I didn't hear him say it,” he will invite contempt and derision. If he were to continue in that vein, he would buy himself a controversy akin to that which drowned John Kerry in the facts and allegations of his service in Vietnam. People will surface to say, “I sat next to him, and Wright said such and such,” and Obama will be hostage to everybody's subjective memory.
But if he handles the situation with subtlety and lets what he cannot say — that it was opportunism that led him to stay in that church — sink in among the electorate, he can and will survive this battle.
And let's remember one other thing: The Democrats will increasingly realize that he will be their nominee and, in continuing this battle, they are eating their own.
Monday, March 17, 2008
HILLARY SENDS FERRARO AFTER THE RACE CARD
HILLARY SENDS FERRARO AFTER THE RACE CARD
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Geraldine Ferraro, a pioneer and trailblazer in American history, has done more to ruin a sterling reputation in the past few days than anybody but Eliot Spitzer. By claiming, I think falsely, that Obama would not be where he is if he were white or a woman, I think she totally overlooks the impact of his charisma, eloquence, demeanor, message, use of the Internet, focus on caucus states, and his refusal to take special interest money as factors in his sudden rise. She betrays a stunning inability to look more than skin deep for reasons for his success.
But this begs the real question: Ferraro is no racist. Her entire career speaks to the contrary. So why is she now so unable to peer into the deeper reasons for Obama's success and stopping at skin level?
The blunt fact is that Geraldine Ferraro would not make a statement like this one without at least the tacit knowledge and acquiescence of the Clintons and their campaign. Ferraro is an old pro and would know enough not to shoot off her mouth without making it part of a carefully conceived strategy to discredit Obama based on race.
As such, her comments need to be seen as a piece with the attacks on Obama's minister and his endorsement by Farrakhan. With Hillary now almost totally dependent on older voters, the race card may be the only way to produce the kinds of margins she needs in the future primaries to offset Obama's large and widening lead among elected delegates.
The fact is that Obama cannot and should not be held accountable for the ranting and raving of his minister, unless he fails to disavow these remarks. He has done all he needs to do in distancing himself from the likes of Farrakhan. And is success is due to his imaginative use of the political process to achieve what he has earned.
Obama out-organized Hillary by focusing on the small caucus states in February, by which time Hillary confidently expected the race to be over.
Obama out-messaged Hillary by refusing special interest PAC or lobbyist money, giving him a way to paint Hillary as the candidate of the Washington establishment.
Obama out-fund raised Hillary by understanding the potential of the Internet to raise quick and clean money and to permit reloading quickly.
Obama out-positioned Hillary by using her claim to experience (faux as it was) to paint her as just another cycle in the oscillation between Bushes and Clintons which has dominated our politics for two decades now.
Obama out-spoke Hillary by showing and eloquence and elegance that she cannot hope to match.
Obama out-targeted Hillary by focusing on young voters and grasping the amazing insight that in an election with a black and a woman, that age would be the decisive variable.
And now Hillary is trying, through her surrogate Ferraro, to make it appear that all Obama had to do was show up, show some skin and win.
Even for the Clintons, this is a new low.
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Geraldine Ferraro, a pioneer and trailblazer in American history, has done more to ruin a sterling reputation in the past few days than anybody but Eliot Spitzer. By claiming, I think falsely, that Obama would not be where he is if he were white or a woman, I think she totally overlooks the impact of his charisma, eloquence, demeanor, message, use of the Internet, focus on caucus states, and his refusal to take special interest money as factors in his sudden rise. She betrays a stunning inability to look more than skin deep for reasons for his success.
But this begs the real question: Ferraro is no racist. Her entire career speaks to the contrary. So why is she now so unable to peer into the deeper reasons for Obama's success and stopping at skin level?
The blunt fact is that Geraldine Ferraro would not make a statement like this one without at least the tacit knowledge and acquiescence of the Clintons and their campaign. Ferraro is an old pro and would know enough not to shoot off her mouth without making it part of a carefully conceived strategy to discredit Obama based on race.
As such, her comments need to be seen as a piece with the attacks on Obama's minister and his endorsement by Farrakhan. With Hillary now almost totally dependent on older voters, the race card may be the only way to produce the kinds of margins she needs in the future primaries to offset Obama's large and widening lead among elected delegates.
The fact is that Obama cannot and should not be held accountable for the ranting and raving of his minister, unless he fails to disavow these remarks. He has done all he needs to do in distancing himself from the likes of Farrakhan. And is success is due to his imaginative use of the political process to achieve what he has earned.
Obama out-organized Hillary by focusing on the small caucus states in February, by which time Hillary confidently expected the race to be over.
Obama out-messaged Hillary by refusing special interest PAC or lobbyist money, giving him a way to paint Hillary as the candidate of the Washington establishment.
Obama out-fund raised Hillary by understanding the potential of the Internet to raise quick and clean money and to permit reloading quickly.
Obama out-positioned Hillary by using her claim to experience (faux as it was) to paint her as just another cycle in the oscillation between Bushes and Clintons which has dominated our politics for two decades now.
Obama out-spoke Hillary by showing and eloquence and elegance that she cannot hope to match.
Obama out-targeted Hillary by focusing on young voters and grasping the amazing insight that in an election with a black and a woman, that age would be the decisive variable.
And now Hillary is trying, through her surrogate Ferraro, to make it appear that all Obama had to do was show up, show some skin and win.
Even for the Clintons, this is a new low.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Arizona city seeks moat to secure Mexico border
Arizona city seeks moat to secure Mexico border By Tim Gaynor
Most plans to gain control of the porous U.S.-Mexico border focus on some combination of fence. But this city in far west Arizona is looking to build a moat.
Faced with high-levels of crime and illegal immigration, authorities in Yuma are reaching back to a technique as old as a medieval castle to dig out a "security channel" on a crime-ridden stretch of the border and fill it with water.
"The moats that I've seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself, and that's kind of what we're looking at here," said Yuma County Sheriff Ralph Ogden, who is backing the project.
Curbing illegal immigration and securing the nearly 2,000 mile (3,200-kilometre) southwestern border are hot topics in this U.S. election year. Washington has pledged to complete 670 miles of new barriers by the close of 2008, despite resistance from landowners and environmentalists.
The proposal seeks to restore a stretch of the West's greatest waterway, the Colorado River, which has been largely sucked dry by demand from farms and sprawling subdivisions springing up across the parched southwest and in neighboring California.
The plan to revive the river, which drains from the Rocky Mountains through the Grand Canyon and runs for 23 miles (37 kilometers) along the border near Yuma, seeks to create a broad water barrier while also restoring a fragile wetland environment that once thrived in the area.
"What you are building is a moat, but it's bringing the life and the wildlife back," said Ogden, an Old West lawman with a handlebar mustache, explaining how the project differs from other plans to fix the border.
"It's innovative thinking. It doesn't take much brainpower to build a 12-foot high fence around something, but this is unique."
RECLAIMING NO-MAN'S-LAND
The project is starting with a desolate 450-acre patch of scrub and thickets known as Hunter's Hole, a once-thriving wetland on the border a few miles southwest of Yuma that has become a haven for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico and a headache for local law enforcement.
"It's in the United States, but it's become a no-man's-land, an area where bodies were dumped, where people and drugs were smuggled over the border," said Ogden, whose deputies share much of the responsibility for tackling border-related crime with federal police.
Engineers plan to dig a "security channel" up to 10-feet (3 meters) deep and 60 feet wide through the problem area, which lies a short way inside the border. The dirt removed would be used to create a levee along the outside to give U.S. Border Patrol agents an elevated patrol road overlooking the line.
The area would also be replanted with native sedges and rushes to provide habitat for threatened local species such as the Yuma Clapper Rail, a secretive marsh bird. Backers say it would also provide a space for residents of Yuma, a farming town popular with winter visitors, to walk and fish.
The organization behind the project would like to extend it the entire course of the Colorado River, which marks the U.S.-Mexico border, in what it sees as an environmental recovery program that complements the Border Patrol's task.
"It doesn't replace the Border Patrol's efforts, it supplements them. At the same time you are restoring habitat in a secure environment and creating a place to relax," said Charles Flynn, the executive director of the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area Corporation.
PROMOTING SECURITY AND FRIENDSHIP
Curbing illegal immigration and securing the border are issues that frequently confront both presumptive Republican Party nominee Sen. John McCain and Democratic rivals Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who are campaigning to be their party's pick for the November election.
The U.S. government has sought remedies including boosting police numbers, adding surveillance technologies, and, controversially, constructing hundreds of miles of vehicle and pedestrian barriers along the international boundary, which has drawn fierce opposition from some quarters.
More than a hundred border landowners in south Texas have resisted a government bid for access to their lands to build new fencing, which they see as a meddlesome and unwelcome intrusion, while environmentalists say fences may sever key wildlife corridors for animals including the jaguar.
The planned revival of the Colorado River, where it carves through desert peppered with fertile farmland, is something of a standout.
It has won the backing of the federal Bureau of Land Management, which owns the land; the Bureau of Reclamation, which has provided a grant to drill wells and pump groundwater, and a letter of support from the Border Patrol. Also on board are Yuma City Council and local residents including the Cocopah Indian tribe, who have farmed the river's flood plains for centuries.
Perhaps more surprisingly, it has also won support across the boundary in Mexico, where plans to build border fences are eyed with suspicion. Local environmentalists there have embraced the project and plan to work in tandem to restore the wetlands on the Mexican side.
"Instead of putting up walls and promoting division, we can promote security and friendship," said Osvel Hinojosa, the director of Pro-Natura, an environmental group in northwest Mexico, of the proposal.
"Moreover, instead of damaging the environment, we can improve it."
(Additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Monterrey, Mexico)
Most plans to gain control of the porous U.S.-Mexico border focus on some combination of fence. But this city in far west Arizona is looking to build a moat.
Faced with high-levels of crime and illegal immigration, authorities in Yuma are reaching back to a technique as old as a medieval castle to dig out a "security channel" on a crime-ridden stretch of the border and fill it with water.
"The moats that I've seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself, and that's kind of what we're looking at here," said Yuma County Sheriff Ralph Ogden, who is backing the project.
Curbing illegal immigration and securing the nearly 2,000 mile (3,200-kilometre) southwestern border are hot topics in this U.S. election year. Washington has pledged to complete 670 miles of new barriers by the close of 2008, despite resistance from landowners and environmentalists.
The proposal seeks to restore a stretch of the West's greatest waterway, the Colorado River, which has been largely sucked dry by demand from farms and sprawling subdivisions springing up across the parched southwest and in neighboring California.
The plan to revive the river, which drains from the Rocky Mountains through the Grand Canyon and runs for 23 miles (37 kilometers) along the border near Yuma, seeks to create a broad water barrier while also restoring a fragile wetland environment that once thrived in the area.
"What you are building is a moat, but it's bringing the life and the wildlife back," said Ogden, an Old West lawman with a handlebar mustache, explaining how the project differs from other plans to fix the border.
"It's innovative thinking. It doesn't take much brainpower to build a 12-foot high fence around something, but this is unique."
RECLAIMING NO-MAN'S-LAND
The project is starting with a desolate 450-acre patch of scrub and thickets known as Hunter's Hole, a once-thriving wetland on the border a few miles southwest of Yuma that has become a haven for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico and a headache for local law enforcement.
"It's in the United States, but it's become a no-man's-land, an area where bodies were dumped, where people and drugs were smuggled over the border," said Ogden, whose deputies share much of the responsibility for tackling border-related crime with federal police.
Engineers plan to dig a "security channel" up to 10-feet (3 meters) deep and 60 feet wide through the problem area, which lies a short way inside the border. The dirt removed would be used to create a levee along the outside to give U.S. Border Patrol agents an elevated patrol road overlooking the line.
The area would also be replanted with native sedges and rushes to provide habitat for threatened local species such as the Yuma Clapper Rail, a secretive marsh bird. Backers say it would also provide a space for residents of Yuma, a farming town popular with winter visitors, to walk and fish.
The organization behind the project would like to extend it the entire course of the Colorado River, which marks the U.S.-Mexico border, in what it sees as an environmental recovery program that complements the Border Patrol's task.
"It doesn't replace the Border Patrol's efforts, it supplements them. At the same time you are restoring habitat in a secure environment and creating a place to relax," said Charles Flynn, the executive director of the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area Corporation.
PROMOTING SECURITY AND FRIENDSHIP
Curbing illegal immigration and securing the border are issues that frequently confront both presumptive Republican Party nominee Sen. John McCain and Democratic rivals Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who are campaigning to be their party's pick for the November election.
The U.S. government has sought remedies including boosting police numbers, adding surveillance technologies, and, controversially, constructing hundreds of miles of vehicle and pedestrian barriers along the international boundary, which has drawn fierce opposition from some quarters.
More than a hundred border landowners in south Texas have resisted a government bid for access to their lands to build new fencing, which they see as a meddlesome and unwelcome intrusion, while environmentalists say fences may sever key wildlife corridors for animals including the jaguar.
The planned revival of the Colorado River, where it carves through desert peppered with fertile farmland, is something of a standout.
It has won the backing of the federal Bureau of Land Management, which owns the land; the Bureau of Reclamation, which has provided a grant to drill wells and pump groundwater, and a letter of support from the Border Patrol. Also on board are Yuma City Council and local residents including the Cocopah Indian tribe, who have farmed the river's flood plains for centuries.
Perhaps more surprisingly, it has also won support across the boundary in Mexico, where plans to build border fences are eyed with suspicion. Local environmentalists there have embraced the project and plan to work in tandem to restore the wetlands on the Mexican side.
"Instead of putting up walls and promoting division, we can promote security and friendship," said Osvel Hinojosa, the director of Pro-Natura, an environmental group in northwest Mexico, of the proposal.
"Moreover, instead of damaging the environment, we can improve it."
(Additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Monterrey, Mexico)
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Ferraro leaves Clinton campaign post
Ferraro leaves Clinton campaign post
Wednesday, Geraldine Ferraro stepped down,in Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign amid a controversy regarding her comments that
Barack Obama wouldn't be succeeding in the presidential race if he weren't black.
Wednesday, Geraldine Ferraro stepped down,in Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign amid a controversy regarding her comments that
Barack Obama wouldn't be succeeding in the presidential race if he weren't black.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Ed Koch says Spitzer has a screw loose?
Ed Koch says Spitzer has a screw loose?
firmer ny mayor ed kock thinks there may a screw loose in Spitzer.
from an interview on CNN
firmer ny mayor ed kock thinks there may a screw loose in Spitzer.
from an interview on CNN
Admiral Fallon Steps Down, differs with Pres Bush ?
Admiral Fallon Steps Down
Admiral Fallon Steps Down differs with Pres Bush ?
Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command,
is stepping down by the end of March, because of perceived differences
on policy with the Bush administration, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said today.
Fallon held the post for almost a year as the commander of all U.S.
forces in the Middle East, with responsibility for the wars
Admiral Fallon reached this difficult decision entirely on his own,''
Gates told a news conference at the Pentagon. Gates said it
was a ``misperception'' that Fallon differed from the administration.
Admiral Fallon Steps Down differs with Pres Bush ?
Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command,
is stepping down by the end of March, because of perceived differences
on policy with the Bush administration, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said today.
Fallon held the post for almost a year as the commander of all U.S.
forces in the Middle East, with responsibility for the wars
Admiral Fallon reached this difficult decision entirely on his own,''
Gates told a news conference at the Pentagon. Gates said it
was a ``misperception'' that Fallon differed from the administration.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Powerball lottery rolls over to $230 millions
see the hottest/coldest Powerball lotto numbers for the
Powerball lottery
Popularity Report
Hot numbers ???
Note: Powerballs not included here
=================================================
times Last
Ranking Number occurred hit on
1 B30 32 02/09/08
2 B54 32 01/30/08
3 B02 31 03/01/08
4 B19 31 03/01/08
5 B35 31 01/26/08
6 B43 31 02/09/08
7 B08 30 02/23/08
8 B13 30 02/23/08
9 B16 30 03/05/08
10 B42 30 02/06/08
11 B23 29 03/05/08
12 B38 29 02/13/08
13 B40 29 01/05/08
14 B24 28 02/27/08
15 B26 28 02/02/08
16 B48 28 02/27/08
17 B55 28 03/01/08
18 B12 27 02/20/08
19 B15 26 03/05/08
20 B47 26 02/23/08
21 B50 26 12/15/07
22 B10 25 03/05/08
23 B14 25 02/02/08
24 B22 25 02/20/08
25 B27 24 01/19/08
26 B37 24 02/27/08
27 B49 24 03/08/08
28 B53 24 02/27/08
29 B03 23 02/16/08
30 B34 23 03/08/08
31 B45 23 09/19/07
32 B20 22 02/27/08
33 B28 22 01/19/08
34 B36 22 02/20/08
35 B41 22 01/30/08
36 B01 21 12/05/07
37 B04 21 02/16/08
38 B07 21 12/12/07
39 B21 21 03/01/08
40 B31 21 03/08/08
41 B32 21 02/13/08
42 B39 21 01/26/08
43 B09 20 02/20/08
44 B11 20 01/26/08
45 B18 20 01/16/08
46 B05 19 02/06/08
47 B51 19 02/13/08
48 B52 19 11/17/07
49 B17 18 03/08/08
50 B46 18 11/07/07
51 B29 17 03/08/08
52 B44 17 02/02/08
53 B06 16 11/10/07
54 B25 16 02/02/08
55 B33 14 01/05/08
=====================================
= end of pop report =
see more Powerball Lotto reporting and stats
at www.needto.net/index.html
best of luck in the next Powerball Lotto
www.needto.net/powerball.htm more Powerball lotto reports
see more lottery reporting and stats at www.needto.net/index.html
including the MegaMillions lotto
report for Powerball lotto prepared on 3/9/2008
Powerball reports and stats
does Paul Pelosi Jr have a no show job at Countrywide?
FBI Investigating Countrywide
Sunday March 9,
FBI Begins Investigation Into Countrywide Financial Corp. for Securities Fraud
doesn't Paul Pelosi Jr., son of Nancy Pelosi have a no show job there?
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Federal authorities are investigating Countrywide Financial Corp. for securities fraud, according to media reports.
The FBI is in the early stages of an inquiry into whether company officials misrepresented its financial position and the quality of its mortgage loans, The Wall Street Journal first reported Saturday, citing law enforcement officials and finance executives with knowledge of the development.
Sunday March 9,
FBI Begins Investigation Into Countrywide Financial Corp. for Securities Fraud
doesn't Paul Pelosi Jr., son of Nancy Pelosi have a no show job there?
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Federal authorities are investigating Countrywide Financial Corp. for securities fraud, according to media reports.
The FBI is in the early stages of an inquiry into whether company officials misrepresented its financial position and the quality of its mortgage loans, The Wall Street Journal first reported Saturday, citing law enforcement officials and finance executives with knowledge of the development.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Pres Bush explains veto of waterboarding bill
Pres Bush explains veto of waterboarding bill
President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.
The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said. The bill provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and includes the interrogation requirement. It passed the House in December and the Senate last month.
"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.
JENNIFER, AP
President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.
The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said. The bill provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and includes the interrogation requirement. It passed the House in December and the Senate last month.
"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.
JENNIFER, AP
Friday, March 07, 2008
is Nancy Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr, a ceo with Countrywide Mortgage ?
is Nancy Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr., a ceo with Countrywide Mortgage ?
Nancy Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr., is an mortgage executive at
Countrywide Loans in California. , also a registered lobbyist for
Countrywide Mortgage.
He also works part time for InfoUSA for $180,000 a year providing
credit background info to government agencies
wow, show me the money...............
Nancy Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr., is an mortgage executive at
Countrywide Loans in California. , also a registered lobbyist for
Countrywide Mortgage.
He also works part time for InfoUSA for $180,000 a year providing
credit background info to government agencies
wow, show me the money...............
Mccain-Kerry in November ? Mccain gets pissed
Mccain-Kerry in November ? Mccain gets pissed
Sen. John McCain flashs anger at a reporter after being asked
about John Kerry as a possible running mate.
anger management class for Mccain ?
Sen. John McCain flashs anger at a reporter after being asked
about John Kerry as a possible running mate.
anger management class for Mccain ?
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
was Perot was right about NAFTA sucking jobs away ?
Perot was right about NAFTA sucking jobs away
was Perot was right about NAFTA sucking jobs away ?
where is Perot now that we need him?
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Examines Visa Waiver Program
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Examines Visa Waiver Program
On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security about problems implementing the new visa waiver requirements Congress adopted last year. In particular, GAO testimony revealed that Homeland Security's strategy to detect visa overstayers will likely fail. (GAO Testimony, Visa Waiver Program: Limitations with Department of Homeland Security's Plan to Verify Departure of Foreign Nationals, GAO-08-458T, February 28, 2008)
The Visa Waiver Program, established in 1986, permits foreign nationals from 27 countries to enter the U.S. for up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa from a U.S. Embassy or consulate. Until recently, any country could be eligible to participate in the visa waiver program if on an annual basis less than 3 percent of nationals who applied for entry to the U.S. were denied. According to the 9/11 Commission, Mohammed Atta was able to enter the U.S. without a visa interview because he was considered a citizen of Germany, a visa waiver country, and remained in the U.S. to plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (9/11 Commission, Staff Monograph on 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, Chapter 2) Because of this weakness, some argued that Congress should have suspended the program last year when it passed H.R. 1, the Implementing of the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-53).
Instead, H.R. 1 made it possible for Homeland Security to expand the visa waiver program to admit citizens of countries that have refusal rates between 3 and 10 percent. However, before the government may consider whether a country is eligible for the visa waiver program under these new, relaxed standards, Homeland Security must:
Certify that an electronic travel authorization system is fully in place that would require foreign nationals to provide the U.S. with biographic information before boarding a flight to the U.S.;
Implement a biometric exit system at U.S. airports utilizing fingerprints and other biometric identifiers to verify the departure of foreign nationals from the U.S.; and
On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security about problems implementing the new visa waiver requirements Congress adopted last year. In particular, GAO testimony revealed that Homeland Security's strategy to detect visa overstayers will likely fail. (GAO Testimony, Visa Waiver Program: Limitations with Department of Homeland Security's Plan to Verify Departure of Foreign Nationals, GAO-08-458T, February 28, 2008)
The Visa Waiver Program, established in 1986, permits foreign nationals from 27 countries to enter the U.S. for up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa from a U.S. Embassy or consulate. Until recently, any country could be eligible to participate in the visa waiver program if on an annual basis less than 3 percent of nationals who applied for entry to the U.S. were denied. According to the 9/11 Commission, Mohammed Atta was able to enter the U.S. without a visa interview because he was considered a citizen of Germany, a visa waiver country, and remained in the U.S. to plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (9/11 Commission, Staff Monograph on 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, Chapter 2) Because of this weakness, some argued that Congress should have suspended the program last year when it passed H.R. 1, the Implementing of the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-53).
Instead, H.R. 1 made it possible for Homeland Security to expand the visa waiver program to admit citizens of countries that have refusal rates between 3 and 10 percent. However, before the government may consider whether a country is eligible for the visa waiver program under these new, relaxed standards, Homeland Security must:
Certify that an electronic travel authorization system is fully in place that would require foreign nationals to provide the U.S. with biographic information before boarding a flight to the U.S.;
Implement a biometric exit system at U.S. airports utilizing fingerprints and other biometric identifiers to verify the departure of foreign nationals from the U.S.; and
that 3am phone call and Hillary's PMS factor ?
that 3am phone call and Hillary's PMS factor ?
could be a nasty response /reply ?
has anyone charted Hillary Clinton menstrual cycle and mood behavior / mood changes
during the campaign. Looking for radical emotions, mood swings.
www.mccainalert.com
could be a nasty response /reply ?
has anyone charted Hillary Clinton menstrual cycle and mood behavior / mood changes
during the campaign. Looking for radical emotions, mood swings.
www.mccainalert.com
does Senator John Mccain have Parkinson ?
does Senator John Mccain have Parkinson ?
is the constant repeating of a phase such as "my friends"
a symptom of Parkinson ?
is the constant repeating of a phase such as "my friends"
a symptom of Parkinson ?
Monday, March 03, 2008
does Senator Mccain resemble Grandpa Munster ?
note the similiarity of noses and the beady eyes.
but grandpa was 378-year-old, Mccain is 72years old.
but grandpa was 378-year-old, Mccain is 72years old.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
does John Mccain really resembles Grandpa Munster?
does John Mccain really resembles Grandpa Munster?
credit given to Bill Maher on HBO for this mental image
credit given to Bill Maher on HBO for this mental image
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Senator Larry Craig is Seeking Interns
Attention, Parents: Larry Craig is Seeking Interns
If you've ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in Sen. Larry Craig's office, now's your chance.
The Idaho Republican has just announced he's taking applications for summer internships in his Capitol Hill office, which has been the brunt of gossip and many a colorful "wide stance" joke ever since last summer, when Craig was busted in a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport men's room sex sting.
"Interns have the chance to be an essential part of a working congressional office," Craig said in a press release issued Tuesday. "They participate in the legislative process as well as ensure that constituent services run smoothly. For those interested in politics, it is an incredible opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at how our government functions while serving the people of Idaho."
Craig is giving preference to "Idaho applicants attending Idaho schools who are in their junior or senior years of college (including graduating seniors)."
The interns Craig seeks are "expected to fulfill some administrative duties such as answering phones, sorting mail and greeting constituents."
Better hurry, kids. This will likely be your last chance to be a summer intern in Senator Craig's office. Craig, who was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee this month for his bathroom conviction, says he's retiring next January when his term expires.
If you've ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in Sen. Larry Craig's office, now's your chance.
The Idaho Republican has just announced he's taking applications for summer internships in his Capitol Hill office, which has been the brunt of gossip and many a colorful "wide stance" joke ever since last summer, when Craig was busted in a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport men's room sex sting.
"Interns have the chance to be an essential part of a working congressional office," Craig said in a press release issued Tuesday. "They participate in the legislative process as well as ensure that constituent services run smoothly. For those interested in politics, it is an incredible opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at how our government functions while serving the people of Idaho."
Craig is giving preference to "Idaho applicants attending Idaho schools who are in their junior or senior years of college (including graduating seniors)."
The interns Craig seeks are "expected to fulfill some administrative duties such as answering phones, sorting mail and greeting constituents."
Better hurry, kids. This will likely be your last chance to be a summer intern in Senator Craig's office. Craig, who was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee this month for his bathroom conviction, says he's retiring next January when his term expires.
William F. Buckley Jr. dies at 82
William F. Buckley Jr. dies at 82
NEW YORK (AP) — William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.
His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said.
NEW YORK (AP) — William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.
His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Initiatives to Improve Border Security
Homeland Security and Justice Department Announce Initiatives to Improve Border Security
At a joint news conference on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, announced the federal government is undertaking several new initiatives to improve border security. First, Secretary Chertoff announced that a twenty-eight mile virtual fence using radar and surveillance cameras has been approved for use along the border near Nogales, Arizona. The virtual fence employs 98-foot surveillance towers equipped with radar, sensors and cameras capable of discerning whether border crossers are persons or animals from a distance of 10 miles. (Washington Post, February 22, 2008) The virtual fence, built by Boeing as part of a $20 million project, was scheduled for completion in 2007, but ran into delays when some of the technology failed to operate as planned. Commenting on the deployment of the virtual fence, Chertoff stated, "I have personally witnessed the value of the system, and I have spoken directly to the Border Patrol agents . . . who have seen it produce actual results."
At a joint news conference on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, announced the federal government is undertaking several new initiatives to improve border security. First, Secretary Chertoff announced that a twenty-eight mile virtual fence using radar and surveillance cameras has been approved for use along the border near Nogales, Arizona. The virtual fence employs 98-foot surveillance towers equipped with radar, sensors and cameras capable of discerning whether border crossers are persons or animals from a distance of 10 miles. (Washington Post, February 22, 2008) The virtual fence, built by Boeing as part of a $20 million project, was scheduled for completion in 2007, but ran into delays when some of the technology failed to operate as planned. Commenting on the deployment of the virtual fence, Chertoff stated, "I have personally witnessed the value of the system, and I have spoken directly to the Border Patrol agents . . . who have seen it produce actual results."
Pew Research Projects Population Will Reach 438 Million
Pew Research Projects Population Will Reach 438 Million in 2050; 82 Percent of Growth Attributable to Immigration
Last Monday, the Pew Research Center released a study which projects that U.S. population will grow by 48 percent between 2005 and 2050, and that 82 percent of this growth will come from immigration — both legal and illegal — to the United States. The report, authored by Jeffery S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn of the Pew Research Center, predicts that the population of the United States, which was 296 million in 2005, will be 438 million by 2050 if current trends continue. Of these 142 million additional people, 67 million will be immigrants and 50 million will represent the children or the grandchildren of these immigrants. (Pew Research Center, U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050, February 11, 2008) The findings of the Pew Research Study are similar to that of a 2006 FAIR study which found the U.S. population in 2050 would be a minimum of 445 million. (Projecting the U.S. Population to 2050: Four Scenarios)
The report also estimates that between 2005 and 2050, the foreign-born population will more than double from 36 million to 81 million. As a result, the foreign-born share of the population will rise from 12 percent of the population in 2005 to nearly 19 percent of the population in 2050. Pew Research also estimates that sometime between 2020 and 2025, the foreign-born percentage of the population will exceed its historic peak of 14.8 percent reached in 1890. Commenting on these findings, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies stated, "we need to ask ourselves if we want the 100 million more people immigration will bring. Do you want 80 million more cars on the road, or 40 million homes occupying what's now open space?" (Washington Post, February 12, 2008)
In announcing the report, co-author Jeffery Passel carefully pointed out that the projection is simply an extrapolation from current trends that could change through intervening events. For example, Passel pointed to its conclusions regarding the ethnic composition of the population in 2050, noting that it assumes the same definitions and categories used today will continue to be used in the next 50 years. Thus, predictions could change not only in the face of changed immigration policy, but due to shifting categories and perceptions about the population. (USAToday, February 11, 2008)
To read the Pew Research Center population in its entirety, click here.
Last Monday, the Pew Research Center released a study which projects that U.S. population will grow by 48 percent between 2005 and 2050, and that 82 percent of this growth will come from immigration — both legal and illegal — to the United States. The report, authored by Jeffery S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn of the Pew Research Center, predicts that the population of the United States, which was 296 million in 2005, will be 438 million by 2050 if current trends continue. Of these 142 million additional people, 67 million will be immigrants and 50 million will represent the children or the grandchildren of these immigrants. (Pew Research Center, U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050, February 11, 2008) The findings of the Pew Research Study are similar to that of a 2006 FAIR study which found the U.S. population in 2050 would be a minimum of 445 million. (Projecting the U.S. Population to 2050: Four Scenarios)
The report also estimates that between 2005 and 2050, the foreign-born population will more than double from 36 million to 81 million. As a result, the foreign-born share of the population will rise from 12 percent of the population in 2005 to nearly 19 percent of the population in 2050. Pew Research also estimates that sometime between 2020 and 2025, the foreign-born percentage of the population will exceed its historic peak of 14.8 percent reached in 1890. Commenting on these findings, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies stated, "we need to ask ourselves if we want the 100 million more people immigration will bring. Do you want 80 million more cars on the road, or 40 million homes occupying what's now open space?" (Washington Post, February 12, 2008)
In announcing the report, co-author Jeffery Passel carefully pointed out that the projection is simply an extrapolation from current trends that could change through intervening events. For example, Passel pointed to its conclusions regarding the ethnic composition of the population in 2050, noting that it assumes the same definitions and categories used today will continue to be used in the next 50 years. Thus, predictions could change not only in the face of changed immigration policy, but due to shifting categories and perceptions about the population. (USAToday, February 11, 2008)
To read the Pew Research Center population in its entirety, click here.
Ask Congress to fully fund new enforcement efforts
Ask Congress to fully fund new enforcement efforts
This new fax has been posted in your Action Buffet based on your answers to the Interest Survey.
You can find this fax by proceeding to
http://www.numbersusa.com/faxes?ID=9614
Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff and Attorney General Mukasey have announced three new penalties and requirements for companies that deliberately hire illegal aliens:
(1) For the first time since 1999, fines on employers (any employer) who knowingly hire illegal aliens will increase:
Previous minimum penalty: $275. New penalty: $375.
Previous maximum penalty for a first violation: $2,200. New penalty: $3,200.
Previous maximum civil penalty for multiple violations: $11,000. New penalty: $16,000.
(2) All federal contractors will be required to use the E-Verify system. Secretary Chertoff does not want federal contractors hiring illegal aliens to help build the fence along the southern border. He noted that 53,000 employers currently use the E-Verify system on a voluntary basis, and 1.7 million new hires were checked this fiscal year.
(3) All companies will be encouraged to follow up with workers if there are discrepancies with the Social Security numbers they use. Out of approximately 250 million wage reports the SSA receives each year, as many as four percent belong to employees whose names and corresponding Social Security numbers do not match SSA’s records.
Please send this fax to your Member of Congress and encourage them to fully fund these enforcement measures, and to bolster them by opposing any effort to reward illegal aliens with a 5-year work visa.
Do you want more or less information?
As a NumbersUSA subscriber, you will receive occasional emails about immigration-related opportunities. If you want to increase or reduce the frequency of these emails, click here and choose from Total Activism, Moderate Activism, or Limited Activism at the bottom of your registration form: http://www.numbersusa.com/user
NumbersUSA - relies upon individuals like you to reach its goal of an environmentally sustainable and economically just America.
This new fax has been posted in your Action Buffet based on your answers to the Interest Survey.
You can find this fax by proceeding to
http://www.numbersusa.com/faxes?ID=9614
Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff and Attorney General Mukasey have announced three new penalties and requirements for companies that deliberately hire illegal aliens:
(1) For the first time since 1999, fines on employers (any employer) who knowingly hire illegal aliens will increase:
Previous minimum penalty: $275. New penalty: $375.
Previous maximum penalty for a first violation: $2,200. New penalty: $3,200.
Previous maximum civil penalty for multiple violations: $11,000. New penalty: $16,000.
(2) All federal contractors will be required to use the E-Verify system. Secretary Chertoff does not want federal contractors hiring illegal aliens to help build the fence along the southern border. He noted that 53,000 employers currently use the E-Verify system on a voluntary basis, and 1.7 million new hires were checked this fiscal year.
(3) All companies will be encouraged to follow up with workers if there are discrepancies with the Social Security numbers they use. Out of approximately 250 million wage reports the SSA receives each year, as many as four percent belong to employees whose names and corresponding Social Security numbers do not match SSA’s records.
Please send this fax to your Member of Congress and encourage them to fully fund these enforcement measures, and to bolster them by opposing any effort to reward illegal aliens with a 5-year work visa.
Do you want more or less information?
As a NumbersUSA subscriber, you will receive occasional emails about immigration-related opportunities. If you want to increase or reduce the frequency of these emails, click here and choose from Total Activism, Moderate Activism, or Limited Activism at the bottom of your registration form: http://www.numbersusa.com/user
NumbersUSA - relies upon individuals like you to reach its goal of an environmentally sustainable and economically just America.
OBAMA’S REAL EXPERIENCE: HIS CANDIDACY
OBAMA’S REAL EXPERIENCE: HIS CANDIDACY
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on February 25, 2008.
The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is the ability with which he has run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it. For anyone who has ever been elected president, the race that sent them to the White House was the single most important event in their lives and dwarfs any other experience they might have had before running.
As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his path, we cannot help but be impressed with his judgment. Adam Wallinsky, who served on Bobby Kennedy’s staff, once singled out good judgment as JFK’s most salient characteristic. Obama has faced so many delicate questions and issues and seems always to have the right feel for how to handle them.
At the start of the contest, he chose to avoid running as a black candidate for president and ran, instead, as a candidate who happened to have black skin. He crafted a middle course between the determined rejection of his race and its grievances of a Clarence Thomas and its emphatic embrace by a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton. While Hillary invoked her gender at every turn, Obama decided to transcend his race rather than invoke it.
He began his candidacy eschewing donations from PACs and lobbyists, preserving his purity and giving him ground on which to stand in his claim to represent a new kind of politics, rejecting the special interests. When Hillary, whose campaign decisions have been as faulty as Obama’s have been flawless, wallowed in such donations, the Illinois Senator used the difference to paint her into the corner of the status quo candidate.
Beyond simply avoiding special interest money, Obama learned the lesson of Joe Trippi and the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 (even though Trippi was working for Edwards) and used his star power to develop a massive cyber-roots fund raising base which he mobilized again and again by the click of a mouse. He realized the potential of the Internet to democratize campaign funding in a way the other candidates in general, and Hillary in particular, did not. (Mrs. Clinton invested tens of millions in direct mail instead with all of its costs and limited returns).
When Hillary criticized him for lacking experience, he brilliantly seized the opening she provided by becoming the candidate of change. He realized, as Hillary and Bill did not, that America wanted a change beyond the Bush/Clinton oscillation and grasped the fact that Hillary’s emphasis on experience would play into his hands.
And when the Clintons tried to use race to derail Obama, he countered skillfully by making Super Tuesday a referendum on tolerance and inclusivity, overtly rejecting the racial polarization which seemed to have set in after South Carolina. Underscoring his message with victories in white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado and North Dakota, he buried the race issue.
While the Clintons went for the knockout blows of winning New York and California, Obama created a fifty state organization to win each caucus state. As Hillary’s campaign wasted half a million dollars on flowers, Obama’s husbanded his resources to put teams on the ground in the small states where his organizing paid off and brought him sufficient victories to survive the loss of the two big Super Tuesday states.
And when the Clintons went to full time negatives, Obama carefully parsed the attacks he would answer from those he wouldn’t and disdained to engage in the tit-for-tat negative campaigning, realizing that the process turned voters off more than the negatives themselves ever did.
Will he be a good president? If he is half as skillful in serving as he has been in running, he can’t miss.
see more at mccain alert.com
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on February 25, 2008.
The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is the ability with which he has run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it. For anyone who has ever been elected president, the race that sent them to the White House was the single most important event in their lives and dwarfs any other experience they might have had before running.
As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his path, we cannot help but be impressed with his judgment. Adam Wallinsky, who served on Bobby Kennedy’s staff, once singled out good judgment as JFK’s most salient characteristic. Obama has faced so many delicate questions and issues and seems always to have the right feel for how to handle them.
At the start of the contest, he chose to avoid running as a black candidate for president and ran, instead, as a candidate who happened to have black skin. He crafted a middle course between the determined rejection of his race and its grievances of a Clarence Thomas and its emphatic embrace by a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton. While Hillary invoked her gender at every turn, Obama decided to transcend his race rather than invoke it.
He began his candidacy eschewing donations from PACs and lobbyists, preserving his purity and giving him ground on which to stand in his claim to represent a new kind of politics, rejecting the special interests. When Hillary, whose campaign decisions have been as faulty as Obama’s have been flawless, wallowed in such donations, the Illinois Senator used the difference to paint her into the corner of the status quo candidate.
Beyond simply avoiding special interest money, Obama learned the lesson of Joe Trippi and the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 (even though Trippi was working for Edwards) and used his star power to develop a massive cyber-roots fund raising base which he mobilized again and again by the click of a mouse. He realized the potential of the Internet to democratize campaign funding in a way the other candidates in general, and Hillary in particular, did not. (Mrs. Clinton invested tens of millions in direct mail instead with all of its costs and limited returns).
When Hillary criticized him for lacking experience, he brilliantly seized the opening she provided by becoming the candidate of change. He realized, as Hillary and Bill did not, that America wanted a change beyond the Bush/Clinton oscillation and grasped the fact that Hillary’s emphasis on experience would play into his hands.
And when the Clintons tried to use race to derail Obama, he countered skillfully by making Super Tuesday a referendum on tolerance and inclusivity, overtly rejecting the racial polarization which seemed to have set in after South Carolina. Underscoring his message with victories in white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado and North Dakota, he buried the race issue.
While the Clintons went for the knockout blows of winning New York and California, Obama created a fifty state organization to win each caucus state. As Hillary’s campaign wasted half a million dollars on flowers, Obama’s husbanded his resources to put teams on the ground in the small states where his organizing paid off and brought him sufficient victories to survive the loss of the two big Super Tuesday states.
And when the Clintons went to full time negatives, Obama carefully parsed the attacks he would answer from those he wouldn’t and disdained to engage in the tit-for-tat negative campaigning, realizing that the process turned voters off more than the negatives themselves ever did.
Will he be a good president? If he is half as skillful in serving as he has been in running, he can’t miss.
see more at mccain alert.com
fighting illegal immigration
The leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives continues to believe that the American people are worn out fighting illegal immigration and will allow her to, at the least, gut new enforcement against illegal immigration and, at the worst, pass an amnesty this year.
Please check your Action Buffet corkboard to make sure you have sent all your latest faxes and made your phone calls to encourage more enforcement and to block all amnesties.
Today's editorial in the Washington Times (see below) describes our situation in the U.S. House well.
In a nutshell, your efforts to push the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088) of Rep. Shuler (D-N.C.) and Rep. Bilbray (R-Calif.) are increasingly successful. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fears that the current 136 co-sponsors will succeed in forcing a House floor vote on the bill to take jobs away from millions of illegal aliens. She desperately wants to keep the 12-20 million illegal aliens in this country. So, she is maneuvering to attach a 5-year amnesty proposal of the Hispanic Caucus. Her hope is that she will either win with the amnesty or just make the bill so bad that we will help her kill the enforcement.
LESS-EDUCATED AMERICAN WORKERS DISPLACED BY FOREIGNERS
Our researcher, Joe Jenkins, has just reconfirmed for me these horrifying figures:
2 million -- The increase in the number of Americans without a high school degree who became jobless between 2000 and 2005.
1.5 million -- The number of immigrants without a high school degree who were imported by Congress between 2000 and 2005 to take American jobs.
Not surprisingly during that same period, the wages for both these immigrants and native-born workers without a high school degree have plummeted. The cheap labor lobbies may want to do away with immigration law, but they can never rescind the law of supply and demand.
Later today, we will put on your Action Buffet corkboard a new fax concerning these figures for you to send to your Members of Congress.
ADMINISTRATION ROLLING OUT TOUGHER ENFORCEMENT
Even as we may be fighting to a stand-still in Congress over better enforcement laws, the battle to curb illegal immigration is actually turning in our favor because of efforts on the state and local level ...
Please check your Action Buffet corkboard to make sure you have sent all your latest faxes and made your phone calls to encourage more enforcement and to block all amnesties.
Today's editorial in the Washington Times (see below) describes our situation in the U.S. House well.
In a nutshell, your efforts to push the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088) of Rep. Shuler (D-N.C.) and Rep. Bilbray (R-Calif.) are increasingly successful. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fears that the current 136 co-sponsors will succeed in forcing a House floor vote on the bill to take jobs away from millions of illegal aliens. She desperately wants to keep the 12-20 million illegal aliens in this country. So, she is maneuvering to attach a 5-year amnesty proposal of the Hispanic Caucus. Her hope is that she will either win with the amnesty or just make the bill so bad that we will help her kill the enforcement.
LESS-EDUCATED AMERICAN WORKERS DISPLACED BY FOREIGNERS
Our researcher, Joe Jenkins, has just reconfirmed for me these horrifying figures:
2 million -- The increase in the number of Americans without a high school degree who became jobless between 2000 and 2005.
1.5 million -- The number of immigrants without a high school degree who were imported by Congress between 2000 and 2005 to take American jobs.
Not surprisingly during that same period, the wages for both these immigrants and native-born workers without a high school degree have plummeted. The cheap labor lobbies may want to do away with immigration law, but they can never rescind the law of supply and demand.
Later today, we will put on your Action Buffet corkboard a new fax concerning these figures for you to send to your Members of Congress.
ADMINISTRATION ROLLING OUT TOUGHER ENFORCEMENT
Even as we may be fighting to a stand-still in Congress over better enforcement laws, the battle to curb illegal immigration is actually turning in our favor because of efforts on the state and local level ...
Who Will Bell Hillary?
Who Will Bell Hillary?
Who Will Bell Hillary?
By Robert D. Novak
February 25, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Even before Sen. Barack Obama won his ninth-straight contest against Sen. Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin last Tuesday, wise old heads in the Democratic Party were asking this question: Who will tell her that it's over, that she cannot win the presidential nomination and the sooner she leaves the race the more it will improve chances of defeating Sen. John McCain in November?
In an ideal though unattainable world, Clinton would have dropped out when it became clear even before Wisconsin that she could not be nominated. The nightmare scenario was that she would win in Wisconsin, claiming a "comeback" that would propel her to narrow victories in Texas and Ohio March 4. That still would not cut her a path to the nomination. Telling her then to end her candidacy and avoid a bloody battle stretching to the party's Denver national convention might not be achievable.
The Democratic dilemma recalls the Republican problem, in a much different context, 34 years ago, when GOP graybeards asked: "Who will bell the cat?" -- go to Richard M. Nixon and inform him he had lost his support in the party and must resign the presidency. Sen. Barry Goldwater successfully performed that mission in 1974, but there is no Goldwater facsimile in today's Democratic Party (except for Sen. Ted Kennedy, who could not do it because he has endorsed Obama).
Clinton's rationale for remaining a candidate is the Texas-Ohio parlay on March 4, with pre-Wisconsin polls giving her a comfortable lead in both states. But Texas has become a dead heat, and her Ohio margin is down to single digits. Gov. Ted Strickland, Clinton's leading endorser in Ohio, is reported following the Wisconsin returns to privately have expressed concern as to whether he could hold the state for her in the ensuing two weeks. If she ekes out a win in Ohio while losing Texas, who then will bell Hillary?
The inevitability of Clinton becoming the first female president was based on her dominance over weak fields in both parties. McCain was the one Republican who worried Democratic strategists, and he appeared dead three months ago. Mitt Romney, the then-likely Republican nominee, was viewed in Democratic circles as unelectable.
Obama's improbable candidacy always worried Clinton insiders, which explains the whispering campaign that the Illinois neophyte would prove vulnerable to Republican onslaught as the presidential nominee. That private assault continues to this day, with Obama described as a latter-day George McGovern whose career record of radical positions will prove easy prey for GOP attack dogs.
But Clinton could not go before Democratic primary voters and assail Obama for being too far to the left. Instead, she insinuated moral turpitude by asserting that Obama had not been "vetted." When that backfired, she claimed plagiarism by Obama in lifting a paragraph from a speech by his friend and supporter Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick -- an approach that yielded mainly derisive laughter among politicians.
I listened in on last Wednesday's news media conference calls by Clinton campaign managers Mark Penn and Harold Ickes in the wake of her Wisconsin drubbing. Incredibly, they were hawking the same plagiarism charge that had proved ineffective. Clinton herself raised the bogus issue again in Thursday night's debate from Austin and was rewarded with boos from the Democratic audience.
Clinton's burden is not only Obama's charisma but also McCain's resurrection. Some of the same Democrats who short months ago were heralding her as the "perfect" candidate now call her a sure loser against McCain, saying she would do the party a favor by just leaving.
Clinton's tipping point may have come when it was announced that her $5 million loan to her campaign came from a joint fund she shares evenly with Bill Clinton. That puts into play for the general election business deals by the former president that had transformed him from an indigent to a multimillionaire and excite interest in their income tax returns, which the Clintons refuse to reveal. The prospect impels many Democratic insiders to pray for clear Obama victories on March 4 that they hope will make it unnecessary for anybody to beg Hillary Clinton to end her failed campaign.
Who Will Bell Hillary?
By Robert D. Novak
February 25, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Even before Sen. Barack Obama won his ninth-straight contest against Sen. Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin last Tuesday, wise old heads in the Democratic Party were asking this question: Who will tell her that it's over, that she cannot win the presidential nomination and the sooner she leaves the race the more it will improve chances of defeating Sen. John McCain in November?
In an ideal though unattainable world, Clinton would have dropped out when it became clear even before Wisconsin that she could not be nominated. The nightmare scenario was that she would win in Wisconsin, claiming a "comeback" that would propel her to narrow victories in Texas and Ohio March 4. That still would not cut her a path to the nomination. Telling her then to end her candidacy and avoid a bloody battle stretching to the party's Denver national convention might not be achievable.
The Democratic dilemma recalls the Republican problem, in a much different context, 34 years ago, when GOP graybeards asked: "Who will bell the cat?" -- go to Richard M. Nixon and inform him he had lost his support in the party and must resign the presidency. Sen. Barry Goldwater successfully performed that mission in 1974, but there is no Goldwater facsimile in today's Democratic Party (except for Sen. Ted Kennedy, who could not do it because he has endorsed Obama).
Clinton's rationale for remaining a candidate is the Texas-Ohio parlay on March 4, with pre-Wisconsin polls giving her a comfortable lead in both states. But Texas has become a dead heat, and her Ohio margin is down to single digits. Gov. Ted Strickland, Clinton's leading endorser in Ohio, is reported following the Wisconsin returns to privately have expressed concern as to whether he could hold the state for her in the ensuing two weeks. If she ekes out a win in Ohio while losing Texas, who then will bell Hillary?
The inevitability of Clinton becoming the first female president was based on her dominance over weak fields in both parties. McCain was the one Republican who worried Democratic strategists, and he appeared dead three months ago. Mitt Romney, the then-likely Republican nominee, was viewed in Democratic circles as unelectable.
Obama's improbable candidacy always worried Clinton insiders, which explains the whispering campaign that the Illinois neophyte would prove vulnerable to Republican onslaught as the presidential nominee. That private assault continues to this day, with Obama described as a latter-day George McGovern whose career record of radical positions will prove easy prey for GOP attack dogs.
But Clinton could not go before Democratic primary voters and assail Obama for being too far to the left. Instead, she insinuated moral turpitude by asserting that Obama had not been "vetted." When that backfired, she claimed plagiarism by Obama in lifting a paragraph from a speech by his friend and supporter Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick -- an approach that yielded mainly derisive laughter among politicians.
I listened in on last Wednesday's news media conference calls by Clinton campaign managers Mark Penn and Harold Ickes in the wake of her Wisconsin drubbing. Incredibly, they were hawking the same plagiarism charge that had proved ineffective. Clinton herself raised the bogus issue again in Thursday night's debate from Austin and was rewarded with boos from the Democratic audience.
Clinton's burden is not only Obama's charisma but also McCain's resurrection. Some of the same Democrats who short months ago were heralding her as the "perfect" candidate now call her a sure loser against McCain, saying she would do the party a favor by just leaving.
Clinton's tipping point may have come when it was announced that her $5 million loan to her campaign came from a joint fund she shares evenly with Bill Clinton. That puts into play for the general election business deals by the former president that had transformed him from an indigent to a multimillionaire and excite interest in their income tax returns, which the Clintons refuse to reveal. The prospect impels many Democratic insiders to pray for clear Obama victories on March 4 that they hope will make it unnecessary for anybody to beg Hillary Clinton to end her failed campaign.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Does Senator John Mccain have a vested interested in Budweiser ?
Does Senator John Mccain have a vested interested in Budweiser ?
see the family owned Hensley and Co., a Budweiser liquor distributorship.
and his pesonal stock holdings.
see his personal worth filing document at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/congress/fin_dis/2006/m000303.pdf
Anheuser-Busch
www.mccainalert.com
see more news info on senator john mccain
see the family owned Hensley and Co., a Budweiser liquor distributorship.
and his pesonal stock holdings.
see his personal worth filing document at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/congress/fin_dis/2006/m000303.pdf
Anheuser-Busch
www.mccainalert.com
see more news info on senator john mccain
How many lobbyists work in John Mccain office? do they get federal paychecks too?
How many lobbyists work in John Mccain office? do they get federal paychecks too?
How many lobbyists work in John Mccain office?
who pays them ?
are they senate employees? federal paychecks?
is this a clever indirect way to skirt the lobbying issues?
www.mccainalert.com
How many lobbyists work in John Mccain office?
who pays them ?
are they senate employees? federal paychecks?
is this a clever indirect way to skirt the lobbying issues?
www.mccainalert.com
Thursday, February 21, 2008
whose private jet was Mccain on with that hot babe ?
whose private jet was Mccain on with that hot babe ?
and why was he given the use of the jet?
and why was he given the use of the jet?
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
NY Times to publish articles link Senator Mccain to lobbyist
NY Times to publish articles linking Senator Mccain
to lobbyists.
to lobbyists.
Monday, February 18, 2008
President George H. W. Bush Endorses John McCain
President George H. W. Bush Endorses John McCain
At a press conference in Houston today, former President George H.W. Bush endorsed John McCain for president. President Bush made the following statement on his endorsement:
"Today we are living in a time of war, a new and vastly more complex time of war. We also have more important challenges at home, chief among them, we clearly need to address those parts of our economy that demand attention. And at this critical time in history, the key point I want to make is the United States of America cannot be permitted to falter. Part of our Republican creed is a prevailing sense of duty. In the coming election, we do not have the luxury of taking a pass on our unique role and responsibilities in the world. And the indisputable fact that unites the greatest number of Republicans, most independents and many good Democrats is the fact that no one is better prepared to lead our nation at these trying times than Senator John McCain.
"As someone who also helped lead our great Party at the RNC and later as President, I believe now is the right time for me to help John in his effort to start building the broad-based coalition it will take for our conservative values to carry the White House this fall. His character was forged in the crucible of war. His commitment to America is beyond any doubt. But most importantly, he has the right values and experience to guide our nation forward at this historic moment. So I am very proud to endorse John McCain for the presidency for the United States of America. Few men walking among us have sacrificed so much in the cause of human freedom, and I am happy to help this remarkable patriot carry our Party's banner forward."
se more news and reports on senator John
Mccain
At a press conference in Houston today, former President George H.W. Bush endorsed John McCain for president. President Bush made the following statement on his endorsement:
"Today we are living in a time of war, a new and vastly more complex time of war. We also have more important challenges at home, chief among them, we clearly need to address those parts of our economy that demand attention. And at this critical time in history, the key point I want to make is the United States of America cannot be permitted to falter. Part of our Republican creed is a prevailing sense of duty. In the coming election, we do not have the luxury of taking a pass on our unique role and responsibilities in the world. And the indisputable fact that unites the greatest number of Republicans, most independents and many good Democrats is the fact that no one is better prepared to lead our nation at these trying times than Senator John McCain.
"As someone who also helped lead our great Party at the RNC and later as President, I believe now is the right time for me to help John in his effort to start building the broad-based coalition it will take for our conservative values to carry the White House this fall. His character was forged in the crucible of war. His commitment to America is beyond any doubt. But most importantly, he has the right values and experience to guide our nation forward at this historic moment. So I am very proud to endorse John McCain for the presidency for the United States of America. Few men walking among us have sacrificed so much in the cause of human freedom, and I am happy to help this remarkable patriot carry our Party's banner forward."
se more news and reports on senator John
Mccain
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Stop the increases in foreign workers / amnesty
Stop the increases in foreign workers / amnesty
Congress needs to hear from you this week --
Just when you think the Big Business Lobbyists can't be any more callous ...
At the same time as reports that we may be in an economic recession and that the job market is getting more and more difficult for Americans, the magazines, newspapers and airwaves are filled with op-eds, editorials and articles quoting the business leaders and lobbyists saying we must import more foreign workers!
Both the Democratic and Republican leadership of U.S. House and Senate are right now conspiring to bring legislation to the floor to greatly expand the pool of foreign labor in this country -- even as they talk about the need for taxpayers to provide more unemployment compensation for all the Americans who are losing their jobs.
This kind of insanity is nothing new.
And it will never slow down unless we as a Lobby of the People mobilize in massive fashion to put an end to it.
Please go to your NumbersUSA Action Buffet corkboard and make sure you have taken all the actions we have provided you to stand up against this latest effort of the Big Business Lobby to depress wages and foist major new subsidies upon the taxpayers.
I have been working full-time on these immigration issues since 1991. The Big Business Lobby and its well-compensated friends in Congress always use every upturn in the economy to cry for more foreign labor because of perceived shortages. But they never change their tune when the economy turns down.
In every period of rising unemployment, the Big Business Lobby
continues to cry about terrible worker shortages and always
brings in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers during recessions.
Your NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team has talked to a number of
people who
have been in high level Hill meetings where leaders of both
Parties have expressed
a desire during this time of economic turmoil to sneak through
giant increases of H-1B visas for foreign tech workers,
H-2B visas for foreign laborers, greencards
for permanent foreign nurses and a five-year visa for
12-20 million illegal foreign workers and their dependents.
Friends, I know that all of this may seem too crazy to be true.
But please believe me that that the worse our country's economic
situation, the more your
congressional leaders see a chance to give their corporate sponsors
the huge foreign labor increases that the People's Lobby has been
blocking the last several years.
Send your faxes immediately. Remember that Monday is a federal holiday.
Wait to make your phone calls until Tuesday.
Congressional leaders hope you will be so busy worrying about
your own jobs that you won't notice them giving away millions
more through immigration increases.
Congress needs to hear from you this week --
Just when you think the Big Business Lobbyists can't be any more callous ...
At the same time as reports that we may be in an economic recession and that the job market is getting more and more difficult for Americans, the magazines, newspapers and airwaves are filled with op-eds, editorials and articles quoting the business leaders and lobbyists saying we must import more foreign workers!
Both the Democratic and Republican leadership of U.S. House and Senate are right now conspiring to bring legislation to the floor to greatly expand the pool of foreign labor in this country -- even as they talk about the need for taxpayers to provide more unemployment compensation for all the Americans who are losing their jobs.
This kind of insanity is nothing new.
And it will never slow down unless we as a Lobby of the People mobilize in massive fashion to put an end to it.
Please go to your NumbersUSA Action Buffet corkboard and make sure you have taken all the actions we have provided you to stand up against this latest effort of the Big Business Lobby to depress wages and foist major new subsidies upon the taxpayers.
I have been working full-time on these immigration issues since 1991. The Big Business Lobby and its well-compensated friends in Congress always use every upturn in the economy to cry for more foreign labor because of perceived shortages. But they never change their tune when the economy turns down.
In every period of rising unemployment, the Big Business Lobby
continues to cry about terrible worker shortages and always
brings in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers during recessions.
Your NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team has talked to a number of
people who
have been in high level Hill meetings where leaders of both
Parties have expressed
a desire during this time of economic turmoil to sneak through
giant increases of H-1B visas for foreign tech workers,
H-2B visas for foreign laborers, greencards
for permanent foreign nurses and a five-year visa for
12-20 million illegal foreign workers and their dependents.
Friends, I know that all of this may seem too crazy to be true.
But please believe me that that the worse our country's economic
situation, the more your
congressional leaders see a chance to give their corporate sponsors
the huge foreign labor increases that the People's Lobby has been
blocking the last several years.
Send your faxes immediately. Remember that Monday is a federal holiday.
Wait to make your phone calls until Tuesday.
Congressional leaders hope you will be so busy worrying about
your own jobs that you won't notice them giving away millions
more through immigration increases.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
OBAMA, THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE? YES HE CAN!
OBAMA, THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE? YES HE CAN!
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com on February 11, 2008.
I believe that Barack Obama will defeat Hillary and win the Democratic nomination. I think that this weekend's victories in states as diverse as Washington State, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Maine illustrates his national appeal and demonstrates Hillary's inability to win in states without large immigrant and Latino populations.
Hillary's results on Super Tuesday, which amounted to a draw with Obama, will be her high water mark and will represent the closest she will ever come to the party nomination.
Right now, CBS has Obama ahead in elected delegates with 1134, while Hillary has only 1131.By the time Virginia, Maryland, DC, Wisconsin, and Hawaii vote during the next week, Obama will have a lead over Clinton of about 100 delegates, even counting the super delegates who have thus far committed themselves.
March 4th will, at worst, be a wash for Obama with his probably wins in Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont offsetting his probable defeat in Texas. (Although in Texas' open primary, Republicans and Independents may flock to the Dem primary to beat Hillary).
And then come a list of states almost all of which should go for Obama, including likely victories in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana. By the convention, he will have more than enough delegates to overcome the expected margins Hillary may rack up among super delegates.
And don't bet on all the super delegates staying hitched to Hillary. These folks are politicians, half of them public office holders who are really good at reading the handwriting on the wall and really bad at gratitude for past favors.
Since 2004, I have predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee. But, given the consistently amazing performance of Obama, his superior organizational and fund-raising skills, his inspiration of young people, and the flat and completely uninspiring performance by Hillary, it looks to me like it will be Obama as the Democratic nominee.
FOLLOW HILLARY CLINTON'S MONEY!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com on February 11, 2008.
I believe that Barack Obama will defeat Hillary and win the Democratic nomination. I think that this weekend's victories in states as diverse as Washington State, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Maine illustrates his national appeal and demonstrates Hillary's inability to win in states without large immigrant and Latino populations.
Hillary's results on Super Tuesday, which amounted to a draw with Obama, will be her high water mark and will represent the closest she will ever come to the party nomination.
Right now, CBS has Obama ahead in elected delegates with 1134, while Hillary has only 1131.By the time Virginia, Maryland, DC, Wisconsin, and Hawaii vote during the next week, Obama will have a lead over Clinton of about 100 delegates, even counting the super delegates who have thus far committed themselves.
March 4th will, at worst, be a wash for Obama with his probably wins in Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont offsetting his probable defeat in Texas. (Although in Texas' open primary, Republicans and Independents may flock to the Dem primary to beat Hillary).
And then come a list of states almost all of which should go for Obama, including likely victories in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana. By the convention, he will have more than enough delegates to overcome the expected margins Hillary may rack up among super delegates.
And don't bet on all the super delegates staying hitched to Hillary. These folks are politicians, half of them public office holders who are really good at reading the handwriting on the wall and really bad at gratitude for past favors.
Since 2004, I have predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee. But, given the consistently amazing performance of Obama, his superior organizational and fund-raising skills, his inspiration of young people, and the flat and completely uninspiring performance by Hillary, it looks to me like it will be Obama as the Democratic nominee.
FOLLOW HILLARY CLINTON'S MONEY!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
WHY HILLARY WILL LOSE
WHY HILLARY WILL LOSE
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com
Hillary Clinton has blown an almost sure shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. Having surrendered the lead to Obama, she is not likely ever to regain it. It is a fantasy that the Ohio and Texas primaries will be a “firewall” to contain the flames of enthusiasm for Obama and reverse her defeats of February. Just as with Giuliani’s supposed Florida firewall, Hillary’s will crumble as Obama’s momentum carries him forward to the nomination.
Before Hillary lost her first primary or caucus, she lost the dialogue with the Obama campaign vis-à-vis the totally misguided decision to focus her message on experience, surrendering the ground of change to her opponent.
The more she tried to emphasize Obama’s inexperience, the more she seemed to fence herself into the status quo. That it was the status quo ante of the Clinton years, not the status quo of the Bush administration, made less and less difference as the campaign progressed.
She ran on a message perfect for a Republican primary — experience — and abandoned the key to winning a Democratic primary — the message of change — to Obama.
Her decision to rely on special interest political action committee and lobbyist contributions and to seed her war chest with the checks of maxed-out donors gave substance to Obama’s contrast of the status quo vs. change. With her chief strategist a lobbyist and her top campaign team all in the business, she was awash in associations that crippled her ability to fight for change.
Obama became the attraction in the race while Hillary recited her laundry list of proposals with a deadening monotony.
She could have waged a grassroots, small-donor, Internet campaign of change based on being the first woman running for president with a serious chance of victory. The charisma could have been hers, the excitement hers and the novelty hers. But by embracing experience and pretending to be safe and tested, she deadened the excitement her candidacy could have generated.
She got a reprieve by winning in New York/New Jersey and in California/ Arizona largely on the strength of Latino and immigrant voters. Their concentration in five key states (75 percent live in California, New York, Illinois, Florida and Texas) gave her a draw on Super Tuesday. But too many of her votes come from Hispanics who fear blacks and from older whites who harbor residual racial feelings. Her and Bill’s heavy-handed attempts to polarize the election racially died on Super Tuesday in an avalanche of votes from white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, North Dakota and the like.
As the election turned from Super Tuesday to the heartland, where there are few Hispanics or new immigrants, Hillary’s campaign has lost its momentum and its prospects of victory. Obama’s victories in Maine, Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington state, and his probable wins in Virginia, D.C. and Maryland, show how complete is his mastery of states without immigrants blinded by the Clinton name to sustain it. Hillary’s hopes for victory in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina are a fantasy. The Latino population in those states is well below 10 percent and not enough to carry her to victory.
The super-delegates will not be enough to reverse Obama’s primary and caucus victories and they will run for cover and join the Obama bandwagon anyway.
Besides losing the rhetorical battle, Hillary will have nowhere near the money that Obama will have. Her preparations for a short war based on maxed-out donors and old politics were disastrously shortsighted, while Obama wisely cultivated online contributors who can regenerate with the click of a mouse.
When Barack Obama beat Al Gore to the punch and jumped into the presidential race while the former vice president was still deciding what to do, it seemed that Hillary had virtually wrapped up the nomination. While Gore could have beaten Mrs. Clinton, it seemed unlikely that a senator with two years’ service under his belt could do so.
But the mistakes and strategic errors of the Clinton campaign gave Obama an opening that he exploited masterfully. It is Obama’s charisma that is winning this election, but it was Clinton’s mistakes that opened the door.
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com
Hillary Clinton has blown an almost sure shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. Having surrendered the lead to Obama, she is not likely ever to regain it. It is a fantasy that the Ohio and Texas primaries will be a “firewall” to contain the flames of enthusiasm for Obama and reverse her defeats of February. Just as with Giuliani’s supposed Florida firewall, Hillary’s will crumble as Obama’s momentum carries him forward to the nomination.
Before Hillary lost her first primary or caucus, she lost the dialogue with the Obama campaign vis-à-vis the totally misguided decision to focus her message on experience, surrendering the ground of change to her opponent.
The more she tried to emphasize Obama’s inexperience, the more she seemed to fence herself into the status quo. That it was the status quo ante of the Clinton years, not the status quo of the Bush administration, made less and less difference as the campaign progressed.
She ran on a message perfect for a Republican primary — experience — and abandoned the key to winning a Democratic primary — the message of change — to Obama.
Her decision to rely on special interest political action committee and lobbyist contributions and to seed her war chest with the checks of maxed-out donors gave substance to Obama’s contrast of the status quo vs. change. With her chief strategist a lobbyist and her top campaign team all in the business, she was awash in associations that crippled her ability to fight for change.
Obama became the attraction in the race while Hillary recited her laundry list of proposals with a deadening monotony.
She could have waged a grassroots, small-donor, Internet campaign of change based on being the first woman running for president with a serious chance of victory. The charisma could have been hers, the excitement hers and the novelty hers. But by embracing experience and pretending to be safe and tested, she deadened the excitement her candidacy could have generated.
She got a reprieve by winning in New York/New Jersey and in California/ Arizona largely on the strength of Latino and immigrant voters. Their concentration in five key states (75 percent live in California, New York, Illinois, Florida and Texas) gave her a draw on Super Tuesday. But too many of her votes come from Hispanics who fear blacks and from older whites who harbor residual racial feelings. Her and Bill’s heavy-handed attempts to polarize the election racially died on Super Tuesday in an avalanche of votes from white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, North Dakota and the like.
As the election turned from Super Tuesday to the heartland, where there are few Hispanics or new immigrants, Hillary’s campaign has lost its momentum and its prospects of victory. Obama’s victories in Maine, Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington state, and his probable wins in Virginia, D.C. and Maryland, show how complete is his mastery of states without immigrants blinded by the Clinton name to sustain it. Hillary’s hopes for victory in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina are a fantasy. The Latino population in those states is well below 10 percent and not enough to carry her to victory.
The super-delegates will not be enough to reverse Obama’s primary and caucus victories and they will run for cover and join the Obama bandwagon anyway.
Besides losing the rhetorical battle, Hillary will have nowhere near the money that Obama will have. Her preparations for a short war based on maxed-out donors and old politics were disastrously shortsighted, while Obama wisely cultivated online contributors who can regenerate with the click of a mouse.
When Barack Obama beat Al Gore to the punch and jumped into the presidential race while the former vice president was still deciding what to do, it seemed that Hillary had virtually wrapped up the nomination. While Gore could have beaten Mrs. Clinton, it seemed unlikely that a senator with two years’ service under his belt could do so.
But the mistakes and strategic errors of the Clinton campaign gave Obama an opening that he exploited masterfully. It is Obama’s charisma that is winning this election, but it was Clinton’s mistakes that opened the door.
HILLARY CLINTON GOOFS AGAIN!
HILLARY CLINTON GOOFS AGAIN!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FOXNews.com on February 15, 2008.
Who was it that defined neurosis as repeating the same mistake again and again, and expecting a better outcome each time? That’s really what the Clinton campaign is doing in its post-Chesapeake primary strategy. Now Hillary defines Obama as the candidate who makes speeches, while she is the one who provides “answers” and “solutions.”
Why is Hillary embracing this new line? It’s not that she has any great record of solutions or answers of which to boast, but rather that she wants to highlight Obama’s lack of a legislative record. Once again, she and her campaign geniuses are making the same mistake they made when they decided to use the experience as their defining difference with Obama. It’s not that she had much, but they sensed an opportunity to highlight that he had even less.
Of course experience not only didn’t work. It backfired massively. By co-opting the experience tag, Hillary bought into the status quo and left Obama to be the agent of change. A candidacy that could have excited tens of millions of women, the first serious prospect of a female president, became merely a boring part of the status quo, shorn of its novelty.
Hillary’s claim to be the solution-person won’t work either for the same simple reason: She hasn’t passed any. If she were McCain, she could tout a long history of legislative success on key issues and herald her ability to pass bills and engineer progress. But she hasn’t done that. She hasn’t walked the walk so now she cannot talk the talk.
As a first lady, Hillary’s sole important legislative involvement came during the first two years of her husband’s presidency when she sought to pass her ill-conceived health care reform, an effort that failed so miserably that it cost her party control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Between 1995 to 1997, she was largely absent from the White House, traveling the world, promoting her best selling book and helping to raise funds. She never attended strategy meetings and her only intervention in the singular legislative achievements of Bill’s administration — welfare reform and the balanced budget deal — was privately to urge a veto of the former and to oppose the latter because it provided for a cut in the capital gains tax. Hillary returned to the White House in 1998 to oversee the defense to the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment attempt, but the Clinton administration essentially folded its legislative efforts during those years and hung on for dear life. No portfolio of accomplishments there.
In the Senate, she has largely spent her time raising funds for herself and other Democrats (in hopes of attracting the votes of super delegates) and promoting her best selling memoir Living History. In part because of a lack of attention and also because of the Democrats’ minority status during much of her Senate tenure, she has passed very, very little of note.
Her legislative accomplishments in her first term in the Senate were almost entirely symbolic. She renamed a courthouse after Justice Thurgood Marshall. She passed a resolution honoring Alexander Hamilton and another celebrating the win of a Syracuse University lacrosse team. She renamed post offices, founded a national park in Puerto Rico and expressed the sense of the Senate that Harriet Tubman should have gotten a federal pension 150 years ago.
Her only actual legislation included one bill to increase nurse recruitment, another to aid respite time for Alzheimer’s care givers and another to expand veterans’ health benefits, a paltry output for six years’ service.
In her second term, she has spent full-time campaigning for president and has the worst attendance record of the three senators now still in the presidential race.
So who is she kidding? If she wants to hit Obama with a negative based on his inexperience and limited legislative record, she should go right ahead. But to pretend that she is the “solutions” and “answers” person while he gives speeches is absurd.
EVEN IN TEXAS: ADVANTAGE OBAMA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on February 15, 2008.
While polls still show Hillary leading Obama in Texas and also in Ohio, her lead will likely fade and likely disappear by the time their primaries are held two weeks hence.
If Obama wins in Wisconsin, he’ll probably also carry Ohio, a state with very similar demographics. Neither state has much in the way of Hispanic voters (Only 2% of Ohio is Latino) or recent immigrants, the two key groups that gave Hillary the edge in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Go to DickMorris.com to read the rest of this blog!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FOXNews.com on February 15, 2008.
Who was it that defined neurosis as repeating the same mistake again and again, and expecting a better outcome each time? That’s really what the Clinton campaign is doing in its post-Chesapeake primary strategy. Now Hillary defines Obama as the candidate who makes speeches, while she is the one who provides “answers” and “solutions.”
Why is Hillary embracing this new line? It’s not that she has any great record of solutions or answers of which to boast, but rather that she wants to highlight Obama’s lack of a legislative record. Once again, she and her campaign geniuses are making the same mistake they made when they decided to use the experience as their defining difference with Obama. It’s not that she had much, but they sensed an opportunity to highlight that he had even less.
Of course experience not only didn’t work. It backfired massively. By co-opting the experience tag, Hillary bought into the status quo and left Obama to be the agent of change. A candidacy that could have excited tens of millions of women, the first serious prospect of a female president, became merely a boring part of the status quo, shorn of its novelty.
Hillary’s claim to be the solution-person won’t work either for the same simple reason: She hasn’t passed any. If she were McCain, she could tout a long history of legislative success on key issues and herald her ability to pass bills and engineer progress. But she hasn’t done that. She hasn’t walked the walk so now she cannot talk the talk.
As a first lady, Hillary’s sole important legislative involvement came during the first two years of her husband’s presidency when she sought to pass her ill-conceived health care reform, an effort that failed so miserably that it cost her party control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Between 1995 to 1997, she was largely absent from the White House, traveling the world, promoting her best selling book and helping to raise funds. She never attended strategy meetings and her only intervention in the singular legislative achievements of Bill’s administration — welfare reform and the balanced budget deal — was privately to urge a veto of the former and to oppose the latter because it provided for a cut in the capital gains tax. Hillary returned to the White House in 1998 to oversee the defense to the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment attempt, but the Clinton administration essentially folded its legislative efforts during those years and hung on for dear life. No portfolio of accomplishments there.
In the Senate, she has largely spent her time raising funds for herself and other Democrats (in hopes of attracting the votes of super delegates) and promoting her best selling memoir Living History. In part because of a lack of attention and also because of the Democrats’ minority status during much of her Senate tenure, she has passed very, very little of note.
Her legislative accomplishments in her first term in the Senate were almost entirely symbolic. She renamed a courthouse after Justice Thurgood Marshall. She passed a resolution honoring Alexander Hamilton and another celebrating the win of a Syracuse University lacrosse team. She renamed post offices, founded a national park in Puerto Rico and expressed the sense of the Senate that Harriet Tubman should have gotten a federal pension 150 years ago.
Her only actual legislation included one bill to increase nurse recruitment, another to aid respite time for Alzheimer’s care givers and another to expand veterans’ health benefits, a paltry output for six years’ service.
In her second term, she has spent full-time campaigning for president and has the worst attendance record of the three senators now still in the presidential race.
So who is she kidding? If she wants to hit Obama with a negative based on his inexperience and limited legislative record, she should go right ahead. But to pretend that she is the “solutions” and “answers” person while he gives speeches is absurd.
EVEN IN TEXAS: ADVANTAGE OBAMA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on February 15, 2008.
While polls still show Hillary leading Obama in Texas and also in Ohio, her lead will likely fade and likely disappear by the time their primaries are held two weeks hence.
If Obama wins in Wisconsin, he’ll probably also carry Ohio, a state with very similar demographics. Neither state has much in the way of Hispanic voters (Only 2% of Ohio is Latino) or recent immigrants, the two key groups that gave Hillary the edge in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Go to DickMorris.com to read the rest of this blog!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Mccain at 72, looks like an old burnout standing next to Romney
"Crash" Mccain at 72, looks like an old burnout standing next to Romney.
"crash" was a name given to Mccain by his fellow naval pilots,
he ahas trashed a few jet planes.
do you really want Mccain in the presidential cockpit?
"crash" was a name given to Mccain by his fellow naval pilots,
he ahas trashed a few jet planes.
do you really want Mccain in the presidential cockpit?
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