This Month's Crisis

Leveraging off a couple of posts by John at AmericaBlog...here and here

I have hesitated to post about the immigration debate because I really can't offer what I consider a reasonable solution. This is a country of immigrants and to dismiss out of hand the right for anyone to search out a better life in the U.S. runs against the grain. On the other hand, we have a responsibility to those already citizens, whether natural or not, to protect their hard won gains in wages, benefits, job security and workplace safety from being diluted by a huge influx of labor willing to work at virtually slave wages. It's a tough problem and there is not a simple solution.

Regardless of all of the above however, the reality is that the current brouhaha over immigration is just another GOP gambit to distract the voting public with some manufactured issue and inflame passions. Bush and company want so much to appear as if they can lead this country and they can point to nothing they have done so far that demonstrates competence or leadership. The last couple of months it was Iran but that now seems on the back burner. Before that it was abortion, gay rights/marriage, obscenity and whatever other issue that they could grab and wave before their slobbering crowds. They do so want to distract us from the debacle in Iraq and the failure to effectively secure our country or provide us with security from such things as hurricanes and such. Now they are facing a losing proposition in the midterm elections and are desperate for the appearance of leadership.

Face it. If Bush and the GOP were serious about border security after 9/11 they would have done something 5 and a half years ago. Instead they cut the budget for border patrol to the tune of 10,000 agents over 5 years and are hoping no one brings up that little piece of work. If they were serious about terrorists coming into the country over unsecured borders they would have done something about the much larger and unpatrolled border with Canada. If you remember that is the border over which the one terrorist with bomb materials was captured.

So what we have here is just a political stunt that is going to cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and hassle some quarter of a million National Guard men and women for political gain. The heartwarming thing is that it is probably too late for them to recover from the screwups and failure to enact the agenda their ravenous, far right, christian base expected of them. Over and over again you are seeing the radical christian bunch throwing up their hands in disgust over the failure of this administration to follow through on their campaign promises to deal with abortion, gay rights, prayer in schools, obscenity and immigration. The good christian soldiers that turned out in such force to keep Bush and Cheney and the rest of the cabal in office in 2004 are pissed and threatening to withhold their vote in 2006 and 2008.

Therefore, one obvious key for Democratic success in '06 and '08 is to do everything we can to see that the GOP and Bush have no success in the key areas the Bible thumping, jumped by Jesus crowd are so desperate for. We need to prevent any GOP successes in all the key issues...

- gay marriage
- immigration
- pray in school
- obscenity/porn
- abortion

If we can stop them here and further frustrate the religious right and thereby suppress their influence in the coming elections we will have come a long way into putting the GOP were they so richly deserve to be.