My oldest are home from college. It's family time. I probably won't be posting this weekend unless something dramatic happens.

I wish all of you the blessings of Easter.

Losing the Hispanic Vote

The controversial issue of illegal immigration will raise it's ugly head again when the so called "DREAM Act" will come to the floor. A few days ago Sen. Dick Durbin and other members of congress introduced a new version of the DREAM Act, that would allow illegal alien teens that were brought here by their parents as toddlers or babies to remain in the country if they attend college or join the military.

The Democrats would like nothing better than to bestow citizenship to all 12 million illegal aliens in this country right now so that they can secure those votes for the future. This bill is a small door opened for that idea.

This is what Republicans get for being so stubborn on this issue.

When Pres. Bush pushed for comprehensive immigration reform, the Republicans wouldn't budge.

Bush had called for strengthening security along the U.S.-Mexico border, including a 50 percent increase in the number of Border Patrol agents, but he also called for a guest-worker program, which would allow foreign workers to fill jobs in the United States for a limited time, after which they would return home and allowing some of the more than 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States to work their way toward citizenship, by paying fines and back taxes, working in a job "for a number of years" and learning English.

But no, heaven forbid we do ANYTHING but deport them all.

When the Democrat majority in Congress and Pres. Obama get through, you guys who were all against Bush on this will be BEGGING for that kind of compromise.

If you remember, amendments on Bush's bill that would have required adult illegal immigrants to return to their home country within 2 yrs in order to apply for a new type of visa that would allow them to stay in the U.S. indefinitely were also defeated. It seemed no compromise was good enough for Republicans.

So Republicans looked anti-Hispanic to the fastest growing minority in this country. Just great. And then we wonder why Obama got the majority of the Hispanic vote?

Fast forward to the Obama administration, who will do everything in it's power to make illegal aliens legal and there won't be any of this going back to their home country, paying fines, or back taxes, or probably even learning english.

With this sweet sounding "Dream Act" millions of young Hispanic adults will become American citizens just in time to VOTE. And they will be forever grateful to the Democrats for the privilege. They will soon have families and they also will vote Democrat.

Do you see why this is so frustrating for me? For years on this blog I have tried to get my Republican friends to look past their own stubbornness on this issue and compromise in a way that would bring more Hispanics into our party. Hispanics are a natural fit. They are pro-family, pro-life, religious, and value oriented. The rhetoric coming out of the Republican party on this issue has alienated this community of legal citizen voters.

Now, because we wouldn't compromise with Pres. Bush, we not only will get "Amnesty" for illegal aliens, but generations of Hispanics beholden to Democrats for their citizenship.

The U.S. Delegation of the Crazy to Cuba

I'll never understand as long as I live why so many on the left refuse to acknowledge the human right abuses in Cuba. Take a look at these astonishingly stupid remarks by Rep. Emanuel after visiting Cuba:

[U.S. Rep. Emanuel] Cleaver called his trip the most interesting he had ever taken. He said he preached Sunday at an Episcopal church where he was allowed to speak freely and meet privately with congregation members. An interpreter was at Cleaver’s side throughout his trip.

“To see all of these myths melt right in front of my eyes was something to behold,” he said. “We’ve been led to believe that the Cuban people are not free, and they are repressed by a vicious dictator, and I saw nothing to match what we’ve been told.”

Really? All those repressed in Cuba by a vicious dictator is just a myth? So... people climb on rickety rafts and tires with their children and risk death (and many die) to make it 228 miles to Miami just for fun?

What planet does this man live on? People who have survived to tell about Cuba here describe post revolution firing squads. Execution without trial. Gross human right violations, on children as well as adults. There are hundreds of political prisoners languishing in Cuban prisons as we speak.

Does this delegation, which was headed by Rep. Barbara Lee of California accompanied by Rep. Cleaver, Reps. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, Mel Watt of North Carolina, Bobby Rush of Illinois and Mike Honda and Laura Richardson, both of California, HONESTLY believe that the Cubans living here in the United States are lying about these abuses? What do they imagine that the people who risk an agonizing death at sea to get here are running from?

It boggles the mind that these people are actually elected officials.

After this embarrassing trip, Fidel Castro released a statement where he noted that members of the delegation said that American society “continues to be racist” despite President Obama’s election. When asked about this on the news this evening the delegation insisted that they said nothing of the kind.

What? Fidel is lying?

Imagine that (although something tells me that he wasn't lying in this instance).

Fidel also said that one "lawmaker" expressed that the United States "should apologize to Cuba for all these years of hostility and for the blockade policy..."

You can read Fidel's entire statement here where he paints the picture of a lovely Cuba where there are no "illiterate people or children shining shoes on the streets." Where all young people attend school and universities. Where all people enjoy free day-care-centers, free senior citizens homes, free hospitals and "no citizens queuing up to apply for a job."

What a paradise! Yet, there is that pesky rickety raft thing. I mean, if all that is true, then why, WHY in the world would Cubans risk their very own lives to leave such a Utopia?

They would have to be crazy, right? No. Who is crazy are the Representatives listed above who dismiss all those brave Cubans who risked everything they loved to come to the United States because of a brutal Communist evil dictator.

As Sen. Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican says, “This is the time to support pro-democracy activists in Cuba, not provide the Castro regime with a resource windfall.”

Castro,

Free political prisoners. Let your people travel freely, let them speak freely, let Cubans living here visit family without reprisals, let people leave Cuba if they wish.

Try all that FIRST, then we can "open a dialogue" with you.

For more about all things Cuba, visit the most excellent blog Babalu.

Good grief

I wasn't going to blog about Pres. Obama bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I didn't even watch the video of it. It seemed silly. It may be irritating, but we have more things to worry about. But now the Obama administration is denying that it was a bow. So I finally look at the video and it is CLEARLY a bow. Give me a break. If he bowed, he bowed. Just own it. Don't lie when it's on video tape for heaven's sake.

Unacceptable

Pres. Obama goes out on a limb for Turkey and what kind of thanks does he get? Turkey TV mocking him in blackface.

Now, I know the left in this country never defended Bush when anyone in or outside our borders mocked him. They were too busy mocking him themselves. We may disagree with Obama on issues, policy, and big government, but the color of his skin has nothing to do with those things and this "blackface" is unacceptable. We should all be offended, whether we agree with Obama or not, he is our President and I won't stand by and say nothing while this kind of vile racism occurs like the left did when Bush was mocked.

Turkey should be ashamed.

A Rock Star, Not a Leader

I know I haven't been blogging about all the "gaffes" of Obama overseas. Yes, it is tempting to write about how the press would have reacted if Bush had thought "Austrian" was a language, but didn't we hate that? It was so ridiculous to go over and over the mistakes and gaffes like they did with Pres. Bush.

I know the feeling is that turnabout is fair play, but I just can't get into it.

My overall feeling of the G-20 summit and the NATO conference was just frustration. I don't like to see my President whine. I don't like to hear him call America "arrogant" and "derisive," because I don't believe we are. I don't like hearing him say "we may not always have the best answer," because I believe we do.

What Reagan always understood was that one negotiates from a position of strength. Obama seems to negotiate from a position of regret. It's not leadership stuff. It just isn't. He talked more about "listening" than leading. The latter should have come first.

This whole overseas trip really was only about one thing...Obama The Rock Star. It was about Obama showing the world that America really isn't that bad.

Ugh.

In reality, other than his pretty speeches, Obama didn't achieve much. Not that you would notice that, with the press rolling around at his feet like a puppy dog waiting for a snack.

Pres. Obama asked for an increase in global stimulus efforts, but simply nothing came of that. He had hoped to get a bit of help in Afghanistan and that was pretty much ignored. And lastly, and most embarrassingly, just as Obama's soaring rhetoric was pleading for a world without nuclear arms, N. Korea fires a long range missile as a nice backdrop for that pretty speech. Later Obama would say, ""North Korea broke the rules, once again, by testing a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles." Broke the rules? Like it was a school child that wrote on the bathroom walls. Good grief. We can't even get strong language here, much less a strong reaction.

Let me just say what no one else will say. Under Obama, the U.S. nor the U.N. are going to do a dang thing to N. Korea until a missile hits a city, and we all know that and N. Korea knows that too. Same thing with Iran.



The Rock Star returns to the United States, still a rock star, but not a leader.

Oh, but didn't Michelle look fabulous? *eye roll*

Ted Nugent prays for Obama to fail...

Yeah, I agree.

But I will let the rock and roller explain.

The One True Journalist

Jake Tapper of ABC News twitters and I follow him. I follow news guys for tips for stories for blogging and breaking news, but Jake twitters like a crazy person sometimes and you gotta love that.

But what is even better to love is that he actually asks tough questions of Pres. Obama instead of just staring and drooling like the rest of the White House Press corps.

Don't get the wrong idea. Tapper is decidedly liberal. That is clear in his tweets too. But the difference is that Tapper is actually a rare thing these days. A real journalist with real integrity in his work. He doesn't let his liberal views keep him from being fair or asking the tough questions.

For crazy, here are just a few of his recent tweets while following around the Pres. in Europe:

re: snacks on plane - reporters descended like locusts upon trays of hummus and dolmades. skeleton found in wake-

the truth is i cant get "elmo has two hands" out of my head. during the campaign it was "bob the builder" theme song

Dude Looks Like a LAAYYY-DEEEEE!!!

hey, annoying person on bus, can u solicit the bus driver to get on the PA and be annoying too? u already did! thanks

DUDES POTUS just called on the China TV guy!!!!


National Review has a piece about him and it quotes Rush Limbaugh as saying, “Jake Tapper is the one guy outside the butt-boy bubble in the White House press room.”

Very true.

NR says this:

What we can say for certain is that Tapper isn’t afraid to go against the grain of the liberal consensus in pursuit of a story. Whether he was pointing out that Barack Obama was a “one-man gaffe machine,” factchecking Obama on the surge, or chiding him for blaming any and all mistakes on his staff, no mainstream journalist was tougher on Obama during the campaign. Considering the fact that much of the media gave Obama the kid-glove treatment, Tapper’s reporting was essential.

Conservatives never minded journalists being liberal. We just wanted their journalistic integrity to give us the news fair and balanced. But that has evaporated completely with few exceptions, and Jake Tapper is one of them.

Why The Government Never Shrinks

Sen. DeMint has a great piece at the American Spectator about the politics of earmarks. This is at the heart of spending and part of what this tea party thing is about:

Take any bill in Congress that impinges on a sector of our economy or on individual liberty itself, and you will find it festooned with earmarks to assuage the concerns of congressmen and senators otherwise unwilling to accept the slow creep of collectivism.

If a proposed bill is 20 percent over budget and thus falls 10 votes shy of passage, congressional leaders are faced with a choice. On one hand, they can cut the bill’s spending by 20 percent. On the other hand, they can increase spending by another percentage point or two to specifically fund projects in the home districts of those 10 recalcitrant members. If they cut spending, the leaders would risk alienating members already comfortable with the size of the bill. If they increase spending with a few earmarks, the only people who will be upset are cranky skin-flints (like me) who were probably voting against the thing anyway.

Which tactic do you think Republican and Democrat leaders tend to employ? There is a reason bipartisan compromises never seem to shrink government. Advocates of earmarks say they represent a fraction of the cost of underlying bills. But like crack cocaine, earmarks create problems disproportionate to their size.

Some love to argue that this spending "creates jobs." But that simply isn't true:

The great lie at the heart of earmarking is that the projects funded create jobs at all. Take the $1.8 million earmark just passed—as part of a $410 billion spending bill—that funds research into pig odor (no, seriously). Its author argues that the study will, in fact, create jobs for the researchers conducting the project. But the problem is that $1.8 million will have to be first taxed out of the economy before it is redirected to any pig farms.

That $1.8 million, if left in the hands of the businesses and families who earned it, could build new homes for several young families, create dozens of jobs for small businesses, or develop new products and services for innovative entrepreneurs to market. In Washington, politicians talk as if federal money is free—it just appears, like magic. But of course, federal spending must come from somewhere in the private sector. Every job the government "creates" is funded through the elimination of a job (or two) in the private sector.

This is why the spending will never work:

That's why the biggest threat to our economy is not corporate greed—which is restrained by both law enforcement and market competition—but political greed, which is encouraged and even rewarded by our political system. Thus Americans are told that the only thing that can save us is a $1 trillion government spending "stimulus" bill that the Congressional Budget Office reports will be a long-term detriment to our economy. Meanwhile, the policies hidden behind the price tag make us less free, less competitive, and more dependent on a federal bureaucracy only too eager to control more and more of the economy.

The media has been focused lately on the greed of AIG big wigs, but in reality their greed in NO WAY compares to the greed of our politicians. It's time we recognized that and did something about it.

Tea Party. Be there.

Consequences

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned this week that if N. Korea fired a long range missle "There will be consequences."



Well, N. Korea did last night.

Our President had this response:

"Now is the time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons."

I just can't wait to see what the "consequences" will be.