Legal immigration or no immigration at all

I have been musing about this issue for sometime now. I don't have any problem with legal immigration of any kind. That's my main point. LEGAL immigration, or no immigration at all.

First off, I'm against illegal immigration in principle, as it is a crime against all Americans. As far as I can tell I am descended from immigrants, from Ireland, England and Wales, who paid their money, and came into the country legally. It is a crime against the memory of those who obeyed the laws and waited their turn, to allow people to sneak across the borders and enter the country by stealth.

Second, if we allow these illegals to stay, why should they obey the laws of our land. They disregarded them when it fit their purposes before, what makes anyone think they will not ignore them again to further their own good. These people are a terrible drain on federal and state services, which, by the way, legal Americans pay for (with taxes which most illegals don't pay) and they allow businesses to pay less than a living wage, even while profits go up. Much of the money made by illegals doesn't stay in the U.S. any way. It is sent back to whatever country the people came from, to their families, which supports another countries local economy, not ours.

Third, some members of the left have used the battle cry " We need these illegals, they do jobs no other American would do!" This idea is patently false. Americans would do the jobs illegals do, if they could make a living wage. After all Americans were picking cotton and grapes, working in kitchens and other menial jobs in the past, Now before you start, not all of the people who worked in menial jobs were Africans. There are and were plenty of poor European and Asian (Irish, Polish, German, Russian) engaging in this kind of work. Three out of four of my great grandfathers were street cleaners in a large East Coast city. Today however no one in this county wants to be taken advantage of, especially for someone else's profit.

Forth, and here is a rather sensitive issue. We have heard the "We need these workers to keep the economy functioning" refrain before. When some might ask? Why in the years leading up to the Civil War. Slave holders continually made the point that the economy of the south would be destroyed if slaves were freed. While it is true that the South experienced economic problems, they came more from the war than the destruction of slavery.

America can do without illegal aliens. There is a problem with in the black community concerning unemployment. An article at cbtu has some interesting data about black unemployment but draws different conclusions. To put it succinctly "It's Bush's fault." I don't see how that computes as he has put more emphasis on improving school performance and education opportunities since becoming president. They also do not discuss the tie between increased illegal immigration and decreased opportunities for not just poor blacks but poor everybody else.

One thing is certain. The United States needs to crack down on illegals from all countries but especially from south of the border. We need to take a page from Mexico's book and deport all those who have entered the country illegally since at least 1970. Mexico should be prepared for an influx of former citizens and illegals from other Central and South American countries, since Mexico has functioned as the major conduit through which these people passed. We should also take Mexico to the world court and sue for the damages done to our economy and the taxes spent on behalf of those who were allowed to enter the country illegally, with help from the Mexican government. Especially since the money sent back to Mexico now either nears or passes the profits from oil for that country. On Free Republic is, as Paul Harvey might say "the rest of the story."

I would remind you that the msm has not covered this part of the story at all. Why? Some maintain it's because the Liberal left is always fighting for the little guy, some say it's because they hate America and want to see it destroyed. I however am a cynic. I believe they didn't cover it because the Democratic Party has given up on Asian Immigrants and African Americans as their political base and seeks to legalize illegals, assuring themselves the Hispanic immigrant vote in the future.

Several years ago a Latina politician said that it was the Hispanic game plan to take over America one house at a time. They are well on their way. While I understand the drive to make a better life, I do not understand breaking the law to do it. If these illegal immigrants are such great workers why don't they and Mr. Fox create a new and better Mexico. Or maybe Mexico could become the fifty first state. Beats the situation now, but only barely.

Leave the rest to .....

One of the reasons I think some people get so out of control and obsessed about things is, that many have nothing else to do. They say it's for their children, or the environment, or the good of the community, but in many cases they do things just to make themselves feel good or important.
I don't have that kind of luxury, now or in the past. I probably won't have it in the future either.
I don't have time to run the government (state, local or national), and I don't have time to fix everyone else's life. People need to stop running away from their lives and "begin as they mean to go on." In other words, if you don't like your life, fix it, the best way you can. Don't expect social service, the church, Dr. Phil and or Oprah, Maury or Jerry to do it for you. Don't constantly complain about what a victim you are- go find some real victims at hospitals, children's homes, and VA hospitals, watch true heros as they live their lives, doing the best they can.
Count the blessings in your life, your family, friends, job, school or whatever you cherish. This year if all goes well I will be the proud grandmother of 2. These will be my first grandchildren and I am both excited and terrified. I will also become a mother in law for the 3rd time. All of these changes will bring with them excitement and stress, even though they are a natural and normal fact of life. The trick is to take them as they come and enjoy them.
Focus on what's really important and .....leave the rest to God!

Romeo and Juliet

My high school freshman came home today and wanted to talk about a discussion she and members of her class are having on line about Shakespeare's worst play ever, Romeo and Juliet. Now don't get me wrong I love Shakespeare and have read and seen many of his works (either in film or on the stage). But this play is without a doubt, the most dreadful pile of claptrap nonsense ever written. I have yet to understand why educators, who are supposed to understand the mentality of the students they teach, would agree to use this play. There are many more interesting or important works to choose from, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, King Lear, Richard III just a few that they could study.

My disagreement focuses less on the mature nature of the subject and more on the license given to adolescents, enabling them to turn their lives into a daytime drama. The hero and heroine of our story are young, too young to be contemplating a physical relationship. These two children should be not be worried about getting married, they should be worried about education, clothes, having fun with their friends or what ever else children of that time did for education and or fun. Just as out teenagers should not have to worry about Aids, pregnancy, STD's, drugs, alcohol and pornography.

One of the questions asked by the teacher was: What did Romeo do wrong? One of the other students asked, what did he do right? If you think about it, the immaturity of all of the characters in the play, including that of the friar, is staggering. I don't think that there is an actual functioning adult in the entire play. The parents are moronic, the children are nitwits and the hanger-oners are pathetic. This could have been produce by Disney!

Although I firmly understand that this is fiction, and I ensure that my children, all of them (6) understand the difference between reality and fiction. I still think there are enough young people out there who don't have a good grasp of the difference between real life and fiction, that giving them even tacit approval for their emotional dramas is not a good idea at all.

Maybe when the students are a little older and more mature they would be able to understand the problems inherent in looking at Romeo and Juliet as simply a romantic story. Maybe they would be able to see it as the cautionary tale it should be. Probably not, though. Plenty of adult have yet to see it that way either. Just look at the domestic violence rate. Emotional children should not get married either.

They Still Don't Get It

I am doing some research on the state of print and television journalism. To say that it is bad would be gilding the lily. The state of most newspapers in this country is dismal. According to the report I read today those who are studying the phenomena are still unable to look at the elephant in the living room.

The Project for excellence in Journalism at the state of the newsmedia.orgtries very hard to get a clue, but misses the point entirely. Why are newspapers in trouble? In our area there are several reasons for the dip in circulation and profit. One is the restriction of area by the corporate entity. Outlying areas that did not bring in enough revenue either in ads or circulation were discarded like used Kleenex. The rest of their customers saw how easily the paper got rid of these customers and felt that they were not of value either.

Years ago the paper in our area was involved in almost everything that went on in it's circulation area. Now it is involved in almost nothing. The people who work for the paper are not encouraged to enter into community events except as private citizens. This is not the only reason the customers of the paper feel separated from those who bring them the news. In our area the majority of the populace is conservative. Most of us don't necessarily want all of the articles to have a right wing bent, but we don't want to read articles that constantly offend us and are at complete odds with the things we hold dear. We want the news but we want the facts, not someone else's opinion of what the facts are or what they mean. I'm a big girl. I can make my own interpretations of the facts presented.

When people in the community see their news outlet as something that is only interested in making money and pushing the agenda of the minority onto the majority they are going to look elsewhere for their news. This explains the upswing in radio talk and cable and internet news. We are tired of being referred to as Flyover country and being treated like the village idiot. As the newscaster in Network said "We're mad as H..l and we're not going to take it anymore.

We want unbiased, ( right or left) intelligent, honest reporting. We want opinion writers who give reasoned arguments instead of rants. We want to occasionally see opinions in our papers that we can identify with. We don't want to have a steady diet of writers who must live on a different planet than we do. We want newspapers that are community partners instead of cash cows, or corporate entities that have no interest in the community except how much profit they can gouge out of their customers. I personally don't think that's much to ask for. (We also would like journalism professors to stop teaching their students that they are smarter than John Q. Public, and it is their job to make people see things their way. After all they are so much smarter than the rest of us.)

Like I said, the folks at this project don't quite get it. They think the future is the internet and they are only partly right. But if people won't pay for their local paper now, why would they pay for it on line.

Oh, please!

I think it is past time someone raised Willy Shakespeare from the grave so that he can sue the vast multitude of authors, songwriters, directors, producers and college professors for their use of his ideas. I'll bet Willy has never see a pence of profit for the adulteration made by the aforementioned intellectual property criminals. After all no one has ever read something that has inspired them to create something else.

Do the two "historians" ( and I use that word loosely) really want people to believe that they were writing fiction when they wrote "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." It was supposed to be a non fiction book, I thought. And the Da Vinci Code is fiction ( definition - NOT TRUE)

Just yesterday I did a little research after watching "National Treasure" because one of my peeps asked, how much of this is true? Guess what I found? There was more than enough information about the Grail in the articles about the Templars, before I even got to the Grail. Does this mean that the authors of Holy Blood should be sued by those from whom they got their information? Now there's an interesting thought!

I'm not exactly sure why the authors of HBHG waited until the movie of Brown's book was about to be finished, but I find the timing very interesting indeed.

Oh and all of you Undergrads and Graduate students out there, don't use any books that have anything to do with your subject in your papers. You may be the next person sued for infringement, whether or not you give credit. Especially if they turn your paper into a movie.

What brought on this rant? CNN
Some other articles that mention either the Holy Grail or Holy Blood
scotsman
tartans
HG and Turin Shroud
I could go on, but I think you get the picture. There is more than enough drek that Mr. Brown wouldn't need to steal from the authors. All he'd have to do is Google.

Of History, Historians and Teachers

Pardon me but I seemed to have missed a memo. When did historians become the people who manipulate history, as opposed to those who keep it.

It is the responsibility of historians to stay out of the political debate, and to keep themselves as objective as possible in order to preserve the integrity of the event. People will have opinions, no matter how objective they try to be, but those opinions should not affect the event itself. If one is against the war, if they think it is wrong, that is their opinion. When they become radicals, they cease to be historians and become participants.

As far as teachers go, I would never say " Those who can do, those who can't teach" because I don't think that's true. A true educator is interested in enabling his students to research all of the facts ( not just the ones he believes in) and encourages his students to come to their own conclusions. To teach any other way is indoctrination not education.

Mr. Bennish is young, idealistic and obviously in need of counseling. Ranting and railing in any class for any reason is inappropriate whether from the right or the left. Children are almost prisoners in their classrooms. They have no real recourse, and in many cases when they do complain, no one pays attention to them. They can not just get up and leave without punishment, and many simply endure the offensive behavior of, not just their teachers but in many cases other students as well.

My daughter used to come home from one of her classes incensed. Not because there were those who disagreed with her, but because they when they disagreed they attacked and when they attacked they made it personal. Even if I had more in common with the left, I would still not join them because they can never argue an issue from a position of logic. Everything with them is argued from emotions, where feelings are cited as gospel and one of the most cherished tenants of that gospel is, that one should never confuse the issue with facts. If you don't agree with them you are evil, bad, stupid or worse and if you should join them in name calling, they, with superiority assure everyone that you started it.

I have said many times on this blog "by their fruits shall ye know them" and I truly believe it. How people act and what they do tells me more about them then what they say. One of the things I have "taught" my children and I hope they will teach my posterity is "Talk is Cheap." Pay attention to peoples actions as well their rhetoric. It is harder to be taken in that way.

Oscars

Last night before retiring to my bed, "to sleep, perchance to dream" I stumbled upon a very interesting web sight called family media guide. I took a fascinating tour of some of my favorite movies and was somewhat astonished by their ratings.

I must confess to you that I do not see R- rated movies. I don't care why they're rated R, I don't care who stars in them, I really don't care how socially relevant they are, and I especially don't care how many critics rate them the best of all time. When I was younger I did see some R rated pictures and with out exception I left the theater feeling manipulated and insulted by the use of gratuitous sex and violence. I don't need to see a naked female body- that picture greets me every time I get out of the shower - there is no mystery there, for me. I have been married for over 25 years and have two sons so the male anatomy is real familiar to me too. As far as mattress dancing goes I've been there, done that and don't want to watch two people pretend to do something that is inherently very private. Violence for violence sake is just stupid and moronic. Except of course in the case of Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner cartoons and then it's just funny (cartoons= not real, fiction, make believe, some people have a hard time with this concept).

Is there a point to this post? Yes actually there are two. I was surprised to find that on the family media guide site some of my favorite G rated movies contained and advisory for violence ie. Sleeping Beauty -Disney
"Violence Content Overview:
Electrocution injury -- crying out in pain. Blunt force injury -- no visible injury. Petrification -- no visible injury. Impalement injury -- blood on person, little blood, object protruding, and screaming in pain. Impalement with death resulting. Physical threat of sharp object, blunt force, bite, fire related, electrocution, and impalement injuries. Destruction by fire. Illegal Imprisonment."
And a less stringent advisory for sexual content
"Sexual Content Overview:
Couple of affectionate kisses.
Sexual Examples in context:
Man kisses woman on the lips."

Now I'm the first one to say that children need protection from Hollywood and as parents we need to be vigilant concerning what they are exposed to. This years crop of Oscar nominated films is a prime example and has absolutely nothing to recommend itself. Anne Couler has a devistatingly funny article on this years list of losers. There is not a virtuous, lovely or praise worthy thing about any of the nominations. They are foul, filthy, deviant stories that should line the bottom of bird cages not be held up as icons.

That said, there is something to be concerned about on the opposite spectrum. If we begin to categorize every kiss or hug, every push or shove as inappropriate we will sentence our children to a life of guilt and loneliness. People kiss every day, sometimes with passion, sometimes not. They shove each other, mostly in play but sometimes not. Since when is a push violence. Get those policepersons out on the playground right now and round up those little preschool bullies who push their friends.

Do I think violence against another should be tolerated, absolutely not. Do I think some have gone way over the top to define what constitutes violence, absolutely. If you drive like a jerk and cause an accident and I get out of my car and tell you you're a inconsiderate jerk that is not violence- if I punch you in the nose, that's violence. Do I think we should all be polite, considerate, and helpful? I do, however I also know that there is not a perfect person on this earth and all of us make mistakes, have bad days and are sometimes terribly stupid.

I wish COMMON SENSE weren't headed for extinction. Maybe it's just me that should be extinct, or preserved in amber. I look good in gold.

Platypii

I have given the matter of platypii much thought over the years. First of all because I think it shows that God has a sense of humor. I imagine he has gotten a great deal of enjoyment over the years just listening to people try to come up with ways to explain how this animal has come about. If Darwin had landed on Australia first the theory of evolution may never have come to be. He might have spent the rest of his life trying to figure out how the platipii fit into the evolution picture.

Another idea that I have postulated is as follows:
Suppose God was acting as the general contractor for the earth. He had other workers (angels for example) doing the actual physical labor of creation. After everything (except man) had been created an angel comes to him and says, "Sir I have this bag of animal parts left over. What do you want me to do with them?" God says, " Let me have a look." Hmmm I don't know... See what you can come up with. I'll leave it up to you.

That would explain the webbed feet, bill, fur, mammary glands and other wonders of the platypii, wouldn't it? It works for me.

Madness and misery in the Big Easy

Yes, it's that time of year. Time to again showcase the strange, the unwholesome, the deranged, and the deviant. No, it's not sweeps month on television. It's Mardi Gras.

Unbelievably to most of us, people are flocking to New Orleans to celebrate the beginning of Lent. This is a time when most Christians are supposed to take a good hard look at their lives and make some serious decisions about how to improve themselves. Think of it as a 40+day New Years Resolution. Many give up some kind of food or entertainment, some even give up things they enjoy. My mother used to give up chocolate, and fighting with her mother - who lived next door. Guess which one was harder to do?

This year one would have thought that the Big Easy would have given up it's excesses, maybe tried to tone down it's depravity. What am I thinking, there is no time better time, than when people are suffering, to engage in a great debauch.

To those Christians out there engaging in the cabal of depravity I have only one question. The next time you're in trouble, need divine help or guidance, who you gonna call? If I were working at the celestial switchboard, I'd put you on hold in favor of those who work tirelessly to assist others who have lost everything.

Lest you think I'm the only party pooper, toddle on over to BBC and see a first hand account of the "fun", from Matt Frei who writes for the BBC. This is just a taste of what he experienced from the safety of his hotel balcony
"....and I am watching a man dressed as a giant phallus screaming obscenities at a woman disguised as Sponge Bob Square Pants."
"She has just opened her yellow box blouse to reveal her bare breasts. An octogenarian Flash Gordon is too drunk to notice as the row between the penis and Sponge Bob reaches fever pitch and a bored policeman, leaning against his car nearby, begins to pay attention."

Later in his piece there is Frei's devestating interview with one of Katrinas many victims.
"Surveying the damage is one of the most popular tourist attractions today - $35 (£20) per person for a two-hour trip through hell."

Hey, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.... Gee I wish people would read the rest of that chapter. Things don't turn out well for that crowd.