Sure, I just poached Joe Biden's line about the least qualified candidate for President other than George Bush from MSNBC's Democratic Debate. Could I pick a winner? Nope. It was not Hillary's night, for sure. While Edwards has been after her for some time, Obama came out with some swings and though nobody hit any home runs off her, she was a bit more dinged up than usual. What may have happened is the aura of invincibility may have been pierced, what that does to the inevitable candidacy is an open question.
I always enjoy Dennis Kucinich, he managed to mention the Constitution about five times, too bad about that inconvenient Second Amendment part of it. Whatever opinion you might have of his politics, at least you know where he stands. If you're a Democrat and the words - not for profit single payer health care - don't speak to you, well... Of course Dennis risks little but he brings to the discourse some of the actual progressive issues.
If I learned anything of note from watching the debate it is that Hillary doesn't like to answer questions she doesn't want to answer and gets a little ticked off when caught out at it. Oh yeah, Dennis did see a UFO...
4 comments:
Republican Ron Paul seems to be big on the constitution too as well as having some border security. Hillary and most of the democrats are in lock step with George on the border invasion. I'll bet Hillary supports the second ammendment only when Dick Cheney is hunting with other republicans. I wish Hillary would get more questions on the mythical "assualt" weapon and illegal aliens.
...[the Dems are] in lock step with George on the border invasion.
But what IS his position? Not sure, but based on his policies he seems to be in favor of continued expansion of the serf/slave labor class of residents in the country who have no political rights, access to most public institutions, and no stake in the general welfare of the country? Behind the pro-La Raza rhetoric, that seems to be the real position of the Republian party as a whole: "why fix a system of exploitation that's making so much money for big agri-business and the service industry." We're on a course to end up like Kuwait where, if you will recall, the disenfranchised foreign workers danced in the streets when the Iraqi tanks came rolling in.
How many people we should allow in is an essential question we should demand an open debate over. Fact is, more workers lowers the market value of work. Period. That's why the Black Death in Europe had the positive effect of bringing feudalism to an end--workers could suddenly bargain for more.
But once we decide on the numbers, we also need to face up to the facts that whoever we aren't sending "back" to whereever they are citizens must be fully integrated and have full access to the American dream. Otherwise we end up with a new type of slavery. You may recall the biggest objection to expansion and continuation of slavery in the U.S. in the 1800s had nothing to do with notions of racial equality but much more to do with working class Americans realizing that keep, exploitable labor (like Bush's so-called "guest workers") hurts them the most. Bottom line: if you're going to live in America you must have a path to full rights and opportunities. Anything less is slavery.
The problem is that by not making a decision on "how many" and backing it up with meaningful policies, we in effect abdicate control of who comes here. But they come here just the same, and the very worst thing we can do to compound our cowardice in policing our borders is to allow a generation of uneducated and unprotected (in terms of civil rights) children to grow up in America without having full rights to use our schools, colleges, hospitals, and social services. Show some balls & lock the border if that's what we want, but if we aren't going to do that, then we shouldn't turn ourselves into a slave society by cutting off opportunity for your new neighbors.
Got it mostly right Zak, the stone balls is what I'm pushing for. Don't forget jail time for employers.
Guess you said "some" balls, not stone balls. Here's antoher twist that I've hammered relentlessly for several years. Our immigration policy is one of constant growth. Population swells. We are asked to mitigate the resulting pressure on the environment by giving up rights. Oregon is the worst with state wide land use planning. The urbanite likes open space and control. Those who already live a country existence are afraid a newly arrived city dweller will move in by them. They push for strict zoning. Those who lived in Oregon all their lives, even farm and ranch back grounds are confined behind a modern reservation system called urban growth boundary ( see The New Nez Perce below)
We should end immgration before we do anymore talking about conservation, land use planning etc.
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