baldilocks

Memorials (Links Continuously Added)

It’s a beautiful, clear day, one typical of Southern California in late spring. The smell of BBQ wafts everywhere one goes. However, as I did a two-mile walk around my neighborhood, I counted only four American flags flying in front of individual houses—and that counts mine and that of my neighbor. More happily—and, in some cases, unfortunately--many others remember what this day is really about.

Dennis Prager memorialized the elite on his radio show today. Not the elite who consider themselves the betters of those of us who didn’t attend an Ivy League school or who may not have a bachelor’s degree at all, but the other elite: those who loved their country so much that they were willing to leave their families and sacrifice their lives for freedom.

California Conservative has re-tooled his site into one called ‘Why We Fight’ featuring the stories of contemporary service members.

Project Hero: Q and O has a great running series featuring the heroes of the Global War on Terror, including one that I had known little about, Sgt Leigh Ann Hester, the first female Silver Star winner since World War II. Strange, she looks so harmless. :-)

What’s a Memorial Day without the Fred Phelps vehicle, the Westboro “Baptist Church?” In their perversion of both Christianity and patriotism, some of their number clashed verbally with members of Free Republic. The location? Some 300 feet from the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. Oddly enough, there are no reports of the slanderers of God protesting near the Vietnam War Memorial or the Lincoln Memorial today.

Search engines Dogpile and Ask.com know which side their bread is buttered on.

Google, not so much.

Are there any more questions about what time it is with the great Google?

Christopher Hitchens:

This Memorial Day, one might think particularly of those of our fallen who also guarded polling-places, opened schools and clinics, and excavated mass graves. They represent the highest form of the citizen, and every man and woman among them was a volunteer. This plain statement requires no further rhetoric.

No it doesn't.

My thanks to all who have served.

MORE:

Iowahawk
Amy Alkon
Jared Keller
Citizen Smash
Dean's World: A YouTube triple-Kleenex tribute.
Capital Times editorial:

[O]n Memorial Day, we pause from the debate to remember those whose lives have been lost, not merely to the fool's mission of the contemporary moment but to all the battles noble and ignoble that have claimed the sons and daughters of this and every land.

There's always one who cannot resist taking a "shot."

Flopping Aces has some excellent videos
Patrick Martin
'Dust in the Wind': the New York Times, of course.

(Thanks to Gut Rumbles , Pajamas Media , Instapundit, Cathy Seipp and to reader Tully)

MacBeth Update

Some of my readers apparently don't know that Jessie MacBeth has been further outed. Ah, the power of prayer.

It turns out that I was wrong (not the first time, won’t be the last) about MacBeth—sort of. He probably washed out of Army Basic Training (that’s flunked for those who don’t know the lingo), was admitted to an Army hospital and was separated--more like divorced--from the Army. The time from his arrival at Fort Benning for Basic Training to the day he left the Army lasted a little over a month. McQ and many others have the story and the evidence: a badly forged DD Form 214. As with nearly everything else in the military, paperwork is strictly regimented and/or formatted. I guess MacBeth didn’t get around to learning about that during his short brush with the Army, nor did he have time to learn how illegal altering a DD Form 214 is (though, judging from his civilian criminal record, I doubt that it would have mattered).

BTW, if you know one of Fort Benning’s drill sergeants, Blackfive thinks you should buy him/her an adult beverage of choice for a job well done.

MacBeth: For One Who Cries Out Loud

In the previous post regarding “Army Ranger/Special Forces” Jessie MacBeth, Casey submits this, as if it matters:

Oh, for crying out loud! When will people learn how to read!? I'm tired of entering the same blasted comment on every excitable blog on the planet.

If you to back and read the original post from JustCitizens, you'll notice that the Army rep say ONLY that MacBeth has no record of having served in the Rangers or Special Forces. What he did NOT say is that MacBeth had no record of service of any kind.

Who here does not understand this? I'm not saying this proves MacB was in the service; I'm just saying too many people are distorting the facts as stated.

Casey, you are correct in your discernment that I did not read the Just Citizens post closely enough to discover that the Army representative who responded did not disclose whether one Jessie MacBeth served in the Army in any capacity. I thank you for pointing out my error via your most-polite correction.

Does Mr. MacBeth have a military record that is less impressive than the one he made up? Maybe, and that’s no sin. I have a less-than impressive service record as well. Though I did achieve many things in my career as a USAF/USAFR member, I did not reach the rank which I should have from the length of my service (some due to supervisor inaction; some to personal failings). As a matter of fact, I bailed out because I wasn’t willing to do what I had to do to get promoted. I had done my time--from the age of nineteen--and wanted to see what this other world was like.

Did Jessie MacBeth have these same inklings? Maybe. Maybe he didn’t like his Army service as a cook (handy people), as an admin troop (very handy people), as a logistics sort (even more handy people) or as an infantryman (the ultimate in handy people).*

Maybe he did his Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine/Coast Guard tour in one of these fields or another uncelebrated field and separated with a great deal of disillusionment. Maybe he wanted to change the past.

Well, Jessie can join the flockin' club. However, he needs to be reminded that his wishes to change the life before only make his future even worse—especially in the information age. His parents changed his name when he was too young to have a say. Perhaps they were trying to hide something for some unknown reason and Jessie is only carrying on in the manner of his upbringing. But check this out: Jessie is an adult and his sins are now his own. It’s up to him to make a break with that heritage and stand on his own two feet and be up-front about his wrong-doings and carry on from there. And Jessie needs no one like Casey to hinder his entrance into the adult world of lessening his resposiblity for his shortcomings--better yet, Jessie's sins.

By the way, Casey, there’s still no proof that young Mr. MacBeth ever served in the United States Army; just so we know that you’re reading correctly. Anyone can look at a photo of an Army Ranger, walk into an Army Surplus store, make purchases and still be straight-up ignorant of how important detail is to all military members—which is a manifest and undeniable symptom of never having been in any US military service. Just sayin’.

*The reason that I mention these military career fields is due the fact that those who occupy them are considered low on the totem poll. But here’s something that many of us other service members often forget: without a great deal of smart, creative, competent and dedicated folks in these areas, the Greatest Military in the World would have fallen by the wayside long ago. True dat.

Supply folks, cooks, admin types and grunts: at least one of your comrades has made my service better via excellence in their professional capacities. So I know your invaluable worth and I salute you and what you do.

"Gentleman" Macbeth

I hate it when I miss out on a good blogswarm, especially when it involves someone who is pretending to be in the military and alleges to be speaking from "experience."

At YouTube, there’s a video of a self-described Army Ranger Jessie Macbeth. Macbeth outlines the various war crimes in which he and his “battle buddies” :::cringe::: participated. Leaving aside the fact that he is essentially confessing to be a criminal, his military portrait sits as backdrop against the doubtful saga which he pours out. This portrait alone makes suspect everything he says in video.

Compare this photo to that of a bona fide Army Ranger. Pat Tillman

Almost everything is wrong in the former portrait—from the position of the flag right down to the t-shirt which Macbeth is wearing. (Only Air Force members wear black t-shirts under their BDUs.) No service member would be allowed to sit for an official military photo in such an un-military state.

In a way, Macbeth's appearance in the photo is one of most insulting issues of his whole spiel. A commenter to one of the linked posts above mentioned how seriously attention to detail is taken all services with respect to appearance in uniform. Simply, it has been drilled into all of our heads via the many weeks of US Military Basic and Technical training: position of headgear, proper positioning of rank, name and service tags, ensignia, cut of facial hair (on men), cut of head hair (female hair isn't supposed to be too "masculine" looking, which, in practice, usually means that the female under the short hair shouldn't be too masculine looking.)

And because of that, any person who knows what's up can spot an impostor in a half a second. It's too bad that many anti-warriors cannot argue their case without lying and/or putting forth this mockery of authentic military service. Urinating on Pat Tillman's grave would be more honest (and far more brave).

*****

I wrote this post last night, only to find out today that Macbeth has no Army service record of any kind. What do you want to bet that Macbeth has some other kind of record?

UPDATE: I would have won that bet.

UPDATE: Please, God, answer Greyhawk's prayer...in the affirmative.

Immigration: Spelling Things Out

God bless the new American, 43-year-old Master Gunnery Sgt. Guadalupe Denogean (USMC) who immigrated to the United States from Mexico with his parents when he was but six. In today’s speech on illegal immigration solutions, President Bush correctly held him up as an example of the type of immigrant who loves his adopted country so much that he was willing to risk life and limb to defend it, as he has for the past twenty-six years. However, a certain question needs to be asked.

Was Gunny Denogean an illegal immigrant? In every write-up on the gentleman’s bravery and injuries from serving in Iraq, no mention is made of the status of his family when they made the journey from the Old Country to the New. I’m inclined to doubt that the military is accepting immigrants who arrived illegally, however.

Assuming that the good Marine’s family came here legally, it is dishonest for the president to hold him up as an example of the subject at hand. Few persons who want concrete and meaningful solutions to the illegal immigration problem begrudge the actions of legal immigrants—those who wait their turn for citizenship or step to the front of the line by serving in the manner that the gunny has. (And since he waited roughly thirty-two years for his citizenship, one could hardly say that the gunny stepped out of line. In my opinion, the end of his first enlistment should have put him in front of the line to take his test.)

When the president mentioned this man, I turned the broadcast off in anger. How dare he suggest that people who sneaked (his word) into this country are the same as those who followed the rules? And how dare he (and others) imply that those of us who want to stem the tide of illegal immigration of all ethnicities and nationalities are against embracing presumably legal immigrants and good persons like Gunny Denogean?

It’s as if certain segments of the population think that their countrymen who oppose illegal immigration are too stupid to know the difference.

It’s worse than that. Some charming elitists think that the immigration of illegals is just-deserts for low-skilled Americans; that Americans who don’t get their education deserve to be walking the streets unemployed; that they deserve to be displaced by those who broke the law to come here and are forced willing to accept lower-than minimum wage. (I hope that such people remember their words the next time they’re complaining about the welfare state or some beggar asks them for a quarter or the next time they’re mugged.) One wonders what such people think should be done with all of these low-skilled Americans who can’t get jobs due to the illegal immigration factor. Perhaps they should all be forced to trade citizenship with the illegals. But then, the new Americans would rightly demand minimum wage and the problem would start itself all over again. (This from an economics blog, no less.)

Back to Gunny Denogean: if he was brought here illegally, he should have never been allowed to join the military. This in no way, lessens his service and if he and others, possibly being illegal immigrants, were allowed in—whether they have served one or thirty years—they should be allowed to stay in and given American citizenship, if desired, or legal status. However, if it is true that illegal immigrants are being allowed to join the military, it’s the government’s problem and not theirs and it needs to stop right now.

The way advocates of illegal immigration attempt to twist the conversation into being about all immigration speaks to an ugly facet of political discussion. One takes something that’s not being said and argues against that something. We all know what that method of argument is called. An even uglier facet of this type of argument attempts to attribute the worst of human failings to illegal immigration opponents: that of racism.

I could go on about my (partially, obviously) Mexican-descended cousins at this point, but I’d rather talk about my biological father. He certainly isn’t the best father in the world and he has some whack (IMO) political ideas, but I have some respect for him for one particular reason (aside from the fact that I am biblically-commanded to honor him).

From Kenya, he immigrated to the US to go to college (back when immigrants on student-visas actually attended school for honorably reasons) and met my mother there. After thier marriage, my birth and their divorce, he graduated and went back home to help better the country of his birth. (One might say that he wasn’t that successful, but that’s beside the point.)

Why can’t Mexicans, with so close an example at hand, do the same? A better question: why aren’t they willing to try?

Some fringe parts of the illegal immigration advocacy want the territories (now American states) appropriated as a result of the nineteenth-century Mexican-American War returned to Mexican possession. So let me get this straight: these people want to turn the place to which they fled seeking to receive jobs, education and real upward-mobility for their American-born children into the place from which they were oppressed so forcefully that they had to flee? Yeah, that makes sense. I suppose that this is easier than staying home and attempting to make meaningful change in one’s own country. (One might want to ask veterans of the Civil Rights Movement how “easy” such is, but it was done.)

I guess I’m simply baffled by the “logic” put forth by those who don’t want to do anything meaningful about illegal immigration, including that of President Bush.

Excuse me while I go take an aspirin.

(Thanks to Red State)

Aging Well

The left photo is of my mom, circa 1955--when she was thirteen--and the other was taken by me in 2003.

Though I am the spirit and image of my father, here's hoping that I got a little of those non-aging genes. Happy Mother's Day, Mom! And don't let those wild grandchildren of yours do what your wild daughters failed to do--wear you down. Love ya.

Always Be Nice on the Phone

Especially when you don't have a leg to stand on.

As many of you know, I have a position at Pajamas Media as the Blogger Relations Representative, so, occasionally I have a chance to answer the phone in their offices. Such was the case today when John Aravosis of AMERICAblog saw fit to give Pajamas Media a call asking the editors to stop linking to his self-described lefty blog (and other blogs with a similar political bent) in a certain manner: by excerpting a particularly provocative and/or well-written portion of a post and attributing it to the author at the top. Pajamas Media has been doing this since its inception, giving its signed bloggers priority but not limiting itself to them or even to a set point of view. The fact that PJM would link to Aravosis (post since removed)--who is somewhere left of the Daily Kos--should make that obvious.

Anyway, when Aravosis explained his problem to me, I said that we would never link to anything of his again and that if he would give me a list of the other blogs who had this same problem, that I would also put them on our no-post list. That wasn't good enough for Aravosis, however. After he ...um...unhelpfully informed me that he was a lawyer, he asked to talk to someone who presumably had more power in the formidable Reich Wing edifice that is Pajamas Media than does your humble (hah!) servant. Since no one else was available, I tried to get Aravosis' number and email, but he was more in a mood to demand things rather than to facilitate reasonable "communication." For instance, though he had spoken in virtually one long run-on sentence during the entire conversation, he demanded that I "stop talking for a minute" so that he could continue the run-on. I complied by hanging up on him. That probably won't go down in the annals of great blogger relations techniques, but it was done in lieu of me going all South-Central LA on the good counselor.

I happen to know that Roger and Charles are trying to feature a variety of opinion at PJM, regardless of whether they agree with it or not. So, basically, when Aravosis complains about the PJM link, he's complaining that Pajamas Media is giving his opinion a fair shake.

No good deed and all that.

Under the less-infuriating and more-entertaining heading fall some of the comments to Aravosis' lament of PJM's "sleazy and illegal" :::snort::: link to his post.

Q. How does the right wing spell "research"?
A. P-l-a-g-i-a-r-i-s-m.

Yes, sure. When you excerpt someone's post and give them credit for their words, it's "plagiarism."

They did this to a whole bunch of other people, including Matt Yglesias, Steve Gilliard, Jeralyn at TalkLeft, me, people from TNR and Slate, and a film critic from Die Welt (and that's just in the last few days.) I wrote yesterday asking them to change it; no response yet.

Sure, PJM is out to "do something" to leftist bloggers--not to mention poor, defenseless German publications--by linking to them.

And this one needs no commentary:

How are they getting the content? Is it your RSS feed?

The moral of the story is: some folks will look for reasons to threaten lawsuits--no matter how ridiculous the grounds--especially when they believe they are being made to look bad in front of their adoring public. The second moral of the story is: don't try to bum-rush someone over the phone.

By the way, John, don't call me anymore.

UPDATE: Who says that the Left and the Right can't get along? Though they have opposing view points on Pajamas Media's linking methods, Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings and Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left have handled the situation in a very classy manner. Thanks, ladies.

Crazy House

Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) may have had a legitimate point even though she probably didn’t realize it until this week.

When McKinney was caught assaulting a Capitol Hill police officer and subsequently played the race card, she was widely denounced and an assault case against her sits--rightly--before a Grand Jury. But what of her colleague, Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI)? Kennedy was recently caught drunk-/high-/being-a-nutjob-/combination-driving by members of that same Capitol Hill police force and merely driven home without having to submit to a sobriety test. And this isn’t Kennedy’s first known display of lawlessness/thuggery. Among several other transgressions, in 2000 he was caught on tape shoving a female, black LAX security guard some thirty years his senior after the lady in question told him that he couldn’t bring an over-sized bag as carry-on luggage. (Good thing for him that this happened before 9/11.) Why was there was no Grand Jury convened for such a boor back then? Is it because he’s white? Or is it because he’s a Kennedy?

An even better question: what are these obviously ill people doing in the House of Representatives?

And a mo' betta question: why doesn't someone tell Kennedy to get rid of that John F. Kennedy (Sr.) hairstyle?

Fund Raising

To keep the Protein Wisdom flowing, go hit Jeff’s tip jar. For an example of why you should do so (aside from the funnies), see this post.

Goss Out--Hayden In?

By now, anyone who has been paying attention to the news knows that CIA Director (DCI) Porter Goss resigned his post on Friday. Speculation for the reason for this abrupt turn of events widely vary—from it being part of new White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten’s shake-up to Goss being unhappy with the subordinate role forced upon him by the existence of the Director of National Intelligence position. (The cabinet-level position, designed to coordinate the various military and civilian intelligence agencies under one umbrella, was created last year and is occupied by John Negroponte. As a result of this new layer of management between the executive branch of government and the CIA, the DCI no longer has direct access to the president.)

And, just to add a little prurience to the conjecture, it has been suggested that Goss had some involvement in the scandal surrounding disgraced former Representative Duke Cunningham (R-CA).

Whatever the reason(s) may be for Goss to cut short his thirteen nineteen-month stint as DCI, word on the street has it that Air Force General Michael Hayden is the Bush Administration’s candidate to take his place. At present, General Hayden is Negroponte’s deputy and, more intriguingly, served as the NSA director from 1999 to 2005. That means that he was the architect for the formerly Top Secret NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program--more disingenuously know as the “domestic wiretap” program—whose cover was so infamously blown by an insider leak to the New York Times.

If the rumors are correct, two issues come to mind: the fact that General Hayden is still on active duty and his top-down knowledge of the specified NSA program.

Were General Hayden to become the DCI, it wouldn’t be unprecedented. As a matter of fact, the very first DCI was an active duty military member, Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter. However, I am inclined to agree with Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) that having a DCI who is under the authority of the Defense Department (and, therefore, the embattled Donald Rumsfeld) would create the appearance of yet another layer of management between the DCI and the president. And with all Hades breaking loose in (and between) both departments, something that this country does not need is an escalation of a turf war to go along with the actual war--especially since those departments are in charge of conducting the latter. (Hoekstra is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.)

HOEKSTRA: Well, we'll have to wait until the president makes an announcement. Obviously, that's his call. I've got a lot of respect for Mike Hayden. I think he's done a very good job in the positions that he's had. He's got a distinguished career.

Bottom line, I do believe he's the wrong person, the wrong place, at the wrong time. We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time.

[CHRIS] WALLACE [of Fox News]: Well, explain that, because there have been, I think, a half dozen military people leading the CIA over the years, I guess most recently, back in the Carter administration, Admiral Stansfield Turner. So this is not unprecedented.

HOEKSTRA: It's not unprecedented. It's a bad time. You know, there's been a tremendous amount of tension between the CIA, Department of Defense, the intelligence community over the last 18 months. It was highlighted in the fact that when we did intelligence reform, the biggest opponent to doing intelligence reform was the Department of Defense.

There's ongoing tensions between this premiere civilian intelligence agency and DOD as we speak. And I think putting a general in charge — regardless of how good Mike is, putting a general in charge is going to send the wrong signal through the agency here in Washington, but also to our agents in the field around the world.

WALLACE: Well, is it your feeling that as an active general that General Hayden would be under the sway of Don Rumsfeld?

HOEKSTRA: I think that clearly will be the perception in the CIA both, again, here in Washington and at the CIA. I don't think you can underestimate the difficulty in rebuilding, reshaping and transforming the Central Intelligence Agency. This is the debate we don't need at this time.

Of course, such a nomination could have its uses. Prospective Senate confirmation hearings for General Hayden will no doubt be quite interesting, not to mention devastating—though not necessarily for the general, the NSA or President Bush. Such a public outing of information on a program which was presumably effective in combating terrorists and had its effectiveness taken away by “the public’s right to know” would serve to strip away the high and mighty hand-wringing which has dogged the program ever since someone in the NSA forgot the contract he/she signed to keep classified information from persons who do not have the proper security clearance nor the ‘need-to-know.’

A White House which has something to hide about the Terrorist Surveillance Program wouldn’t nominate a person so intimately knowledgeable of it to go before a champing-at-the-bit Senate. If General Hayden has been cleared to tell all that he knows of the program, it’s safe to assume that he—along with the president—is holding all of the high cards.

To attribute even more guile to the reasoning behind a Hayden nomination, getting the information out on the Terrorist Surveillance Program could be the sole reason for nominating him. Think of it. The nomination happens, all and sundry are in an uproar over the prospect of an active-duty general as DCI for the above-stated reasons. So everyone is tuned in as General Hayden is earnestly grilled questioned about the “illegal” program. He answers every question, presents newly declassified documents pertaining to the program along with lists of members of both houses of Congress who had been briefed about the particulars of the program and who said nothing about it until the New York Times rendered the program useless. Then he withdraws his nomination.

Last week Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) threatened to support a bill to defund the program if a senate-wide briefing isn’t given by the executive branch. Could it be that the president is “capitulating” to the senator’s threats? The senator should be careful what he asks for.

We’ll see whether he (and his fellows) get it.

(Thanks to Think Progress)

Day of Images

Under the auspices of Pajamas Media, Roger Simon and I went out to one of the LA versions of “A Day without Immigrants” and took documentary-maker Andrew Marcus and cameraman/editor Jeff Koeglar along with us.

One of the fun things about being among a multitude with a video camera is that many folks are willing to talk to you—whether they have their thoughts and concepts in order or not. Andrew and Jeff caught much of this which will be featured here directly. (In the meantime, go check out our other “A Day without Immigrants” coverage.)

Go below the fold to see the some of the still images captured.

Open Letter to Commenter Bill O...

Yes, dear "Bill," I've seen your comments and I'd love to let them through moderation, such as they are. However, you have yet to send me an email apologizing for perpetrating the dead and stinky Bush-AWOL theme here. You know what to do--send me a note with the words 'I apoligize' both in the subject and the body of the email. You don't have to grovel or anything. Make sure, however, that you don't ruin it by adding any of your usually snideness. The two words will be sufficient. One more thing--don't do what I asked you not to do. Ever.

After that, you can go on being...yourself...in my comments section and I will take you on, if I feel like it. (I'm sure that many of my other commenters will do the same.) However, privately, I will have a considerably higher opinion of you than I do right now, regardless of any future disagreements.

So what do you say? End this and let my small audience enjoy the, um, beauty of Bill O... commentary.

Nothin' to it but to do it.

Day of Unintended Consequences

Every time some individual or groups of individuals takes a word or concept and changes the meaning or frame of context to those, I am astonished anew. So it is with many aspects of this day.

Today—dubbed ‘A Day Without an Immigrant’--demonstrators will exercise their American right (hah!) to march in support of immigration—that’s all immigrants to America, whether they waited in line in the Kenyan lottery system or whether they clandestinely crossed the southern border at will. This will be the second nation-wide demonstration in as many months. And its organizers and supporters will continue to call their advocacy an ‘immigrant’ advocacy, leaving out that all-important, but left-unsaid adjective: illegal.

The significance of the date designated for the demonstrations goes likewise unsaid. I’m willing to bet that a good portion of the participants have no idea of the historical import of May 1st. However, I am equally sure that May Day’s meaning isn’t lost on at least one of the principal organizers of these demonstrations. (In fairness May Day has been co-opted by several warring ideological groups.)

All of this obfuscation is an attempt to hide the real truth: tomorrow’s marches are for amnesty for illegal immigrants. The organizers could care less about the legal ones because, by definition, they don’t need any amnesty. And, because the majority of illegal are from Mexico, many of the framers of this cause—including President Bush--have attempted to turn opposition to amnesty for illegals into a racism issue.

Some years back, I took an algebra class with a guy named Carlos. Carlos was in his thirties and was a Mexican immigrant who had left his country of origin in his teens to seek out a better life in this country. Carlos was an impressive guy who had done back-breaking work in his twenties and had decided that it was time to get an education and make some real money. His English was grammatically perfect, though hampered by a thick accent which sometimes caused difficulties in understanding (something that is, of course, not unique to Spanish-speakers). On those rare occasions when someone spoke to him using an English word he didn’t understand, he’d ask what the word meant, pull out a small note pad, ask how to spell it and write it down to look up later.

Carlos was also a legal immigrant.

I bring this acquaintance into the mix on the subject of immigration because I don’t think that his is an isolated case. Having grown up in LA, I know of countless Mexican (and other) legal immigrants like Carlos who simply want to better themselves and make better lives for their families through work and education.

That is, of course, what most illegal immigrants want to do, as well. The illegality of these immigrants, however, has many rippling effects and those effects are about more than the not inconsiderable fact that such people are breaking US law and that the many legal agencies of this country either refuse to or aren’t granted the resources to enforce those laws.

By coming here without permission to do so, such immigrants are a drain on this country. (For the purposes of this post, the phrases ‘American’--in the context of both employers and workers--and ‘this country’ are meant to include people like Carlos and other legal immigrants from his country and other countries, in addition to American citizens.) But, in addition, illegal immigrants, specifically those from Mexico (because they make up the majority) are being used—by both their own country of origin and by American employers.

Mexican President Vicente Fox has made it pretty clear that he wants to rid himself of his “peasant” countrymen—his mostly Indian-descended and poorer citizens. And our politicians—most chiefly Democrats, but, even worse, the leading Republicans headed by our Republican president—seem only too happy to take President Fox’s responsibility off of his hands and ignore his very un-Democratic bigotry.

Though President Bush and Senator John McCain make factually true statements like “illegal do jobs which Americans aren’t willing to do,” such statements are in want of their context: illegal immigrants will take jobs at a much lower wage than Americans and legal immigrants are willing to accept. Additionally, employers won’t offer less than minimum wage to those who are unafraid to call the law on them.

So what are the implications of this state of affairs? It means that a given company can get the same amount of work or more for less money by hiring illegal immigrants instead of the equally-skilled American. Additionally, employers don’t have to shell out those all important benefits—medical, dental, FML, etc. They don’t even have to allow for vacation days; just dock the person’s pay and give some similarly-circumstanced person a temporary or permanent position. It’s a simple equation: get more for less without consequence. Ted Hayes called this odious form of economics ‘a new type of slavery.’

What are some of the other implications? Equally-skilled American persons will have a hard time finding honest work and will turn to other means of support. Think of that the next time you see a group of teenaged boys wandering by aimlessly and menacingly. (Welfare plays into this particular part of the equation also, but I want to finish this post today.)

Public services (read: free services) are forced to scale down or close due to higher output and lower-to-non-existent input (read: taxes). You think guys who are on the lookout for La Migra are paying taxes? (Think of that the next time a county hospital closes due to lack of funds.)

Within my earshot, someone said that it would be easier for Mexico—with its demonstrably hard-working population--to reform itself were it not for the fact that it exists right next to the most prosperous nation in the world. With the border so close, open and inviting, however, who could blame a poor Mexican for fleeing instead of standing up to Mr. Fox’s notoriously brutal and crooked police and military?

Ironically, since such people know that our police agencies and military won’t brutally repress peaceful demonstration, they feel relatively safe in demanding more than what taxpayers have already given in the first place with a minimum amount of grumbling.

All things considered, I don’t think that the organizers and participants have calculated the response they are generating by using International Worker’s Day for their demonstrations, by claiming to speak for all immigrants, by vowing to stay away from work and school and by vowing to boycott “all things Gringo.” (I would guess that this would not include the public utilities, the gas stations, cell phone services—well, you get the idea.)

I hope and fear that the grumbling will grow louder after tomorrow.

(Thanks to Independent Conservative and to Pajamas Media)