Day: May 15, 2006

The President’s speech tonight was a major disappointment to me. I have posted the full text of his remarks here, but in this post, I’ll simply excerpt a few of the most blatant pieces of bullshit.

But first, before the bad and the ugly, the few pieces of good:

A pledge to involve 6,000 National Guard troops. I’d be much, much happier with regular Army (and controlling our borders would NOT conflict with posse comitatus restrictions in any universe except the ACLU’s warped “reality-based” fantasy).

A pledge to end “catch and release” for illegal aliens. (We’ll see if this is a real pledge as things unfold.)

The Bad?

“…we need to hold employers to account for the workers they hire.” Sounds good? Yeh, but then he goes into a spiel about how haaaaard it is for the poor widdle employers to screen illegals. Bullshit. He goes all around the barn inventing a need for hi-tech biometric IDs. Bullshit. All that’s needed is to plainly and simply jail people who employ illegals and confiscate their businesses. Bob’s your uncle. No more jobs for illegals. (Or damned few.)

Instead, Bush flogs the issue… all around the bush and excuses the vast jobs market in illegals.

Bullshit.

“A tamper-proof card would help us enforce the law and leave employers with no excuse for violating it,” the President said. What he said a few sentences earlier, plainly, and reiterates here elliptically, is that employers now have a ready-made excuse, acceptable to the Administration, for violating the law. Poor widdle co-conspirators with alien invaders!

“… by making it harder for illegal immigrants to find work [with hi-tech, but still fakeable ID cards–ed] in our country, we would discourage people from crossing the border illegally in the first place.

Gee, when simply ENFORCING THE LAWS AS THEY NOW STAND would do the same thing, and would have started emptying our borders of illegals long ago, he wants to shut down jobs for illegals the hard way. He says. Except…

It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border.

But, but I thought he said that enforcing the laws against hiring illegals would shut down their job market? Gee, wouldn’t that dry up their reasons for being here? Doesn’t he even listen to himself? No, because while arguing that a guest worker program is not amnesty (and ignoring what he himself said about drying up the job market for illegals), he describes… an amnesty program. Sure, he said it’s not amnesty, by redefining very narrowly what amnesty is, but what’s the “harsh penalty” he outlines for illegals in his proposed guest worker program? Let’s see… they get to stay and work, they get to apply for citizenship and, oh, he says they have to get to the back of the line in getting their citizenship approved! Wow! While millions of people around the world have to wait in line just to enter the country, these people who cut in line to begin with get to stay! What penalty do they pay? uhm, zippo, zilch, nada, zero-with-the-rim-kicked-off. If they had to LEAVE and THEN REALLY, genuinely, honestly “get in the back of the line” then they’d be paying a small penalty for being line-jumpers.

As it is, the President’s proposal is a lie. No penalties of any substance. They are getting amnesty, no matter what disingenuous label he slaps on it.

The Ugly

The United States is not going to militarize the southern border. Mexico is our neighbor, and our friend. We will continue to work cooperatively to improve security on both sides of the border, to confront common problems like drug trafficking and crime, and to reduce illegal immigration.

“…continue to work cooperatively…” with Mexico? Complete and absolute and utter bullshit. Violation of our borders as an institutionalized policy of the Mexican authorities is an established fact. Anyone who can type in a google search can refute this piece of the President’s bullshit. Unacceptable, Mr. President. Completely unacceptable. Until you can start being truthful about the Mexican authorities’ willful participation in aiding illegal immigration, you have not yet begun to be honest about border security.

*sigh*

The Prsident concluded his remarks with two highly offensive comments:

America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone.

Mr. President, when you engage in flat-out lies, deception and misdirection, YOU are not being reasonable or respectful. You are being insulting. And although I have defended you and your policies in the past, until and unless you apologize for your deceptions on this issue and your insulting remarks, I will no longer consider you within the circle of those to whom I need deal with respectfully.

Consider the damnable deception of your closing argument, sir:

I know many of you listening tonight have a parent or a grandparent who came here from another country with dreams of a better life. You know what freedom meant to them, and you know that America is a more hopeful country because of their hard work and sacrifice. As President, I have had the opportunity to meet people of many backgrounds, and hear what America means to them. On a visit to Bethesda Naval Hospital, Laura and I met a wounded Marine named Guadalupe Denogean. Master Gunnery Sergeant Denogean came to the United States from Mexico when he was a boy. He spent his summers picking crops with his family, and then he volunteered for the United States Marine Corps as soon as he was able…

Thank you, Mr. President, for metaphorically showing us how you really think our country’s flag should be flown:

I too know many immigrants. I too know family who are the progeny of immigrants. Legal immigrants. When you lump them all into the same pot, sir, you create an error of construction. You know what you are doing. You are being deliberately deceptive, conflating arguments for accepting LEGAL immigrants, those who stood their turn in line, learned English, earned citizenship and became productive members of society LEGALLY, with line-jumpers who refuse to assimilate, to learn English and earn citizenship, truly become Americans.

That deliberate blurring of a very real line is disgusting and offensive, and it alone proves, Mr. President, that you know you are betraying the real immigrants, the one who are willing to genuinely pay the price to enter legally and truly become Americans.

Either that or the Bushitler people were right all along and you really are stupid.

Which one is it?

Update: Big Dog nails the speech with trenchant observations including this one:

I have no problem with a guest worker program. I just think the guest workers should be people who are not already here ILLEGALLY. We can get people who did not break the law and let them be guests. A man who breaks into your house would not be treated as a guest so why treat a person who broke into our country as one.

Woof!

And I missed the the “Live Blogging/Drinking Party” at Stop the ACLU, but the comments are certainly worth swinging by for.

Well, you won’t find it in this list.

Early this year, the Book Review’s editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.”

Yeh, well, that’s exactly the wrong kind of people to ask. Why do I say that? Because it is exactly that list of “prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages” who are responsible for the plague of “Suckitudinous Fiction” so well described by Holly Lisle.

It’s fair to say that writing a good story is damned hard to do. Writing something that engages readers and wins them over to the side of the characters and makes these readers care about the outcome of your tale requires constant effort on the writer’s part — brutal questioning of each scene and each line, a tight, sharp focus, and a deep belief in the story that you the writer want to tell.

The writers—and books—on the NYT list fail on most of those points, preferring binstead to write shallow, pretentious, manipulative crap that pointy-headed critics and the like proclaim to be profound and moving because they are themselves shallow pretentious and mani[pulative and have no idea what good storytelling is.

Don’t take my word for it. Check a couple of the books on the list out at your local public library. They’ll be easy to find, cos they’re likely covered with dust. Try to read them. Try your hardest to enjoy reading them.

The more intelligent you are, the harder that task will be, cos most of ’em are really crappy stories with characters it’s easy to dismiss as pretentious and disengaging constructs, reflections of their creators’ mental masturbation.

“Great” literature of the 20th century: the ugly flip side of pop culture crap novels.

Oh, and am I going to tell you what the best American fiction of the last 25 years was? No. You tell me. What work of fiction held you with credible characters, believable plot, well-written descriptive narrative? In short, what was the best-written story you’ve read in the last 25 years? Ignore the Academia Nuts, Mass Media Podpeople and Moonbatteried “critics.” What really grabbed you and held you?

I’d almost go with the mythic legend the Clintoons built up about themselves, except that the whole thing was so pornographic. (And in the end, not even particularly titilating porn, although it did achieve its essential purpose: the further coarsening of the American political and social scene… )

h.t. Chaos Manor Musings for the link to the NYT article, where the reference was listed under “Literary Affirmative Action”—*heh* And I don’t care HOW many thousands of readers Pournelle’s blog has, it’ll ALWAYS be the most under-read blog out there. It should be on everyone’s daily reads.

Self-featured at Mark My Words, Jo’s Cafe, Basil’s Blog, Right Wing Nation and Comittees of Correspondence.

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Today is usually Guard the Borders Blogburst day, but I’m waiting to hear what President Bush has to say this evening in defense of his disingenuously named “guest worker” proposals. His deceptive amnesty position has never sat well with me only in part because it’s a tissue of lies. Principles do matter, even in politics, and the proposal he’s been pushing for some time is the most unprincipled pseudo pragmatism his administration has proposed. As Ann Coulter recently put it, any child could tell you that cutting in line isn’t right. You let folks get away with it and pretty soon, there is no line, just an unruly mob.

And that’s just the start of problems with amnesty disguised as a “guest worker” program. Like we really need to legitimize this attitude:

(And yes, I did flip that Aztlan flag upside down. I would rather like to see the ruling elite of Mexico have to handle their own problems than have them shoved down our throats. Let them deal with their own peoples’ distress… )

More after his speech tonight. Maybe, just maybe there’s a dim chance he’ll amend his position. If he does, so to a satisfactory degree, well and good. If not, he’ll be speaking fightin’ words.

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