mycatharsis.com

That’s an awful lot for a border wall that will only cover 370 miles of a 1900 mile border.  And Republicans rampage across yet another abandoned constitutional principle, this time eminent domain.  A border wall that stops at the property lines of the wealthy and politically connected.

Just 69 miles north, Daniel Garza, 76, faces a similar situation with a neighbor who has political connections that reach the White House. In the small town of Granjeno, population 313, Garza points to a field across the street where a segment of the proposed 18-foot high border wall would abruptly end after passing through his brick home and a small, yellow house he gave his son. “All that land over there is owned by the Hunts,” he says, waving a hand toward the horizon. “The wall doesn’t go there.”

In this area everyone knows the Hunts. Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt and his relatives are one of the wealthiest oil and gas dynasties in the world. Hunt, a close friend of President George W. Bush, recently donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush’s presidential library. In 2001, Bush made him a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where Hunt received a security clearance and access to classified intelligence.

Nice.  Again, this wall is apparently critical enough that it must destroy the property of hundreds of normal citizens, but not important enough to interrupt the lives of major Bush donors.  Do they really think we’re this stupid, that no one will notice the hypocrisy? I don’t think they think that, I think they just don’t care.  Whether it’s their refusal to submit to checks on their power from the legislative branch while insisting all citizens must submit totally to checks on their actions by their government, pardoning their own criminals while cracking down on everyone else’s, or building a border fence that stubbornly refuses to inconvenience their wealthy friends, this administration just does not care about any appearance of impropriety in their actions.  They really believe they are above the law.

“I don’t see why they have to destroy my home, my land, and let the wall end there.” He points across the street to Hunt’s land. “How will that stop illegal immigration?”

It won’t.  But then again, stopping illegal immigration was never the point of the wall.  The whole point of the wall is simply to placate Bush’s tinfoil-hat base that he is ‘doing something’ about illegal immigration.  He’s known all along that a wall does nothing.  Garza’s home life and property is simply one of the eggs that must be broken to placate a bunch of angry nativists who can’t understand anything beyond “Big wall hard to climb over. Anything else amnesty”.  Extremely easy to walk around though, especially when it only covers a fraction of the border.  Or fly over.  Or swim around.  Or crawl under.  And 50 billion dollars to essentially build an immigration detour is considered chump change only by this administration.

So much for his supposed passion for sticking to his ‘principles’, no matter the popularity, Huckabee now supports deporting all illegals. As with all the GOP candidates, except possibly McCain, he supports this despite the complete lack of evidence that mass deportations will help us at all, and will only accomplish the breakup of families, cause thousands to lose their jobs, and thrust thousands, or even millions, of children into harder circumstances. Not to mention the costs, financially and constitutionally of rounding up 12 million people and shipping them out of the country. On the plus side, at least this idea itself is a complete fantasy. Facts right now seem to have no place within the GOP’s campaign.

So much for him being ‘a conservative, but not angry about it.’ Sorta depressing how quickly the GOP candidates will ‘go angry’ when they think there’s votes to be had. It’s so ludicrous that this Onion News piece has quite the tinge of truth to it!

Mitt Romney Defends Himself Against Allegations Of Tolerance

Obama’s speech last night was amazing. Inspiring, patriotic, reasonable and hopeful. You know he’s liberal, but you also get the impression that he’s pragmatic and will do what is best for the country, as opposed to what is good for him or the party.  A goosebumps kind of speech.  I sure hope he’s the Dem’s pick, I mean the difference between him and Clinton/Edwards? Wow, just leaps and bounds. I enjoyed watching the returns, but really wasn’t putting much stock in what happened, remembering Tom Harkin got 70 some percent in 1992.  But Obama just about had me believing I was watching history.  He brought to my mind the eloquence of Reagan and Kennedy, a once in a generation kind of candidate.  If he wins New Hampshire, he may successfully take the mantle of inevitability away from Senator Clinton, which would leave her with, politically speaking, nothing that I can think of.

Huckabee’s speech was excellent as well,  on content very close to Obama’s.  His urging not to hate, but to love seemed to me at least somewhat a repudiation of the angry nativism most all the other candidates are so eager to pander to.  I like his views on immigration, taxes, and abortion, but worry about him on the economy, which I think may be THE issue of 08, even if Iraq takes a turn for the worse.  But I like that he’s convinced me that he would try to do the ‘good’ thing as president, which goes a long way when his main competitors will do whatever is best for his own popularity, no matter the expense to others (Romney), seems rather uninterested in running (Thompson) or seems like he would make President Bush look like a beacon of openness and accountability in comparison (Giuliani).

And Ron Paul might be disappointed with 10%, but he did end up at the maximum level of his polling numbers. Double figures in Iowa, for him, really isn’t bad.  I wanna see how he does in Wyoming on Saturday, I think he has a legitimate shot at a top 3 or even higher finish among the GOP there…

Hugh Hewitt mentioned in his column something I’ve been saying for awhile, but not many people seem to be considering.

Maybe illegal immigration doesn’t matter that much after all?

Nope, I really don’t think it does, and I can’t understand why the talking heads  don’t notice it.  The one candidate seen as most soft on immigration won 95% white Iowa.  The one candidate who defined nativism as his pet cause didn’t even make it to Iowa, never rising above 1% in the polls.      Huckabee was the only GOP candidate talking about compassion for illegals, and he was the only candidate to come from nowhere and rise to the top of the pack!  In short, a vocal minority is still a minority ….