For the last 3 days (years? decades?) the overly serious TBogg has been at the top of his game.

Go looky.

I recently discovered a website that has eaten up dozens of hours over the past two days. I wanted to share it with The Street, as I thought others might find it fun and/or useful. I can actually see how one might turn a buck using it, but I’m not ready for that yet. Forgive me if you already know about this.

The site is actually several sites, I think, but seem to be interwoven fairly well. To sign up with one is to already be able to access the others. The main two I use are 43places and 43people.

43places enables you to create or find places you have been or want to visit. You can rate the places, comment on them, invent them even, and also see who else wants to go there, bla bla bla.

43people is essentially the same, only with people. Who have you met? Who do you want to meet?
Describe the meeting. That sort of thing.

Here are my places and people:

Dave’s Peeps
Dave’s Domiciles

As I have only been on there a day and a half, I haven’t seen all the potential uses of it, but I know there are a lot of resourceful inventive types around here, so I suspect cool things may well follow.

Have fun walking down Memory and Future Lanes!

This is an outrage.

Until they’ve tested the armor they’re banning, they should let troops utilize the gear they find most efficient. While I understand the military must maintain adherence to its own standards, it should not set a standard before they have the facts. Their premature standard could cause greater risks to the troops.

I think they should delay the enforcement of the new standard until June.

Peter Daou speaks of an organization’s plan to run a security operation for a country that has been struggling to obtain protection. That nation’s media, apparently fearing a backlash from the strongman who runs the country via threats and intimidation of his own intelligence agencies and that nation’s media, have been reticent to give much coverage of that organization’s plan.

Steve Gilliard has a different perspective. He thinks the organization’s plan too closely mirrors the abysmal program of the strongman.

I have a different take than both. Yes, the plan has plenty of flaws, but it offers that country a different direction than the strongman one which has raided the public treasury to benefit his cronies while leaving the country in a barrel as a sitting duck. And yes, the nation’s media needs to be pestered by the underground democracy movement known as the Blogger Brigades, till they provide more airplay to the upstart plan.

But as one very credible media outlet has noted, the country’s citizens have grown so skeptical of the strongman that they’re very receptive to any alternative that spares them from the failed policies of the strongman:

Polls suggest that the Democrats are closing the gap on the question of which party would better safeguard the country.

In a recent Gallup Poll, 45 percent of adults said they trusted Republicans to defend them against terrorism, and 41 percent said they trusted Democrats.

Four years ago the margin for Republicans was 51 percent to 19 percent.

Much of the Democrats�€™ gain could be attributed more to Republican problems �€” anger at the Iraq war and a proposal to turn over operations at some U.S. ports to a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates �€” than to Democratic stands.

Despite the flaws in the plan and the media’s fear of the strongman, these numbers make it clear there’s a tide of populist sentiment that will soon overcome the strongman’s defenders, and the new plan offers the surge to put the grassroots sentiment over the top.

So let me repeat it: the nation’s media needs to be pestered by the underground democracy movement known as the Blogger Brigades, till they provide more airplay to the upstart plan.

It’s not the end-all and the be-all for a nation that longs for security without the muck and mess of the lawless tyrant. But it offers some long overdue steps in the right direction, it provides the emerging majority with a foundation that fresh planners can build on. And most important, it will demolish the strongman’s House of Cards on what has long been his sole area of public support.

Overcoming a repressive regime marked by failure is not an easy task when the regime excells at intimidating his intel agents and the media. It’s common wisdom to readers of The Art of War that attacking an enemy of the people in his perceived area of strength is the surest path to victory.

Though I share Mr. Gilliard’s lament that the new blueprint is not yet visionary enough to construct a building that will stand up to the nation’s needs, it’s stronger than the current House of Cards. The planners and the populist resistance will have time to upgrade the design by next November to make the new building sound.

We’d be foolhardy to ignore the need of this nation for news that will strengthen their hope and resolve to overcome the successive failed plans of the strongman. So let’s hector the media for starters, and then knock heads with the new plan’s architects. Go with the flow of the rising tide. All tides peter out, and this one finally grants us the opportunity to find solid ground on which to build.

That’s not a sell-out of progressive strengths and vision. It’s an understanding that the House of Cards will fall and we have to be there to maintain a say in the coming design.

51-19 to 45-41 is an historic 28 pt surge; the key now is to sustain that tide.

My kudos to Kash, for the best analysis and conclusion on immigrants I’ve seen or can imagine.

Yup. There’s really no problem demanding all this legislative hoohaw. If you ask me, this is just another election year grandstanding by the GOP, rooted in r-a-c-i-s-m.

The Herald has the story, the picture and the words spoken.

This from the so-called smart guy on the court. I dunno about IQ but his Arrogance Quotient is sky high. He’s some role model for the kids, considering he’s a guy in a deliberative job, not one that’s supposed to be political. And he behaves like a lowly political hack.

Here’s a bit for Antonin I’ve translated from my Dutch-Irish heritage: “You’re a disgrace. A liar. A guy who thinks he’s a Mafia don, but is just a dweeb who was wedgied into barking coyote madness. Grow up. And bite me.”

Here’s what Memeorandum’s displaying right now:

Hindrocket / Power Line:
VERDICT: THE NEW YORK TIMES BLEW THE STORY �€” Yesterday, five former judges of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the subject of the amendments to FISA that have been proposed by Senator Arlen Specter.

+Discussion: The Huffington Post, Captain’s Quarters, Middle Earth Journal, Daily Kos, The Sideshow, Infidel Bloggers Alliance, Danny Carlton, In the Bullpen, Confederate Yankee, Don Surber, Jeff Gannon and Decision ‘08

RELATED ITEMS:
Media Blog on National Review Online:
NYT Abandons Reporting for Assertion

+Discussion: JustOneMinute, protein wisdom, The Strata-Sphere, Power Line, The Mahablog, Charging RINO, The Heretik, Confederate Yankee, The Carpetbagger Report, ACSBlog, The Washington Monthly and AMERICAblog

———————————-

It’s funny to see the blinders folks use.

As I noted in response to a crowing comment today:

Ultimately, I understand that Bush�€™s actions won�€™t draw Congressional action beyond pseudo-investigations while the GOP maintains its majority position there. So the only judges whose opinions really matter in this argument are the nine Supremes.

I do not claim that Bush shouldn�€™t spy on �€™suspected international agents�€™ and I believe that�€™s a straw man argument as I know no progressives who argue he shouldn�€™t.

I object to him overriding the FISA rules without good cause - and the reasons offered thus far don�€™t hold water. More importantly, I oppose spying on ordinary Americans and political opponents. I think that�€™s what the FISA judges meant when they said they �€œcould not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it.�€�

Such a briefing would reveal who got spied on and why. Unless that gets explored and is given ongoing oversight, the possibility of a past law violation and the potential for fresh ones remain.

The info that�€™s leaked out thus far provides enough of a smoking gun that anti war advocates were spied on to warrant a full investigation, to determine if any legit reasons existed to suspect a potential tie to terrorists.

There�€™s nothing in the testimony of the FISA judges to refute the existence of that smoke, nor anything that refutes the need for more information so an objective assessment of the legal questions can be made.

“Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear of blackmail is not a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory command,” he said. “Indeed, the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed.”

Amen!

That, from Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who ordered the release of the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison over the objections of government lawyers, who complained that doing so would incite violence against U.S. troops in Iraq and cause more terror.

Someday, we’ll get a hella story from Ms. Carroll, that will likely be one of the more interesting tales from Iraq. But for now, I’m just thrilled for her, her family and friends. May she quickly heal from the arduous ordeal she’s experienced.

And I thank her captors for releasing her.

The Rasmussen Poll has Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) with a narrow lead over football player/sports commentator Lynn Swann (R), 44% to 41%.

As a football player, Swann averaged 37 catches a year, never had 900 yards in a season, but he was good in the clutch and was part of a Super Bowl winning team four times. In Super Bowl X, his performance was stellar, and he was named MVP for good reason. And he excelled in XIII and XIV as well.

He was flashy as a player and he’s a physically attractive guy who looks good on TV. As I recall, his teammate, John Stallworth, was more dependable as a receiver and both had the good luck to be on the receiving end of Terry Bradshaw’s heaves.

He made the Pro Bowl 3 times in a 12 year career and it took him 19 years after retirement to get elected to the Hall of Fame. Why the delay?

In his playing days, it was said that he wouldn’t go over the middle for his passes. And that he was a whiner that was not popular among a number of his teammates. He had a rep as one of the guys who wouldn’t play with the tiniest hurt.

Without being a Steeler, I can’t know for sure whether he earned that rep, but the time it took to make the Hall of Fame does suggest something was amiss.

Still, football’s nearly a religion in much of Pennsylvania, so his star power, not his public service record, provides him enough to be a viable opponent of the sitting Democratic governor. He’s slipped from a 2 point lead to a 3 point deficit in the past two months, yet with the poll’s margin for error, this race remains virtually a tie. His low negative ratings at this point in the race remains his chief asset, which is understandable since Rendell actually has a public service record that influences such judgments.

Swann, however, is anti-choice. This race could turn into a regional referendum on that question as there’s little else to judge him on. I suppose if a similarly popular ex-teammate of his were to offer a public critique of his playing days, that could impact such a close race. But the abortion question, after the nation gets its fill of South Dakota’s ill-conceived law protecting rapist rights, is going to be THE question that sinks Swann in November. (Remember, you heard it here first).

Regarding immigrants speaking English as a prerequisite.

It’s odd. I had four years of French in grade school and never came close to speaking that language. I can remember maybe two dozen French words today.

I had a half-year of Latin, which I took to at once, but I struggle with the old English of Shakespeare.

As my point’s not about me, I won’t mention IQ numbers, preferring to say simply that my intelligence is above average. Yet my struggles with most anything beyond American English reinforce the points Jeanne makes.

There’s many countries willing to accept educated immigrants, including the US. But the folks already here illegally, estimated at 11 or 12 million, often lack educational resources in their countries of origin. Mind you, I don’t mind there being a requirement for some rudimentary English capabilities before full citizenship is granted, but that’d allow a few more years of educational access past an English requirement upon arrival.

Another thing: Mark Kleimann’s requirement, as I read it, would apply to newly arriving immigrants, so it doesn’t really address the bigger issue of the already arrived and longterm residents. We can propose and come up with decent immigration policies for future new arrivals.

But the immediate dillemma is what to do with millions of people already here. What’s that? You’re a conservative who wants them deported? Fine. Define how to identify them all, transport them all, and what we do with the successive generations who got born within our borders. Without harming our economy, without civil unrest and with the governments of numerous countries agreeing to take them back.

It’s easy to spout xenophobic talking points. But even if the majority of America consented to that, no-one’s ever offerred a rational plan to handle the logistics to make that happen. And they never will. Draconian punishments require a justice system larger than we have, would create racial discord within both the illegal and legal immigrant communities, and spark violence.

If you’re going to talk that sort of mousecrap, tell me how you plan to bell that cat. Otherwise, you’re just pumping air.

I’m not surprised.

But I wonder if a new Cold War alignment is in the works, with the US, Israel, Egypt’s government and India arrayed against China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, with Shi’a dominated Iran and Iraq largely isolated from both of the big, more worrisome blocs.

And can anyone remind me why Bush embraces both the Saudi leadership and nutballs like Kaddafi in this new world disorder?

Admittedly, young people are capable of letting their passion for justice exceed the public relations skills of professionals. And extremists advocating wacky things will always be around in any public event (Fred Phelps, anyone?)

But is it wise for the daughter of immigrants to fan the flames of racism repeatedly, in her quest to bring a civil war to the US? Her point seems to be that racists she agrees with are better than the people with opposing views that she thinks are worse racists.

In short, “Neener-neener, we’re smarter and better than these kids and extremists, because we stand for the law and proper flag protocol this week, unlike the previous weeks when we were flying George Bush on a flagpole above an upside-down US Constitution.”

It sure would be a shame to start a civil war to make a point like that. Here’s another point I’d ask folks to consider. America is an entire hemisphere. From the southern tips of Chile and Argentina to the northernmost reaches of Canada, we’re all ‘Americans’. So why do we continually refer to us - U.S. citizens - as ‘the Americans’ and call all our fellow Americans names like Chileans, Argentinans and Canadians?

Perhaps, Ms. Malkin, when we begin to address the myriad ways we divide and separate people from their neighbors and when we put the concerns of all Americans above flag protocol, we can begin to display democracy, humanity, courtesy and civility at its best. Striving to be a good model of all that would seem to make more sense and would be more moral than always trying to claim you’re superior to everyone else, and hoping to incite a race war.

After the judges who were legally providing perfect anti-terrorist surveillance security for the US weighed in, the Lord God appeared on Fox News and thundered to millions of viewers: Bush and Cheney should repent for lying, bearing false witness against numerous neighbors, coveting their neighbors’ goods, killing and putting others before God.

The White House refuted that with a prepared statement released moments ago, that read:

“When the Lord God granted us free will, divinely ordained us to lead this nation and permitted his Son to die for our sins, He granted us blanket authority to use all means necessary to fight anyone we label as terrorists without Divine supervision. If He wants to limit our power to direct the war on terrorists and risk being known as ‘The Weenie God So Not Almighty’, we say ‘bring it on.’ And we’ll let American voters decide who’s right. ”

Republican leaders of the House and Senate immediately introduced legislation that would permit the President to overrule God without threat of eternal flames. An amendment introduced by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) to declare Dick Cheney as the new God was narrowly defeated.

Democratic leaders’ proposals to provide greater security via rational thought, competent planning, strategic choices and the innovative use of sanity were rejected by GOP lawmakers as ‘immoral’ and ‘typical for a bunch of homo-loving freaks who would reward illegal immigrants with ice cream and balloons and the minimum wage as if they were human or something.’

Media Matters notes that the March 27 New York Times story by Don Van Natta, “Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says,” has been, um, underreported by news media.

Since a March 27 New York Times article confirmed that a leaked British memo appears to contradict President Bush’s repeated claim prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that he wanted to avoid war, media have failed to note the full significance of the document and in some cases ignored the story altogether. For instance, major newspapers have yet to feature articles on the memo, and Fox News has not once mentioned the document. CBS and ABC have limited their coverage to several brief mentions of the story. And numerous other reports have failed to contrast the memo’s depiction of Bush with his public statements prior to the war.

After reminding us of some of Bush’s public statements that, um, diverge somewhat from what he was saying behind closed doors, Media Matters continues,

In light of these statements, the January 31 memo — and the Times‘ verification of it — is obviously significant. Nonetheless, numerous news outlets have failed to cover the story at all, or in some cases failed to cover it adequately. Fox News has ignored it entirely. A Media Matters for America survey of Fox’s full March 27 coverage (6 a.m.-11 p.m. ET) and partial March 28 coverage (6 a.m.-noon ET) failed to turn up a single mention of the memo.

Similarly, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today all declined to run articles on the memo in their March 28 editions. Both the Associated Press and Reuters have failed to report on the story thus far. By contrast, United Press International ran two articles on March 27 — one on the memo and one on the White House’s reaction to the Times piece.

Televisions news wasn’t much better, although let it be noted that MSNBC, mostly through the reporting of Keith Olbermann (Olbermann transcript here) and David Shuster, “devoted the most airtime to the British memo and repeatedly emphasized its relevance.”

Peter Daou writes of this story and another that documents it’s way too easy to smuggle radioactive material into the country –

Getting back to the Triangle metaphor, what would happen if the progressive netroots, the Democratic establishment, and responsible media figures worked together to treat these two stories with the gravity and intensity they deserve? It would be a major political crisis. Sadly, the system is not in place, the coordination of the various components of the progressive message machine is lacking, and as we saw in the NSA fiasco, the trajectory of these stories is all too easy to predict.

So what we end up with is confirmation of the most dire concerns of the anti-war movement (i.e. that Bush was itching for war and was ready to do whatever necessary to provoke it), coupled with evidence that all the national - I hate the word ‘Homeland’ - security blather on the part of the administration since 9/11 is hot air; we’re as vulnerable as ever. Once again, impeachable offenses drifting into an endless stream of impeachable offenses, receding into oblivion…

Well, you go to war with the news media you have, so to speak. For what it’s worth, there are a couple of good op eds in newspapers today. At the Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson writes,

PRESIDENT BUSH said he invaded Iraq to rid the world of a madman. It is ever more clearer Bush went mad to start it.

This week, the New York Times reported on a confidential memo about a meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003. It was just before Secretary of State Colin Powell would go before the United Nations to convince the world of the planetary threat of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and ask for a second UN resolution to condemn him. …

… Powell’s punch line was, ‘’Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions.”

But Bush already realized the sources were not panning out.

Suggestion: Print out the Media Matters story linked above, which provides a timeline of what Bush said and when, and put it alongside Derrick Jackson’s op ed. Jackson continues,

Even though his growing fears about finding no weapons of mass destruction had reached the incredible point of considering fakery to make it look like Saddam started the war, Bush had the gall to go before the press on Jan. 31 after his meeting with Blair and show no doubt. A reporter asked Bush, ‘’Mr. President, is Secretary Powell going to provide the undeniable proof of Iraq’s guilt that so many critics are calling for?”

Bush responded, ‘’Well, all due in modesty, I thought I did a pretty good job myself of making it clear that he’s not disarming and why he should disarm. Secretary Powell will make a strong case about the danger of an armed Saddam Hussein. He will make it clear that Saddam Hussein is fooling the world, or trying to fool the world. He will make it clear that Saddam is a menace to peace in his own neighborhood. He will also talk about Al Qaeda links, links that really do portend a danger for America and for Great Britain, anybody else who loves freedom.”

Powell would deliver on Bush’s boast five days later, saying, ‘’There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. . . . With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take their place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies.”

Bush wasn’t being fooled by bad intelligence. He knew that WMDs were not being found, and didn’t care. Jackson continues,

The web spun by Bush has now cost the lives of 2,300 US soldiers, another 200 British and coalition soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Iraq is closer to civil war than stability. Three years later, it is the United States that is not disarming, with Bush admitting last week that our troops will be needed there past his presidency. We took out a madman with madness. At a minimum, there should be hearings, with Bush under oath. With any more details like this, the next step is impeachment.

This is from an editorial in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer,

In the first months of 2003, we joined much of the rest of the world in hopes that war with Iraq could be avoided, that a diplomatic breakthrough or confirmation of reports that Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction might render the military option unnecessary.

How silly of us.

A confidential memo recording a Jan. 31, 2003, Oval Office meeting between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair makes it clear that the two men were going to war in Iraq in any event. …

…The memo is stark evidence that it was a war of choice — a choice that had been made early on.

So far, that’s all the newspaper commentary I’ve found.

Earlier this week, as blogs linked to and discussed the memo story, someone on the Right introduced a “we already knew this” meme. This was frantically picked up and repeated by the usual tools. But the sad fact is that the righties not only did not know this, they still don’t know it. They’ve got their eyes shut and their ears plugged and they’re screaming LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU as loudly as they can. Not one rightie commenter was able to acknowledge what actually went on between Bush and Blair. I suspect they couldn’t see it if you printed it in

and rubbed their noses in it.

In fact, the invasion of Iraq may prove to be among the most critical “turning point” events in American history, right up there with the assault on Fort Sumter and the Watergate break-in. I believe it will prove to have greater long-range significance than 9/11. Iraq may be our Icarus moment, the beginning of the end of America as World’s Biggest Superpower. Centuries from now, assuming civilization as we know it survives, historians will still be writing about Bush’s insane invasion of Iraq, the same way they’re still writing about Napoleon’s retreat from Russia and the fall of the Roman Empire.

Yet American news media still refuse to see the insanity. Come to think of it, lots of Romans didn’t notice their empire was falling, either.

(Cross-posted to The Mahablog.)

The Sicilian capo di Supremo gives his signal from his pew. Then Lyn Nofziger and Caspar Weinberger die within two days. Shades of Marlon Brando!

I’m just waiting for the signal from Boss Hawg Cheney to some progressive blogger. If you wake up with a pheasant’s head in your bed, be afraid. Be very afraid.

I think Jeff Alworth’s take on the immigration issue is exactly right. Yet it is kind of funny the things I’ve heard in the past 24 hours…. from self-professed progressives.

I read one economist describing how illegal immigrants keep low income worker wages down. “Oh?” I thought, “so they’re the ones that have held the GOP-controlled Congress at gunpoint for ten years to keep them from raising the minimum wage?” Then I thought, “if there were no illegal immigrants around and the wages at the bottom rose, the businesses would just move to countries like those where the immigrants come from, where they can pay lower wages.”

So neither scenario has anything to do with immigrants - legal or illegal - at all.

The one that surprised me most of all was from Stephanie Miller on Air America, who said something like: Americans don’t want to landscape or clean toilets, so that’s why we need immigrants, to do those things. Ms. Miller, who I like a lot, displays an ignorance that I think goes to the root of why so-called Reagan Democrats went Republican.

Many blue collar workers think people expressing such ignorance are completely out of touch with their lives.

Sure, cleaning toilets is hardly anyone’s favorite job. But even janitors only spend a small percentage of their time actually cleaning toilets. And I maintain there’s plenty of janitors - US citizens - who take pride in their work and are perfectly happy being janitors. And no, it doesn’t mean they set the bar low, or are unintelligent, or any other negative stereotype some would attribute to them.

If a job pays the bills and you’re competent at that job, I think most folks doing the job try to do it well. And it’s a turn-off to hear some people be dismissive about the job they’ve invested themselves in, when those people are really saying the job is beneath THEM.

My impression is that many illegal immigrants will take any work that pays more than they made in their country of origin. In Oregon, from what I’ve observed, field (farm) work and the building trades are where most illegal immigrant men work. And there’s no shortage of US citizens willing to do that work - especially in the building trades.

Do citizens in those trades resent the illegal immigrants working beside them? For the most part, no. But if they’re around a bunch of guys speaking a foreign language, that can cause anxiety, because it causes wonder about what’s being said, and that is plain old annoying. I don’t think that’s racist either. Communication with peers is a human trait and anything that limits that can cause annoyance and discomfort.

I question assumptions that seem all too common about illegal immigrants, as well as stereotypes about blue collar workers. It’s common to expect politicians to be out of touch that way, as most of them come from the so-called professional classes (law and business managers/owners, especially).

But activists and opinionists in the persuader class should certainly know better, before they open their mouths. As a guy who’s a blue collar worker myself, I’ve been persuaded often…. to tune out the rest of the opinions of people who miscast me out of ignorance. And since it happens with some regularity, from righties and lefties alike, it’s common for me to feel that there’s nobody at all truly representing my concerns in electoral politics.

Which leaves me, and I bet many other blue-collar workers, feeling like every election is not about anything positive but simply a chance to vote for the lesser of two evils. That’s not much of a motivator. And it leaves me ripe to respond to single-issue appeals. Is it any wonder why so many Dems jumped to Reagan? They probably did so because of one single issue (tax cuts?). Now, if Carter or Mondale were offering platforms that demonstrated they had a clue about many things blue collar folks wanted someone to address, Reagan wouldn’t have been able to peel them away with a single issue.

That missing platform, that lack of understanding, has been exhibited by the GOP and the DLC-dominated national party ever since. The Dems could be the majority party if they quit trying to patch together poll-induced quilts of platforms and simply listened, then represented what they heard.

But back to the topic of immigrants, the situation is similar. Have you spoken with any illegal immigrants lately? Then how can you know their motivations and desires? How can you offer a fix if you’re only guessing what’s wrong?

That’s not to say that people at the lower end of the economic scale don’t have some myths and biases themselves. For example, I believe the culprits in this immigrant debate are not the immigrants. Employers who are labor exploiters and/or tax evaders are the greatest causal factor of the problems our society wants to address.

That’s my bias. And maybe it’s not a myth. I also have another bias that assumes our society would rather use immigrants as the convenient, powerless scapegoats than to do anything about the corrupt employers who created and maintain the problem. And I also believe politicians on both sides are being disingenuous to make a morality play out of this issue, as legalities and penalties get discussed. They’re both pandering to voters based on what their polls say.

Are there any politicians left who’d rather do ‘the right thing’ to resolve a problem honestly, instead of putting their elective viability forever first?

My bias says, there’s too damn few. Which is why I’d rather side with those being scapegoated. I may know almost no Spanish at all, but I understand the universal language of the lower-paid worker far better than the language of the shuck-and-jivers in the political class.