Jun 16 2007
New Immigration Poll – GOP Damaged
Well, it would seem the goodwill of America has been poisoned by the relentless PR campaign of the amnesty hypochondriacs. We seem to have found the magic scapegoat for all our woes: illegal immigrants. A new WSJ Poll Shows a big drop off in support of the immigration plan dealing with illegals currently here (see here and here). But at a major price to the GOP (as predicted):
Now I would like to get your reaction to several parts of a possible new immigration bill. Please tell me whether you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose each of the following parts of this bill.
All immigrants who apply to be U.S. citizens would be required to learn English
Strongly Favor: 73
Somewhat Favor: 16
Somewhat Oppose: 6
Strongly Oppose: 4
Not Sure: 1Fav/Opp: 89/10
Imposing new fines on businesses that hire illegal immigrants
Strongly Favor: 57
Somewhat Favor: 17
Somewhat Oppose: 11
Strongly Oppose: 12
Not Sure: 3Fav/Opp: 74/23
Increasing border security by building a fence along part of the U.S. border with Mexico and by hiring and training more border patrol agents
Strongly Favor: 44
Somewhat Favor: 21
Somewhat Oppose: 12
Strongly Oppose: 19
Not Sure: 4Fav/Opp: 65/31
Immigrants who want to come to the U.S. to work and who are not already here could apply for a two-year work visa that they could renew up to two times
Strongly Favor: 38
Somewhat Favor: 41
Somewhat Oppose: 6
Strongly Oppose: 12
Note sure: 3Fav/Opp: 79/18
Allowing illegal workers who arrived in the U.S. to apply for permanent U.S. residency if they return to their home country within eight years and pay additional fines
Strongly Favor: 13
Somewhat Favor: 22
Somewhat Oppose: 20
Strongly Oppose: 35
Note Sure: 10Fav/Opp: 35/55
Allowing illegal workers who arrived in the U.S. before January first of this year to receive an automatic work visa if they pay a fine of around five thousand dollars
Strongly Favor: 10
Somewhat Favor: 20
Somewhat Oppose: 18
Strongly Oppose: 46
Not sure: 6Fav/Opp: 30/64
Of course, the real question on dealing with illegal immigrants is a fine, back taxes and a background check for a violent criminal record. But despite the misleading question the news is not good. The GOP, striving for something harsh enough to entice illegal aliens NOT to come forward and register with the government, are hell bent on retaining the status quo and all its problems. The whole point of fines and back taxes was to require a reaonable (by all other laws on our books) payment of debt to society but enough of an enticement so that these people come forward and get jobs that include all the required taxes so that they too pay their fair share. The problem is rounding up people will cost a lot more than some small set who get benefits.
But today’s GOP is not run on logic, it is run on hate. And it is paying a price:
Putting aside for a moment the question of who each party’s nominee might be, what is your preference for the outcome of the 2008 presidential election––that a Democrat be elected president or that a Republican be elected president? (IF “DEMOCRAT” OR “REPUBLICAN,” ASK:) And do you strongly prefer a (Democrat/Republican), or is your preference not that strong?
Democrat
Strongly: 42
Not Strongly: 10
Republican
Strongly 23
Not Strongly 8Dem/Rep: 52/31
Strong Dem/Rep: 42/23
Almost 2-1 against the GOP. I would say that is a lot of damage when usually these numbers have a gap of only 5-10%, with the Reps down usually. The damage inflicted by the GOP on itself has been stunning. The Dems have inflicted damage on themselves too. People are ready to toss the Pols out and start fresh. The question on whether people support their own representative or want someone new is 40/48 in favor of someone new. That number is usually very high in support of incumbants (its always someone elses representative causing the trouble). But somehow the Dems are not as bad off as the Reps (though Congress is).
The fact is the damage to the GOP is done. And is it surprising? Again, all I have to do is sample the conservative blogs to show what kind of person represents the base:
And those that support this monstrosity will be looking for new jobs. The Senators that supported it will be next on the unemployment line.
Bush may go down in history as a traitor, but he won’t care, he’ll be living the high life in Paraguay.
3 posted on 06/16/2007 12:17:22 AM PDT by janetgreen
So this POS legislation proves beyond a shodow of a doubt that our government truly no longer serves by the consent of the governed.
According to the Founders, we now have the right to abolish said government.You bring the guillotines, I’ll bring the pikes!
6 posted on 06/16/2007 12:23:12 AM PDT by FierceDraka (I’m not against the government. The government is against ME.)
“El Presidente will be having steaks on the grill each evening while the rest of us will be left wondering what the hell happened???â€
We can wonder over that while we are spending hours in line waiting for our govt. cheese handout.
21 posted on 06/16/2007 2:01:55 AM PDT by Bogtrotter52 (Reading DU daily so you won’t hafta)
Peruse the insanity at will. Bush and Congress were duly elected and given the power to do what they think is right. People who disagree and then propose coup d’etat’s are not Americans. In fact I would not be surprised if the mob mentality gripping the right is not being stoked by people to help them in their credibility self-destruction. The funny thing is, the same Chicken Little cries resulted from the 1980’s bill and all the immigration that occurred has NOT destroyed this country. But the hate from the partisans has. They have lost all self control. And for those of us who have not lost our minds over documenting the undocumented workers here it is becoming uglier. And the sad thing is these haters who pretend that is the American way have lost all their perspective. It is now only ‘American’ to be like them.
The bill could pass, and it might be the right thing to do to get past this insanity. It is either pass it now and show the wingnuts the sky will not fall, or leave the entire mess in place for another 10-30 years. Because this issue is looking like a 3rd rail issue like Social Security reform. Thanks to the GOP we will could be stuck with the current mess for the foreseeable future. Either way, thanks to the GOP we are likely to be stuck with a Democrat President unless someone like Rudy Guiliani or Mitt Romney can hang on and win the primary. The problem is, the GOP may have distilled itself down to the point moderates do not participate at all.
Instead of learning the lesson of Pete Wilson in CA, and how long it took to get someone like Arnold Schwarzenneger to get the (R) back into a statewide office, we are probably seeing that mistake now being repeated on a national level. It was over illegal immigrants Wilson lost CA to the GOP for a decade. Sad, but true. We never learn our lessons of history. Bush better beat al-Qaeda in Iraq in the next year or the lesson of listening to partisans (left and right) will be a very, very painful one. People forget the comprehensive bill was designed to efficiently deal with immigration, minimizing law enforcement requirements and leave those for our war on terror. It was not meant to maximize punishment.
The bill was more enticement than punishment so we could optimize the resources between illegals and terrorists. We want the hay stack to come forward to make it easier to find the needles. The more who come forward the less effort required to deal with those we need to find who should be out of here. It is now way out of balance and the whole thing is going to leave us vulnerable. Not what the GOP wanted – but it is the price they were willing to pay to go after nannies and cooks and painters.
Update: A lot of readers keeping bringing up marginal details and asking me to address them as if they are important. They do not understand my position (though I have posted on it many times). The reason I am were I am is because of the priorities I have selected. I am not for maximizing the punishment of illegal aliens. What I am for is an efficient and rapid fix to our national security – thus I come down to a different set of conclusions.
The problem is the amnesty hypochondriacs think we have unlimited law enforcement resources or unlimited time to deal with the problem of illegal immigrants and who may be among them. In a world without al-Qaeda I would possibly agree.
But in a world with al-Qaeda my priorities are to rapidly separate the good from the bad and get the bad outta here before they go radical. Those who push this issue off until years later are allowing a dangerous criminal element to remain here and possibly be recruited by al-Qaeda. That is and has been my top concern.
The concept is one of triage, where you select what you can do to save what is salvageable. In my opinion we need to optimize our defense, not our punishment of illegals. We cannot focus on illegals at the expense of national security. So I am all for a path where we entice those who have not done anything seirously wrong and look to be law abiding to come forward and step aside. Once this is done we have made our national security problem orders of magnitude easier. Where to put our resources – nannies versus terrorists – it is a pretty basic question. With limited resources that is the choice. Worrying about silly things like touchbacks (more resources required we do not have) is just not worth the effort when you add up the problem and the resources we have to deal with the problem. Nannies or terrorists.
This has always been the basis of my equations – from day one. Maximize the transition of tolerable illegals to legal and monitored, while deporting the bad apples ASAP. Bad apples are potential terrorist recruits. When that is your driving strategy the bill makes total sense. When something else is your goal these priorities fall to the wayside.
Oh, and insulting and haranguing this subculture population so that the feel isolated and disrespected (like immigrants in Europe) only provides an excuse to finally give into terrorist overtures. Offering them to come into the open gives them one set of motivations. Offering them hate and punishment gives them another set of motivations. Cold, hard, unavoidable logic. Usually the best answer in a fight for your life. Leaving potential recruits for al-Qaeda on our streets is pretty dumb. Giving them excuse to sign up is suicidal.
There is no reason to wait on culling the 12 million illegals here into two camps: the relatively safe and the known problems (which are then deported). There is no rational excuse to delay this process of culling out those who cannot stay here any longer than possible. And what about insulting them, their families and their culture (e.g., 3rd world toilets) while you let them stay around longer? …… Needless to say I am woefully unimpressed with the GOP right now.
And I think it is this kind of logic that drives Bush and many conservative leaders. Unlike the armchair experts sitting at home behind a computer screen, our leaders see the daily security threats. So why would you go against your party and do something that spells political disaster? How hard is that one to figure out. You sacrifice what you must to protect the nation – including party. And no, they will not tell us if the telling opens up our national security secrets and defenses. I may be wrong – but at least I am erring on ‘the conservative side’.
Re: “Cultures have always mixed.”The Macker
Mostly not a good thing unless one likes to see devolution of the superior culture. Let in tens and tens of millions of Mexicans and America will cease being America.
Re: “psychologists are ‘making it up’ with IQ standards of ‘general intelligence.’ You seem to be using a bogus theory to underestimate an entire ethnic group.” The Macker
Ok, you don’t believe in IQ and that it has mainly a genetic basis. If you have an open mind, educate yourself on the subject and you may be surprised with what you learn. A place to start is http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/late/cb_camb.html” and http://www.douance.org/qi/brandbook.htm.
FE
Just for your interest there is still an active OS/2 community out there.
Also there is a variant of OS/2 still in active development , it’s called now by the name EcomStation.
There are hundreds of freeware programs still being developed including some of the latest drivers which were always os/2’s weakness because MS threatened all driver developers with sudden death syndrome if they supported warp. That was an issue brought up in their anti trust suit.
Re: “Cultures have always mixed.”The Macker
Mostly not a good thing unless one likes to see devolution of the superior culture. Let in tens and tens of millions of Mexicans and America will cease being America.
Re: “psychologists are ‘making it up’ with IQ standards of ‘general intelligence.’ You seem to be using a bogus theory to underestimate an entire ethnic group.” The Macker
Ok, you don’t believe in IQ and that it has mainly a genetic basis. If you have an open mind, educate yourself on the subject and you may be surprised with what you learn. A place to start is below with two sites:
here is an introductory article,
http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/late/cb_camb.html
here is a free downloadable book,
http://www.douance.org/qi/brandbook.htm
Atlantin
Re: “Cultures have always mixed.”The Macker
Mostly not a good thing unless one likes to see devolution of the superior culture. Let in tens and tens of millions of Mexicans and America will cease being America.
Re: “psychologists are ‘making it up’ with IQ standards of ‘general intelligence.’ You seem to be using a bogus theory to underestimate an entire ethnic group.” The Macker
Ok, you don’t believe in IQ and that it has mainly a genetic basis. If you have an open mind, educate yourself on the subject and you may be surprised with what you learn. A place to start is <a HREF=”http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/late/cb_camb.html”>Here</a> and <a HREF=”http://www.douance.org/qi/brandbook.htm”>Here</a>.
Re: “Cultures have always mixed.”The Macker
Mostly not a good thing unless one likes to see devolution of the superior culture. Let in tens and tens of millions of Mexicans and America will cease being America.
Re: “psychologists are ‘making it up’ with IQ standards of ‘general intelligence.’ You seem to be using a bogus theory to underestimate an entire ethnic group.” The Macker
Ok, you don’t believe in IQ and that it has mainly a genetic basis. If you have an open mind, educate yourself on the subject and you may be surprised with what you learn. A place to start isHere and Here.
MS killed OS/2 with the release of Win95.
The threatened IBM with withholding of Win95 if OS/2 development continued and IBM bowed to the pressure and MS only released Win95 to them two or three days before the general release and cost IBM revenues in the near 300 million loss of opportunity since they didn’t have the license for preinstalls that everybody else already had in the pipeline and had their products ready to be put on the shelves.
Whats crazy about all this is MS was the lead developer for IBM to write the Warp code.
The HPFS file system is far and above even the file system MS was going to try to release with Vista and couldn’t deliver the goods on.
When IBM divorced from MS in development, they further extended it with the Journaled file system that kicked butt in all respects.
In case you non computer types are looking in here, the HPFS and variants beyond don’t require defrag or anything like it. It beats out all the windows file system efficiencies by about a 4 to 1 factor.
I have servers running similar programs in MS and OS/2 and guess what the database OS/2 supports only covers 12.2 gig of disk space and MS requires 34.6 gig for exactly the same data. OS/2 allows virtual volumes spread across many drives and MS is still playing catch up. OS/2 allows dynamic expansion of virtual drive size and MS falls over dead at the thought.
Apology by Atlantin for the above duplicate post..
The above screw up is from using Open Xinha! Word press still stripped out the URLs.
Sure wish this site used Blogger. My HTML code works on Blodder just fine.
Atlantin
From the very beginning OS/2 supported 16 cores or processors and the latest version I am running supports 64.
From the beginning the max file size was 2 to the 64th power and virtual volumes were much larger. Do the math on 2 to the 64th and get your eyeballs adjusted because MS today even in their enterprise version only support 2 to the 32nd power and if you try to push that number it breaks often and hard because of round off errors once you get past 60% of the limit.
OS/2 is rock solid and faster by a factor of 6 or 7 when accessing data or serving web pages.
I have servers here with 24 500 gig drives being virtually raided on duplicate servers giving me Raid 5 protection over multiple serves.
MS can’t touch that and it will be years before they can.
I had a database crash once simply due to hardware faults and OS/2 took 40 minutes to correct the error when I installed new drives since I was running the Journaled File System.
I benchmarked it against MS offers and I gave up when it wasn’t even halfway there after 22 days.
Terrye likes to point out that 42% of Hispanics voted for Bush.
“Smacks forehead”
Well, Terrye that means that 58% percent did NOT vote for Bush and the last time I checked, the winner had to take 51% of the votes.
Also, you failed to note that while Hispanics voted for Bush in larger numbers than the previous Republican candidate, they still voted, overwhelmingly, for Democratic candidates and not Republicans. In case you failed to really read your last ballot, you can vote for a Republican president and a Democratic senator or congressman.
I have pointed out time and time again, that low income people will always vote for the one that promises the most free stuff. You have never disproved that.
And while Linda Chavez may tout that most Hispanics in Texas are third generation, she seems to suffer Disconnect Syndrome with Tejanos who are against this bill because they understand the backlash will affect them. They also resent illegals who have no respect for the laws of our nation. I notice that Chavez never uses the term “Tejano”, a term that all Texas born Hispanics I know uses. Never mind that Chavez is anti-union. She even wrote a book on how unions abuse employees. So are we to think that Chavez is some bastion of wisdom when she uses the “race” card to push her agenda?
Barney Frank admitted that the Shamnesty Bill would affect blue collar workers but that it should be offset if the Democrats work with the unions. Yeah, Chavez is gonna like that.
Now the $4.4 billion emergency supplement that Bush wants to use for border security is contingent on illegals applying for citizenship. In other words, that $4.4 bil is a long way down the road. But in the meantime, we will have more of the “doing nothing” policy that six years after 9-11 has still not provided for border security.
As a token of apology in all of the duplicate posts above, let me just post an article on how immigration of browns and blacks into Europe is having an effect on white flight. The question comes up, where will the white Americans go when the USA is Mexico North?
Read below and weep.
Atlantin
Europeans’ flight from Europe
TODAY’S COLUMNIST
By Paul Belie
June 6, 2007
Last year more than 155,000 Germans emigrated from their native country. Since 2004 the number of ethnic Germans who leave each year is greater than the number of immigrants moving in. While the emigrants are highly motivated and well educated, “those coming in are mostly poor, untrained and hardly educated,” says Stephanie Wahl of the German Institute for Economics.
In a survey conducted in 2005 among German university students, 52
percent said they would rather leave their native country than remain there. By “voting with their feet,” young, educated Germans affirm that Germany has no future to offer them and their children. As one couple who moved to the United States told the newspaper Die Welt: “Here our children have a future [ Ha,Ha. Atlantin ] in which they will not have to fear unemployment and social decline.”
There are two main reasons why so-called “ethno-Germans” emigrate. Some complain that the tax rates in Germany are so high that it is no longer worthwhile working for a living there. Others indicate they no longer feel at home in a country whose cultural appearance is changing dramatically.
The situation is similar in other countries in Western Europe. Since
2003, emigration has exceeded immigration to the Netherlands. In 2006, the Dutch saw more than 130,000 compatriots leave. The rise in Dutch emigration peaked after the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. This indicates that the flight from Europe is related to a loss of confidence in the future of nations which have taken in the Trojan horse of Islamism, but which, unlike the Trojans, lack the guts to fight.
Elsewhere in Western Europe immigration currently still surpasses
emigration, though emigration figures are rising fast. In Belgium the number of emigrants surged by 15 percent in the past years. In Sweden, 50,000 people packed their bags last year — a rise of 18 percent compared to the previous year and the highest number of Swedes leaving since 1892.
In the United Kingdom, almost 200,000 British citizens move out every year.Americans who think that the European welfare state is the model to follow would do well to ponder the question why, if Europe is so wonderful, Europeans are fleeing from it. European welfare systems are redistribution mechanisms, taking money from skilled and educated Europeans in order to give it to nonskilled newcomers from the Third World.
Gunnar Heinsohn, a German sociologist at the University of Bremen, warns European governments that they are mistaken if they assume that qualified young ethnic Europeans will stay in Europe. “The really qualified are leaving,” Mr. Heinsohn says. “The only truly loyal towards France and Germany are those who are living off the welfare system, because there is no other place in the world that offers to pay for them… It is no wonder that young, hardworking people in France and Germany choose to emigrate,” he explains. “It is not just that they have to support their own aging population. If we take 100 20-year-olds [in France or Germany], then the 70
[indigenous] Frenchmen and Germans also have to support 30 immigrants of their own age and their offspring. This creates dejection in the local population, particularly in France, Germany and the Netherlands. So they run away.”
On Monday Francois Fillon, the new French prime minister, said that
“Europe is not Eldorado,” emphasizing that his government intends to curb immigration by those who only seek welfare benefits. “Europe is hospitable, France is an immigration country and will continue to be so, but it will only accept foreigners prepared to integrate,” he stressed. Europe cannot afford to be “Eldorado” for foreigners any longer, because it has stopped being “home” for thousands of its own educated children, now eagerly looking for opportunities to move to America, Canada, Australia or New Zealand — white European nations outside Europe.
While the fertility rate in France is 1.9 children per woman, two out of
every five newborns in France are children of Arab or African immigrants. In Germany (fertility rate 1.37) 35 percent of all newborns have a non-German background. Paradoxically, fertility rates in Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, etc., are lower than among immigrants from these countries in Europe. “A woman in Tunisia has on average 1.7 children. In France she has six because the French government pays her to have them,” Mr. Heinsohn
explains. “Of course, the money was never intended to benefit Tunisian women in particular, but French women will not touch this money, whereas the Tunisian women are only too happy to… For Danish and German women the welfare benefits are too low to be attractive. Not so for the immigrants.
So, what we see in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands are
immigrant women who take low-paid jobs which they supplement with public benefits. It is not a fantastic income but sufficient for them,” he said. Europe’s welfare system is causing a perverse process of population replacement. If the Europeans want to save their culture, they will have to slay the welfare state.
Paul Belien is a European writer. He is editor of The Brussels Journal
and an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute.
Atlantin, good info but you can’t use logic on the illegal alien issue. It’s only an emotional, name calling, personal issue. Save logic for something that it applies to.
As the informed know, the only thing the current proposed illegal alien bill does is make illegals instantly legal (does away with the category). It would therefore provide 30-40 million hispanic voters for the democrats, insuring them being in power forever and ensuring themselves support at American taxpayers expense, forever. The only thing it would do for the Republicans is ensure they would never be in the majority again and that their taxes would be devoted to supporting illegals for the rest of your life. In a nutshell, that’s it.
Anyone disagreeing, use language FROM the bill to disprove what I say.
AJ, I think you’re wrong on this for the simple reason that this immigration bill provides for no assurances that the border will ever be secured.
Without that provision, it does no good to advertise “USA- illegals wanted”. I am for a one-time, all-inclusive amnesty and a vigorous and expanded program of legal immigration. Immigration has largely built the nation we have today, and done right there is no greater force propelling our great nation.
But without border security, increased legalization will only encourage more illegal immigration while exacerbating the current problems with the system.
I still have 5 or 6 computers here running OS/2 Warp 4. The only time they had to be rebooted was after the last hurricane that ran thru here.
By the way , if you don’t know it, the code name for Warp 4 in all the internal documentation was ….ta da MERLIN.
Ain’t life strange.
I didn’t know that IBM had kept up OS/2. I thought they had abandoned it. I learn something new every day.
I am a hard cored Linux user now. I love it! And I love journaled file systems. My favorite, and the one I use most often, is XFS. Which is now property of IBM. ReiserFS is nice, but it takes forever to mount a sizable partition with Reiser. And Reiser doesn’t have all of the options that XFS has.
I administer Linux servers for a living these days. Server admin was my hobby while in the military and it was a natural choice when I got out. I have Linux servers that have been up forever. They only go down when I tell them to. Generally speaking, there is only 3 times when I shut one down –
need to update the kernel
need to move the server
no longer need the server in its current capacity
And while I can no longer testify about OS/2, I can tell you that Linux outperforms MS in every meaningful way.
That’s too funny about the codename for Warp4.
Thanks for the xinha here editor. Too cool. I’m using it now.
Apache
It’s not IBM, it’s a third party software developer that used to be an IBM development partner.
IBM has officially abandoned it and all support by them has ceased.
But out in the real world there are enough people who understand the code from their prior support by IBM that it still breathes
They have no official blessing and MS will not at any price release their portion of the code base.
There are hundreds of patent issues haunting this project but it still slowly carries on.
Merlin,
Thanks for the info. So I wasn’t completely uniformed; IBM did abandon OS/2. That is cool that it hasn’t died. Kind of like BeOS. It still lives!! I occassionally check in on the status of BeOS, just because it was such a good operating system and I really liked it. Now, I will also track the status OS/4. I looked on line for info, but it is scarce. Is it being maintained by some Germans? Do you have a link for the OS/4 home page?
Danke shorts.
PS. MS doesn’t innovate, it stifles and crushes innovation. OS/2 is a perfect example of that. The innovation highway is littered by fantastic and innovative products that were intentionally destroyed by the beast in Redmond.