Stop Me Before I Vote Again

from Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Der Gefangene: ...................... The prisoner:

Die Gedanken sind frei, ........... Thoughts are free,
Wer kann sie erraten? ............. who can guess them?
Sie rauschen vorbei ................ They rush past
Wie nächtliche Schatten. ......... like nocturnal shadows.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, ... No man can know them,
Kein Jäger sie schießen; .......... no hunter can shoot them;
Es bleibet dabei, .................... for it remains thus:
Die Gedanken sind frei. ........... thoughts are free.

http://azag.tumblr.com/post/786623991/letter-to-president-obama

another kind of democrat raises
"a fighters head "....

policy recommendation:

jack asses are better off
picking a fight with the frito banditos
next door
then
tea towel turbonians
in way off afpakenberg

"Dear Mr. President:

As Arizona’s chief law enforcement officer, I write to respond to your recent statements about the security of our border with Mexico and to urge that you take immediate action to substantially strengthen our nation’s fight against the most significant and immediate threat to border security: the powerful and violent Mexican drug cartels.

I remain appreciative of the new resources your Administration has begun to bring to our broken border, and I strongly support your call for major federal immigration reform.

Yet, having considered your recent remarks on these topics and your Administration’s actions on border security, I am concerned that you may have misperceived the nature of the border threat, and in so doing, may have jeopardized the success of your well-intended initiatives. Your statement that our border has never been more secure, in part because we have more boots on the ground, misses a fundamental truth: Our border cannot be secure as long as the cartels are so deeply entrenched, so well-funded, and operate so brazenly. Until the cartels are dismantled, rampant trafficking of drugs, humans, guns and money across our border will persist.

The growth in size, strength and sophistication of the Mexican drug cartels is the most immediate actual threat to the security of Arizonans and other Americans from our broken border.

The cartels are responsible for the murders of more than 22,700 people south of our border since 2007. These are war zone-like death tallies. They exceed the combined number of all deaths of American troops, coalition troops, and civilians in the war in Afghanistan since it began in 2001. In fact, the nwnber of violent civilian deaths in Mexico last year also exceeded the number of violent civilian deaths in Iraq. As Attorney General Holder correctly noted last year, “International drug trafficking organizations pose a sustained, serious threat to international safety and security. They are a national security threat.”

Yet, despite the proximity of the American public to this threat (many, if not most, ofthe killings are occurring in Mexican border towns like Juarez, Chihuahua, and Nogales, Sonora), the federal response to the situation there has paled in comparison with the $12 billion per month we are now spending to fight in far~away Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, even with your new, enhanced financial commitment to the Southwest border, federal spending in this area constitutes less than one percent of our nation’s annual expenditures Iraq and Afghanistan.

For those of us actually living on the border, this imbalance is intolerable. And it is worsened by the fact that Arizonans pay a disproportionate share of the costs associated with our broken border. As I and others have repeatedly pointed out, Arizona houses a substantially higher percentage of criminal aliens than other states; yet we get paid only about 10 percent of our costs for incarcerating them despite the clear mandate of the SCAAP law that the federal government either pay our full cost or take our criminal alien population into federal custody.

These realities must change, because the problem is getting worse. The cartels are now diversifying their business operations by attacking major sources of domestic and international commerce. Recent reports of truck hijackings and thefts from petroleum pipelines by the cartels confirm that they are finding new ways to make money, overrun civil authority, and expand their power.
Perhaps more troubling, the cartels have launched an assault on Mexican democracy itself. The recent assassination of leading gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre and his staff, on the heels of an attempted assassination of the Chief of Police of Puerto Penasco, sends a clear message that the cartels believe they-and not the Mexican people, the Mexican government, or even the United States—-control the border region.

The time has come for you to identify and more forcefully respond to the real threat on our border. The cartel leaders are nothing short of well-armed warlords whose continued operations near and across our border pose a significant, serious, and immediate threat to Arizona’s and the nation’s security.

I call on you to launch a major, multi-national, law enforcement initiative aimed first and foremost at identifying cartel warlords by name and bringing them to justice by all means available. Breaking up these cartels and restoring the rule of law within Mexico not only would bring better security to the border region, but also would greatly assist Mexican efforts to stabilize their economy and improve the conditions that compel so many Mexican citizens to seek work illegally in the United States. It would also restore safety and confidence to the many legitimate businesses (including tourism) that seek peaceful trade between the United States and Mexico.

I can think of few international policy areas of more immediate interest to the people of Arizona than restoring the rule of law in the border region and developing Mexico into a safe, stable and prosperous trading partner. For this reason, I have made the fight against the cartels my top priority as Arizona’s Attorney General. The prosecutors and investigators in my Office have helped take down a number of drug-and human-smuggling rings. Using federal Merida Initiative funds, we have trained over 400 Mexican prosecutors to help improve that country’s low criminal conviction rates. I also secured an important $94 million recovery from Western Union that includes $50 million for the four states that make up the Southwest Border Alliance to further Arizona’s work in disrupting the flow of money to the cartels.

If my Office can achieve these results on our limited state budget, imagine the impact the federal government could make if it devoted even five percent of the money it is spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At a minimum, as I have discussed on several occasions with Secretary Napolitano and Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Alan Bersin, I implore you to find funding to provide dollar-for-dollar federal matches to the law enforcement initiatives being funded by our Southwest Border Alliance.

Which brings me to my final point: In the absence of a new and comprehensive federal immigration law, it is just wrong for this Administration to fight state efforts to address the effects of our broken border. While I did not agree with the specific approach taken by my state when it passed SB 1070, I fully support Arizona’s right to take strong action to protect our taxpayers from the substantial costs of residing along a broken border.

Your Administration’s decision to challenge Arizona’s law before it even takes effect without any effort to address Arizona’s costs or to effectively deal with the cartel threat -has created substantial and justifiable anger here. That anger should not be underestimated, and threatens to undermine the effectiveness of your efforts to secure needed federal immigration reform.

I strongly urge you to take two steps to address that anger: 1) focus federal law enforcement efforts on a stronger and higher profile multi-national effort to find and incarcerate the leaders of the cartels; and 2) propose real financial relief to Arizona taxpayers who have paid far more than most others of the financial consequences of a failed federal border policy. Fully funding the SCAAP law and better compensating border state hospitals for emergency treatment of immigrants would go a long way toward addressing the frustrations of Arizonans and other border state taxpayers.

I would be pleased to meet with you at any time to discuss these important issues further.

Sincerely,

Terry Goddard "

smart bomb the salsa cartels !!!!!

mr president
send down ten thousand predators now

the lords of this bean patch Illium
must be rubbed out ...b4 november 1st

if he takes this sage brush advice
from a prepster geek
he really is st woodrow in black face

his
black jack pershing ???

i suggest for symmetry sake
ohbummer fire up

ole pale face powell

father S knows i am a rock rib TTBO guy
in fact when he formed this site in his mind
i more or less reacted with
throw the bums out is the line of duty here
no more but certainly ...certainly no less

the dembots were by that point ...circa 05
rising ever so slowly from their nadir in 02
obviously long range lag time accounting suggested
strike at em now
get ready to prefigure
the coming TTBO take down charge
in '10 or '12

so here it is a fixed fortified position
raising its flags
open to view
and ready to train fire on the donkbats of dingville
by advocating total war
till the jack asses
are a string of skinned mules in '12

twice in my adult life TTBO has failed

84 and 96
it must not fail again
or the two party system will rehabilitate itself by the legitimate process of handing primary power to the mule train party

and like
some two headed turkey turned phoenix
and we'll be back in 12 to 1896
all over again only
the election that sets a pattern for decades
this time
the new bryan cleveland in short pants
won last time and will
win again improbably
like harry truman in 48 !!!!

(austro hungarian empire on a world scale )

no progressive alternative that will only wake up the swing left party agitprop
again ala harry
nope we go straight to ...palin

http://conservativecancer.com/sarah_palin_5.jpg

Vlad the Impaler and the Tasmanian Devil? What about Yosemite Sam and Sasquatch? Why do you hate America?

pinkos for palin form
the frente amplio

this time
put the right kinda sex in the drivers seat

marxist-leninist mao tse tung thought
spike heel submissives
unite!!!

don't let the red queers
be the only ones letting it all hang out !!!

turf jane Harman ??

my secret love thing ???

http://www.jewoftheday.com/Ulpan/Images/Phyllis%20Diller.gif

I'm much too fond of Yosemite Sam and Sasquatch to wish the disgrace of office upon either one.

the WSJ's own mr moore
takes on the teachers unions

"The Obama administration is pressuring Congress to spend $23 billion to rehire the more than 100,000 teachers who have been laid off across the country. "

" Wisconsin is a microcosm of the union intransigence that's fueling the school funding crisis in so many cities and states and leading to so many pink slips. It also shows why a federal bailout is a mistake. "

"Because of declining tax collections and falling enrollment, Milwaukee's school board announced in June that 428 teachers were losing their jobs"

horst vessel moment :

"including Megan Sampson, who was just awarded a teacher-of-the-year prize. "

" the teachers union, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, had it within its power to avert almost all of the layoffs. "

stage set

now the numbers:

" The average pay for a Milwaukee school teacher is $56,000,"

'hey that ain't much eh ??' sez goo goo guy
' sounds decent but hardly excessive
even with their shorter job hours per year '

mr moore agrees

but keep your shirt on pinkos

" According to a new study by the MacIver Institute...The current(milwaukee teachers) health plan costs taxpayers $26,844 per family, compared to the typical $14,500 cost for a private employer family plan."

now watch the vulgarian's gorge rise eh ...

"The plan does not require teachers to pay any premiums toward the cost of the health plan"
driving home the nail :

"a situation that is all but extinct in private employment."

now facing this health cost bill
the local board in a fiscal jam
suggests ".. a new health plan that would reduce costs to $17,172 per family. The plan would have saved money by requiring co-pays....This would have prevented the lay off of approximately 480 teachers"

But guess what

" when union officials were presented the option, they chose to allow their members to be dismissed. "

qed so far as talk radio homer and marge are concerned eh ??

want some more vinegar babes ??

"Many Milwaukee teachers have been quoted in the local press complaining that union officials never offered them a choice to make health-care concessions, and many say they would have been willing to go with reduced benefits to avoid the firings. "

now comes the coup de gras

"So why were these teachers considered expendable by the people who are supposed to protect their jobs? .. because it placed a bet on its Democratic friends in Washington rushing to the rescue. "

this is precisely the agit prop that explains why goo goos and the corporate wage class
are seperated by a common party

btw mr moore suggests
(using the think tankers at kiniver )
the board also pays
14 k per year in pension contributions
per teacher too

charterize the public school fleet
kill the shankerite menace ??
elect the pals of palin !!

By Chris Kromm (of facing south)

"One of the most striking things we learned meeting with community leaders in the Gulf Coast recently is how deeply conflicted coastal residents are about offshore oil drilling.

All of the people and groups Facing South talked to -- from Dulac, Louisiana to Moss Point, Mississippi -- were suffering in some way from the BP spill. But most, even bona-fide environmentalists, were at best ambivalent about calls to ban drilling in ocean waters.

This was especially true of fishermen, despite the fact that BP's disaster has closed a third of Gulf waters and undermined their very livelihood. We quickly found out why: Many of the fishermen also worked on oil rigs in the off-season. And even those who didn't work on rigs knew that thousands of Gulf jobs depend on the energy industry; in the absence of alternatives, they're staying pro-drill.

This highlights what may be the most critical point in the national debate over offshore oil drilling: The public is increasingly wary of drilling in our oceans in the wake of the BP disaster, but the only way environmentalists are going to cinch the debate is if they can offer compelling economic and energy alternatives.

The polls clearly show a backlash against the "drill, baby, drill" mantra. The Pew Research Center has found a 19-point drop in support for increased offshore drilling since the spill: In February, 63% supported more offshore drilling; as of late June, a majority (52%) opposed it. A new Public Policy Polling survey in North Carolina, a state that was included in Obama's earlier plans to expand offshore projects, finds that for the first time a plurality (46%) in NC now oppose offshore drilling.

But those anti-drilling views aren't shared in Gulf Coast states, even as BP's oil washes onto their shores. A Rasmussen poll in late June found 79% of likely Louisiana voters support offshore drilling and another found 70% support in Texas. Rasmussen's surveys have always found higher support for offshore drilling than their peers, but in this case their findings are in line with other polls.

The overall message here: Even after our worst oil spill ever, only small majorities nationally oppose offshore drilling. And residents of states who rely on the oil economy still fiercely support it. In a simple pro/con debate over offshore drilling, there isn't enough political momentum to end the exploration and extraction of oil in the oceans.

But what the public can respond to are clear alternatives. As polling guru Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress points out in his analysis of the Pew survey, while the country is deeply divided about offshore drilling, it's positively enthusiastic about clean energy:

Compare those views on allowing more offshore drilling to the robust support for requiring that new homes and buildings meet higher efficiency standards (78 percent), for increasing federal funding for research on wind, solar, and hydrogen technology (75 percent), and for spending more on subway, rail, and bus systems (64 percent).
Whether or not the public wants to make the needed sacrifices, or politicians have the will to push for such measures is another story, which David Roberts has been exploring in a series of thoughtful pieces at Grist.

But the support for a new energy future is there. And at a time when millions in the country are out of work -- including thousands dislocated by the BP disaster -- public sentiment for clean energy could be even stronger with a focus on green jobs.

Green jobs have lots of job-creating potential in the Gulf. A 2009 study from the Center for American Progress and Political Economy Research Institute projected that a $150 billion investment through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (passed in 2009) and American Clean Energy and Security Act (in jeopardy) could generate 325,000 green jobs [pdf] in the five Gulf Coast states (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.)

In fact, the report estimates such green job investments could create 29,000 jobs in Louisiana alone -- an amount nearly identical to the number who work on deep water oil rigs.

The problem is that, like any economic transition, the shift to green jobs will take time -- something in short supply in a region reeling from hurricanes and an oil spill. That's why many Gulf Coast community leaders are also pushing for more immediate investments in Gulf job creation, like the post-Katrina idea of a Gulf Coast Civic Works program.

Politics aside, an immediate Gulf jobs program is surely doable: If BP can quickly put thousands of fishermen to work cleaning up oil, why can't Washington do the same for jobs focused on coastal restoration, green building and other vital projects?

Now more than ever, those seeking to break our country's -- and the Gulf Coast's -- addiction to oil and offshore drilling need to offer such practical, common-sense economic alternatives, both short-term and long-term.

The public wants clean energy; now the green jobs movement needs to show a new energy future can also put people to work -- and fast."

Al-vin Greene! Al-vin Greene!

Not Mexico or its namesake gulf... The pre-election target is the gulf near Persia. The bombs are in place at Diego Garcia. The flotilla is on station. The UN is on board. The misdirection has been published.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2010/ss_israel0634_07_09.asp

The Bushehr reactor is scheduled for operation in September, i.e., the last straw, the pretext.

Happy motoring!

Yar, Boink.

Two years ago, I'd have wagered against overt action against Iran (plenty of covert already going on, especially with the recalcitrant Baluchis).

Now, VoteVets and a host of other front groups are out a'pimping an Iran War.

I don't think it'll be a boots on the ground kind of thing, but it serves a whole lot of purposes (for the death state) to drop bombs on Tehran, Isfahan, Qom and the like.

Lots of pretexts to stay in the two encirclement zones (Afghanistan and Iraq). Lots of appropriations for more ordnance. Lots of dead Americans to rile up the homefront.

And the Iranians stone womenfolk, y'know. So, the gliberals are already on board, confusing western, white, capitalist gender issues with class, as always. Statist shit bum fucktard blinder wearing nitwit moron raasholes.

Plus, Israel. Must. Save. Eretz. Yisroel.

Plus plus, what cameras in the Gulf of Mexico, again?

J.C., are you implying that liberals need a reason to be on board with imperial wars? Based on what evidence? They were born on board.

And, fwiw, I don't think the status of women under Islam is a mirage or the capitalist mind.

P.S. This past "electoral season," I stuck to my SMBIVA principle and refrained from even opening my ballot (Oregon being -in an apt turn of phrase -- an all-mail-in elections state).

I enjoyed the process and haven't had a single pang since.

Why waste time voting for anybody? Why risk the papercut?

"The obvious answer: Vote for every Republican in sight. Turf him out of the Oval Office in 2012, and Jane Harman and Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi with him, and replace them with Sarah Palin and Ted Bundy and Vlad The Impaler and the Tasmanian Devil and whoever the fuck."

I'm with you on this one. Can't say that I'll vote republican in every instance but I'll sure not vote for any incumbents or democrats.

Michael,

I think they need the simulacrum of a reason, or reasons. Liberals are incomprehensible without their pitch for liberalism. Evangelical, the lot of them. They cannot just kill the brownies what scare them - like an old timer conservative who'll shoot the Injun and sleep the dreamless sleep that same night - they have to sell the murder.

Not unlike their neocon Frankenstein creations, they.

And whether or not it sucks to be a woman in an Islamic tyranny has little to do with why gliberals care about that issue, methinks.

All the same, women have more roles in Hizbollah than they do at Microsoft or in Bammael's White House.

Respect,

Jack

Agreed that liberals don't give a crap about women, especially "over there." Over here, they like Hillary. Nuff said.

NH has open primaries. Plenty of room for mischief.

Drunk Pundit writes:
I'm with you on this one. Can't say that I'll vote republican in every instance but I'll sure not vote for any incumbents or democrats...

Y'know, you oughta give it a try... vote for every Republican, straight down the line, even if they're batshit -- or, perhaps, because they're batshit. I may actually vote in 2012, and for a Republican for El Presidente (Run, Sarah, Run!) and enjoy it, in very much the same way I enjoyed being one of thousands of people all over the Internet who sabotaged the People Magazine "Most Beautiful People" Poll in 1994 by logging on and voting for Hank, The Angry Drunken Dwarf.

Mahmood Mamdani had some interesting things to say about the humanitarian empire builders:

Nor was it mere idiosyncrasy that inspired the devotion with which many colonial officers and archivists recorded the details of barbarity among the colonized—sati, the ban on widow marriage or the practice of child marriage in India, or slavery and female genital mutilation in Africa. I am not suggesting that this was all invention. I mean only to point out that the chronicling of atrocities had a practical purpose: it provided the moral pretext for intervention. Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilizing them.

You can learn more in depth about particular regions in such studies as Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, for example the study there by Drèze and Gazdar of Uttar Pradesh, a state of about 160 million people with one of the lowest female to male ratios in the world, not because of female infanticide but because of the miserable treatment of women, reminiscent of the Taliban but of no more concern than their fate was under the Taliban until they became an official enemy, and the hideous conditions of life generally.

Bernie Sanders?! He's one of the few good Kongress Kritters.

stop me b4 i vote ...democratic ...again

SMBIVDA