Summer is off to a nice start. The dog is laying in the backyard sunbathing right now. She’s a weirdo.

Played a game of baseball online this morning. Went down early 2-0 against the Devil Rays of all teams, but had a couple nice innings and won 4-2, raising my record online to 10-4. Last night Angelo helped me fine tune my network setup and change my dsl router to a “bridge,” which should simplify things. But that’s nerdy mumbo jumbo you don’t care about.

We’re going camping this weekend at San Onofre which should be fun. I haven’t been to the beach in forever, and it will be nice to go “away,” even if it’s only for a short time.

Andrew and Sarah are well on their way of making Denise and Paul’s condo into their own. They’ve done some painting and moved in furniture. It’s great to see them start their new life together. I have a much greater appreciation than I used to for weddings and marriage, now that I’m married. You know what the people are getting themselves into and what a special time that is in their life.

We started to watch the season of ER that finished a month or so ago. We didn’t watch it all during the year, but instead saved it for summer viewing. It’s a well done show, but the liberal nonsense is unbelievably annoying. Here are the recurring liberal story lines:

1) Huge numbers of people are gay, and they don’t act anything like gay people do in real life. Gaydar need not apply, because you could never guess, because the show wants you to think gay people are just like straight people, but gay. Oh wait, that’s not all, gay people are actually more with it than the straight people. The gay relationships are always great, and the straight people are screwed up.

2) Everyone is dying in Iraq. Last year a main character got killed in Iraq, and this year there was a family whose father had died in Iraq. They wouldn’t want to have a character that came back from Iraq alive and emphasize the good they were doing. No, Iraq is the devil and everyone is dying.

3) National healthcare mumbo jumbo! The ER is always full and nobody has health insurance on the show. The characters are always screaming about how we need a national healthcare plan. What BS. Where are the illegal aliens in the ER? Oh that’s right, they never show any.

Sorry for that diversion from my summer, I apologize.

I’m off to start Act 2 of the book. Act 1 clocked in at around 20k words, or somewhere around 45-50 pages in a real book. It’s sitting on Stacie’s desk waiting for a read through. It’s amazing how much time it takes to get a story going and established. I’m looking forward to what comes next. It should get exciting.

The politicians are swearing up and down that it’s not amnesty. “Look, there are a bunch of hoops to jump through. It’s not like 1986 at all!”

The entire thought process behind the recent Senate bill is backwards. A discussion about what to do with the illegals already here shouldn’t even begin until our borders are secure. Employers need to be held accountable for hiring illegal workers. The double fence needs to be built along the border (it’s not a wall, it’s a fence). Illegals that commit crimes should be immediately deported. Anchor babies shouldn’t become automatic citizens.

Once the above happens, then we can talk about what to do with the illegal aliens here. You don’t hand out Z-Visas that automatically make illegal immigrants legal (not citizens, but legal). You don’t create enforcement “triggers” to be met at a later date. Prove to me that enforcement is working now, not later. A majority of illegal aliens don’t even care about becoming citizens, they care about the jobs. Politicians are kidding themselves if people are going to pay thousand dollar fines and return to their home country to become citizens.

If a Republican presidential candidate backs this bill, they will lose my vote. So far Romney has the right response, McCain (not surprisingly) doesn’t.

2:00 PM – KCAL 9 News

A sign reads "The Sleeping Giant Has Awaken." Rational and legal citizens, are you paying attention?

They actually spent a segment covering an anti-boycott group in Santa Ana. Most used intelligent arguments in the debate like "no amnesty" and "crackdown on employers that hire illegals." There was one lady holding a "Trust Jesus" sign though, so there can be crazy people on both sides of the debate.

Haha, a guy is standing in front of Home Depot to see if today had any impact on their day to day operations. It was "empty," but I guess he didn’t notice all the cars in the parking lots.

There is a protest group heading TOWARDS the U.S.-Mexican border! Could it be, are they actually going to leave on their own free will? I wish.

3:00 PM – KCAL 9 News

Paul Dandridge is reporting that the Mayor is supposed to speak before the rally starts. I wonder if he’ll be talking about cleaning toilets? The rally is supposed to start at 4 pm, but it could be starting early. Oh boy, I can’t wait!

A reporter in Oxnard is reporting with a crowd behind her, and a Mexican flag is filling up the entire background behind her.

A sign reads "It’s better to be on your feet than to live on your knees."

In Ventura Adrian Gaspar, a rally organizer, said "We gathered the whole community so we can protest for our rights. Up until now we’ve been exploited, and with these new laws coming in we’re gonna be even worse." You have the nerve to say that YOU have been exploited? What about every time an illegal takes advantage of social services that I pay for with MY taxes?

4:00 PM – KABC 7 Eyewitness News

Back to High Definition!

More signs. "We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us."

Haha, the organizers passed out oranges when it got hot. I forgot about that important part of our economy: the orange seller!

They went to a group of Black people who had gathered to discuss the problem of finding a job when illegals will do the same work for $5 an hour. They best they could come up with is that amnesty would level the playing field. I keep hearing the thinking that amnesty will fix it and we can just go on our way. The problem is that amnesty doesn’t end anything if people can still run across the border without consequence!

Some signs from the Riverside protest read "We Are Everywhere!" What is he likening himself to, the plague, maybe an infestation?

Marc Brown found a crazy lady. "Put yourselves in our shoes, you wouldn’t like it. We’re here, we need to survive, we need to take care of our children. Turn the tables around, you wouldn’t like it." Marc Brown asks "What do you want to have happen now?" She replies "Legalization, get Bush out of here!" Marc Brown says "Wait, one of the things the President is asking for is a guest worker program. Is that what you want?" She then says "No that’s not we want. We need papers, legalization, and papers!" Brown says "People who are opposed to that say you would be getting in line in front of people who are here legally and have been through the process legally." Faced with this extremely difficult question requiring critical thinking, the woman can only reply with "It don’t matter. Everybody deserves a chance here!"

One guy said that "They forgot that they came from Europe and stole turkeys." I’m sorry sir, but I didn’t come from Europe. And again, more anti-white people sentiment. Who again is racist?

Another good sign that reads "Who are the REAL illegals? YOU stole our border!"

Some protestors threw eggs at people protesting the boycott.

Today I DVRed news shows all day long to see what went on around the country. I now sit down to suffer through hours of mainstream media for YOU!

7:00 AM – Good Morning America

They keep calling it "a day without immigrants." Why don’t they just be honest and call it a day without illegal aliens. Immigrants are great! It’s illegals we don’t want. Uh oh, your favorite dry cleaner or restaraunt might be closed.

Goya Foods is shutting down today. I don’t know who they are, but I’m not buying there stuff. (They showed a picture of kidney beans, sick.)

They took some time to bash Rush Limbaugh. Some "legal analyst" claims he had 10,000 pills, but Drudge has a link saying the charge was only for 40 pills. The whole time their headline is "Did Limbaugh Get Off Easy?" which of course makes people think he did.

8:00 AM – Good Morning America

"Immigrants are flexing their economic muscle!" This has to be utterly frustrating for immigrants that migrated here legally. The media is lumping all immigrants into the same group. Not ALL immigrants are supporting the boycott!

So Good Morning America was pretty much pointless. They’re mainly scripted, so very little live coverage.

11:00 AM – ABC 7 Eyewitness News

Downtown LA at the beginning of the first march. Wow, this is going to be really painful listening to a bunch of buffoons.

One lady compared this to past civil rights battles. "It’s cyclical, where one group is marginalized until people band together and do something about it." This is NOT a civil rights battle. This is about people breaking the law and coming here illegally.

Someone is holding a sign that says "CREATE CONSCIOUSNESS: Don’t Bite The Hand That Wipes Your Ass."

Haha, vendors are selling flags and rally t-shirts. Isn’t that against the boycott?

In Riverside protestors were gathering. These folks, the National Alliance for Human Rights, are a little confused. They have signs that read "A Day Without Mexicans," "Stop Racism, We’re All God’s Children," and shirts that say "Stop Racism."

Their Eyewitness Poll shows that 32% of people support the boycott, and 61% oppose. Also 31% think they boycott will help achieve their goal, 19% no effect, and 48% think their will be backlash. We can hope. Politicians that like to change with the wind should be paying attention.

I see another sign that reads "I came here for a better life. Everybody deserves the same chance." No, they don’t! According to this idiot if they entire country of Mexico wanted to move here they should be allowed to. You DO NOT have a right to move here!

A sign reads "The White People Stold the Country…" and I think it ended with "From My Ancestors" but it was blocked. So some people think this is a civil rights movement for illegal Mexicans…and others saying white people stole this land. A little scary.

Haha, 50 illegals got caught trying to cross the border this morning.

Another sign reads "Please latin american countries boycott american goods and services." So he wants me to believe that he is a part of this country, but he’s telling other countries to boycott us?

Vincente Amador owns Atwater Screen and Glass said "I believe everybody forgets how much we contribute to this economy. We are a few but very strong in every aspect of the business world, but as a big group we are huge, and people seem to forget that we are here." You would think that congress made being an immigrant a felonyKarla.

Fed Alvarez said "They (illegals) take our jobs from us, they live on the streets, they go and get minimum wage jobs, get $3 jobs, and us Americans we’re out here collecting cans." I assume he’s homeless, but it’s the first anti-illegal thing I’ve heard (and from a slightly crazy homeless person at that.)

Another sign reads "We Are All Immigrants." No idiot, I was born here.

Karla Rodriguez, a high school student, skipped school. She said "There’s actually no point of going to school if they’re gonna pass a law that doesn’t make us go to school." What the crap are you talking about? Go back to school and actually learn something!

That was a lot more to report on than I expected, so I’ll start another post for all the protests from the afternoon.

On Thursday the California State Senate decided to support a walkout by illegal aliens. If you read the article there are a few quotes, which basically show that Democrats are supporting the walkout. It’s pandering for votes at its finest. So much for schools that have been preparing for May 1st and warning students not to skip school. Apparently the state government thinks it’s ok!

If all the toilet cleaners want to stay home that is fine with me. I clean my own toilet.

UPDATE

Another article from Drudge about May 1st. There was a specific part I found very humorous:

"Conservatives want the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants returned to Mexico and a fence built along the border.

Others, including President George W. Bush, want a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship."

Haha, there are conservatives, and then there is President Bush. How true!

John and Ken were talking about the rally held here in Los Angeles the other day. One of the people that led the rally was public servant Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The man that is in charge of the city of Los Angeles had these amazing words to say:

"Today we say to America — we’ve come here to work," Villaraigosa told the crowd near Olvera Street. "We clean your toilets. We clean your hotels.We build your houses. We take care of your children. We want you to help us take care of our children as well."

I find this statement interesting for two reasons. Notice how the Mayor uses the term "we" over and over. He is including himself with illegal aliens, and promoting the breaking of our nation’s laws. The second part I find interesting is the work he claims illegal aliens do, and also the order that he lists.

Out of every job held by an illegal alien, the first one he can come up with is "we clean your toilets?" This is amusing for several reasons. 1) The mayor is admitting that he cleans people’s toilets (hence the funny picture) and 2) IT’S NOT IMPORTANT! I can clean my own toilet thank you very much. If every illegal alien was deported, the worst thing that would happen is our toilets wouldn’t get cleaned? HA! Our economy will not be falling apart due to dirty toilets.

Don’t believe the nonsense that our country won’t survive without illegal aliens, it’s rubbish.

I decided that lumping my thoughts into the last post would be far too confusing, so I will start a new one. Look for new updates as I get the energy and facts to back up my points. If you make any comments while this post is in progress, you may want to indicate the "section" of this that you are replying to.

1) Understanding Terminology Used in the Illegal Immigration Debate

Before I start babbling about crime and the economy, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the terms used in the debate (especially when the media loves to spin them to death).

An illegal immigrant is someone who either entered this country without permission, or has overstayed a temporary permit (a visa)¹. Any person who is in this country, in violation of the laws of this country, is an illegal immigrant. There are different terms used to refer to people here illegally. Illegal aliens is my favorite. Liberals enjoy using "undocumented workers."

Whatever your term for people who are in the country illegally, the word "immigrant" is not sufficient. The rally over the weekend was not about "immigrants" rights, it was about "illegal immigrants" rights. The laws being debated in congress in no way affect legal immigrants. This is the primary error that so many of the protestors and students walking out of class fail to realize.

It’s not about Mexicans, Chinese people, and it’s not about legal immigrants. This debate is about illegal immigrants.

Citations: ¹Wikipedia – Illegal Immigration

2) A Foreword on Immigration

Before I get into the nitty gritty, here are some of my personal views on immigration, just so you know what my "biases" are. I believe that the United States is a great country, and something that makes it great is that we are governed by laws. As a nation we have rules and the right to enforce those rules. The United States allows immigration into our country, and people have been coming to live here for hundreds of years. I have no beef with immigrants, as my great-great-grandfather was an immigrant (I think). Many immigrants come here because they want a better life and an opportunity to have the American dream.

The debate before us now is that there are certain individuals who do not believe in the rule of law. It is within the power of the United States to create and enforce the laws. It is illegal to overstay a visa or cross the border without permission. I don’t care who the person is and no matter their circumstance, no one has a right to be in this country besides the citizens of this country. That’s correct, the USA is an exclusive club, and if you want in, you need permission. If you decide to break the laws of our country, you are a criminal.

I’m sure this will sound "mean" to people that think with their emotions. It is not racist nor predjudiced for a country to control it’s own destiny, and who we let in plays a major part in that. A quick look at France and the recent Muslim protests is an example². Just as we have decided to not let terrorists into our country, we reserve the right to say no to extremists, the uneducated, and illegal immigrants. If a person has the desire to come and enjoy the freedom of this country and the economic opportunities, I believe they should also be willing to adopt the values and language of this country. If a person is unwilling to do that, then they should not be here.

Citations: ²France – The Cost of Multicultralism

3) It’s Friday and I’m Tired.

I’m tired and don’t feel like devoting several hours of my life creating a pseudo scholarly post, so I will now be succinct.

4) The Economy and Illegals: We Don’t Need Them

All the nonsense about illegals working jobs that no one else will is total horse doo-doo. Americans will clean bathrooms, pick lettuce, and build houses, but when employers have cheap labor to exploit of course they’ll pay the lower wages. We have thousands if not millions of uneducated people that would be great at scrubbing toilets. Just go to myspace and look up all the people that graduated with you and still have no life. Illegal immigrants also love to send money back to Mexico instead of investing it back into our economy.

5) Welfare: If You Hand It Out, They Will Take It

When an illegal comes over the border they get so much handed to them. Public education, emergency medicine, roads and highways, medicare, social security, and welfare. An illegal immigrant does not deserve any of that, because they’ve done basically nothing to pay for any of it. Illegal immigrants are having babies by the thousands at our hospitals and not contributing a dime to pay for it. ONE BILLION DOLLARS. I think I’m turning into a Libertarian when it comes to economics. The solution to all of this is to make people pay for everything. Charge people $4000 to send their kid to public school, pay per miles used on the highways. In turn the goverment could get rid of property taxes or income taxes. Ultimately there should not be anything handed to illegal immigrants by the goverment reaching into the pockets of law-abiding and tax-paying citizens.

6) Illegal Immigrants Commit a lot of Crime

Crime 1: 29% of criminals filling jails are illegals, costing 1.6 billion dollars a year (they only make up around 3% of the entire population).

Crime 2: 60% of the 20,000 strong 18th street gang are illegals.

Crime 3: 95% of outstanding homicide warrants in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

Crime 4: A whole lot of document forgery going on!

There are tons of illegal immigrants and crime links, just search google.

7) Conclusion

That’s all the energy I have. Doesn’t seem like the politicians in Washington D.C. have the guts to really do anything, so I don’t see this problem being solved anytime soon.

Real quick I’d like to vent some frustration over a few things.

1) Clinton appointed Ginsburg, a far left, ACLU loving, pro-choice nut. Now that Bush has the opportunity to bring balance to the court, he picks first Roberts and now Miers. Have some guts Bush and pick a strong conservative! Sure, they might turn out great, but why the mystery candidates? Who cares if Dems don’t like them, I’m sure Republicans didn’t like Ginsburg.

2) Federal spending is WAY too high. What happened to small government? What happened to living within our means? Larry Elder just said that social welfare spending has increased faster under Bush than under LBJ…which I assume means a lot. Republicans on capital hill need to wake up and stop spending our children into the ground.

3) The Border. Illegal aliens are still pouring through our open border everyday. Does Bush or anyone on capital hill do anything about it? Nope. This is an issue that resonates with voters, but no one seems to pay it any mind.

Bush has lost some gusto. Republicans should be reducing government spending, closing our borders, and leveling the courts, but they’re not. This is what Republicans WANT, so wake up.