Let’s Play Political Football

Wikipedia offers this definition: A political football is a political topic or issue that is continually debated but left unresolved. The term is used often during a political election campaign to highlight issues that have not been completely addressed, such as the natural environment and abortion.

I have an addition for the Wikipedia page. A political football is also a topic that generates more hypocrisy than any other form of discussion. During my first few months in the world of politics I discovered that particular sport was not specific to any one of the political parties.

My first example is Illegal Immigration. On the Democrat side the football becomes one of so called “human rights” where the people breaking the U.S. immigration laws somehow have been granted rights above and beyond those of natural and naturalized citizens. On the Republican side, those violating our border are criminals, unless they suddenly become a valuable resource in protecting the bottom line of big business by working under the table. The reasons are quite different but both parties are refusing to resolve the issue, much less even come close to it. The real issue is that the United States is a sovereign country and should act as such. Immigration has rules for good reasons and the U.S. labor laws are also in place for good reasons. The hypocrisy of both parties on this issue has no good reason.

The second example is capital punishment. The left views capital punishment as cruel and unusual and claims the state has no right to kill people. At the same time they champion the killing of unborn children and support terrorist organizations overseas actively involved in the killing of innocents. The right is no better. They have allowed the laws involved around capital punishment to metastasize into a cancerous tangle that has reduced the effectiveness of the punishment to a moot point. Execution is not there to provide entertainment value or even revenge. It is there to act as a deterrent just as every other law with a stick attached to it is put in place. Our government isn’t interested in exacting punishment, it is interested in promoting good behavior, and yes, there is a difference between god and bad behavior.

The last example is abortion. It ties in with capital punishment because of a particular hypocrisy of the left. It is almost a certainty that most of the supporters of abortion know that a human life is being destroyed each time an abortion is performed. They also know that well over 99% of all abortions occur without a medical necessity. They simply cannot acknowledge that realization because of political necessity. The party agenda is far more important than human life…check that, human life that cannot vote.

I received several rather incendiary comments on this topic because I used the example of a woman’s unborn child being killed and the killer not being sentenced for the murder of that child. The point was missed, and I doubt it will ever be got. The person who pulled that trigger should be sentenced just as stringently for the killing of an unborn child as they would be for the killing of a 50 year old man. The age, sex, race, or economic status of a life should not matter. Wanton killing is wanton killing, regardless of the circumstance of the victim. Where are NOW, the ACLU and every other abortion rights group on this issue? They are silent as is to be expected, because the life of a child in the womb is nothing to them. They have their own agenda and that is the furtherance of their own political power. This football is simply a means to an end.

The right has its own problems where this issue is concerned. A few churches and several individuals have acted with the same fanaticism as members of the Taliban. The bombing of clinics and the killing of doctors have done nothing but place their cause in a bad light. Breaking the law is not the answer. Committing murder certainly is not the answer. Education is and it is going to take a long, long time because, though individuals may be intelligent, people are stupid. Just take a look at what we think is good television if you don’t believe me.

You Can't Vote Your Choice in Nevada

An Assembly Caucus meeting was held in the spring of this year. At that meeting the bill I was proposing to address the problem of illegal immigration was ridiculed by two people I thought were my friends. Today, I know better. One began the dismantling by telling the caucus that my bill would bankrupt the state. The other agreed wholeheartedly. The bill would have mirrored the law passed in Oklahoma and gone after both illegals and those who knowingly hire them.

Remember the famous catch phrase that Bush Jr. proclaimed while he was raking in millions of dollars of bribe money from Mexico, “…doing jobs that Americans won’t do.”? He uttered that bit of rubbish while at the same time his friends in corporate America were firing American workers and shipping those lost jobs overseas.

Here in Southern Nevada we have developers building massive billion dollar resorts. In nearly every case the contractors doing the work have dozens of illegals on the job site. Many of these illegal workers carry the same phony social security ID as their buddy. Big business loves the idea of being able to pay upwards of ten wetbacks for the price of one American. Bush should have said his catchphrase a little differently, “…doing jobs that Americans won’t do at that price.” It’s a funny thing about the United States, we citizens insist on being treated fairly. Here in Nevada, it appears that the Republican Party considers fairness, real fairness, not that phony liberal nonsense, unfair. I suppose that is why they have worked overtime to remove Nevada’s citizens from the political process. You see, if the voter cannot have a direct impact on the fundamental decisions that affect their daily lives, the corrupt have an additional layer of protection.

The Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution reads thusly: Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Two brief paragraphs and one huge impact. It is no wonder that in recent history several states have had highly contentious court cases over what this amendment actually says. As far as the English language is concerned, the most important word in this right is the word, “abridged”. That means that if any person, entity, agency or government does anything to prevent a legal voter from voting for the person of their choice, they have violated the constitution. If a state passes a law restricting the ballot process, that state has violated the constitution. Well, here in Nevada, we apparently love illegal immigration. We even register them to vote as the Acorn story proves. However, we don’t want the legal citizens to vote freely, we only want them to vote for what the political parties say they can. Even though a write-in ballot is provided by federal law and you can go online and print one out, Nevada won’t let you use it. I know the 10th Amendment gives certain rights to the states, but it doesn’t do that.

Unfortunately, try to get your rights reestablished in a state that has nearly every legislator and judge bought and paid for by those businesses profiting from corruption.
Bankrupt the state? Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.

Immigration

I have a bill in draft form ready to be considered in the 2009 session. It mirrors the Oklohoma law that shut off social welfare to illegal immigrants and punished those businesses knowingly hiring illegals in preferance to citizens. I have already been told by members of my own party, GOP, that the bill is dead on arrival because implimenting such a law would bankrupt the state.

Here is my problem with that: when we take office, we are sworn in. This means we swear an oath to uphold the law and the constitution. There is a reason these people are called illegal immigrants, they have broken our law. If they have been sent back and crossed the boarder illegally a second time they are guilty of a felony. If a business hires a group of illegals...all of them using the same social security number on their fake IDs, then that business is breaking the law. Nowhere in the oath of office that I took did it say that I was to ignore lawbreaking if I found that law to be inconvenient. Expediency is the currency of cowards and the avenue of cretins and a sure path to a life of corruption.

I say, build the wall. Put it up 40 feet high and send it 40 feet deep. Make it impossible to climb over and impossible to tunnel through. Sure the United nations will scream and Mexico will call it an act of war, and our president will be uninvited to bridge games by our southern neighbor...so what? We can help the farmers by putting Ellis Island structures every 50 miles and allowing those who want to work to be checked out, set up with a temporary visa, tracked, taxed, and sent on their way...legally. We can also filter out the bad guys, the terrorists, those carrying the next plague virus and the drug runners. If Mexico gets upset becasue their drug profits drop, again, so what? This is our country. It does not belong to the UN or to any of Bush's foreign friends, at least not yet. We have over a hundred thousand homeless combat vets without jobs in this country. They have earned a job, not one illegal can say that, at least not honestly.