Blagojevich and bluster

I think the U.S. Senate will have no choice but to seat Roland Burris as the new Senator from Illinois.
As distasteful as it may seem, Rod Blagojevich is still the governor of Illinois - innocent until proven guilty - and now it looks like it may be another couple of months before we even know if an indictment will be handed down. In the meantime, the rules say that Blago gets to make the Senate appointment. There is nothing in the law that says the Illinois Secretary of State has to approve of the choice, so this business of him not certifying the paperwork seems kind of silly. If he won’t do his job, the governor will just find someone else who will.

And on what grounds could the leadership in the U.S. Senate block Burris from being seated in the chamber? He is in no way implicated in the scandal swirling around Blago. All things considered, he seems to be a pretty good choice. So I think the courts will ultimately rule in his favor.
Blago pulled a fast one and it looks like he will get away with it. He is still going to be impeached and possibly indicted and could end up serving prison time along with his immediate predecessor. But for now he has demonstrated that he can still play politics and the only thing his critics can do is bluster.

Pop culture prowess

The movies are one of the touchstones of our culture. We share a common culture in part by seeing the same movies (or watching the same TV shows, or listening to the same music) as everyone else.
Here is an interesting way to gauge your pop culture prowess: See how many of the top grossing films ($100M-plus domestic gross) that you have seen over the years. In other words, how many of the films that everyone else saw did you see too?
It is easy to do if you go to Box Office Mojo and browse through their yearly list of box office results.

Here is how I measure up:
2000 - 14 of 22
2001 - 14 of 20
2002 - 15 of 24
2003 - 15 of 29
2004 - 17 of 24
2005 - 13 of 19
2006 - 11 of 19
2007 - 8 of 28
2008 - 4 of 24 (so far)

I’ve also seen every one of the highest grossing films for each year (not counting 2008) going back to 1980 with the exception of “Three Men and a Baby” from 1987.

I will probably never have a perfect score for any particular year because there are always going to be some popular films that I have no interest in seeing. If it is a horror film or a gross-out comedy you can usually count me out.
But overall we tend to be exposed to popular movies even when we don’t see them. For instance, I know who Michael Myers, Freddie Krueger and Jason Voorhees are despite the fact that I have never seen any of the Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th movies.

2008 Movies recap

This was a pretty good year for the movies overall thanks largely to the super heroric efforts of Batman, Iron Man and Indiana Jones.
The film industry seemed to be in a slump in 2005-06 when it failed to put out more than 20 films either year that cleared the $100 million mark in domestic box office grosses. There was a big jump in $100M grossing movies in 2007 with 28 and so far this year we are at 24 and counting. You can clearly see the slump here:

2001 - 20
2002 - 24
2003 - 29
2004 - 24
2005 - 19
2006 - 19
2007 - 28
2008 - 24 and counting

I’m not sure if the slump was due to the miserable Bush economy, anxiety over the Iraq war or what, but now, even with the economy fully down the drain, we seem to be going back to the cinema in droves trying to make it all go away for a few hours at a time.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve seen very few 2008 films so far. Here are the ones I’ve seen in order of preference. (* indicates a video/DVD I own).

WALL-E
*Kung Fu Panda
*Iron Man
Horton Hears A Who
*Speed Racer

There are still many 2008 films I want to see including:

*Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The Dark Knight
*Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Gran Torino
Frost/Nixon
Quantum of Solace
Hancock
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Hell Boy II: The Golden Army
Bolt
Burn After Reading
W.
Appaloosa
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Valkyrie
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Defiance
In Bruges
Wanted
Shine A Light
*Nim’s Island
Bedtime Stories
Australia
The Tale of Despereaux
Milk
The Spiderwick Chronicles
The X-Files: I Want To Believe
The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything

Revisiting my list of films from 2007, I am now up to 16 films I have seen:

*Spider Man 3
*Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
*Ratatouille
No Reservations
*The Bee Movie
*Meet the Robinsons
*The Bourne Ultimatum
*National Treasure: Book of Secrets
*Enchanted
*Beowulf
*The Golden Compass
*Stardust
*The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep
*Charlie Wilson’s War
The Simpsons Movie
*Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

And here are the 2007 films I still want to see:

I Am Legend
Sicko
Transformers
I’m Not There
300
The Great Debaters
*Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
No End in Sight
American Gangster
Sweeney Todd
There Will Be Blood
No Country For Old Men
Hairspray
Talk To Me
Bridge To Terabithia
Rescue Dawn
Walk Hard
Eastern Promises
*Michael Clayton
3:10 to Yuma
Juno
Live Free or Die Hard
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The Incompetence Dodge

I have harped on this before, but I think it is worth repeating that it is a mistake to focus too much on George W. Bush’s incompetence as a president and not on the intellectual bankruptcy of the ideas that he championed.
I saw recently where the word “incompetent” is the most frequent one associated with President Bush. While that may be well deserved, it also serves to give Republicans an out as to why their political policies have failed during the past decade. They can say, “It wasn’t our ideas that failed, it was the man who tried to put them into action who was at fault. He was incompetent and screwed things up, thus our ideas were never given their due.”
So it serves Republicans’ interests right now to jump on the “Bush was incompetent” bandwagon so that they can come back in four years with a new standard bearer and the same old failed policies and take another shot at running our country into the ground.
We can’t afford to let them get away with that. So don’t fall for that dodge. Bush was a bad president, there is no doubt. But it was ultimately the failed policies he promoted that sank his presidency, not any personal foibles or missteps. If the taxcuts had actually boosted the economy, rather than creating huge new deficits, then people would not have cared so much about Bush’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina or his efforts to politicize the Justice Department. If toppling Saddam would have really resulted in a flowering of democracy across the Middle East, people would have dismissed reports of abuse at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo and yawned over reports of domestic spying.
The policies failed. Everything else was the icing on the cake.

Cycle of violence

Is it just me? Or does it seem like the Israeli government always picks Christmastime every year to start bombing the hell out of their neighbors?
I’m not going to try and defend Hamas, but the Israeli military action is, as usual, big-time overkill. I never could find out how many Israeli’s were killed by the missile attacks which purportedly sparked this latest offensive, but the death toll on the other side is now at 350 and climbing. That is typical of the entire history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But no matter how lop-sided the death ratio is, (100-to-1?) it never solves anything but rather perpetuates the cycle of violence and death. Israel has maintained an economic death grip on the Palestinian territories for years now, not allowing any kind of normal commerce to take place and keeping the populace in a state of near squalor and starvation. At the same time, the government has allowed the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories to grow and expand almost unheeded. Then they act surprised when radical factions launch rockets on a sporadic basis.
Then over here, our government acts like the Israeli response is appropriate and necessary even as every other country on the planet is appropriately appalled. It makes me sick.
I don’t know if Obama can change things and I know if he even tries to moderate the U.S.’s current Israel-can-do-no-wrong approach to the Middle East he will be viciously attacked by the rightwing spin machine and its media lapdogs. But do something he must because it is clear that the current Israeli government is not going to pull itself out of this cycle of violence on its own.

Merry Christmas

Whose whining now?

President-elect Obama has been taking a lot of abuse recently — from liberals.
Why?
Because he chose someone they don’t like to give the invocation at his inauguration. That someone is evangelical preacher, and best-selling author of “The Purpose Driven Life”, Rick Warren. Warren, unsurprisingly, is anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage and that, according to those on the left, should have precluded him from having any kind of role, no matter how ceremonial or symbolic, in an Obama inauguration.
What distinguishes Warren from your run-of-the-mill evangelical preacher, according to Wiki, is his outspoken challenge to evangelical leaders to devote less attention to divisive social issues and focus more on efforts to fight international poverty and disease, expand educational opportunity for the marginalized, and combat global warming.
It sounds to me like the guy has taken some major steps in the right direction. So why the big uproar over the invocation nod? Atrios gave Obama “wanker of the day” honors for the choice and even suggested that inaugural attendees should turn their backs on Warren during the invocation.
Please stop.
Folks on the left have spent the last two years mocking those on the right as “whiny ass titty babies” and now here we have the same people behaving like spoiled children who throw a hissy fit when they don’t get their way on every little thing.
Obama can choose whoever he wants to give the invocation at his inaugural party. Get over it! If he wants to reach out to those on the right and show some appreciation to someone who met him halfway on some key issues, then what is the big problem? It’s not like Obama has changed his position on these social issues. Far from it. But he is going to need some support to get these changes in place and it is not helpful to have those who should be his biggest supporters rolling around on the floor, kicking and screaming over a complete non-issue. Sheesh!

Obama's Cabinet

Obama is nearly completely done naming his cabinet.

TREASURY SECRETARY: Timothy Geithner, president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
SECRETARY OF STATE: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
ATTORNEY GENERAL: Eric Holder, former deputy attorney general.
DEFENSE SECRETARY: Robert Gates, holdover from Bush administration.
HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Gov. Janet Napolitano, D-Ariz.
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Retired Marine Gen. James Jones.
COMMERCE SECRETARY: Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M.
NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary.
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET DIRECTOR: Peter Orszag, director of Congressional Budget Office.
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
VETERANS AFFAIRS SECRETARY: Retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki.
HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY: Shaun Donovan, New York City housing commissioner.
ENERGY SECRETARY: Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
EPA ADMINISTRATOR: Lisa P. Jackson, former commissioner of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE: Carol Browner, former EPA administrator.
WHITE HOUSE COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY CHAIR: Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor for energy and environment in Los Angeles.
EDUCATION SECRETARY: Arne Duncan, Chicago schools superintendent.
INTERIOR SECRETARY: Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
AGRICULTURE SECRETARY: Tom Vilsack, former Iowa governor.
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR
Denny Blair, retired admiral and former commander of the U.S. Pacific Command.
LABOR SECRETARY
Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif.
TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY
Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill.

U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE
Ron Kirk, former Dallas mayor.

POSTS TO BE DECIDED, WITH THE CONTENDERS:
CIA DIRECTOR
John Gannon, former deputy director for intelligence at the CIA during Clinton administration.
Jami Miscik, former head of CIA's analytical operations.
Steve Kappes, CIA's current No. 2.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., now heads House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence.
John McLaughlin, former interim CIA chief.

Add them all up and you have 24 major appointments of which half have gone to non-white males.
That’s pretty remarkable.
The one demographic group that looked as if it would be left out was the South, but that seems to have been rectified with the last minute nomination of Texan Ron Kirk as U.S. Trade Representative.

Franken may win afterall

I should know never to get my hopes up too much, but there has been a lot of buzz recently that Al Franken might actually pull out a victory in this Minnesota recount. The fact that the election board came down with two crucial rulings the other day that favored Franken may have made all the difference. Now, fresh analysis of the disputed ballots by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Associated Press show Franken should pull ahead in the vote count.
The frustrating thing so far is that all the official tallies have shown Coleman with a 200-vote lead. But now it may finally be revealed that the only reason he has had that lead to date is because he made so many frivoulous challenges to ballots in an effort to keep Franken’s numbers down. That slimy strategy has allowed Coleman to go around for the past few weeks boasting that he is the consensus frontrunner.
But that may all end soon.

Finishing what they started...

In the Express-New's Random Notes section this Sunday, they hi-lite a quote from Peggy Noonan in the WSJ stating that "the final argument for Mr. Bush" will be the fact that "since 9-11, there were no further attacks on American soil..."
Now this statement completely ignores the post-9/11 anthrax attacks that were never resolved. But that aside, it is maddening that anyone would try to pretend that because of something Bush did, al-Qaeda was deterred from making another attack.
This makes no sense when you consider that Bin Laden is still loose and al-Qaeda is as strong now as it ever was. Why wouldn't they have attacked again? Could it be that they simply didn't need to.
One of the goals of the 9/11 attack, besides killing people and striking fear in everyone else, was to damage the U.S. financially by striking at the heart of our economic and financial infrastucture.
Fortunately, they failed.
Unfortunately, Bush and the Republican economic polices may have succeeded where they fell short. Our nation is caught in an economic death spiral that was a direct result of the Republican economic policies that have damaged the very fabric of America both here and abroad.
Al-Qaeda doesn't need to drop any more bombs, Wall Street has blown itself up quite nicely without their help. We desperatly need to change course, but it may already be too late for many companies.

Neo-Hooverites strike again

Why do Republicans hate America? And why do they hate American workers - blue collar workers in particular?
Last night, lame duck Republicans in the Senate filibustered the $14 billion auto bailout package, presumably because the autoworkers union refused to slash salaries for its members next year.
Funny. I don’t recall Republicans filibustering the much larger bailout packages for the financial industry. I don’t recall them demanding big cuts in salary and compensation for Wall Street bankers and stockbrokers.
Out of an ideological hatred for unionized workers, a handful of southern Republican senators - with the full complicity of the majority of Republicans in the Senate - are trying to use the auto bailout as a stick to bludgeon to death the unions. They want to eliminate every advantage workers have from being organized by forcing them to be paid the same as non-union workers. And irregardless of cost-of-living variances between the north and south as well, I presume.
Because of their obstinate, stubborn right-wing hatred for unions, these Republicans may have pushed us into a much deeper recession than we are already in. The only way to pull ourselves out of this economic death spiral, that was created by Republican economic policies to begin with, is to get people employed and spending money again. And you can’t do that when you are forcing job cuts and salary reductions by fiat from Washington.
There is clearly no reason for any working American to ever vote Republican again, certainly not as long as they continue to embrace the economic policies of Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush.

Golden Globe 2008

The Golden Globe nominations are out and needless to say I am very much underwhelmed.

Drama:
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "The Reader," "Revolutionary Road" and "Slumdog Millionaire."

Comedy or musical:
"Burn After Reading," "Happy-Go-Lucky," "In Bruges," "Mamma Mia!" and "Vicky Christina Barcelona."

The only one I am even vaguely interested in seeing at this point is “Frost/Nixon” and that is mostly because it is directed by Ron Howard, one of my favorite directors.

As per usual, the biggest movies of the year were shut out. Dark Knight, which raked in an astonishing half a billion dollars got one supporting actor nomination for the late Heath Ledger. None of the other Top 10 grossing films of the year got any recognition whatsoever. That is unless you count the segregated category for animated films that includes WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda.
It is interesting to note that four of the Top 10 grossing films of 2008 are animated films - WALL-E, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar 2 and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who. At this rate, I’m not sure how much longer Hollywood can continue dissing animated films.
The other interesting thing to note is that five of the Top 10 grossing films were “super hero” movies: Dark Knight (Batman); Indiana Jones; Iron Man; Hancock; and Quantum of Solace (James Bond).
The only non-animated, non-super hero film to break into the Top 10 (literally in the No. 10 slot) was the “chick flick” Sex and the City, which just edged out the year’s other big chick flick, Mama Mia.
Now Mama Mia DID make the Golden Globe cut, but only because they have a special category for comedies and musicals. They don’t have such a category over at the Academy Awards, so you can forget about Mama Mia come Oscar time.

My movie watching in 2008 has been pretty pathetic, so I’m not one to judge the worth of most movies (although that has never stopped me before ;)

Here are the handful of films that came out in 2008 that I have actually seen so far:

Iron Man
WALL-E
Kung Fu Panda
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!
Speed Racer

I would definitely put WALL-E up for Best Picture ahead of those other nominees.

The Untouchables

The Blagojevich corruption scandal is so completely over-the-top as to be almost comical. I can’t help but wonder if Blago didn’t do this on purpose. Maybe he knew he was about to get nailed for some other activities and decided to go out with a bang.
The only other explanation is that he is completely nuts.
I mean, the guy is a lawyer, a former prosecutor, who knew very well that he was already under investigation by the Feds. He should have known that his phones were already tapped. Did he think that he was too big, too powerful, too important to get nailed? How so? His immediate predecessor as governor is currently sitting in jail!
There is no rational explanation for what Blago did. But one thing it does do is present a very clear contrast with the Obama transition team.
Despite Republicans’ pathetic attempts to smear Obama with this mess, the president-elect is coming out of this smelling like a rose.
Blago clearly wanted to involve the president-elect in his pay-to-play scheme, but Obama wasn’t cooperating. Blago was upset that the only thing the Obama team was offering him in return for choosing their favored Senate candidate was “their appreciation.” So he told them to go Cheney themselves. Which is probably why Valerie Jarrett’s name was rather abruptly withdrawn from consideration some weeks ago.
So Obama and his team could not be touched. And now it looks as if Obama’s recent push for ethics reform in Illinois may have been the key to Blago’s downfall.

Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it. But after the call from Mr. Obama, the Senate overrode the veto, prompting the governor to press state contractors for campaign contributions before the law’s restrictions could take effect on Jan. 1, prosecutors say...
Mr. Obama used leverage that he had seldom employed — publicly, anyway — and strongly urged Mr. Jones to bypass Mr. Blagojevich and approve the ethics bill, banning the so-called pay-for-play system of influence peddling in Illinois...Mr. Obama’s intervention deepened a rift between him and Mr. Blagojevich that had been growing for some time.

There will no doubt be many more people who will try to tempt Obama to do things that would not look good in the light of day. But I think this is just one of many examples we will see that he will be scrupulous in avoiding them. Having been burned once over the comparatively innocuous Rezco land swap, I don’t think Obama is going to allow himself to make that kind of mistake again.

Cleaning house

The Democratic Party should smell a lot cleaner next week after the stench of Rod Blagojevich and William Jefferson starts to dissipate.
Everyone knew that Blagojevich was in trouble, but few people expected him to go out with such a splash. It’s almost as if he did it on purpose, knowing full well his phones were being tapped by federal prosecutors. I mean, could anybody really be that stupid? Don’t answer that!
What is it with Illinois governors anyway? Blagojevich, a Democrat, could soon be sharing a prison cell with the former governor, Republican George Ryan. I think that is unprecedented. Now I assume that it will be left to the Democratic Lt. Gov. to choose Obama’s replacement in the Senate.

And at long last, the happy news that William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson is finally going to be an ex-congressman. It’s just too bad that the Democrats didn’t oust him themselves, leaving it up to the Republicans instead. But the candidate they got to knock off Jefferson - Joseph Cao, who will be the first Vietnamese-American in Congress - hardly fits the bill as your typical Republican, especially coming out of Louisiana. A former Jesuit priest, Cao’s primary goal, according to the NYT, will be addressing global poverty and taking care of refugees. I wonder how well that will fit in with his Republican colleagues’ goals of tax cuts for the rich?
If Democrats play it right, they might be able to persuade Cao to switch parties before long.

Gov. Perry’s Neo-Hooverism

Gov. Rick Perry recently co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford arguing against federal bailout and stimulus efforts to revive the flagging economy.
This has been correctly identified by certain Blogger types
as a governing philosophy known as Neo-Hooverism, as in Herbert Hoover, whose failed economic policies led to the Great Depression and whose austere response to the crisis only made it worse.
I find it disturbing that Republicans like Perry and Sanford are suddenly so concerned about the prospect of deficit spending after saying nary a word about the $5 trillion in debt run up by the current Republican administration. They say:

Washington doesn't have money in hand for any of these proposals. Every penny would be borrowed.

And yet, Washington didn’t have money in hand for the War in Iraq either and that didn’t seem to bother them any. Why is it OK to spend hundreds of billions to fix up Iraq’s economy, but it’s not OK to invest a similar amount on our own economy?
Cutting back on government spending right now would be a disaster on top of a disaster. Private industry just dumped 534,000 jobs and is leaving it up to the federal government to pick up the slack in the form of unemployment benefits, welfare and medicare. Without all this federal spending, people would be out on the streets, going hungry, losing homes, causing civil unrest and turmoil. This do nothing approach that Perry and Sanford are advocating is such a horribly bad idea that even the Bush administration, the worst presidential administration in the history of our nation, rejected it outright.

Does Perry really believe what he is saying? Or is he appealing to the baser instincts of the electorate in preparation for a big fight next year with Kay Bailey Hutchison, who he has already slammed as “Kay Bailout Hutchison”.

Obama’s birth certificate

Thanks to Justice Clarence Thomas, the U.S. Supreme Court will spend part of today considering a lawsuit questioning President-elect Barack Obama’s citizenship.
It is just one of a dozen or more lawsuits by far-rightwing lunatics trying to overturn the election based on totally bogus and nonsensical claims that Obama is engaged in some kind of grand conspiracy to cover up the details of his birth.
The fact that Clarence Thomas would give one of these suits the sheen of credibility by forwarding it to his Supreme Court colleagues is a real insult, especially coming from the only black justice on the court. But it is nothing less than what I expect from Thomas.
I always thought it was odd that the wingnuts were tryng to make an issue out of Obama’s birth records when it was their nominee, John McCain, who was clearly not born in the United States. Technically, McCain was still OK because he was born on a military base in Panama, but for crying out loud talk about people throwing stones in glass houses.
Obama tried to defuse the bogus controversy early on by posting a copy of his birth certificate on his campaign website, but that only sent the unhinged, reality-impaired idiots to go off barking about “kerning” and other supposed “evidence” of forgeries.
As Steve Benen notes, to believe that Obama was not born in Hawaii, one must not only accept that he forged his Hawaiian birth certificate with the full complicity of the Hawaiian authorities, but also that his family had to have the foresight 47 years ago to post a bogus birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper. You see, they KNEW back then that he would be president someday so they started plotting way back then to cover up his foreign birth, blah, blah, blah....
And this is just the kind of blather you get from some rightwingers today. My op-ed piece at the E-N, now up to 124 comments drew out a whole nest of these people to rant and rave about Obama’s supposed birth certificate conspiracy (along with repeated racist references to Obama as a “mutt” meaning of mixed race).
I would just add that my conservative friend JimmyK, to his credit, has been knocking this particular loony theory down at his blog for sometime now.

Ray Conniff Singers - Ring Christmas Bells

It’s time to get in the Christmas spirit...



This is one of my absolute favorite Christmas recordings.

That's bitchin'

In a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing, in the Express-News last Sunday we had this column by Bob Richter talking about the complaints the paper had received over allowing the word 'bitchin' to be used in a story quoting former Dallas Cowboy's star Bob Lilly. We are told how the editors fretted before allowing the word to go through, even though in this context it is just a synonym for complaining.
But then one page in front of Richter's column, we find the Random Notes section edited by Mr. Gurwitz using a quote from a New York author referring to Hillary Clinton as a 'bitch'. Oops!
Interestingly enough, they don't have that Random Notes column online. I wonder why?

Immigration Losers

Here is a rarity. A Wall Street Journal editorial that I agree with. But I’ll bet a lot of “GOP hardliner” losers around here won’t much like it....


More Immigration Losers
GOP hardliners need to face reality.

Virginia Republican Congressman Virgil Goode's narrow loss to Democrat Tom Perriello became official last week, and it caps another bad showing for immigration restrictionists. For the second straight election, incumbent Republicans who attempted to turn illegal immigration into a wedge issue fared poorly.

Anti-immigration hardliners Randy Graf, John Hostettler and J.D. Hayworth were among the Republicans who lost in 2006. Joining them this year were GOP Representatives Thelma Drake (Virginia), Tom Feeney (Florida), Ric Keller (Florida) and Robin Hayes (North Carolina) -- all Members of a House anti-immigration caucus that focuses on demonizing the undocumented.

According to a review of election results by America's Voice, an advocacy group, Republican restrictionists had especially weak showings in "battleground" races. "Nineteen of 21 winners advocated immigration policies beyond enforcement-only," says the report. "This includes 5 of 5 Senate races and 14 of 16 House races listed in the 'toss-up,' 'leans Republican,' or 'leans Democratic' categories of the Cook Political Report."

Mr. Goode, a 12-year incumbent, had made a name for himself in Congress as a seal-the-border advocate. Among other things, he has called for mass deportations and amending the Constitution to deny U.S. citizenship to children of illegal aliens.

Immigration wasn't a dominant issue this fall, and other factors contributed more to the GOP defeat. But the political reality is that Republicans who thought that channeling Lou Dobbs would save their seats will soon be ex-Members. Meanwhile, exit polls showed that the Republican share of the Hispanic vote fell to 31% this year from more than 40% in 2004. The demographic reality is that the GOP can't win national elections while losing such a large share of the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the country.

Read this

Check out this essay in today’s Express-News.
They really should publish more pieces by this guy!