Posted on 12/31/2004 5:43:33 AM PST by white trash redneck
No issue, not one, threatens to do more damage to the Republican coalition than immigration. There's no issue where the beliefs and interests of the party rank-and-file diverge more radically from the beliefs and interests of the party's leaders. Immigration for Republicans in 2005 is what crime was for Democrats in 1965 or abortion in 1975: a vulnerable point at which a strong-minded opponent could drive a wedge that would shatter the GOP.
President Bush won reelection because he won 10 million more votes in 2004 than he did in 2000. Who were these people? According to Ruy Teixeira--a shrewd Democratic analyst of voting trends--Bush scored his largest proportional gains among white voters who didn't complete college, especially women. These voters rallied to the president for two principal reasons: because they respected him as a man who lived by their treasured values of work, family, honesty, and faith; and because they trusted him to keep the country safe.
Yet Bush is already signaling that he intends to revive the amnesty/guestworker immigration plan he introduced a year ago--and hastily dropped after it ignited a firestorm of opposition. This plan dangerously divides the Republican party and affronts crucial segments of the Republican vote.
The plan is not usually described as an "amnesty" because it does not immediately legalize illegal workers in this country. Instead, it offers illegals a three-year temporary work permit. But this temporary permit would be indefinitely renewable and would allow illegals a route to permanent residency, so it is reasonably predictable that almost all of those illegals who obtain the permit will end up settling permanently in the United States. The plan also recreates the guestworker program of the 1950s--allowing employers who cannot find labor at the wages they wish to pay to advertise for workers outside the country. Those workers would likewise begin with a theoretically temporary status; but they too would probably end up settling permanently.
This is a remarkably relaxed approach to a serious border-security and labor-market problem. Employers who use illegal labor have systematically distorted the American labor market by reducing wages and evading taxes in violation of the rules that others follow. The president's plans ratify this gaming of the system and encourage more of it. It invites entry by an ever-expanding number of low-skilled workers, threatening the livelihoods of low-skilled Americans--the very same ones who turned out for the president in November.
National Review has historically favored greater restrictions on legal as well as illegal immigration. But you don't have to travel all the way down the NR highway to be troubled by the prospect of huge increases in immigration, with the greatest increases likely to occur among the least skilled.
The president's permissive approach has emboldened senators and mayors (such as New York's Michael Bloomberg) to oppose almost all enforcement actions against illegals. In September 2003, for example, Bloomberg signed an executive order forbidding New York police to share information on immigration offenses with the Immigration Service, except when the illegal broke some other law or was suspected of terrorist activity. And only last month, a House-Senate conference stripped from the intelligence-overhaul bill almost all the border-security measures recommended by the 9/11 commission.
The president's coalition is already fracturing from the tension between his approach to immigration and that favored by voters across the country. Sixty-seven House Republicans--almost one-third of the caucus--voted against the final version of the intelligence overhaul. And I can testify firsthand to the unpopularity of the amnesty/guestworker idea: I was on the conservative talk-radio circuit promoting a book when the president's plan was first proposed last January. Everywhere I went, the phones lit up with calls from outraged listeners who wanted to talk about little else. Every host I asked agreed: They had not seen such a sudden, spontaneous, and unanimous explosion of wrath from their callers in years.
Five years ago, Candidate George W. Bush founded his approach to immigration issues on a powerful and important insight: The illegal-immigration problem cannot be solved by the United States alone. Two-thirds of the estimated 9 million illegals in the U.S. are from Mexico. Mexico is also the largest source of legal immigration to the United States. What caused this vast migration? Between 1940 and 1970, the population of Mexico more than doubled, from 20 million to 54 million. In those years, there was almost no migration to the United States from Mexico at all. Since 1970, however, some 65 million more Mexicans have been born--and about 20 million of them have migrated northward, with most of that migration occurring after 1980.
Obviously, the 30 years from 1940 to 1970 are different in many ways from the 30 years after 1970s. But here's one factor that surely contributed to the Mexican exodus: In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, the Mexican economy grew at an average rate of almost 7 percent a year. Thanks to the oil boom, the Mexican economy continued to grow rapidly through the troubled 1970s. But since 1980, Mexico has averaged barely 2 percent growth. The average Mexican was actually poorer in 1998 than he had been in 1981. You'd move too if that happened to you.
Recognizing the connection between Mexican prosperity and American border security, the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations all worked hard to promote Mexican growth. The Reagan and Clinton administrations bailed out Mexican banks in 1982 and 1995; the first Bush administration negotiated, and Clinton passed, NAFTA. George W. Bush came to office in 2001 envisioning another round of market opening with the newly elected government of his friend Vicente Fox, this time focusing on Mexico's protected, obsolete, economically wasteful, and environmentally backward energy industry.
Bush's hopes have been bitterly disappointed. The Fox government has actually done less to restore Mexican growth than the PRI governments of the 1990s. And so Bush has been pushed away from his grand vision and has instead accepted Fox's demand that the two countries concentrate on one issue: raising the status of Mexican illegals in the United States. But this won't work. Just as the U.S. cannot solve the problem by unilateral policing, so it also cannot solve it through unilateral concession. Bush had it right the first time.
Some of the president's approach to immigration remains right and wise. He is right to show a welcoming face to Hispanics legally resident in the United States. He is right to try to smooth the way to citizenship for legal permanent residents. He is right--more controversially--to give all who have contributed to Social Security, whatever their legal status, access to benefits from the Social Security account.
But he is wrong, terribly wrong, to subordinate border security to his desire for an amnesty deal--and still more wrong to make amnesty the centerpiece of his immigration strategy.
Right now, of course, the president does not have to worry much about political competition on the immigration issue. But Republicans shouldn't count on their opponents' ignoring such an opportunity election after election. "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants," Hillary Clinton told a New York radio station in November. And later: "People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work." Okay, so maybe Hillary will never pick up many votes in Red State America. But there are Democratic politicians who could.
Republicans need a new and better approach--one that holds their constituency together and puts security first.
First, Republicans should develop and practice a new way of speaking about immigration, one that makes clear that enforcement of the immigration laws is not anti-immigrant or anti-Mexican: It is anti-bad employer. Illegal immigration is like any other illegal business practice: a way for unscrupulous people to exploit others to gain an advantage over their law-abiding competitors.
Second, Republicans can no longer deny the truth underscored by the 9/11 commission: Immigration policy is part of homeland-security policy. Non-enforcement of the immigration laws is non-protection of Americans against those who would do them harm.
Third, Republicans have to begin taking enforcement seriously. It's ridiculous and demoralizing to toss aside cabinet nominees like Linda Chavez over alleged immigration violations while winking at massive law-breaking by private industry--or to regard immigration violations as so trivial that they can be used as a face-saving excuse for the dismissal of a nominee damaged by other allegations.
Fourth, skills shortages in the high-technology and health-care industries are genuine problems that have to be addressed--but they should not be used as an excuse to void immigration enforcement. Republicans can say yes to using immigration law to attract global talent, while saying no to companies that systematically violate immigration law to gain an advantage over their more scrupulous rivals.
Fifth, Mexico should not be allowed to sever the migration issue from trade and investment issues. Mexican political stability is a vital national-security issue of the United States--and just for that reason, Americans should not allow Mexican governments to use migration as a way to shirk the work of economic and social reform.
Finally--and most important--Republicans need to recognize that they have a political vulnerability and must take action to protect themselves. An election victory as big as 2004 can look inevitable in retrospect. But it wasn't, not at all. The Democrats could have won--and could still win in 2006 and 2008--by taking better advantage of Republican mistakes and making fewer of their own. And no mistake offers them a greater opportunity than the one-sidedness of the Bush immigration policy. The GOP is a party dedicated to national security, conservative social values, and free-market economics. The president's policy on immigration risks making it look instead like an employers' lobby group. That's the weak point at which the edge of the wedge could enter--and some smart Democratic politician is sharpening it right now.
There's more to it than that. As things stood, employers were expected to become experts in document fraud, making convictions of illegal alien employers difficult to obtain.
Once Dreier's legislation is passed and Bush's 1-800 workplace verification program is made mandatory, the convictions will come.
And taking a job cleaning a toilet or putting up a roof is evil.
Unfortunately, it seems this question is like the old conumdrum of wichh came first the chicken or the egg.
If the person doing the job entered illegally, then the job is illegal.
Is it good to reward lawbreakers at the expense of those who obey the laws?
Unfortunately, it seems this question is like the old conumdrum of wichh came first the chicken or the egg.
LOL! It's not a conundrum at all. Quit torturing analogies and see if you can give a straight answer.
Is it good to reward lawbreakers at the expense of those who obey the laws?
California is on the brink of bankruptcy. This is because Californians insist on maintaining a welfare state for Californian-Americans and the federal courts, capable of reading the US Constitution as Californians often are not has noticed that such programs, if they exist, must extend to all "persons" and not merely to citizens. Read the 14th Amendment. Abolish the programs for your grandma and you can abolish them for new immigrants (legal or otherwise).
Cities are broke???? Abolish welfarism.
Parts of LA are unpoliceable???? Darryl Gates policed those parts of LA and, if he failed in any respect, it was the "political correctness" of LA Demonratic politicians that hamstrung his efforts. The Watts riots were not Mexican-American riots. There are easily available solutions to policing the "unpoliceable" neighborhoods but none that are socially acceptable at the fashionable soirees in La Jolla.
Protect one's community from what????? Generally from welfarism? Fine. Selectively and unconstitutionally? Not fine.
Anyone who votes for Her Satanic Majesty will have no gripe coming from the inevitable results, especially if the voters are motivated by anti-Mexicanism.
Laws come and go. So does the sdtatus o "illegality." If the institutional successor to the hapless and hopeless Immigration and Naturalization Service fascisti can figure out what to do with their Kansas warehouses stuffed with millions of "legally" submitted but unread (for many years) immigration applications, the argument from "legality" may make more sense.
Also, any argument from "legality" ought to take into consideration relevant historic distinctions between that which is evil in and of itself (malum in se) such as rape, murder, abortion, robbery and "evil" only because prohibited (malum prohibitum) such as crossing the border to El Norte because you benignly think more of your children than of "laws" designed to preserve artificial racial quotas favoring Nordics (I am English, Irish, Scottish and German and feel no need to be "protected"). Did it bother you when the "rule of law" was violated in Eastern Europe as residents of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, et al., fled across borders to flee communism, blatantly violating the laws of their nations? If so, what are you doing on a conservative website. This is about human freedom and NOT about multiculturalism.
BTW, impeachment did not fail. The Arkansas Antichrist was duly impeached by a majority of the House of Representatives. The partisanship of Senate Democrats in the face of plain facts justifying conviction and the utter gutlessness (what else is new?) of Senate Republicans and Arlen Spector's rendition of Scottish Law guaranteed Slick Willie's acquittal. That he was impeached is and was justified nonetheless. You may also have noticed that Slick was disbarred for his perjuries.
Finally, you would be hard-pressed to prove your case as to Hispanic-Americans from the election returns since former California "Republican" Governor Pete (Planned Barrenhood) Wilson decided to attack the US Constitution with Proposition 47 or whatever the number trying to play to the nativist gallery by cutting off aid to resident Mexican "illegals" while maintaining a full-service welfare state for everyone who might vote for the Planned Barrenhood types. Some long-settled Mexican-Americans might agree with you and that will not insulate the anti-Mexican movement from being, well, anti-Mexican.
I will always despise Hillary and Slick. I view Mexicans as a valuable and quite necessary addition to our society. There are plenty of Mexicans (legal and illegal) here in Northwestern Illinois (the state with the fourth highest number of Mexicans). For the most part, we call them: Republicans.
The GOP candidate for mayor of Rockford next spring is Gloria Cudia who is, well, Mexican. She has previously chaired the school board in Rockford. She may be defeated by an alliance of blacks, Angloleftists, and laborleftist types (as distinguished from other workers) and by the involvement of a phony third party "independent" who poses like a Republican but is a good government goo-goo, but she will do well and may win. Winnebago County which includes Rockford as its only sizeable municipality voted for Dubya and is about as "red" as counties outside the South or the Rockies can be.
If you are worried about illegal immigration, what do you propose for the much less "policeable" Canadian border? If you are worried about Al Qaeda, look to the border with our policy enemies to the North who, though they look like us, think like Al Qaeda.
Looking at California under liberals is liking looking at the Gorgon Medusa. No thanks. Mexicans are not responsible for the leftism that is now California. Racist Planned Parenthood liberals like Pete Wilson are responsible. When California figures that out, California will be on the comeback trail but not until.
As to Ms. Hillary: Rationing medical care, even in the private sector; abortion on demand through partial birth abortion; government funding of abortion; expressed hatred of Boy Scouts at a New York Demonrat State Convention; shrillness is her middle name; etc.; etc.; etc. The conservative problem with Ms. Shrillery is that we have neglected the weapon of getting America to horselaugh at the mention of her name. The one thing that Hillary cannot abide, the one thing that drives them to public apoplexy is being the object of derisive laughter. It interferes with their self-worshipping pretensions.
RATS would sooner support overturning Roe Vs Wade than stop illegal immigration. The RATS see open borders as a treasure chest of new voters for them.
OK, then if a building or house has been proved to be built with illegal labor, then I expect you to call for that house to be bulldozed since it didn't pass your purity test, no matter that the family who likes that house or honest business that is prospering in that buliding.
Small political lobby ? You mean like taxpayers and home owners ? It is truly laughable to hear open borders "conservatives" oozing "compassion for the downtrodden of Mexico" and denouncing "racism" when what they really want is cheap labor, the social consequences of which are paid for by the American taxpayer.
Selfishness trying to pass itself off as generosity fools no one, particularly when it is everyone else who will pay the cost of your "generosity". For the Democrats this will be a perfect "Republicans only care about rich people who want cheap labor and will let Joe Sixpack pick up the tax bill" issue.
Really ?
Why do you think Gray Davis lost ? Because he was seen as soft on illegals.
See reply #187.
There are issues that transcend politics and have the ability to completely devastate the established order of things. Criminal Illegal Alien Immigration is one of them. By ignoring the Laws and Statutes we have lived by and supported all our lives, we are now being told in so many words to just shut up and accept this critical issue as fact. If you do this you might as well be one of the players in my Russian Roulette scenario. In short order you will see everything you and I have worked all our lives to preserve and defend; "Gone in a blinding "BROWN" Tsunami driven by a Southern breeze.
Your "Birthright" is being bartered away and you are wasting your "Blood Bought Vote" on fickle socialist politicians who are mandated to do the will of of the people who elected them to do our business in government. Apparently many of you out there don't care about this and are thinking about having a "BALL" to celebrate the infusion of millions of Presidentially Approved Criminal Illegal Aliens that you as a TAXPAYER will be obliged to support for the rest of your miserable lives. I will remind you once again because your brain-stem has apparently rotted to the point that you forget that the representatives work for us not the other way around. If its democracy you want try Russia or China or "Cuber"! Their dictators will welcome you with open arms. In America even at this late hour we have "A REPUBLIC" if we the people can keep it!
"PATRIOTS UNITE!" and never forget you are "BLOOD BOUGHT" and have worth and value far beyond the dim witted representatives that you tolerate to your own demise!
"Do you really see Saul Alinsky becoming a big issue in a national election?" ~ Fatalis
Yes. Because Hillary and the rest of the DemocRATS in the Religious Left (liberals) always attempt to wrap themselves in "morality" in order to accomplish their goal of obtaining power and control over others.
They have to hide who they really ARE. It is our job to expose them. So in line with that, here you go:
This is one of the tactics that Alinski advised in his book Rules for Radicals:
".... he must give a moral appearance (as opposed to behaving morally): "All effective action requires the passport of morality."
And Saul Alinsky, the Clintons, et.al. made sure to align them with other moral-appearing, "do-gooder" relativists in the Religious Left (theological liberals) --- like Tony Campolo, Ron Sider, Rev. Jim Wallis, Editor, Sojourners Magazine, etc.
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=Soj0003&article=000311
*
These people and their various groups have been exposed for who and what they are in several books, one of which is entitled, "The Coercive Utopians" by Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac.
"Utopian" because they assume an ideal social order can be created (if the "right people" are in charge), and "coercive" because to obtain this ideal "order" they have in mind, they seek to IMPOSE the blueprint rather than try to use legitimate persuasion (which they know won't work).
The United States is seen by the utopians (people like Campolo, Sider and Wallis) as the worst society in the world.
As is shown in their book, Utopians dominate the leadership and professional staff of the mainline Protestant church denominations and their related organizations, including the National Council of Churches.
Another good book on this subject is entitled, "Anti-Americanism" by Paul Hollander.
Hollander pays considerable attention to William Sloane
Coffin, one-time Chaplain at Yale University and senior minister of the Riverside Church in New York City. In the 1970's, Hollander states, "Coffin served as an apologist for the Communist regime in North Vietnam. Coffin once claimed that "Communism is a page torn out of the Bible", and that "the social justice that's achieved in North Vietnam [is] an achievement no Christian society on that scale has ever achieved." Coffin threw his support behind the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista movement in Nicaragua and provided a platform for the #1 star of that movement, Daniel Ortega.
Another book on this subject is "From the Mainline to the Sidelines" by K.L. Billingsley. He writes that "Only political bias, poor judgement, or serious misinformation can account for the National Council of Churches failure to see that Marxist-Lenenist regimes persecute Christians for their faith and seek to eradicate all religious belief."
That is the tip of the iceberg. Hillary will easily be connected to the radicals - she not only was one of them, she is still one of them.
To see more of the tactics Alinsky advises, read on:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/886451/posts
BILL, HILLARY, SAUL, AND MORAL RELATIVISM Saul Alinsky and the Lessons He Taught Bill and Hillary
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky Courtesy of The Wanderer. From a FR post dated 03/23/00.
Saul Alinsky wrote two books outlining his organizational principles and strategies: Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1971).
Rules for Radicals opens with a quote about Lucifer, written by Saul Alinsky:
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer.”
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky says: “Here I propose to present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step toward a science of revolution.”
Rules for Radicals is concerned with the acquisition of power: “my aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it.” ....Altogether, Alinsky provides eleven rules of the ethics of means and ends. They are morally relativistic:
“The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe’s ‘conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action’; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind.”
“The second rule of the ethics of the means and ends is that the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent on the political position of those sitting in judgment.”
Alinsky elaborates his meaning on this point, saying that if you were a member of the underground Resistance, “... then you adopted the means of assassination, terror, property destruction, the bombing of tunnels and trains, kidnapping, and the willingness to sacrifice innocent hostages to the end of defeating the Nazi’s. Those who opposed the Nazi’s conquerors regarded the Resistance as a secret army of selfless, patriotic idealists ....” Rules for Radicals is therefore concerned with how to win. “...[I]n such a conflict, neither protagonist is concerned with any value except victory.”
“The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the ends justifies almost any means.”
“There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father.”
Rules for Radicals teaches the organizer that he must give a moral appearance (as opposed to behaving morally): “All effective action requires the passport of morality.”
The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends states “that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments ... Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.”
Rules for Radicals provides the organizer with a tactical style for community organization that assumes an adversarial relationship between groups of people in which one either dominates or is dominated.
“The first rule of power tactics is: power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”
“Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”
“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
“The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.”
“In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt.”
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
One of the criteria for picking the target is the target’s vulnerability ... the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract.”
“The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
Saul Alinsky urged the active and deliberate “conscious-raising” (Ed note: a tactic used by feminists) of people through the technique of “popular education.” Popular education is a method by which an organizer leads people to a class-based interpretation of their grievances, and to accept the organizer’s systemic solutions to address those grievances. “Through the People’s Organization these groups [of citizens] discover that what they considered primarily their individual problem is also the problem of others, and furthermore the only hope for solving an issue of titanic proportions is by pooling all their efforts and strengths. That appreciation and conclusion is an educational process.”
Rules for Radicals stresses organizational power-collecting: “The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader. The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which a man can reach -- to create, to be a ‘great creator’, to play God.” Alinsky considered Hillary a terrific “organizer” and wanted her to become his protege. She declined. She had bigger fish to fry. She learned her lessons well. She and Bill have employed Alinsky’s tactics probably better than anyone else.
Since estimates are that 1/2 the folks in construction and building maintenance are illegal wage slaves of the capitalist stooges, I suspect that we would have to demolish a large fraction of the homes and offices constructed in the US in the last 10-15 years.
I would guess that a lot of the folks I see around Washington DC who do grounds maintenance are of questionable status. There is not a large hew and cry among the local unions about all of the leaf-blowing and grass-cutting jobs being filled at substandard wages. In fact, my guess is that the employers pay market wages for labor.
Please answer the question posed to you in reply #187. Should all buildings and/or houses built by "illegal" labor be bulldozed.
Afterall according to your overall rhetoric on FR those buildings are illegal/impure.
Excellent post.
Let me tell you something, it just stuns me that by raising these questions, we get accused of race-baiting. Like WE are Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. That's bullcrap.
I think we have got valid concerns about some of these groups - it seems John Tanton has his fingers in each of them. And looking at his background, we see ZPG, racist, and pro-choice leanings, to put it bluntly. We have question, we have concerns, and the way it's being dealt with is NOT, in my opinion, a credit to conservatives.
We want to know what the deal is with Tanton. We want the truth about the Pioneer Fund. We want to know why it seems that the known bigotry of Sam Francis and Pat Buchanan, who mouth off on this issue a lot doesn't bother a lot of people. We have questions about privacy and civil liberties. We have questions about enforcability and whether or not maybe we need to loosen things up in certain areas. We wonder if it's wise to deport people here since they were very young kids and who are now going into college.
And for asking these questions (which are legitimate questions), it seems that we're like skunks at some garden picnic or worse. We're accused of race-baiting, or profiting from illegal immigrants, among other things. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have become extremely suspicious of the cultural conservatives. I'm not sure I *want* a cultural consevrative in power, any more. I'd rather have a libertarian-leaning President and a neo-conservative foreign policy. As for culture, I think the government has no business picking winners and losers in economic matters, and I think it goes even more so for in cultural matters.
By feeling that way, am I still conservative? I don't want to stay where I am not wanted.
People cared about John Kerry's Vietnam activities because he kept bringing them up. He opened the door for the Swifties, who would have had little traction otherwise. Unless you see Hillary making a similar mistake it's hard to see how Saul Alinsky will be in play.
The reason that there is little national consensus on eliminating the labor pool that these guys provide is, I suspect, that your premise is wrong, that their labor comes at the expense of someone else.
Furthermore, the issue about mandatory provision of social services to illegal immigrants is a separate issue from that regarding the effects on labor markets.
Is David Frum now part of the John Tanton conspiracy? I'm trying to keep track.
bookmarked and bumped. PING to Mud
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.