I've never, in my six years here, seen such a disgraceful selfish campaign like a relatively small number of very very profligate malcontent Anti-Bush Freepers are waging right now. Ugly, ugly sentiments being amplified and enabled thread after thread. They are on a mission to destroy this forum, because they HATE George W. Bush as much as the DUmmies do. As demonstrated over the last few weeks ... I'm not pleased nor particularly compliant in their sabotage.
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Careful there, Toothy, your envy is showing. And it isn't pretty.
Oh dear, if I had to strike all my posts that the majority of the above don't like, I'd be about 50% at least out of "bidness." For me, the only road with any honor one can take, is to say what one really believes, with candor, and to the extent one can, with supportive data and analysis, and without spleen or personal attacks, and trying to fairly parse the opposition's point of view, also with a minimum of rancor. And I think we both do that reasonably well, and thus give us both a pat on the back, even if one of us, or both of us, are totally and ineluctably "wrong."
Why not Tooth? You rate.
And by the way, there are 3500 posters here every day, that's solid for months and years, and about 100 people newly registering each day. That's TROUBLE. Therei's 120,000 screen names and 3500 posting daily. The "inventory" is out of control.
FR, TOMORROW, should shut down and we should all re-register with at $30 entrance fee. I'm in! Let's clean the intestines, all the multiple screen names, out of the system here. This is GAME TIME, the most important political election year in our lifetimes. I wanna know who's playing in this important forum in this historic political year.
Jim, time to be bold. Everybody here starts January 21 or later. Every name here has a stake in this forum's success, whatever their political ideology or personal style. If 2500 of us want to pay $30, that's $75 grand for next quarter and we'll see what happens.
Otherwise, this place is going to implode. I see it coming.
Most people understand this, and giving Illegals blue cards before green cards before citizenship is just the lipstick on the pig.
I don't buy this argument. Sure, I'd like them, as current law says, to have to go back home to apply, but we already have guest worker programs and I wonder how many "illegals" are counted as illegal that are currently in these programs. I know many businesses that use this program.
Also, it at least, if enforced, makes them go to some government agency to at least get documented and it takes 3-9 years as a "guest" before they can even consider trying to become a citizen.
So what we are back to arguing is the level of LEGAL immigration we are willing to accept and given the 8-12 million classified as illegal today (let's average that to 10 million) over the last 20 years, that's 500,000 a year. Too many? Not enough? I don't know.
I also sympathize with those from other places that aren't Mexico that DO come here and legally go through the INS and have to spend years and thousands of dollars to become citizens. It's not fair. But that doesn't address the problem as we have it.
Deport them all? Sure, let's do it. The cost would be ungodly but maybe many would leave on their own. Fine the businesses that hire them illegally, YES! We should be doing that now because it's the law.
But I think something has to be done and Bush is at least willing to put the poker in the fire and have the debate, something we haven't seen since 1984 leading up to the 1986 amnesty. But I don't see this as amnesty if it takes over 9 years to even start becoming a citizen. That alone proves it's not amnesty and is just trying to fix the problem that has festered for 20 years. If we made marijuana legal today, it's not giving amnesty to those that illegally smoked it in the past.
Again, it, to me, comes down to a debate on how many immigrants we want to allow in every year and how many new citizens from foreign countries we want. And I want it to be equal for all involved regardless of where they come from...Europe, Asia, Mexico, South America, Africa, etc.
I welcome the debate and I welcome the possibility of working this out. But too many want to proclaim anyone that doesn't agree with them on this issue as an "idiot" or a "moron" or "Bush lover" or "Bush hater" or "anti-American", etc. That doesn't do any good and in my opinion those people ought to be exported out since they don't understand what our country truly stands for...freedom of the individual and ideas.
And I always appreciate your level headed discussion on all topics. Many regards.