Well, we reached yet another milestone yesterday, albeit, a grim one.

I was sitting here reading when WILK did the top-of-the-hour news and the lead blurb was that we had reached 2,500 combat deaths in Iraq. I immediately knew what that meant. I knew that the anti-war folks would be frantic to find a camera and start spewing their tired ‘needless deaths’ jabberwocky. Actually, this nonsense is fairly easy to follow. If a Democrat orders troops into harm’s way, any resulting deaths are not needless deaths. They were necessary. Oh, but if the commander-in-chief happens to be one of those bastardized Republicans, well, then every death, even those of the freakish variety, are needless deaths. It’s really quite simple.

The way I see it, all that we need is 7,500 more KIAs, and the anti-war crowd will finally have been right whereas their pre-invasion battlefield prognostications were concerned. What did Wesley Clark (thought by very many on the left to be presidential material) have to say before the M1/A1s rolled into Iraq? He said we’d suffer well over 10,000 American casualties during the initial invasion of Iraq. Still others on his side of the political fence predicted upwards of 30,000 casualties. Didn’t happen. Not even close.

Funny though, all that I’ve heard from that same clueless crowd since the invasion was how The Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld and George (W for Wicked) Bush have totally botched the prosecution of this war. This, from the military “experts” whose former commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton, who could not secure a 12-block area of downtown Mogadishu, and gave the order to cut and run away after suffering only 18 casualties.

And before him, we had ourselves another Democrat calling the shots, Jimmy Carter, who ordered a pre-dawn helicopter raid on Tehran, Iran, but our helicopters were shot down by…well, blowing sand. Before him we had JFK--Democrat--in possession of the nuclear suitcase. The disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and the regrettable Vietnam entanglement were both far less than satisfying. And playing nuclear brinksmanship with the Soviets over Cuba is oft-revered by the leftists, but was reviled when Ronald Reagan did much the same thing twenty years later.

No matter what your political stripe, the loss of 2,500 Americans fighting on foreign soil is no happy matter. But to hear the Democrats and their blind devotees telling me how a war ought best be prosecuted fast approaches the abject lunacy of a pot-bellied couch potato telling me how to knock out Mike Tyson. When it comes to shots being fired in anger, the Democrats are always prone to pissing into a wind tunnel.

Sez me.

The self-important elitists--the folks of the same mindset as Kevin Lynn--can mistakenly paint this growing illegal immigration brouhaha as a case of mass racism all they like. The fact is, this hot button issue is not going away, and whoever wants to become the next president had better fall on the right side of the issue. Namely, they had better appeal to the folks in the red states and all but ignore the wishy-washy illuminati crying foul from their blue state strongholds.

Take Kevin’s hypocritical stance as an example. He lives amongst the well-heeled white people who chose to segregate themselves from the unwashed masses. Yet, he has the unmitigated gall to dare chastise those very same unwashed masses for being, in his “superior” mind, racists. On my street alone I’ve got white neighbors, black neighbors, Ukrainian neighbors, neighbors of an undetermined nature and some definite white trash down on the corner. But, I demand that the flow of illegal aliens come to an abrupt halt and Kevin is going to speculate about my true intentions? Kevin has the nerve to suggest that I’m no better than some KKK slug from Mississippi? Is it bad to wish for someone’s untimely demise? Can I get a ruling on that?

Once again, the folks that have purposely isolated themselves from the bulk of average Americans lash out as if they have their pampered fingers on the very pulse of America. Kevin, you have no fu>king idea what you’re droning on about, other than what you read at some slanted Web site somewhere. Do you really, really, really want to know what illegal immigration is all about? Do you want to know why the common hardscrabble folks are up in arms? Well, then join us out here in the wastelands. Yes, I’m suggesting that you leave your financially gated community for more than just an evening of binge drinking with other self-absorbed, snooty, five-star quasi intellectuals.

No, golf courses don’t count. Golfing with judges and lawyers does not pass as getting out there and mixing it up with the average folk. You have to spend time with us where we live. I’m sure it’ll all wash off, I mean, being with lowly pond scum such as us. But wouldn’t it be interesting to see for yourself just once how Americans actually live? Tell those nubile female students of yours that you were studying us as if we were some lower form of life. Maybe they’ll be impressed and give you a little like back in the ‘60s when sluts were still called sluts and not feminists.

Whew!!!

Time out.

Alright, I’m all better now.

Maybe not…fu>k him!

Let us explore the folly of The Immigration Reform and Control Act passed, I believe, in 1986. Rather than take the bull by the horns and clamp down on the border as the illegal immigration problem grew worse and worse, the fedrule govmint put the onus of quelling the influx on the backs of employers, both large and small. Or, in other words, they didn’t do a freaking thing.

I remember that time very well. Being the general manager of a full-service restaurant in an area not yet on the front lines of the illegal immigration invasion, I recall thinking what a joke all of it was. If I want to hire Timmy from G.A.R., I have to fill out an I-9 Form? Timmy with the G.A.R. Football jacket on has to prove that he’s an American? Christ! His dad works at PG&W. His mom has been at General Hospital since my daughter was born. Whatever.

Since I only needed the 15-year-old Timmy to work Saturday and Sunday mornings, and since he was so young, he was not real big on official identification. A driver’s license? Nope. Social security card? Lost it swimming at the dam. Birth certificate? Mom can’t find it. A school I.D. card? Um, that was before high schools were made to resemble federal prisons. Voter registration card? Yeah, right. That was before the Democrats got to registering zombies and whatnot. And a military card was definitely out of the question.

Let’s try Plan B, or what the feds would call, LIST C. Library card? Darn. Acme Club savings card? Damn. A Mickey Mouse Club membership card? Sh*t! How about a crumpled scrap of paper with your last name on it? No, it doesn’t have to be spelled correctly. Son of a bitch!

Sorry, Timmy, but your parents have to acquire a new social security card and send away for a copy of your birth certificate if you want to work on the weekends. Sorry. You’ll just have to hang out on the streets and find away to get in trouble.

Try my wife’s experience. She has never had a driver’s license. She had a social security card, but in her maiden name rather than her marital name. Go figure! To get a job at the nearest mini-market, she had to show a copy of her marriage license and had to send away for a copy of her birth certificate. And after those insane shenanigans, I forced her to get one of those official state photo IDs.

As an employer back in those days, not once was I required to see proof of anything from the federally approved LIST A. No passports, no citizenship certificates, no naturalization certificates, no un-expired foreign passports and no permanent resident cards. Not even once. Only one time did my outfit employ a recently settled Mexican (at another location), and he promptly went out and stole a car from Ertley’s lot. From his cell at the LCCF, he told his former boss over the phone that he took it on credit. Credit? Take it now and pay for it later. Um…yeah.

To make a long and deranged story short, rather than protecting our borders, the feds put people like you and I through a whole bunch of unneeded, unwanted hoops of real burning fire.

In other areas of the country which were already being overrun, I-9s were obviously needed, but, I have to tell you that a friend of mine practically paid his way through four years at Ohio State by selling illegal IDs and bootleg records to any takers. And takers there were a plenty. And with the rapid advances in readily-available technologies, getting a fake ID over the years has gotten much easier than trying to coax a legal ID from a pimple-faced freshman from G.A.R., circa 1988.

So, to mandate that employers are required to prove that job applicants are in this country legally is both fraught with error, and inviting illegalities from employers and would-be employees alike. It’s a joke now and it was a joke twenty years ago. So don’t give me any claptrap about how companies large and small are cheating so as to acquire cheap labor, or how the Republicans are in the pocket of the now dreaded Big Business.

Twenty years ago, the federal government of this country supposedly flexed it’s expansive muscles and did something to stem the rising tide of illegal immigration. But as with everything other major initiative of late, they tried to attach a minute strip of gauze to a gaping wound. They gave us more lip service rather than doing what they’re supposed to do--fix the problems.

If prisoners went over the wall en masse at the local prison, would you want the proper authorities to hunt them down? Would you demand that the walls be made higher to prevent any future outbreaks? Or would you want the manager of a local restaurant put in charge of spotting them one-by-one and then by denying them employment opportunities, forcing them back from whence they came? Be you a Republican, a Democrat, or third-party outcast, you have to know that the latter program is patently absurd.

The plain fact is, illegal aliens are just that by their very presence here--illegal. But the feds stupidly decided that we didn’t need a wall along the border. No, instead, we needed Mark and his perplexed staff to fill out I-9 forms. Some twenty-odd years later, the illegal immigration problem has increased tenfold, if not even more, and that same government of ours is still resisting what needed to be done in the first place. They refuse to protect our borders. They refuse to protect our sovereignty. They refuse to bend to the will of the people.

In my mind, we’re being set up and sold out. The overriding question is…why?

Think.

Remember one thing, I am not an economist, nor do I try to play one on the internet. I’m the guy who glances at his investments quarterly and then tosses the reports off to the side with a quick “whatever.” Yep, they’re still piled there on the side of the ‘puter desk. Thing is, I pay that sort of being-independently-wealthy-when-I’m-seventy malarkey about as much attention as I do Walter Griffith. If things work out as planned, I’ll have enough money to keep a roof over my head, provide for lots of grilled cheese sandwiches (my dope), still more music, a half-decent bicycle and plenty of used clothing from the local Salvation Army thrift store. I’ll be that old man pedaling around the square wearing the purplish high-waters. And I’ll be content.

I, myself, am an unabashed fan of limited government, but I ain’t seen any limited government for quite some time now. I honestly think Bush’s “new tone” meant he would give everyone, namely the Democrats, whatever they wanted as far as spending increases were concerned, and then the Republicans and Democrats would co-exist in peace, play lawn darts on the White House lawn and live out their mostly banal days saying really swell things about each other to an adoring, fair-minded press. Which is not to say that the Republicans themselves haven’t overspent aplenty since President Bush legitimately knocked off Lunatic Gore. You see, proposed federal budgets are not usually written in ancient hieroglyphics. And they’re basically agreed upon as being good for all concerned long before they reach any president’s desk. So, for one side or the other to cry foul over any perceived excessive federal spending after the fact is akin to helping your wife grocery shop, and then complaining that she spent too much on the groceries afterwards.

Our economy has proven time and again that you can grow your way out of debt. With tax cuts comes an increase in economic activity. And with an increase in economic activity comes increased revenues to the federal government. Our growing deficits should be a major concern for all involved, but I shudder to think what might have become of our economy without the tax cuts serving as a countermeasure to the financial damage done by the attacks of 9/11, and the resulting War on Terror. I realize we’re incurring some serious debts of late, but I fail to realize how restricting our economy at this critical juncture would better serve us in the long run.

The thing is, I didn’t ask any of our soldiers to die in any faraway land, and neither did you. President Bush demanded that of them and they did, and are still doing their duty as they see fit. I’m certainly not happy when some small town boy or girl with hopes and dreams of their own embark upon that final mission. Sometimes, images portraying our fallen sent back from Iraq and Afghanistan make me want to cry. So far, somehow, I’ve resisted that sometimes overwhelming urge, but there are those times when I’d just prefer to let loose and have a good cry.

Truth be told, never, ever did it ever occur to me to feel even remotely guilty about the levels of taxation in this country while we’re sending our sons and daughters off to war. Whether we’re paying the bills as they come in, or running record deficits, those sons and daughters of ours are still being shot at regardless. And I think it’s totally irresponsible for any politician of any stripe to be carrying on about the cost of a war when the cost of war weighs most heavily upon those who are charged to wage it.

Let’s just win the war and bring our above-repute, dedicated troops home. Then we can get to haggling about how best to pay for it all.

A basketball court for adults? Full-court? Geez, I hope a medic unit is stationed nearby.

Stay in touch.

Check this picture I snagged from Fark.com.

I realize the registered Democrats, legal or otherwise, think Hillary Clinton is the best thing since sliced unborn babies, but much of the populace sees her as she really is…

Yikes! Seriously, though. Which Republican hopeful do you see becoming the eventual successor to George Bush? Those elitists in the blue states don’t really think that fly-over country is going to vote for a polarizing witch, do they?

Wifey pedaled something just short of 17 miles today. I’d make the claim that I busted her nuts, but she doesn’t have any. We rode the dike all the way to the Wyoming Valley Airport, watched a small plane land, and then humped it through Kingston proper, through Kirby Park, through the downtown and finally…back here to good ole’ Nord end. She looks beat. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. At the very least, at least now she knows what I put myself through completely by design.

Very early tomorrow morning I’ll be off on the latest kayaking adventure. Yep, RiverFest 2006 is scheduled for tomorrow. You’re all invited to come on down to the river’s edge and yell assorted stuff at me. But let it be widely known, iffin’ you’re fixin’ to pee on me from any of the bridges crossing the Susquehanna, I might be carrying my Crossman Stinger P-30. A 6mm plastic BB fired at 400 feet-per-second does in fact sting like all hell. I just thought we should cover that.

Then again, it’s not too late to show up at the launch in West Pittston, rent a boat and join me.

I think.

Once again, them’s my thoughts.

Later