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Progressives need to join the Dobbs Watch – the guy has got it all wrong about the effects of global capitalism. And according to these folks he’s also got the nerve to be pushing for “socialized medicine”.
Before Marc “drubs” me for the tweak, I’ll reiterate that I don’t agree with Dobbs on the what one might call the “Tom Tancredo” approach to this issue, but I’m overjoyed to see one national reporter break rather dramatically with elite opinion on the imperatives of global capital and their Beltway/media handmaidens to push the debate beyond the phony “liberal” vs. “conservative” paradigm bounded by “acceptable” establishment opinion typefied by moribund hacks like Thomas Friedman and David Brooks.
As for the “leprosy” reference that offends Rutten, I don’t watch cable news at all and only know Dobbs a bit from an excellent interview he did with Bill Moyers on globalization and his occasional clips excerpted on Crooks and Liars that are generally pretty tough on the right people, so I don’t know the extent to which this was “yahooized”, but anyone who thinks issues of cross-border disease – or food contamination, for that matter – aren’t real is an idiot. Ever heard of avian flu ? And, yes, health experts who actually track leprosy and doctors who treat it support what Rutten implies was stated on Dobbs show regarding the source of increasing incidences of the disease among recent immigrants. Alarmism is no doubt unfounded, but this isn’t some crackpot thing Dobbs or one of his cohorts made up.
Lou Dobbs often looks inebriated on the air. His views are interesting as in they are somewhat “fusionist” or “producerist.” No friend to either the left and labor or what he refers to as “corporate america,” he’s kind of a new incarnation of the Perot/Buchanan approach. Anti-corporate without being anti-capitalism, Dobbs seems to believe that the “real economy” is more important than markets. He may be right, but he doesn’t take his critique to its logical conclusion, and meanwhile, with his onair angry and perhaps drunk persona, spews borderline xenophobic invective…does anyone doubt that if a Jewish parade were mentioned by a guest, he would probably immediately say “there shouldn’t be Jewish parades in this country.”
In fact, he sounds a little like Richard Rorty – this is the dark side of “achieving your country.”
Marc, when you get a chance, can you please lay into Joe Hicks’ heinous op-ed in the LATimes today? Black/Latino relations are understandably particularly fraught at this moment, and Hicks seems consciously determined in his piece to set them back as far as possible…
Dobbs has been a one-note samba on this a for quite a while. It’s unfair as some do to paint him as a racist. As Cummings here illustrates to fallacious perfection. I’ve seen him elaborate in CNN since it’s the only cable news channel I get. He really isn’t a so-called nativist like Tancredo.
Reg, you echo my sentiments perfectly, so I’m echoing you back:
“but I’m overjoyed to see one national reporter break rather dramatically with elite opinion on the imperatives of global capital and their Beltway/media handmaidens to push the debate beyond the phony “liberal†vs. “conservative†paradigm bounded by “acceptable†establishment opinion typefied by moribund hacks like Thomas Friedman and David Brooks.”
Amen.
And as it bizarre as it sounds, I think it’s quite healthy to have someone like Dobbs spouting out in such an “illiberal” fashion, if only to scramble up the con/lib equation we are so mercilessly and boringly subjected to. People are forced to scratch their heads and actually think about what they believe, instead of mindlessly clinging to a partisan line.
Incidentally, his approach is a definite exception compared to the rest of CNN’s coverage on this issue, which is overwhelmingly pro-McCain-Kennedy and quick to lump all other opinions into the Tancredo box. A number of CNN’s McCain-Kennedy-biased interviews have been stupefying to watch, actually–like observing a parallel universe in which Fox is CNN and CNN is Fox. Er, something like that.
One would have thought the Democratic Party could have come together on this issue. This issue of allowing hordes of slave laborers into the country to compete with the wages of already dual income Walmart families trying to survive in an expensive country. Worse, total silence while these families, and the states they live in, approach bankruptcy providing the extra social needs and services employers know they don’t need to extend to their ‘illegals’.
One would have thought the traditional friend of the American laborer would have joined and united in their interest. We didn’t expect it out of the friend of the business party. But very unfortuantely for the fractured friend of the workers party, they are missing in action……no that isn’t exactly true, many are showing up to fight for the other side in a repeat of NAFTA and all the other ‘Free’ trade agreements for what in reality is ‘Free’ labor.
The Democratic Party was looking up, was on a roll, was looking like they really gave a F about the American people when they united to stop the auctioning off of port entries into our country by international money grubbers behind closed doors. I was damn proud of them. Now I am dumbfound by their turnaround on this illegal land entry into our country by not calling for enforcement of our immigration laws AT THE EMPLOYMENT POINT to stop the money grubbers abuse of the parties traditional base, the fair but not ‘free’ laborer.
It is truly amusing, if you’re a masochist, to see the strange bedfellows this issue has created. The Lambs in Washington lie down with the Lions and the Lions with the Lambs all in one F_ing big orgy, all at the expense of American workers. The Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were so damned agreeable, happy and attracted to each other on their agreement not to enforce EXISTING IMMIGRATION LAW(we don’t need anymore lip-flapping lawyer laws they are not going to enforce), I thought we were going to see some porn right on top of their f__king huge, imported walnut, hand-labor polished, ridiculously expensive, circle jerking, do nothing, desk.
Hell. If I could have seen Spector and Feinstein giving each other oral sex literally instead of figuratively, I wouldn’t be so damn mad. I would feel as if I got something.
Reg, Im gonna give u a pass because you have admitted u dont watch Lou Dobbs. Rutten has it perfect. Dobbs had a long record as being a literall butt boy for Corporate America when he ran his noxious Moneyline show… ‘ho for Wall Street.
Now he found a new niche market. Under the guise of defending the “little guy” he flirts with overt racism and good old fashioned national jingoism. Indeed, his rhetoric is identical to that of the old John Birchers who, if you will remember, were also about defending the little (white) guy. Dobbs is a 100% bullshitter and 101% demagogue. Im not stupid about this stuff and have myself supported the old right-left “Halloween Coalition” against such measures as Fast Track. Im also sympathetic (though not as much as you) to Buchanan’s view on the war, as well as republic vs empire.
But Dobbs is beyond the pale– a truly dangerous nationalist agitator and propagator of only slightly covert racism.
Tim Rutten, by the way, is paid to be a columnist and therefore paid to bloviate. Lou Dobbs is a bloviating anchor on a morally bankrupt and corrupt and failing TV network. They ought to give him a show co-hosting with that other fasicst, Nancy Grace.
Shame on you Reg for defending someone like Dobbs. He’s one degree removed from a Father Coughlin. Tune in sometime and listen.
Jim Russell: Your plea about enforcing existing law sounds fine on paper. Unfortunately it has not a single link to reality.
Immigration law is rigorously enforced at the border. One day when Reg is actually watching Lou Dobbs maybe u should go down to the border and actually see the quasi military operations that are conducted around the clock to stop and apprehend illegal crossers. I have. It’s much more like Vietnam than, say, it is like croquet.
Too bad there is no technical force that can, however, stop a human wave the size we are talking about. You might not LIKE that thought… but too bad. That’s reality. I dont like earthquakes either. But they cannot be enforced out of existence.
As to enjoining illegal workers at the site of employment. You’re also in a dream state. Many of the employers pay in cash (as they always have and always will). Many of the employers are small businesses so enforcement would mean tens of thouands of new police agents scrutinzing every business and small business in America. Dream on, my friend. Nobody except you, Reg and Jim Gilchrist are gonna support that.
As to enforcement in larger industrial and service industries… oh I imagine it could be done. If , that is, you’d like to shut down America’s restaurant, hotel, agriculture, construction and food production industries. You dont seem to understand that even with the mass of illegals in this country at present there is currently a LABOR SHORTAGE at the bottom end of the market– especially in agriculture.
Might make life more sustainable without all those polluting industries around any more.
Even if that were not true (which it is is).. here’s the job I propose for you Jim. As we go around rounding up these 12 million illegals, I will apoint you Commissioner of Family Affairs. Here’s your mandate: millions of these 12 million have children who were born in the U.S. who are U.S. citizens. I bet you dont like that either. Too bad, because it’s what they call a FACT. Most of those kids, in fact, fall between the extremes of being an infant or a young adult. Many of these 7-10-16 year olds born in the US who are citizens speak only English and know only America. Your job will be to tell them that they are going to be put on the same busses as mom and dad and sent back to what is essentially a foreign country with which they have no knowledge or awareness. Sounds fair to me!
I wonder Jim if you have had any REAL LIFE contact with this issue– or is it all just a simple abstract geometric equation for you? Have you ever spent ANY time talking to as much as one of these “illegals?” Ever been to their homes, their work sites or in their classrooms? Or do they merely just serve you your food and clean up your office as you watch them rather invisibly?
Marc – I think you know you’re out on the edge you claim Dobbs inhabits when you call him a fascist. It’s unhinged. Seriously. As for him being a ‘butt boy’ for corporate America, I’d suggest you read his interview with Bill Moyers. I wish we had more “butt boys” like him in the media.
He’s one of the few commentators out there who doesn’t consistently parrot the corporate elite – unlike some folks who’s names will go unmentioned on this one. And if anyone ever went to Dobbs for their news, as opposed to personality-driven, sound-bite laden news-lite mixed with up-front commentary, they have only themselves to blame. I wouldn’t recommend Dobbs as a reliable news source, but there’s nobody on any of the major cable networks I’m aware of who is as consistently critical of the stranglehold corporations have on the political system or of the down-side of globalization as Dobbs, based on the clips and interviews I’ve seen with him. I don’t watch his show on a regular basis, but I’m pretty well aware of his views and how he expresses them.
The rhetoric that folks on your end of this issue are determined to amp up is really verging on hysteria. We’ve got the loonytoons “Sensenbrenner is like Hitler” commenter on another thread and now Lou Dobbs is a fascist. Amazing. Rather than induce shame, your response makes me ever more certain there’s no liklihood of getting reasoned commentary on this one and more set in my skepticism of the notion that McCain-Kennedy is a “breakthrough” or that someone who notes that Mexican flags may not be the most politic banner one marches for citizens rights under is beyond the pale – because, you know, the nativists are already stirred up to the max and include anyone who doesn’t get it that borders are obsolete.
“As to enforcement in larger industrial and service industries… oh I imagine it could be done. If , that is, you’d like to shut down America’s restaurant, hotel, agriculture, construction and food production industries. You dont seem to understand that even with the mass of illegals in this country at present there is currently a LABOR SHORTAGE at the bottom end of the market– especially in agriculture.”
That’s the only area on which I’m particularly adamant as regards this issue, and the position you take on it is the same position as the capitalist elite and their “butt boys” like John Stossel, Tom Friedman, David Brooks, CATO/Manhattan/Hoover etc./propaganda units, K Street, NAM, CoC, Business Roundtable, ad infinitum.
I’m for fast-tracking working people with families but no papers into citizenship and coming down hard on those industries that violate labor laws, including hiring illegals, and let a tighter labor market push wages up. Then we’ll see what kind of labor shortage we’ve got. You’re really an apologist for some of the crappiest and most oppressive interests in the country when you spout the “labor shortage” line to rationalize this. Doesn’t make you a “fascist” but it makes you disingenuos when you accuse Lou Dobbs of being a butt-boy for corporate America. You can talk all you want about unionization among illegals, but your central argument and description of “reality” is precisely what the big boys want everyone to believe. I don’t accept that crapola, low-end labor market as something that just IS. It is what it is for a reason – a concerted effort kick the bottom rungs down even further.. “Guest workers”, etc. is just what these Voodoo doctors ordered and I refuse to applaud it.
I doubt anyone would even show up to be called “guest workers.” There’s nothing honorable in this debate. Of course I see overbreeding as the root cause of the problem as uncomfortable as that may be for some to wrangle with. I suppose it’s a God-given justification or just plain negligent mindlessness, it matters little which it is. It just is.
Wouldn’t you know after a long week of construction labor, too many Milwaukees, and time to rant instead of retort on Marc’s Blog, Marc was there reading the waywards. This is all Reg’s fault Marc. His convincing and compelling arguments on various immigration posts of yours has turned me into a a radical nationalist, nativist, and anti-immigration activist.
If this excuse don’t work, give me chance at another, K?
Now seriously. I live in CA. I work on construction sites and am self employed. I don’t ask who is illegal or not, but assume with some reason, that employers that pick up workers in front of malls at interstate intersections and pay them cash at the end of each week likely suspect their status, but don’t ask. I’ve done it for them. I also obviously interface with many Latinos at various places and find them great people. Very reliable, good workers, good natured, and just trying to make a living, some for families in Mexico, some for families here I would guess. I like and respect them. My guess is residents that pick them up for day labor feel more comfortable and safe with them at their homes than they would many americans.
So yes the problem has gotten much more complicated than it could have been if our laws had been enforced long, long ago AT THE EMPLOYMENT POINT. There was no, and still apparently no, willingness to do this in our need-to-keep-my-expensive-to-get-elected special interest lobbyist paid for job in Washington. Yes we must allow exceptions for people with families. But, we must FIRST start identifying who is here illegal AT THE EMPLOYMENT POINT, then deal with them in an humane family fashion. Many on my jobs are young guys I know have no families here and live together.
Money promises for more control at the borders is ineffective and I believe our politicians know it. It is a treatment of the symptom instead of the disease they want to avoid. They don’t want to bite the hand that is feeding them, business contributors. It DOES NOT take an army on the border, an army in the work place, or an expensive fence. It takes the will to slap expensive fines on the those who employ undocumented workers by providing the employer with an 800 number or website database of legitimate(or duplicate but not dead) SS number, or green-card numbers, or guest worker numbers.
Like an expensive traffic fine for running a red light is a strong deterrent for drivers to do it again, it doesn’t require a patrol officer on every road. It just requires a patrol officers spot checking every road just once in a while, followed by a STIFF fine for those caught. Once those workers without legal documents are identified, then we can decide what is the best way to handle them; deport them if single in order to sign up in their own country for work in the USA, or if supporting a family here, document them here for legal work and path to assimilated citizenship.
But, we MUST FIRST identify who is here illegally before we can deal with this disaster perpetrated on us by Washington, not the hard working Mexican people trying to survive in F’ed up country more corrupt than ours. We MUST MANAGE and control immigration for our security and to prevent the false depression of wages needed to survive in our much more expensive country. The goal being, the migrant workers allowed to work here, as well as the migrant work supporting a family already here, will be getting the same fair entry level wage, working conditions, and WORKER RIGHTS as american with LABOR LAWS long ago fought for by our ancestors, litterly fought for.
Marc….and Reg…. I don’t watch Lou Dobbs a lot, but when I do, I am simply slackjawed much of the time at the reactionary stuff he says. The Saint Patrick’s Day remark, which I did happen to see (then saw replayed on the Daily Show) was sort of wackily emblematic of this cliff he seems to have jumped from. Honest to God, it’s beginning to feel more than just slightly tad Faustian since—unlike people like O’Reilly and the Hannity and Colmes twins (who are now so creepily strange they’ve passed the point of merely being loathsome and gone into some surreal realm that’s kind of interestingly ironic)—Dobbs seems like he wouldn’t make a bad next door neighbor, and much of the time he says perfectly logical things. Then whammo! He’s off the cliff again. I think Rutten’s nailed it. And not a moment too soon.
Ohmigod, I becoming a “John Bircher,†little did I know that Lou Dobbs was a demagogue, to me he just seemed like a mediocre looking guy, similar in appearance to Chris Matthews, except Lou Dobbs lets you know exactly where he is coming from, while Matthews comes off strident, but is purely an ass licking bullshitter.
Several months ago I read Dobbs book “Exporting America : Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas,†and I thought he made many valid points—the Republican and the Democratic Party NO longer represent American labor, it really is a corporatocracy and money is the only thing that matters.
Globalization has given corporations the mandate to eliminate loyalties to any specific country, while like vultures they roam the global market place in search of fresh resources and cheap labor.
Now I don’t politically agree with Dobbs on every issue, is analyses are somewhat simplistic —he is convinced that China is a communist country and I feel that it is a capitalistic dictatorship, but we both agree that the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India is a recipe for disaster.
Of course, it is purely based on the fact that if you import more than you export you’re headed for “deep shit.â€
A country cannot remain a viable democracy if all of its workers are slinging burgers at MacDonald’s. And a country cannot sustain a democracy if you have only two classes– a ruling class and an impoverished underclass—unless of course we assume Mexico as our future role model.
What is Mexico’s GNP, heroine, cocaine, white slavery—oh, so is that our future; sex drugs and a Big Mac?
“…a patrol officers spot checking every road just once in a while, followed by a STIFF fine for those caught.” This meant a STIFF fine on the employer, not the employee.
It is really really dumb to be talking about more immigration laws before we can show willingness to enforce those already on the books. Unbelievable.
Sonia Nazarrio’s Op Ed re: immigration in today’s LA Times is worth reading all the way through. Here’s the opening….
The love left behind:
What will it take to keep mothers and their children from crossing the border?
By Sonia Nazario
(Times staff writer Sonia Nazario’s Pulitzer Prize-winning series, “Enrique’s Journey,” was published as a book by Random House in February.)
April 2, 2006
IT STARTED AS AN OFF-THE-CUFF question to MarÃa del Carmen Ferrez, who came to clean my house twice a month. Did she plan to have more children? Carmen, always chatty, suddenly went silent. She started sobbing. She told me about four children she had left behind in Guatemala. Her husband had left her, and Carmen simply couldn’t feed them more than once or twice a day. They would ask for food. She didn’t have it. So she left them in Guatemala with their grandmother and came to work in El Norte. She hadn’t seen them in 12 years. Her youngest daughter was 1 year old when she left.
Carmen’s answer stunned me and sent me on a journey of my own. How could a mother leave her children and travel 2,000 miles away, not knowing when or if she would see them again? After nearly two years of research in the U.S. and in Latin America, I found some answers — and many more Carmens. Regardless of the law, regardless of the danger and pain, millions of women, often single mothers, come to the United States from Mexico and Central America and send dollars to the children they leave behind. And after years apart, their children, desperate to be with their mothers, often make their own harrowing journey through Mexico to find them.
These mothers and children offer up almost certain proof that the legislative “solutions” that Congress is debating — and that brought thousands out into the streets in protest — can’t and won’t make a difference in the nation’s illegal immigration problem.
First, some facts. Clearly, illegal immigration is out of control…….
Marc, there is no “labor shortage” just as there is never any long or medium term “oil shortage” — there’s just an issue about price adjustment.
There’s not even a doctor shortage, just an artificially created limited supply (by the AMA) refusing to accredit any more Medical Schools — you might want to look into how this severly restricts supply … and UP goest the prices … so there’s no shortage.
Supply and Demand make the world go round. Rosedog’s Carmen is sending money home. Estimates are some $20 billion (almost certainly FAR better targeted than any US gov’t programs would be at helping poor people). If half of that $20 bil., some $10 bil./year, were going to states/ DC, there would be two things happen.
1) Fewer would want to come (but still millions), and 2) the Opposition to their coming goes way down — because the opposition is based on rich Americans paying for the poor non-Americans, and we all know the rich don’t want to pay for the poor.
Even the Dem Party knows it, and there’s no way it can be “tough” against the really really poor illegals while trying to gain moral superiority for “supportting the little guy”.
MAKE the immigrants PAY to come, legally, to the US (thru a loan that they pay back over time; with progressive income taxes, er, repayments) — that’s how the market creates, through peaceful, voluntary action, a balance of supply and demand.
But the nativists who think able bodied workers coming to America are some kind of “drain” are very likely failing to count up the benefits of a growing population. Increasing house prices is one; larger domestic demand for whatever the nativist is selling is another; lower overall prices for everything the nativist buys is a third. Statistics can lie especially well when one sides’ benefits are hugely undercounted (admittedly very difficult to count accurately).
Sort of like how those against smoking, who count up the “cost” to society, seldom include the fact that smokers die earlier — and thereby save Social Security expenses. [I'm not advocating smoking here, just pointing out an example of usually more ignorant than deliberate miscounting.]
I’m wondering where this can go? How about this for all you wild eyed progressives? Throw open the borders (all of em) make the minimum wage for all workers $100,000.00 per annum, guaranteed health care for everyone including for those who don’t care for them selves (drunks and addicts), universal day care beginning at six weeks, and a guaranteed 8 weeks paid time off, jobs for life and no one would ever offend anyone else… now, turn to hymn number 12: Some one’s crying Lord, Kumbayah….
That was an excellent article – I’d like to see a followup by somebody who could be programatic and tell me what the plan to address this would actually look like. Obviously not sending financial aid through the state bureaucracy to be skimmed. I’ve got some other thoughts on this – like why Lou Dobbs is the spokesman lots of Americans are going to identify with on this for the things he gets exactly right about it. I don’t think he’s convinced anyone that we should eliminate St. Patricks Day parades. I do think he’s convinced a lot of people that corporate interests are primarily at play in the formation of what will be the “actually-existing-immigration-bill”, not concern for anybody at the bottom end of the labor market, regardless of ethnicity. Republicans also reflect some local and regional splits based on their perception of the need to court the 40% or so of Latino voters who tend to vote Republican. (Cuban-Americans, of course, vote about 80% GOP.) In any event, Dobbs, whatever one thinks of some of his rhetoric, is about the only friend people who are impacted by the wage-depression illegal immigration creates at the unskilled and low-skilled end of the workforce have in the loudmouth cable “news” media. That sorry shits like Joe Klein and the rest of the thumbsuckers who are called “liberal” pundits echo the business interests that feed off of the current situation (of which McCain-Kennedy is just a bullshit ratification with no teeth to change the way the game is being played, frankly) defer any emotion or anger over this to Lou Dobbs – or people who truly are rabid, like the hate-radio crowd – is pathetic. Given the choice between Dobbs and Klein or Friedmanesque “liberal”, I’ll take Dobbs. Fuck St Patricks Day.
This was the straightest talk I’ve seen anywhere on Iraq and the criminal negligence, past and present. This guy started saying this stuff before the war – anyone who wasn’t paying attention and taking him seriously than has only themselves to blame, frankly.
That link is to a video – you have to sit through the increasingly pathetic bullshit of “Maverick” McCain at the head of the show. This week he’s kissing the ass of Jerry Falwell. Probably worth watching to see how low McCain has descended in his trolling for votes in the polluted swamps of the GOP. I couldn’t see any way to scroll past it. Sorry as McCain is, it’s worth letting it play to hear the entire interview with Zinni. He starts out pretty good and just gets better and better – tougher and more forthright – on how we’ve been screwed by these Bushnik assholes since Day One as the interview unfolds. An excellent antidote to the “Everybody believed Saddam had WMDs” horseshit, among other things and he puts Condi and Rummy in their Deserve-To-Be-Fired place. My Triple AAA recommendation for audio-visual edification. Better than Chappelle’s Block Party…
If I can find a complete transcript (Think Progress has some snips), I’ll post it.
I fail to see where and how Dobbs offers any real analysis to support his positions. His show/program has resorted to simple redundancy; restating the same positions or points over and over again. His interviews aren’t really interviews ; they simply provide him an opportunity to have some hapless subject at the other side of the TV window for Dobbs to talk over. I don’t recall Dobbs letting an interview subject actually answer a question especially if the interview subject should happen to disagree w/Dobbs. Therefore, I have concluded that the Dobbs’ program on CNN is not really a news program. It’s really just the Lou Dobbs commentary hour.
GMR – If I ever start smoking weed again and join the Green Party, I’m going to nominate you for President. Love the platform…makes Kucinich look like the Democratic sell-out we all know he is, underneath that thin veneer of veganism. You da man !!!!!
G.M., in addition to your proposal, we need to do away with the silly rules that you have to be a natural born citizen to be President and lived in the U.S. for fourteen years. Then, we need to be sure that our Constitution comes in two languages. Next, we move the capital to McAllen, Texas to be closer to the citizens who would run this country. BUT, I draw the line at moving it south of the Rio Grande. There are limits, you know.
The response of the left (and the ever progressive Marc, one of my favorite people) indicates that they really understand the foolishness of the natural extension of their wishes.
Lou Dobbs is one of the most important voices in the American debate. He gets beyond the hackneyed “left” and “right” paradigm and has a populist message that is distinctly “made in America”. If Lou Dobbs were to run for President, I would vote for him in a heartbeat.
You anti-globalization and anti-trade folks really should read some Adam smith and David Ricardo who understood the benefits of trade for all people. Opposing outsourcing will not keep America competitive in the global economy. Making sure that America is an attractive place to do business through energy, tax and health care issues would help us compete. Just look at Ireland who transformed their economy in the last decade by using globalization.
We don’t live in a vacuum and not competing in the global world will make us all worse off. We shouldn’t fear competition we should rise to the challenge. Outlawing outsourcing and global trade will make us all poorer period. There are a finite amount of resources and controlling costs allows cheaper goods and investment in other sectors of the economy. Technology displaces FAR more jobs than outsourcing ever does. We don’t ban technology.
People may love to blame immigrants legal and otherwise for a whole host of problems from wages to health care, but we will NEED many more workers to support the entitlements for baby boomers. So build a 60 foot wall (technology won’t work only billions of dollars for a wall) but realize that people will be let in, because we need the workers to support boomers.
Dobbs promotes misinformed defunct economic views that if followed would spell disaster for our country. He should be helping America solve problems with real solutions, not obsolete protectionist rhetoric.
April 1st, 2006 at 3:38 am
Progressives need to join the Dobbs Watch – the guy has got it all wrong about the effects of global capitalism. And according to these folks he’s also got the nerve to be pushing for “socialized medicine”.
http://blog.nam.org/archives/dobbs_watch/
April 1st, 2006 at 4:39 am
Before Marc “drubs” me for the tweak, I’ll reiterate that I don’t agree with Dobbs on the what one might call the “Tom Tancredo” approach to this issue, but I’m overjoyed to see one national reporter break rather dramatically with elite opinion on the imperatives of global capital and their Beltway/media handmaidens to push the debate beyond the phony “liberal” vs. “conservative” paradigm bounded by “acceptable” establishment opinion typefied by moribund hacks like Thomas Friedman and David Brooks.
As for the “leprosy” reference that offends Rutten, I don’t watch cable news at all and only know Dobbs a bit from an excellent interview he did with Bill Moyers on globalization and his occasional clips excerpted on Crooks and Liars that are generally pretty tough on the right people, so I don’t know the extent to which this was “yahooized”, but anyone who thinks issues of cross-border disease – or food contamination, for that matter – aren’t real is an idiot. Ever heard of avian flu ? And, yes, health experts who actually track leprosy and doctors who treat it support what Rutten implies was stated on Dobbs show regarding the source of increasing incidences of the disease among recent immigrants. Alarmism is no doubt unfounded, but this isn’t some crackpot thing Dobbs or one of his cohorts made up.
April 1st, 2006 at 4:44 am
Rutten: “No real reporting, just lots of opinion aggressively presented”
And Tim Rutten’s columns are…what, exactly ????
April 1st, 2006 at 7:15 am
Lou Dobbs often looks inebriated on the air. His views are interesting as in they are somewhat “fusionist” or “producerist.” No friend to either the left and labor or what he refers to as “corporate america,” he’s kind of a new incarnation of the Perot/Buchanan approach. Anti-corporate without being anti-capitalism, Dobbs seems to believe that the “real economy” is more important than markets. He may be right, but he doesn’t take his critique to its logical conclusion, and meanwhile, with his onair angry and perhaps drunk persona, spews borderline xenophobic invective…does anyone doubt that if a Jewish parade were mentioned by a guest, he would probably immediately say “there shouldn’t be Jewish parades in this country.”
In fact, he sounds a little like Richard Rorty – this is the dark side of “achieving your country.”
April 1st, 2006 at 7:56 am
Marc, when you get a chance, can you please lay into Joe Hicks’ heinous op-ed in the LATimes today? Black/Latino relations are understandably particularly fraught at this moment, and Hicks seems consciously determined in his piece to set them back as far as possible…
April 1st, 2006 at 9:30 am
Dobbs has been a one-note samba on this a for quite a while. It’s unfair as some do to paint him as a racist. As Cummings here illustrates to fallacious perfection. I’ve seen him elaborate in CNN since it’s the only cable news channel I get. He really isn’t a so-called nativist like Tancredo.
April 1st, 2006 at 10:33 am
Reg, you echo my sentiments perfectly, so I’m echoing you back:
“but I’m overjoyed to see one national reporter break rather dramatically with elite opinion on the imperatives of global capital and their Beltway/media handmaidens to push the debate beyond the phony “liberal†vs. “conservative†paradigm bounded by “acceptable†establishment opinion typefied by moribund hacks like Thomas Friedman and David Brooks.”
Amen.
And as it bizarre as it sounds, I think it’s quite healthy to have someone like Dobbs spouting out in such an “illiberal” fashion, if only to scramble up the con/lib equation we are so mercilessly and boringly subjected to. People are forced to scratch their heads and actually think about what they believe, instead of mindlessly clinging to a partisan line.
Incidentally, his approach is a definite exception compared to the rest of CNN’s coverage on this issue, which is overwhelmingly pro-McCain-Kennedy and quick to lump all other opinions into the Tancredo box. A number of CNN’s McCain-Kennedy-biased interviews have been stupefying to watch, actually–like observing a parallel universe in which Fox is CNN and CNN is Fox. Er, something like that.
April 1st, 2006 at 12:17 pm
what is the difference between Dobbs and Scalia?
Ok I know there is obscure good punchline to that but I am to busy crying to think of it.
on another note, have the rumors of castro’s death been validated??
April 1st, 2006 at 2:26 pm
One would have thought the Democratic Party could have come together on this issue. This issue of allowing hordes of slave laborers into the country to compete with the wages of already dual income Walmart families trying to survive in an expensive country. Worse, total silence while these families, and the states they live in, approach bankruptcy providing the extra social needs and services employers know they don’t need to extend to their ‘illegals’.
One would have thought the traditional friend of the American laborer would have joined and united in their interest. We didn’t expect it out of the friend of the business party. But very unfortuantely for the fractured friend of the workers party, they are missing in action……no that isn’t exactly true, many are showing up to fight for the other side in a repeat of NAFTA and all the other ‘Free’ trade agreements for what in reality is ‘Free’ labor.
The Democratic Party was looking up, was on a roll, was looking like they really gave a F about the American people when they united to stop the auctioning off of port entries into our country by international money grubbers behind closed doors. I was damn proud of them. Now I am dumbfound by their turnaround on this illegal land entry into our country by not calling for enforcement of our immigration laws AT THE EMPLOYMENT POINT to stop the money grubbers abuse of the parties traditional base, the fair but not ‘free’ laborer.
It is truly amusing, if you’re a masochist, to see the strange bedfellows this issue has created. The Lambs in Washington lie down with the Lions and the Lions with the Lambs all in one F_ing big orgy, all at the expense of American workers. The Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were so damned agreeable, happy and attracted to each other on their agreement not to enforce EXISTING IMMIGRATION LAW(we don’t need anymore lip-flapping lawyer laws they are not going to enforce), I thought we were going to see some porn right on top of their f__king huge, imported walnut, hand-labor polished, ridiculously expensive, circle jerking, do nothing, desk.
April 1st, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Hell. If I could have seen Spector and Feinstein giving each other oral sex literally instead of figuratively, I wouldn’t be so damn mad. I would feel as if I got something.
April 1st, 2006 at 2:45 pm
On second thought, at their age that would be nasty…….naw.
April 1st, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Reg, Im gonna give u a pass because you have admitted u dont watch Lou Dobbs. Rutten has it perfect. Dobbs had a long record as being a literall butt boy for Corporate America when he ran his noxious Moneyline show… ‘ho for Wall Street.
Now he found a new niche market. Under the guise of defending the “little guy” he flirts with overt racism and good old fashioned national jingoism. Indeed, his rhetoric is identical to that of the old John Birchers who, if you will remember, were also about defending the little (white) guy. Dobbs is a 100% bullshitter and 101% demagogue. Im not stupid about this stuff and have myself supported the old right-left “Halloween Coalition” against such measures as Fast Track. Im also sympathetic (though not as much as you) to Buchanan’s view on the war, as well as republic vs empire.
But Dobbs is beyond the pale– a truly dangerous nationalist agitator and propagator of only slightly covert racism.
Tim Rutten, by the way, is paid to be a columnist and therefore paid to bloviate. Lou Dobbs is a bloviating anchor on a morally bankrupt and corrupt and failing TV network. They ought to give him a show co-hosting with that other fasicst, Nancy Grace.
Shame on you Reg for defending someone like Dobbs. He’s one degree removed from a Father Coughlin. Tune in sometime and listen.
April 1st, 2006 at 2:57 pm
We need more Lou Dobbs and Bill Bradleys. They are on the cutting edge of the new wave of thinking on immigration.
April 1st, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Jim Russell: Your plea about enforcing existing law sounds fine on paper. Unfortunately it has not a single link to reality.
Immigration law is rigorously enforced at the border. One day when Reg is actually watching Lou Dobbs maybe u should go down to the border and actually see the quasi military operations that are conducted around the clock to stop and apprehend illegal crossers. I have. It’s much more like Vietnam than, say, it is like croquet.
Too bad there is no technical force that can, however, stop a human wave the size we are talking about. You might not LIKE that thought… but too bad. That’s reality. I dont like earthquakes either. But they cannot be enforced out of existence.
As to enjoining illegal workers at the site of employment. You’re also in a dream state. Many of the employers pay in cash (as they always have and always will). Many of the employers are small businesses so enforcement would mean tens of thouands of new police agents scrutinzing every business and small business in America. Dream on, my friend. Nobody except you, Reg and Jim Gilchrist are gonna support that.
As to enforcement in larger industrial and service industries… oh I imagine it could be done. If , that is, you’d like to shut down America’s restaurant, hotel, agriculture, construction and food production industries. You dont seem to understand that even with the mass of illegals in this country at present there is currently a LABOR SHORTAGE at the bottom end of the market– especially in agriculture.
Might make life more sustainable without all those polluting industries around any more.
Even if that were not true (which it is is).. here’s the job I propose for you Jim. As we go around rounding up these 12 million illegals, I will apoint you Commissioner of Family Affairs. Here’s your mandate: millions of these 12 million have children who were born in the U.S. who are U.S. citizens. I bet you dont like that either. Too bad, because it’s what they call a FACT. Most of those kids, in fact, fall between the extremes of being an infant or a young adult. Many of these 7-10-16 year olds born in the US who are citizens speak only English and know only America. Your job will be to tell them that they are going to be put on the same busses as mom and dad and sent back to what is essentially a foreign country with which they have no knowledge or awareness. Sounds fair to me!
I wonder Jim if you have had any REAL LIFE contact with this issue– or is it all just a simple abstract geometric equation for you? Have you ever spent ANY time talking to as much as one of these “illegals?” Ever been to their homes, their work sites or in their classrooms? Or do they merely just serve you your food and clean up your office as you watch them rather invisibly?
April 1st, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Marc – I think you know you’re out on the edge you claim Dobbs inhabits when you call him a fascist. It’s unhinged. Seriously. As for him being a ‘butt boy’ for corporate America, I’d suggest you read his interview with Bill Moyers. I wish we had more “butt boys” like him in the media.
http://www.alternet.org/election04/19625/
He’s one of the few commentators out there who doesn’t consistently parrot the corporate elite – unlike some folks who’s names will go unmentioned on this one. And if anyone ever went to Dobbs for their news, as opposed to personality-driven, sound-bite laden news-lite mixed with up-front commentary, they have only themselves to blame. I wouldn’t recommend Dobbs as a reliable news source, but there’s nobody on any of the major cable networks I’m aware of who is as consistently critical of the stranglehold corporations have on the political system or of the down-side of globalization as Dobbs, based on the clips and interviews I’ve seen with him. I don’t watch his show on a regular basis, but I’m pretty well aware of his views and how he expresses them.
The rhetoric that folks on your end of this issue are determined to amp up is really verging on hysteria. We’ve got the loonytoons “Sensenbrenner is like Hitler” commenter on another thread and now Lou Dobbs is a fascist. Amazing. Rather than induce shame, your response makes me ever more certain there’s no liklihood of getting reasoned commentary on this one and more set in my skepticism of the notion that McCain-Kennedy is a “breakthrough” or that someone who notes that Mexican flags may not be the most politic banner one marches for citizens rights under is beyond the pale – because, you know, the nativists are already stirred up to the max and include anyone who doesn’t get it that borders are obsolete.
April 1st, 2006 at 3:49 pm
“As to enforcement in larger industrial and service industries… oh I imagine it could be done. If , that is, you’d like to shut down America’s restaurant, hotel, agriculture, construction and food production industries. You dont seem to understand that even with the mass of illegals in this country at present there is currently a LABOR SHORTAGE at the bottom end of the market– especially in agriculture.”
That’s the only area on which I’m particularly adamant as regards this issue, and the position you take on it is the same position as the capitalist elite and their “butt boys” like John Stossel, Tom Friedman, David Brooks, CATO/Manhattan/Hoover etc./propaganda units, K Street, NAM, CoC, Business Roundtable, ad infinitum.
I’m for fast-tracking working people with families but no papers into citizenship and coming down hard on those industries that violate labor laws, including hiring illegals, and let a tighter labor market push wages up. Then we’ll see what kind of labor shortage we’ve got. You’re really an apologist for some of the crappiest and most oppressive interests in the country when you spout the “labor shortage” line to rationalize this. Doesn’t make you a “fascist” but it makes you disingenuos when you accuse Lou Dobbs of being a butt-boy for corporate America. You can talk all you want about unionization among illegals, but your central argument and description of “reality” is precisely what the big boys want everyone to believe. I don’t accept that crapola, low-end labor market as something that just IS. It is what it is for a reason – a concerted effort kick the bottom rungs down even further.. “Guest workers”, etc. is just what these Voodoo doctors ordered and I refuse to applaud it.
April 1st, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Tim Rutten’s disemboweling of Lou Dobbs was almost as enjoyable as Todd Gitlin’s vivisection of Chris Matthews in The American Prospect.
April 1st, 2006 at 4:41 pm
I doubt anyone would even show up to be called “guest workers.” There’s nothing honorable in this debate. Of course I see overbreeding as the root cause of the problem as uncomfortable as that may be for some to wrangle with. I suppose it’s a God-given justification or just plain negligent mindlessness, it matters little which it is. It just is.
April 1st, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Wouldn’t you know after a long week of construction labor, too many Milwaukees, and time to rant instead of retort on Marc’s Blog, Marc was there reading the waywards. This is all Reg’s fault Marc. His convincing and compelling arguments on various immigration posts of yours has turned me into a a radical nationalist, nativist, and anti-immigration activist.
If this excuse don’t work, give me chance at another, K?
Now seriously. I live in CA. I work on construction sites and am self employed. I don’t ask who is illegal or not, but assume with some reason, that employers that pick up workers in front of malls at interstate intersections and pay them cash at the end of each week likely suspect their status, but don’t ask. I’ve done it for them. I also obviously interface with many Latinos at various places and find them great people. Very reliable, good workers, good natured, and just trying to make a living, some for families in Mexico, some for families here I would guess. I like and respect them. My guess is residents that pick them up for day labor feel more comfortable and safe with them at their homes than they would many americans.
So yes the problem has gotten much more complicated than it could have been if our laws had been enforced long, long ago AT THE EMPLOYMENT POINT. There was no, and still apparently no, willingness to do this in our need-to-keep-my-expensive-to-get-elected special interest lobbyist paid for job in Washington. Yes we must allow exceptions for people with families. But, we must FIRST start identifying who is here illegal AT THE EMPLOYMENT POINT, then deal with them in an humane family fashion. Many on my jobs are young guys I know have no families here and live together.
Money promises for more control at the borders is ineffective and I believe our politicians know it. It is a treatment of the symptom instead of the disease they want to avoid. They don’t want to bite the hand that is feeding them, business contributors. It DOES NOT take an army on the border, an army in the work place, or an expensive fence. It takes the will to slap expensive fines on the those who employ undocumented workers by providing the employer with an 800 number or website database of legitimate(or duplicate but not dead) SS number, or green-card numbers, or guest worker numbers.
Like an expensive traffic fine for running a red light is a strong deterrent for drivers to do it again, it doesn’t require a patrol officer on every road. It just requires a patrol officers spot checking every road just once in a while, followed by a STIFF fine for those caught. Once those workers without legal documents are identified, then we can decide what is the best way to handle them; deport them if single in order to sign up in their own country for work in the USA, or if supporting a family here, document them here for legal work and path to assimilated citizenship.
But, we MUST FIRST identify who is here illegally before we can deal with this disaster perpetrated on us by Washington, not the hard working Mexican people trying to survive in F’ed up country more corrupt than ours. We MUST MANAGE and control immigration for our security and to prevent the false depression of wages needed to survive in our much more expensive country. The goal being, the migrant workers allowed to work here, as well as the migrant work supporting a family already here, will be getting the same fair entry level wage, working conditions, and WORKER RIGHTS as american with LABOR LAWS long ago fought for by our ancestors, litterly fought for.
April 1st, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Marc….and Reg…. I don’t watch Lou Dobbs a lot, but when I do, I am simply slackjawed much of the time at the reactionary stuff he says. The Saint Patrick’s Day remark, which I did happen to see (then saw replayed on the Daily Show) was sort of wackily emblematic of this cliff he seems to have jumped from. Honest to God, it’s beginning to feel more than just slightly tad Faustian since—unlike people like O’Reilly and the Hannity and Colmes twins (who are now so creepily strange they’ve passed the point of merely being loathsome and gone into some surreal realm that’s kind of interestingly ironic)—Dobbs seems like he wouldn’t make a bad next door neighbor, and much of the time he says perfectly logical things. Then whammo! He’s off the cliff again. I think Rutten’s nailed it. And not a moment too soon.
April 1st, 2006 at 7:10 pm
that was supposed to read “just slightly Faustian..”
April 1st, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Ohmigod, I becoming a “John Bircher,†little did I know that Lou Dobbs was a demagogue, to me he just seemed like a mediocre looking guy, similar in appearance to Chris Matthews, except Lou Dobbs lets you know exactly where he is coming from, while Matthews comes off strident, but is purely an ass licking bullshitter.
Several months ago I read Dobbs book “Exporting America : Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas,†and I thought he made many valid points—the Republican and the Democratic Party NO longer represent American labor, it really is a corporatocracy and money is the only thing that matters.
Globalization has given corporations the mandate to eliminate loyalties to any specific country, while like vultures they roam the global market place in search of fresh resources and cheap labor.
Now I don’t politically agree with Dobbs on every issue, is analyses are somewhat simplistic —he is convinced that China is a communist country and I feel that it is a capitalistic dictatorship, but we both agree that the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India is a recipe for disaster.
Of course, it is purely based on the fact that if you import more than you export you’re headed for “deep shit.â€
A country cannot remain a viable democracy if all of its workers are slinging burgers at MacDonald’s. And a country cannot sustain a democracy if you have only two classes– a ruling class and an impoverished underclass—unless of course we assume Mexico as our future role model.
What is Mexico’s GNP, heroine, cocaine, white slavery—oh, so is that our future; sex drugs and a Big Mac?
April 1st, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Well I don’t know Eleanore we can always see how many degrees we can earn and still not be able to get a real job. Isn’t that a sign of progress?
April 1st, 2006 at 10:18 pm
“…a patrol officers spot checking every road just once in a while, followed by a STIFF fine for those caught.” This meant a STIFF fine on the employer, not the employee.
It is really really dumb to be talking about more immigration laws before we can show willingness to enforce those already on the books. Unbelievable.
April 2nd, 2006 at 10:58 am
Sonia Nazarrio’s Op Ed re: immigration in today’s LA Times is worth reading all the way through. Here’s the opening….
The love left behind:
What will it take to keep mothers and their children from crossing the border?
By Sonia Nazario
(Times staff writer Sonia Nazario’s Pulitzer Prize-winning series, “Enrique’s Journey,” was published as a book by Random House in February.)
April 2, 2006
IT STARTED AS AN OFF-THE-CUFF question to MarÃa del Carmen Ferrez, who came to clean my house twice a month. Did she plan to have more children? Carmen, always chatty, suddenly went silent. She started sobbing. She told me about four children she had left behind in Guatemala. Her husband had left her, and Carmen simply couldn’t feed them more than once or twice a day. They would ask for food. She didn’t have it. So she left them in Guatemala with their grandmother and came to work in El Norte. She hadn’t seen them in 12 years. Her youngest daughter was 1 year old when she left.
Carmen’s answer stunned me and sent me on a journey of my own. How could a mother leave her children and travel 2,000 miles away, not knowing when or if she would see them again? After nearly two years of research in the U.S. and in Latin America, I found some answers — and many more Carmens. Regardless of the law, regardless of the danger and pain, millions of women, often single mothers, come to the United States from Mexico and Central America and send dollars to the children they leave behind. And after years apart, their children, desperate to be with their mothers, often make their own harrowing journey through Mexico to find them.
These mothers and children offer up almost certain proof that the legislative “solutions” that Congress is debating — and that brought thousands out into the streets in protest — can’t and won’t make a difference in the nation’s illegal immigration problem.
First, some facts. Clearly, illegal immigration is out of control…….
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-nazario2apr02,0,4892693,print.story?coll=la-home-commentary
April 2nd, 2006 at 11:01 am
Ooops. Didn’t notice I put too many “r”s in Sonia’s last name. Obviously it’s correct in the byline.
April 2nd, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Marc, there is no “labor shortage” just as there is never any long or medium term “oil shortage” — there’s just an issue about price adjustment.
There’s not even a doctor shortage, just an artificially created limited supply (by the AMA) refusing to accredit any more Medical Schools — you might want to look into how this severly restricts supply … and UP goest the prices … so there’s no shortage.
Supply and Demand make the world go round. Rosedog’s Carmen is sending money home. Estimates are some $20 billion (almost certainly FAR better targeted than any US gov’t programs would be at helping poor people). If half of that $20 bil., some $10 bil./year, were going to states/ DC, there would be two things happen.
1) Fewer would want to come (but still millions), and 2) the Opposition to their coming goes way down — because the opposition is based on rich Americans paying for the poor non-Americans, and we all know the rich don’t want to pay for the poor.
Even the Dem Party knows it, and there’s no way it can be “tough” against the really really poor illegals while trying to gain moral superiority for “supportting the little guy”.
MAKE the immigrants PAY to come, legally, to the US (thru a loan that they pay back over time; with progressive income taxes, er, repayments) — that’s how the market creates, through peaceful, voluntary action, a balance of supply and demand.
But the nativists who think able bodied workers coming to America are some kind of “drain” are very likely failing to count up the benefits of a growing population. Increasing house prices is one; larger domestic demand for whatever the nativist is selling is another; lower overall prices for everything the nativist buys is a third. Statistics can lie especially well when one sides’ benefits are hugely undercounted (admittedly very difficult to count accurately).
Sort of like how those against smoking, who count up the “cost” to society, seldom include the fact that smokers die earlier — and thereby save Social Security expenses. [I'm not advocating smoking here, just pointing out an example of usually more ignorant than deliberate miscounting.]
America gets huge benefits from the immigrants.
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:15 pm
I’m wondering where this can go? How about this for all you wild eyed progressives? Throw open the borders (all of em) make the minimum wage for all workers $100,000.00 per annum, guaranteed health care for everyone including for those who don’t care for them selves (drunks and addicts), universal day care beginning at six weeks, and a guaranteed 8 weeks paid time off, jobs for life and no one would ever offend anyone else… now, turn to hymn number 12: Some one’s crying Lord, Kumbayah….
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:20 pm
That was an excellent article – I’d like to see a followup by somebody who could be programatic and tell me what the plan to address this would actually look like. Obviously not sending financial aid through the state bureaucracy to be skimmed. I’ve got some other thoughts on this – like why Lou Dobbs is the spokesman lots of Americans are going to identify with on this for the things he gets exactly right about it. I don’t think he’s convinced anyone that we should eliminate St. Patricks Day parades. I do think he’s convinced a lot of people that corporate interests are primarily at play in the formation of what will be the “actually-existing-immigration-bill”, not concern for anybody at the bottom end of the labor market, regardless of ethnicity. Republicans also reflect some local and regional splits based on their perception of the need to court the 40% or so of Latino voters who tend to vote Republican. (Cuban-Americans, of course, vote about 80% GOP.) In any event, Dobbs, whatever one thinks of some of his rhetoric, is about the only friend people who are impacted by the wage-depression illegal immigration creates at the unskilled and low-skilled end of the workforce have in the loudmouth cable “news” media. That sorry shits like Joe Klein and the rest of the thumbsuckers who are called “liberal” pundits echo the business interests that feed off of the current situation (of which McCain-Kennedy is just a bullshit ratification with no teeth to change the way the game is being played, frankly) defer any emotion or anger over this to Lou Dobbs – or people who truly are rabid, like the hate-radio crowd – is pathetic. Given the choice between Dobbs and Klein or Friedmanesque “liberal”, I’ll take Dobbs. Fuck St Patricks Day.
But what I really wanted to say was
GEN. ANTHONY ZINNI ON MEET THE PRESS
WATCH IT IF YOU HAVEN’T
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10005066/
This was the straightest talk I’ve seen anywhere on Iraq and the criminal negligence, past and present. This guy started saying this stuff before the war – anyone who wasn’t paying attention and taking him seriously than has only themselves to blame, frankly.
That link is to a video – you have to sit through the increasingly pathetic bullshit of “Maverick” McCain at the head of the show. This week he’s kissing the ass of Jerry Falwell. Probably worth watching to see how low McCain has descended in his trolling for votes in the polluted swamps of the GOP. I couldn’t see any way to scroll past it. Sorry as McCain is, it’s worth letting it play to hear the entire interview with Zinni. He starts out pretty good and just gets better and better – tougher and more forthright – on how we’ve been screwed by these Bushnik assholes since Day One as the interview unfolds. An excellent antidote to the “Everybody believed Saddam had WMDs” horseshit, among other things and he puts Condi and Rummy in their Deserve-To-Be-Fired place. My Triple AAA recommendation for audio-visual edification. Better than Chappelle’s Block Party…
If I can find a complete transcript (Think Progress has some snips), I’ll post it.
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:24 pm
I fail to see where and how Dobbs offers any real analysis to support his positions. His show/program has resorted to simple redundancy; restating the same positions or points over and over again. His interviews aren’t really interviews ; they simply provide him an opportunity to have some hapless subject at the other side of the TV window for Dobbs to talk over. I don’t recall Dobbs letting an interview subject actually answer a question especially if the interview subject should happen to disagree w/Dobbs. Therefore, I have concluded that the Dobbs’ program on CNN is not really a news program. It’s really just the Lou Dobbs commentary hour.
DW Foster
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Yeah, I know that was full of crappy grammar and spelling. It’s a blog comment. Shoot me…
(Not you, rosedog. Just being metaphorical…or something.)
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:37 pm
GMR – If I ever start smoking weed again and join the Green Party, I’m going to nominate you for President. Love the platform…makes Kucinich look like the Democratic sell-out we all know he is, underneath that thin veneer of veganism. You da man !!!!!
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:48 pm
GM.. I kinda like ur plan and almost ready to endorse it. Just one clarification: Does one HAVE to be an addict to qualify? Just asking.
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:57 pm
“the benefits of a growing population. Increasing house prices is one”
Hello ???? WTF?
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:07 pm
If you like that plan your should see him on climate science. Hoo booy. Zippy rides again.
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:12 pm
G.M., in addition to your proposal, we need to do away with the silly rules that you have to be a natural born citizen to be President and lived in the U.S. for fourteen years. Then, we need to be sure that our Constitution comes in two languages. Next, we move the capital to McAllen, Texas to be closer to the citizens who would run this country. BUT, I draw the line at moving it south of the Rio Grande. There are limits, you know.
April 3rd, 2006 at 5:35 am
The response of the left (and the ever progressive Marc, one of my favorite people) indicates that they really understand the foolishness of the natural extension of their wishes.
Ahhhh, Utopia, thy name seems glorious!
April 3rd, 2006 at 10:19 am
Marc Cooper: “Does one HAVE to be an addict to qualify?”
Nah, I put that in so that I wouldn’t be accused of being an uptight rethuglican in the war on drugs. No PC here donchaknow!
April 11th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Lou Dobbs is one of the most important voices in the American debate. He gets beyond the hackneyed “left” and “right” paradigm and has a populist message that is distinctly “made in America”. If Lou Dobbs were to run for President, I would vote for him in a heartbeat.
May 2nd, 2006 at 2:16 pm
You anti-globalization and anti-trade folks really should read some Adam smith and David Ricardo who understood the benefits of trade for all people. Opposing outsourcing will not keep America competitive in the global economy. Making sure that America is an attractive place to do business through energy, tax and health care issues would help us compete. Just look at Ireland who transformed their economy in the last decade by using globalization.
We don’t live in a vacuum and not competing in the global world will make us all worse off. We shouldn’t fear competition we should rise to the challenge. Outlawing outsourcing and global trade will make us all poorer period. There are a finite amount of resources and controlling costs allows cheaper goods and investment in other sectors of the economy. Technology displaces FAR more jobs than outsourcing ever does. We don’t ban technology.
People may love to blame immigrants legal and otherwise for a whole host of problems from wages to health care, but we will NEED many more workers to support the entitlements for baby boomers. So build a 60 foot wall (technology won’t work only billions of dollars for a wall) but realize that people will be let in, because we need the workers to support boomers.
Dobbs promotes misinformed defunct economic views that if followed would spell disaster for our country. He should be helping America solve problems with real solutions, not obsolete protectionist rhetoric.
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December 24th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
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