Empire of the Iguanadons

Tonight, America turns the corner toward the light. Republicans have secured a solid, perhaps bullet proof majority in the US House of Representatives, and they've made commanding gains in the US Senate as well. The wave stopped just short of reaching a majority there, but the split in the Senate is now so close that the Democrats can no longer ignore our presence there. Many solid blue state positions fell our way, including a few important Senate committee seats that will be lost regardless of the outcome.

As of this writing, We hold 233 seats in the House, 218 were required for majority. We hold 46 seats in the Senate, with 3(4?) races left to call. Colorado is leaning Republican, Washington is leaning ever so slightly Republican, and there's a comedy of errors going on in Alaska with "write-in" currently winning. That race will take days, if not weeks to resolve. The only good thing being the Democrat got his ass handed to him. All media outlets instantly called California for Boxer the second the polls closed, but results right now show that Boxer and Fiorina are in a dead heat at 48% each. That hasn't stopped the arrogant liberal from claiming she's won though.

Unfortunately, the idiots in Nevada sent Harry Reid back to the Senate. I suppose there's just some people who, despite the damage their guys do, just can't stand the idea of sending someone else to Washington.

The most important victory of all: Nancy Pelosi is no longer the Speaker of the House. All indications are that the position will be filled by John Boehner. A more honorable man you will not find in the House right now. He's got a long road ahead of him, but at least with the House safely out of Democrat hands, we can start the process of repairing the damage done by Obama and his progressives.

As usual, the people of California continue to boggle the mind. Despite the overwhelming disgust people claim to have with the way the Democrats run things, it seems we've gone off the deep end yet again and Jerry Brown had been elected to his 3rd term as governor. So much for term limits. Also so much for keeping the other even scarier and far more left wing candidate out of the lieutenant governor's office. Gavin Newsom is projected to have won 48% to 41%. So much for any hope of sanity in our executive branch.

As for propositions on the California ballot, the breakdown is as follows with about half of the precincts reporting in:

Proposition - 19 - Legalize Marijuana: Defeated, 55%.
Proposition - 20 - Redistricting (the good one): Passed, 62%
Proposition - 21 - The $18 car tax: Defeated, 58%
Proposition - 22 - No raiding the transportation funds: Passed, 62%
Proposition - 23 - Suspend global warming regulations: Defeated, 59%
Proposition - 24 - Repeal crushing taxes on businesses: Defeated, 59%
Proposition - 25 - Simple majority budget vote: Passed, 54% (The media hasn't called this one yet)
Proposition - 26 - The 2/3 majority on tax hikes: Passed, 53% (Likely nullified by Prop 25 passage)
Proposition - 27 - Eliminate the redistricting commission: Defeated, 60%

So on one side, voters don't want new car tax and don't want the state stealing the transportation funds. However, despite having crippling 15-20% unemployment, the people of this state seem to want to continue to drop the hammer on the very businesses that are equipped to solve that problem. There's also the fact that Prop 25 passed, which is going to make the passage of Prop 26 pointless. One of the pitfalls I warned about in my previous post on California propositions. Even though we appear to have made some gains in the state assembly, it doesn't look like we'll get the majority needed to block the damage that can and will be done through the abuse of Prop 25.

So a sound pounding in the House, a huge wave to balance out the Senate, and a potentially disastrous outcome for California. Politics as usual?

(Pic is of the US House results as of ~12am)
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RIP United States of America

July 1776 - November 2012.

Let me elaborate a little bit here.

1. The point I was making there with regards to conservatives and American exceptionalism, and I don't mean this about all of them but certain a very vocal segment of them, is that "believing in the myths" turns into "using the myths to justify whatever they do." Waterboarding, to pull a current example, is not wrong for Pol Pot and ok for us, and I'd say that if anything it's even more wrong for us, because of who we proclaim ourselves to be. The general amazingness of our founding fathers/documents doesn't particularly excuse the inability to deal with the question of slavery by/in same. That sort of thing.

Which is to say two things:

- I think our national myths are strong enough to bear critical examination, and I think they SHOULD bear critical examination, because through said examination we learn things about ourselves and come to greater understandings. I think not examining them does us a disservice.

- There is a certain strain of Lee Greenwood-blaring, flag-waving, love-it-or-leave-it patriotism in the culture that I don't have a great deal of time for. I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but again, we need to have the ability to deal with ourselves as we are, not as we want ourselves to look, and we need to work to make ourselves be as we want others to see us.

2. Here's the thing about right versus left to my mind. It's not so much that I think conservatives are bad, though I disagree with them on many things. I'm fairly conservative on foreign policy, among other things, as you well know. But yeah, beyond the very broadest elements of fiscal policy, I think the entire agenda there is madness.

As far as the left, I think the social policy goals are generally laudable, but the Democrats have some serious issues with foreign policy, which is largely to say that their base and most of the congress have no idea what to do with a military or the use of force. That latter strain leads them to all sorts of damnfool things.

I am not, said the Ent, altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side.

Also, re: Russia/China, I suspect that China especially would love to be a hegemon, but I don't think a lot of people would like what that looks like. Certainly Russia's neighbors don't like what it looks like when Russia comes out to play.

And you know of course that we largely agree wrt to Iraq/Afghanistan, but righteousness of our cause aside, I think the case has pretty well been made that we didn't particularly do a model job of Iraq in particular, especially during the early years.



This I think is my whole point, yes.

3. Now, as to big government and fiscal policy, I disagree almost entirely, but:

- I do think that if we're going to decide to have entitlements, we need to also pay for them via higher taxes or whatever. And I'm not trying to say here that we shouldn't look at entitlement reform, because we clearly should. I think the idea of scrapping entire departments willy-nilly gives us more problems than it solves, though.

- We've had this out before (the entire Stand Before the American People thread is a good primer), but I think there needs to be, at some level, overwatch and regulation over the economy, with the powers to bail out certain portions of it as necessary.

It used to be the fashion in the 19th century and up to the Great Depression, to have government keep its hands off the economy. I don't think this worked well. Certainly the recession/depression periods of the 19th century were very, very bad, and took longer than they might otherwise have needed to recover, than had something been done. Didn't work all that great for Hoover, either.

I think things like the FDIC are better than that, and you need government to get there.

Again, the whole of this discussion lives in a 200+ comment thread, so I don't want to spend forever on it, but that's the gist.

Wow, I had a busy day yesterday and, to a lesser extent, the day before. I see y'all were busy in the interim here, but mostly I see that this conversation more or less concluded on it's own in favor or other threads. Rather than re-open this one with responses that require a small novel, I'll likewise move on. See y'all in the other threads.

In a sudden break for conservatives everywhere, two major developments happened today. Well, one minor and one major. The first, the minor, not unexpected one-congress has renewed the Patriot Act for another four years by an overwhelming majority (74-23 Senate, 43?-115 representatives). A spokesman for the white house has said that President Obama has "directed the use of the auto-pen to sign it."
Now the major-not really expected one: The supreme court has upheld an Arizona law that allows the state of Arizona to deny business licenses to individuals and companies that get caught hiring undocumented aliens more than twice. Chief Justice Roberts said, in the opinion of the majority, that "(the law in question) is well within the powers the (founding fathers) left to the states." This ruling will also be a boon for litigators who will be arguing in favour of Arizona's controversial immigration law next month.

Yes, I saw the Patriot Act ruling earlier and I'm happy to see it isn't being scrapped by ignorance.

The Arizona thing I hadn't heard though, that's interesting, and I think lays major groundwork in favor of upholding their other law on illegals. Roberts is a smart guy, Bush did good getting him appointed.

I got all excited, thought Conner was back to pay us a visit, then read the time stamp and got depressed



Ok, now to some debate, I actually like this law, i think that companies etc who willfully subvert labour hire laws by hiring illegals or anyone for that matter who they underpay etc etc, should be punished, but is this way of doing it actually practical?

What is to stop me from hiring backpackers, fence jumpers or anyone else without a green card, getting caught, folding my company, setting up a new one and doing it all over again. Or are there other punitive means also imposed on the company or individual which would make getting caught in the first place a financially painful experience.

If you're an individual, you're not getting away quite that easily. Companies? I'm not sure, I don't know the details of this particular law other than what's been superficially reported. I would hope they've thought about fly by nighters who will do just as you suggest.

Me too. :|

As a practical matter, I'd think the rate of that sort of dodge would be fairly low, since it would be fairly expensive to up and relocate, get licensed again, etc, especially since, IIRC, a lot of the places employing illegals are manufacturing and agricultural type places that are hard to relocate, or at least that's how it is here. AZ's MMV, though.

Also, troubled though I am by many a thing AZ's done in the past while, this particular law seems on the face of it to be a fairly reasonable idea.

Patriot act perhaps not so much.

It would have been nice if Conner was back for a visit; however I'm confused about what the time stamp would have to do with anything. After all, If he can log in, he can do it at noon just as well as 8pm.

Most of the illegal hires are in manufacturing and agriculture, like Dwip said (while using way to many acronyms :p ) . Also, used to be a lot of "temporary labour" for construction; but with that particular industry flat probably not so much. As far as I can tell, this law is mainly aimed at individuals (who hire farm workers and domestic servants) and small businesses. If you have more than 50 or so employees, the immigration services has had the power to inspect your documents and shut you down for decades (at least that branch any ways).

I <3 acronyms. YMMV.

What you kiss acronyms butt, and young mules marry vixens? (I think you drew the butt backwards)

...

Look at the date on the post above your thread necro post, Conner said: Comment #177 Nov 10, 2010 10:49 am. I was like OOhhh Conner is back, then looked at the post date and said Oh Fuck that was 6 months ago,

oh. sorry, this was the only thread that had anything remotely to do with what i was wanted to talk about. Still, if he did show up, it would show up in the 'recent comments' box. Mouse over them and it says who made it, when.