Submitted by Miranda Blue on Friday, 5/10/2013 2:56 pm
Robert Rector, the lead author of a Heritage Foundation study on the economic impact of immigration reform that has been slammed by fellow conservatives, defended his work on the Sandy Rios show on AFA Radio today.
Rector claimed that his critics “haven’t really pointed to any flaws” in his study and that if it had been “about anything other than immigration and open borders, they would all applaud this study.”
Of course, critics of the Heritage report from both the left and the right have pointed toa number ofmajor flaws, most notably the authors’ failure to consider how legalized immigrants would help the economy to grow. This major departure from the conservative doctrine of “dynamic scoring” did not sit well with many on the Right, including the author of a previous Heritage immigration study, who wrote:
Unless they expect readers to believe all this household income (a) generates no productive work (e.g., makes product, mows lawns, nurses the sick, and starts businesses that hire other Americans) and (b) is 100% remitted abroad, consuming nothing in the U.S. macro economy, then the report is misleading.
Rector’s defense? He points out that his report is “80 pages” long and contains “literally hundreds of equations.”
Rios: I think Heritage has such a fine name, I can’t see that they’ve done much of a dent in your reputation yet.
Rector: Not at all. And as I’ve said, with Grover Norquist, who’s for example attacking me, if this study was about anything other than immigration and open borders, they would all applaud this study. But as soon as you start talking about immigrants, then this study is flawed. And also, the people who are attacking this haven’t really pointed to any flaws. They’ve said, well, maybe the number of immigrants is low.
Submitted by Miranda Blue on Friday, 5/10/2013 1:53 pm
Two years ago, the Iowa Religious Right group The Family Leader caused a bit of a stir when it convinced Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann to sign a “marriage pledge” that, among other questionable provisions, stated that African-American families were better off under slavery than they are today.
And apparently the Family Leader’s president Bob Vander Plaats hasn’t learned much from the “marriage pledge” episode. In an interview today with Business Week about Sen. Rand Paul’s chances with social conservatives, Vander Plaats says Paul’s “leave it to the states” position on marriage equality is unacceptable because gay marriage, like slavery, is something “you don’t leave up to the states.”
Vander Plaats said Iowans may tolerate Paul’s comments on abortion exceptions because he’s also authored a bill that would define life as beginning at conception. His views on same-sex marriage are another matter.
“We are definitely going to have visits with Rand on some of those things,” said Vander Plaats, who disagrees with Paul’s view that the legal status of same-sex marriage, like drug crimes, should be left up to the states.
“You don’t leave slavery up to the states, nor should you,” said Vander Plaats. “It’s either right or it’s wrong.”
Submitted by Miranda Blue on Friday, 5/10/2013 12:33 pm
The mainstream media’s favorite racist commentator, Pat Buchanan, is predictably upset by a Census report this week that in last year’s election, black voters turned out at higher rates than white voters for the first time in history.
In a WorldNetDaily column yesterday, Buchanan laments the fact that African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2012 and that even more people of color are immigrating to the United States.
His solution, of course, is not for the GOP to try to appeal to non-white voters. Instead, he suggests that Republicans focus exclusively on turning out white voters by re-implementing what he sarcastically calls the “evil Southern Strategy” that helped catapult Richard Nixon to office. Buchanan implies that this time around, instead of stirring up racial resentment against black Americans, Republicans should work to pit white voters against “illegal foreign aliens."
“Is the way to increase the enthusiasm and turnout among [white voters] for the GOP to embrace amnesty and a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal foreign aliens?” he asks. “Or is it to demand the sealing of America’s borders against any and all intruders?”
Who are these folks? Perhaps half are Hispanic, but 90 percent are people of color who, once registered, vote 4-to-1 Democratic. One would not be surprised to hear that the Senate Democratic Caucus had broken out into chants of “Go, Marco, Go!”
Who are these folks? Perhaps half are Hispanic, but 90 percent are people of color who, once registered, vote 4-to-1 Democratic. One would not be surprised to hear that the Senate Democratic Caucus had broken out into chants of “Go, Marco, Go!"
Setting aside the illegals invasion Bush 41 and Bush 43 refused to halt, each year a million new immigrants enter and move onto a fast track to citizenship. Between 80 and 90 percent now come from the Third World, and once naturalized, they vote 80 percent Democratic.
This brings us back around to the Electoral College.
After Richard Nixon cobbled together his New Majority, the GOP carried 49 states in 1972 and 1984, 44 states in 1980 and 40 in 1988. In four elections – 1972, 1984, 1988 and 2004 – the Republican Party swept all 11 states of FDR’s “Solid South.”
Such were the fruits of that evil Southern Strategy.
But when conservatives urged Bush 1 to declare a moratorium on legal immigration in 1992 and build a security fence, the politically correct Republican establishment fought tooth and nail to keep the idea out of the platform.
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From these Census figures, white folks are losing interest in politics and voting. Yet, whites still constitute three-fourths of the electorate and nine in 10 Republican votes.
Query: Is the way to increase the enthusiasm and turnout among this three-fourths of the electorate for the GOP to embrace amnesty and a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal foreign aliens?
Or is it to demand the sealing of America’s borders against any and all intruders?
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 5/10/2013 12:16 pm
Bachmann declared that both the original 9/11 attack and the attack in Benghazi on 9/11 of last year were God's judgment while promoting a Birther-hosted payer event.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 5/10/2013 12:10 pm
Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute recently sat down with anti-gay talk show host ‘Coach’ Dave Daubenmire to elaborate on his latest “findings” that gays in relationships face more severe health risks than single gays and heterosexuals.
Cameron said that he was mildly “pro-gayish” before he started studying the issue but “then I saw what they did and I thought, ‘boy this is something that is really not only disgusting but this probably has medical consequences.’”
He claimed that “partnered” gays “do nastier things” than “when they are just flirting from bathroom to park,” and as a result have higher rates of HIV infections.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 5/10/2013 11:00 am
The Texas Board of Education member who is leading the committee to review CSCOPE, a curriculum that has been the target of severalright-wingconspiracy theories, told a Republican women’s group that his committee will “look at whether or not [CSCOPE lessons] treat the roles of men and women in a traditional way.”
Republican Marty Rowley also told the group that CSCOPE had “a definite leftist bent” but that it is not as left-wing as Common Core, promising to block “any opening or opportunity for Common Core to weasel its way into Texas.”
The comments were first spotted by Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, who notes that right-wing activists in Texas have consistently criticized textbooks “for including information on birth control, line drawings of self-exams for breast cancer and other content they found morally objectionable.”
“As folks began to look at those lessons what they began to see was there was a definite leftist bent to some of those lessons, particularly in the area of social studies and it became of great concern to folks, myself included,” said Rowley, R-Amarillo, during the Midland County Republican Women meeting Wednesday.
Rowley represents Midland as the District 15 SBOE member and was recently appointed chairman of an ad hoc committee to review the CSCOPE social studies curriculum this summer.
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“We have some specific criteria that we’re looking at (regarding the CSCOPE lessons). We’re going to look at whether or not they treat the roles of men and women in a traditional way. That’s part of the operating rules and things that we’re looking at,” Rowley said. “We’re going to look at whether or not they treat American exceptionalism in a particular way and whether they enforce the belief that America is an exceptional nation.”
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“I’ve looked through (the Common Core Standards) and it’ll curl your eyebrows. It’s not something you’ll enjoy reading. You think CSCOPE’s to the left, you ought to read Common Core,” Rowley said. “My concern is if we just say do away with this entire curriculum that 75 percent of our school districts use, they’re going to go shopping for something else. I don’t want to create any opening or opportunity for Common Core to weasel its way into Texas.”
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 5/10/2013 10:07 am
As we have pointed out many times before, once a mythical incident of supposed Christian victimization gets embraced by the Religious Right, it takes on a life of its own as no amount of evidence pointing out that the incident never happened will stop if from being spread.
And that principle was demonstrated today on Liberty Counsel's "Faith and Freedom" radio broadcast where hosts Matt Barber and Shawn Akers juxtaposed the news of Jason Collins' coming out against the story of Derrick Hayes, a high school runner who was supposedly disqualified from an event for thanking God after finishing a race.
While someone like Collins is hailed as a hero, Akers said, someone like Hayes is "almost criminalized":
Based on the UIL’s investigation, the student athlete raised his hand and gestured forward at the conclusion of the 4x100-meter relay. The meet official approached the student-athlete in an effort to warn him of a possible disqualification should that behavior continue. In the opinion of the official, the student reacted disrespectfully. Based on his reaction, the student-athlete was subsequently disqualified. Any decision to disqualify a student-athlete at any track meet must be upheld by the head meet referee. The meet official and the meet referee conferred, and the disqualification was upheld on-site. At no point during the discussions surrounding the disqualification at the meet was the issue of religious expression raised by any parties.
The UIL’s investigation also revealed that all coaches involved were notified prior to the regional meet that any gestures in violation of the National Federation of State High School Associations track and field rule against unsporting behavior would be grounds for disqualification. Coaches were instructed to discuss this with their student-athletes prior to all races.
To assist the UIL in its investigation, the student-athlete’s parents submitted a letter stating that their son’s religious freedoms were not violated. “In looking back at the conclusion of the 4x100 race, we realize that Derrick could have handled the win in a different manner,” KC and Stacey Hayes said in the letter. “It was not our intention to force the issue that our son’s religious freedom was violated. Nor do we feel that way now. After discussing this with our son, we have come to the conclusion that his religious rights were not violated.”
The student-athlete who was disqualified also submitted a letter during the investigation stating: “Although I am very thankful for all God has given me and blessed me with, on Saturday, April 27, 2013 at the Regional Track Meet in Kingsville, TX, my actions upon winning the 4x100 relay were strictly the thrill of victory. With this being said, I do not feel my religious rights or freedoms were violated.”
Even though Hayes admits that he was not disqualified for thanking God, Liberty Counsel continues to spread the myth, thus demonstrating yet again they aren't going to stop promoting a good tale of victimhood just because it happens to be demonstrably false.
The controversy over the report, however, has overshadowed an op-ed that Gonzalez wrote for the Denver Post last week that pins at least some of the blame for the Boston Marathon bombings on what he sees as a new trend in American schools of teaching “multiculturalism and diversity” rather than “love of country.”
But we know one thing for sure: He wasn't taught that assimilation into American society was desirable. As I'm finding while researching a book on Hispanics — indeed, what I experienced as a young Cuban coming to this country in the early 1970s — we no longer teach patriotic assimilation. By that I mean love of country, not just its creature comforts.
We teach the opposite, in fact — that we're all groups living cheek by jowl with one another, all with different advantages and legal class protection statuses, but not really all part of the same national fabric. In other words, we teach multiculturalism and diversity, and are officially making assimilation very hard to achieve.
If Dzhokhar and his brother Tamarlan are guilty of the acts of terrorism they are accused of because they succumbed to Islamist radicalism, then they are monsters who are personally responsible for turning against the land that welcomed them. Tamarlan has paid with his life, and Dzhokhar will be dealt judgment.
But as we grapple now with the thorny question of immigration, how to handle the millions of people who started to arrive at mid-century in a massive immigration wave, we could do worse than look at the affairs in Boston for a clue on whether our current approach works.
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Over the past few days, many people pondering the question of how the Tsarnaevs could have acted the way they did have discounted that lack of assimilation could be the case, emphasizing that the brothers Tsarnaev lived in Cambridge, "one of the most diverse and inclusive places in America."
The problem is indeed with an "inclusive" approach that considers it wrong to teach love of a country so generous that it takes in two foreigners from a far-away land, gives them refuge, welcomes them in and gives them a free education. To have done so might have precluded the radical brain washing that led to the bombing.
This absurd argument is basically the one put forward last week by Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 5/9/2013 5:20 pm
The Minnesota State House today approved marriage equality legislation.
But according to Brian Brown, Minnesota’s marriage equality bill will cause “incredible social damage” and also “hurts the economy.”
Richard Land warns that if the immigration reform bill includes protections for same-sex couples then “most, if not all of us, would have to oppose it.”
The Family Research Council is asking people to pray for churches that “have abandoned the Bible” and “religious adversaries” like Mikey Weinstein, warning that “the worst can be averted only by national repentance and God-sent Awakening.”
William Murray says what we have known for a very long time: “By backing Mark Sanford, or by saying nothing to stop his re-ascendancy, the social conservative leaders of the Christian right have declared that they are Republicans first and moral leaders maybe second, third or fourth.”
