Zuckerberg vs Trump

UnknownDonald Trump wants to deport all undocumented immigrants in the US. He’s said it many times. That seems to be his platform. He says Mexicans love him because he employs so many.

Mark Zuckerberg employs a lot of immigrants, not necessarily Mexicans, specifically, but immigrants just the same. Mark wants to help immigrants get access to legal status so they can continue to contribute to society.

One Billionaire wants to help immigrants, the other wants to vilify them.

Mark was recently quoted in Inc magazine as saying, “[D]eporting 11.5 million people would cost U.S. taxpayers $400 to $600 billion dollars, and would take at least 20 years to complete. Even worse, this mass deportation would reduce our GDP by $1.7 trillion–over 5 percent. Many industries would be hit hard, others–like agriculture, construction and hospitality–would be devastated.”

These numbers would suggest that Donald Trump doesn’t particularly care about our economy. Either that, or he really hasn’t studied the problem at all, and like all good reality TV personalities, he’s just running  for the fame and publicity.

Mark Zuckerberg is younger, wealthier and obviously smarter. Too bad he’s not running for President.

Walker trying to out-Trump Trump!

Wisconsin Governor and GOP Presidential nominee hopeful Scott Walker has raised the bar for outrageous border statements, set only days earlier, by Donald Trump. We, of course are talking about building a wall on our border, but this time, not just a 1,954 mile border with Mexico, but a wall over twice that long with our northern neighbors Canada.

 Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press” Walker said some people in New Hampshire have asked the campaign about the topic.

“They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago. So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at.” Walker said.

So, the party who would balance our budget would also like to spend over a Trillion dollars on building a Border fence on both our northern and southern borders.

I guess with this latest salvo in the bidding wars for the GOP nomination, the next person has to up the ante with building a wall on our eastern and western coasts, creating a National Castle, if you will.

Anyone want to live here then?

 

 

GOP tries to blame Obama on immigration reform

The Republicans, who have refused to put the latest immigration bill up for a vote, are using their old, tried and true tactic of blaming Obama for the lack of immigration reform movement. Are you tired of this argument too?

Support the DREAM Act Today

Teenage Girls And Best Friends Arm In Arm

 

We need to support the DREAM Act now and stop punishing children for the actions of their parents. These kids need a future they can get behind and work for. Only we can make this happen.

Click Here to help.

Is Obama like Lincoln?

Is Obama similar to Abe Lincoln?

lincoln-obama

If Obama comes out with an executive order to help a marginalized and highly oppressed portion of our society gain legal status to live in the US, then, yes, he will be.

On January 1, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order to free Slaves in Confederate held lands. It did not free all the slaves.  This executive order was issued without Congress voting on it, and gave slaves the right to create their own destinies, free from the fear that they could be captured and returned to previous owners.

The people who wanted the white man to always have dominion over the inferior black man, were very hateful and vocal about their anger over this issue. So much so that Lincoln would later be killed by one such person.

This is very similar to what Obama will be introducing in the next few days. His executive order is expected to give some 5 million undocumented immigrants (not all of them) permission to live within our borders without fear of being captured and sent back to their former country.

Let us also not forget that Abe Lincoln was a Republican, which should make the loud, hateful Republicans pause, but of course, it does not. Anything that Barack Obama wants, these guys want the opposite–even if it’s in their own best interest. Their hate can  be read in every immigration article’s comment section online.

So let’s hope our  Conservative lawmakers and their supporters don’t get their panties in a bunch over what will inevitably be another step in our country’s racial evolution. History truly does repeat itself. This has already happened, and it is happening again.

Get over it.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez- the Children’s Champion

Thank God for Senators like Luis Gutierrez.

Not many people have come to champion the needs of children, as they do not vote, so the political capital one would spend on such an endeavor could be seen to weaken their standing among peers. But that matters not for people like Rep. Gutierrez. He came to the Senate with love in his heart and a gleam in his eye that says, “I will stand for those who cannot defend themselves, and anyone who picks on children, especially an hour before going on recess when no defense could even be fielded, is a coward.”

The Republican base has spoken on how it intends to deal with DREAMers, the children caught between their illegal status and their desire to do the right thing; they choose to vilify them.

This is like calling a rape victim the criminal, or a robbery victim an outlaw. These things do not make sense to a logical person, but hate, the real kind of hate, the kind that knows not how to discriminate between right and wrong because of a preconceived  idea of what type of person is allowed to be right or wrong, this kind of hate has no logic and therefore cannot be reasoned with.

So it should go without saying this type of hater needs to be removed from places of influence.

When the Catholic priests began getting complaints that certain ministers were using their position of influence to victimize children, at first the church pretended not to hear the call, after all, children cannot be reliable witnesses and can therefore be ignored. It was only years later, when the few victims turned into seas of angry young men and women who had been victimized, not just by the priests, but by the church itself for turning a blind eye on their plight, they could not avoid responding in the way they should have so many years before.

This is the way it is today, as millions of children are being victimized by the society that should be looking out for them, protecting them, and giving them every opportunity to make their circumstances right. This, unfortunately, is not happening, and we continue to elect those who will demonize the children who where brought here in their youth, and many, who know only this country. The responsibility for the victimization can now only fall onto us, the American voter, for we are not only keeping those high priests of our legal system in power, but actually electing even more of them.

So when we hear from heros like Rep. Gutierrez, we need to stand up and say, “we are with you.” and heed his call, back up his position and give him the political capitol it takes to protect those child victims. Without men like Gutierrez,  I fear for all children the of the world.

No Illeagles

Anderson Cooper says it all in this very short video about how highly uneducated people probably shouldn’t weigh in on important topics, especially ones they can’t even spell correctly.

In a World. . . where Republicans rule supreme.

Where Democrats don’t have much say in government and are left to sit on the sidelines and complain about what could have been.

 

A young man gets shot by someone who bought a gun and some ammo at recent gun show and robbed him of his cell phone and wallet. The hospital bill is in the tens of thousands of dollars, even though he was released that same day, because the Affordable Health Care Act was repealed and Medicare has been gutted to barely care for some of the necessities of senior citizens who cannot afford their own private medical insurance.

He goes home and fixes the same thing he eats every day—Ramen noodles. Sometimes, for a special occasion, he will add a few Ketchup packets he boosts from the fast food restaurant he started working at, ever since all the immigrants got deported, creating a vacuum in the economy and causing chain layoffs as companies lost people who could afford their products. Job choices are slim since many other college graduates have flooded the foodservice, hospitality, homecare and other menial job markets.

This bright, intelligent, 26 year old man is thinking it might not be too late to join the military, the only healthy industry left after the Republican dominated government cut all the “parasitic social services” in order to create tax breaks for the rich and reduce spending to balance the budget, not to mention motivate those people “addicted to government subsidies.” Balancing the budget was supposed to be the main goal, but with all the other problems with the economy and the new wars breaking out with the Russians, Chinese, Chechens, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, Afghans and those pesky Pakistanis. America understands it’s hard to think about the budget at times like these, so they will wait until times are better and they can afford to focus on such things. Until then they will support an ever growing military budget and still find room to blame our overspending on the few remaining social programs that are struggling for survival.

A woman he met at a party a few weeks ago comes to his home and informs him she’s pregnant, having lost any access to birth control services she previously used, and since abortion is outlawed, they must have the baby. They both struggle to figure out how they are going to be able to support their child, let alone each other.

The day is not a total loss as they are both invited to a going away party for two of the young woman’s gay friends who are leaving for Europe, where Gay relationships are not so harshly punished and they will even be able to get married and enjoy family benefits. They are both excited at the prospect of possibly scoring some food at the party, or at least a few beers.

At the party, the main discussion makes its way to the usual topic of late; life in America and how it changed so much in just a few years.

With his wallet gone, he’s without a license, so he won’t be able to vote in next week’s elections. Everyone at the party agrees they would vote for someone other than a Republican, except they keep producing these great video promos that play all the time and really convince everybody that things will get better and we, as a society, are returning to a better, more “pure” America, just like in the good ol’ days.

Everyone can hardly wait.

Berlin Wall vs American border wall

Here are some examples of how similar the Berlin Wall is strikingly similar to our American border fence with Mexico.

Caution: contains some graphic images

 

 

“Doing nothing” is not a political strategy- it’s a STRIKE

When the Republicans take on the position that doing nothing is the way to proceed on immigration, I have to think it’s not a political strategy, it’s more like a strike.

When workers walk out on a job and refuse to do any work until certain terms are met, that is called a strike–look it up–yet this is the strategy the Republicans are taking on immigration reform. Their terms? They didn’t say, but according to the Conservative Read, Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, said there’s:

“overwhelming support for doing nothing this year.”

gop-strike2

That’s it. According to the huge amount of press this has garnered, the Republicans are not going to move on immigration reform “this year” because:

  • Obama can’t be trusted to enforce whatever laws they do come up with.
  • This is not a good time to do this right now, with mid-term elections coming up.
  • If immigrants got to vote, they would vote Democratic because the Republicans have done such a great job of alienating immigrants, they would lose any hope for a presidential hopeful for years.
  • The Tea Party would have a fit and call for the removal of any Republican that helped get this problem resolved.

None of the above have anything to do with the American people or the problem of having 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the country. American citizens and the undocumented immigrants are the ones who suffer and pay the price for this problem, lingering year after year. We are also the ones who pay the lawmaker’s salaries and who give them their jobs.

I think they’ve forgotten who they work for.

Refusing to pass legislation because they are afraid the president won’t enforce the law has got to have their  head examined. The Obama administration has deported more people than any other president in history, including the all past Republican presidents.

That’s not enforcement?

The argument that this is not the right time to bring up this subject is absurd. When is it EVER a great time to bring up this issue? Immigration reform is a polarizing and highly contentious topic, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be put off until later, it should mean it needs to be dealt with as soon as possible.

Immigrants voting is just a fact of life.

“Every month fifty thousand hispanics turn 18 and become eligible to vote.”

This should be the motivating factor to champion this issue, not aggravate it.

The problem seems to be that the Republicans fear the Tea Party because they are a very vocal and active group.

What would happen if WE became very vocal and active?

What would happen if WE bombarded their phone lines and filled up their email boxes with angry messages telling them if they didn’t get back to work, they wouldn’t have a job when their seat came up for election?

If it works for the Tea Party, it should work for us.

Click on this link for your congressman’s contact info and let them know what YOU want from them.

It really is up to you, if you want it to be. Or, you could just sit by the sidelines and watch as others get their way.