I will try to take more time later to illustrate my reasons, but my wait and see attitude is waning, and my support is dwindling for the bill.

Listening to the radio I have to agree with both of the Commentators.  Ken Schram notes that doing anything without securing the border cutting off the influx of illegal immigrants is a wasted effort.  He is partially correct.  Border security is something I am very upset about.  All these years and nothing has been done beyond a wisp of a fence.

But he is only partially right.  Cutting off the source is fine, and necessary, but it does no good unless you deal with the people here already.  You also have to consider that no fence on the southern border is proof against all illegal incursions, and there is also a very porous northern border, as well as a couple of wet ones to the east and west.

So to deal with the people here, you can make suggestions of amnesty and all that, but the first line of defense and enforcement has to be in the work place.

Put simply, in deference to Possum, if there are no jobs, there is no reason to stay or even to come.

The laws are clear about hiring illegals, so enforce them and enforce them harshly.  Maybe if a few businesses are ruined by the practices of the employers they will all learn.

Extreme?  I don't think so.  Businesses get shut down for other criminal activity, particularly tax evasion and such, so how is this not as important?

John Carlson, the other half of the radio team suggested a multi shot approach.  Make a law about employers, pass it and then move on to the next aspect as opposed to trying to do it all in one bill.

Such mass effort bills always become so complex and unenforceable they are a waste of time.

And I still support the concept of "caught once illegally, blacklisted from citizenship for life."

Hillary is under attack on all sides.  The Conservatives have never held her in any esteem, but the nutroots, the far left of her own party have found her unappetizing.  Her early support for the war left them with a deep distrust, fueled by the efforts Cindy Sheehan and her ilk.

She has been caught in numerous campaign exaggerations, she has had fund raising scandals, and her accent usage during speeches is nothing short of patronizing.  She is hardly a "lil southern gal".

And that isn't even addressing the drama that surrounds her Husband.

Her recent vote against the war funding is a good example of the tap dance she is constantly doing as she tried to be appealing to all. She knows this will alienate her from the moderates and the war supporters, so she mitigates it by claiming she was sending a message, which again leaves the sense to the nutroots that she is not sincerely in their camp.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070530/D8PEVA5G0.html

White House hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday defended her vote against an Iraq war funding bill, saying she believes President Bush will begin withdrawing troops from Iraq soon.

The New York senator said she came to the conclusion while watching the president's news conference last week in which he referred to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report and its recommendations for the administration.

"He talked about it favorably for the first time I've ever heard him talk about it," Clinton told The Associated Press in an interview during a campaign stop in Las Vegas. "That was to me a big signal that starting in the fall and toward the end of the year we're going to start seeing troops withdrawn from Iraq.

"My argument is, why wait?"

Clinton initially opposed cutting off funds for the troops, but said Wednesday that she believed last week's vote was cast in support of soldiers abroad.

"The best thing I can do to continue my very vigorous support of the troops is to begin to bring them home," she told the AP.

Hillary Clinton again hints at a socialist agenda:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070529/clinton_economy.html?.v=1

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ownership society really is an "on your own" society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

"I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society," she said. "I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none."

That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

"There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed," she said. "Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies."

And that illustrates the flaw in her argument and in the progressive agenda:  Fairness.  Since when is life fair? 

No matter how hard they try, no matter how much income redistribution and socialization they try and push the fact is that it does not work, because human selfishness will always interfere with institutional fairness.

Equality is not the same as equity.

This is not new by Hillary, she has for years spoken a very whitewashed and sugarcoated version of socialism, usually covered in a cloak of "good for you".

For example, this from 2004:(via ST)

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

I had hoped this weekends shameful events were isolated but a few more have surfaced.

I still cannot bring myself to blame the anti war movement or progressives in general.  I can admit that when John Edwards calls for war protests over Memorial Day and these things happen, I can easily understand why others might want to connect the dots.

http://www.nbc10.com/news/13403099/detail.html?dl=headlineclick

As veterans and their families filtered in to a local American Legion on Memorial Day, they found a somber scene.

Swastikas were sprayed all over the Manoa American Legion building in Delaware County, prevalently displayed and polluting the patriotic look of the veterans’ sanctuary.

"I was just shocked to think that someone would come to a place like this and desecrate it with a swastika,” said Phil Miller of American Legion Manoa Post 667. “Especially on Memorial Day. It's just horrible.”

 And the local case has at least one person absolutely convinced this was not a gag, it was a professional Nazi event.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276089,00.html

The vandals who desecrated the graves of U.S. veterans over the Memorial Day weekend were professionals, says a Vietnam vet who kept night watch at the cemetery in Washington State.

"We thought at first it was just a prank-type deal at first. We were very upset about it and so forth, but now we know that this is a real deal," said David Resch, a past commander of American Legion Post 93 in Eastsound, Wash. "This is a Nazi act, not just somebody going out there and desecrating things for the fun of it."

I doubt it.  I cannot see real professional Nazis actually stooping to homemade signs.  That they were sneaky is not indicative of professional.

And here is further evidence that kids are not immune to acts of patriotic disrespect.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/05/29/police_
arrest_2_teens_at_parade/

Standing ramrod straight in dress blues and crisp khakis, the seven color guard members lifted their rifles for one of the most solemn moments of any Memorial Day parade, the 21-gun salute. Hundreds who had gathered to witness the tribute watched in silence.

Thats 6 figures of hits, as in page hits.  At 11:53 I passed the 100,000 visitors mark thanks to a reader from Bothell Washington.

Thanks to all my readers who helped me reach this milestone.  Half a million, here we come.

A woman mourns her dead fiance at Arlington National Cemetery 27 May on the outskirts of Washington D.C.

(via Hot Air)

I saw this on news tonight, and Michelle Malkin beat me to it tonight.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070529/ap_on_re_us/flag_vandalism

Vandals burned dozens of small American flags that decorated veterans' graves for Memorial Day and replaced many of them with hand-drawn swastikas, authorities said Monday.

Forty-six flag standards were found empty and another 33 flags were in charred tatters Sunday in the cemetery, authorities said. Swastikas drawn on paper appeared where 14 of the flags had been.

Members of the American Legion on this island off Washington's northwest coast replaced the burned flags with new ones Sunday afternoon.

The vandals struck again on Memorial Day after a guard left at dawn, the San Juan County sheriff's office said. This time, the vandals left 33 of the hand-drawn swastikas.

"This is not an act of free speech. This is a crime," Sheriff Bill Cumming said in a statement released Monday afternoon.

Investigators believe there's more than one culprit, based on the number of flags that were vandalized, Cumming said in a telephone interview. But authorities have no suspects, he said.

The sheriff said deputies were trying to lift fingerprints off what little physical evidence they were able to recover.

I am not quite prepared to demonize the anti war movement.  Since no one has taken responsibility, this is as easily the act if stupid disrespectful kids.

But it does point to the complete lack of common decency and respect that just a generation ago would have been completely unheard of.

Let me make it easy. 

This is respect (source ST):

This is not:

Any questions?

Maybe such outrages always have happened, as stupid people have always existed.  Maybe I am too sensitive as this was Memorial Day and I am a very strong proponent of the military.

Maybe.

Maybe I just know stupidity and ignorance when I see it.  I hope to hell that I see some outrage from the left.

All along I have written and believed that Cindy Sheehan was a useful idiot for the left, a sympathetic morally untouchable figurehead for the anti war anti Bush left.

And Like Watada, their latest useful idiot, as soon as her effectiveness and usefulness is gone, they will turn away.

Cindy finally got that message.  This is her message on Daily Kos.

I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called "Face" of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such "liberal blogs" as the Democratic Underground. Being called an "attention whore" and being told "good riddance" are some of the more milder rebukes.

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party.  This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

Or maybe she didn't get it.  This is not about gender, or about her place in society as a woman, and she demeans her own argument by trying to imply it is.

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

Sorry, but in my list of holidays, it is not a happy one any more.

A couple things occurred to me as I was thinking about what to write about.

First was a guy on a discussion list who wrote the whole wish and wished everyone a happy Memorial Day.

Maybe he meant no harm, but in a sense I was offended.  He is wishing happy celebration of a day to memorialize the death of patriots who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Sure they deserve acclaim, memorializing and respect.  But I dunno, I am not happy about it at all.  For every death given for our freedom there is a bereaving family. the loss of loved ones and often children now living without a parent.  "Happy Memorial Day" to my curmudgeonly mind seems too flippant.

I celebrate with grim sobriety the lives lost, the stories never told of valor and bravery and the heroes forgotten.

But my second thought reminds me how shallow that is.  Shopping tonight I saw flags and banners and cakes and stuff.  I even hung a new crisp flag out front.

But shopping I also saw people who don't give a rat's ass about any of that, to them it is a day off work, or a day of no school.  A day to BBQ.

Again, it is my curmudgeonly mind at work, but for all the supposed dissatisfaction with the war, people really don't care.  They say bring the troops home, but frankly we don't really feel any pain for their sacrifice, except maybe our complaints about gas prices, which is not really related, but as the nutroots love to cry "No War for Oil" it is related.

When did I last sit and think about how one of those brave men died in Iraq?  Only in passing really.  I don't dwell on it here outside of my blog.

The war is not real to me, except when two friends were deployed.  But even then, it is was not real to me, it was just something I knew intellectually.

After the infamous fight with Elisabeth Hasselbeck a few days ago, rumour circulated that she trashed her dressing room and bailed.  Taking a day off for her partner's birthday was prearranged, but now the report is she won't be back.

On the heels of that was another report that her chief writer was escorted from the studio, for defacing Elisabeth's pictures in the hall.

Both of these events, though by separate individuals, illustrates the same attitude which has seemed to permeate O'Donnell's character:  Childishness.

Her mockery and resulting feud with Trump, her condescending attitude toward Elisabeth, her blind belief in ridiculous theories (and refusal to recant in the face of solidly rebutting evidence), her racists remarks and resulting denial and her piteous gay baiting tactics to avoid debate, all speak to the behavior of a child.

Her comments about the troops are a classic example.  Her denials to the contrary, she actually did call the troops terrorists.  Oh she didn't say it directly, she merely suggested it as a faux hypothetical question with only one possible answer.  The effective result is the same, it is a difference that makes no difference.

But rather then either confront it as her belief and defend it, or retreat from it and apologize, she engaged in a childish debate, calling on Elisabeth as her friend to defend her, and then shifting the focus of the debate to Elisabeth's shortcomings as a friend finally calling Elisabeth the coward though she was the one who could not face the consequences of her actions.

And her comments on her blog support her belief in that theory, so why not defend it?

This is not about free speech.  She has the right to have that belief and to state it if she chooses.  And if others disagree, they have a similar right to express that.

The reality is that this is about maturity and intellectual honesty.

Put short, I have no respect for a person who cannot engage honestly in a debate.