the american immigration problem

I feel that if the 12 million estimated illegal immigrants were given anything remotely similar to amnesty, it would be like telling the people who came here legally, that they were stupid for following the rules of our nation and being honest enough to follow the rules to be here.

It also opens up the flood gates to further illegal immigration by telling people that if enough illegal immigrants enter America, the fact that they didn't follow the rules will not be a factor in determining citizenship. It also lets anyone who is straddling the fence so to speak on whether to come here legally or illegally, that it would be in their best interest to be here illegally.

In the end offering anything remotely like amnesty is like placing a welcome mat at the border and saying we don't have an immigration policy. It doesn't help when there are some countries out there that have a double standard about immigration, they seem to want hard line policies of their own but lax policies for other countries.

an idea on global warming

Global warming, everyone agrees that something has to be done to reverse the effects of it on our environment. The one problem with global warming is the fact no two climatologists can agree on how dire the situation is.
Everyone who is trying to getting get the point across should be trying to show existing ways of or coming up with ways of their own to help reverse global warming. This is especially true since we have land that we currently view as unusable due to it being to arid to be used along with limitations on our clean drinkable water.
In an effort to counteract the negative aspects of global warming and resulting climate changes, maybe we should be looking at the deserts of the world differently and look to scale up efforts at the commercial desalinization of ocean water in an effort to make arid land sustainable land for crops and small communities.
The only real problem with the world's deserts is the lack of sustained water sources to them on a regular enough, basis to keep it from being usable by our current standards. If we stepped up the commercial desalinization of ocean water to the point that we could send it to the deserts to help create usable farmland and small communities around them to help support the farms, while easing some of the congestion in other areas given a genuine willingness of people to move to those areas.

why I feel President Bush should resign or be impeached

I would like to believe George W. Bush is a good person who has been perceived as someone that is misunderstood. Unfortunately, regardless of intent he has come across as someone who came into office with an agenda beyond running the country. Given statements he has made in the media I feel that his impeachment is warrented.

He showed us when asking for a declaration of war against Iraq he was shooting from the hip by asking for the declaration of war before before the information that was provided to be double checked by the agency that handed him the report.

when reading the constitution, you can see that it is broken up into numbered articles that break down the specifics of each branch of government including the break down of duties between the house of representatives and the senate.

when you come to article VI, it specifically states:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned and the memvers of the several State Legislatures and all executive and judicial officers both of the United States and of the several States shell be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to hold any office of public trust under the United States."

during his re-election campaign he came out and told a auditorium full of of Christian Conservatives that if he were to be re-elected and he was given the opportunity to put a new justice in the Surpreme Court, he would nominate a person who shared their specific religious values to the post.

I feel that by doing that President George W. Bush did enact a religious test to for the nomination process of the cheif justice of the Surpreme Court, which would constitute a technically impeachable offense.

The Middle East

at the moment the whole question of whether or not we should pull out of that region and in particular Iraq, is a paradox in of itself. Regardless of how we got there, we are technically an occupying force that is forcing our rule onto the people who are the innocent people in Iraq that didn't ask for their former dictator or our occupation, but at the same time we have to be there to prevent genocide based on the different sects and sub sects of the dominate religion.

Religion is a major part of their lives over there and there are outside forces in that region that would prefer to manipulate the religion so they can manipulate people like a puppet-master does with a puppet. The reclusive masterminds would have us believe it is all about religion, but in the end it really isn't about religion, it is really about the masterminds wanting to control people.

If we were to leave Iraq we would be like opening up the hen house to a pack of wolves, but at the same time if we were to stay much longer we would be unintentionally proving the terrorist organizations points, due to having the patience to wait us out.

political correctness

Regardless of whether your commentary is good, bad or anywhere in between, we are becoming a society where we have to walk on egg shells when it comes to dealing with other peoples emotions.

People are becoming thin skinned when it comes to any type of commentary even if it is directed at an individual and possibly warranted. Granted some of time the commentary will be off color and derogatory in nature but that isn't any reason to treat all commentary as such.

In the main stream media, it is evident that part of the problem is the media outlets themselves and part is certain people in positions of high visibility that push the subject onto a group of people such as race, gender, social class, sexuality and so on, even if the commentary was pertaining to a specific individual or a group of people perpetuating a stereotype.

There are also groups of people that by nature that believe we have to be protected from anything and everything that can potentially harm us either emotionally or physically sometimes to the point that they become the people doing the harm but without being able to see it.

In every society there are people who definitely are frail either emotionally or physically but there is no need to have all of society walking on egg shells with everyone in society due to a small part of society. Some of those frail people are people who need to project their frailty onto others so they feel better which is happening in some cases.

If we are more interested in protecting people from themselves we are going to be raising a generation of Americans that will be a special interest group unto itself.

A Show of Support

I may not be able to join our soldiers on the battlefield.

I may not be able to lend direct support to our soldiers over on the battlefield.

But I can show support and solidarity to our soldiers and war veterans by keeping the principles and the ideals that this country was founded on in my heart.

I can show our soldiers and our war veterans that their efforts are not in vain, by doing my best to make sure that the principles and ideals that this country was founded on are kept alive and held in high regard even amidst oppression and tyranny that some people would have us tolerate and accept as the norm.
I may not be able to lead this country effectively but I can lead by example.

I can show support to my fellow countrymen and women by doing my personal best to live up to and to teach the principles and the ideals that were set fourth by the founding fathers of this country of ours. For if we forget where we came from, we forget who we are and what our country stands for.

I will when I can stand up and show my fellow countrymen and women that the principles and ideals set fourth by the founding fathers of our country were not set fourth in vain by giving everyone the respect that they deserve.

I will also honor the decisions and choices that everyone makes and will respectful in the way I present any criticism that I may have.

memorial day

This Memorial day we are in desperate need of something that we have been seeing little of over the past few years. This nation of ours has been preoccupied by our superficial ways and a government that is in a power struggle due to a president that does not bend to the people who elected him and a congress that is unwilling or incapable of standing up for the people who in the last federal election voted in a way that mandated that the government listen.

we need a unified stance for both domestic affairs and the war with the insurgents in Iraq. neither side is willing to listen to the other nor are they willing to cooperate to help overcome their differences.

what we are doing is making our founding fathers role in their graves by letting the different parts of the government walk over each other unabated. if we keep allowing each part of the government to walk all over each other then we will end up falling apart as a nation.

The Republican party

I have a few friends that are Republicans, and have no problem with them being Republican. It is the Leadership of the political party and the politicians who are Republican I tend not to agree with. I will not put anyone down here but I would like to state my opinion on how I think they appear in the media.

The republican leadership appears to be smart people with well enough intentions but work against themselves at least in my book. Both mainstream political parties do seem somewhat out of touch with the voters but the Republicans appear to be worse off than the democrats with being in touch with the voters, this is due to what looks to be a college fraternity mentality.

I am saying that they have a fraternity mentality due to the fact that they tend to treat non-republican legislation with disdain even if it means positive change for their constituents. They also tend to hold onto a narrow view of what is best for this country and tend to blindly follow the party line when ever there is any legislation that may be considered controversial. each group regardless of political or social affiliation, tends to back their members up but the republicans at least in the public eye tends to protect its ranks even when they cannot be defended against their own action.

religion and politics

I will not fault anyone for having religion or politics as their driving force in their lives. I feel that they both have their place but should not be mingled together as deeply as some would want us to do.

Unfortunately, with the founding of the Moral Majority, by Jerry Falwell more than two decades ago we have more people trying to make Christian Doctrine into governmental law. For somethings I can understand why people would want it or feel it is needed but other things I feel it is an intrusion into the private lives of people who don't practice any of the Christian faiths or don't agree with religion being force fed to them from strangers that don't have anything to do with them personally.

Jerry Falwell had the best of intentions when trying to open peoples eyes to what you can do when it comes to government, but he should have made every effort to seperate his religous teachings from his political views due to the fact that even though we do put the two together to some degree we should never put them together on a large scale like what has happened. Religion is based on beliefs and values that are suppose to be based in the home, the respective places of worship and the respective local communities that they are in.

given that religion has tried to intrude into politics, how would a religious service take to a politician trying to turn their service into a political forum?

seems someone likes my writing

I have been posting some commentary on a blog that I have, that is part of a community of blogs for a local paper I read and it seems that they really like the commentary I have due to the fact that I have had 7 blog entries in the last month published and recently they started running a contest that if a blogger sees his or her name in the paper during the course of the week they are in the running for a thousand dollar prize if they submit had submitted an entry form.