you knew we're screwed when

We're definitely on the wrong path in this country when retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is described by a generally respected news organization as "liberal."

Centrist, maybe. Not-as-crazy-as-Thomas-or-Alito, sure. But liberal she is not.

I really hate it when the mainstream media suggest that anyone to the left of Dick Cheney might as well go back to their naked pot-smoking hippie gay communes.

It's all a matter of perception and semantics, I guess. I mean, you know how I feel about some of the supposed "liberals" out there. But do we have to lump everyone into overgeneralized categories all the time? Sure it comes in handy now and then (just kidding! well, kind of), but, for example, just because I don't think Hillary Clinton is liberal doesn't mean I think she's Ann Coulter's best friend.

(though does anyone else think that Hillary looks a little too much like Harriet Miers if Harriet went through detox and had a facelift? Just curious...)

And just because Sandra Day O'Connor hasn't used her free time in retirement to start to start vacationing with Pat Robertson doesn't mean she's liberal.

Maybe (but don't hold me to this) it's not conservatives that are ruining this country (except for a few particular conservatives, but that's a conversation for another time). Maybe it's actually our intense need to categorize and label everything and everyone and make a really messy world fit into neat little boxes so that we can sleep well at night.

Well, that and mainstream denial that that's what we're doing. But that's another conversation, too.

next thing you know i'll be eating freedom fries and watching hannity and colmes

The immigration bill is dead.

To me this seems to be a tremendous loss and a tremendous gain, all in one. Undocumented immigrants in this country - or at least some of them - just came closer to solutions to a couple of their problems than they have been probably in this lifetime. And personally, I think they should be breathing a sigh of relief that the bill died where it did. RIP.

I will admit right now that I say that based on only quick skimming of the TONS of coverage and commentary out there about the potential bill, and also with a brief but extremely informative background in both immigration law and Latin American social justice organizations. And here's what I believe - the proposed bill was about politics, not helping immigrants.

It was about figuring out how to appease the relatively open-minded voters and potential (future citizen) voters while not alienating (get it?) the Fox News crowd whose ancestors were, no doubt, sharing their corn with the Pilgrims and walking the Trail of Tears. This is why they can be so damn self-righteously opposed to immigration. (And, of course, because cultural diversity, bilingual education, and finding out what real Chinese and Mexican food tastes like will positively RUIN this country.)

There are many on the left criticizing the "hardliners" who killed the bill despite its supposedly wide support, and I think they're correct that a lot of people in this country would actually like to see a plan for more legal immigration opportunities and maybe even some amnesty. I don't happen to think it's because most people have any kind of a real understanding of the lives of undocumented immigrants or how screwed this country would be without them, much less how absurdly atrociously complicated and self-contradictory the U.S. immigration system is (example: when I worked for an immigration lawyer I regularly had to call the USCIS - formerly the INS - for answers to questions. They regularly gave me WRONG answers, which I would prove to them by reading them the most current version of the law, at which point I usually got hung up on). I do think it's because at least some people don't enjoy a) being hypocrites (see above: the Fox News crowd) or b) hearing about the horrible deaths people die in the Mexican/U.S. border desert or suffocating in the backs of trucks to get into this country.

I disagree very strongly, though, with the notion that a bad bill is better than no bill. How can anyone to the left of Hillary Clinton (and forgive me, but I don't consider her to be anywhere near the left, unless you catch her on a day when the left has taken out its wallet or voter registration cards in a big way, or she just has indigestion) honestly believe that logic? Do these same liberals believe the war on (that's not a typo) Iraq is good because it got rid of a torturous dictator? Is a bad war better than no war? Is a bad piece of seafood better than no seafood at all?

(Hint: No. Unjustified warfare that creates civil war and regional meltdown is really just bad. And no one wants E.coli.)

Give me a break. Maybe this is why people think liberals are naive. A bad bill would have been better than no bill only because there is no bill, so it's easy to pretend that the bill couldn't really have been that bad, could it? (answer: YES) and that our fearless leaders would have made sure that it was fair and benevolent and true to our country's ideals of tolerance and diversity and welcoming the huddled masses yearning to be free, yada yada yada.

Ever tried to read the federal tax code? Imagine it being more complicted. By about 1000 times. That's generally where the immigration code is. There are one or several types of immigration status for just about every letter in the alphabet (example: an L-1B is an intracompany transferee with specialized knowledge; an L-2 is his/her spouse or child), and obtaining one always involves lots of money and time and usually frustration and patronizing treatment. Even better, the laws change constantly, with every whim and pork barrel in Congress.

And that's just the law for people who have a shot at legal documentation. Then there's how we deal with the rest - giant fences, raids on businesses, people picked up for minor offenses - traffic tickets, smelling of marijuana smoke, being brown-skinned, etc. - being handcuffed to a bus seat for, oh, 35 hours and dropped off on the other side of the bridge in Tijuana.

(I'm not making that up, by the way.)

So no, I do not believe a bad bill would be better than no bill at all. I believe a bad bill would have been bad. I believe it would destroy more lives, create an even bigger bureaucratic mess than we currently face, and worst of all, allow most of us to pat ourselves on the back for accomplishing "reform" and ignore the ensuing chaos. I believe this president wouldn't sign a good bill even if the weak-ass Democratic leadership managed to get one to his desk, which frankly, I have no faith they would, because they're too busy being scared of their shadows.

If that makes me a hardliner... so be it.

this i believe

Maybe this is the cheater's way to blog, just posting links to other things that I find provocative and interesting. And maybe I think there's too much good stuff out there to sift through, and I hope that by posting these links I'm helping you just a teeny bit to muddle through the internet's constant threat of information overload and actually find and read some informative stuff. Maybe both. Anyway, I like it when far better writers than I are able to articulate exactly how I'm feeling. For example, I wish I could have written this, because boy do I believe it:

"For many of us, feminism is not separate from the struggle against violence, war, racism and economic injustice. Gender hierarchy and race hierarchy are not separate and parallel dynamics. The empowerment of women is contingent upon all these things. Despite the fact that we know that identity does not equal politics--especially an antiwar, social equity and global justice politics--we are led to believe that having a woman in power is the penultimate accomplishment. And even when the "either/or" [as in, either you're with us... and believe a woman - any woman - should be President or you're against us] feminists back off this claim in general, we are told, it is true in the case of the particular, Hillary Clinton. Experience and judgment go hand in hand, we are told, but one has to wonder how is it that so many ordinary citizens who were outside the beltway instinctively sensed what would come with the war, but the female candidate running for President did not?"

For us, the choice at hand is actually quite simple. It is not about the woman candidate vs. the Black male candidate. It is about the candidate who works to dismantle the bomb, rather than drop it; the candidate who works to abolish the old paradigm of power, rather than covet and rise to its highest point; the candidate who seeks solutions and dialogue rather than retaliation and punishment."

purposefully cryptic*

Highlights of the whirlwind Miami trip earlier this week:

• the beach
• speaking Spanish
• delicious handmade pasta (at Spiga, for those of you heading to South Beach for a meal anytime soon)
• watching storm clouds go the other direction, for once
• the beach, early in the morning, empty except for me
• starting the day with real espresso, made by a real Italian guy, in a tiny little Italian cafe, where all the other customers were (really!) Italian.
• eating lunch and reading the newspaper cover to cover at News Cafe (from which Gianni Versace was walking home when he got shot, says my friend Ben) and watching the fancy people go by
• coming home

Lowlights:

• the task I was actually sent there to do, which luckily went OK
• coming back to the hotel, turning on the news, and having the shit scared out of me after the fact
• the Miami Beach version of a good time, which appears to involve lots of money, tiny bikinis, fake tans, nightclubs, and clothing boutiques... none of which interests me, in case you wondered
• the sunburn on my upper lip. Not the lower one, just the upper. How do I do these things? Clearly I carefully covered my lower lip and then stared up into the sun.
  
• the airport shuttle driver, who said he supported Hillary Clinton and is dismayed that "now they want to paint the White House black." To which I said "yup, and I think it would be one of the best things to ever happen to this country." He changed the subject and started telling me about his Shih Tzu puppies.

I'm tempted to start speculating in print here about why I volunteer for things that might suck. OK, more accurately, I've been speculating for the last five or 10 minutes, then hit the "delete" button. It doesn't it really matter. I do it, I'll keep doing it, and I don't believe in harboring regrets.

But sometimes the things that might suck really do.

*I really can't get more specific, sorry.

looking forward to tuesday

I'm sorry if the political posts get boring for some of you, but there are things I just can't help but point out, like...

(From today's NY Times)
Mr. Romney warned his audience that unless the Republicans put up a candidate who could counter Mr. Obama’s message of change, “the same thing that happened to Hillary Clinton will happen to our nominee.”

“He just trounced her there because all that experience isn’t what they wanted to hear about — they wanted to see somebody who said they would do something new and change Washington,” Mr. Romney said.

“And,” he added, “we cannot afford Barack Obama as the next president. He’s a very nice fellow and he’s a well-spoken fellow, but he’s never done it.”

Oh right... I guess I'd forgotten the Romney presidency.*

*Yeah yeah, I know he's talking about experience in general, not necessarily experience in the presidency. Fine, just remember that a lot of people in MA would tell you that the reason Romney didn't run for re-election as governor of Massachusetts isn't that he wanted to run for president. It's that he would have lost, because he was a lousy governor who lied about his ideology to get elected.

seriously, people?

I implied that Hillary Clinton and Harriet Miers might be the same person and no one has a single comment?

Readers, I am disappointed.