Hmmm, we have President Bush wanting to open the borders and give amnesty (yes I used the “A” word) to the illegal aliens to do the jobs that Americans won’t do and here we have the RNC firing solicitors. Won’t those folks need those jobs?

(WashingtonTimes) The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors’ rebellion over President Bush’s immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, The Washington Times has learned.

Faced with an estimated 40 percent falloff in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee’s chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, fired staff members told The Times.

Correlation = causation, Jolly?

Several of the solicitors fired at the May 24 meeting reported declining contributions and a donor backlash against the immigration proposals now being pushed by Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans.

“Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue,” said a fired phone bank employee who said the severance pay the RNC agreed to pay him was contingent on his not criticizing the national committee.

And finally, proof positive that the RNC is in a drastic state of denial:

A spokeswoman for the committee denied any drop-off in fundraising.

“Any assertion that overall donations have gone down is patently false,” RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt wrote by e-mail yesterday in response to questions sent by The Times. “We continue to out-raise our Democrat counterpart by a substantive amount (nearly double).”

Collecting double is really easy to do when the DNC is faced with the same consternation from their base.

During my trucking days, I learned that it was a major insult to leave a penny tip for a waitress. I wonder if the RNC would take the hint if we returned their solicitations for donations with a penny? Probably not.

An Illinois school district is finally imposing discipline - even though only upon graduates:

Gayles was one of five students denied diplomas from the lone public high school in Galesburg after enthusiastic friends or family members cheered for them during commencement.

About a month before the May 27 ceremony, Galesburg High students and their parents had to sign a contract promising to act in dignified way. Violators were warned they could be denied their diplomas and barred from the after-graduation party.

The students were officially graduated, but will not get a diploma. (Oh, and among other things, there are now charges of racism, as none of those denied diplomas were white.)

Meanwhile, next door in Indiana:

In Indianapolis, public school officials this year started kicking out parents and relatives who cheer. At one school, the superintendent interrupted last month’s graduation to order police to remove a woman from the gymnasium.

“It’s an important, solemn occasion. There’s plenty of time for celebration before and after,” said Clarke Campbell, president of the Indianapolis school board.

Pretty dumb, right? Well, consider this:

School officials in Galesburg, a working-class town of 34,000 that is still reeling from the 2004 shutdown of a 1,600-employee refrigerator factory, said the get-tough policy followed a 2005 commencement where hoots, hollers and even air horns drowned out much of the ceremony and nearly touched off fights in the audience when the unruly were asked to quiet down.

“Lots of parents complained that they could not hear their own child’s name called,” said Joel Estes, Galesburg’s assistant superintendent. “And I think that led us to saying we have to do something about this to restore some dignity and honor to the ceremony so that everyone can appreciate it and enjoy it.”

So, aside from the question of what a 2004 factory shutdown has to do with any of this, do they have a point, or is this just more foolishness from the not-all-that-clever educational bureaucracy?

The story caught my eye, but I was not speechless until I read this:

American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Edward Yohnka said Galesburg’s policy raises no red flags as long as it is enforced equitably. “It’s probably well within the school’s ability to control the decorum at an event like this,” he said.

Did we just enter some parallel universe?

Wow, the heat has really been turned up outside the Beltway, as they say. Those right wingers are really ticked this time.

online activists have ripped party leaders and threatened to halt contributions

“They let us down this time,” “But the opportunities for them to make amends still exist. And if they don’t? Well, no one, not even the most rabid partisans, have an endless supply of patience.”

“You insult me, sir. And I will not be insulted. Go to hell,” wrote Bill from Portland, Maine.

“PIGS will fly before I will contribute a penny to this s—- … where is our spine, backbone, morals and ethics,”

Is anyone listening? Hey, wait a minute…..these are just some lefty wingnuts mad about funding the troops. It sounded so familiar…..I got confused. Nevermind.

Sheesh, and we all thought that Mormons were into polygamy.

John Amaechi still has fond memories of Salt Lake City despite his struggles over two seasons playing sparingly with the Utah Jazz and often clashing with his coach.

The community balanced it all, said Amaechi who earlier this year became the first former NBA player to acknowledge he is gay.

In memoirs published in February, he calls Salt Lake City “the hippest, gayest place east of San Francisco.”

Shocking news!

BATON ROUGE, La. - Louisiana’s grant program to help people rebuild homes damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita is estimated to be as much as $5 billion short as the six-month Atlantic storm season began Friday.

Of course, far be it from Louisiana politicians to assume any responsibility at all for the costs.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco says the federal government should pay for the entire program, ….

Blanco’s proposed budget does not include a dime for the program, despite more than $2 billion in surplus and unobligated state money available.

The best part of the story, though, is this:

U.S. Rep. William Jefferson of New Orleans said Congress is angry about how Louisiana has handled the money it has already received, particularly a $200 million grant to the city’s utility, Entergy New Orleans, and its $750 million contract with ICF International Inc., the private firm hired to run Road Home.

“They think we’ve wasted a billion dollars or more,” he said.

Uh, maybe somebody should look in Jefferson’s freezer.

Courtesy the Buffalo News:

In the eyes of government and the institutions of mainstream society, Clarence Oliver Rounds is homeless.

But Rounds, who lives in a secluded underground bunker he built in the northern part of Buffalo, doesn’t look at himself that way.

He’s comfortable with his life in the 6-foot-deep bunker equipped with a narrow makeshift bed, a small fireplace, a portable toilet and a stereo radio that he keeps tuned to a classic country music station.

“I have a home. I have friends. I have a support system of people who look out for me,” mused Rounds, 47, sitting on a plastic milk crate outside his bunker Thursday morning. “I wouldn’t recommend this life for everybody, but it works for me.”

After reading the full story, I’m struck by four things.

1. Clarence Rounds seems a lot happier and more content than many people I know who live above ground in nice homes.
2. Unless they are civilized by responsible adults, children’s natural tendency is towards being merciless little savages (Rounds has been beaten, his bunker set on fire by some local kids).
3. Raised properly, grown-ups can be tremendously decent and compassionate people (neighbors and local community officials look out for Rounds’ basic needs).
4. It’s only a matter of time before the Buffalo County Tax Assessor-Collector tells this guy his hole in the Earth has increased in value by 10% per year.

Readers comments from this past Friday - Thursday. Many first time commenters and some very interesting discussions on finances and immigration.

In the category of “Someone is Looking Out For Us” goes:

Peter Says:
May 25th, 2007 at 3:57 pm e

Time for another contribution to CLOUT.

Who’s with me?

I’m headed over there right now to make a $20 contribution.

Please join me with whatever you can. This is a great investment for all of us.

In the category of “Well, He Does Have a Point, We Could Have Had Gore or Kerry” goes:

Gibonno Says:
May 25th, 2007 at 11:17 am e

20. - Bush is a great president. The economy is great. Unemployment is for all practical purposes - ZERO (4.5%) There has not been another attack on the U.S. since 9/11. The income tax credit was a great idea. He doesn’t screw or get BJ’s from his assistants. His wife is not Hillary!!! His parents are great. He earned an MBA. His ranch is simple. His brother is a good governor.

In the category of “I’ll Be Danged, It Worked and They Had To Pay For It!” goes:

Alexandra Says:
May 31st, 2007 at 5:11 pm e

MEXICAN AMNESTY AND OPEN BORDERS ACTIVISTS HAVE A DIRECT LINE TO OUR TREASONOUS SENATORS!!!!! FILL THESE VOICEMAILS WITH ENGLISH INSTEAD OF SPANISH.

For those of you having difficulty getting thru to your senator, here is the 800 # paid for by the Mexican Amnesty and Open Borders Activists:

800-882-2005

This will get you directly to your senator unlike the #’s available to the US Citizen.

Press 1 when you hear a Spanish message, then Press 1 again to be transferred to your Senior Senator’s office

OR

Press 2 when you hear a Spanish message, and you’ll be transferred to your Junior Senator’s office.

It only takes a minute and you get through immediately. The call is paid for by the open-borders and amnesty supporters.

WE NEED TO FILL THESE SENATORS VOICE MAILS WITH ENGLISH MESSAGES INSTEAD OF ALLOWING THEM TO BE FILLED WITH SPANISH. SPREAD THE WORD AND CALL NOW BEFORE ITS TO LATE!

Read more

If you begin a war, you have to win the war. Nothing else matters. Nothing else.

Read the whole thing.

It ain’t us folks - it really IS him:

What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. …. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition.

Peggy Noonan once again confirms what many of us have reluctantly concluded about GW Bush: he doesn’t give a rat’s backside what you and I think. Why? Because he, like the Democrats, view us as knuckle-draggers:

And the people in the administration don’t even much like the base. … This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place

Noonan took the same message from Bush as we did a few days back; that is, if we oppose the president on immigration, he says that makes us evil people:

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don’t like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don’t like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from “Too bad” to “You’re bad.”

Yes, we are bad people - downright anti-American - if we do not share Bush’s vision of sacrificing our sovereignty for the benefit of Mexico. And it speaks volumes that Flim Flam Graham is carrying the president’s water.

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic–they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, “We’re gonna tell the bigots to shut up.”

Now, in addition to the president questioning our loyalty, we have a corn-pone John McCain wannabe from South Carolina trashing our integrity.

Noonan, a former speechwriter for and biographer of Ronald Reagan, asks the obvious question: Why does this president hate the base so much? She offers her conclusion:

I suspect the White House and its allies have turned to name calling because they’re defensive, and they’re defensive because they know they have produced a big and indecipherable mess of a bill–one that is literally bigger than the Bible, though as someone noted last week, at least we actually had a few years to read the Bible.

The president’s contemptuous assault on conservatives is pathetic, but it proves Noonan’s point that this White House seems “to be marshalling not facts but only sentiments,” probably because they haven’t the facts to marshal.

I have said that I think the president is bordering on the delusional. Noonan comes close to saying the same thing when she describes the Bushies’ almost messianic belief that everyone else is wrong and they are right:

The story they would like written in the future is this: Faced with the gathering forces of ethnocentric darkness, a hardy and heroic crew stood firm and held high a candle in the wind. It will make a good chapter. Would that it were true!

Noonan decries the fact that, like his father, this president has squandered a great “political inheritance” (”They throw it away as if they’d earned it and could do with it what they liked”) and argues this is the result of the president’s character defects, not ours:

What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom–a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don’t need hacks.

Noonan says it is now time for us to overcome the president’s betrayal, to win back our party, “to break from those who have already broken from [us].”

As usual, it is up to us anti-American, stupid, bigoted nobodies to fix what he has broken.

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