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A Day to Celebrate
Jun. 28th, 2007 10:18 pmToday was a joyous day; yesterday was, as well, but for much different reasons - which I'll start with since it's much shorter. ^^
And now, please excuse the run-on sentences... No cuts; this is important.
THANK YOU TALK RADIO, FELLOW CONCERNED AMERICANS, and last and certainly least, SENATORS OF THE 110th US CONGRESS!!
For those of you who may not know, today was an amazing example of democracy in action.
On Tuesday, in an extremely controversial vote, the Senate revived the "Amnesty Bill" - officially called the Comprehensive Immigration Bill - for 30 hours of debate. I, along with the majority of America, was against this first cloture vote, but despite the numerous calls, faxes, letters, and e-mails from concerned citizens - constituents - across the country, the Senators ignored the voices of the people and voted in favor of bringing the bill out to debate again.
This bill called for the immediate legalization of 12-25 MILLION illegal immigrants by the simple signature of the President. They would be "required" to pay $5,000 to become registered and begin a path towards citizenship. - After a "24 hour background check." Current regulations stipulate 90 DAY background checks, and they're STILL not finished within that timeframe; this measure of the bill was a joke! - It even provided a way for the criminals amongst them to become citizens. The bill was drafted in secret behind closed doors - *coughcough* Anyone remember democratic campaign promises about OPEN government and nothing behind closed doors????*coughcough* - and not even printed when debate began on Wednesday. NONE OF THE SENATORS VOTING IN FAVOR OF THE BILL HAD READ THE BILL. Not a single one. Yet to the citizens who lit the phones, fax lines, e-mails, and mail boxes on fire who HAD read the bill and DID know what was in it, the Senators said it was WE who were the ones who did not understand the bill!! The bill never went to committee. It never had a cost analysis run on it! The Heritage Foundation, a star conservative Think Tank, was the ONLY one to run the numbers: they came up with a cost of $2.6 Trillion to the health care and social security systems in 15-20 years. Which you can attempt to throw the number out the window because they're a political organization and impugn them for who they are, but you canNOT argue that the cost of this bill is ASTRONOMICAL!
In the uphill battle of Citizens vs Government - a battle that is NEVER supposed to occur in a country where the government is FOR the PEOPLE, BY the PEOPLE - WE THE PEOPLE shut down the phone system of the United States Senate; they couldn't even send simple messages between each other. The phone system completely crashed from all the incoming calls. Even though just shy of 80% of the nation is against amnesty for illegal aliens and only 22% of the population supported the outrageous bill, (Rasmussen & CBS polls) the Senators were fully expected to ignore us all.
They didn't, surprising everyone.
The vote of 46 YEA to 53 NAY for cloture - bringing the bill to the floor to end debate and take an immediate vote which would pass it onto the House or kill it - effectively killed the bill again. - At least for a little while until Majority Leader Harry Reid decides to bring it up again.
For now, the threat of amnesty is past, but certainly not defeated. We can hope that maybe now the government will stop sitting on the funds promised to boarder patrol and to build the fence along the southern border. (A wasted attempt, IMO. If we're going to build anything, why waste money on a fence? Let's just build a wall if Washington is convinced that's the way to go. - Of course, we know that they dig tunnels. Under one of the most recent areas of fencing, they found EIGHT TUNNELS for drug trafficking. We need more boarder patrol and less incentive to come into this country illegally.)
Now in the Senate, they're debating the Fairness Doctrine - a bill to require radio stations to play both conservative radio shows and liberal radio shows, completely stripping the radio industry of their freedoms in both the business sense and especially in free speech. Radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do far better than shows such as Al Franken and NPR simply because they're better. No one forces me or any Limbaugh/Hannity listener to turn the radio on to ABC to listen to them; it's free choice. And now the government is attempting to step in on that.
We've another battle ahead of us; the liberals have been after the talk radio industry - the only place in the media dominated by conservatives as opposed to the liberals controlling the mainstream tv and newspaper medias - for the longest time. And if they succeed in this effort, you can count on blogs being next because more and more people are turning to them for their information. - And those blogs are slanted - most of the most influential ones being conservative in ideology.
Today was a day to celebrate, but not a day to kick back and relax. There's a lot more to fight for, and with democrats in power and spineless republicans as our only hope, it's going to be extremely tough. The good news is that I think this fight may have, as Hannity said today, galvanized the base, and that's what the republicans needed after the horrible political year of 2006.
And now, please excuse the run-on sentences... No cuts; this is important.
THANK YOU TALK RADIO, FELLOW CONCERNED AMERICANS, and last and certainly least, SENATORS OF THE 110th US CONGRESS!!
For those of you who may not know, today was an amazing example of democracy in action.
On Tuesday, in an extremely controversial vote, the Senate revived the "Amnesty Bill" - officially called the Comprehensive Immigration Bill - for 30 hours of debate. I, along with the majority of America, was against this first cloture vote, but despite the numerous calls, faxes, letters, and e-mails from concerned citizens - constituents - across the country, the Senators ignored the voices of the people and voted in favor of bringing the bill out to debate again.
This bill called for the immediate legalization of 12-25 MILLION illegal immigrants by the simple signature of the President. They would be "required" to pay $5,000 to become registered and begin a path towards citizenship. - After a "24 hour background check." Current regulations stipulate 90 DAY background checks, and they're STILL not finished within that timeframe; this measure of the bill was a joke! - It even provided a way for the criminals amongst them to become citizens. The bill was drafted in secret behind closed doors - *coughcough* Anyone remember democratic campaign promises about OPEN government and nothing behind closed doors????*coughcough* - and not even printed when debate began on Wednesday. NONE OF THE SENATORS VOTING IN FAVOR OF THE BILL HAD READ THE BILL. Not a single one. Yet to the citizens who lit the phones, fax lines, e-mails, and mail boxes on fire who HAD read the bill and DID know what was in it, the Senators said it was WE who were the ones who did not understand the bill!! The bill never went to committee. It never had a cost analysis run on it! The Heritage Foundation, a star conservative Think Tank, was the ONLY one to run the numbers: they came up with a cost of $2.6 Trillion to the health care and social security systems in 15-20 years. Which you can attempt to throw the number out the window because they're a political organization and impugn them for who they are, but you canNOT argue that the cost of this bill is ASTRONOMICAL!
In the uphill battle of Citizens vs Government - a battle that is NEVER supposed to occur in a country where the government is FOR the PEOPLE, BY the PEOPLE - WE THE PEOPLE shut down the phone system of the United States Senate; they couldn't even send simple messages between each other. The phone system completely crashed from all the incoming calls. Even though just shy of 80% of the nation is against amnesty for illegal aliens and only 22% of the population supported the outrageous bill, (Rasmussen & CBS polls) the Senators were fully expected to ignore us all.
They didn't, surprising everyone.
The vote of 46 YEA to 53 NAY for cloture - bringing the bill to the floor to end debate and take an immediate vote which would pass it onto the House or kill it - effectively killed the bill again. - At least for a little while until Majority Leader Harry Reid decides to bring it up again.
For now, the threat of amnesty is past, but certainly not defeated. We can hope that maybe now the government will stop sitting on the funds promised to boarder patrol and to build the fence along the southern border. (A wasted attempt, IMO. If we're going to build anything, why waste money on a fence? Let's just build a wall if Washington is convinced that's the way to go. - Of course, we know that they dig tunnels. Under one of the most recent areas of fencing, they found EIGHT TUNNELS for drug trafficking. We need more boarder patrol and less incentive to come into this country illegally.)
Now in the Senate, they're debating the Fairness Doctrine - a bill to require radio stations to play both conservative radio shows and liberal radio shows, completely stripping the radio industry of their freedoms in both the business sense and especially in free speech. Radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do far better than shows such as Al Franken and NPR simply because they're better. No one forces me or any Limbaugh/Hannity listener to turn the radio on to ABC to listen to them; it's free choice. And now the government is attempting to step in on that.
We've another battle ahead of us; the liberals have been after the talk radio industry - the only place in the media dominated by conservatives as opposed to the liberals controlling the mainstream tv and newspaper medias - for the longest time. And if they succeed in this effort, you can count on blogs being next because more and more people are turning to them for their information. - And those blogs are slanted - most of the most influential ones being conservative in ideology.
Today was a day to celebrate, but not a day to kick back and relax. There's a lot more to fight for, and with democrats in power and spineless republicans as our only hope, it's going to be extremely tough. The good news is that I think this fight may have, as Hannity said today, galvanized the base, and that's what the republicans needed after the horrible political year of 2006.
