A Letter to the Editor

From:

"David LaBonte"

My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to "print" it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:

Dear Editor:

So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.

They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.

Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany , Italy , France and Japan . None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan . They were defending the United States of America as one people.

When we liberated France , no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.

And here we are with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.

And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty , it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.

(signed)

Rosemary LaBonte

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One Month to Act

Last week, Behzad Soltani — deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization — announced that Iran will join the world nuclear club within a month. He further claimed that:

No country would even think about attacking Iran after Iran’s membership in the club.

Iran’s leaders continue to defy the international community’s demands to stop uranium enrichment activity, and are in fact enriching more aggressively than ever before. While heads of state around the globe debate even more sanctions against Iran — none of which have worked in the past — Iran’s clerics speed toward becoming one of the most dangerous regimes on the planet.

They continue to enrich uranium at the Natanz facility (which currently has enough enriched uranium stockpiled for one nuclear bomb), while producing new centrifuges that can enrich uranium six times faster. They are increasing yellowcake production at the Gchine uranium mine. The mine currently has a design capacity of 21 tons of yellowcake per year, about half as much as is needed to produce the 55 pounds of 93% enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb.

They have a nuclear fuel facility in Isfahan capable of producing 10 tons of nuclear fuel annually, and sufficient plutonium for two nuclear weapons a year.

The Arak heavy water plant — built in violation of the nonproliferation treaty — is near its completion, though the West assumed this would not happen until 2015. This facility will be capable of producing significant amounts of bomb-grade plutonium.

As will the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is set to go live with the help of Russia this coming summer.

At the same time, the Revolutionary Guards are making significant progress with the country’s missile delivery system, concealing their efforts within the space project they have embarked upon with North Korea. The Shahab-3 missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, and can currently target Tel Aviv, Riyadh, U.S. bases in Iraq, and the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.

The Guards’ goal is to be able to deliver a nuclear-tipped missile anywhere in Europe.

Who is to blame for Iran’s growth into a nuclear power? Sadly, it is the West — whose politicians worked tirelessly for three decades to appease the mullahs. This had the effect of buying Iran the time it needed.

Our time is now running out, and it is essential that we acknowledge our failures and take immediate action to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear state.

We must understand that a nuclear-armed Iran will not only harm the Iranian people, but will create instability throughout the world. If the leaders of Iran can currently threaten to disrupt the flow of oil, launch missiles at all U.S. bases in the region, or wipe Israel off the map, they could take the whole world hostage with nuclear weapons.

An Iran with nuclear bombs will make the leaders of Iran untouchable and empower its allies and proxies such as Syria, Hezbollah (already rearmed with thousands of Iranian rockets for a possible war with Israel), Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. Instability will rule the Middle East and have a huge impact on the world economy.

Just recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned the White House about the lack of a plan to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If this is truly the case, our situation is dire indeed. One can only hope that President Obama is working to lead the world in confronting this grave and growing danger. What we do today could save millions of lives and affect how our children live for decades.

If we fail to act, future generations will never forgive us.

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Violence Erupts at Illegal Immigration Rally

From Sister Toldjah....

The so-called “May Day” illegal immigration rallies were conducted and attended over the weekend by mainly “amnesty” proponents who believe that the GOP “hates illegal immigrants” because the color of their skin. These crowds marched in response to the “controversial” immigration bill signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.

One such protest, held Saturday in Santa Cruz, CA, got ugly and violent – but unlike the Tea Party rallies, at which this point there has beenno violence other than the thuggery perpetrated by radical liberal union goons – the MSM is falling all over itself to explain the violence away as “maybe being by acted out by anarchists” who may have “infiltrated” the May Day rallies, etc. Dan Riehl has the details here. There is a notable contrast in how the MSM treated the May Day rallies versus how they have routinely characterized the Tea Party rallies which won’t surprise you a bit.

Michelle Malkin has much more on the angry mobs who took to the streets Saturday in order to “take back their country.” And stay tuned for Rev. Al’s upcoming Cinco de Mayo “candelight vigil” he’ll be holding while “marching” towards the Arizona state Capitol in Phoenix where he and his followers will look to sign up “freedom walkers” to “go to jail if the law goes into effect.” The photos and video from this “vigil” will be priceless ….

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Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy

I thought I'd post something a little light-heared today. This guy has a point.

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What Would You Do?

I heard this the other day and I think it a great simple example of a “What would you do?” scenario.

What would you do if you left the front door open to your house and one day you went into your living room and saw a family living in there? They don’t eat much from your fridge and they are quiet. Does this bother you? A few months later, there are a few more people and the one woman is giving birth to a child on your living room couch. Now you can’t get into your bathroom, your grocery bill has grown and there is a baby keeping you up all night, not to mention the pile of diapers in your front yard.

You’ve had enough, so you call the FBI, you call ICE, you call the Feds, but they never come. They ignore your plea’s for help. The frustration is building, after all, it is your house. So you call the local authorities but they tell you their hands are tied and there is nothing they can do because federal law says they can’t. You’re helpless.

You contemplate moving, perhaps taking the law into your own hands, but wait…. There is a better solution! Create a state law that says you can do the same thing the federal law does. So you do.

The next thing you see is just unbelievable… buses are pulling up in front of your home, protests are forming, people are calling you racist and they are calling for your eviction. They want to boycott your sources of income. They want to starve you and make you pay.

.... You're right. It could never happen.

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Is Arizona's New Immigration Law Constitutional?

We have an interesting situation developing in Arizona. Last week, the Arizona legislature passed and the governor signed a law which says, in effect, that the state will work harder to enforce the existing federal immigration laws.

The left is having a cow, of course. They are concerned that enforcing the law is racist.

"Racist." Where have we heard that before?

So the left is now crying "Unconstitutional." It is unconstitutional, according to the left, to merely enforce federal law. The constitution, by the way, does give the government the authority to set and enforce immigration policies.

Now, remember back ... ALL THE WAY BACK .... to about three weeks ago when the Health Care System Destruction Act of 2010. Remember the congressmen who said that the constitution doesn't matter? The only thing that mattered, way back then, was to make sure that all those uninsured citizens who were just dropping dead in the streets from lack of health care, got covered. They AREN'T covered, but we did get health care destruction/reform shoved down our throats. Constitutional or not.

So, now that there is an issue in which the left wants to limit the power of government, the left is crying "foul." We CAN'T ignore the constitution.

Hypocrisy? Thy name is Democrat.

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Health Care Reform Lawsuit...What's Your Opinion?

Before the ink was dry on the Health Care Destruction Act of 2010, several states began filing lawsuits challenging the Constitutionality of the act.

Now, there is no question that the act is unconstitutional. That's not the question. You CANNOT read the constitution (unless you are a lawyer/judge) and conclude after reading it that the federal government has ANY authority to fund health care. Of course, you would also be forced to conclude, if you REALLY thought about it, that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal funding of education and a whole host of other things the federal government does are ALSO unconstitutional.

Of course, lawyers and judges can't read.

Or so it seems. When they read something, they obviously don't read or understand it the same way that you and I do.

Where I have a problem with the Supreme Court's rulings on the constitutionality of ANYTHING is that they don't really look at the constitution and what its original intent was. They look at everything else. Previous rulings, case law, their liberal agenda, etc.

I've always looked at the constitution as a contract. The American people voted on it (in the 1700's) and it's Amendments (in the years following). What were the writers thinking it meant when they wrote it? What were the voters thinking it meant when they voted on it? There is no way the framers of the constitution envisioned our current government. In fact, our current government, and in particular, our current administration, were precisely the thing they were trying to AVOID when they wrote the document.

So, then, the question, really is this: Does this lawsuit REALLY stand a chance of succeeding. Given the liberal nature of the court and the way they tend to rule on these kinds of issues, my feeling is the Health Care Destruction bill will stand as is. I don't think the Supremes will strike it down. But I'm not a lawyer, and, frankly, I don't follow these kinds of things that closely.

What do you think?

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Jobless Rate Rises

For the second straight week, the jobless rate has risen, confounding liberals and the media. The recession was supposed to be over, but I guess the people who do the hiring didn't get the memo.

I "doubt" that the recent health care legislation, with its new and confusing regulations and taxes on businesses has had any impact on the business sector and their decisions to hire, not hire or even lay off employees. Of course, we know that health care reform is going to balance the budget and save everyone tons of money.

A year ago, Dick Morris (whom I respect, but don't always agree with) predicted that the jobless rate would rise in response to the Generational Theft Act (stimulus) to around 10% nationally. He also predicted that it would stay near that rate for 2010 and perhaps beyond. Furthermore, he predicted that as we move into 2010 and 2011, we would begin to see an increasing rate of inflation that would trigger a second recession before we've even recovered from the first one.

While we've yet to see a significant amount of inflation, Morris' predictions usually tend to be pretty accurate. We've already seen gas prices rise, and the price of other goods and services usually trend upwards when gas prices go up because almost everything we buy is affected by the cost of fuel.

I'm not optimistic about our future. With the passage of health care reform, it appears the recession is going to extend into the foreseeable future, despite proclamations that it is over. We might as well get used to double digit unemployment. Unless we can reverse the damage O.B.A.M.,A. has done, it is likely to become the norm. Pollsters and other experts are backing off of predictions that the Republicans will take back the House and Senate. At best, they will neutralize the Democrats' majority, but it is highly unlikely they will get enough seats to pass their own agenda, let alone repeal any of what O.B.A.M.,A. has done (including health care).

Even looking forward to 2012, prospects aren't much better. Assuming we can get a Republican back in the White House, many of the front runners (including Huckabee and Romney) are far from conservative. They are in favor of many of the same programs and spending polices of the left, just to a slightly lesser degree.

Sorry for the "negative" post, today, but given that it's April 15 (Tax Day), perhaps some honest evaluation of where we are at economically is in order.

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Quote of the Day

"There is nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won't cure."

-- Dan Bennett

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Doctor Shortages On the Way

Dr. Melissa Clothier shares:

The Wall Street Journal shares this inevitable news:

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

The whole point of health care reform was too feel better–not you, or your health–but liberal politicians.

It wasn’t to improve health care treatment.

It wasn’t to reduce costs.

It wasn’t even to get more people under care.

Wait, what? That’s right. More people will be insured, but patients will receive less care at more cost. It’s just logical. The new health care system creates a gatekeeper system that will eliminate individual choice and drive up costs. So, a person thinks something is wrong with his prostate–he goes directly to a proctologist. That saves 1. wait time 2. cost (no double doctor fees) and 3. diagnosis time.

But not now.

Oh no! Now, a patient must wait to get into an overburdened primary care physician, get a referral and then get into another physician. A patient will be dead by the time he gets diagnosed.

The inevitable response?

Cash-only doctors. Some doctors won’t accept this new insurance and work outside the system. So, people will pay into the health service, hate the waits and then, go pay cash for good care.

The rich will have good care while subsidizing everyone else. The middle class will be caught in a jam because the taxes will be so egregious they can’t afford anything, never mind a quick diagnosis. So they will be caught in government-mandated substandard care.

And the poor, who don’t pay into the system, will still misuse the system because they still won’t take care of themselves. And Medicare and Medicaid could have been expanded to help them as is.

But noooo. An overhaul had to happen. The government had to control health care.

If this diseased legislation doesn’t get revoked, America is going to go down the road of all disastrous socialized countries: chronic unemployment, disheartened and downwardly mobile middle class and an elite aristocracy for whom policy doesn’t matter.

In the liberal world that’s called utopia.

And by the way, a small board will decide what does and does not get covered under Obamacare. So, yes, death sentences will be handed down by the government. That too, is inevitable.

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Auto Bailouts: Where Did We Go Wrong?

This is likely to be a fairly long post, but I'll try to make it as readable as possible. The information here is condensed from a couple of research projects and a number of articles from the auto industry.

At one time, the American auto industry was king. Nobody in the world produced the quality of cars, with the technology and engineering at the prices that the United States was producing before and after World War II. That ended around the 1970s and 1980s. (It's hard to pinpoint an exact year, but for the purposes of this article, within a decade or so is accurate enough).

After 1980, the Japanese auto industry, which already had a foothold in the U.S. began to take off by leaps and bounds. At the same time, Americans were discovering the quality and drivability of European makes like BMW, Saab, Volvo, Mercedes and others. Around this time, foreign makes were jumping ahead of American manufacturers with regard to quality, engineering, technology and, especially, design.

Many auto industry insiders view the "beginning of the end" of the dominance of American auto companies to be the book "Unsafe at any Speed" by Ralph Nadar.

The book was written about Chevrolet's unique car, the Corvair. The Corvair was designed in the late 1950's by very forward-thinking GM engineers and designers. These people inside GM were looking at Porsche and Volkswagen and they wanted to see what they could learn from the popularity of those German cars. In terms of handling, reliability and technology, these cars were simple designs with sporty performance (at least Porsche was) and were noted for reliability in extreme weather and road conditions.

Chevrolet wanted to see what it could do with a similar concept. They wanted to create a rear-engine, air-cooled, rear-wheel-drive car. Unlike Porsche and Volkswagen, they wanted to make the car a little larger so that it could be used as both a sporty car as well as a small family sedan.

The Corvair was introduced in 1959 (as a 1960 model) and was Motor Trend's Car of the Year. It brought to market a number of firsts and innovations for an American car: A rear-engine air-cooled aluminum flat six cylinder engine with rear transaxle, four wheel independent suspension, with the front and rear suspension components each attached independently to the subframe. In terms of design, technology, innovation and concept, it was different in every way from every other car Detroit was producing and different than anything Detroit had ever produced.

A few years later, Ralph Nadar wrote his book in which he alleged that the Corvair was an unsafe vehicle. Nadar was an unknown "consumer advocate" looking for a cause, and he found it in the Corvair. He alleged that the vehicle was prone to turn over easier than other vehicles, that it was more prone to catch fire in a front end collision and that it was more likely to cause injury to passengers in a rear end collision than any other car.

These allegations were proven false. The government held hearings and then conducted its own safety tests of the car. Their findings: The car was as safe, or safer, than any other vehicle on the road. (The government actually found that the car was less likely to catch fire in a collision than other cars.)

The damage, however, had been done. Sales of the car dropped and it was phased out in 1969, to be replaced by the more conventional Chevrolet Vega, a car with all the disadvantages of a small car along with poor fuel economy and poor handling. The lesson the Big Three Automakers took from this episode of automotive history is this: Don't innovate. Just make your traditional vehicles like you've always done, and don't try anything new, exciting or innovative.

When Subaru introduced front wheel drive to small asian imports, (Saab actually beat them to it in the American market), the other imports followed. By the mid 1980s, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Mazda had front-drive on most of their car models. The U.S. manufacturers did not follow suit until it became apparent that they were losing sales because of this feature. The same can be said of smaller, four cylinder, more fuel efficient models. Most other innovations and engineering breakthroughs after the 1960s came from either European or Japanese manufacturers. The Japanese in the 1980s and 1990s and later on the European manufacturers even began leading the way in styling. Today, if you take the nameplate off of a car and show it to the average consumer, most people would pick a foreign car to most domestic models.

All of this has led up to our current situation in which the government "had" to bail out two of the Big Three automakers.

I would be the last person to suggest that Ralph Nadar is single-handedly responsible for all of the ills of the auto industry. Over the past 40 years, there has been enough bad decisions, bad design and stupidity within the industry for a lot of folks to share the blame.

The question I have is, who is holding Nadar's feet to the fire? If industry insiders had lied and conspired in some way to bring an entire industry to its knees, no doubt those folks would be held accountable. Yet, Nadar is a darling of the left; a champion of the "little guy"; even a "green" presidential candidate. I doubt the American public is even aware of his role in the decline of the American auto industry (and by extension, American manufacturing).

While this post probably isn't as timely as it could have been (I recently ran across a series of articles that spurred this entry), I suppose the whole point is that I'm now doing my part to help people understand why we are where we are, today. Something as seemingly small and innocuous as a little book with a few little lies has had an effect that has spread to every American some 45 years later.

Now, use your imagination and look ahead to the next thirty or forty years. How do you think the lies currently being spread by O.B.A.M.,A., and Reid and Pelosi about health care and how much universal coverage will "save us" is going to affect America in the coming years?

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Laws and Freedoms

I missed a corner, yesterday. I was driving down the street and I drove right by my turn.

I was too distracted. While I was driving, I was listening to Fox Radio on the Satellite. Neil Cavuto was interviewing a socialist who was marveling at how great it was to force everyone to buy health insurance, and he kept commenting over and over that we are "an nation of laws." He also asked the question four or five times, "Would you rather live in a banana republic" where the law is corrupt?

I was screaming at the radio when I drove right by the street I was supposed to turn on.

Well, Mr Liberal-Spout-the-Democrat-Party-Line (I didn't catch who the guest was), it seems to me that we DO live in a banana republic where the law is corrupt. The new health care law was passed by a corrupt congress in a corrupt manner and it exempts those who created the law. How much more corrupt can you get?

But what really got me thinking was the idea of what makes America a great place to live. Or, maybe more accurately, what USED TO make America a great place to live, before Congress shredded the Constitution?

It isn't the fact that we are a nation of laws that makes America a great place to live.

What has made America great, what made America the place that people from other places in the world flock to the U.S., is not our laws, but rather our freedoms. People come here because we have, or rather HAD, a Constitution that protected us FROM the government and FROM the laws it wants to pass to deprive us of our freedoms.

Until this year, you could come to the U.S. and as long as you didn't do something to harm someone else, you could pretty much do what you wanted and the government was FORCED (by the Constitution) to leave you alone.

Now, for the first time in our nation's history, that is no longer the case. Simply by existing, simply by being here, you are now FORCED by the government to buy something, whether or not you want it.

Now, someone tell me .... how does that make us any better than those so-called "banana republics?"

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Diplomat Lights Shoes on Fire

Reports are still coming in as I write this, but the latest news reports are saying that a man who is a diplomat at the Qatar embassy in Washington, Mohammed al Modadi, attempted to light his shoes on fire on a flight from Washington, D.C. to Denver.

Apparently, and air marshall on the flight subdued the man, and he was detained and question once the plane landed. Early reports are also suggesting that he did not have any kind of bomb or weapon, but think he may have tried to light his shoes on fire to cover up a smell. (Smoking?)

Two questions come to mind.

First, with all the security at airports in the U.S., how does an Arab get through security with something to light his shoes with? And second, what are the odds this was some kind of test of airport security and airplane security? Maybe next time, we won't be so lucky.

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