OF IMMIGRATION AND IRAN

Wall off the border? Can they be for real? Free countries have no need to be fortified by walls (and this "virtual wall" sounds like a boon for a Bush-crony security company--Stratesec, perhaps?). If they build a damn wall between us and Mexico, that will be concrete (pun intended) proof that we are not free.

Don’t forget, walls have a dual function–they may keep others out, but they can also keep you in.

What we need to do is what Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis said on the Majority Report Monday night, which is what I had been thinking. We need to stop just treating the symptoms (i.e., illegal immigration) and treat the disease itself, which is Mexico’s disastrous economy that makes immigrants need to come here in the first place. But that’s not what the corporatists want. And the corporatists tend to get what they want, which is a steady source of cheap labor–i.e., the illegals, which drives down the price of labor of workers in this country (bigger supply of labor means employers pay less for it).

But if they do build a wall, a friend of mine pointed out that there’s a good bet that there will be illegals helping to build it.

Iran and ran and ran

I can’t find out much about what’s going on with the Iran oil bourse. I thought it was supposed to have opened on March 20. But I haven’t googled it lately. I’ll do that after I get these thoughts down.

Read this piece by Joseph Cirincione about how he now thinks that war with Iran is more or less inevitable whereas he used to think it was unlikely. As I read it, it occurred to me that the Bushies have nothing to lose by attacking Iran. The “Commander-in-Crony” will be gone in 2009 and will not have to deal with any of the repercussions personally.

It’s like the Bush quote I wrote about a few days ago–when asked by Bob Woodward how he thought history would view the Iraq war, his response was that no one can know that with the implication being that it doesn’t really matter to Bush because “we’ll all be dead.” Similarly, one can imagine Bush and Rove’s feeling about Iran, a bigger deficit, or anything else they might be able to wreck before 2009 as being the same–they’ll be out of office and won’t have to deal with it, so what do they care what happens?

Their only concern is keeping, consolidating, and projecting power, regardless if it starts WW III.

Lagniappe

Check out this thread that I replied to about the Iraq war...it's not spectacular or anything, just gives some idea what we're up against...