Arizona gov signs immigration enforcement bill - "misguided" says Obama; Financial sector takeover looms

1) Ariz. governor signs immigration enforcement bill PHOENIX – Gov. Jan Brewer ignored criticism from President Barack Obama on Friday and signed into law a bill supporters said would take handcuffs off police in dealing with illegal immigration in Arizona, the nation's busiest gateway for human and drug smuggling from Mexico. With hundreds of protesters outside the state Capitol shouting that the bill would lead to civil rights abuses, Brewer said critics were "overreacting" and that she wouldn't tolerate racial profiling. "We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act," Brewer said after signing the law. "But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation." Earlier Friday, Obama called the Arizona bill "misguided" and instructed the Justice Department to examine it to see if it's legal. He also said the federal government must enact immigration reform at the national level — or leave the door open to "irresponsibility by others." "That includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe," Obama said. Fairness? You might like, EVERYONE must obey the law, not just some people? Oh, I forgot how little the rule of law means to you, Barack Hussein Obama. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_on_re_us/us_immigration_enforcement 1a) Congressman: US should fight Ariz. immigrant law PHOENIX – An Arizona congressman urged the Obama administration on Sunday not to cooperate when illegal immigrants are picked up by local police if a tough new state immigration law survives legal challenges. U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, and civil rights activists spoke to thousands of people gathered at the state Capitol and called on President Barack Obama to fight the law, promising to march in the streets and invite arrest by refusing to comply. "We're going to overturn this unjust and racist law, and then we're going to overturn the power structure that created this unjust, racist law," Grijalva said. What does that mean? Overturn the Constitution? Overturn states’ rights? State Sen. Russell Pearce, the Mesa Republican who sponsored the legislation, said it's "pretty disappointing" that opponents would call on the federal government to refuse to cooperate with Arizona authorities. "It's outrageous that these people continue to support law breakers over law keepers," Pearce said Sunday. …The new law makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally (So, let me get this straight. It‘s a crime to break the law. What a concept!). Immigrants unable to produce documents showing they are allowed to be in the U.S. could be arrested, jailed for up to six months and fined $2,500. Other provisions allow lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws, and the law makes it illegal to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100426/ap_on_re_us/us_immigration_enforcement 2) No deal yet on financial rules as test vote looms WASHINGTON – Democrats are showing little willingness to alter financial overhaul legislation any further and are ready for a showdown vote Monday, hoping to splinter solid Republican opposition or to cast the minority party as an ally of Wall Street. Republican leaders seem prepared to take that risk — for now — if they can force Democratic concessions. The top negotiators on the sweeping bill — Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd and Republican Sen. Richard Shelby — professed to be close to a deal Sunday during a joint appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." But, as Shelby said, "inches sometimes are miles." The two lawmakers did not hold a negotiating session Sunday. The legislation, the most sweeping effort to rein in financial institutions since the Great Depression, is approaching its end game, and Republicans and Democrats alike predict it can ultimately pass with bipartisan support. But for now, Republicans are using what leverage they have in hopes of putting a bigger GOP imprint on the bill or removing Democratic provisions they perceive as government overreach. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday blocked Democrats' efforts to bring the bill up for debate, setting up a vote Monday that will require 60 votes to move ahead. McConnell and Shelby said Sunday that without a deal with Dodd, all 41 Republican senators would vote to stall the start of debate. Shelby said a deal in time for the vote was unlikely. Democrats said they were out of patience. …Both bills would create a mechanism for liquidating large firms, set up a council to detect system wide financial threats (translation, the government will not control large parts of the financial industry), and establish a consumer protection agency to police lending. The legislation also would require derivatives, blamed for helping precipitate the meltdown, to be traded in open exchanges. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100425/ap_on_bi_ge/us_financial_overhaul 3) Climate bill placed on hold over Senate dispute WASHINGTON – Long-awaited climate change legislation was put on hold by its authors Saturday when a dispute over immigration politics and Senate priorities threatened to unravel a bipartisan effort that took months of work. Voicing regrets, Sen. John Kerry said Saturday he is postponing the much anticipated unveiling of comprehensive energy and climate change legislation scheduled for Monday. The Massachusetts Democrat made his announcement after a key partner in drafting the bill, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (a RINO - Republican in Name Only) of South Carolina, threatened to withhold support if Senate Democratic leaders push ahead first with an immigration bill. Graham is angry that Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is considering that. Legislation to overhaul immigration laws and grant legal status to millions of long term immigrants unlawfully in the country could create problems for Republicans in the midterm elections. It's a top priority for Hispanic voters — and most Republicans are opposed. Reid's idea amounts to a "cynical political ploy," Graham asserted. So “immigration reform” is our consolation prize for delaying Cap and Destroy. Not sure which is worse. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100425/ap_on_go_co/us_climate_bill_congress 4) What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama (long but really good - by Jonah Goldberg - excerpts of it here) The assertion that Barack Obama is a socialist became a hallmark of the 2008 presidential campaign. His opponent, John McCain, used Obama’s own extemporaneous words to an Ohio plumber as Exhibit A: “When you spread the wealth around,” Obama had said, “it’s good for everybody.” That, McCain insisted, sounded “a lot like socialism,” as did Obama’s proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy and high earners for the explicit purpose of taking better care of the lower and middle classes with that redistributed money. …Fourteen months into his presidency, in March 2010, Obama succeeded in muscling through Congress a partial government takeover of the national health-care system. That legislative accomplishment followed Obama’s decision a year earlier, without congressional approval, to nationalize two of the country’s Big Three automobile companies (emphasis mine). In the intervening months, he had also imposed specific wage ceilings on employees at banks that had taken federal bailout money—the first such federal wage controls since an ill-fated experiment by Richard Nixon in 1971. Obama also made the federal government the direct provider of student loans, and did so by putting that significant change in American policy inside the larger health-care bill. In a September 2009 press conference, Obama suggested that a publicly funded health-care system might help “avoid some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs”—thus mistaking the act of making money, the foundational cornerstone of capitalism itself, with the generation of unnecessary expenses. …The Obama administration may not have planned on seizing the means of automobile production or asserting managerial control over Wall Street. But when faced with the choice, it did both. Obama did explicitly plan on imposing a massive restructuring of one-sixth of the U.S. economy through the use of state fiat—and he is beginning to do precisely that. …It was the revolutionary rabble-rouser Francois-Noël Babeuf who first asserted in 1794 that true equality would be impossible without the abolition of private property. The pursuit of private wealth was simply the means of replacing one aristocracy with another, he argued. The true promised land required abolishing such distinctions, inherited or earned. Babeuf’s “Conspiracy of Equals”—a precursor to Lenin’s revolutionary avant-garde—sought to “remove from every individual the hope of ever becoming richer, or more powerful, or more distinguished by his intelligence.” The goal, according to the Manifesto of the Equals, was the “disappearance of boundary-marks, hedges, walls, door locks, disputes, trials, thefts, murders, all crimes, courts, prisons, gallows, penalties, envy, jealousy, insatiability, pride, deception, duplicity, in short, all vices.” To fill that void, “the great principle of equality, or universal fraternity would become the sole religion of the peoples.” Say what you will about such an agenda, it is certainly not focused on empirical economic theory. …Obama is no Marxist. This is a point lost on some who like to highlight the president’s indebtedness to the ideas of the late radical Saul Alinsky, who was no Marxist either. Rather, Alinsky was a radical leftist and a proponent of “social-ism” before Blair named it. He believed that all institutions, indeed the system itself, should be bent to the needs of the underprivileged and the downtrodden in the name of social justice. Bent, not broken. Like the progressives and various Marxists, Alinsky was a proponent of radical pragmatism, using the tools available to change the existing order. This was the core of what the New York Times, in a remarkable 1913 analysis surveying Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas in the wake of his third-party campaign for president, dubbed T.R.’s “super-socialism”: “It is not the Marxian Socialism. Much that Karl Marx taught is rejected by present-day Socialists. Mr. Roosevelt achieves the redistribution of wealth in a simpler and easier way”—by soaking the rich and yoking big business to the state. “It has all the simplicity of theft and much of its impudence (emphasis mine),” the Times asserted. “The means employed are admirably adapted to the ends sought, and if the system can be made to work at all, it will go on forever.” …In this sense, Obama is a practitioner of the Third Way, the governing approach most successfully trumpeted by Blair, who claimed to have found a “third way” that rejected the false premises of both Left and Right and thereby located a “smarter” approach to expanding government. The powerful appeal of this idea lies in the fact that it sounds as if its adherents have rejected ideological dogmatism and gone beyond those “false choices.” Thus, a leader can both provide health care to 32 million people and save money, or, as Obama likes to say, “bend the cost curve down.” But in not choosing, Obama is choosing. He is choosing the path of government control, which is what the Third Way inevitably does and is intended to do. ..On the night the House of Representatives passed the health-care bill, Obama said, “This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system. But it moves us decisively in the right direction.” Then, speaking specifically of another vote to be taken in the Senate but also cleverly to those not yet satisfied with what had been achieved, he added, “Now, as momentous as this day is, it’s not the end of this journey.” Under Obama’s neosocialism, that journey will be endless, and no matter how far down the road toward socialism we go, he will always be there to tell the increasingly beleaguered marchers that we have only taken a “critical first step.” See: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/what-kind-of-socialist-is-barack-obama--15421 5) Abbas calls on Obama to impose Mideast peace deal RAMALLAH, West Bank – Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called on President Barack Obama on Saturday to impose a Mideast peace deal, reflecting growing frustration with what Palestinians see as Washington's failure to wrangle concessions out of Israel's hardline government. In an unusually blunt appeal, Abbas said that if Obama believes Palestinian statehood is a vital U.S. interest, then the American leader must take forceful steps to bring it about. "Since you, Mr. President and you, the members of the American administration, believe in this, it is your duty to call for the steps in order to reach the solution and impose the solution — impose it," Abbas said in a speech to leaders of his Fatah movement. "But don't tell me it's a vital national strategic American interest ... and then not do anything," he added. Oh, Mr. Abbas. He’s done plenty already. And who do you think he is? He’s president of the United States, not king of the world (even though he thinks he is)! See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100424/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians 6) Torpedo blast likely sank warship: SKorea minister SEOUL, South Korea – An explosion caused by a torpedo likely tore apart and sank a South Korean warship near the North Korean border, Seoul's defense minister said Sunday, while declining to assign blame for the blast as suspicion increasingly falls on Pyongyang. …Soon after the disaster, Kim told lawmakers that a North Korean torpedo was one of the likely scenarios, but the government has been careful not to blame the North outright, and Pyongyang has denied its involvement. …As investigations have pointed to an external explosion as the cause of the sinking, however, suspicion of the North has grown, given the country's history of provocation and attacks on the South. The Cheonan was on a routine patrol on March 26 when the unexplained explosion split it in two in one of South Korea's worst naval disasters. Forty bodies have been recovered so far, but six crew members are still unaccounted for and are presumed dead. The site of the sinking is near where the rival Koreas fought three times since 1999, most recently a November clash that left one North Korean soldier dead and three others wounded. The two Koreas are still technically at war because their 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100425/ap_on_re_as/as_skorea_ship_sinks