The President has put the Coast Guard and military air craft at BP's disposal. He has put a moratorium on off-shore drilling in the U.S. for the next 6 months. He has forced the resignation of the head of the Minerals Management department. But that's not enough. If I was the President, I would declare war on the oil spill:

In case I haven't conveyed the sentiment yet, I'd get the clean up to the level it should have been the minute they knew what was happening, and I'd hand the cost to BP. I'd kick the crap out of TransOcean for not doing any better now than they did 30 years ago. I'd make sure Halliburton put all the money they got during the Iraq War to good use cleaning the mess they created by ignoring federal regulations during the building of this rig. I'd kick ass, I'd take names, and I'd make sure Emeril Lagasse kept the finest cajun food in the world on the tables in his restaurants.

"It's not a Krups."

If you're married to a high maintenance, easily angered woman, you know exactly how much trouble I was in after that. I scrambled to make nice, but even though I showered her with hugs and kisses and said a dozen thank yous, she was still cranky. And I still don't have a Krups coffee maker because, as part of groveling, I had to accept and keep the coffee maker to prove that her purchase was surely superior to what I would have purchased. Even though it's not. It couldn't be. It's not a Krups.

It's a Mr. Coffee cappucino maker.

(waiting for laughter to die down)

Yeah, I know. Mr. Coffee is great for brewed coffee -- I have a Mr. Coffee coffee maker, also 22 years old albeit only used occasionally when company comes over -- but for cappucino? No, I'm sorry, it just isn't the same. It's nice and all, but it's not as easy to use, it tries too hard to look cool, but ergonomically it's just not as nice.

So, unless someone were to pony up a Krups (hint, hint), this is now a Mr. Coffee household... (sniff)... Well, at least for the next five years...

This time it's illegal immigration. They have come out swinging in favor of letting illegal immigrants stay in the country. And they can only lose. The Supreme Court, IIRC, has already ruled that the suite of federal immigration laws are constitutional. What the ACLU is not representing the law in this case, but attempting to fire up contention over what the law should be by picking up specific, cherry picked cases and putting them before the media.

I'll leave the details for the next segment, but my point is, the ACLU, while operating even in this instance within the intent of their charter, sometimes acts on behalf of the law breaker in order to foment change, sometimes without regard to whether the change they're fomenting is good or bad. In this case I feel their argument of racism isn't valid.

She was pulled over in March for a traffic violaton. She had no driver's license, and the only ID she could present was an expired Mexican passport. She was arrested for driving without a license and for being in the country illegally. She spent more than a month in the Etowah Detention Center in Alabama. Thanks to her friends who protested on the campus and drew media attention to her situation, she was released and her deportation was deferred for a year so she could complete her studies.

The ACLU has latched onto this, calling it a "civil rights disaster" and throwing loaded terms around like "racial profiling" and "undocumented". In my opinion, this is one of those times when the ACLU is on the wrong side of the law.

I'm for enforcing immigration laws for *all* illegal immigrants. I'm also for modifying the laws as they pertain to South American immigrants to allow for guest workers. If they want to work here, they can. If they want to live here, there's already a process for that as well.

And please, can we dispense with silly terms like "undocumented"? Is a bank robber an "unhired bank employee"? When I get a ticket for speeding, am I an "uncertified racecar driver"? When a drunk driver plows into a school bus, is it an "unscheduled safety equipment test"? They are undocumented because they are not here legally. Calling them undocumented whitewashes the fact of their illegal status.

This case is actually perfect in that she was not pulled over for being Mexican. She was pulled over for a driving infraction. When the only identification she produced when asked for her driver's license was an expired Mexican passport, that was when the deportation process kicked in. If what immigration activists were really alarmed about was racial profiling, which this wasn't, then they would ask for guidelines that state that a person can't be asked for identification without probable cause of committing some other crime. It would take more than being brown and not speaking English to allow law enforcement to ask an individual to produce ID.

The ACLU says that current laws allowing police to work with immigration officials are "abused". Abused how exactly? If you're here illegally, then you're here illegally. While ICE has prioritized the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants who are committing other crimes as well, it is within the letter of the law to deport anyone who is here illegally.

Having said all that, here's my take on what should be done with the law.

Look, we run a de facto welfare program for Mexico. 98% of the wealth of Mexico is held by less than 1% of the population. Mexico is a case of capitalism run amok. With no regulation and unregulated corporate control of the political system, Mexico is a failed state, rife with corruption and lawlessness. Impoverished people there desperate for opportunities to support themselves and their families, and this country offers just those kinds of opportunities. We as a nation have turned a semi-blind eye to porous borders because we have an innate respect for good people who just want to work an honest job for an honest wage. We grumble a lot, but at the end of the day the Mexican and South American part of our population are simply a part of the fabric of our rich, heterogenous society.

Hey, my kids are part Mexican, and I love and respect the Mexican members of my extended family. I've never asked how they all got here. I don't really care, and I would not take the chance of offending my family members with that question. They're all second and third generation American-born anyway, so it's a moot point anyway, but if they weren't and it came up in conversation that one of them were here illegally, I'd stress to them that they needed to apply for citizenship, and I would help them any way I could to attain it. I'm saying all this so you understand that this is not a racist thing for me.

And while I know for a fact that you can't say that about everyone, I honestly don't think it's a racist thing for most people. They just simply want the borders controlled and the people allowed into this country to do so in a legal and regulated fashion. Open borders? I don't think anyone except the far fringe want that. Closing the borders and throwing out all the Mexicans? That's the other fringe, the hateful, nasty sons of bitches that I can't stand and can't believe still exist today. But the people in the border states are in an understandably bad position. They need to get a handle on the crime that's overflowing from Mexico into the U.S., and the law is their authorization for doing so.

So what we need to do is make it tougher for people to come in illegally, and provide a quicker, easier process for people from specific countries to be background checked and allowed into our country to find work and a better life. It's either that or take over Mexico, make it the 51st state, throw out the government, tax the crap out of their elite class, use those taxes to start work and education programs for the poor, regulate their industry, grow their middle class, crack down on corruption, move the national guard in to wipe out the drug trade, and safeguard their economy, society, and personal freedoms and safety.

And that just ain't gonna happen.

In fact, the only "hurt the big guy, spare the little guy" facet of this is penalizing employers, and while that may play well in the media, it's not going to happen on a truly effective scale because that would mean penalizing *any* employer. And no politician is going to go after corporations in any meaningful way during an election cycle. This is something the minority party waves around because the majority party won't do anything truly effective, and it makes the minority party look good. But it's a calculated sham, believe me.

In case you don't think the immigration reform movement in Arizona is grounded in racism, you have got to watch this next segment.

Rachel Maddow's crew digs up news reports of TransOcean killing the gulf in 1979, just like they've done today. Things don't change much when the lessons learned cost money and no one forces oil companies to spend the money to put the lessons to use.

Maddown again, this time covering the damage to the marshes.

Anderson Cooper kicks the crap out of BP.

This one is sobering. The part where Anderson's guide points out that the marsh is silent is an extremely sad moment. This is one of the few times that Bobby Jindal didn't sound like a complete tool. This spill is really hitting Louisiana hard, it's going to stomp on their economy and way of life.

I'm a big fan of James Carville. He's a Democrat, but an honest one, and he's not shy about sounding off on stupidity no matter the source. Combine that with the destruction of the way of life in his home state and you get a passionate, erudite man eloquently emoting the pain thousands of people are feeling over this spill.

3/22/2010:   The following Democrats could not be convinced to do the right thing where healthcare reform was concerned. As such, they must be replaced:

These elected officials are either ignorant or they've sold their souls to the Republican Party. Either way, it's time that the Democrats built a party that could be relied upon to do the right thing. These people need to be replaced at the next election.

Full transcript of the bill, "debate", and vote can be found at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=H5733&dbname=2008_record. You'll need to flip to about page 11 using the irritating little links at the bottom because apparently no one has notified Congress that PDFs can be more than one page long...