The republican bill is simply common sense law. The federal government clearly is not engaged on the issue of illegal immigration and has no intention of doing anything about the growing problems we face as a result of this issue. So, states have an obligation, I think, to do their due dilligence—which they have—to determine what impact illegal immigration has on their state, the people of their state, and I think the states have an obligation, as well, to at least represent the best interests and the WILL of their citizens. After all, these states do not belong to the illegal immigrants. These states do not belong to the country of Mexico. They belong to the citizens of their states, and are a part of the United States. The will of the...

The real sad truth here is the absolute abundance of characters like Van Jones who are throughout the Obama administration, and how little the media focuses on this stuff. Rather, the usual liberal media outlets talk about how much hate resides in America's conservatives. Hate? How much hate WE have? Probably not nearly as much as the liberal left had for Bush during his two terms in office. Probably not nearly as much as a guy like Van Jones who all but spits on Americanism, and the flag itself.

Good riddance. My only hope here is that we not only see the end to guys like Van Jones, but that the liberals and democrats alike make it very clear to the American people that conservatives need to be returned to...

I agree with you that the obvious liberal media are not worth our time. They have a severe and sorrowful lack of ability to tell the truth in ANY political story they tell. Still, I think absolutely ignoring them is not exactly the right idea. In order to cite their misdeeds and accurately define the entire context of their misrepresentations, they have no leg to stand on when the finger-pointing begins. Remember that sooo many Fox News haters, for example, often criticize, but do so having not watched. Having simply joined in with liberal bloggers and news media outlets in inaccurately stating the views of the others.

I want to stay informed, and be able to accurately describe WHAT in their story is...

I heard a voice shout from a seashore, "Mr. President, I suggest you come back to shore, sir. I think I can't see your feet anymore." In other words, this remarkable man who can turn water to wine, who can WALK on water, and who can (yes, he CAN!) turn this country around in a quick one-two of wits and unprecedented change, is beginning to show that he can no more walk on water than you and I, and he most certainly WILL sink if he tries to.

BTW, are we any bit surprised about Van Jones showing up in the Obama admin? I mean, if we didn't get enough of a clue when Rev. Wright showed up. Or the other terrorist (his name eludes me at the moment). His Chicago affiliations didn't raise additional red flags?

The a**holes are...

I'm far from an advocate of labor unions. I think it's rather obvious where the idea of the labor union falls off. However, I think jobs are important as a whole. I also believe that we've allowed globalization to get away from us. We've allowed ourselves to believe that we don't need a strong industrial base in this country. We think we can make it by employing people at places like Wal-Mart and McDonald's. It's a fallacy at best to think that way. And wages have been fairly stagnant for quite some time. Our current economic state is a direct result of giving too much away and expecting too little in return. It's a result of thinking that open and accessible credit markets more than made up for the need for wage increases.

This...

Why not put a ceiling on who can collect irregardless of who paid in? I mean, a guy with $10,000,000, for example. Does he really need social security benefits? I don't know what the cutoff should be, but I think that might be a good place to start.

One thing we need to do in order to avoid having to even consider having to do anything like this again is SLOW DOWN THE USE OF CREDIT! Man, it's killing us. It HAS killed us. Somewhere along the line in this coutry we've got to start living within our means and setting aside more money for a rainy day. If people would have had money in the bank to fall back on when credit card rates went through the roof, when all this hit the fan and people couldn't pay their mortgages, they might have been able to bail themselves out.

A guy I used to work with a while back who was a retired Caterpillar worker said to me once, "when I was coming of age we made $10 an hour, and spent $5. Now folks make $10 an hour and spend $15."

That's...

Somewhere in this job growth plan, though, we need (as I posted earlier and for the reasons stated there) to restore the industrial base. We need to encourage American manufacturing, and when companies do business here, a percentage of their workforce should be here as well. Globalization is fine, in my view, if everyone wins. We are obviously losing out on opportunity and I think that's shameful. I'm proud to be republican AND protectionist to some degree.

http://www.springboardblog.blogspot.com

Okay, so burning food does sound nutty. But what if we considered that the vast majority of our crops are not used for human consumption? Soy crops are used for all sorts of things. Even with corn, we only eat about 6% of all the corn we grow.

The key here is that we have abundance and we the source is also renewable. Not that I'm saying it's a full on alternative. But when we say we're burning food for fuel, we're not being totally accurate when we aren't even eating 15% of what we're growing in US crops. In fact, I think we eat far less than 15% of all US crops.

If someone has the actual statistics I'd definitely be interested.

But in some sense I feel a falling dollar ultimately helps us. I'm not suggesting a WORTHLESS dollar helps us, but certainly if the value of a dollar is less it will help to make producing goods in the US cheaper, and will help exports. The fact is that we need jobs in this country. Not only that, but we need good paying jobs. That means industrial jobs, which were the heart of the American middle class. When we were industrialized and working and receiving good wages and benefits we also spent more and lived better, mainly because we could afford to. What happened to us and what helped to bring us into this current recession was the faltering of the industrial base, the falling wage of average Americans, and the heightened offering and...