Mike Rowse A voice from New Mexico

Enough is enough

This is the sign posted in Arizona parks 90 miles north of the border. Now the federal government has posted similar signs along US Highway 8 100 miles north of the US/Mexico border. US 8 runs between Casa Grande and San Diego. The signs warn drivers that this is “an active drug and human smuggling area” and drivers may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.” Pinal County sheriff’s deputies are out gunned and out manned and the feds are of little help according to Sheriff Paul Babeu. I have traveled this area before and it is desolate and truly some areas are desert. But people live here; Gila Bend AZ is a great farming community. There are great 4 wheeling areas and parks in the area. But citizens are being warned to stay away or run if they see anyone suspicious.

Folks, it’s time to face reality. The federal government has literally ceded parts of America to drug cartels and human smuggling rings. We are not safe in our own homes or traveling our own roads. It is time to shut the border which means finish the fence and put military troops on the border to protect us from foreign incursion. The Mexican Federales, some of them, are on the cartel payroll and regularly come across the border. Mexico’s government has been warned and we’ve talked enough. If you are armed and step on U.S. soil without permission you will be detained. If you fight back or threaten to fight back, we will open fire.

On a related note, I saw a brief story about government officials in Sonora Mexico (the state just south of AZ) complaining about the influx of Mexican nationals returning to their homes from Az. They may have even visited Tucson to meet with AZ government officials yesterday to whine about their inability to handle the influx of Mexican citizens that were in AZ illegally. Sonoran officials are complaining that they don’t have the jobs, school capacity or other infrastructure to deal with all the people and want AZ to relax their enforcement of the law. Let me call the whambulance for you.

Damn you if you are Christian and peaceful

Obama is bending over backwards to appease radical Muslims around the world; including here at home. Right now his approval ratings are at an all time low, except with Muslims with whom he has a 78% approval rating. Not only is Obama trying to appease Iran (they are now openly flaunting their violation of the non-proliferation treaty; have developed unmanned aircraft & nuclear missiles); not only is he supporting the building of the WTC Mosque (while putting up roadblocks to rebuild a Greek Orthodox Church); not only is he apologizing for the U.S. & claiming we are not a Christian nation (while paying to rebuild 2-3 dozen historically significant Mosques around the world; his administration is today holding a conference for Muslim organizations with ties to terrorism so they can have unfettered access to government assistance and grants.

The Islamic Society of North America, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial and long associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, announced that leaders of 20 Muslim groups will attend a workshop today with several government agencies represented, Agriculture, Education, Homeland Security, Health & Human Services & the White House; in order to provide “direct access” and “cut through the red tape” in order to provide government services to “benefit the Muslim Community.” In other words our government is going to provide special access to a specific religion helping them obtain government assistance of several types in order to “strengthen their communities.”

So let me get this right: we can’t have a nativity scene displayed in public: a cross in the middle of the Mojave desert is offensive and somehow violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution; we can’t have prayer in public schools; but we can provide special funding and access to government programs to Muslim groups, many with documented ties to terrorist organizations, to help spread their word. Makes perfect sense to me.

Oh and why does the Department of Homeland Security need to be there?

Bad, bad credit card companies!

And the fantastic politicians here to save you! The Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility Act (CARD Act) kicked in this week with new rules governing your credit cards. All designed of course to protect you from those terrible, manipulating, scheming bankers from whom you get your credit card; with which you can buy stuff, take trips, Christmas just wouldn’t be the same without your credit card. Now thanks to Washington DC and you of course, it won’t be the same.

The Wall Street Journal reports that interest rates are now 1.6% higher than last year and the gap between your credit card interest rate and the prime rate is the highest it’s been in 22 years. The average credit limit on cards is down 11% from last year. Because the CARD Act limits the banks’ ability to be flexible on interest rates say for overdue balances (because you couldn’t or didn’t pay) the bank has to make up the money some other way. Now annual fees on cards are up 18% and fees on cash advances are up 33%. How’s Washington’s solution working out for you so far?

So essentially this bill was put in place to protect those that for whatever reason can’t pay, say due to job loss, or those that won’t pay. Those of you that are paying on time are paying higher fees because the politicians meddled in the private market again. Soon we will have the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection in place with a $500 million budget and several thousand new federal employees here to protect and serve you, the consuming citizen in every other aspect of our financial lives. I can hardly wait.

Ask the unemployed how the stimulus is working

The CBO announced this week that they had determined the stimulus bills have created or saved up to 3.3 million jobs and the administration is using this to say we need more stimulus. If the stimulus is working then why do we need more? That’s right, durable goods orders are down, housing purchases are at a 50 year low, unemployment remains at 9.5%, jobless claims were up again this past week and the underemployment rate remains around 16%. But the CBO is trying to tell us the unemployment rate by be 10 or 11% if not for the stimulus. One little problem, their claims are inconsistent with what they were saying in February 2009 when the stimulus was passed. If their models were wrong then why are they right now? The CBO staff predicted unemployment rates would stay about 7.8 to 8.5% if the stimulus bill passed; if it did not pass the CBO said unemployment would rise to 9%. They went on to predict that unemployment in December 2010 would be 8.7% without the stimulus and 6.8 to 8.1% with the passage. You know where we are now. Ask the 14.5 million unemployed and the over 20 million underemployed how these predictions are working out.

Illegal immigrants win again

Understand this is not just about illegal immigrants from Mexico: The DHS is operating with a mandate from Congress to implement a biometric exit system; that is take fingerprints from foreigners leaving the country as they leave. Of course this would mean when they enter they leave a fingerprint as well. Duh! Janet Napolitano is opposed to the system saying the cost is too high and it would further congest airports and other ports of entry. Given that the government’s own statistics, from DHS no less, show that 40% of the estimated 11 million illegals in this country are people who did not leave when their visa expired, this might be worth it. And since when did cost stop any government agency from spending money or causing us delays for that matter? Been to the DMV lately?

So Ms. Napolitano has a solution; she will have DHS and TSA officials confirm departure of foreigners by writing their name down; from passenger manifests printed out by the airlines; then the hand written list will be sent back to immigration authorities. That’s perfect. What if one of the foreigners is wanted for doing something wrong while here? A biometric solution would allow authorities to capture them right then and there. But that might support the arguments from opponents of legalizing illegal immigrants.

Speaking of which: President Obama has apparently ordered the Justice Department to drop hundreds if not thousands of cases against illegal immigrants. These are cases where the individuals have been detained because they are here illegally. Some of them may have committed other crimes as well but as long as those crimes were not ’serious’ then they can return to society. Because of course illegal aliens contribute to society more than U.S. citizens. This administration will find a way to legalize all illegal aliens if it’s the last thing this administration does; let’s hope it is the last thing they do.

Don’t cross Big Brother

Barack spoke in Austin TX not long ago and went after Americans for Prosperity. Barrack said there are groups like AfP running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country. These groups GL said have harmless sounding names but you never really know who is behind them; it could be foreign controlled corporations or insurance companies who don’t care about the American people, only their bottom line. GL specifically mentioned Americans for Prosperity and inferred no one really knows who runs that group. One little problem; everyone knows who funds that group. It’s Koch Industries and has been since the 1970’s when the Koch brothers founded AfP. David Koch was the Libertarian VP candidate in 1980; he and his brother have been very politically active for decades funding right of center and/or Libertarian causes including acting against Republican candidates they thought were RINOs. But don’t let facts get in the way of a good scare; GL follows the Saul Allinsky model of Soviet style politics by creating fear about anyone who disagrees with him.

So how about the Center for American Progress? CAP is run by John Podesta, the Co-Chair of the Obama-Biden transition team. Each day at 8:45 a.m. Podesta coordinates a conference call among left wing media to make sure everyone has the talking points; including character assassination of any of Barack’s opponents. It wasn’t that long ago that the left was screaming that dissent and opposition to Administration policies was patriotic; now dissent will get you attacked.

He’s not going to be happy…

Colorado is fast tracking a bill that is similar to AZ’s immigration enforcement measure; AZ has decided not to alter the language in their bill to try and comply with the judge’s preliminary ruling; about 1/2 of the States are considering enacting similar if not identical bills to the AZ law. Glorious Leader is not going to be happy that the will of the people and not his will is being enacted in the realm. This is about as close to a revolution as we are going to get and it’s kind of exciting. While people are all excited that about the movement to take power back from Washington and put it into the hands of the people and the states again, don’t get too excited. Don’t forget that GL may very well have the last laugh; he got Elena Kagan appointed and confirmed to the Supreme Court and she is just as radical as GL. It may come down to serious talk of secession before it’s all over.

These are illegal aliens?

When I did a search on Google images for illegal aliens to see what would come up, this was one of the photos that was very prominently displayed. OK, if these are illegal aliens maybe we don’t want to keep them all out. But now that I have your attention let me make my point. Not all illegal aliens are from Mexico. That country certainly sends us the vast majority of illegal immigrants because of proximity and the persistently pathetic state of their economy not to mention the escalating violence of the drug cartel infighting.

But living where I do I come into contact with several Border Patrol agents and they tell me that there are known to be radical Muslim terrorist groups sponsored by or associated with al Qaeda in Mexico. These groups regularly send people across the border into America. Our own government has admitted to capturing and releasing 481 illegals from nations designated as state sponsors of terrorism including Iran, Syria and Somalia. (from 2007-2009) Did I say they were released into the U.S.? Not deported or sent to Canada but released into the U.S. where no one knows where they are or what they are doing. I feel so much safer already; especially now that the Border Patrol has stopped patrolling several areas along our border with Mexico because it is too dangerous.

Now this is getting ridiculous

Now that GL has stepped into the NYC Mosque controversy it’s time to point out some facts. I have said that there are no legal barriers to the radical Imam building his Mosque in that location. Building the Mosque there might have been legal but it was certainly not politically correct thing to do. Now that Harry Reid has weighed in with the same opinion I am making an appointment to have my head checked.

But here’s something that you may not know. There is a mosque just 12 blocks away from the site of the proposed Mosque. There are over 3 dozen Mosques in NYC. So there isn’t a shortage of Mosques nor is the area under served by the lack of a nearby Mosque. BUT the most interesting factoid is this: during the terrorist attack a Greek Orthodox Church was destroyed when the towers fell. Despite intense efforts and negotiations with the city that church has yet to be rebuilt and it does not look like it will ever be rebuilt.

NYC has consistently thrown up roadblocks to rebuilding the church. City officials have used many excuses to delay the construction; the design is not consistent with the architecture of the area; then the proposed dome on the church was too big; then the dome was too high and could not be taller than the proposed WTC Memorial. It went on like this for several years until the church fathers finally threw up their hands in disgust. The two sides have not met to discuss any issues in 2 years and there are not any planned meetings. Quite simply city officials have gone out of their way to block the reconstruction of a church that was already there. Yet they are bending over backwards to help build a Mosque that no one wants.