Bush, immigration, Republicans, Laura, tax cuts, Rove and the economy.

Bush is set to unveil his new immigration plan tonight. The first problem being that his plan has already, pretty much been unveiled everywhere else.

The plan, loaded with problems of it's own, has a lot of outside problems. The Democrats and some big Republicans are already complaining about the strain it will be putting on the National Guard. Even Bush's good buddy the Mexican President Vincente Fox is not at all happy about the "militarization" of the border.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will call for thousands of National Guard
troops to be deployed along the Mexico border in support of patrols aimed at
keeping out illegal immigrants, White House officials said Sunday on the eve of
an Oval Office address announcing the plan.

White House aides worked into the night Sunday to iron out details of the
proposal and allay concerns among lawmakers that using troops to man the border
would further burden an overextended military.

Two White House officials said Bush would propose using troops as a stopgap
measure while the Border Patrol builds up its resources. The troops would play a
supportive role to Border Patrol agents, who would maintain primary
responsibility for physically guarding the border.

To make matters worse for Bush and the GOP, the more gullible among us, you know the people who watch FoxNews, are starting to question their fearless Republican leaders on the unconservative track that the country's on. You can't blame them. After all, wasn't the Republicans going to balance the budget?

Well they're not going to balance the budget, and the only thing they care about is being in power. They care about it so much that right now, they're at each other's throats trying to figure a way to keep it. After WatergateGate, the Republican Feeding Frenzy should be a big hit of the summer.

From immigration policy to energy to emergency spending, House Republican
leaders are publicly breaking rank with their counterparts in the Senate,
fearing that Senate efforts at compromise are jeopardizing the party's standing
with conservative voters.

The breach in congressional leadership has been especially stark in the
past two weeks. As the Senate returns to the immigration issue this week, House
Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said House Republicans will not agree to any
plan granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship that does not require
them first to return to their home countries. House Majority Leader John A.
Boehner (R-Ohio) dismissed Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's proposed $100
rebate for gasoline as "insulting" and "stupid." And House Speaker J. Dennis
Hastert (R-Ill.) declared a Senate-passed, $109 billion bill to fund the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, hurricane relief and a bevy of home-state pet projects
"dead on arrival."

Laura is showing that she's way smarter than George, insert you're own comment here, by saying that using the proposed constitutional amendment against gay marriage as a campaign tool is stupid. And to prove her point Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said.

"I basically say, Mr. Vice President, right now marriage is under attack in this
country," Frist said on CNN. "And we've seen activist judges overturning state
by state law, where state legislatures have passed laws defining marriage
between a man and a woman, and that's being overturned by a handful of activist
judges around the country. And that is why we need an amendment to come to the
floor of the United States Senate to define marriage as that union between one
man and one woman."

And in North Carolina, Vernon Robinson proves that being a nut can be an advantage if you're running as a Republican.

Robinson highlights the fact that Miller and his wife do not have children.

“We can't have children,” said Miller. “I shouldn't have to be on
television explaining that we can't have children.”

He also insinuates Miller is gay.

“It's just a wild rant,” said Miller. “It's nuts.”

Robinson responded by a statement that says the real issue is Miller's
voting record. He calls Miller "extremely intolerant of people like me who have
a Christian viewpoint on homosexual marriage".

U.S. intelligence chief John D. Negroponte is letting us know that reality is whatever he wants to say it is at the moment.

"I wouldn't call it domestic spying," he told reporters. "This is about
international terrorism and telephone calls between people thought to be working
for international terrorism and people here in the United States."

And there are still people who believe him.


And while we're on the easily beguiled, did you know that there is a large segment of our population that actually believe that "tax cuts raise revenue". Those of us that don't listen to right wing gasbags on the radio, know that the only thing that gets bigger the more you take away from it, is a hole. And the Bush tax cuts are proving us right.

Sabastian Mallaby's excellent op-ed piece on "The Return Of Voodoo Economics".

Nobody serious believes that tax cuts pay for themselves, as I noted last
week. But most senior Republicans flunk this test of seriousness.

In January, George W. Bush declared that, "by cutting the taxes on the
American people, this economy is strong, and the overall tax revenues have hit
at record levels." Regrettably, this endorsement of what his dad called voodoo
economics was not a one-time oversight. The next month, Bush told a New
Hampshire audience, "You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase."

According to TruthOut.org Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more
than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing
Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served
attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an
indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to
investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of
the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 business hours to get his affairs in
order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday
morning.

What did you expect? Bush's economic policies are doing wonders for the working class. Just not in this country.

The global economy is on a growth streak that is shaping up to be the
broadest and strongest expansion in more than three decades.

Yet this is a different kind of boom from any other in the post-World War
II era, analysts say. The soaring economies of China, India, Russia, Brazil and
other emerging nations increasingly are setting the pace, overshadowing the
slower growth of the United States, Europe and Japan, where the benefits of the
expansion have eluded many workers.

The trend is being driven by free trade, which has created millions of jobs
in emerging nations in recent years, fueling stunning new wealth in those
countries.

"People are being paid better, hence the buying capacity is more," she
says.

I believe that last line is the most important. That's something we're not doing in this country.
When was the last time we raised the minimum wage?