The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.
~Woodrow Wilson
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
~Thomas Paine
No matter what other nations may say about the United States, immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
~Jack Paar
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
"Money is power, & you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it." —Russell H. Conwell, Temple Univ, 1877
"It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine" say the French as consumer confidence in May rose to the highest since Nov '10 as they welcome and get excited about new Pres Hollande. Also, the French 10 yr bond yield touched the lowest on record this morning. June consumer confidence in Germany held at 5.7, just .2 pts off the highest since Mar '11. To the euro bond debate which is now taking on greater rhetoric with those with high bond yields wanting them and those with low ones saying no way, ECB member...
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July 4th, 2010 at 6:10 am
Dude,
Don’t you ever sleep in?
July 4th, 2010 at 6:28 am
LOL Every blog software has scheduling capability — as in “This post is Scheduled for: Oct 4, 2010 @ 6:27″
I set this to launch at 6am last THU
July 4th, 2010 at 6:52 am
Just goes to show you how the revolution got shanghaied by business interests early on, took a while to solidify, while the system was “gamed” by fraud, corruption, and thugishness to the point that now we no longer live in a democracy here.
Greed won, everyone else loses.
July 4th, 2010 at 8:21 am
Too bad you can’t do that with the replies.
(that’s a joke folks)
July 4th, 2010 at 8:23 am
But still Barry, you consider 6:28 sleeping in? You guys still have cows to milk in NYC?
July 4th, 2010 at 8:33 am
Jack Paar was perceptive. Been a long time since I’ve seen his name and I expect the majority on this board have no idea who he was.
[Pedantic mode on]
Immigration is probably the best answer to most of our ills. It keeps both the physical and intellectual gene pools diverse, allowing evolution to do its stuff. New immigrants seem to work harder than those of us, including yours truly, who have had it relatively easy.
The demographic benefits of immigration and an increasing population also would solidify social security.
If you look at Europe and Japan now and China in 20 years with its one-child policy, you see the financial problems caused by an aging, stagnant population. One could even theorize that our current problems are rooted in the steep decline in birthrates since the baby boomers were born. See, e.g. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html They (we) provided a built in market for our goods and a need for expansion of physical facilities. The aging of the baby boomers is a chief cause of the problems we are having with social security and medicare: too few young people to pay the bills. An increase in the younger population would alleviate much of that problem.
Yeah, immigrants change society. Every group that has immigrated has changed our society. Our society has gotten a bit richer with each wave.
July 4th, 2010 at 9:32 am
Today we celebrate the revolution. However, as a Native friend of mine once relayed to me: (The fourth of july is celebrated annually as a revolution when actually it was a time when the locals told the Brits to get lost as we were perfectly capable of killing the rest of the natives by ourselves”. Kind of an interesting twist?
July 4th, 2010 at 9:40 am
louoswi: Maybe but one fact is that 90%+ of the american natives were killed by disease, not violence.
July 4th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Yes, and the Europeans brought the diseases with them. Tough luck, native Americans.
July 4th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Mike in Nola
your immigration post…”Our society has gotten a bit RICHER with each wave.”(Yup. we rich as HELL right now!)
“our current problems are rooted in the steep decline in birthrates” (sure. PONZI growth requires endless population expansion)
“New immigrants seem to work harder than those of us, including yours truly” (speak for yourself lazybones)
imho, we have enough goddamn, balkanized, uninvolved, “unmelted” peasants in this country to last us till the end….
There’s even a large subset from mexico that didn’t even bother to knock…
But they are more a symptom of our national dis-ease than a cause (…let alone a cure! sweet jesus Mike, what pablum)
July 4th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
to clarify “they are more a symptom of our national dis-ease than a cause”…i’m talking about illegals from mexico there.
i live in SoCAl and i’ve HAD it with the sneaky peasant bastards
July 4th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.
~Benjamin Franklin
July 4th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
In an 1813 letter to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class… The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.”
July 4th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.
~Mayer Amschel Rothschild
July 4th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Vaughn: I never said immigrants were popular.
The various immigrant groups have all faced various degrees of discrimination until they were assimilated. Some still do. Before assimilation, they form the lower classes and have a higher crime rate.
In my hometown of New Orleans Italians were lynched at the instigation of the white blue bloods for the shooting of an Irish police commissioner who would, no doubt, have been looked down on 50 years before. http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1973/4/1973_4_65.shtml
July 4th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Immigration by unemployed or drug dealing Mexicans is flattery?
July 5th, 2010 at 12:16 am
Nothing in politics ever happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
~Franklin Delano Roosevelt