Here's a bold new verge in politically correct language!

So the other night, I was eating a taco and reading the often-satiric "Ask a Mexican" column in the LA Weekly. In this week's column, I was told that calling someone an "illegal" immigrant is as racist as calling someone "nigger".

This struck me as obviously untrue, but it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the salsa or anything.

(That really happened.)


This morning Twitter recommended this item:

"Decatur Utilities now prohibits [unauthorized] immigrants from obtaining electric, gas, water or sewer service, an official said Friday.

Yes, there is. The source being cited puts it like this:

Decatur Utilities now prohibits illegal immigrants from obtaining electric, gas, water or sewer service, an official said Friday.

The Obama Lefties are suicidally controlling. They're insane.

And just like that, I have enough rage to start my Monday. Let's get out there and make it a great week, people.

And let's call things by their names.

A Federal Government restricted to its enumerated powers would offer so much less opportunity for graft.

We could refuse to accept any grants or pork for our state and let New York take all the federal money for themselves. New York would like that. It would certainly be better if the federal gov't did not steal so much in the first place so we do not have to hire professional thieves to steal it back for us. This system is ugly, but the underlying problem is that the money is there in the first place.

When the pie comes to the table the knives come out.

I still maintain that the idea of selecting members of Congress with a random selection system from a list of registered voters would provide an improvement in both the moral and intellectual level of the legislative branch. As an added plus, there would be fewer lawyers.

"I'd vote in almost anyone on my block over my elected representative."

That's refreshing and pragmatic, something you can do by voting against the bum and by urging your neighbors to do the same. If I had a nickel for every voter tee'd off over *someone* else's elected official and unable to name his own, I'd be retired.

Re: My offtopic, apparently this is like a that people are dealing with right now.

This morning on the drive I was trying to remember which candidates, if any, have embraced or rejected the language "illegal immigrant."

From the late media critic Neil Postman's 1984 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death":

Although it may go too far to say that the politician-as-celebrity has, by itself, made political parties irrelevant, there is certainly a conspicuous correlation between the rise of the former and the decline of the latter. Some readers may remember when voters barely knew who the candidate was and, in any case, were not preoccupied with his character and personal life. As a young man, I balked one November at voting for a Democratic mayoralty candidate who, it seemed to me, was both unintelligent and corrupt. "What has that to do with it?" my father protested. "All Democratic candidates are unintelligent and corrupt. Do you want the Republicans to win?" He meant to say that intelligent voters favored the party that best represented their economic interests and sociological perspective. To vote for the "best man" seemed to him an astounding and naive irrelevance. He never doubted that there were good men among Republicans. He merely understood that they did not speak for his class.....

I will not argue there the wisdom of this point of view. There may be a case for choosing the best man over party (although I know of none). The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by "better" such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs...and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with "image". But not because politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best possible light. After all, who isn't...But television give image a bad name. For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences of the television commercial on political discourse...

(end)

I'd posit, an important distinction is that the right's base is actively working (often to its own detriment) to elect people who will fight against this sort of cronyism. The left's base, meanwhile, seems to be fighting tooth-and-nail to continue it.

Solyndra's original request for loan guarantees was denied by the Bush adminsitration. The company was judged to have a significant risk of insolvency even with the loans.

Despite both the assessment of the previous administration and a later assessment of analysts within its own administration, the Obama administration not only provided the loan guarantees for Solyndra but publicly highlighted Solyndra as a shining example of its commitment to alternative energy.

Having asked the DoE for subsidies for legitimate energy businesses within one's own district while decrying the money carelessly wasted on Solyndra is not by itself hypocrisy.

"We could refuse to accept any grants or pork for our state and let New York take all the federal money for themselves. "

That's the root of the problem, isn't it? In Washington, ethical behavior is punished. A Congressman who doesn't play the earmark game will be played for a chump, won't "bring home the bacon", and will soon be voted out. State and local governments are so much in thrall to the federal government (and can't do much with their own tax base because of the crushing tax load from Washington) that the only way to get significant projects done is with federal money.