Yesterday, President Obama went to Austin for another slickly produced bit of Kabuki Theater that is the hallmark of his Presidency. In his speech, President Obama managed to showcase his new tone of Hopety Change by alienating the people of Texas, alienating anyone who resides near one of our international borders, cynically lying to all of the American People, and failing to do the basic fact checking necessary to even begin to have an intelligent debate on this important issue. Perhaps most important of all, the, “constitutional scholar,” seems incapable of getting even the most basic of historical perspectives correct. On to my rant.
President Obama spoke to a group of Texas citizens. During his speech he gave not one reason why he has neglected to do his job in regards to declaring Texas a Federal Disaster area in response to the wild fires raging there. I have heard much in the way of speculation, which given the lack of the President’s action, and the fact of his failure to even address the Texan’s concerns, is the only thing available to be heard. Whatever his motivations for his clear dereliction of duty, whether they be politically motivated or not, are at the very least troubling for those of us who are citizens of this great nation. The fact that his speech instead was meant to chide the residents of Texas for not being thankful for the nothing Barack Obama has done on this issue is just cruel. Is this the new tone in Washington he meant? “If your state did not send me their electoral votes, or if your Governor is not a political ally, then you’re screwed.” The people living in our border states have very real, not theoretical issues that they have to deal with. Our nation is literally being invaded by a hostile force from Mexico. Armed, and well organized Cartel Militias now rule the northern portions of what used to be part of Mexico. What’s worse, Barack Obama’s Justice Department has been buying weapons and actually selling them to the cartels. Our border patrol agents have been saddled with idiotic rules of conduct designed to get them killed, and to prevent them from actually enforcing our borders. Several of these agents recently have found themselves in legal trouble for attempting to perform their duties to protect the rest of us. What President Obama stated, beyond the silly, “you should be thankful for what I am doing.” schtick is that immigration is in fact what made our country great. We’ll get back to this point, and destroy it later, after we discuss his latest foray into cynical lying.
President Obama told the good people of Texas that he is doing everything humanly possible to stem the tide of illegal immigration from the south. He stated this in the same speech in which he said that we should do nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration because it actually helps America. We can put aside for the moment the contradictions within his speech. Let’s analyze the everything humanly possible aspect. The fact is that Obama has done everything humanly possible to prevent enforcement of our borders. This Administration has actually placed signs, within U.S. territory stating that care should be taken close to the border with Mexico. The signs state the these areas may in fact be controlled by criminal elements operating out of Mexico and that our own national land may in fact be an unsafe place for American Citizens.
The Obama Administration, since January of 2009 has instituted an asinine policy of prosecuting border patrol agents for defending themselves against incoming shots being fired from the drug cartels in control of the southern portion of our country. Yes, he has hired a handful of new agents to, “enforce the border,” but at the same time he has instituted policies that make them basically targets, and not law enforcement personnel.
On to his never ending struggles with historical perspectives. Immigration did not make our country great, our founding documents made our country great. To the extent that immigrants came here and participated in that I agree. I do not believe that any one sane would disagree. It was the fact that our form of government, and the freedoms to incent people to take control of their own destinies which made America such an attractive place for people to immigrate here. The way Barack Obama tells it in speech after speech, is that we here in America traveled the world kidnapping people with talent so that they would created businesses and technology that otherwise would have been founded somewhere else. The true historical perspective is that people with ideas saw the opportunity here. Realizing that their ideas would either not come to fruition in their home countries, or that they would not be rewarded for their efforts decided to immigrate to our shores in search of their own self interests. Now, I realize that not everyone is going to get the historical perspectives correct all of the time. I also realize that I myself may get it wrong from time to time. I do however feel the the leader of the free world should get them right more often than wrong. Barack Obama is either the dumbest person on the planet, or he is screwing this up on purpose. It is not really important to me which, but I do laugh whenever he is referred to as a, “Scholar,” or a, “Constitutional Scholar.”
From his speech yesterday:
Look at Intel and Google and Yahoo and eBay – these are great American companies that have created countless jobs and helped us lead the world in high-tech industries. Every one was founded by an immigrant. We don’t want the next Intel or Google to be created in China or India. We want those companies and jobs to take root in America.
Ed Morrisey at Hotair provides some important fact checking not performed by the White House staff.
As reader Joe C points out, Obama might be surprised, too — if he bothered to look for himself. Intel was founded by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce in 1968, neither of whom was an immigrant … unless Obama thinks San Francisco and Burlington, Iowa are in foreign countries. (Some conservatives might be tempted to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on San Francisco.) In fact, Noyce is descended from passengers on the Mayflower, which is about as non-immigrant as one gets without being a Native American.
As for the other firms on the list, Obama comes closer, but still doesn’t quite get it right. Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan, although Brin was born in Russia. Yahoo was co-founded by Jerry Yang (China) and David Filo (Wisconsin). eBay was co-founded by Pierre Omidyar (France) and Michael Dean Johnson (US). Put together, the firms had more American founders than immigrants.
Finally, of course, even the immigrants all had one thing in common — they emigrated to the US legally. They came to this country rather than China precisely because they could exercise their entrepreneurial spirit and find investors without kowtowing to an authoritarian ruling class of the kind found in China. They didn’t enter illegally and then demand amnesty for breaking the law. No one opposes legal immigration.
One more point on the immigration thing before I move on to other issues. Milton Friedman sums it up nicely. Bear in mind that this was recorded in the late 1970’s, and that things have changed since then. One of the things that has changed is the fact that our illegal immigrant population is today entitled to the social welfare system in many places. California chief among them. Even with California’s mammoth problems in regards to her own budget crisis, they are still forcing a bag of goodies from the public largess on the backs of an already burdened tax paying populace.
Part 2:
