Anti-Immigrant Bill a Manufactured Crisis to Help Bush
by Cheryl Seal
I would stake next year's morning coffee supply on that !he sudden big flap over the so called "anti-immigrant" bill ( Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illega Immigration Control Act of 2005) is yet another manufactured crisis, designed to pull Bush's quickly charring fat out of the fire.
Here's how it goes: Just when Bush's approval ratings are in the toilet and things are going downhill in Iraq, pull out the ole "crack down on illegal immigrants" bill and threaten to ram it through. Of course, everyone knows this bill will never pass the Senate as written, but the idea is to strike enough terror into the hearts of immigrants and humane Americans to get a major media show going. To help foment this, get your pals in the rightwing talk show industry to talk it up so it sounds like the "illegal immigrant concentration camps" are just a heartbeat away. Then when the predictable protests are held, get your pals in the mainstream media to cover the hell out of them - the same coverage the nationwide protests against Bush's war in Iraq just the week before did NOT get. Hype it to within an inch of its life, with emotional sound bytes, video, and photos. Exaggerate the number of protestors at each event as heavily as the number over anti-war protestors are routinely downplayed. Really tug at the nation's heartstrings - show shots of pretty young Latino women holding signs that read "Do you want me to leave without my baby?"
Then, just when the super-heavily publicized emotional crisis reaches fever pitch, have Bush ride like John Wayne to the rescue, either threatening to veto such "evil legislation" or offering his "Solomon-like" compromise that saves the day. So thus he suddenly looks "compassionate" to the public (saving those poor Latino women and their babies!), gains points with moderate Republicans who have pulled away from him, and looks less like a racist bastard to the the rest of the non-white world. God, how obvious can this phony ploy be?? And how clueless can the American public be NOT to see it?
If you look below the nearly transparent surface, you can see all the wriggly little worms crawling around. Wriggliest of them all is James Sensenbrenner, a guy with gigantic Boss Hogg jowls who looks like an evil corporate version of Oliver Hardy. Sensenbrenner authored the Act, along with NY state's Peter King. The bill is suspiciously draconian - as in a bill that no one believes for a New York second will actually pass, especially as is. For example, the bill would, among other things, "turn relatives, employers, counselors, co-workers of undocumented immigrants who perform any charitable act to them into an "alien smuggler," subject to up to five years in jail." (NY Daily News"). I mean, this sort of language is obviously DESIGNED to invoke outrage and was never meant to actually make it into law.
The Bill was passed by the House in December, but this is a typical GOP ploy. A bill that everyone knows is dubious will often pass the House, which is filled with corporate Republicans willing to line up like lemmings behind just about anything they are told to line up behind. The passage of a bad bill is designed to: 1. Get gratutitous brownie points for Washington Republicans from their far-rightwing supporters (Reps can later claim it wasn't THEIR fault the bill didn't make it through the senate), 2. Create a diversion that drowns out more important issues by forcing a needless debate, and 3. Give Bush a chance to appear to be a "compromising voice of reason."
In any case, no one with an IQ above their shoe size who knows anything about Sensenbrenner actually BELIEVES he is working against the Bush administration (as this bill makes it appear). Puleeze! There are few other people besides Dick Cheney who have worked harder to help shape and promote the Bush dictatorship than Sensenbrenner. What's really odious this time is that these slimebags are trying to use the nation's immigrants as unpaid bit players in their national media epic.
The Nasty Truth about Sensenbrenner
Sensenbrenner led the successful push in 2004 to block an overhaul of the nation's intIelligence system - an overhaul that would have given US intelligence chiefs more independence from the executive branch, which means if that the executive branch could no longer hide and/or manipulate intelligence with no oversight and with impunity. Sensenbrenner even blocked a compromise deal that many Republicans had decided to support. The Washington Post reports: "The two chief opponents of the compromise were House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.). They persuaded scores of GOP colleagues to join their opposition in a sometimes emotional closed-door meeting of House Republicans"
Sensenbrenner has used the immigration bill before as a ploy to get what Bush wanted. One way Sensenbrenner tried to block the intelligence overhaul bill was to insert language based on the original anti-immigrant bill (introduced in early 2005 by David Drier) into the compromise that called for a police state-like crackdown on illegal immigrants. The language was obviously inserted to make it impossible for many Democrats to support the compromise (and, of course, Sensenbrenner could then later claim that the Dems were just wimps who wouldn't fight). However, this ploy backfired when many Republicans decided to back the compromise BECAUSE of the immigration language. So guess who then removed the language? Sensenbrenner himself, according to Think Progress.
Sensenbrenner is a master of staged set ups to aid Bush and undercut opponents. This jowly, arrogant creepo has used treacherous, deceitful means over and over to try to push the Bush agenda while Bush critics looks evil or weak. For example, last June, when the House Democrats were trying to debate the Patriot Act, Sensenbrenner simply shut off the House microphones and declared the session at an end. Sensenbrenner thus helped perpetuate the image to the media - intentionally and calculatedly - that Democrats "never put up a fight" on issues like the Patriot Act. Btw, it was Sensenbrenner who lobbied to make it legal to use provisions of the Patriot Act against ANY citizens the government decides it wants to harass, not just terrorist suspects.
Sensenbrenner also tried to help Bush ram through the police state-like federal requirement for "national IDs" by barring Democrats from any of the secret meetings on this odious move. In the end, the measure ended up being designed to "kill two birds with one stone": take the US one step closer to a police state and throw business to the automobile and insurance industry: The New York Times reported that "Congress is [trying to] ram through a bill that turns state-issued driver's licenses into a kind of phony national identity card through the mislabeled "Real ID" provision. And in order to make absolutely sure there's no genuine debate, the sponsors have tied it to a crucial bill providing funds for American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Attaching a bad bill to a vital one is a sneaky business, making it nearly impossible for thoughtful members of Congress to vote against it." So this type of slithery bill manipulatiuon is clearly Sensenebrenner's classic modus operandi.
Wanna hear more?
While Sandra Day O'Connor was still on the Supreme Court and had started to more consistently vote her conscience, thereby not siding with Bush's Supreme henchmen, Sensenbrenner called for the creation of an "office of inspector general for the federal judiciary". Sensenbrenner claimed it was to prevent "judicial activism." But I notice we've heard no more about the inspector general's of the judiciary scheme since Roberts was confirmed, much less since Alito was rubberstamped.
Oh, it gets worse. To make the Democrats look not just bad, but downright evil, Sensenbrenner once actually REWROTE amendments to legislation originally authored by Democratics, to make it sound as if the changes were designed to protect sexual predators from legal consequences!!
In short, Sensenbrenner is not above ANYTHING. And, of course, neither is G.W. Bush.
http://cherylsealreports.com/antiimigrantcrisis.html