How about this AP headline:

“Romney Fires Landscapers Over Illegals –– Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Tuesday fired a landscaping company for using illegal immigrants to work on his lawn a week after a tussle with rival Rudy Giuliani over this issue.”

You know what struck me about this?

Not that he fired an illegal, was that they used the word “illegal“ in the headline.

This is like a Reuters story:

“Romney Fires Landscapers for Illegals.”

If this had been a Democrat, and if the story had even been written, the headline would have been: “Democrat Presidential Candidate Fires Undocumented Workers.” They would never use the word “illegals.”

When is the last time you saw the Media use “illegal“? They don’t do it, except now when they can tie it to a Republican: Mitt Romney.

The three main authors of this report are former State Department officials with previous reputations that should lead one to doubt their conclusions. All three are ex-bureaucrats who, as is generally true of State Department types, favor endless rounds of negotiation and ‘diplomacy’ and oppose confrontation.

These three officials, according to the Wall Street Journal, have ‘reputations as hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials.‘ ‘They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’

Tom Fingar was a State Department employee who was an expert on China and Germany — he has no notable experience, according to his bio in the Middle East and its geopolitics.

Vann Van Diepen is also a career State Department bureaucrat, who, according to the New York Sun, is one of the State Department bureaucrats who want ‘revenge’ for having their views regarding Iran ignored by the Bush Administration. He is now seeking to further his own agenda.

As the Sun wrote in their editorial yesterday:

‘Vann Van Diepen, one of the estimate’s main authors, has spent the last five years trying to get America to accept Iran’s right to enrich uranium. Mr. Van Diepen no doubt reckons that in helping push the estimate through the system, he has succeeded in influencing the policy debate in Washington. The bureaucrats may even think they are stopping another war.’

Vann Diepen also shares a lack of experience in dealing with Iran or the region.

The third main author comes in for particular criticism in the Wall Street Journal editorial. Kenneth Brill served as the US Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA). This is an agency that has served to enable Iranian’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has even been called a friend by the Iranian regime.

As he should be, for he has been an enabler of its nuclear weapons program and has stiff-armed European Union diplomats who have worked to restrain Iran.

ElBaradei and the IAEA have over-reached and now seek to control diplomatic negotiations with Iran — a function that is beyond its mandate.

Brill was apparently unwilling to stop this mission creep and put an end to ElBaradei’s efforts to help Iran. Or, as the Wall Street Journal hints, maybe he was just incompetent.

“Brill also has no previous history of experience dealing with Iran. (He graduated from Business School at Berkeley in 1973.)”

So exactly what a number of people have suspected is certainly true here. You have some disgruntled State Department people, one of them actively pursuing a program of allowing the Iranians to enrich uranium, sabotage, unhappy with the Bush administration.

It’s exactly the kind of thing that I suspected and feared yesterday, and the president is not backing down from this and he’s not accepting this per se in the sense that this doesn’t mean they’re not a threat, this doesn’t mean that they’re not going to continue to try later on down the road, if they have, indeed, stopped.

They’re still enriching uranium, and you don’t do that to drive cars around and provide electricity for the Iranian people.

This is Joe Biden last night with Chris Matthews on Hardboiled.

Matthews says, “Why did we invade Iraq? Senator Biden, we were we threatening World War III with Iran, why did this administration, Cheney and the president, keep pushing the war? Why do they always want to fight or scare somebody? What is it about if it’s not weapons?”

BIDEN: I can’t prove it. I think it’s about our ability to try to dominant that region of the world to control oil. The only thing I can fit together with Cheney and his gang is that they went to war, they are smarter than they are acting. They went to war in the hope that they would be able to do two things. One, have a government that sat on a whole bunch of oil that would still exist in the world that would be indebted to us. Two, have permanent military bases in Iraq to dominate that part of the world, to be able to control oil, not to go steal it for American oil companies, but to be able to control the price and control the access of it, a very Machiavellian view.

I have multiple reactions to this. He’s very deft here for Senator Biden, starts out, says he can’t prove it, says I don’t think they’re trying to get the oil for Big Oil. Can I give you a real simple reality? It may be controversial, but it’s inarguable.

This is a world that runs on fossil fuels, folks, and it’s going to run on fossil fuels long after you and I and your grandkids are dead. Wind, solar, all pipe dream stuff, as we sit here and speak now. Would somebody explain to me what is so immoral about the leaders of this country attempting to maintain a supply and access to the fossil fuel that runs the world and runs our economy?

It is the fuel.

I’m not suggesting Biden is right. What I’m suggesting here is that even if a part of all of the strategy here is to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices, what in the name of Sam Hill is wrong with that? What’s the crime? Where’s the immorality in it?

What’s wrong with having a friendly nation in the Middle East allied with us? What’s wrong with this? Biden said all of this as though he’s indicting Cheney and Bush as criminals over oil. Now, I know this kind of thing plays well with these nut bins that make up the Democrat Party base, but I ask you a serious question of human being to human being, what in the world is so immoral, or wrong, or irresponsible about trying to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices for the purposes of the US economy and its growth — that’s jobs, that’s people’s lifestyles, that’s people’s lives, what is so wrong with this?

I am not conceding that that’s what this is all about. I’m only reacting to Biden and his attitude here that somehow a nation that thrives, and lives, and depends on, and requires the free flow of oil at market prices is somehow criminally disposed if it seeks to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices.

Hell’s bells, folks, somebody’s gotta do something to protect us from liberals and Democrats.

We can’t drill for our own oil in Alaska; we can’t drill for it in the Gulf, while the ChiComs and the Cubans and the Mexicans are and the Brazilians are, but we can’t.

We can’t open our capped wells — they were capped back in the eighties — and get that, we can’t do that, we can’t use our own. Where are we going to get it? This attitude that these Democrats have, it’s like I said yesterday, we get up every day, come in here, and what this job has become in large measure is defending this country against these people and their screwball ideas.

Senator Biden takes a train home to Delaware every day. He doesn’t have a place in Washington, when he has to stay, chums with somebody. What does he think his Amtrak train runs on? What does he think the lights and the air-conditioning in his Senate office run on, or the restaurants that he goes to out there, what does he think powers all this? This is just the height of irresponsibility, this answer about oil. He tried to indict Bush and Cheney as only caring about that, all the rest of this was just a sideshow, they actually want to get their hands on the oil supply, the Middle East’s oil supply.

Somebody has to do something to get around the obstacles posed to growth and freedom in this country by liberal Democrats and the Democrat Party in general today.

Look, I understand. You know, a little knowledge is okay, but you know what the biggest problem is? It has a huge cost.

I’m not making a joke here. Ignorance is the most expensive thing this country pays for in so many ways. Ignorance is what allows this global warming hoax to be believed by a bunch of people who simply are ignorant. I’m not saying stupid. They just don’t know, and yet they think they do.

In the last 50 years, CO2 levels in the atmosphere are up, so are global temperatures. “Ah! Well! See? CO2 is causing it!” We don’t know this. We can’t prove it! It has yet to be established.

Yet people believe it because, in a linear way, it makes sense. But it’s total ignorance that allows the belief to happen.

Same thing here with the situation in the Middle East, be it Iraq, be it Iran, be it Al-Qaeda, be it the war on terror, free flow of oil at market prices, “Let ’em handle it. It’s not our problem.”

It’s ignorance, and we pay a huge price for this.

The biggest price we pay for ignorance is electing so damn many Democrats, which is one of the biggest obstacles to progress and success in this country for the individual human being that I have ever encountered.

It is ignorance. Devotion to ignorance, bliss, blissful ignorance, is the only explanation for the election of Democrats.

If people actually sat down and thought about this and learned what the differences in the two ideologies are, conservatism and liberalism.

— see, liberalism, you don’t even have to think about it, because it’s all feelings. It’s the most gutless choice you can make. All you have to do is be a liberal and you’re a good person and you care and you have tolerance, all this rotgut that’s not even true, and it’s just easy, and your ignorance allows you to believe a hoax.

It allows you to believe a bunch of propaganda.

Ignorance, the most expensive thing we pay for in the United States.

Thanksgiving Day Proclamation 1981
Date: November 12, 1981
By: Ronald Reagan

America has much for which to be thankful. The unequaled freedom enjoyed by our citizens has provided a harvest of plenty to this nation throughout its history. In keeping with America’s heritage, one day each year is set aside for giving thanks to god for all of His blessings. On this day of thanksgiving, it is appropriate that we recall the first thanksgiving, celebrated in the autumn of 1621. After surviving a bitter winter, the Pilgrims planted and harvested a bountiful crop. After the harvest they gathered their families together and joined in celebration and prayer with the Native Americans who had taught them so much. Clearly our forefathers were thankful not only for the material well being of their harvest but for this abundance of goodwill as well.

In this spirit, Thanksgiving has become a day when Americans extend a helping hand to the less fortunate. Long before there was a government welfare program, this spirit of voluntary giving was ingrained in the American character. Americans have always understood that, truly, one must give in order to receive. This should be a day of giving as well as a day of thanks. As we celebrate Thanksgiving in 1981, we should reflect on the full meaning of this day as we enjoy the fellowship that is so much a part of the holiday festivities. Searching our hearts, we should ask what we can do sass individuals to demonstrate our gratitude to God for all He has done. Such reflection can only add to the significance of this precious day of remembrance.

Let us recommit ourselves to that devotion to God and family that has played such an important role in making this a great Nation, and which will be needed as a source of strength if we are to remain a great people. Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 26, 1981, as Thanksgiving Day. In witness where of, I have here unto set my hand this twelfth day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and sixth.

————————————————————————————————-

Proclamation of Thanksgiving

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed,

Done at the city of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State

Wishing all, a blessed Thanksgiving.
PL

Democrat debate on NPR, yesterday in Des Moines. The moderator Robert Siegel had this exchange with the Sen. Biden.

SIEGEL: Clearly, many Muslims hate the US enough to want to do us grievous harm. Would you speculate on the reasons for their hatred of us, Senator Biden, why?

BIDEN: The reason we are disliked so much is because we are trusted so little. The reason why we are disliked so much, obviously — I’m not talking about Al-Qaeda, I’m talking about the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world who look at us and when we say and do things as we’re talking about now with Iran, conclude that this is a war on Islam.

Why, the world hates us because of George Bush. Now, NPR, obviously a bunch of libs: “Why do they hate us? Can you Democrats tell us why, why do they hate us? We’re so bad that they hate us, we’re so scared, why do they hate us?”

I don’t care why they hate us. It doesn’t matter a hill of beans to me.

The premise behind this question, “Why do they hate us?” is absurd, because it implies that we’re guilty.

Of course, to liberals, America is guilty.

Oh, and this also got to me…

OBAMA: What I’ve been consistent about was that this saber rattling was a repetition of Iraq, a war I opposed, and that we needed to oppose George Bush again. We can’t keep on giving him the benefit of the doubt, knowing the ways in which they manipulate intelligence.

Manipulate intelligence?

We just had some intelligence that totally screws Bush.

But, of course, this wasn’t manipulated, was it, Senator Obama? No, no, no. We can trust all of this. If, if, if, if, if, the proverbial if, the Iranians and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have actually shut down the nuclear program, it ain’t because of sanctions.

It’s Shock and Awe in March of 2003 in Baghdad.

Berry Hussein Obama, pay attention, and try to keep up.

OBAMA: Listen to the Republican candidates’ debates and how they frame this issue. And if you are a Muslim overseas listening to Rudy Giuliani say, “They are coming here to try to kill you,” which is the tenor of many of the speeches that are delivered by the Republican candidates, you would get the impression that they are not interested in talking and resolving the issue peacefully. Now, what we need to do is we need to close Guantanamo; we need to restore habeas corpus; we need to send a strong signal that we’re going to talk directly to not just our friends but also to our enemies.

And once again, ignorance will applaud that answer. I think, Senator Obama, they spoke loud and clear on 9/11 when they came to New York to kill us. Rudy was there. Senator Obama, it was 9/11, 2001. They came to kill us. They came to New York to kill us. You know what? They went to Washington to kill us. And you know what, Senator? They did. Almost 3,000 of us they killed. They came here, and they were here for a long time.

I’m sure many Americans talked to them. They went to Vegas for one last fling. They’re out there taking flying lessons. I’m sure a lot of Americans talked to them. I’m sure they probably liked a lot of Americans they ran into. They came here, Senator, and they’ve said they’re going to keep coming.

You can go talk to them ’til you’re blue in the face and you can close Guantanamo, and you can guarantee our defeat, more power to you.