Day: May 15, 2006

Writing in the rightwing “news” site WorldNetDaily, a genius named Vox Day, whose bio says he is “a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist church, and has been down with Madden since 1992,” posits that the United States could model the Nazis’ effiency at population control in dealing with the illegal alien crisis:

[President Bush] plans to address the nation tonight, a speech wherein he will almost surely attempt to deceive citizens into believing that he does not wish the mass migration from Mexico to continue unabated. He will likely offer some negligible resources for law enforcement and border security – resources which will never materialize – in return for an amnesty program that will grant American citizenship to the Mexican nationals who have helped lower America’s wage rates by 16 percent over the last 32 years.

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: “Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it’s just not going to work.”

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Wrong numbers: According to today’s PollWatch from the National Journal, there’s no clear majority opinion among Americans on the topic of phone-record data mining by the National Secret Agency (I suggest this name change, as the agency has little to do with security and everything to do with secrecy). I suppose folks are more concerned with “American Idol” than with American ideals.

A slight majority (51 percent) told Gallup/USA Today pollsters they disapproved of the program to collect phone records, while 43 percent said they approved. A new survey from Newsweek found similar sentiments: 53 percent of respondents said they thought the program “goes too far in invading people’s privacy,” compared with 41 percent who deemed it a “necessary tool to combat terrorism.”

Gallup/USA Today found more than 60 percent said they would not be concerned if they knew the government had their records; 22 percent said they would be very concerned, and 13 percent said they would be somewhat concerned. Those numbers dovetail with an ABC News/Washington Post overnight poll released last week in which 66 percent of respondents said it would not bother them if they learned the NSA had a record of their calls.

But Gallup/USA Today also found that a majority of respondents (57 percent) said they would feel their “personal privacy” had been violated if they knew their phone company had handed their records over to the government; 42 percent said they would not. Nearly two-thirds said they favor immediate hearings in Congress on the issue.

When Newsweek pollsters asked if presidential powers have been overextended “in light of this news and other executive actions by the Bush-Cheney administration,” 57 percent said it had and 38 percent said it had not. Responses were split along party lines — with 81 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of Republicans answering affirmatively — but 61 percent of self-identified independents fell also said yes.

Newsweek’s poll showed another new low for Bush: 35 percent said they approved of the way he is handling his job and 59 percent said they disapproved, a slight shift from March’s 36/58 split.

The direction-of-the-country measure showed a more precipitous drop: Just 23 percent said they were satisfied with the way things are going, down 7 points since the previous poll. A slight majority — 52 percent — said they wanted to see Democrats win back control of Congress in the fall; 35 percent said they wanted the GOP to keep its grip on power.