Obama Plays Race Card In U.S./Arizona Illegal Immigrant Debate

    SCOTTSDALE, Arizona – If you think the Labour party is uniquely incompetent, corrupt and venal, think again.

The U.S. Democratic party in general and its leader President Barack Obama in particular make Gordon Brown and Labour look almost benign in their uselessness. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been observing the clamour over illegal immigration here in Arizona and it isn’t a pretty sight.

At first you might think the issue is straightforward.

Arizona has a huge, open border with Mexico. Mexicans have been poring in illegally for many years, and millions of them are now working off the books in the U.S. Recently there has been a spate of violence, intimidation and murder on the border around Tucson involving Mexican drug gangs. The locals are up in arms and finally want something done. The governor of Arizona Jan Brewer, exasperated at the lack of action by the federal government in Washington, pushed a bill through the state legislature seeking to do something about this.

The bill was carefully drafted to avoid the charge that police could use these powers to intimidate all Mexicans, rather than the ones who have fallen foul of the immigration law. The police would only be allowed to question suspects about their immigration status if they had already committed an offence, like speeding.

But the usual suspects were into action quickly, ignoring the facts and seeking to lie and smear. The likes of Democratic troublemaker Rev Al Sharpton were quick to play the race card, invoking smears about Nazism, as they predicted this would mean police asking anyone brown to show their papers. Remember that we are talking about illegal immigration here. In Nazi Germany, the police were trying to stop people leaving the country. In this case it is the exact opposite. People are trying to sneak in to partake of America’s unique opportunities and living standards.  The law seeks to try and repair this damage.

There is a huge problem because various U.S. governments over the years have failed to secure the border with Mexico. President Obama called the Arizona law “misconceived”, even though he knew perfectly well that there was a horrendous problem to be solved, and that the Arizona law was scrupulously fair and only sought to force the federal government to live up to its own laws.

This is what makes his attitude so interesting. Obama reckons that even though any reasonable person would agree that Arizona was right to seek early and tough action, his whipping up of various reliable attack dogs in the media would make black appear white. And to a degree he has been successful. Various Hollywood motor mouths were recruited to say how awful it was to try and end illegality and how racist it was. The likes of pea-brain lefty singer Linda Ronstadt led the way.

But you might say, why would Obama and the Democrats want to do this? The reason is simple. Democrats don’t see illegal immigrants as a problem, rather than as a pool of future votes which they can harvest to keep themselves in power in perpetuity. Immigrants tend to vote Democrat when they, rather easily, get themselves on voter roles.

It never ceases to amaze me how parties of the left use lies and smears to gain power. The Labour party routinely used these tactics to smear those who pointed out the shortcomings in its policies. If any one dares suggest that the National Health Service does a less than perfect job in delivering health care, Labour attack dogs go for the man, not the ball. Instead of entering into the policy debate and suggesting better ways of healing people, labour will simply say things like “The Tories don’t love the NHS as much as us and want to tear it down”.

But since I started writing this, the Labour party has finally been booted out of power, so we will be spared these underhand and childish tactics. The LibDems, being lefties, routinely do this too. Can we expect them to cease and desist while they are members of the Tory government?

Oil Spill 

    I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but sometimes when bad things happen and it plays straight into the hands of the left, you have to wonder.

During his election campaign, Barack Obama was equivocal about drilling for oil in the U.S. When he was elected it was clear he wouldn’t take any action to start offshore drilling, even though everyone knows that if dependence on foreign oil is to be achieved, exploiting U.S. oil is the only way. Obama and the Democrats don’t actually want to find any new oil because they are in thrall to Warmists who think this will only increase man’s contribution to climate change. A couple of months ago though, Obama seemed to cave into political pressure and said he might allow drilling off the east coast of America.

Then came the disastrous oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Quickly, those on the left were using this as an excuse to say that offshore oil exploration should be stopped, even though British oil production in the North Sea over 30 years has never led to any serious oil pollution. How convenient that the BP oil rig exploded when it did. I trust that any investigation will focus on just how this happened.