immigrants: terrorism:: LGBT community: Federal Marriage Amendment

Which is SAT-speak to say how many ways can the Republicans pull the wool over people's eyes? First the GOP (Grand Old Party) decided to make undocumented immigration THE hot button issue - internal focus groups and polling suggested that the issue was a win-win - it motivated their base of (white) Christian conservatives and split traditional Democratic-leaning base groups like labor and environmental groups from immigrant rights activists. Not to mention, just one mention of "security" would make Democrats cower and run for political cover, selling out a constituency that currently can't vote. Well, the Republicans figured it would be like making mac n' cheese to bully one of the most disenfranchised parts of America, since they have no voting rights and no legal status.

Little did they figure on the massive rallies to show our support of our immigrant brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors. The rallies I attended were wholly diverse with grey haired seniors marching alongside young punk anarchists and queer pride activists standing up next to Catholic nuns. (The GOP by way of Tancredo and Sensenbrenner's House bill HR 4437 really pissed off and mobilized the churches when they wrote that preachers can't minister to parishioners because it's a CRIME to "aid and abet" undocumented immigrants.

And what do you know? The left mostly stayed together and it was the right who splinted down the corporate America on Wall St and the average Bubba in Texas line. Corporations (and small businesses) ultimately NEED undocumented labor to do all the menial and dirty jobs that actual make these Fortune 500 companies run. They need someone to make the food and then throw out all the trash, someone to deliver their mail and to stock the shelves.

Plus they discovered that the majority of Americans actually support undocumenteds. Damn those inconvenient truths that even scare ads can't dispel. Onto the next bogeyman, which is gay-bashing via the Federal Marriage Amendment.

There's a true field-tested nuclear bomb which is sure to make everyone look over here while they are busy ripping off taxpayers here (and over there.)

It seems to me like the GOP is running out of dirty tricks to distract the American public from the spiraling gas prices, exploding roadside bombs in Iraq, the plummeting economy and feeble job market, and their own general inability to manage domestic, foreign or ANY policy.

There's a reason why members of the LGBT community were marching in support of immigrant rights, and it's encompassed in this oft-quoted poem:

First they came...

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Peace and love to everybody and remember that my struggle today could be yours tomorrow.