Are we still far away enough from the presidential election to be allowed to criticize a politician without violating McCain-Feingold? Probably not, so let me say this: I hope Hillary Clinton is the next President of the United States of America.

One of the most annoying commentaries about Senator Barack Obama campaign is that if he wins the election people around the world will take a more favorable view of the United States. Seth Gitell gives you good reason - if you needed any - to think that that brave new world probably wouldn’t come about if the Senator were to become President. And that’s not a slam on Senator Obama, I hasten to add, as the president’s job is to worry about the well being of Americans, not the feelings of foreigners.

As Gitell puts it:

This Hussein phenomenon, to me, is a classic case of projection. The election of Barack Hussein Obama would make baby boomers and other Americans feel better about their country.

A couple of years ago I called casino gambling in Massachusetts a no brainer, but Governor Deval Patrick’s administration has allegedly put a lot of head into it.

This might actually be the best part, quoting The Boston Globe: “[The Patrick aide] helped draft Patrick’s casino bill.” Only the bill is a poorly thought out piece of crap that was based on one-sided pro-casino guesses, estimates, and talking points. I guess he was on paid leave before he was placed on unpaid leave.

A common argument against enforcement of immigration laws is that it is impossible or at least hopelessly impractical to deport all 12-20 million illegal aliens. The retort is that it isn’t necessary to deport them all, most of them will leave on their own volition if enforcement is stepped up. There are reasons to believe that enforcement is in fact reducing the size of the population of illegal aliens from Brazil in Massachusetts, partly by sharply reducing the inflow and partly by inducing illegals to leave. The effect is the one might have expected: Better prospects for low-end workers. Liz Mineo writes in the MetroWest Daily:

The flier flatly announced job openings for housekeepers at the Sheraton Framingham Hotel requesting “good disposition, some cleaning experience, team work spirit, and attention to details.” In exchange, it offered “competitive salaries, a friendly work environment and a benefits package.”

…

Calls to the Sheraton Framingham were not returned. The flier invites those interested to apply in person or call a number that now appears to be a fax line. The hotel’s Web site said there are no job openings.

I guess that’s how companies decide that the jobs they offer are of the kind Americans won’t do, as the saying goes. Mineo continues:

Though the flier drop may indicate the difficulties businesses in the area face recruiting workers - as reports of Brazilians going back home continue - it could show that fewer and fewer Brazilians are coming in.

I can see at least five reasons for why that would be: The weakening dollar has reduced the attractiveness of a low-wage job in America. Last summer I talked to a Brazilian-American importer at eBay Live in Boston who had to contend with a soaring real. Just as the real’s rise decreased his profits it also takes a bite out of the value of money sent back to Brazil from America. A second economic reason is the commodity boom across the world that has pushed up prices for agricultural products and raw material, two industries that are very important to Brazil’s economy. Brazil easily has the most advanced economy in Latin America and is able to enjoy relatively broad-based benefits of increasing commodity prices (correspondingly, Brazilians can fairly be described as the cream of the crop of illegal aliens in the United States, partly because they are more or less from the cream of the crop of Brazil’s population).

Three important things have happened on the enforcement side: Mexico started demanding Brazilian’s to get visas in order to enter the country. At about the same time America ditched the so-called Other Than Mexican catch-and-release policy, which in short meant that non-Mexicans who were caught trying to sneak across the border were released rather than detained while awaiting deportation. Finally, tougher interior enforcement have made many employers unwilling to hire workers who don’t have proper documentation.

The result appears to be that employers are having a harder time finding low-wage workers in parts of Massachusetts.

Writes Mineo:

A landscaping company based on the South Shore contacted Basilio’s center to look for Brazilian workers, but didn’t have much luck. It offered $8 an hour and required a green card.

“With a green card, people are not willing to work for $8 an hour,” said Erika Abreu, who works at the center that is sponsored by St. Tarcisius Church.

$8 an hour is the minimum wage in Massachusetts. It is in my opinion a good thing that companies that offer minimum wage rates have a hard time finding workers. It would be, in my opinion, a bad thing if such companies were able to simply bring in essentially whatever number of foreign workers they desired, as the McCain-Kennedy bill proposed last year.

A couple of years ago Mineo wrote an outstanding series of articles about illegal migration from Brazil to New England. She has, in my opinion, displaced The Boston Globe’s Yvonne Abraham as the leading immigration reporter in the state (perhaps one should say chronicler since Abraham is no longer a reporter but a columnist).

Here’s the link to the Sheraton flier.

Below is a screenshot from an online poll at the website of one of Sweden’s biggest daily newspapers. They question is “Who do you hope will become America’s next president?”

“Annan” is Other and “Vet ej” is Don’t know.

I have no idea what John Edwards did to so royally piss of the Swedes.

From Boston’s Chinese-American newspaper Sampan:

A new immigrated Chinese woman with two children age 8 and 10 lost her husband a few months ago. She worked part-time job with meager income. The income barely covers rent and food. She sought assistance with the program at Asian American Civic Association. With the help from program staff, she filed an application for food stamp and public housing too.

Within a few weeks, she received $298 worth of food stamp benefits. This benefits helped her and her family to live much better.

The American Dream sure has a different meaning for ‘65ers than it did for Ellis Islanders.

The ancestors of Jewish-American community leader Mr. Abe Foxman’s Turkish buddies were a busy bunch. They slaughtered not only hordes of Armenians, but also hordes of other non-Muslim people, including Assyrians. Many surviving Armenians cleverly emigrated to America, a country that matters, while Assyrians for God knows what reason chose to turn my Old Country hometown into their diaspora capital, which was an unfortunate choice from a political standpoint since Sweden by and large doesn’t matter at all.

On Thursday, prodded by Armenian-American lobbying efforts, the U.S. House of Representative Committee on Foreign Affairs declared the anti-Armenian massacres in Turkey during the Great War (a.k.a. World War I) genocide. Apparently, the Committee decided to give Turkey/The Ottoman Empire a pass on the other anti-Christian massacres, perhaps in part because Armenian-Americans have given Assyrians and other non-Armenian Christian victims of Muslim Turkey’s murderous policies the cold shoulder. Many Assyrians are pissed and feel betrayed. Here are a couple of reader comments from Länstidningen i Södertälje, my old hometown’s daily newspaper:

“The Armenians deny the genocide against us Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs and Pontic Greeks… They have never put our names on their monuments. They can go to Hell.”

“When we’re lobbying for the [genocide memorial] monument in Södertälje it’s a given that Armenians should be included [but Armenians] never mention us.”

Various Assyrian-Swedish notables welcomed the resolution but lamented that it focused only on the plight of Armenians, ignoring the fate of non-Armenian Christians at the hands of the Muslim Turks.

I don’t see how America benefits from Congress writing history pamphlets. At least some of the arguments advanced by Congressmen during the debate are borderline childish, like this one, by the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff:

[H]ow can we take effective action against the genocide in Darfur if we lack the will to condemn genocide whenever and wherever it occurs?

Mr. Seth Gitell writes that Time Magazine - which apprently is not only subscribed to by dentists and doctors but occasionally also read - is running a hit piece on former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The magazine disputes the former Mayor’s claim that he has been dealing with terrorism for thirty years, arguing that he mentioned terrorism only once in his “80… major speeches from 1993 and 2001.” Off the top of his head, Mr. Gitell can recall at least two other occasions where the mayor addressed the issue.

E-comm consultant Randy Smythe finishes a post on eBay Live with an interesting bit of speculation:

Of course if Meg Whitman’s buddy Mitt Romney is elected President that might help delay [government] action [against eBay]– I’m just saying.

Here’s a thought OT (off topic) With Meg reaching 10 years at the helm of eBay and eBay facing their most daunting issues ever would Meg leave eBay late this year or early 2008 to join Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. If Mitt is the front runner I think the possibility becomes remotely feesible.

How about that? I wonder what role Ms. Whitman would play in a Romney White House? I’d put her in charge of ICE because she’d make all the visa fees unaffordable. I’m so funny I hurt.

One of the Republican Party’s fund-raising operations called my wife today to ask for $500, money that would get her “dinner with the President,” her name in an ad in the Wall Street Journal and a certificate that she could frame and hang in her office (shouldn’t they spend that money on rebuilding the party, and recruit and support candidates?).

There’s a Swedish comic book from the mid-1980’s called Socker-Conny in which the protagonist desperately tries to scrape together money for beer. In one panel he pleads “I’ve called all my friends…” to which a dark figure darkly replies “And now you’re calling your enemies.” Yes, my wife’s a life-long Democrat. A Bush hating, Clinton-loving Democrat.

But since many Republican donors reportedly are refusing to give any money as long as the White House and the Republican leaders in Congress keep pushing for amnesty for illegal aliens I suppose the party is left with little choice but to call liberal Democrats for financial support.