Film review: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel -- save money, move to India

It’s Friday, and time for a weekend cultural offering --

Once in awhile, rather than seeking common ground, it is good just to have the beloved pick the movie, and usually I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t have seen great movies like “The Blind Side” or “The Help” without deferring to tastes other than my own, and so it also was recently, when I stalwartly trooped off to see Dame Judy Dench, et al in “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

As might be expected for a movie with lots of aging British actresses and no gunplay or CGI, there were perhaps only a half-dozen men in the theater, and I appeared to be the only viewer under the age of 50. The movie earned a polite and warm round of applause from the audience at the end, something one doesn’t encounter all that often these days -- a pleasant benefit of hanging out with a more mature crowd for the afternoon, perhaps.

The basics of the plot are that a collection of British retirees have answered the ad from a hotel in India that is even more aging than they are, essentially deciding to “outsource” their retirement to a place they can afford to live. Multiple subplots develop as this group creates an expatriate community in an exotic foreign location. It is hardly the glory of being a Briton in India during the Raj, but genteel enough for all that.

There are the usual nods to modern social sensibilities and preoccupations: a homosexual British jurist (played unerringly by the underappreciated Tom Wilkinson) wanting, before he dies, to see the Indian lover of his youth (perhaps the most touching and human part of the film,) a loveless marriage between a retired civil servant and a wife whose natural shrewishness has been rubbed raw by the penury caused by them having invested most of their life's savings into a daughter’s sketchy start-up company, a scruffy would-be playboy whose preoccupations with having one last go at a libidinous fling betray the stark emotional loneliness of his existence, a recently widowed woman who has never before had a life of her own apart from her husband (Dench,) and a crotchety woman (played by Maggie Smith, who so dominated the screen as the Dowager Countess in the ITV/PBS series “Downton Abbey”) whose entire life “in service” was thrown over by a new generation of the British ruling class that somehow didn’t get the memo that some of their household servants still treated their jobs as a vocation in the truest sense of the word -- one that involved loyalty to their employers, loyalty that is not, in these modern times, necessarily returned in kind when offered.

Themes of aging and of questioning where life has gone and whether any of it was worth it play out in relatively predictable fashion; but not less effective for all that -- this is life, after all, and modern existence loses none of its pathos simply because bathos is also involved (if I may.) As Hilton Kramer, who I have been reading and quoting a lot these days, once said -- anything worth saying is worth saying over and over again. These existential explorations are nicely scripted and acted -- one could imagine even these talented actors being stymied by a more mediocre script or this quite good script falling flat with lesser actors. Still, the most fascinating parts of the film are found in the substrata.

Most important in this respect is the brief but effective portrayal of life in modern Britain at the beginning of the film, seen particularly through the eyes of Smith’s character, who finds herself facing the business end of a painful 6 month wait for a simple hip replacement thanks to British socialized medicine and who furthermore finds herself unable to find much of anyone at the hospital to talk to whose native tongue is actually English. When she makes the decision to outsource her hip replacement to India, recuperating at the “Marigold,” one thinks “why not?” If the poor old thing is going to be operated on by Indian doctors with difficult to understand accents, why not do it where the costs are low and where it can be done right away?

In fact, all of the characters seem, without commentary, to realize that while life in an Indian city involves smells and teeming crowds and intestinally challenging foods like nothing they have before experienced, there is a sense in which life really hasn’t changed that much when moving from “Londonistan” to India, where they are still surrounded by a different culture but where they are actually treated with more respect and kindness than they experienced at “home.”

Whether it is Smith’s character unexpectedly connecting with an “untouchable” -- who like her, is a domestic -- or Dench’s character unexpectedly finding herself going from retired housewife to consultant to an Indian calling center that desperately needs her ability to teach them how to talk to elderly British customers, or various characters finding themselves befriended by locals whose kindnesses bespeak a gentleness in Indian culture that makes one want to go there, we see that if there are changes for these British expats, they are arguably for the better. We can envision them heading toward a more pleasant sunset than they might have had back in a Britain that has largely cast its lot not with its own heritage but with the oppressive bureaucratic weight of the EU and the self-immolation of multiculturalism. They are comfortable not because they are rich and powerful foreigners, which they aren’t, they are rather comfortable because they have discovered a place that is (may one say it?) civilized.

These are thoughts that can’t help but preoccupy one a bit as one gets older. Part of the reward for surviving the Darwinian challenges of life and for paying the exorbitant costs of living in modern welfare states like Britain and America is that one presumes one will get to retire in familiar surroundings where everyone talks like you and understands you.

But what if the end game leads to a land where one's dotage is going to be spent in surroundings one doesn’t even recognize anymore, whether because of massive immigration or dizzying societal changes? Wouldn’t it make sense simply to outsource your life sooner, while you are young enough and adaptive enough to make for a smoother change to a more inexpensive and no less foreign locale?

Mark Zuckerberg’s partner at Facebook certainly decided quickly enough that it was time to take himself and his millions to a country without confiscatory tax policies. Presumably more will follow. But what of those who are neither physically fit enough or mentally sharp enough to take such a leap as do the characters in this film, nor wealthy enough to find a sheltered enclave, either abroad or within Western countries as demographics continue to change?

I digress... This is a lush film with an even lusher soundtrack (Indian music that has been Westernized enough to make it exceedingly pleasing to an Anglo-American movie-going public’s ears,) visuals that capture the light and colors of India with warmth and comfort and with just a touch of the frisson of exoticism that makes a movie like this more than a British ensemble film that just happens to be filmed in India. Not a film for the ages, but for the bloke who wants to earn some brownie points with his own beloved, one could do much worse.

Big Sky Cairn is Absolut-ly on top of things

Big Sky Cairn -- a great new conservative blog that we are enjoying -- had the breaking news this past weekend about the Absolut Vodka ad that ran in Mexico. Look at the post, and you'll see why the ad might be somewhat controversial from a geopolitical perspective -- particularly to residents of about a third of the U.S.

In followup, Big Sky Cairn notes that there was an apology of sorts posted on the Absolut website. Actually, there were two apologies -- an immediate one on April 4 that drew more than 1500 comments (from browsing, almost all negative,) and a second, more apologetic one that has 270 comments and counting -- again mostly negative.

What is interesting is that Absolut defended itself by saying that it had different marketing strategies and ad campaigns in different countries and that the ad would have been different had it been intended for an American audience.

Duh.

There is nothing unusual about targeted campaigns -- whether in politics or in advertising. But in a global economy and the modern information age, politicians and ad-meisters alike usually pay attention to how their ads will be received in other markets. Long gone are the days when someone campaigning for President could be in Louisiana and promise to shift money from corn programs to sugar -- and then go to Iowa and promise exactly the opposite. Or the days when one could sell something in one country with ads that could be perceived as disrespectful to people in another country (at least if that country's market is sizable enough to affect the bottom line -- which in this case, it is.)

Should Americans already angry about our porous borders boycott Absolut? Sure, if they like. That's the beautiful thing about boycotts -- people have the complete freedom to buy or avoid whatever they want to for whatever reasons they choose. In most cases, not enough people participate in boycotts to make any real difference -- and sometimes when someone calls for a boycott it brings more attention to the brand and attracts some sympathy buying. (So look for Absolut sales to go up in some markets and demographics.)

But (at the risk of delving into the argument about whether there even is such a thing as a best-tasting vodka, let alone which ones are better than others) there is a much better reason to avoid Absolut. As long as Grey Goose is available, that is. Or, if one is in the mood for a more authentically Russian experience, one might put on a fur cap with earflaps and drink Stolichnaya while sitting outside in below-zero weather.

This, we would note, is for those who enjoy vodka in straight shots, on the rocks, or thinly veiled in a martini. If you're really mixing it with something, there is a good argument to be made that you're wasting your money on anything more expensive than your basic Smirnoff. In either case, there isn't much of a reason to waste money on buying that expensive Swedish firewater.

The Helena IR polls its readers on the immigration bill

Anyone who wonders why Sens. Baucus and Tester were exceeded in their zeal to oppose the recently defeated comprehensive immigration bill only by a couple of the most conservative Republican Senators need only look at the unscientific poll of Helena IR readers, where 80% of readers who responded opposed that bill.

One suspects that their mail and their switchboards were telling them the same impressive numbers, even taking into account the unscientific nature of such polls.

Incidentally, the wording of the question, "whether the U.S. Senate was right to kill the president’s immigration plan," shows how successful Democrats were in defining a bill that was largely crafted in Sen. Kennedy's offices as "the President's bill."

Where is the Montana press when our Senators need it?

The weekend leading up to Independence Day is not the time to do extensive blogging -- much better things to do both for writers and readers.

But it is interesting to note that there seems to have been little or no attention paid in the Montana press to the role that Sens. Tester and Baucus played in bringing down the recent immigration bill. The Senators themselves weren't shy about taking credit.

Montana Headlines pointed out that it was the amendment by Sens. Baucus and Tester that ended up bringing down the house of cards, and a commenter asked the rhetorical question of how the Montana media would respond. We were interested in that ourselves.

Other than the Flathead Beacon, the matter hasn't been mentioned. Among the major papers, the only other mention of the matter at all has been in the Tribune, which notes our Senators voted against cloture, but nothing else.

Given that the defeat of this legislation was the top story last week in the national media, one would expect the Montana media to take note of the Baucus/Tester press release -- whether to congratulate them, scold them, or to make the case that there was nothing special about our Senators' roles.

But to ignore it completely seems a bit odd. Or maybe our search engines just aren't working right.

Sens. Baucus and Tester responsible for killing immigration bill

Throughout the U.S. Senate debates and voting over the immigration "reform" debacle bill, Montana Headlines has kept close tabs on Sens. Tester and Baucus, noting both how they voted and the reasons that they have given for voting as they have. Just do a search on this site for their names plus "immigration," for the details.

Our Democratic Senators have voted right. Repeatedly.

And it has been our pleasure to thank them for those votes. Repeatedly.

From the first vote to attempt to kill the bill before it even began debate, through a long string of amendments, and down to the final cloture votes, they did Montana proud. We were wary, knowing that the pressures in their caucus would be great for them to cast a few symbolic votes against the bill and then, when votes were in the balance, to switch sides.

Even more importantly, Sens. Baucus and Tester articulated from the beginning reasoning that was sound. They wanted border enforcement, they opposed amnesty and stated that people here illegally should not be given preference over those who are obeying the rules. They also insisted that American workers be protected.

One of the things that has been particularly gratifying is that it was Sens. Baucus and Tester with their REAL ID amendment that broke the back of this bill. Read, for instance what National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote. The opening sentence gives the setup: "A key moment was last night when the Baucus amendment on REAL ID wasn't tabled."

Lowry portrays the conservative votes for Baucus's amendment stripping the bill of any REAL ID components as being strategic:

A few shrewd conservatives had seen the potential here and voted against tabling Baucus—even though they didn't support the amendment—because they knew it would throw a monkey wrench in the process.

When Baucus wasn't tabled because of those surprise conservative votes, a desperate Reid moved to vote on it right away to try to get it out of the way. But he couldn't because he couldn't get unanimous consent from opponents of the bill. Procedurally, he had been check-mated...

The whole issue of how REAL ID affected the entire bill is a complex one. Given that the bill changed almost hourly throughout the process (not by amendment, but through the Senate staffs of Kennedy and McCain simply rewriting it at will,) following any particular provision is difficult. It is not accurate to say that the immigration bill would have mandated REAL ID: after all, REAL ID has already been voted into law, passing both House and Senate (it passed the Senate unanimously under cover of a critical funding bill.)

The Baucus amendment was, in that sense, symbolic, since it wouldn't have undone the force of law that the REAL ID bill currently has.

Some conservatives saw the REAL ID standards in the immigration bill as essential to workplace enforcement, but when push came to shove, they certainly had to realize that workplace enforcement wasn't going to happen anyway. Not under this president.

Getting back to Sens. Baucus and Tester, they remained consistent to the end, insisting that their amendment was motivated by privacy concerns about a national ID but also that they were glad that it killed the entire bill in the process.

Baucus: "We scored a major victory today in our efforts to protect privacy and defeat a bad immigration bill at the same time... If Jon and I just brought down the entire bill, that's good for Montana and the country..."

Tester: "If by fighting to keep government out of people’s private lives, Max Baucus and I stopped the senate from passing this flawed immigration bill, then this was a real victory for Montana and the American people."

Either Senator could have hidden behind the REAL ID portion alone, and remained silent on the immigration bill itself, giving them cover with their disgruntled left wing in Montana, which only ever objected to the guest worker provision of the immigration bill.

That they did not is to their credit, and likely reflects their accurate read on how the overwhelming majority of Montanans felt about this bill.

The guestworker provision was, to be sure, a hideous feature of the bill. It was a sop to big business, plain and simple. Opponents of this bill on both the left and the right were in full agreement on that.

Opponents on the left correctly noted that guestworkers only needed to be paid minimum wage, and would undercut prevailing wages of legal workers.

What is difficult to understand is that many of these opponents on the left would have fully supported the bill if only the guestworker provision had been removed.

This position makes no sense, since it completely ignored the fact that illegal immigrants are the ultimate undercutters of American wages -- since they are illegal, they can be and are often paid less even than minimum wage.

We know from the experience of the 1986 amnesty bill that the net effect of amnesty (particularly in the absence of border and workplace enforcement) is to attract even more illegal immigrants.

Question: who would those who currently employ illegal workers hire once those illegal workers became legal? Would they employ these newly legal workers, to whom they are now required to pay minimum, and perhaps prevailing wage rates? Or will they instead hire from the new flood of illegal workers coming across the border, continuing to pay less than minimum wage? That was a rhetorical question, by the way.

Legal workers need to be protected both from guestworkers and from illegal workers -- both of which depress wages. After all, with all due disrespect to those who say otherwise, there is no job a legal worker in America won't do. There are only wages for those jobs that legal American workers won't accept.

The next question is one of border and workplace enforcement. There are laws on the books, there is money available for enforcement, a long stretch of fence has been funded. There are sanctions against employers -- and there need to be more of them, and stiffer ones.

So, will President Bush begin to enforce the laws, as he has recently loudly proclaimed that he desires to do? That, too, is unfortunately a rhetorical question.

Perhaps our Senators from Montana, who put the final knife in this bad bill, can begin to push for some Senate hearings on why this administration has been so abysmally bad at securing our borders -- in the wake of 9/11, no less.

If it were Bill Clinton, there might be some credibility

President Bush has now, in his last ditch attempt to save the immigration bill designed in Sen. Kennedy's office (with some input from John McCain,) promised $4.4 billion to fund border security.

Bush pledged his support for the proposal Thursday, heralding it as a necessary step toward convincing naysayers that the government will stick by promises to deliver on security improvements where it has neglected to do so before.

"It's important for the people to know that their government is serious about meeting these benchmarks," Bush said. "By matching our benchmarks with these critical funds, we're going to show the American people that the promises in this bill will be kept."

Coming from someone other than President Bush, this might actually mean something. But coming from him, it means nothing. Last year, Congress authorized and funded a significant border fence -- not only has nothing been done on it, but this new immigration bill actually significantly reduces the distance of this fence.

Even if such a fence is symbolic to an extent, he has never explained why a bill that Congress passed and funded was ignored. This was not some non-binding resolution -- and he didn't veto it.

In the recent dead-tree issue cover story in National Review, John O'Sullivan (himself a legal immigrant) penned an article entitled "Comprehensively Awful." He notes:

Worksite arrests for immigration violations, for instance, fell sharply under (President Bush,) to a mere 159 in 2004 from a high of several thousand under President Clinton -- a decline of something like 97% (and 9/11 had occurred in the meantime.)

Yet whenever a debate on immigration is pending, the feds mount a dramatic workplace raid. Last April, when an earlier version of the present immigration bill was about to be presented to Congress, federal agents swooped in on plants in 26 states that belonged to a U.S. subsidiary of a Dutch company, IFCO. They arrested 1187 illegal-immigrant workers and deported 275 of them.

...four-fifths of those arrested were released into the community almost immediately.

But as illegal immigration became a hotter issue,

...in 2006... 716 people were charged with criminal violation of immigration law. That compares with only 25 criminal arrests back in 2002 -- and testifies to the fact that immigration was a major political issue throughout this period. An even larger raid than that on IFCO was launched later in the year, with success.

However useful politically, and however episodic, these raids tend to undercut one of the main arguments offered for the bill by its proponents: the idea that we simply can't mount workplace raids, arrest violators...

So, President Bush, who gained the nomination and election in no small part by making it clear that he was going to model his presidency more on Reagan than on his father, should understand the message he will doubtless be sent by most Senate Republicans (and, we assume, by our Montana Democratic Senators, along with a few other Democrats) -- "trust but verify."

In other words, spending $4.4 billion -- or whatever it takes -- on border security is nothing that should be special. It should have been done for the last 6 years. Americans shouldn't have to be forced to accept amnesty for 20 million illegal immigrants, a guest-worker program, etc. in order to bribe the President into doing his job, or certain Congressmen into doing theirs.

Law-abiding would-be immigrants waiting in line shouldn't have to accept a bill that allows people who broke the law to cut in line in front of them. Besides being unfair, it sends a terrible message to all new Americans: America is a country that respects the rule of law, except when when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable.

When strict border and workplace enforcement is actually reliably taking place (and, by the way, this should first and foremost mean charging employers with violations and giving them punishment that really hurts -- not just deporting illegal workers,) then it will be time to take stock of what to do with the illegal immigrants who are already here. Not before.

Given President Bush's record, there really is no point in even pretending that this can happen until his is out of office.

Speaking of which, O'Sullivan comments, "If those Democrats who want to impeach President Bush had a sense of humor, they would cite his immigration record at the head of the indictment."

The sad part of his quip is that the word "impeachment" is actually being bandied about by some level-headed conservatives due to the fact that Bush has grossly failed to enforce our borders (post 9/11 no less) by comparison to the President we actually did impeach.

It's that bad.

Harry Reid knows the score

If anyone wants to know where the American people as a whole stand on the main provisions of the immigration bill that recently died in the Senate (and that the president is now trying to resurrect,) all one needs to read is this:

Reid said GOP leaders must show they can produce 25 Republican votes on behalf of the measure before he moves it forward.

"The question is, do the Republicans support their president's immigration bill?" Reid asked. "At this stage, it's a resounding no."

Well, the problem with a lack of GOP support is that while President Bush and John McCain may think it's great, this isn't a bill that remotely reflects where the GOP is on this issue. This isn't a GOP bill, this is a Kennedy bill with a few Republican fellow-travellers, and the vast majority of its supporters are Democrats.

Last we heard, Democrats were going to "show us the way" in running the country -- which means that what Reid needs to do is get his 51 Democrats on board (and to get Baucus and Tester, that will essentially mean making the bill GOP friendly -- if they stand by their earlier strong statements about the bill,) keep the few GOP votes he currently has, and get the president to strong-arm or bribe a couple more Republican Senators into voting for the bill.

But that's not what Reid wants -- he wants this to be Bush's bill, and he wants 25 Republican Senators to vote for it so it will be the GOP's bill in Congress as well.

If what Kennedy hath wrought is such great stuff, one would think Reid would leap at the chance of grabbing credit for it. But he knows that if this is the Democrats' bill, as Americans begin to live with its consequences, the Democratic Party will pay a stiff price.

Reid wants the GOP to take the rap for a Democratic misdeed -- that alone should be reason for Republican Senators to unite in refusing to vote for this bill unless it undergoes dramatic, dramatic changes and becomes a bill that Republicans will vote for -- and where Democrats have to scratch together a dozen votes to help out.

Dead for now

Ultimately, the opposition to the grand immigration compromise was too much. On the final vote that ended up killing the bill, supporters of the legislation couldn't even muster a simple majority. Sens. Tester and Baucus, joined by a handful of other Democrats, voted with the good guys, completing a voting record that was pretty consistent throughout the process.

Immigration update, pt. III -- Sens. Tester and Baucus change their position, Billings Gazette doesn't notice (or doesn't want to)

Montana Headlines said on Sunday that while our Democratic Sens. Baucus and Tester had been voting in ways that reflect the views of most Montanans when it comes to the current illegal immigration measure being debated in the U.S. Senate, they bear watching.

And yesterday they proved that point when they voted against the Allard amendment. Simply stated, the amendment was "To eliminate the preference given to people who entered the United States illegally over people seeking to enter the country legally in the merit-based evaluation system for visas."

Sounds pretty simple, and it would be right in line with the rhetoric from Sens. Baucus and Tester that we reported some time back, in which both said that illegal immigrants need to go the back of the line behind those trying to enter the country legally.

The amendment failed, as the above link shows, but it is worth noting that the amendment was supported by the other four members of what we had described as a core group of 6 Senators who were consistently voting in a common-sense way that supports upholding the law. The other two Democratic Senators in that group of 6 that Sens. Tester and Baucus had been consistently joining were Sens. Dorgan of ND and Byrd of WV.

Those two Democrats were joined by 6 other Democratic Senators and 23 Republicans in voting for the failed amendment.

Perhaps Sens. Tester and Baucus are beginning to show their true colors and are falling into line behind Senator Kennedy on his bill -- we'll have to see. This was a major test -- and Montana's Senators failed it.

Their votes make no sense in light of what they have previously said and in light of how they previously voted. Again, we wonder if their early votes and rhetoric were just window-dressing.

We note that the Billings Gazette failed to report on this vote at all. But earlier, the Gazette trumpeted Tester and Baucus's earlier votes and rhetoric against illegal immigration.

One would think that a reversal in position like this would be newsworthy -- but apparently if it won't shine a nice light on our Democratic Senators, it won't make the pages of the Gazette.

__________________

Our Senators also voted wrong on the McConnell amendment, which would have required voters to present photo identification when voting in person. This is a reasonable requirement. Given that many liberals are anxious to put photo identification into the hands even of illegal immigrants, we're not sure what the problem was with this amendment for Democrats -- unless they expect it to hurt them at the polls.

Time for a rumble on the right; Noonan on Bush's failure; and a postscript on Fred Thompson

The editors of the most prominent and widely-read conservative opinion journal, National Review, have issued a challenge to the editors of the most prominent and widely-read conservative-leaning national newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, to debate the immigration issue.

As the NR editors pointed out today, the silence from the WSJ editors is a bit odd:

Odd because just the other day our friends at the Journal seemed absolutely certain that they could take all comers on the issue, that opponents of the bill had no real arguments for their position.

When they issued the original challenge, the NR editors were a little more specific in calling the WSJ editors on the carpet for the latter's rash words:

It shouldn’t be a problem for the Journal’s editors to take up this challenge, since opponents of the bill aren’t “rational” on the question, have no arguments, and are “foaming at the mouth,” as they explained in a videotaped session of one of their editorial meetings last week. Click here to watch — you have to see it to believe it.

We urge them to come out of the shadows, and hope defending the bill in this forum is not another one of those jobs that no American will do. (We would challenge President Bush himself to a debate on behalf of the conservatives he has maligned, but we fear he hasn’t read the bill.)

_____________________

Ah, for what might have been. Meanwhile Peggy Noonan has declared out loud in the pages of the WSJ (she's obviously not on the editorial board) what everyone has long known but not wanted to say -- President Bush actually did finish the business his father started but never completed. Specifically, he has "torn the conservative coalition asunder," with the final piece of evidence (as if such were needed) being the recent immigration bill.

Her entire editorial is should be read, but Noonan's closing words are too appropriate not to quote at length:

One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked.

Bush senior... won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had.

Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him.

And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose his party the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him.

He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go.

This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.

This may seem like a rush to flee a sinking ship, and to a certain extent it will be. Conservatives who take the long view might consider, though, that it may not be a bad thing that Bush finally pushed them too far. If conservatives have proved anything over the past 6 years, it has been how little it took to keep them loyal. Bush met expectations in exactly three areas: he appointed good justices to the Supreme Court, he held the line on human life issues, and he cut taxes without turning around and raising them again.

Some might add to this the fact that there haven't been terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. It is true that we have experienced no further such attacks.

But leaving aside the difficulty of proving a negative, when one considers Bush's anti-terrorism measures against the backdrop of the disastrous interventionist foreign policy pioneered by his father, continued by Clinton, and brought to a crusading fever pitch in the current administration, it should be hard for conservatives to cheer this negative accomplishment with much relish.

Much of the vehemence of conservative reactions to Bush's immigration bill is that our borders are about the most concrete national defense that one can imagine. If the President's desire for cheap labor and cheap deals with Democrats is so great that it makes him willing to write off our borders, conservatives are thinking, then why have we been standing by him loyally on what has boiled down to the single issue of national security?

Put differently, if the President's desire for security is so great that he was willing to force his fellow Americans to swallow the bitter pills of the Patriot Act's worst provisions (provisions that would drive conservatives into armed revolt were Clinton to have proposed them,) and a war the likes of which no conservative from Coolidge to Reagan would ever in a lifetime have considered starting -- why wouldn't he have the courage to force big business and his buddy Vincente Fox to swallow the bitter pill of tightly secure borders?

The imploding credibility reflected in questions like these, not any sort of nativist foaming at the mouth, is at the heart of the vehemence of the conservative revolt against Bush's immigration bill.

Some Republicans tried, in an exercise of wishful thinking, to pretend that President Bush is and always was a conservative in the sense that the party rank-and-file would understand the term. Their current crushed anger is understandable, but in all fairness, someone else's self-delusion isn't entirely the President's fault.

What is important is the process of rediscovering what it means to be conservative, and rediscovering what it was about conservative thought that was once greeted by the country as fresh, honest, and bracing after decades in the liberal doldrums.

And a part of that rediscovery is realizing that conservatism changes to meet new challenges through a combination of keen observation of human nature as it is and of a careful mining of the riches of human experience and history.

____________________

Which brings us to the spreading wildfire of support in the GOP for Fred Thompson -- a man whose objective accomplishments are nearly as thin as those of his likely Democratic opponent, Sen. Clinton. The grassroots excitement about his now-certain entry into the race is due in no small part to this inchoate sense that conservatives need a leader who is simultaneously old and new.

The second-tier candidates are failing to connect with Republicans not because Republicans aren't conservative. It is because they are painting themselves as Reagan clones. Republicans instinctively know that Reagan didn't get elected because he was anyone's clone. It was because he was simultaneously old and new -- old ideas and old sensibilities, new applications and fresh articulations.

The top-tier candidates are failing to connect with Republicans for a variety of reasons. Romney has the authenticity of a telemarketer. McCain is, well, McCain. Guiliani will ultimately falter because it takes more than being neither Romney nor McCain to light up the base, especially when you and the base disagree with each other 75% of the time.

Of the three, only McCain has the slightest chance at defeating Sen. Clinton. Romney performance in a general election would make Republicans long for the good old days of 1964, and Guiliani would probably fare along the lines of, say, Bob Dole. So of the three, McCain is naturally the one least likely to get the nomination.

It is Thompson's moment. A majority of Republicans have been waiting for someone to step forward, and they will rally behind that someone if he shows himself to be worth it. Whether Thompson has the stuff to pull it off, though, remains to be seen.

Forget the lack of money and organization and high-dollar consultants, forget the late start, forget the thin qualifications. He has waged the perfect stealth non-campaign (Noonan again -- it's a priceless one,) and now the nomination is his for the taking. But he will have to take it. Not from his opponents, but from the hands of a betrayed, demoralized, and wary party.

Immigration update, part II

A series of amendments to bring sanity into the current immigration bill were brought before the U.S. Senate today. Montana's Senators continued their unbroken track record of voting to support American workers and legal immigrants, and of voting for enforcing existing laws.

While the three amendments of substance were defeated, some of these votes are getting closer, probably because more Senators are starting to hear from their constituents. The reasons become clearer, if one still wonders why Sens. Kennedy and McCain, joined by President Bush wanted to ram this bill through without debate and without the text being available for review -- based solely on a back-room deal.

A core group has emerged, Democratic Senators Dorgan (ND,) Tester and Baucus (MT,) and Byrd (WV,) joined by Republican Senators Coburn (OK,) and Vitter (LA) -- this group has voted consistently to kill bad provisions, add good ones, and kill the entire bill (anticipating that the final "deal" will be a bad one for America.)

In addition, a larger group of both Democrats and Republicans are increasingly voting with that core of 5 Senators.

Today's action:

The Akaka amendment to exclude children of certain Filipino WWII veterans from numerical limits on visas was overwhelmingly approved. There is a long and venerable history of Filipinos serving in the US Armed Services -- especially in the US Navy, and such special provision makes sense.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-MN, had an amendment to facilitate sharing information between various federal and local governments regarding an individual's immigrant status. We have had a chronic problem of state and local governments refusing to cooperate with federal authorities for various reasons, and this needs to stop -- immigration is not under the authority of state and local governments. Unfortunately, the amendment failed 48-49, with mostly Republican support and 9 Democratic votes. Sens. Baucus and Tester voted for the amendment.

Sen. Dorgan, D-ND, made another valiant effort to limit the guest worker program by submitting an amendment that would sunset the program (already cut back to 200,000 permits thanks to the Bingaman amendment) after 5 years. This more than reasonable amendment failed 48-49, this time with mostly Democratic support, joined by 9 Republicans -- a mirror image of the Coleman amendment results. Sens. Baucus and Tester voted for the amendment.

Sen. Vitter's amendment that would have dramatically restricted the amnesty provisions of the immigration bill failed 29-66. Senate Republicans contributed 20 votes for the amendment, while 9 Democrats voted for the amendment -- including Sens. Baucus and Tester.

Stay tuned.

Immigration bill update

In today's action on the immigration bill before the Senate, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, put forward his amendment to cut the number of guest workers from 600,000 to 200,000. The amendment passed 74 - 24, with Republican Senators splitting down the middle. It's not as good as Dorgan's amendment, but if the final bill makes it through, it's better than nothing, so its passage was a minor victory. Sens. Tester and Baucus voted for the amendment.

Somehow lost in the fuss over Sen. Byron Dorgan's failed attempt to strip the guest-worker provision from the immigration bill now in the works in Washington was another roll-call vote where the results were also interesting, and where Montana's two Democratic Senators again came down on the right side.

On Monday, there was a vote on a motion to proceed with the bill. Sens. Baucus and Tester were two of only four Democrats to vote against proceeding, joined by Sen. Byrd of WV and Sen. Dorgan of ND. On the Republican side, 19 Senators voted against proceeding.

This means that 17 of the Republican Senators who voted against Dorgan's amendment had earlier voted to kill the entire bill. This points toward a reliable 19 votes against the bill if it remains essentially unchanged. If the Democratic Senators who voted against the guest-worker provision hold firm, there are more than enough votes to uphold a filibuster -- and as Republican Senators continue to get an earful from the base, those 19 Republican votes should grow in number.

We will continue to monitor Montana's Senators as votes go by -- realizing that there is a lot of bargaining and maneuvering going on, and realizing that corporate America has a lot of campaign dollars to throw around. But so far, so good.

The immigration sell-out: quote of the day

No one really knows what is in the "comprehensive immigration reform" bill. It has been agreed on, but it hasn't been completely written yet or released. It will run to about 1000 pages, per report, and won't be available for examination until after the voting is done. Regardless, Republicans are already in revolt.

What appears clear even from the information available is that the only part that will go off without a hitch is the amnesty part. The enforcement parts are all on delay, under study, or weakened to the point of uselessness.

Quote of the day, from Mickey Kaus at Slate:

This is looking more and more like the Bush administration's domestic version of Iraq: a big risky gamble, based on wishful thinking and nonexistent administrative competence, that will end in disaster.

What disaster?

1) Lower wages for struggling unskilled--and semi-skilled--American workers (including, especially, underclass men) even when the labor market should be tight;

2) Income inequality moving further in the direction of Latin America--maybe even to such an extent that social equality between the rich and their servers becomes difficult to maintain; and

3) A large semi-assimilated population along our southern border with complex, understandably binational allegiances--our own Quebec. ...

Actually, I can see why some Republicans might not be so bothered by (1) and (2). But what about Democrats? ...

There was never much question for conservative Republicans about who was the better of the two candidates in both 2000 and 2004. But one thing that has always sat poorly with conservatives has been Bush's position on immigration. And the more populist-minded the conservative (read: "Reagan Democrats,") the less Bush is liked on this issue.

The Bushes have close ties with any number of members of the Mexican plutocracy. The Mexican system, whereby there is a small number of extremely wealthy families and a huge mass of working poor, doesn't seem to distress the Bushes all that much. Mainly because they and theirs won't ever be a part of the latter group.

The failure to control our borders and control immigration is a tidy arrangement between two groups of plutocrats in the U.S. On the one hand, you have the Republican big business interests who like open borders because they drive labor costs down and will eventually break the backs of unions. It's like a bottomless cheap labor pool.

On the other hand, you have the (usually very wealthy) plutocrats at the top of the Democratic food chain -- epitomized by Sen. Kennedy. They like open borders because they know that first and second generation immigrants vote overwhelmingly Democratic. It's like a bottomless voter pool.

Working class Democrats are fooled into thinking that controlling borders and immigration is a mean Republican thing. All too many Republicans are fooled into thinking that what is good for Wall Street regarding immigration is good for Main Street, too.

As a final note, the Bush-Kennedy-McCain amnesty/immigration deal marks the end of McCain's presidential hopes. A spokesman bravely says that they're glad it is happening now, and not this fall. But given that real immigration reform (i.e. enforcement) is an issue of deep concern to the Republican base, and one which polls show deeply resonating with a vast majority of Americans. McCain can run, but it is doubtful that he will now be able to hide. His chances of wooing the Republican base were always a long shot. Now, it's Hail Mary time -- and one can't imagine what he would have up his sleeve.

Enter Fred Thompson stage right.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

Image Courtesy of www.old-picture.com

Tempers getting short in Helena: A frustrated Sen. Joe Tropila, D-Great Falls, made a symbolic gesture by proposing that the Senate adjourn and come back only after all compromises have been hammered out by legislative leaders and the executive branch. This was prompted by Speaker Scott Sales, R-Bozeman, having said that the House wouldn't consider voting on the appropriations bills sent back by the Senate until after the governor had signed the property tax relief bill that the legislature will eventually send his way.

The governor, of course, sticks by his position that he wants everything in front of him first before he'll sign anything. What is at stake is prioritizing, and it is no secret that priorities differ between the Republican controlled House and the executive branch -- and quite frankly there are probably more differences between the Senate, narrowly controlled by the Democrats, and the executive branch priorities than might meet the eye.

The order in which bills are sent to the governor for his up-or-down verdict are an important control that the legislature has over prioritizing spending and tax relief -- and this is doubly true now that the governor has shown a willingness to use very wide latitude in applying amendatory vetoes.

The press is making the House Republicans out to be the villains of the piece, and they have not perhaps mastered the skills of PR management enough to prevent this from happening. But as Charles Johnson points out in his Sunday "Horse Sense" column today:

The governor hasn't helped the situation much in recent days. He has been lobbing verbal bombs at the Republican legislators from California, where he has been raising campaign money, meeting with investors and appearing on a political talk show.

This was like having a batting practice fastball lobbed across the middle of the plate -- the fact that the GOP hasn't managed to hit that one out of the park, or at least deep into left field, is concerning.

One can only imagine what kind of press a Republican governor would get if he were off doing big-money fundraisers and playing rock-star while he and his legislature were in desperate need of working out some final compromises. One suspects that it would amount to more than a brief factual mention here or there.

But those are the ground rules, and Republicans need to figure out how to win some victories in spite of them. Maybe they still will, but a lot of Republicans are concerned about how badly to our disadvantage this deal is going to end up once it is finally closed. Until we find out, all we can do is wait, and keep rooting for the home team.

Multiple use under fire from East Coast Democrats: Montana Democrats like to get lots of mileage out of the fact that there is a history of big out-of-state corporations treating Montana's resources as though we are their colony.

Their point is valid, but all too often Democrats are blind to colonialism of the liberal sort. The proposal to turn much of the public land in the northern Rockies into wilderness areas is just another step down the path of incrementalist policies that ignore the fact that people actually live here.

The fact that the noted scientist Carole King (who apparently gained an in-depth knowledge of the needs and priorities of Montanans in between writing admittedly catchy pop songs) was involved in crafting the legislation makes the proposal difficult to ignore, we realize -- but we still feel that some critical thinking is in order.

In a recent episode of the Discovery Channel series Planet Earth, an ecologist living in Africa made some pretty harsh comments about people living in the developed world who "love the animals" from looking at pictures of lions playing with their cute cubs -- and don't have any idea (or really don't care) that in the particular part of Africa where he works, humans are a source of food for lions. Needless to say, the local whose children have been eaten by the noble lions have a different view about the beasts than does the environmentalist living in New York.

His point was not that lions shouldn't be protected (far from it,) but rather that if Westerners don't have any solutions that involve humans as part of the environment, they should just mind their own business.

We in the West like to make jokes about our ideas for reintroducing wolves to Central Park or the Berkshires, and we're only half-joking. Conservation and environmentalism starts at home, and eastern lawmakers should start telling us what to do with our land out west once they've taken some radical and very expensive actions in their own states (with their own money) to restore pristine wilderness.

As a side-note, it is interesting that this entire article went by without a single mention of one of the most emotion-laden uses of public land in Montana -- grazing. We realize that the Taylor Grazing Act (which isn't going anywhere anytime soon) protects grazing rights, even in wilderness areas, national monuments, and the like. But make no mistake about the fact that ranchers leasing public lands are in the cross-hairs. Rural Montanans need to keep this in mind when casting their ballots in 2008.

Selling out on immigration reform: Sen. Jim Shockley, R-Victor, had some words for Republicans who voted against his measure banning state contracts with those who hire workers who are in the U.S. illegally.

"The Republicans sold out to the Montana Contractors' Association and the Chamber of Commerce," Shockley wrote in a newspaper editorial.

Well, of course they did. Both of those organizations certainly had valid concerns about the legislation, but we have two things to say about that: Shockley should have known that those organizations would have issues with the bill, and worked with them far ahead of time to find acceptable language for meaningful reform. The Contractor's Association and Chamber of Commerce, on the other hand, should have enough economic patriotism to want to work with Shockley to come up with good legislation that accomplishes the desired goal of reducing illegal workers without putting honest employers at excessive risk.

By not working with Shockley to come up with acceptable language and getting the bill passed, those organizations are giving the impression that they really don't care. Even if they don't, they should try to pretend as though they do. Because "we don't care" attitudes aren't the sort of thing that is going to make for good relationships with the rank and file of the party that generally supports their legislative concerns.

The most inflammatory comments came from one of the usual suspects, however -- and no, we're not talking about Ed Butcher:

Sen. Christine Kaufmann, D-Helena, opposed all of Shockley's unlawful-immigration bills and said they "encourage us to distrust people with dark skin." She agrees with Shockley that unlawful immigration could be a widely discuss topic in the next state election, but said it would be one without merit. "It is a created issue rather than a real problem," Kaufmann said.

A majority of Americans are concerned about the rule of law when it comes to illegal immigration. They feel that employers, state and local governments, and would-be immigrants should all obey immigration law, just as we citizens are expected to follow the federal laws that apply to us.

If Sen. Kaufmann wants to call Sen. Shockley and other such Americans racists, she should come right out and say so in so many words. It will win her a lot of friends here in Montana. Which is why she is instead calling Sen. Shockley a racist by using sly code-words.

Everyone knows it's windy: It really is hard to find a downside to full throttle development of wind power generation in Montana, so this Great Falls Tribune article about the possible development of transmission lines that will take power from the windy country north of Great Falls to connect with grids in Great Falls and Alberta is encouraging.

We understand that there are some noise issues, that rights of way for transmission lines have to be worked out, etc. There are things to deal with in every kind of energy development, and wind power is no exception. There was a concerning reader's comment attached to the Tribune story, though:

The next logical step after developing the transmission lines would be creating one or more large man-made lakes in the area for pumped-hydro energy storage. Such a project must be done in such a way as to not trample on but rather assist the needs of farmers and other land owners within the Golden Triangle.

The following link was provided by the reader. Why this provokes uneasiness, we're not sure, but perhaps it has to do with the fact that water is hardly in plentiful supply in this state. Storing energy, which is produced on nature's schedule, for use during peak periods that depend on our consumption schedules, is of course a key issue with wind power. Further manipulation of Montana's water supply to accomplish such storage is, however, something that should be approached with more than a little care.

Another opportunity lost on illegal immigration

Chalk up another failure for this Montana legislative session. Yet another illegal immigation bill bit the dust, this one in the House Judiciary Committee. This bill sponsored by Sen. Shockley had passed with strong bipartisan support in the Senate.

As we have noted before, we need to have comprehensive measures dealing with the problems of illegal immigration before the inevitable wave hits Montana -- not after.

There are bipartisan concerns -- labor, voter fraud, safety, the solvency of social service programs, law enforcement, and general respect for the rule of law.

Bipartisan action should be able to address all of these concerns -- if only each side is willing to grant that the other's concerns are valid. As long as Republicans remain reflexively anti-union and pro-cheap labor -- and as long as calling Republicans racist remains a respectable talking point from our supposedly more intelligent friends on the other side of the aisle, we won't get anywhere.

And we need to.

Focus, focus, focus -- on immigration

The goal should be simple: make Montana a state that has a climate that discourages illegal immigrants from choosing Montana as a place to live and work, and a climate that is friendly to legal immigrants who want to come to Montana. Wanting to come to Montana does, in and of itself, show good judgment. Who could fail to be moved by Vasily Borodin's dying words in Hunt for Red October: "I would have liked to have seen Montana."

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a bill proposed by Rep. Dennis Himmelberger, R-Billings requiring Montana drivers to understand English so they can read road signs and communicate with law enforcement officers.

Montana Headlines questions, however, whether bills like this cause us to lose focus on the primary task at hand. As we have noted before, we agree with former Montana Secretary of State Bob Brown on this point: Montana is blessed with having had time to learn from the experiences of other states that have long dealt with the effects of illegal immigration. If we fail to use this grace period wisely, it will be a failing of our current legislature that may have longer-reaching impacts than will any other of the failings they devise.

Montana should have a comprehensive package of bills that focus on key issues: requiring citizenship or legal resident status to receive welfare benefits or hold a driver's license, instituting procedures to ensure that only citizens of Montana vote in our elections, establishing laws that require law enforcement officers and other state employees to notify the INS of any illegal immigrants they encounter, and instituting stiff penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants.

English can and should be the official language of Montana, the only language in which state business and public education is done. The concerns that Rep. Himmelberger has about drivers who can't understand English are more than warranted. But if a comprehensive plan as noted above is instituted, that will take care of itself.