HEALTHY EATING, RIGHT-WING LOONS AND THE GOP'S NEXT BEST THING TO SLAVE LABOR

Last night I got into a brief spat with another leftie blogger because he was kind enough to invite me to eatin' and drinkin' festivities with Southern California bloggers... of all stripes. He mentioned right-wingers. With my irrepressible, but sometimes not clearly decipherable sense of humor, I shot back with a wise-ass answer about the only good right-wingers were... well you know the rest. Oh he was pissed-- especially when I threw in that I don't drink alcohol and that I only eat health food. (We patched it up later). But the irony is that that very night (last), I had a dinner date with an actual real life right-winger!

Yes, my seriously unlikely pal, J from rural Georgia came along for dinner to The Jade Cafe in Silverlake, where all is safely vegan, organic and uncooked. Healthy, healthy, healthy-- and yum, yum, yum. And the right-winger just babbled on about the merits of Sean Hannity, Neil Boortz and Michael Savage (all of whom he volunteered were his favorites). J also volunteered that he had eaten a steak before we met, since he knew what was in store for him (although he also professed to have loved Jade Cafe's food, especially the sugar-free dessert and said he plans to go back.)

But as we were driving away-- I had something special lined up for him in an African-American ghetto-- an odd thing happened. I don't remember what the stimulus was, probably something that came out of my car radio from NPR or Air America, but J started pontificating about his theories on undocumented labor and illegal immigration. "Oh, so you're a Democrat on this one," I offered. He was momentarily stunned; then wary.

But, he was actually offering up many of Labor's arguments against BushCo doctrine on Immigration, one of the (many) soft white underbellies of Greed and Selfishness Republicanism's hold on non-multimillionaire white voters. Need I mention that J is a hopeless xenophobe (although later that night he mentioned to a houseful of my African-American friends that he exclusively goes for "ethnic" chicks and offered to introduce anyone interested to all the white girls he always rejects)? But, nonetheless, somewhere deep down in his rural Georgian roots he senses that there's something wrong with policies that drive American wages and buying power down. And, as much as I'm sure he wants to try, he can't quite blame Bush's immigration policies on either Bill or Hillary Clinton (not that either of those too-corporatist-for-my-taste almost-Republican-Democrats has a position all that different from Bush's). But Bush and the Republicans are in charge now-- and not the Know-Nothing/Tancredo wing of the GOP-- and they are the ones who are primarily concerned with one thing that impacts immigration: CHEAP LABOR.

Ever since progressives routed them and made them give up their slaves (the ultimate in cheap labor), the right-wingers, who are currently led by BushCo, have been fighting, sometimes literally, a battle-to-the-death with working men and women struggling to achieve the American dream through their labor. Right-wingers define this quest for fair wages and a safe working environment as "communism" and do whatever they can, often very successfully, to confuse people like J from rural Georgia.

I'm sure many people like J were confused today when they read in USA TODAY this morning that undocumented immigrants are working on hurricane reconstruction for below minimum wage rates. I mean first the hideous Bush decides the way to "help" New Orleans recovery is by making it legal for companies (particularly his campaign contributors' companies outside of Louisiana) to pay substandard wages and then we find out that on a U.S. Naval base Halliburton has a crew of undocumented illegal immigrants working away. I saw a report on this on CNN last week on which the manager of the project just lied and lied and lied about it all, doing his best to cover up BushCo/Halliburton policies of illegally exploiting desperate third world workers for their own profits and much to the detriment of American workers-- AND U.S. SECURITY CONCERNS.

According to the USA TODAY report, "Robert 'Tiger' Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, said about 75 union electricians lost their jobs after the Bush administration temporarily suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which guarantees the prevailing local wage for workers hired under federal contracts." Halliburton hired them through Alabama and Texas-based slave-labor companies. Imagine that! Where the hell is Lou Dobbs when we need him?