A quick one this week because (a) ugly weather predicted here and (b) the show actually provided an interesting clarification of a single issue, which is rare indeed.

The issue of course is "immigration" which is The Big Hoo-Rah of late. Anybody notice that time spent talking about "immigration" is time not spent on illegal NSA and other wiretaps, IRAQ, casualties in, lack of government of, sectarian strife pervading, etc? Yeah, I thought you might have thought so too.

Anyway, the "immigration" issue, such as it is, is breaking down into a four-way (or more) split. One, obviously, is by party, but the other side of the split is making some very weird bedfellows indeed. Basically you have the legalize-in-place crowd vs. the sweep-'em-up-and-bus-them-back-to-the-border then let 'em back in one-by-one proponets. These were personified today by George Allen (Nutball-VA) and Barak Obama (Well-Meant-But-Liebermanesque-IL).

Allen is willing to alienate the whole Hispanic vote, it seems, in hopes of making it up with the nativist, USA-USA-USA chanting, job-threatened, terrorist-terrified, Daddy protect-me-from-evil-brown-people WATB vote. If he weren't an idiot this might have a very good chance of working (remember that even Bush played the compassionate conservative role originally) if he weren't an idiot.Then again, so is Bush, so this threat is not to be ignored. This quadrant's mantra is "Secure Our Borders And Sweep The Aliens Into Camps."

Obama was quizzed more on the are-Hispanics-a-threat-to-blacks issue, which he finessed quite nicely to make the point that people with no bargaining power whatever over wages are a threat to all low-skill, low-wage workers. He hit the Secure Borders button quite a bit too, but emphasized the other two legs of the tripod: a Path to Citizenship program, basically to prevent employer exploitation, and limited Guest Worker program tied to specific industries like agriculture.

George Allen wants the Rio Grande Wall (any similarities to a structure of that name in Berlin are entirely unmentioned) but on the cheap. More border patrols, sensors, drone aircraft. If we had secured the border 20 years ago (is this the It's All Jimmy Carter's Fault defense? Sounds like it) we could talk about a guest worker program now, but we didn't so we can't.

Oh yeah--Allen is also dying his hair. Or sure looks like it. It looked positively....Reaganesqe. Hmmm.....?

By amazing coincidence he wound up his segment, after a question about both a presidential run in '08 and holding onto his Senate seat this fall, with a...dare we say Reaganesqe?--paen to, get this, Reagan. Who he loved, who got him his start in politics. (Reagan has much to answer for. One hopes Satan watches the Sabbath Gasbag shows.) And Allen actually used the line "Sweet Nectar of Freedom" in relation to something or other. Sweet mother of horseshit....

The roundtable was Robert Reich, Martha Reddick, and George WillHeEverShutUpAndRetireAlready. Martha was trying to pitch the notion that all Bush needs is better communicators so we hard-of-hearing folks will learn about the wonderful things he's done here and in Iraq.

Robert Reich pointed out that he can communicate till his lips fall off and nothing will change until he gets better policies, which it is entirely too late to do anyway.

George Will looked dyspeptic, and babbled about how Bush needs to fight against Congress. And that he (Bush) has had a lifelong strength on the issue of immigration because he loves Mexicans. Very confusing.

Reich almost had time to make an important point about how the Federal Pension Guarantee Benefit (whatever the name is) is setting up to be the next Savings & Loan meltdown as companies keep making promises of pensions then freak out and dump them in bankruptcy court or default when comes time to actually pay the said pensions. But of course by then they were out of time. Maybe next week.

Speaking of next week...tune in again, same blog time, same blog channel.