If you’re not familiar with New Jersey newpaperman Paul Mulshine, let me introduce him.

He’s written about Kwanzaa, Mumia, and Central America, in ways that tend to establish his conservative credentials.

Recently, however he’s been concentrating on George Bush. He likes him more than he does Mumia, but only just.

His column just before the election was called “Why I’m voting for this clown .” (Online here, with slightly different title.)

Check out Mistreated for too long, the dog bites back October 25, 2005, in which he points out that Bush couldn’t betray conservatives over the Miers nomination, because he never was a conservative.

I seem to be the only one who remembers this, but way back in the 20th century when Bush first ran for president, he ran not as a conservative but an anti-conservative. The point of the Bush candidacy, initially at least, was to stop a conservative, Pat Buchanan. Buchanan was proposing such right- wing measures as an isolationist foreign policy and strong curbs on immigration, both legal and illegal.

He also takes on the latest enforcement spin, which has been dumped on by Peter Brimelow and Juan Mann here on VDARE.com, and adds a fact that was new to me.

So there was no news, just spin. And it was lame spin at that. Karl Rove is like a pitcher who has lost a few miles an hour off his fastball, an aging boxer who telegraphs his punch.

In this case, Rove was lucky the media ignored the story. Any journalist who looked into it would have come across that fax sent to Rove last month by U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith suggesting the strategy that emerged last week.

“Enforcement of immigration laws, current and new, should come first to satisfy the increasing public demand for border security,” wrote Smith, a Republican from San Antonio.

“Liberals can easily and accurately be painted as opposing enforcement,” Smith added. “Only then, as enforcement begins to gain traction, should the twin programs of guest workers and long-term illegal residents begin to be addressed.”

Brilliant. Except that someone in Smith’s office dialed the wrong number and sent the fax to a Democrat. Before long it was posted on the Internet, where it outraged both liberals and conservatives. The liberals were upset for obvious reasons. The conservatives were upset because the fax showed that they were once again being taken for fools by a bunch of Texans too dumb to dial a phone. [Bush spins across the border, The Star-Ledger (Newark) October 23, 2005]

More Mulshine can be found here.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

“As the nominee to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke will face, quite literally, a world of economic challenges.”[Greenspan's heir apparent, October 25, 2005 ]

Now Bernanke as it turns out has resisted even the modest restrictions on immigration in place since 9/11:

“I think a very important part of the productivity gains in the past decade were associated with our open immigration policy,” he said. “If we don’t allow, if we don’t make provision for bright people, whether they be graduate students or professional people to come… that’s a loss to our society and a loss to our potential productivity.”

See also here:

“all four of my grandparents [emphasis added] were foreign-born, coming from Europe to the United States either just before or directly after the First World War last year a period, incidentally, that represented a high-water mark of immigration to the United States.”

UPDATE:

Bernanke’s feelings about immigration haven’t been much mentioned outside VDARE.com, but check this out:

Since he was sworn in on June 21, Bernanke has testified once before congress and given five speeches on three noncontroversial subjects. He nonetheless has stayed busy, providing research on such topics as Bush’s policies on immigration and trade.Federal Reserve hopeful keeps head down, By Brendan Murray and Craig Torres, October 18, 2005