5/16/2006

Border Control Advocates Have No Amigo In El Presidente:
Fat fuckin' Minutemen, frothin' furious Lou Dobbs, and House Republicans need to know: when it comes to the border with Mexico, George W. Bush has always been a pussy. When he ran for Governor in Texas, he would barely engage with the issue of illegal immigration, other than to say that Ann Richards' actions were only "to make the President look good." While Governor, as Elisabeth Bumiller says in her scrotum-scrubber of an article in today's New York Times, "There were no major battles over immigration or immigration legislation when Mr. Bush was governor."

Of course, Bumiller leaves out the little incident where Marines shot and killed an Hispanic-American teenager, Texan Esequiel Hernandez, Jr., while on border patrol for drug runners. He was tending goats, and, as ever when goats are involved, George W. Bush was inactive. According to the May 24, 1997 Houston Chronicle, "In Austin, Gov.George W. Bush, after reading newspaper accounts of the shooting, termed Hernandez's death a 'terrible tragedy,' said spokeswoman Karen Hughes. But Hughes said the governor had not been briefed on the incident and was not going to issue a public statement." But that was par for the course for Bush on immigration. You can't alienate that voting bloc. And anything you do, at all, will send them scurrying around like, well, jumping beans, in a fury.

'Cause, you see, George W. Bush loves him some immigrants, says Bumiller in her slow, lubricious cock-sucking of an article: "Mr. Bush first met Mexican immigrants at public school in Midland, Tex., where Hispanics made up 25 percent of the population. Later, when he owned a small, unsuccessful oil company, he employed Mexican immigrants in the fields. When he was the managing partner of the Texas Rangers, he reveled in going into the dugout and joking with the players, many of them Hispanic, in fractured Spanglish." So, wait: you mean Bush knew Mexican immigrants in third grade? And he hired Mexicans to do the shit jobs? And he tried to act cool with the tough ball players? In Texas? How's that possible? Fuck, did he put on a sombrero and serape and saunter onto the streets of Laredo to declare, "MisiĆ³n lograda" on border control?

So last night, Bush promised not to militarize the border by sending the military to "assist" the Border Patrol. Gonna leave those guns behind, right? He made the same kind of promise about the Border Patrol and National Guard as he made about the Iraqi forces and U.S. military: as one stands up, the other will stand down. "[T]he number of Guard forces will be reduced as new Border Patrol agents and new technologies come online," Bush said, and that's worked out so well in Iraq.

He promised to enslave a large number of immigrants in demeaning, low-wage jobs, using them up for a few years before tossing them back to their countries of origin. Call it the "Used Condom Approach" to illegal immigration, or, if you must, a "Temporary Worker Program." Said Bush, "This program would match willing foreign workers with willing American employers for jobs Americans are not doing...A temporary worker program would meet the needs of our economy," meaning cheap chicken choppers for Tyson, with no hope of anything like union protections or unemployment or job security or health insurance or any of those little things. Everyone wins. Except, you know, most people.

As ever in a Bush speech, there was the weirdo, scary science fiction-y proposal. This time it was the use of "biometric technology" to track legal immgrants: "A key part of that system should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamper-proof." Even easier, of course, would be snapping an ear tag on 'em.

It was a fairly useless speech, since the proudly nutzoid House Republicans (motto: "Look at our big piles of shit! Look at them!") aren't gonna budge, and Bill Frist is just a punk-ass little bitch on everything. And, ultimately, all Bush did was promise to move his toy soldiers some more, cross his fingers, and hope for the best. Watching the President is a little like watching the last marathon runner at the Special Olympics. Gosh and darn, you want the limping fella to make it to the finish line, but mostly we just want him to give up so we can go hom and get on with our lives.

But, hey, at least Bush didn't mention 9/11, huh?