1/30/2008
I'm DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE.
Yes, my dear friends--done. I've been beating myself against this new novel like a hawk moth at a lit screen. My wings are tattered. But I am satisfied. Justified. And finished.
I'll be delivering it to Little, Brown Firday afternoon. I think...I think.... Well, why jinx it? But I think it's really, really, really good. I vowed to make you laugh, to scare you, and to entice you with richness and amazement. And I think I even managed to make it a hankie-wetting story, too. So, whew. Glad that's done.
How's this title: Into the Beautiful North.
As soon as I get back from NYC, I'll watch a bunch of dvd's and hit the treadmill and buy loud cd's and pump iron and toughen up for the Big Marathon. Yes: Hummingbird's Daughter II.
I'll make you a bet right here and now: Beautiful North will be my third movie deal. I'll invite you now to the Urrea Rancho...out there...in the hills.
Yrs.,
L
Border Beat Immigration Monday
Yes, my dear friends--done. I've been beating myself against this new novel like a hawk moth at a lit screen. My wings are tattered. But I am satisfied. Justified. And finished.
I'll be delivering it to Little, Brown Firday afternoon. I think...I think.... Well, why jinx it? But I think it's really, really, really good. I vowed to make you laugh, to scare you, and to entice you with richness and amazement. And I think I even managed to make it a hankie-wetting story, too. So, whew. Glad that's done.
How's this title: Into the Beautiful North.
As soon as I get back from NYC, I'll watch a bunch of dvd's and hit the treadmill and buy loud cd's and pump iron and toughen up for the Big Marathon. Yes: Hummingbird's Daughter II.
I'll make you a bet right here and now: Beautiful North will be my third movie deal. I'll invite you now to the Urrea Rancho...out there...in the hills.
Yrs.,
L
1/29/2008
“Tijuana makes me happy.” -- The Nortec Collective
January 28, 2008
#
PLEASE GO TO MY LAST BLOG POST FOR THE FAMILY FUND FOR SLAIN USBP AGENT LUIS AGUILAR. To those of you who have sent money, like Red Charlie—thanks.
#
“WHEN THE UNITED STATES SNEEZES, TIJUANA CATCHES PNEUMONIA.”
www.tijuana.indymedia.org
Once again, The Border is in the headlines. No, not our border. “Egypt struggles to reseal Gaza Strip border.” “Gaza Border Proves Easier to Open Than to Close.” “As Egypt Tries to Plug Border, Gazans Poke New Hole.” Interestingly, Egyptians are responding to this wave of illegal immigration in the surest border way, proven by time: they are moving in goods for sale! Offering savings while jacking up prices! Moving in blue jeans, running shoes, bread, sunglasses, aspirin! Shades of San Ysidro, California.
Did you see today’s papers? There was a picture of an Egyptian kid at the border fence with a big tray of pastries for sale to the “illegals”! They looked just like tortas and empanadas! I’ll take one of those, and lay on some jalapeños.
Meanwhile on our own border, USBP agent, Luis Aguilar, is run down intentionally by Mexican drug dealers in a Hummer. However, much more interesting to the Entertainment Tonight media, rapper Lil Wayne was caught—allegedly—ahem—crossing the border with drugs! In Yuma! In the same sector where Agent Aguilar was assassinated! By drug lords! In other words, Lil Wayne—ALLEGEDLY!-- was investing good American money in the organization that murdered Luis Aguilar.
Devo had it right: “It’s a beautiful world for you. For you. For you. It’s not for me.”
#
It isn’t just Americans who hate the Mexican border and are ashamed of it. Gael García Bernal, the cutie-patootie post-modern movie star from Mexico City, once attended an important arts event in Tijuana and, during his public presentation, helpfully reminded the gathered adoring public that Tijuana was the armpit of Latin America. Gee, uh, thanks! We couldn’t be more proud.
I wonder—does that make San Diego the shoulder? The more vivid border-haters have been heard to address TJ, or Juarez, or Matamoros, or Nuevo Laredo as the anus of Mexico—that’s even less helpful, though it’s plenty vivid. One has to wonder which appendage/orifice the United States becomes.
But Tijuana is the eternal optimist. The great survivor. They scrappy alleycat. The perfect capitalist construct. Hey, Gael—before you leave, you wanna buy a plaster Bart Simpson statue?
For you, amigo, it’s half-price! Hey, amigo…how about a blanket? Hey! I got a nice surfer hoodie right here.
Hey…!
#
Way back at the shadowy birth of Immigration Monday (we need a snappier title, don’t we—now that the blog is swelling up into some kind of b-movie monster), I trumpeted the amazing and welcome book, AQUI ES TIJUANA by Fiamma Montezemolo, René Peralta, and Heriberto Yepez. (Black Dog Publishing.) Not only is it a physically ravishing chunk of funk, but it’s a compendium of astounding data, history, wit and joy. Yes, bad news too. When I post the Immigration Monday reading list in the near future, you can bet this book will be on the shelf.
I’ll give you a Ph.D. reading list—everything you need to know about the border. Learn for yourself. Do it for yourself. Change the world by yourself. Be Zapata, sisters, be Sor Juana, brothers. While you’re joining me in the self-built Border Studies Ph.D., AQUI ES TIJUANA can get you an MA in Tijuana Studies.
Gael García Bernal and the delicate Chilangos of El D.F. aside, the border is alive and overwhelming and sometimes beatific. It is dark, violent, troubling and insane (yes, all these things) in direct relation to its proximity to the United States. Oops. Yass, yass, as Dean Moriarity says to Sal Paradise. Yass! You see, the Unites States places its massive buttocks upon the imaginary line and grunts and groans and—whoa, dude—did you eat something that upset your tum-tum?
Politely stated: Mexican border cities have always, forever, without pause or doubt, been what we could call SERVICE PROVIDERS for the big fat (beloved yet feared) patriarch squatting on the line. You don’t think so? Prohibition? Hey, run to Mex for booze. Horny sailor? Hey, run to Mex for a hooker. Wanna see women degraded in sex shows. Hey, run to Mex where a poverty-stricken woman with a starving family will copulate with fruit or a donkey for money. We don’t like to see people sitting around, sleeping under cactuses like that guy on the Taco Bell signs! Work! We can be proud that we have taken that welfare-chiseler and gotten her onstage earning good minimum wages.
And our great mental/spiritual American Exceptionalism salve is that we can go home to civilization and say, “Damn, them Messkins is sub-human!” Truly, we are the city shining upon the hill.
Don’t feel guilty. Guilt is bunk. It’s a sucker’s game. All we liberals feel guilty all the time—instead of actually doing anything about the world. We sigh and fret. We sip our slim-latte and crunch our biscotti and shake out heads. But we don’t do anything.
Urrea’s Dictum # 741: Guilt is self-indulgence.
How come the Bible doesn’t yell “guilt” all the time? Look in your mconcordance. Mine has two listings for guilt, amigos. One with a few verses from the New Testament, and one with a slightly bigger handful of quotes from the Old. None that I can see deal with “feeling totally bummed about the gnarly bad stuff.” Feelings? Zero entries in the concordance! [Note to self—time to rethink that whole “poetry” thing you have going on.]
God is a writer. (Dictum # 1.) God knows what’s up with words and the urge to write-sing-yell. Guilt? No. Conviction? Yass, yass—now you’re getting somehre. Now you’re cooking with gasoline. (It’s cheaper at Pemex.)
Feel convicted and act: even if all you do is scrawl a pointless little blog like me. But feeling guilt? Nah. At the end of the day, all you do if you’re guilty is go to bed tired, thinking you really took part in saving the world because you were inconvenienced for an hour or two.
It’s caca de toro.
Besides, Tijuana likes your money.
This is the great sin of the border: love of money.
#
Need cheap cigarettes? Mexico! Horse thief? Hide out in Mexico! Want a quick and inexpensive muffler job? Mexico! Want affordable meds because your health insurance sucks? Tijuana, here I come. Want to film TITANIC and MASTER AND COMMANDER on the cheap? Build a studio in Tijuana! Wanna hid your toxic waste and radioactive bilge water where only poor brown invisible paupers will be poisoned? Tijuana Municipal Garbage Dump right this way!
Wanna run a toy factory where women work 19 hour days for a $1.50 a day making lead cars for the world’s children? How about the maquila we own in MEXICO!
Spring break? Quick divorce? Botox? Abortion? Cancer treatment? Crafts? Silver jewelry? Oaxacan wooden carvings? Pottery? Velvet Elvis paintings?
Drugs?
Homey, please.
“You attack us for selling drugs
But who are the consumers?”
Molotov
#
DATA from the TJ book:
In 2000, earnings for traffickers in illegal immigrants on the border grew to more than 7000 million dollars, according the the United States State Department.
Contrary to what is generally believed, the majority of “polleros” (human smugglers) are United States citizens. In 2003, 123 polleros were detained at the Tijuana-San Ysidor border crossing. 89% of them were North American.
www.mexidata.info/idl145.html
One third of the money that is paid by the undocumented (“pollos”) to by taken across the border by traffickers (“polleros”) ends up in the pockets of immigration functionaries of Mexico and the United States.
Report of the Commission of Population, Borders and Migratory Affairs of the Chamber of the House of Deputados, Mexico, 2003
#
Last week, I was wondering what it would take to really REDEFINE THE LINE.
Vicente Fox doesn’t get much credit these days. It is a standard Mexican phenomenon that the president leaves office in semi-disgrace. No, wait…I guess it is a universal phenomenon that a president leaves office in semi-disgrace. But Fox, bringing a Coca Cola executive’s business plan to Mexico for the first time, offered a new border-paradigm for a region sorely in need of one. Clinton’s NAFTA wasn’t so Nifty. It was a great concept, but the practice, well, we’re human. We want more more more, as Billy Idol reminds us. Ross Perot doesn’t sound so crazy now, does he? MEMO TO ROSS PEROT: Come Back, All Is Forgiven!
Fox tried to dismantle decades (centuries?) of Mexican distaste for their own border by declaring it not the armpit, not the rectum, not the zone of porno, dark hole, Calcutta of the border, or no-man’s land. All terms well known to anyone with any border history. (Besides, give Calcutta a break—your phone bill’s handled there and your iPod battery complaints probably built a couple of fine downtown edifices.) Fox declared the border a ZONE OF POSSIBILITY! A profit zone! A Texas-style bidness opportunity, y’all. No fool he. In the New York Times, I (yay for me, I rule and am powerful and immensely famous) dubbed him “President Vicente Crazy-Like-A Fox.”
He smartly recommended to the Bushettes that they forget about years of Mexican yowling about Imperialism, Human Rights, Border Hegemony. Let’s all forget the Alamo! Buy Buy Buy, baby! Mexico = Billions of $$$ in Fat Juicy American Profits. In other words, the creamy white buttocks of the Northern Gargantua could not only spew, but learn some exercises to intake! Suck it up, man! Fox had workers available! Fox had oil! Fox had corn and sugar and rice and tequila and fruit and fish and olives and tomatoes! Fox had copper! Gas! Tech. Cheap manufactoring. Fox even had REAL Coke with sugar instead of corn syrup! And Mexico had Mexicans with a lot of $$$ they wanted to spend! Where does all this happen? THE BORDER!
New World Order? Yeah—order me up a fish taco platter, 67 freight cars full of copper nuggets and pinto beans, six tankers with Pemex crude, and a cherry Coke.
POLITICAL PARANOIDS TAKE NOTE (are you listening, Warrior!!!????): one of Mexico’s minor-level politicians took me aside once and suggested that Bush was “soft” on immigration because Mexico made it clear that this new-world order, including the fish tacos, could happily and profitably go to China if we didn’t want to play.
How much money is available to us from Mexico? Well, the biggest Home Depot in the world is in Mexico City. I bet Gael García Bernal buys his widgets there.
Border: zone of opportunity.
Border: imaginary line uniting partners.
Save the world. Buy Nortec CDs. You can dance you ass off. Expand your mind. Pour money into my beloved border arte y música scene. Feel good—in unity with your Mexican brothers. Party hardy, y’all. Drink Coronas! It’s the NWO thing to do.
I’m not going to apologize: Tijuana makes me happy.
YEAH, BUT THEY’RE FRENCH, SO WE DON”T HAVE TO BELIEVE THEM
In case you don’t believe my rants, last week and above, here’s a little story from Agence France Presse. You see, even if we don’t pay attention to our border situation, the rest of the world does. What’s it about? Why, it’s about the “border-panic” taking hold in AZ now that more draconian state immigration laws are going into effect. Mexicans are leaving. But, but—who’s gonna work? Where’s all that spending-cash going? Did anyone see any of that tax revenue I had sitting around? What!!!???? It went to New Mexico???
I’ve said it here before. (Damn, I’m good.) You can’t scare everyone into leaving because they’re “taking too much” from your economy, then realize they took their spending money with them, and now you’re broke because those damned Beaners up and abandoned you!
Fortunately, those traitors at Truth Out post stories like this.
www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012608B.shtml
#
Lord.
I’m tired.
It’s snowing here. My daughter eats Oreos and drinks chocolate milk and watches Indiana Jones. No idea of the suffering. No sense of The Fear.
I’m finishing my new novel.
I’m daring to hope.
I’m loving America—trying to care for its broken wing. Spring isn’t far. I can’t wait to open the window.
WWJD—Who Would Jesus Deport?
Not me.
Love, L
Update: Luis Aguilar Fund
January 28, 2008
#
PLEASE GO TO MY LAST BLOG POST FOR THE FAMILY FUND FOR SLAIN USBP AGENT LUIS AGUILAR. To those of you who have sent money, like Red Charlie—thanks.
#
“WHEN THE UNITED STATES SNEEZES, TIJUANA CATCHES PNEUMONIA.”
www.tijuana.indymedia.org
Once again, The Border is in the headlines. No, not our border. “Egypt struggles to reseal Gaza Strip border.” “Gaza Border Proves Easier to Open Than to Close.” “As Egypt Tries to Plug Border, Gazans Poke New Hole.” Interestingly, Egyptians are responding to this wave of illegal immigration in the surest border way, proven by time: they are moving in goods for sale! Offering savings while jacking up prices! Moving in blue jeans, running shoes, bread, sunglasses, aspirin! Shades of San Ysidro, California.
Did you see today’s papers? There was a picture of an Egyptian kid at the border fence with a big tray of pastries for sale to the “illegals”! They looked just like tortas and empanadas! I’ll take one of those, and lay on some jalapeños.
Meanwhile on our own border, USBP agent, Luis Aguilar, is run down intentionally by Mexican drug dealers in a Hummer. However, much more interesting to the Entertainment Tonight media, rapper Lil Wayne was caught—allegedly—ahem—crossing the border with drugs! In Yuma! In the same sector where Agent Aguilar was assassinated! By drug lords! In other words, Lil Wayne—ALLEGEDLY!-- was investing good American money in the organization that murdered Luis Aguilar.
Devo had it right: “It’s a beautiful world for you. For you. For you. It’s not for me.”
#
It isn’t just Americans who hate the Mexican border and are ashamed of it. Gael García Bernal, the cutie-patootie post-modern movie star from Mexico City, once attended an important arts event in Tijuana and, during his public presentation, helpfully reminded the gathered adoring public that Tijuana was the armpit of Latin America. Gee, uh, thanks! We couldn’t be more proud.
I wonder—does that make San Diego the shoulder? The more vivid border-haters have been heard to address TJ, or Juarez, or Matamoros, or Nuevo Laredo as the anus of Mexico—that’s even less helpful, though it’s plenty vivid. One has to wonder which appendage/orifice the United States becomes.
But Tijuana is the eternal optimist. The great survivor. They scrappy alleycat. The perfect capitalist construct. Hey, Gael—before you leave, you wanna buy a plaster Bart Simpson statue?
For you, amigo, it’s half-price! Hey, amigo…how about a blanket? Hey! I got a nice surfer hoodie right here.
Hey…!
#
Way back at the shadowy birth of Immigration Monday (we need a snappier title, don’t we—now that the blog is swelling up into some kind of b-movie monster), I trumpeted the amazing and welcome book, AQUI ES TIJUANA by Fiamma Montezemolo, René Peralta, and Heriberto Yepez. (Black Dog Publishing.) Not only is it a physically ravishing chunk of funk, but it’s a compendium of astounding data, history, wit and joy. Yes, bad news too. When I post the Immigration Monday reading list in the near future, you can bet this book will be on the shelf.
I’ll give you a Ph.D. reading list—everything you need to know about the border. Learn for yourself. Do it for yourself. Change the world by yourself. Be Zapata, sisters, be Sor Juana, brothers. While you’re joining me in the self-built Border Studies Ph.D., AQUI ES TIJUANA can get you an MA in Tijuana Studies.
Gael García Bernal and the delicate Chilangos of El D.F. aside, the border is alive and overwhelming and sometimes beatific. It is dark, violent, troubling and insane (yes, all these things) in direct relation to its proximity to the United States. Oops. Yass, yass, as Dean Moriarity says to Sal Paradise. Yass! You see, the Unites States places its massive buttocks upon the imaginary line and grunts and groans and—whoa, dude—did you eat something that upset your tum-tum?
Politely stated: Mexican border cities have always, forever, without pause or doubt, been what we could call SERVICE PROVIDERS for the big fat (beloved yet feared) patriarch squatting on the line. You don’t think so? Prohibition? Hey, run to Mex for booze. Horny sailor? Hey, run to Mex for a hooker. Wanna see women degraded in sex shows. Hey, run to Mex where a poverty-stricken woman with a starving family will copulate with fruit or a donkey for money. We don’t like to see people sitting around, sleeping under cactuses like that guy on the Taco Bell signs! Work! We can be proud that we have taken that welfare-chiseler and gotten her onstage earning good minimum wages.
And our great mental/spiritual American Exceptionalism salve is that we can go home to civilization and say, “Damn, them Messkins is sub-human!” Truly, we are the city shining upon the hill.
Don’t feel guilty. Guilt is bunk. It’s a sucker’s game. All we liberals feel guilty all the time—instead of actually doing anything about the world. We sigh and fret. We sip our slim-latte and crunch our biscotti and shake out heads. But we don’t do anything.
Urrea’s Dictum # 741: Guilt is self-indulgence.
How come the Bible doesn’t yell “guilt” all the time? Look in your mconcordance. Mine has two listings for guilt, amigos. One with a few verses from the New Testament, and one with a slightly bigger handful of quotes from the Old. None that I can see deal with “feeling totally bummed about the gnarly bad stuff.” Feelings? Zero entries in the concordance! [Note to self—time to rethink that whole “poetry” thing you have going on.]
God is a writer. (Dictum # 1.) God knows what’s up with words and the urge to write-sing-yell. Guilt? No. Conviction? Yass, yass—now you’re getting somehre. Now you’re cooking with gasoline. (It’s cheaper at Pemex.)
Feel convicted and act: even if all you do is scrawl a pointless little blog like me. But feeling guilt? Nah. At the end of the day, all you do if you’re guilty is go to bed tired, thinking you really took part in saving the world because you were inconvenienced for an hour or two.
It’s caca de toro.
Besides, Tijuana likes your money.
This is the great sin of the border: love of money.
#
Need cheap cigarettes? Mexico! Horse thief? Hide out in Mexico! Want a quick and inexpensive muffler job? Mexico! Want affordable meds because your health insurance sucks? Tijuana, here I come. Want to film TITANIC and MASTER AND COMMANDER on the cheap? Build a studio in Tijuana! Wanna hid your toxic waste and radioactive bilge water where only poor brown invisible paupers will be poisoned? Tijuana Municipal Garbage Dump right this way!
Wanna run a toy factory where women work 19 hour days for a $1.50 a day making lead cars for the world’s children? How about the maquila we own in MEXICO!
Spring break? Quick divorce? Botox? Abortion? Cancer treatment? Crafts? Silver jewelry? Oaxacan wooden carvings? Pottery? Velvet Elvis paintings?
Drugs?
Homey, please.
“You attack us for selling drugs
But who are the consumers?”
Molotov
#
DATA from the TJ book:
In 2000, earnings for traffickers in illegal immigrants on the border grew to more than 7000 million dollars, according the the United States State Department.
Contrary to what is generally believed, the majority of “polleros” (human smugglers) are United States citizens. In 2003, 123 polleros were detained at the Tijuana-San Ysidor border crossing. 89% of them were North American.
www.mexidata.info/idl145.html
One third of the money that is paid by the undocumented (“pollos”) to by taken across the border by traffickers (“polleros”) ends up in the pockets of immigration functionaries of Mexico and the United States.
Report of the Commission of Population, Borders and Migratory Affairs of the Chamber of the House of Deputados, Mexico, 2003
#
Last week, I was wondering what it would take to really REDEFINE THE LINE.
Vicente Fox doesn’t get much credit these days. It is a standard Mexican phenomenon that the president leaves office in semi-disgrace. No, wait…I guess it is a universal phenomenon that a president leaves office in semi-disgrace. But Fox, bringing a Coca Cola executive’s business plan to Mexico for the first time, offered a new border-paradigm for a region sorely in need of one. Clinton’s NAFTA wasn’t so Nifty. It was a great concept, but the practice, well, we’re human. We want more more more, as Billy Idol reminds us. Ross Perot doesn’t sound so crazy now, does he? MEMO TO ROSS PEROT: Come Back, All Is Forgiven!
Fox tried to dismantle decades (centuries?) of Mexican distaste for their own border by declaring it not the armpit, not the rectum, not the zone of porno, dark hole, Calcutta of the border, or no-man’s land. All terms well known to anyone with any border history. (Besides, give Calcutta a break—your phone bill’s handled there and your iPod battery complaints probably built a couple of fine downtown edifices.) Fox declared the border a ZONE OF POSSIBILITY! A profit zone! A Texas-style bidness opportunity, y’all. No fool he. In the New York Times, I (yay for me, I rule and am powerful and immensely famous) dubbed him “President Vicente Crazy-Like-A Fox.”
He smartly recommended to the Bushettes that they forget about years of Mexican yowling about Imperialism, Human Rights, Border Hegemony. Let’s all forget the Alamo! Buy Buy Buy, baby! Mexico = Billions of $$$ in Fat Juicy American Profits. In other words, the creamy white buttocks of the Northern Gargantua could not only spew, but learn some exercises to intake! Suck it up, man! Fox had workers available! Fox had oil! Fox had corn and sugar and rice and tequila and fruit and fish and olives and tomatoes! Fox had copper! Gas! Tech. Cheap manufactoring. Fox even had REAL Coke with sugar instead of corn syrup! And Mexico had Mexicans with a lot of $$$ they wanted to spend! Where does all this happen? THE BORDER!
New World Order? Yeah—order me up a fish taco platter, 67 freight cars full of copper nuggets and pinto beans, six tankers with Pemex crude, and a cherry Coke.
POLITICAL PARANOIDS TAKE NOTE (are you listening, Warrior!!!????): one of Mexico’s minor-level politicians took me aside once and suggested that Bush was “soft” on immigration because Mexico made it clear that this new-world order, including the fish tacos, could happily and profitably go to China if we didn’t want to play.
How much money is available to us from Mexico? Well, the biggest Home Depot in the world is in Mexico City. I bet Gael García Bernal buys his widgets there.
Border: zone of opportunity.
Border: imaginary line uniting partners.
Save the world. Buy Nortec CDs. You can dance you ass off. Expand your mind. Pour money into my beloved border arte y música scene. Feel good—in unity with your Mexican brothers. Party hardy, y’all. Drink Coronas! It’s the NWO thing to do.
I’m not going to apologize: Tijuana makes me happy.
YEAH, BUT THEY’RE FRENCH, SO WE DON”T HAVE TO BELIEVE THEM
In case you don’t believe my rants, last week and above, here’s a little story from Agence France Presse. You see, even if we don’t pay attention to our border situation, the rest of the world does. What’s it about? Why, it’s about the “border-panic” taking hold in AZ now that more draconian state immigration laws are going into effect. Mexicans are leaving. But, but—who’s gonna work? Where’s all that spending-cash going? Did anyone see any of that tax revenue I had sitting around? What!!!???? It went to New Mexico???
I’ve said it here before. (Damn, I’m good.) You can’t scare everyone into leaving because they’re “taking too much” from your economy, then realize they took their spending money with them, and now you’re broke because those damned Beaners up and abandoned you!
Fortunately, those traitors at Truth Out post stories like this.
www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012608B.shtml
#
Lord.
I’m tired.
It’s snowing here. My daughter eats Oreos and drinks chocolate milk and watches Indiana Jones. No idea of the suffering. No sense of The Fear.
I’m finishing my new novel.
I’m daring to hope.
I’m loving America—trying to care for its broken wing. Spring isn’t far. I can’t wait to open the window.
WWJD—Who Would Jesus Deport?
Not me.
Love, L
1/23/2008
As posted in Immigration Monday (see below), USBP agent, Luis Aguilar, was intentionally run down and killed by narco smugglers in a Hummer in the western end of Yuma Sector.
There is a fund set up for his family. I hope you will not only help them out, but pass this information to your associates and friends.
This information comes directly from our good friend, Sheriff Ralph Ogden.
National Bank of Arizona
For the Benefit of Agent Luis Aguilar
1800 S. 4th Ave
Yuma, AZ 85364
Account # 0163038724
Immigration Monday: Late Edition
There is a fund set up for his family. I hope you will not only help them out, but pass this information to your associates and friends.
This information comes directly from our good friend, Sheriff Ralph Ogden.
National Bank of Arizona
For the Benefit of Agent Luis Aguilar
1800 S. 4th Ave
Yuma, AZ 85364
Account # 0163038724
Just let me laugh
So that I don’t weep
Let me laugh
So the shame doesn’t hurt so badly.
--Ruben Blades
Week of January 21, 2008
[Note: like Paul Harvey, I will offer “The Rest of the Story” at the end of this dispatch. I think it’s time to weigh the border-threat paradigm and look at what might be the real story. Set trends, don’t follow them. Let’s set the trend right here, right now.]
Hello, Americans. When I began this “Immigration Monday” experiment, I often wrote the sub-head: REDEFINE THE LINE.
Spunky, isn’t it? Catchy li’l motto for our Immigration Monday T-Shirts. But how, exactly, does one redefine the (border)line? By charting the course of a fence? On this first day of the Panic of ’08—worldwide fiscal melt-down, Black Tuesday—do we still believe there is money available for the fab fence? Do we really?
By the way, I have a piece coming in the San Francisco Chronicle soon—watch for it. I’ll give you the link when it’s up. It won’t be a shock to you who know me, my public work, or this blog. But it might be startling to Joe Citizen. I hope so.
#
What if we define the line by redefining the words? That’s a start. There can be no doubt that words set the borderline, set the agenda, and sway the public (or attempt to sway the public) by inflaming or assuaging whatever useful emotion is available. I want words to inform.
I have long railed against the inflammatory and propagandistic use of language in the *ahem* border discussion *hack! gack!* and debate we have going on in this country *cough!* Gee, I seem to have a hairball stuck in my throat. It IS a reasoned discussion, right? *heeek! heeeeek!* And everybody’s dealing honestly with the American people… * HOOOOYYYYYCK!*
If you have seen any of these postings, you already know my position on the TINY FAT MEN who need to strike BIG HARD POSTURES relating to those frigging Huddled Masses. Look at their language. It’s as inflamed and itchy as their hemorrhoids. No wonder they feel ‘rhoid rage. 100% INFLAMMATION, 0% INFORMATION.
By any lights, one would define a “border” as a line that divides two countries. Correct? This is the operative definition that fuels all our policies and our feelings of invasion. What if the definition is wrong? If not wrong, what if it’s incomplete?
What if the BORDER is THE LINE THAT UNITES TWO COUNTRIES?
What if?
Hey—I write poems. What do I know? Are our countries connected? Sho looks that way to me. Are border cultures united? Go ask ‘em. Go to El Paso, go to Brownsville.
I once suggested that the only thing left that we haven’t tried at the border is Art. I wanted to do something stupid, something the Viagra-nauts of anti-immigrant Fat Bottom Media could disparage as so gay, so defeatist, so America-hating, so New Age, so pinko, so lame, so unmanly that they could laugh at us for a week. But, you see, I thought it would be an amazing project if musicians from Mexico, and musicians from the US, would set up on either side of the fence(s) and serenade each other. A symbolic act of that pesky ol’ aberration, humane behavior.
Sing over the line that unites us. Art, you see, music, lyrics, poems—is not held by borders. They don’t need papers to cross. What if we stopped the sneering for a moment and sang to each other. Once a year?
Can you imagine Bill O’Reilly’s face? Even The Honorable Obama would be embarrassed, though perhaps John Edwards would get it.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Capitalist! And a patriot! Do it on Teresita’s birthday, and I can sell signed Hummingbird’s Daughters to everybody, and Teresita t-shirts and Teresita miracle green tamales. Yes! I need money. I want to take my children far into the Rockies, set up the solar panels and the wind-generators and wait out the apocalypse. Buy a few acres for my Border Patrol and FBI buddies so there will be a well-armed phalanx at the perimeter. With my Shelby 5oo GT Mustang. While I’m at it, I’d like to add an S-Class Mercedes.
I know: the border serenade would be a bust--drug runners would shoot us, tear gas would choke us, badness would overrun us, evil Mexican whatevers would chop us up with machetes, blah blah blah.
Stupid idea.
But here’s another idea: Dare To Be Stupid.
No one who does not risk looking foolish will ever change the world.
BORDER, n. 1. An imaginary line imposed on an indigenous landscape by men who are not from that landscape; 2. A line that unites two different cultures and forms an unbreakable bond between them.
BREAKING NEWS—YOU THINK YOU HAVE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS?
Jan. 23.
Hundreds of Palestinians have used their bodies, vehicles, and explosives, to destroy the border fence in the town of Rafah. They tore the fence down and flooded into Egypt.
This mass border run was a response to Israel’s harsh new border strategy of completely closing the border fences and sealing off the impoverished border town.
Read the news story here:
#
PASTOR HUCKABEE RAPTURES THE BEANERS!
Recently, Mike Huckabee flailed about, stung by the hard-liners’ sniping that he was SOFT on immigration, and changed his tune and announced that he was a hard-liner himself! With God’s help, Pastor Mike plans to round up and deport all illegal immigrants in America!
Sadly, Pastor Mike didn’t notice that the boldest hard-liners on the Beaner-smacking front are gone. Yes, that’s right—Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter failed to stir a proper frenzy of Bean-o-phobia. Fred Thompson didn’t manage to parley big talk about li’l brown perps into anything, either. Rudy can’t make up his mind. The dems are afraid to say anything firm at all. Is John McCain really the only visionary?
Now, we must ask ourselves—in light of the Panic of ’08—can we afford to round ‘em up?
Memo to Pastor Mike:
The Center for American Progress tallied the bill, you know.
The estimate for the round up and expulsion of the unwanted immigrants living in the US today is $206 billion over 5 years.
That’s $41.2 billion ANNUALLY.
Want some perspective? The entire budget for Homeland Security is $34.2 billion a
year.
Google it if you don’t believe me.
Wait! What’s that I smell? Mmmm—fresh horse manure.
#
REDEFINE THE LINE
Chi Tribune, January 16, 2008.
Pat Ahumada, the mayor of Brownsville, Texas, on the $1.2 billion border fence:
“To appease people in middle America, they are going to kill our communities along the border. The rest of America has no idea how we live our lives down here. We are linked by the Rio Grande, not divided by it. Our history, our families, our neighbors are tied together on both sides of that river.”
THE REST OF THE STORY
Who gets ignored in this mess? The border communities that, yes, are over-run. School districts. Hospitals. See what has happened to things like elder care and long-term health care in Tucson and Yuma. The funds are tapped out. I will not argue or deny that. Maybe, just maybe, the $1.2 billion being spent on the non-existent border fence could be of use to those schools and ERs?
I have suggested that the paradigm has already shifted. Illegal immigration is so 20th Century. Old news.
There is a surge, like the Iraq Surge, happening right here on American soil. Did you know? (America, as Argentine poets and Chilean folk singers so tiresomely remind us, runs from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle—it ain’t just Kansas City.) That surge is the Mexican surge. Oh yes—the conservative government of Mexico has mounted a violent surge on Mexico’s criminals and drug smugglers.
Thousands of soldiers, armed Jeeps, jet fighter air support, helicopters. Snipers. Rockets, tear gas, grenade launchers. Torture and assassinations. Bombs. Violent machine-gun battles in city neighborhoods. Hey—sound familiar? Only this is not in Babylon. This is on the Mexican border.
Is anyone at all nervous that Israel/Lebanon style air sorties are flying over Tijuana?
#
USBP agents will tell you that the criminal element is way up, while the numbers of “illegals” have dropped. There is a border war happening. I am telling you now.
The terrible death of US Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar this week ought to peel open your eyes if you’re looking for the 2008 border story.
Radio blowhards have been belching and farting their usual rote propaganda: Agent Aguilar was run down by “illegals sneaking into the country in their Hummer.”
I heard it again last night on XM Radio.
I ask you: how many “illegals” can you imagine sneaking into Yuma Sector/East California sector in their new Hummers? Agent Aguilar was laying out a tire-strip to flatten the tires of fleeing NARCOS in a heated chase, and they AIMED at him with their Hummer and MURDERED him.
WAKE UP.
The situation is more dangerous than you think. The cartels are very powerful. They are right on the border because they smuggle through the same deserts the paisanos walk across. They have changed the immigration paradigm: narco activity, human trafficking, sex slavery. They have expanded their marijuana and cocaine distribution and moved heavily into crystal meth, everybody’s favorite peaceful mellow drug. They are rich. They are insanely well-armed. They have been protected by the Mexican military and the corrupted police operations in the north.
The Mexican Beta-Group officers, who might have fought them, are famously unarmed.
Add to this mix the participation of the terrifying Zetas. Commandos! Trained by the USA! Defected from the military elite forces. Ultra-effective warriors for the cartels. Blackwater’s evil twin.
Is it any wonder that, in this stew of escalating war, the ol’ coyotes and people-smugglers are ratcheting up their own tech and weaponry and ferocity? They seem almost nostalgic in light of the Zetas.
Yes, the bad guys aiming at Mexicans and slaughtering each other. But they’re also aiming at Luis Aguilar and my good friends in Yuma Sector. They’re aiming at you, if not with their guns, with their meth.
#
I told you in other postings that there is a strange land-grab going on outside of Juarez. Lomas de Poleo. Look it up.
Is there a vast new terminal coming for shipments from Mexican ports? Why have the Zapatistas suggested they might come to Juarez/El Paso? I don’t know. I keep stumbling into the conspiracy theorists—the Illuminati crowd. Is there a Nafta Corridor or isn’t there? Let’s ask Sub-Comandante Marcos.
It’s one thing for Americans to ponder revolu in Chiapas—it’s another thing to have it in Texas.
#
The Mexican government is systematically taking apart corrupt urban and federal police forces. Trying to train new clean cops. Moving soldiers in. Taking away police weapons. Sounds like de-Baathification to me. Sounds like Iraq.
Now, here’s another trend I find alarming: the widening split in the Mexican political fabric. The Left is pissed at the Right—allegations of voter fraud and tampered elections. Allegations that the liberal candidate for president won the popular election but had it stolen by the conservative. Sound familiar?
The Mexican surge is allegedly curtailing citizens’ civil rights. I add three words: oil, oil, oil. Holy crap—doesn’t anybody else think we need heavy duty cooperation and joint efforts on the parts of our governments? Or does that make me a Globalist?
Am I crazy to think much more is at stake here than how many “illegals” fry my burgers in Peoria and pluck my chickens in Little Rock?
#
The New Mexican Revolution? Yikes. I don’t even like to think about it.
I propose this: we may have strong feelings about our politics and what is or is not happening in D.C. But you can absolutely know that people in our government know what’s at stake. Do you sense softness toward illegal immigration? Do you sense appeasement?
Imagine: 2,000 miles of border raging with fire and explosions. The US economy bankrupt. Mexico’s oil and natural gas going to China.
What will the immigrant flow look like then?
Will we finally see them as refugees?
#
God bless Agent Luis Aguilar. No matter what you think or feel about the USBP, that agent died for you. He died for me. My tax dollars paid his salary—I paid him to do his duty.
If there is a fund set up for his family and loved ones, I will post it here.
As always, WWJD—Who Would Jesus Deport?
I did not write this document. I have no knowledge of its content.
Biff Manly
Immigration Monday MLK Delay
So that I don’t weep
Let me laugh
So the shame doesn’t hurt so badly.
--Ruben Blades
Week of January 21, 2008
[Note: like Paul Harvey, I will offer “The Rest of the Story” at the end of this dispatch. I think it’s time to weigh the border-threat paradigm and look at what might be the real story. Set trends, don’t follow them. Let’s set the trend right here, right now.]
Hello, Americans. When I began this “Immigration Monday” experiment, I often wrote the sub-head: REDEFINE THE LINE.
Spunky, isn’t it? Catchy li’l motto for our Immigration Monday T-Shirts. But how, exactly, does one redefine the (border)line? By charting the course of a fence? On this first day of the Panic of ’08—worldwide fiscal melt-down, Black Tuesday—do we still believe there is money available for the fab fence? Do we really?
By the way, I have a piece coming in the San Francisco Chronicle soon—watch for it. I’ll give you the link when it’s up. It won’t be a shock to you who know me, my public work, or this blog. But it might be startling to Joe Citizen. I hope so.
#
What if we define the line by redefining the words? That’s a start. There can be no doubt that words set the borderline, set the agenda, and sway the public (or attempt to sway the public) by inflaming or assuaging whatever useful emotion is available. I want words to inform.
I have long railed against the inflammatory and propagandistic use of language in the *ahem* border discussion *hack! gack!* and debate we have going on in this country *cough!* Gee, I seem to have a hairball stuck in my throat. It IS a reasoned discussion, right? *heeek! heeeeek!* And everybody’s dealing honestly with the American people… * HOOOOYYYYYCK!*
If you have seen any of these postings, you already know my position on the TINY FAT MEN who need to strike BIG HARD POSTURES relating to those frigging Huddled Masses. Look at their language. It’s as inflamed and itchy as their hemorrhoids. No wonder they feel ‘rhoid rage. 100% INFLAMMATION, 0% INFORMATION.
By any lights, one would define a “border” as a line that divides two countries. Correct? This is the operative definition that fuels all our policies and our feelings of invasion. What if the definition is wrong? If not wrong, what if it’s incomplete?
What if the BORDER is THE LINE THAT UNITES TWO COUNTRIES?
What if?
Hey—I write poems. What do I know? Are our countries connected? Sho looks that way to me. Are border cultures united? Go ask ‘em. Go to El Paso, go to Brownsville.
I once suggested that the only thing left that we haven’t tried at the border is Art. I wanted to do something stupid, something the Viagra-nauts of anti-immigrant Fat Bottom Media could disparage as so gay, so defeatist, so America-hating, so New Age, so pinko, so lame, so unmanly that they could laugh at us for a week. But, you see, I thought it would be an amazing project if musicians from Mexico, and musicians from the US, would set up on either side of the fence(s) and serenade each other. A symbolic act of that pesky ol’ aberration, humane behavior.
Sing over the line that unites us. Art, you see, music, lyrics, poems—is not held by borders. They don’t need papers to cross. What if we stopped the sneering for a moment and sang to each other. Once a year?
Can you imagine Bill O’Reilly’s face? Even The Honorable Obama would be embarrassed, though perhaps John Edwards would get it.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Capitalist! And a patriot! Do it on Teresita’s birthday, and I can sell signed Hummingbird’s Daughters to everybody, and Teresita t-shirts and Teresita miracle green tamales. Yes! I need money. I want to take my children far into the Rockies, set up the solar panels and the wind-generators and wait out the apocalypse. Buy a few acres for my Border Patrol and FBI buddies so there will be a well-armed phalanx at the perimeter. With my Shelby 5oo GT Mustang. While I’m at it, I’d like to add an S-Class Mercedes.
I know: the border serenade would be a bust--drug runners would shoot us, tear gas would choke us, badness would overrun us, evil Mexican whatevers would chop us up with machetes, blah blah blah.
Stupid idea.
But here’s another idea: Dare To Be Stupid.
No one who does not risk looking foolish will ever change the world.
BORDER, n. 1. An imaginary line imposed on an indigenous landscape by men who are not from that landscape; 2. A line that unites two different cultures and forms an unbreakable bond between them.
BREAKING NEWS—YOU THINK YOU HAVE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS?
Jan. 23.
Hundreds of Palestinians have used their bodies, vehicles, and explosives, to destroy the border fence in the town of Rafah. They tore the fence down and flooded into Egypt.
This mass border run was a response to Israel’s harsh new border strategy of completely closing the border fences and sealing off the impoverished border town.
Read the news story here:
#
PASTOR HUCKABEE RAPTURES THE BEANERS!
Recently, Mike Huckabee flailed about, stung by the hard-liners’ sniping that he was SOFT on immigration, and changed his tune and announced that he was a hard-liner himself! With God’s help, Pastor Mike plans to round up and deport all illegal immigrants in America!
Sadly, Pastor Mike didn’t notice that the boldest hard-liners on the Beaner-smacking front are gone. Yes, that’s right—Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter failed to stir a proper frenzy of Bean-o-phobia. Fred Thompson didn’t manage to parley big talk about li’l brown perps into anything, either. Rudy can’t make up his mind. The dems are afraid to say anything firm at all. Is John McCain really the only visionary?
Now, we must ask ourselves—in light of the Panic of ’08—can we afford to round ‘em up?
Memo to Pastor Mike:
The Center for American Progress tallied the bill, you know.
The estimate for the round up and expulsion of the unwanted immigrants living in the US today is $206 billion over 5 years.
That’s $41.2 billion ANNUALLY.
Want some perspective? The entire budget for Homeland Security is $34.2 billion a
year.
Google it if you don’t believe me.
Wait! What’s that I smell? Mmmm—fresh horse manure.
#
REDEFINE THE LINE
Chi Tribune, January 16, 2008.
Pat Ahumada, the mayor of Brownsville, Texas, on the $1.2 billion border fence:
“To appease people in middle America, they are going to kill our communities along the border. The rest of America has no idea how we live our lives down here. We are linked by the Rio Grande, not divided by it. Our history, our families, our neighbors are tied together on both sides of that river.”
THE REST OF THE STORY
Who gets ignored in this mess? The border communities that, yes, are over-run. School districts. Hospitals. See what has happened to things like elder care and long-term health care in Tucson and Yuma. The funds are tapped out. I will not argue or deny that. Maybe, just maybe, the $1.2 billion being spent on the non-existent border fence could be of use to those schools and ERs?
I have suggested that the paradigm has already shifted. Illegal immigration is so 20th Century. Old news.
There is a surge, like the Iraq Surge, happening right here on American soil. Did you know? (America, as Argentine poets and Chilean folk singers so tiresomely remind us, runs from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle—it ain’t just Kansas City.) That surge is the Mexican surge. Oh yes—the conservative government of Mexico has mounted a violent surge on Mexico’s criminals and drug smugglers.
Thousands of soldiers, armed Jeeps, jet fighter air support, helicopters. Snipers. Rockets, tear gas, grenade launchers. Torture and assassinations. Bombs. Violent machine-gun battles in city neighborhoods. Hey—sound familiar? Only this is not in Babylon. This is on the Mexican border.
Is anyone at all nervous that Israel/Lebanon style air sorties are flying over Tijuana?
#
USBP agents will tell you that the criminal element is way up, while the numbers of “illegals” have dropped. There is a border war happening. I am telling you now.
The terrible death of US Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar this week ought to peel open your eyes if you’re looking for the 2008 border story.
Radio blowhards have been belching and farting their usual rote propaganda: Agent Aguilar was run down by “illegals sneaking into the country in their Hummer.”
I heard it again last night on XM Radio.
I ask you: how many “illegals” can you imagine sneaking into Yuma Sector/East California sector in their new Hummers? Agent Aguilar was laying out a tire-strip to flatten the tires of fleeing NARCOS in a heated chase, and they AIMED at him with their Hummer and MURDERED him.
WAKE UP.
The situation is more dangerous than you think. The cartels are very powerful. They are right on the border because they smuggle through the same deserts the paisanos walk across. They have changed the immigration paradigm: narco activity, human trafficking, sex slavery. They have expanded their marijuana and cocaine distribution and moved heavily into crystal meth, everybody’s favorite peaceful mellow drug. They are rich. They are insanely well-armed. They have been protected by the Mexican military and the corrupted police operations in the north.
The Mexican Beta-Group officers, who might have fought them, are famously unarmed.
Add to this mix the participation of the terrifying Zetas. Commandos! Trained by the USA! Defected from the military elite forces. Ultra-effective warriors for the cartels. Blackwater’s evil twin.
Is it any wonder that, in this stew of escalating war, the ol’ coyotes and people-smugglers are ratcheting up their own tech and weaponry and ferocity? They seem almost nostalgic in light of the Zetas.
Yes, the bad guys aiming at Mexicans and slaughtering each other. But they’re also aiming at Luis Aguilar and my good friends in Yuma Sector. They’re aiming at you, if not with their guns, with their meth.
#
I told you in other postings that there is a strange land-grab going on outside of Juarez. Lomas de Poleo. Look it up.
Is there a vast new terminal coming for shipments from Mexican ports? Why have the Zapatistas suggested they might come to Juarez/El Paso? I don’t know. I keep stumbling into the conspiracy theorists—the Illuminati crowd. Is there a Nafta Corridor or isn’t there? Let’s ask Sub-Comandante Marcos.
It’s one thing for Americans to ponder revolu in Chiapas—it’s another thing to have it in Texas.
#
The Mexican government is systematically taking apart corrupt urban and federal police forces. Trying to train new clean cops. Moving soldiers in. Taking away police weapons. Sounds like de-Baathification to me. Sounds like Iraq.
Now, here’s another trend I find alarming: the widening split in the Mexican political fabric. The Left is pissed at the Right—allegations of voter fraud and tampered elections. Allegations that the liberal candidate for president won the popular election but had it stolen by the conservative. Sound familiar?
The Mexican surge is allegedly curtailing citizens’ civil rights. I add three words: oil, oil, oil. Holy crap—doesn’t anybody else think we need heavy duty cooperation and joint efforts on the parts of our governments? Or does that make me a Globalist?
Am I crazy to think much more is at stake here than how many “illegals” fry my burgers in Peoria and pluck my chickens in Little Rock?
#
The New Mexican Revolution? Yikes. I don’t even like to think about it.
I propose this: we may have strong feelings about our politics and what is or is not happening in D.C. But you can absolutely know that people in our government know what’s at stake. Do you sense softness toward illegal immigration? Do you sense appeasement?
Imagine: 2,000 miles of border raging with fire and explosions. The US economy bankrupt. Mexico’s oil and natural gas going to China.
What will the immigrant flow look like then?
Will we finally see them as refugees?
#
God bless Agent Luis Aguilar. No matter what you think or feel about the USBP, that agent died for you. He died for me. My tax dollars paid his salary—I paid him to do his duty.
If there is a fund set up for his family and loved ones, I will post it here.
As always, WWJD—Who Would Jesus Deport?
I did not write this document. I have no knowledge of its content.
Biff Manly
1/21/2008
Happy MLK Day, and all honor to Dr. King. We'll be taking this day off, and Immigration Monday will run, fresh ans tasty, full of spicy goodness, on WEDNESDAY. See you then.
By the way, I have two words for you: kidney stones. No, I have a third word: OWWWWWW!
Housekeeping
By the way, I have two words for you: kidney stones. No, I have a third word: OWWWWWW!
1/17/2008
Just some various items.
It snowed today, and it was bitterly cold. As I pulled out of the garage this morning to go teach, the neighborhood turkey accosted my car. He stretched his neck very high and glared through my window. He was demanding sunflower seeds.
However, now that Reverend Mike Huckabee has taken a firm stance on immigration, I refused. After all, the turkey came into my yard uninvited. He was there to steal seed emant for cardinals. And he had the temerity to protest the lack of social services. Sorry, but we're taking a hard zero-tolerance stance on illegals in Naperville.
On a happier note, the NPR version of my "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses" is finally up on iTunes. Got it if you want it. Robert Sean Leonard, from "House," reads it. Now all we have to do is make a movie so he can act in it.
IMMIGRATION MONDAY RETURNS
It snowed today, and it was bitterly cold. As I pulled out of the garage this morning to go teach, the neighborhood turkey accosted my car. He stretched his neck very high and glared through my window. He was demanding sunflower seeds.
However, now that Reverend Mike Huckabee has taken a firm stance on immigration, I refused. After all, the turkey came into my yard uninvited. He was there to steal seed emant for cardinals. And he had the temerity to protest the lack of social services. Sorry, but we're taking a hard zero-tolerance stance on illegals in Naperville.
On a happier note, the NPR version of my "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses" is finally up on iTunes. Got it if you want it. Robert Sean Leonard, from "House," reads it. Now all we have to do is make a movie so he can act in it.
1/14/2008
Wow! I cannot believe how many e-mails and messages I received from you, my dear readers, when I suggested that this little border-blog had run its course. I would like to say it was deeply gratifying, except it means I have to keep writing it! ha ha ha.
Immigration: It's So Last Century
I hope your holidays were full and happy. I truly enjoyed some time off. How dismal it is to not only spend your time contemplating the nightmare of the border itself, but the cascade of raw sewage that is the debate, the propaganda war, and the lying idiocy that prevails.
For example, I was recently led to the ponderings of a Mung-Munching Moron on the web; someone thought I should see this guy's political thoughts. The columnist was thrilled to be visiting a European country with NO MEXICANS. He made winking comments about the "whole Mexican not-working thing" they have going on in the US. Aside from the dumbth of that comment--one thing the "illegals" and "legals" both are here for is to WORK, by a vast landslide avalanche of a percentage--were his strange suggestions that Mexicans, in particular, somehow damage the American grain. The fabric of what makes this country great, under assault by those freakin' swarthy little foreigners!
OK, I can see the Nativist argument. My own mother made that angry Goldwater GOP announcement to me almost every day. Along with the brilliant Right Wing comment: What This Country Needs Is A Good Dictator! Take that, Beaners, hippies, queers, and commies! But do you know what this guy, this critic of all that harms good Americans, does for a living? He edits a website dedicated to porn, upskirt videos, videos of people defecating and vomiting, and graphic videos of people being tortured and killed. YES! God Bless America! But at least he's white.
Let's begin the Mung-Munching Moron of the Month Awards! Send me your candidates.
I digress.
#
Have you looked in your paper lately? Have you noticed something missing? Here's a hint: today, after days and days of NO IMMIGRATION NEWS AT ALL, both the Chi Tribune and the NY Times ran immigration stories...about the problems in Germany and Italy.
Hate to say I told you so, but...well, you know.
Did the paradigm shift? Is immigration yesterday's news? Let us look at some facts.
All the hard-core anti-immigrant candidates in the election have been kicked to the curb. Did you notice? Tom Tancredo, the immigrant hating son of immigrants: gone. Duncan Hunter: gone. Mitt Romney ran his anti-immigrant TV ads over 12,000 times in the last few months--and he got hi ass whupped. (See www.immigrantslist.org for figures and numbers and interesting writings on the subject by Drew Seman.) Hmmm.
So who is leading the GOP pack right now? Good ol' John McCain. Derided by the brave warriors of anonymous call-in radio as being SOFT on IMMIGRATION. (You already know my opinion on this fabu propaganda of SOFTNESS, but I delight in bringing it up--pun intended--ALL THE VIAGRA-NAUTS WHO NEED CHEMICAL 24 HOUR ERECTIONS HUNT DOWN AND CRUSH ANYONE OR ANYTHING THAT IS "SOFT" ON ANY SUBJECT. Lou Dobbs tells them who is the bad guy, and his commercials tell them how to get big pulsating silos of manhood so they can go root 'em out! We need a...gasp...we need a...oh yes yes...we need a big...gulp...a strong...do me do me...HARD MAN.)
McCain, of the derided appeasing put-terrorism-first Beaner-loving McCain/Kennedy Immigration Bill. He's #1.
Hey, it ain't just me noticing. Look at your paper. Watch CNN. Where did all the films of nasty brown criminals scuttling across the desert go??? Perhaps they all work on the landscaping crew at Mitt's mansion!
Look here, if you don't believe me:
www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/andres_oppenheimer/story/373555
That's a _ between andres and oppenheimer. In case you're typing it in.
The right was rcently appalled that Hillary Clinton (SOFT! No, wait, we don't like her because she's too HARD. NO! Wait. She was hard, and we hated her, but then she showed some softness, and we hate her for that. Hard to keep up) said, publicly, that "No woman is illegal."
Hey, at least one of the dems said something about immigration. Mostly, they don't dare. By the way, where did Iraq go? Where did Global Warming go? What's the next hot issue--Killer Bees?
#
Last week, the New York Times ran a fascinating op-ed piece in its Sunday edition. Written by Joshua Hoyt (an executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights), it points out some fascinating data. I quote:
"...In 20 of 22 separate public opinion polls conducted between March and December, somewhere between 55 percent and 83 percent of the respondents favored some form of earned legal status. In the remaining two polls, the majority favored this option."
In other words, the immigrant-bashing doesn't work. So they drop it. But wait, you say--wasn't it the burning issue last month? Did it resolve itself? If it mattered so much in November, and has not changed since then on the ground, how can it be that those who banged that drum so soundly have gone silent?
Is America itself soft on immigtaion? I'm telling you--friggin' Americans are so un-American.
Could it be that our fear, our frustration, our dread, our national insecurity and--hate to say this, but you know it's true--our racism, are tools? Hmm? To be used to move product? Even if the product is a candidate or a political party? We certainly know it works on talk radio and populist TV shows. (According to figures I've been reading, the number remains steady over time: 20-25% of Americans remain hard-core anti-immigration Nativists...more than enough to lend ratings magic to the airwaved patriots babbling away out there.)
When those tools don't work, do we put them back in the tool box amd grab some new tool? Is that, by any stretch of the imagination, possible? Remember when Manuel Noriega was the greatest threat to America? Remember when Rosa Parks was a danger to the status quo? Do you remember when we were going to be killed by Global Cooling? New slogan for Big Brother: FEAR WORKS! WORK THE FEAR!
All the while, the border is begging for a savior.
It's up to you and me.
Ah, 2008. It's going to be the most amazing year. I have more immigration material piled up than I know what to do with. I think I can sell some Viagra ad space here and make some good money.
I close with a personal note. Perhaps the most patriotic man I have met in a long time, and certainly a far more conservative political creature than I, and--I must add--one of the kindest and most warm men I have met in a long time, is an FBI agent I hung out with recently. This man, as he said to me, "Bleeds red, white and blue." He doesn't speak of "the" American flag; he speaks of MY American flag. You know what he said about the issue? He said, "I don't care if you're documented or not. I care about two things: are you working hard, and are you not breaking my laws. That's it."
Sure, it was over beer and chili, and does not represent the agency or the federal government or blah blah blah. Just a good man talking about a bad scene among friends. If I do anything with this blog in the months ahead, it will be to talk about things nobody seems to want to address. Let's see where it goes.
Guest columnists are lining up!
WWJD--Who Would Jesus Deport!
"Republicans like their cheap labor, Democrats like their cheap causes." --Edward Abbey
Adios, Amigos.
L
Hello, It's Me
Immigration: It's So Last Century
I hope your holidays were full and happy. I truly enjoyed some time off. How dismal it is to not only spend your time contemplating the nightmare of the border itself, but the cascade of raw sewage that is the debate, the propaganda war, and the lying idiocy that prevails.
For example, I was recently led to the ponderings of a Mung-Munching Moron on the web; someone thought I should see this guy's political thoughts. The columnist was thrilled to be visiting a European country with NO MEXICANS. He made winking comments about the "whole Mexican not-working thing" they have going on in the US. Aside from the dumbth of that comment--one thing the "illegals" and "legals" both are here for is to WORK, by a vast landslide avalanche of a percentage--were his strange suggestions that Mexicans, in particular, somehow damage the American grain. The fabric of what makes this country great, under assault by those freakin' swarthy little foreigners!
OK, I can see the Nativist argument. My own mother made that angry Goldwater GOP announcement to me almost every day. Along with the brilliant Right Wing comment: What This Country Needs Is A Good Dictator! Take that, Beaners, hippies, queers, and commies! But do you know what this guy, this critic of all that harms good Americans, does for a living? He edits a website dedicated to porn, upskirt videos, videos of people defecating and vomiting, and graphic videos of people being tortured and killed. YES! God Bless America! But at least he's white.
Let's begin the Mung-Munching Moron of the Month Awards! Send me your candidates.
I digress.
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Have you looked in your paper lately? Have you noticed something missing? Here's a hint: today, after days and days of NO IMMIGRATION NEWS AT ALL, both the Chi Tribune and the NY Times ran immigration stories...about the problems in Germany and Italy.
Hate to say I told you so, but...well, you know.
Did the paradigm shift? Is immigration yesterday's news? Let us look at some facts.
All the hard-core anti-immigrant candidates in the election have been kicked to the curb. Did you notice? Tom Tancredo, the immigrant hating son of immigrants: gone. Duncan Hunter: gone. Mitt Romney ran his anti-immigrant TV ads over 12,000 times in the last few months--and he got hi ass whupped. (See www.immigrantslist.org for figures and numbers and interesting writings on the subject by Drew Seman.) Hmmm.
So who is leading the GOP pack right now? Good ol' John McCain. Derided by the brave warriors of anonymous call-in radio as being SOFT on IMMIGRATION. (You already know my opinion on this fabu propaganda of SOFTNESS, but I delight in bringing it up--pun intended--ALL THE VIAGRA-NAUTS WHO NEED CHEMICAL 24 HOUR ERECTIONS HUNT DOWN AND CRUSH ANYONE OR ANYTHING THAT IS "SOFT" ON ANY SUBJECT. Lou Dobbs tells them who is the bad guy, and his commercials tell them how to get big pulsating silos of manhood so they can go root 'em out! We need a...gasp...we need a...oh yes yes...we need a big...gulp...a strong...do me do me...HARD MAN.)
McCain, of the derided appeasing put-terrorism-first Beaner-loving McCain/Kennedy Immigration Bill. He's #1.
Hey, it ain't just me noticing. Look at your paper. Watch CNN. Where did all the films of nasty brown criminals scuttling across the desert go??? Perhaps they all work on the landscaping crew at Mitt's mansion!
Look here, if you don't believe me:
www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/andres_oppenheimer/story/373555
That's a _ between andres and oppenheimer. In case you're typing it in.
The right was rcently appalled that Hillary Clinton (SOFT! No, wait, we don't like her because she's too HARD. NO! Wait. She was hard, and we hated her, but then she showed some softness, and we hate her for that. Hard to keep up) said, publicly, that "No woman is illegal."
Hey, at least one of the dems said something about immigration. Mostly, they don't dare. By the way, where did Iraq go? Where did Global Warming go? What's the next hot issue--Killer Bees?
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Last week, the New York Times ran a fascinating op-ed piece in its Sunday edition. Written by Joshua Hoyt (an executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights), it points out some fascinating data. I quote:
"...In 20 of 22 separate public opinion polls conducted between March and December, somewhere between 55 percent and 83 percent of the respondents favored some form of earned legal status. In the remaining two polls, the majority favored this option."
In other words, the immigrant-bashing doesn't work. So they drop it. But wait, you say--wasn't it the burning issue last month? Did it resolve itself? If it mattered so much in November, and has not changed since then on the ground, how can it be that those who banged that drum so soundly have gone silent?
Is America itself soft on immigtaion? I'm telling you--friggin' Americans are so un-American.
Could it be that our fear, our frustration, our dread, our national insecurity and--hate to say this, but you know it's true--our racism, are tools? Hmm? To be used to move product? Even if the product is a candidate or a political party? We certainly know it works on talk radio and populist TV shows. (According to figures I've been reading, the number remains steady over time: 20-25% of Americans remain hard-core anti-immigration Nativists...more than enough to lend ratings magic to the airwaved patriots babbling away out there.)
When those tools don't work, do we put them back in the tool box amd grab some new tool? Is that, by any stretch of the imagination, possible? Remember when Manuel Noriega was the greatest threat to America? Remember when Rosa Parks was a danger to the status quo? Do you remember when we were going to be killed by Global Cooling? New slogan for Big Brother: FEAR WORKS! WORK THE FEAR!
All the while, the border is begging for a savior.
It's up to you and me.
Ah, 2008. It's going to be the most amazing year. I have more immigration material piled up than I know what to do with. I think I can sell some Viagra ad space here and make some good money.
I close with a personal note. Perhaps the most patriotic man I have met in a long time, and certainly a far more conservative political creature than I, and--I must add--one of the kindest and most warm men I have met in a long time, is an FBI agent I hung out with recently. This man, as he said to me, "Bleeds red, white and blue." He doesn't speak of "the" American flag; he speaks of MY American flag. You know what he said about the issue? He said, "I don't care if you're documented or not. I care about two things: are you working hard, and are you not breaking my laws. That's it."
Sure, it was over beer and chili, and does not represent the agency or the federal government or blah blah blah. Just a good man talking about a bad scene among friends. If I do anything with this blog in the months ahead, it will be to talk about things nobody seems to want to address. Let's see where it goes.
Guest columnists are lining up!
WWJD--Who Would Jesus Deport!
"Republicans like their cheap labor, Democrats like their cheap causes." --Edward Abbey
Adios, Amigos.
L
1/12/2008
Happy New Year.
White Eagle dropped me a note to let me know that NPR is running yet another reading of my story, "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses" this weekend. It's on their excellent "Selected Shorts" show. Unfortunately, we don't get that show in Cih-Town or environs. But Cinderella gets their podcasts on her iPod! So you can iPod it if you feel like it. That story has taken on a real life of its own. Now that I'm Mr. Movies, there are some movie folks talking about filming it. It got into a Best Stories of the American West antho somehow. It makes me happy, since it's my love song to my Sioux brothers and to Pine Ridge reservation. I hope we do make a movie of it--I'd like to give back some goodness to the Lakota people and take a production there and spend some needed Hollywood money on those good folks. Get all my buds in the movie!
Anyway, the reading is by Sean Patrick Leonard, from "House." Maybe we can get him to play the white guy in the movie!
I don't know if I'm ready to come back to the blog or not. This little NPR item prodded me out of my marmot's tunnel for a minute. I'm blinking at the cyber-light. I'm cranky. I'm reading and working on my book(s). I'm getting ready to return to the classroom.
Slowly, I shall come back from Christmas vacation and, no doubt, tap away here soon.
I miss you, though, and hope everything was full of nutmeg, cinnamon, chocolate and laughter for you.
This is a big big big year.
L
White Eagle dropped me a note to let me know that NPR is running yet another reading of my story, "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses" this weekend. It's on their excellent "Selected Shorts" show. Unfortunately, we don't get that show in Cih-Town or environs. But Cinderella gets their podcasts on her iPod! So you can iPod it if you feel like it. That story has taken on a real life of its own. Now that I'm Mr. Movies, there are some movie folks talking about filming it. It got into a Best Stories of the American West antho somehow. It makes me happy, since it's my love song to my Sioux brothers and to Pine Ridge reservation. I hope we do make a movie of it--I'd like to give back some goodness to the Lakota people and take a production there and spend some needed Hollywood money on those good folks. Get all my buds in the movie!
Anyway, the reading is by Sean Patrick Leonard, from "House." Maybe we can get him to play the white guy in the movie!
I don't know if I'm ready to come back to the blog or not. This little NPR item prodded me out of my marmot's tunnel for a minute. I'm blinking at the cyber-light. I'm cranky. I'm reading and working on my book(s). I'm getting ready to return to the classroom.
Slowly, I shall come back from Christmas vacation and, no doubt, tap away here soon.
I miss you, though, and hope everything was full of nutmeg, cinnamon, chocolate and laughter for you.
This is a big big big year.
L
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