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The Real Thanksgiving Location? San Elizario, Of Course

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

Newfoundland thanks? A New England Thanksgiving? I say Yankee Thanksgiving Shmanksgiving.

Everyone around the border knows that the real first Thanksgiving on what is now US soil was celebrated in what is now San Elizario, Texas. Texas Almanac tells us a good story.

Some hee to Plymouth and some Canucks tout Newfoundland as the birthplace of the American Long Weekend. Why Canadians are all about this I have no idea, since they spend most of their political lives trying to avoid being the tophat of the USA even while their talent drains, like water down a sink, into the Lower 48. Nevertheless, all may enjoy their debates as they suck down turkey legs and watch jibbling cones of canned cranberries being served.

But let there be no debate that there is some debate around and about the well-set tables of America’s Thanksgiving, besides the traditional Auburn-Alabama football rivalry (which, as a matter of fact, dwarfs all other trivialities about who-came-first and where-they-celebrated, and who-the-hell is Ohio State). HNN throws a few myths like pies into the face of traditionalists. Yeah, they didn’t wear belt-buckles on their hats; we all know that. Who would? Now, this Puritans-like-sex thing, that’s worth a federal grant to research. Ain’t it?

UPDATE: The origins of the holiday, vice the first feast, are provided here. It’s interesting because history should put to rest the irritation in liberal circles over eeevil Pilgrims imposing themselves on Native Americans back in the day; for which the current solution is to ban kids from playing dressup.

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Posted in El Paso, Food, Migration, Texas | Comments Off

“Silver” Brings Home Some Homeland Security Bacon, Pork-Style

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Maybe some of it will go to diminish flooding in 79932. DHS owns FEMA, too. Rep. Reyes announces nearly $6 million in security grants for El Paso.

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Posted in Border Insecurity, Border Security, Border Violence, Democrat, El Paso, Law Enforcement, Migration, Politics, Smuggling, Southwest Border | Comments Off

News You’re Not Likely to Hear About From the Open-Borders Set

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin is a good clearinghouse for immigration related news, though with a decidely pro-migration bias.* Here’s a news article that isn’t likely to appear at Bender’s.

*It’s worth subscribing to the RSS feed however you feel about migration.

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Posted in Border Patrol, CBP, Democrat, Law Enforcement, Liberal, Migration, Politics | Comments Off

El Paso: That City of Walls

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Check out this cartoon. Then check out the landscape of El Paso. The cartoonist is so taken with the horror of the planned border fence (whether real or virtual) that s/he doesn’t see the irony in their own back yard.

El Paso is littered with rock walls. Practically every home has a wall surrounding its back yard. Businesses are divided by them. Streets and schools enjoy the coolness of the shadows they provide. FBI agents lurk behind them, looking for the next bribe-taking local yokel politician stumbling toward a wad of cash.

Fact is, El Paso is the embodiment of the sentiment expressed in this cartoon: it seems people think that some problems in El Paso can apparently be solved by building rock walls everywhere.

If they don’t think that, then why do they build so many of them?

–Walls to keep out news of suicidally-drunk underage teenage drivers screaming down Country Club at three in the morning.

–Walls to keep us from seeing the legion of abused and neglected pets in our unthinking neighbors’ yards.

–Walls to keep us from viewing the latest TAKS scores from our next generation of geniuses (or bribe-takers).

–Walls to hide us from the view of white and African-American beggars at street-corners, selling candy and bullshit at Airway & Montana, Fred Wilson & 54, or Redd & North Desert.

–Walls to keep out the latest bad news of the antics of the Commissioners Court.

And one more thing. The author of the article, listed as a Professor Emeritus at Sul Ross, should go back to school. His analogy to the Berlin Wall misses on a main point: it was East Germany that erected that wall, not West Germany. To bring his fantasy to reality, then, it would be Mexico building the wall on the Southwest Border, not the United States.

Well, “emeritus” means “retired” in academic circles, and for that, we can come out from around our own wall, and be thankful.

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Posted in Border Insecurity, Border Security, El Paso, El Paso Politics, Environment, Humor, Mexico, Migration, Politics, Satire, Southwest Border | Comments Off

Psst. It’s Called “Co-Optation,” and Mexican Lawmakers Want to Introduce It to the U.S.

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Sonora state legislators have complained about Arizona’s new employer sanctions law, which punishes those who hire illegal aliens.

By doing so, they hope to co-opt existing American cultural systems, laws and norms to suit their needs.

After all, it beats having the intellect, moral strength and political acumen to deal with their self-made failures. Evolutionary biology explains all, in this case.

Hat Tip: Stop the ACLU.

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Posted in Border Security, Law Enforcement, Mexico, Migration, Sonora, Southwest Border | Comments Off

Border Invaded Again and Again? Say It Ain’t So!

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

Michelle Malkin notes a recent recent Judicial Watch FOIA request on the number of Mexican military and police incursions into the US.

Noted. Still, it’s a fact that Mexican organized criminal enterprises routinely adopt the uniforms, weapons and vehicles of federal, state and local enforcement entities (including the Mexican military, which has an internal security role and targets drug traffickers). I doubt all of these incursions were by military or law enforcement members. The notorious Hudspeth County, TX, incident in 2006, which was widely reported, was likely such a situation, as corrupt Mexican soldiers are really a bit more sophisticated (yes, sophisticated) and wouldn’t so easily allow themselves to be so exposed. Some other incursions were by mistake — losing one’s bearings happens more than you might think along remote parts of the Southwest Border, and US law enforcement entities have done it as well (though certainly not as often as Mexican LE). The rest of the incursions? That’s the problem not sufficiently addressed by either the US or the government of Mexico.

Here’s the incursion report, courtesy of Judicial Watch.

Malkin notes that this candidate has a lot to say on immigration, little of it good or, well, even consistent. You might say it’s enough to make you cry. And that guacamole reference? Please, patronize Latinos some more, will ya?

One Malkin commenter argues for the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to patrol the border. That’s a slow interagency process, held up by the public servants at the FAA. If Katrina can’t make the FAA move faster, what makes you think a little thing like national sovereignty will?

Border security is serious business, and government policies on immigration are complex, convoluted and sometimes out-of-date (think citizenship by birth), which is why this satire, and this one, hit home.

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Posted in Aliens, Border Insecurity, Mexico, Migration, Smuggling, Southwest Border | Comments Off

11 August 2007: Your Weekend RSS Update

Saturday, August 11th, 2007

Here we are with another roundup of items of interest, guaranteed to feed your RSS reader like a Porterhouse down the gullet of a high-heeled cowboy boot wearing bribe-taker. No. Please stay. The references are only as dumb as they sound.

EL PASO FBI CORRUPTION CASE:
Lawyer Martie Jobe’s got issues. [Hat Tip: Newspaper Tree.]

Former First Southwest Company’s Hector Zavaleta Jr, may have been working for the G-Men, sez someone from out of state. Ermm, OK. Next.

Did not know until last week that the El Paso Times has a players list and timelines of events in the corruption case. You can find it here.

From the Department of Non-story Departments, Ramon Bracamontes of the El Paso Times tells us that speculation and rumors abound at the El Paso County Courthouse after the May FBI raid. What — civil servants engaged in speculation and rumor, possibly on company time? Say it ain’t so, Ramon! What’s next, goofing off, watching TV, surfing the Internet and updating resumes???

EL PASO’S SPINNING WHEELS OF JUSTICE: District Clerk Gilbert Sanchez says the wheels of justice are running off the rails over at the County Attorney’s Office. That assumes that justice on the Border had wheels to begin with.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT KILLED IN EL PASO: He’d not been shot at the 28 previous times he unlawfully entered the US. Bonus: The loopy Border Network for Human Rights appears.

USBP AGENT CHARGED WITH MURDER IN ARIZONA: County Judge takes action against the Feds over there.

WELL, DUH: A Mexican narco linked to Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila of shot-in-the-butt-ocks fame has pleaded guilty to operating a Davila drug stash house. Limp-a-long Davila, of course, gained fame and free Army medical care when he got plugged in an incident with USBP Agents Ramos and Compean, who were notorious for their selfless service to the Constitution. US Attorney Johnny Sutton remains involved up to his butt-ocks in this continuing border scandal, in particular trying to sort out whether Davila took a drug load through a Port-of-Entry while he enjoyed his federally-granted status as a quasi-US citizen.

SOME DAY MEXICAN COPS MAY SHOOT ILLEGAL MEXICANS IN THE US: Santa Fe will hire Mexican nationals as law enforcement officers. Based on what goes on in Mexico with cops, that won’t end well. On the other hand, if you’re feeling insecure about wandering around Santa Fe, you’ll be able to hire a cop off his beat for about sixty bucks as your armed guard, same as in Juarez.

UNFORTUNATE: An immigration attorney teaching at West Point mischaracterizes what servicemembers fight for. It’s not the government they defend, but rather the Constitution. [Hat Tip: Bender’s Immigration Bulletin.

ASARCO STINKS IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE: Asarco, the once-and-future smelting plant on the West Side of El Paso, has spent thousands on local radio ads proclaiming how its operation will create four hundred or so jobs for the three-quarter million El Pasoans to choose from. Perhaps one of those jobs will be tax attorney.

AND THERE’S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO POLLUTE EL PASO: Don’t sneak away from the campfire just yet, Tigua Indians. If you paid your taxes, the State of Texas might be more lenient about your desperate desire to fleece grasping Hispanics and Gringos at that casino you so badly want.

IS IT XXXXXX RESTAURANT FOR BRIBE-ISTA BETTI FLORES? Someone said it is a BBQ place in town. I don’t know, even though a waitress in one well-known place offered me all the free Mountain Dew I want for 25 cents. And an extra half-rack of ribs for just a dollar. I keed. But honestly, $10k for a vote? That’s chump change, even in a burg where the median income is something like a thousand pesos, or something.

GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS: Except on the Southwest Border. El Paso Times ran an article on Border Patrol workers who repair vandalized or destroyed fence portions along the border. Can’t find it now, but a simple fact for politicians to ponder remains: It takes far more resources to maintain an initiative than it does to implement it. Starting up something just to win an elections means you might have to slog throught the boring side of politics to keep it going, especially if it’s a Bill, say, or a bridge that has your first and last name on it.

HANDS ACROSS THE BORDER FENCE: Opponents of a border fence announced sixteen days of protests. El Paso mayor John Cook is joining forces with 4 Borders Pundit’s favorite loopy locals, the Border Network for Human Rights, to protest, umm, something. None of the participating groups have offered any concrete solutions, methinks, because none of those mentioned in the article seem to have any kind of overarching, holistic expertise on the intricacies of border life, to say nothing of figuring out what to do with those irksome illegals who go after Border Patrol agents with bolt-cutters and get shot to death for it.

HOW TO KILL OFF RESTAURANTS: Govern them to death. Business and liberal-left politics don’t mesh well, which leads to, well, hungry dining-outers with a Bay Area attitude. I keep saying, the bottom line trumps naively optimistic tulips-and-May Day dancing, every time. The two are as incompatible as Western boots and stiletto heels.

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Posted in ASARCO, Border Insecurity, Border Violence, Democrat, El Paso, Environment, Juarez, Liberal, Migration, Politics, Southwest Border | Comments Off

28 July 2007: Your Weekend RSS Update

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

As you can see, we’re working on a new website design. Due to technical difficulties, you may experience problems viewing this site. Do not adjust your set.

FBI EL PASO CORRUPTION CASE:
In 2006, real estate speculators descended on El Paso after BRAC results were announced. The housing market boomed. This year, the lawyer market is exploding.

Lawyer Mary Stillinger ain’t gonna represent Ysleta School Board Trustee Milton “Mickey” Duntley, El Paso School Board Trustee Charles Roark, and former NCED Chief Operating Officer Ernie Lopez. So said Hizzoner, U.S. District Court Judge Frank Montalvo.

MISCELLANY:
The El Paso Empowerment Zone (not our beloved Adventure Zone, where 4 Borders Pundit can be found anytime he is in El Paso avoiding his day job), is in trouble with HUD over its spending. Newspaper Tree has the details. Goodness: liquor purchases, charges without documentation and apparently unauthorized trips with teenagers. But let’s see: booze, fraud and teens running around without parental supervision: sounds like a typical American urban environment to me, so maybe HUD is off-base on this.

Wannabe DA Theresa Caballero opines on corruption in El Paso and holds a special place in her pen for DA Jaime Esparza. Esparza probably needs to reassess whether he’s been asleep at the wheel while corruption broke all around this wannabe fair city, and Caballero’s published friends-and-foes list, helpfully laid out in her blog, probably deserves a link chart.

Mudville Gazette is all over the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story. If you haven’t heard yet, Beauchamp runs a blog called Sir Real Scott Thomas, in which he portrayed soldiers, including himself, being assholes, UCMJ violators and possibly criminals, in Iraq. He may have written his brutal stories while in Germany, or while in the Middle East. Truth will tell soon enough, but fact is, Beauchamp writes like a wannabe Hunter S. Thompson, but without the Southern gentility (Thompson was courteous about women), or a certain gonzo tactfulness: HST never made fun of a disfigured woman. And there’s the difference. Thompson, who served in the Air Force, got in trouble with his chain of command for writing up local wrestling matches as if the fighting, blood, rivalries and injuries were real, while Beauchamp goes gonzo by mixing American Psycho, Private Pyle and Catch-22, all randomly, like a drunk with the munchies and a working ATM card. If what Beauchamp writes about his daily “landscaping” duties is real, then what better GI’s know as “weeds-and-seeds” or “pavements and grounds” detail is probably what he deserves. That’s where screwups go in the military.

Sorry, El Paso Times. Your story on disabled El Pasoans suing Chico’s Tacos is mis-headlined. It’s the Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project doin’ the suin’, not the disabled themselves. Me, I’d sooner sue Chico’s for putting too much cheese on those flautas. And I wonder why PDNCRP wants to damn with faint praise this overrated chain by calling it a “quintessential El Paso tradition.” I mean, does this advocacy group hate Chico’s, or El Paso in general? Quintesseintially, I think the Project just hates, period.

Living in the Borderland as we do, it’s likely none of us have ever thought much about immigration. Except those who constantly complain that El Paso, Laredo, Deming, Las Cruces, and various — ahem — lesser metropolises in between don’t meet our sophisticated, well-bred needs. Fortunately, the International Association of Chiefs of Police have thought about migration, and put out a handy guide on the topic, which you can read in the comfort of your migrant-infested home here.

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RSS Roundup 27 May 2007

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Was there ever any question but that banning illegals from renting in the US would fail faster than a Democratic timetable for withdrawal from Iraq? Naturally, the ACLU was all over this — you’ve got to admire the Union’s ability to sniff out high-profile material for its own publicity purposes.

JihadWatch is all over the University of California at Irvine’s latest Muslim outrage. And I thought cinderblock statements were so 1970.

Yin, Yang and attorneys: This smacks of more clever backroom dealing than Dems are probably capable of pulling off. Ms Yang isn’t hurting anymore; shucks, plenty of people are leaving government service for better-paying jobs.

But barely making the news anymore: California Okie, allegedly grieving mother and Professional Nutroot Cindy Sheehan quits the Democrat Party. I don’t know what will be missed more: her heartfelt “grieving” for her son, expressed only in politicking, or her (literally) attachment to Hugo Chavez and Jesse Jackson. Sheehan is up for the “Tool of the Decade” award, you know. And her meds haven’t helped her one dang bit.

The French military may be a joke to some, but they’re really a competent fighting force once they get unshackled by their snotty, and usually cowardly, politician overlords. Watch some shackled troops let off steam here.

This goat needs a 12-step program to get off his addiction, as do so many Democrats who keep “embracing the suck” and licking electricity. Will the Dems get any smarter than this goat?

Tired of staid American politics, where the men are dumb when not corrupt and the women wear that Beltway fashion thing of red-colored jackets and pearl chokers? YesButNoButYes points us to Belgium, where things are perking up.

One gets weary: Dems, local pols and libel. Say anything, Dems, and keep saying it.

Digger’s Realm posts a lot on immigration and border security issues, but this Pew Hispanic Center datapoint is off-base. Fact is, most migrants go back and forth between the US and their home countries (usually Mexico and Central America). It’s a stat thing, and it’s enormously hard to get accurate figures on the number of illegals in the US.

US News & World Report thinks illegals don’t contribute to society (in the form of taxes and so on) what they remove from it. That’s contrary to what I studied a long time ago, in a far away university. Times may have changed, however. Used to be, illegals didn’t take advantage of things like medical insurance and drivers licenses.

In case you, Whitey, are feeling a nostalgia for a lifestyle you never knew — that of your Caucasoid ancestors across the pond — there is always something popping up in the news to remind you of how misguided you are. Whether its thousands dead in France because doctors were on summer holiday, or thousands dead in the Balkans because democracy was on holiday, you can always rest assured that whitey’s grass isn’t always greener. Naples, Italy, shows us how right now.

Pining for a good book? How about drug-addled horses with racially-stereotyped names getting high wit’ it ‘n’ shit? For children only.

No, I’m not kidding:

Now that’s a corral I wanna stable with. ‘N’ shit.

And finally, to end on a good note, the bovinian influence of that Mad Cow, Rosie O’Donnell, won’t sully your TV screens for the time being. The depressed, medicated and overrated hay-chomper has quit ABC’s “The View.”

What, she had a show on Australian TV??

Someone on the show named Hasselbeck didn’t see eye-to-fat with the pudgy plebian princess O’Donnell. So who won? The medicated one? Not. I don’t know if H is the grinning skinny blonde or the one with the cheekily-tossed off-red hair like an extra from “Golden Girls.” And I don’t care. All I want to see is Rosie and Paris Hilton in the same jail cell, starring in the same B-movie. Something about exploitation, prison discipline, midnight PT and dungarees, I think.

UPDATE: The Nose on Your Face draws a connection to a recent news event that will make you laugh or make you puke a little in your mouth.

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Posted in Californistan, Democrat, Humor, Liberal, Migration, Politics, Republican, USA | Comments Off

Your Weekend RSS Roundup!

Saturday, May 12th, 2007

Outside the Beltway wants to know why members of the press aren’t knowledgeable about their subjects. In this case, it’s about commissioned officers “re-enlisting.” I don’t know, OTB, but lack of basic understanding about the military certainly is a problem. For mainstream media, it seems every servicemember is a “soldier,” and every officer above O-3 is described as “senior.” I wonder how many times Wesley Clark re-enlisted.

GOG IS BACK: One of the original members of our Gang of Generals has lost his job at CBS. MG (Retired) John Batiste was removed from his “military analyst” job for political activism. Nonetheless, Batiste remains on radar for his buffoonery. GoG member Paul Eaton has a cameo in the offending activism: a TV ad.

MAN BITES DOG O’ THE DAY: Michelle Malkin notes an SFGate article on a legal immigrant suing San Francisco’s police commissioner for failing to deal with illegal migrants. That ought to end well. The City, of course, is a “sanctuary” for illegals, as well as the homeless, the mentally ill, wasteful and clueless politicians, and bay windows.

REYNOLDS ALUMINIUM UPDATE: If it’s kooky, it’s Kucinich! Impish Dem climbs aboard Bush impeachment train, surprised to find only three other passengers.

ABC BLOG APPARENTLY RUN BY SNARKY TEENAGER: An ABC blog is deleting comments. That’s nothing new. Most of my readers’ comments are deleted out of hand. I must say, I sure do have a large fanbase in the pharmaceutical industry.

A MINUTE FOR PELOSI: If it’s a day of the week ending in “day,” then Pelosi must have done something wrong. This time she’s working a deal that would purportedly help hubby’s rental property a scant mile away. A mile’s a long way for Pelosi, who denies any link — but then again, it would be a long way away for a Speaker who’s still crawling.

FORGOTTEN RECENT NEWS: Read somewhere that one in two Mexicans have family members in the US. Where did I read that, and why don’t I care?

The ace reporters at the El Paso Times have sussed out something important. Undocumented immigrants in the border town are poor because they lack, you know citizenship, naturalization papers, or visas that would get them a better education. But what EPT doesn’t realize is that plenty of Americans are still stuck on stupid even with a sheepskin between their paws. All that said, “thousands of Mexican children” are attending US public schools, the paper screamed back on April 29th. Well, OK, it didn’t scream. No one would care if the “brown ones” (that’s Bush the First talking, not me) were taking up desk space learning (or more likely, not learning, the three Rs, but the rub comes when the city is trying to float a $230 million education bond to, believe it or not, build new schools to handle growth. We’re such a magnanimous country. “Give me your tired, your poor, your coyotes and drug runners, and your illiterate kids who are evidence of a failed/nonexistent Mexican education system.”

OUT OF TIME: I’m not even beginning to get ready to deal with Al Sharpton right now. I have to unstop a toilet, which is preferable to thinking about that ugly little bigot.

ANOTHER USA VS. BORDER PATROL AGENT STORY: How far back in time do you need to go to start seeing a pattern? One gets weary of reading of yet another agent crucified to satisfy the political and financial agendas of NGOs, bureaucrats and lawyers. If you believe the agent and not the federal lawyer, that is. Either one could be the crumb bum.

WEEKEND AT CASTRO’s: Like a resurrected corpse, Michael Moore made it back into the light of day. He jetted off to Cuba to check out their world-class medical system, which is free for everyone, as everyone who is free knows. Sadly, the unfilmed truth is more painful. It ain’t free and it’s not available to everyone. I hear there’s a new show coming out: “Who Wants to Correct a Millionaire?”

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Posted in Border Patrol, Democrat, Gang of Generals, Law Enforcement, Liberal, Media, Mexico, Migration, Politics | Comments Off

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