And in other news, water is wet

EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

The JOE 2008 report also predicted the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, the defeat of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist forces by Mao Zedong and warned that continuing hyperinflation in Weimer Germany could open the door for an extremest political party to make significant gains in the upcoming Reichstag elections.

Seriously, Mexico is a basket case and its collapse would be very bad for the US. However the new Obama administration has a plan to prevent a catastrophic implosion of the Mexican government.

By allowing absolutely unrestricted immigration into the US, along with generous welfare benefits, the percentage of Mexico's population resident in the United States will rise from 10%, where it is today, to anywhere between 40 and 55 percent. This should relieve the pressure on Mexico's internal institutions and prevent any kind of civil unrest.

Of course many of the problems plaguing Mexico would flow into the United States with such massive immigration however plans to deal with that are already in place. Plans for the withdrawal of US military forces from the Middle East and other points around the world so that they can be stationed around the nation and put down domestic upheavals have already been drawn up and only await the new president's signature on the evening of Jan. 21.

Truly the United States can look forward to change.

What is Bush thinking?

WASHINGTON - To put it bluntly, Texas wants President Bush to get out of the way of the state's plan to execute a Mexican for the brutal killing of two teenage girls.

Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out.

The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.

That is the same court Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws.

"The president does not agree with the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention," the administration said in arguments filed with the court. This time, though, the U.S. agreed to abide by the international court's decision because ignoring it would harm American interests abroad, the government said.

Texas argues that neither the international court nor Bush has any say in Medellin's case.

Medellin was born in Mexico but spent much of his childhood in the United States. He was 18 in June 1993, when he and other members of the Black and Whites gang in Houston encountered two teenage girls on a railroad trestle.

The girls were gang-raped and strangled. Their bodies were found four days later.

Medellin was arrested a few days later. He was told he had a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, but the police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican consulate.

Medellin gave a written confession. He was convicted of murder in the course of a sexual assault, a capital offense in Texas. A judge sentenced him to death in October 1994.

Medellin did not raise the lack of assistance from Mexican diplomats during his trial or sentencing. When he did claim his rights had been violated, Texas and federal courts turned him down because he had not objected at his trial. Mexico later sued the United States in the International Court of Justice in The Hague on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row in the U.S.

A fair question to ask is what make this case unique in Bush's mind? What are these "American interests" that would be harmed by standing up to the International Criminal Court in this case which would not be harmed by standing up to it in other cases?

The only thing I can come up with is that in this case it is Mexico which is seeking to affect US policy and Bush is unwilling to defy Mexico's wishes. Which leads us to another question. Why is George W Bush so willing to consistently place the wishes of the Mexican government over the wishes of the America people? Why is he willing to violate the oath he took when he was sworn in as President of the United States by serving the interests of a foreign power against the interests of the United States.

So that's where all the money in Mexico was

MEXICO CITY: The Mexican government vigorously denied this week the accusations of a Chinese-Mexican businessman who is wanted on drug charges here but who asserts that $150 million found hidden in his mansion came from members of President Felipe Calderón's party, including the secretary of labor.

Zhenli Ye Gon, a naturalized Mexican citizen who owns a pharmaceutical company, rocked the political world here recently by suggesting, through his lawyer in New York, that the labor secretary, Javier Lozano Alarcón, had threatened to kill him last year unless he agreed to hide duffel bags stuffed with tens of millions of dollars in his house.

On Tuesday, Lozano Alarcón issued a statement calling the charges "false, absurd, untrue, crooked and perverse." A spokesman for Calderón, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the president had yet to make an official statement, said Zhenli appeared to be making false charges as part of a strategy to broker a deal with prosecutors here.

Mexico's attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, said in a televised interview Monday that the idea that someone from Calderón's campaign or cabinet would force Zhenli to hide money seemed "ridiculous and fantastic."

"Evidently the man dedicated himself to the illicit importation of pseudoephedrine, and this was sold to drug traffickers," the attorney general said. "This money was the product of that activity."

He said the government had evidence that Zhenli, 44, had illegally imported 19 tons of pseudoephedrine, a decongestant, and intended to sell it to drug dealers who use it to manufacture methamphetamine, a synthetic stimulant known on the street as "ice."

Zhenli denied the charge in an interview with The Associated Press published Saturday; the news agency said the interview was given in the New York office of his lawyer, Ning Ye.

Zhenli said that various party officials had delivered money for him to hide, but he did not provide their names.

The Mexican authorities began investigating Zhenli in December, after discovering an illicit shipment of pseudoephedrine on a boat in the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, prosecutors say. The chemical was being shipped to Unimed, a pharmaceutical company Zhenli started in 1997, they said.

In a dispute between Mexican government officials and a Chinese drug dealer who has more credibility? I'd have to say its about 50/50.

In the Mexican government's favor I would ask why the ruling party would allow Zhenli to be investigated and raided if he were in bed with them. But then there could well be other factors that we don't know about.

Whatever the truth in this specific case the fact that the story sounds eminently credible tells you everything you need to know about the Mexican government.

Real immigration reform

Pat over at Born Again Redneck Yogi has a post about his support for the president's latest immigration reform proposal (which is far better than what he has been suggesting). However he presents a common straw man argument in opposition to the idea of sending back those who are here illegally that I can't allow to pass without comment:

. . .You can't just round them [illegal aliens] up, put them on buses and send them back to Mexico. The SCOTUS has already ruled that illegals must appear before a judge before they can be deported. There just aren't enough judges and it would take years to accomplish.

Notice that the choices are laid out as a stark alternative between allowing them to say legally or staging mass deportations. There is not even the barest hint that any kind of third way is even possible. Yet there is another way which accomplishes the goal of ridding the nation of its population of alien criminals while sparing the expense of tracking down and deporting all 12 - 30 million of them.

Here is how you do it. You focus on the people who employ them and the people who rent to them. You put teeth in the laws against hiring an illegal so that in addition to the fine which employers simply pass along to their customers as part of the cost of doing business you add serious jail time for the company officers and board of directors if a corporation and owner or owners if a privately owned business.

You cannot pass along a prison sentence to your customers.

The prison sentence should not be 90 days in the county work farm either. If those who knowingly hire illegals have the reasonable expectation of doing at least one year behind bars in the state prison where they will have the joy of learning how much fun it is to start every morning by performing oral sex on a fellow convict with a name like "Snake" or "Big Leroy" then they will be highly unlikely to continue to attempt to lower expenses by hiring the "undocumented".

The law should also be modified to place the same penalties upon those who rent to illegals or to those who knowingly sell them real property.

Hospitals should continue to provide care in their emergency rooms to anyone who presents, however they should be required to make a good faith effort to verify the citizenship status of all who come in for treatment. If a patient is found to be an illegal then law enforcement should be notified. Individual doctors who fail to report illegal patients should lose their license to practice medicine for 1 year for the first offense and permanently for the second. Hospitals who condone their doctors shielding illegals should be closed and their administrators and board of directors should be jailed just like employers who hire illegals.

All law enforcement agencies, federal, state and local should be required to enforce immigration laws. Police administrators who order police to look the other way on illegal immigration should be removed from office and jailed just like those who hire illegals and police convicted of aiding illegals should serve their time in the general population. This way we would no longer have "catch and release" immigration enforcement. When an illegal was caught for speeding or drunk driving or just got caught in a routine license check he would be guaranteed a trip back to Mexico City.

If these measures were adopted jobs and housing would dry up and the illegal aliens would deport themselves back to where they came from where they would at least be able to earn enough not to starve. This process of self deportation would be aided by a policy of offering free transportation back to Mexico (or other nation of origin) to any illegal turning him/her self in to any law enforcement. Three hot meals per day at the collection center and a nice clean bed to sleep in until enough of your fellow illegals are collected to fill a Greyhound then a nice air conditioned bus ride back to Mexico where you belong and have every right to be.

Some people will think that I am being overly harsh, but the truth is far from it. Mexico is a corrupt dysfunctional basket case. Most of the money and all of the power is in the hands of a small number of elite families who are descended from the original Spanish Conquistadors. These families routinely run Mexico through their olive press (to borrow the Sicilian expression) and squeeze themselves out vast fortunes.

This leaves very little for the rest of the Mexicans, those descended from the original native Mexican Indians. The lid is kept from blowing off the nation by the safety valve of immigration to the United States. Deny that safety valve and the current graftocracy would melt like a snowball in a blast furnace.

The Mexican ruling class knows this and this is why they scream like banshees whenever gringo politicians talk about doing things like building a wall along the Mexico/US border.

This is why it is absolutely vital that we build a wall along the entire border. From Brownsville, Texas to Imperial Beach, California a real physical barrier must be constructed and then patrolled so that access to this nation can only take place at designated entry points and only after who and what comes in can be inspected.

Doubtless someone will point out that no wall can be perfect and keep everyone out. This is true, but if we build the wall and thousands make it in every year that will be infinitely better than no wall with millions making it in every year.

Tightening our immigration laws to force those here illegally out and building a wall to keep more from coming in is the only way to force Mexico to deal with its serious internal problems. Mexico, if it is to survive, must make serious efforts to move its economy in a free-market capitalist direction. They must put serious curbs on the corruption, cronyism and nepotism which keep real political power the plaything of the privileged few.

The only way that a nation can create and distribute enough wealth to adequately feed, cloth and house a population is through free-market capitalism in the context of a firm rule of law. Mexico will not have any of these as long as it can export its discontent to the North.

The only compassionate way to deal with Mexico and the Mexican people is to take away the safety valve of illegal immigration and force their rulers to pursue genuine reform. Anything less may help some individuals in the short run, but will only serve to make the coming (and it is coming) explosion South of the border that much worse. And by worse I mean bloodier, more violent and more likely to produce some kind of totalitarian Marxist dictatorship.

Ultimately the way to solve America's illegal immigration problem is to fix Mexico and that cannot happen as long as those most aware of what is wrong in Mexico are in America doing a half-assed job of hanging drywall and driving around drunk.