April 12, 2006

"...When it's fiesta time in Guadalajara,

    Then I long to be back once again

    In Old Mexico.

    Where we lived for today,

    Never giving a thought to tomara.

    To the strumming of guitars,

    In a hundred grubby bars

    I would whisper ' Te amo.'

 

    The mariachis would serenade,

    And they would not shut up till they were paid.

    We ate, we drank, and we were merry,

    And we got typhoid and dysentery.

 

    But best of all, we went to the Plaza de Toros.

    Now whenever I start feeling morose,

    I revive by recalling that scene.

    And names like Belmonte, Dominguin, and Manolete,

    If I live to a hundred and eighty,

    I shall never forget what they mean.

 

    Aside- For there is surely nothing more beautiful in

              this world than the sight of a lone man facing

              single-handedly a half a ton of angry....pot roast..."

 

 

            - Partial lyrics from the song "Old Mexico", by

              Tom Lehrer

 

 

To All,

     One can only imagine the multicultural reaction of our environmentalist and animal rights friends when picadors finally come to ply their trade in the Fool's Golden State. Then perhaps there will finally be consensus from the Bay Area that regime change and nation-building backed by military force is "justifiable":

 

El Riesgo:

     Angel Jaramillo writes in the April 17th issue of the Weekly Standard about the upcoming national election in Mexico.

 

     Jaramillo reports that Mexico will vote on July 2 to replace the termed-out Vincente Fox. The current leader in polls in Mexico is the PDI's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, where some sources are reporting him to be as much as 11 points ahead in the polls from the next candidate, Felipe Calderon of the PAN.

 

    For those unfamiliar with Mexico, a Lopez Obrador victory would be the rough equivalent of having the Head Kommisar of the Berkeley City Council winning the White House. This would put a Hugo Chavez-Fidel Castro "clone" in charge of a country that is a mere sprinting distance for an undocumented worker-aspirant from the plush environs of Coastal Del Mar and La Jolla.

 

    And for those of us amateur pundits who try to divine the future of politics by those means not solely involving chicken innards, a PDI victory means that what was once a trickle of potentially thousands of undocumented workers able to cross the current frontera will literally turn into a flood of millions of political refugees fleeing a soon-to-become Cuba 4.0. (Just ask the Venezuelan middle class what their current travel plans are.).

 

     And if Mexico becomes the 21st Century Cuba, especially in reaction to harsher restrictions on both legal and illegal immigrants, then Americans can count on changes that will be sure to turn their world up-side down.

 

     For starters, the justification of an Israeli-style "Great Wall" stretching from San Ysidro to Brownsville could go up logarithmically with the numbers of people trying to escape the hit that is sure to come to Mexico's domestic economy through PDI policies.

 

    Secondly, such a barrier will have to be augmented by troop deployments so as to respond to breaching techniques at locations more convenient to the drug cartels and "OTM" visitors of the Islamo-fascist bent. Of course, such troops will have to be given flexible enough "ROE's" so as to permit live fire responses to armed incursions (Flexible in the sense of a lack of recrimination should the cartels start using undocumented immigrants as "human shields" for their drug smuggling activities, given that the narco-traffickers have all seen "Blawkhawk Down". Otherwise, fixed barriers will be of no use in stopping the flow of people with noting left to lose.).

 

    Next, taxpayers are going to be faced with the increased expenditure for controlling the US-Mexico border, which may just end up rivaling current expenditures for social services currently  utilized by undocumented/illegal immigrants (Of course, undocumented/illegal immigrants already in the country will still continue to draw on those services, thus resulting in a kind of economic "double whammy" to the body politic.).

 

     Other effects can be possibly extrapolated from past American experiences from dealing with Cuban, Vietnamese, and Iranian refugees, among others. But what is clear is that future migrants that did not have a chance of staying legally in the US, due to being "only" economic refugees, will significantly improve their chances by being able to list themselves as legitimate political refugees trying to escape a radical left-wing government.

 

     Perhaps it is possible that the current policy, supporting a work permit system,  by the White House and certain members of Congress is being promulgated with the upcoming Mexican elections in mind. It would not be the first time that the public was hoodwinked by the myopia of populist demagoguery. But without better "salesmanship" from a White House strongly focused on completing the mission in the Middle East, it may just be that the public's current fixation on Closing The Door will worsen the very situation it is trying to prevent. And that will result in a political re-orientation that will make it hard to predict outcomes for a whole host of interests for quite a while to come. Stay tuned.

 

Link at:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/
000/000/012/088txjtt.asp

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/14319082.htm

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/
viewItem/itemID/11371

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14218949.htm

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0403/p06s03-woam.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060411-115929-8404r.htm

 

 

Deadwood:

     John Wildermuth reported about some recent findings over at the California Secretary of State's office in regards to voter registration efforts in the first quarter of 2006 in an article on March 31 at the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

     Wildermuth reports that some 25% of new voter registration forms submitted to the state have been referred back to their counties of origin for verification of eligibility. He discovered that this is due to Federal requirements put into place in the aftermath of the Great 2000 Recount, which are now coming into effect.

 

     There is no confirmation as of publication date that this pattern holds for prior registrations, though one would expect voter registration groups to be cognizant of the requirements of their profession. Nonetheless, given the standardization of voter registration forms, it is hard to accept that such large numbers of voters would fill out the cards incorrectly through innocent omission.

 

     Of special interest to pollsters and campaign managers across the state is his reporting that some 43% of new forms from Los Angeles County, and some 33% of new forms from San Mateo County, have been kicked back for lack of a valid driver's license number, state identification number, or Social Security number verified by the Social Security Administration. These may be an indication of efforts by individuals unknown in those counties to "pump up" the numbers in such a way as to possibly aide in electoral chicanery.

 

    Current information per the California Secretary of State's January, 2006, 154 day closure report on voter registration statistics shows that San Mateo County has some 173,826 registered Democrats and some 89,026 registered Republicans. The same report also shows 76,620 voters registered as Independent, out of a total registered voter count of some 467,427.

 

     Los Angeles County likewise shows some 1,930,675 registered Democrats, 1,034,558 registered Republicans, and some 706,644 registered Independents, out of 3,834,499 total registered voters.

 

     Los Angeles County is of critical importance in this context, since it alone provides an edge of almost 900,000 registered voters towards the Democrat's total state-wide lead over Republicans of over 1.2 million.

 

     In other words, it may just be that, if this discrepancy holds for past registrations, a sizeable number of people otherwise not qualified to vote in American elections are currently able to vote in California.

 

     These potentially erroneous registration totals have more of an effect than just on Election Day. Such registration numbers determine poll sampling for local, state, and even national races and issues on a "24/7" basis. Pollsters will actually use these numbers as justification for where and how many responses are weighted towards one political party or another.

 

     Of course, these are the very same polls that the "Drive-By Media" use to shape public opinion on all things related to war and peace.

 

     In turn, said "weighted" polls are often used by candidates and campaign managers on whether any race or initiative is worth doing, or not. It would be interesting to discover how many worthwhile candidates deferred entering politics because there currently appears on paper to be a hostile philosophical environment in California to certain positions and beliefs.

 

     And, finally, it is of passing interest to historians of the Great 2000 Florida Recount that, like Florida, the troublesome counties noted in Wildermuth's article are dominated by the Democrat Party.

 

    What is not discussed by Wildermuth is whether Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is "culling" the voter registration rolls for those who a) have not voted in recent elections; and  b) whose forms do not show the identification needed to complete the verification process noted under Federal and California law.

 

     Given that public spending is tied to actual vote totals, it would seem highly advisable that Secretary of State McPherson begin a review as soon as possible to assure the integrity of the registered voter database. The rolls should be purged of "deadwood" and other voters not qualified to vote under the new requirements. Otherwise, voters may have a real reason to mistrust election night results, rather than the trumped-up issues that were used after the 2000 Presidential Election.

 

Links at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/
03/31/MNGC1I1ARQ1.DTL

 

http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/ror/154_2006/county.pdf

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612392/posts

 

Respectfully,