Musings on Rubio and Immigration

The position of the Republicans viz Immigration is not a happy one. It is quite like the position a Thanksgiving Turkey is put in : do you want to be deep fried or baked? The wiser heads of the Republican Party can see the demographic freight train coming. They can see the hurt coming. They can look at the situation of the California Republican Party and see how the national party could become just as irrelevant.

Obama won because he crushed the Republicans in specific demographics. The biggest part of that butt-kicking came with Hispanics. They are a growing slice of the nation and they are going over to the Democratic Party in droves.

So what to do, what to do? And that is the dilemma the National Republicans face. The TEA Party folk are dead set against any kind of amnesty. They are still fans of "self deportation' and other really brilliant ideas like "securing the border." The big ideas being that if the nation will just build a bigger wall and act even more despicably to undocumented workers everything will come up roses.

The flaws to that ideology are at least two. There is no wall long, deep, and wide enough to keep undocumenteds out. You can only make the idea of building a wall plausible to people in U.S. because their geographic skills are so atrocious. Build the dang wall? Look at a map genius; thousands of miles of border with multiple areas where the landscape is impossible to guard and then thousands more miles of coastline with similar issues. Building a wall is nothing more than passing a Coyote Full Employment Act.

The other flaw with the ideology is that undocumenteds have already self-deported, thank you very much, and are not in the mind to do it again. They came here for better opportunities. They came here for jobs. They put down roots; they are not leaving. No matter how mean and vicious we become, we are not going to match the conditions these people left. If you have actually seen the Third World up close and personal, if you have had a even a small taste of what a developing nation looks, smells, and taste like, you know that no cruelty we can dream up will exceed what these people left.

But those inconvenient truths are even less palatable for Republicans than the 800 pound gorilla residing on the couch of national politics. Plainly put, the Republicans brand has no appeal for Hispanics. Thus a man like De Mint has a point. Why let these people become citizens, citizens that vote, citizens that vote Democratic? The awful truth for TEA Party Republicans is that they die a quick and ugly death if DREAMers and others get the right to vote. The TEA Party will be as dead as a stuffed Dodo.

But for the National Party the optics are different. The longer the TEA Party rules the roost on immigration, the longer the trek in the wilderness for the National Republicans becomes. Again, the example of California looms, dark and ominous, for the National Republicans. All during the 1990's the California Republican Party went on an immigrant bashing tear. And that is why in the early 21st century the CA Republican Party can not find a non-white vote for love or (tons of) money. Republicans can rock the white vote from now to rapture (and they still do, comfortably) but still loose because whites are now just another minority and because the Republican Brand is so toxic to the other minorities in CA.

In a way I don't envy Rubio's position. His personal and political argument is that the Republican have to accept quite a bit of pain now to avoid a whole world of hurt later. It's a hell of a high-wire act. Plus there is the added bonus that even if he succeeds, he is not going to have much to show for it in the form of Hispanic votes. Immigration is not the only thing that turns off Hispanic voters from the Republicans.

Personally I see Republicans acting to type. Obama Derangement Syndrome will kick in and De Mint will get his scalp to hang on the wall. I see some rather large chickens coming home to roost. I see chickens the size of Airbus A350s heading in. A whole generation and then some have been fed a toxic witch's brew of bigotry, resentment, fear, and hatred. They have lashed out in ways large and small. They have made the politics of resentment the national sport, the norm. And while doing this they have left a ton of people hugely pissed off. You don't work off that kind of karmic political debt with one bill. Deep down all Republicans know this. They know a reckoning is coming and they don't like it one little bit. But much like a cornered rat, the default will be to lash out as much as possible, to do as much damage as possible, to hold on to as much power as long as possible, and damn the consequences.

In the end I think the Republicans will refuse to give Obama a win, any kind of win, even if such a win is in the long term interest of the Republican Party. It is not even just about Obama. The Republican Party still believes in the Rove-ite dream of a one Party state, a nation solely ruled by the precepts and programs of the Republican Party. They don't accept any Democratic president as legitimate. They don't accept the Democratic Party as legitimate. In such a zero sum ideology, where your loss is my gain, any "win" for Democrats is unacceptable. I fear 10-12 million people are going to have to wait for the Elephants to finally, irrevocably be swallowed up by the coming demographic tsunami before any real reform comes their way. 

Not to worry, no way this could end up badly; honest.

MANILA - China has beefed up its naval might around the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, threatening a clash as the United States and Philippines hold joint military exercises in the vicinity of the potentially energy rich disputed maritime territory. 

In a show of force, a state-of-the-art Chinese vessel, the Yuzheng 310, is now on patrol near the Scarborough Shoal, raising the strategic ante as its maritime standoff with the Philippines heads into a second week. Certain news reports have suggested as many as five other Chinese patrol vessels are now in the area. 

In contrast, a lone US-made Philippine Coast Guard ship

remains on alert in a lopsided faceoff with the Chinese fleet, while Manila's other warships joined the two-week joint drills, known as Balikatan (shoulder to shoulder) the US is leading near the contested islands. 

The US has deployed 4,500 marines, the bulk of them from its military base in Okinawa, Japan, and battleships in the biggest contingent since the joint war games began in 1983. 

In an unprecedented exercise held near the Philippine island of Palawan on April 19, US and Philippine forces rehearsed retaking seized offshore oil and natural gas platforms. Philippine officials said the exercise was relevant in the context of Chinese harassment of energy exploration teams last year near the contested Reed Bank. 

The US has issued assurances that the combined military exercise is not aimed at any country or rising territorial tensions. China, however, clearly remains wary. A recent Chinese military paper has warned that the US-Philippine joint exercises increase the potential for an armed confrontation in the region. 


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/ND24Ae01.html

Policy Fantasies: Securing the Border, Ever

In one of the more free-form absurdist utterances ever put out by an un-ironical major political figure, Mitch McConnell made the statement that immigration reform would have to wait until the border was secured in 2012. The statement was so transparently in bad faith that it is a wonder that anyone took it seriously. First, does anyone with two brain cells to rub together think a subject as politically radioactive as immigration reform will make any progress in a presidential election year? Right off the bat, even the most casual observer knows that mighty Mitch was angling to demagogue this issue for Republican success in 2012. At the very least, the Minority Leader in the Senate was attempting to find an excuse to kick the can down the road at least past the midterms. The firestorm over Arizona SB 1070 made such delaying tactics both much more transparent, and much less tolerated.

But the real hidden gem of mendacity was the idea that the border would somehow be secure by 2012. Even if you take the Administration's estimates as gospel, the 2012 date is impossibly optimistic. At best, the border will be slightly less of a sieve by that date; but secure, not even in the movies.

The dirty little secret that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want you to know is that "securing the border" is an impossibility. First, the power structure has no desire to actually seal the border. Big business absolutely loves the cheap labor that the porous border provides; and it is more than willing to bribe our legislature and our executive to continue the "catch and release" enforcement that is our real policy. In this the oligarchic elite are not alone, ordinary U.S. citizens are also addicted to cheep, undocumented labor. Almost no one wants to actually pay the extra dollars it would cost to use well paid native labor. There is a truism that everyone wishes to ignore: there is no "illegal immigrant problem" in the U.S.; there is only an illegal employer problem.

But even if we were willing to pay the extra amount it would cost us in our purchases to pay living wages; that "sacrifice" would still not help to "seal the border." This is because of the hugest and most ignored elephant in the room: our border is impossible to defend, it is impossible to seal.

Case in point, take the very small section of the border in the state of California. Just in California, the terrain is a nightmare for the people trying to defend it. It is a combination of rugged mountains and large swaths of desert. It is a landscape that eats up both men and machines. It is a terrain that foils any technology that you throw at it. Toss in a Navy live-fire area near El Centro and no sane law enforcement officer is going into parts of the Chocolate Mountains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_Mountains.)

Go further east and it gets no better. The state of Arizona has become a smuggling nightmare because of environmental and topographical reasons. Enforcement efforts in California have pushed the flow of immigrants into the state's vast swaths of desert. It is the same Sornoran Desert that makes enforcement efforts so hard in Imperial County, California; but much, much bigger. If you actually look at South West United State and its topography, the task of "sealing off" that vast and hostile tract of land becomes much more clear; and daunting. Further east the task gets no easier.

Once past the imposing deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, the geography of the southern United States just keeps tossing spanners in the works of border enforcement. The meanderings of the Rio Grande alone present a formidable challenge to the green-clad defenders of truth and justice know as the Border Patrol. Add in the few odd speed-bumps known as the mountain of Texas in to the mix and the challenge just gets bigger. Taken just by itself, the Rio Grande crossing presents a Sisyphean task to any government agency trying to monitor it. There are just not enough drones and more importantly drone operators to cover the area adequately. The drones cannot loiter over the area indefinitely. Once the cat is away, the coyotes (human traffickers) will play.

If the challenges of guarding the surface of the border were not maddening enough, no one has bothered to mention the Palestinian option; that is the literal undermining of the border fence. Mexicans with shovels managed to shred the most "secure" part of the southern border, that of San Diego, California. The drug and people smugglers just burrowed underneath the triple fence that hulks at Otay Mesa, California. There, in the unfashionable part of San Diego County, where jails, industrial warehouses and factories, junk yards and truck stops sprawl under the blue Southern California skies, the criminal element purpose-built a tunnel that lacked no amenities. The tunnel emptied out into one of the hundreds of non-descript houses that cover the Otay Mesa border area like a bad rash. Law enforcement sheepishly admitted that the operation ran right under their noses (and their fence) for at least seven months.

But let us say that some major miracle enables the government to meaningfully seal the southern land border, the weary DHS is still not done. Next up is the deep blue sea; lots of it. There are thousands of miles of U.S. coast that need to be observed. These are served by numerous ports large and small. Of course the great container ports are a major source of human imports. The immigrants come in the same containers that ship our iPads and other consumer toys. Customs and Border Patrol are not ignorant of these facts; they are just buried under the millions of containers that ship in every year. Customs cannot even screen the containers for the odd nuclear weapon that might try to wonder in our ports, never mind any small puny humans that might be on the same ship, hiding in other containers. If the land border is somehow closed, the human traffickers will just move to sea. The process is rather simple; place the immigrants on mother ships outside the U.S. then zip them in to unguarded shores via small boats once off U.S. waters. Europe is already dealing with this headache in the Mediterranean, a much smaller body of water than the Gulf of Mexico. Toss in the Pacific Ocean in the west and the Atlantic in east when the traffickers get really inventive, and any talk about sealing the borders becomes a cruel joke.

One does have to give a small bit of credit to Mitch McChinless for playing the "seal the border" card. The idea plays neatly into U.S. assumptions that there is always some easy technical fix to large social issues. Just put a whole mess of sensors on the ground, a few predator drones in the sky and add some more human assets and the "problem" will be solved. But as with most other simple solutions offered by the Elephant Party, the proposal does not survive even the most cursory glance. It is depressing, but reality does have a well known liberal bias. Geography is in cahoots with the "illegals flooding into the United States." Topography is conspiring to undermine our nation. It is an old story, just ask the real natives about the futility of keeping out "undesirables." The restless shade of Sitting Bull would give you an earful.

McCain Moves Spain To South America

McCain 'confused' over Spain PM
By Lourdes Heredia
BBC News, Washington

US Republican presidential candidate John McCain has raised suspicions in Spain that he thinks the country's prime minister is Latin American.

Asked by a Miami radio station if he would meet PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Mr McCain spoke of his record with leaders in "the hemisphere".

His answer led some to suggest he thought Mr Zapatero was Latin American.

Mr McCain's campaign team denied any gaffe, but did say the candidate had refused to commit to a meeting.

Spanish media have suggested that stance could be a sign Mr McCain has not forgiven Mr Zapatero for pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq when he became prime minister in 2004.

Misunderstanding?

Before asking Mr McCain about Mr Zapatero, the Spanish interviewer repeatedly questioned Mr McCain about Latin American leaders, including Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, with whom the US has a fraught relationship.

But the interviewer then changed the subject by saying: "Let's talk about Spain.

"If you are elected president, would you be willing to invite Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?"

"I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are our friends and who want to work with us in co-operative fashion," Mr McCain answered, before moving on to talk about US relations with Mexico.

He did not even mention Zapatero's name
Semanaldigital.com
Spanish digital newspaper

In an effort to draw an answer, the Caracol Miami reported posed the same question three more times. Mr McCain gave more or less the same response, saying at one stage:

"All I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not.

"And that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region."

But Mr McCain's answer has itself posed more questions.

Did Mr McCain forget which country Mr Zapatero leads? Did he misunderstand or mishear the question? Or was he intentionally signalling a cooling in the relationship between Spain and the US?

Mr McCain's foreign policy adviser, Randy Sheunemann, said that there was no doubt about the senator's answers.

"The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain's willingness to meet Zapatero, and identified him in the question, so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred," he wrote in an email to the Washington Post.

"Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview," he confirmed.

'No mention'

In Spain, opinion was divided on the ambiguous answer.

One interpretation is that Mr McCain has not forgiven Mr Zapatero for deciding to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq upon taking office in April 2004.

"McCain was asked four times and four times he avoided committing to a meeting with Zapatero", wrote the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

That would be a big change from April, the newspaper said, when the candidate told a reporter "it is the moment to leave behind discrepancies with Spain."

Other newspapers were more critical.

"He did not even mention Zapatero's name" wrote El Semana Digital, an online newspaper.

Mr Zapatero, himself did not give much credence to this episode, telling Spanish media that his government would work with Washington "whoever wins the elections" in the US.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7624143.stm

Published: 2008/09/18 21:47:17 GMT

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