Saturday, October 21, 2006
BIGGER CATS MAKE BETTER FENCES
Micky Klaus over at Slate has devoted quite a bit of space in his Klausfiles blog lately to the ongoing saga of the Secure Fence Act, which GWB has yet to sign, apparently because nobody actually knows where the Bill is…
“Read My Lips: No New Jaguars!”
http://www.slate.com/id/2151609/?nav=fix
On the 18th, Mickey leads off the discussion, acerbically suggesting “Bush Picks Secret Signing Over Winning Midterm Election,” citing a bit of analysis from The Washington Times, which is looking high and low for the bill…
“Border-fence bill awaits signing”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20061018-123040-8481r.htm
According to the Times:
“The White House is pleading with Congress to send over the bill authorizing 700 miles of fence on the U.S.-Mexico border so the president can sign it immediately, but Republican leaders on Capitol Hill want to wait until closer to the election and to have a public signing ceremony…”
Apparently the Congressional Leadership is holding onto the bill, hoping for a really big show really close to the election – but the administration would rather this be a low-key affair, because… Mickey Klaus picks up the refrain there, providing all kinds of speculation built around the Times assertion a White House “official” “rejected a signing ceremony, and said the White House doesn't want voters to expect too much out of the wall.”
A good read if you are a political junkie needing a fence fix…
A day earlier, Klausfiles takes on a naysayer’s piece from the Washington Post by staff writer John Pomfret detailing why the fence won’t work, will cost too much, will offend Mexico, and will stifle “Efforts to protect pronghorn sheep and encourage the jaguar to return to the United States”…
“Fence Meets Wall of Skepticism”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901006.html
Klaus notes, “Pomfret makes no attempt at balance--it's a straight "let's let fence critics piss all over the idea" piece.”… Klaus does a good job of pissing on the critics…
I don’t know… As an animal lover, I may have to change my mind on this issue… If it is, as Klaus suggests, a question of “Which will it be: No new jaguars or no new illegal immigrants?” well, we need to get our priorities straight here…
But the germ – rapidly fermenting – of an idea formed as I read that line “No new jaguars or no new illegal immigrants”… If we could just change one little couplet and moderate “no”… “No” is soo negative…
After all, if GWB can proclaim operation Enduring Bullshit to be a mere comma in history, I can change an “or” to an “and”…
So let’s consider a better, more ecologically sound initiative:
“New jaguars and fewer illegal immigrants!”
Consider it. We import a lot of nice, fat Jaguars. Just think of them as very big black kitty cats. We populate the border with them, and teach them to eat border crashers! Let’s scrap that fence and build a wildlife preserve instead. Make it maybe five miles deep along the whole border… We’ll collar the Jags and set up “invisible fence” on our side to keep them where they belong and let nature do the rest…
There are wins all around this scenario.
First off, Americans don’t really want to stop Pedro from sneaking in. There’s work to be done north of the border, and business will suffer if it has to pay a fair wage to an American. Pedro will pick those apples or clean the “biohazardous materials” off those hotel walls for half of what one of those lazy white dudes will, and he won’t ask for any safety gear, either!
No, Americans want to stop Pedro’s wife from sneaking in and dropping an anchor baby on our side of the Rio. And this is where the Jaguar system will be a real win-win: The cats will go after the easy marks – kids, 8 months’ pregnant women, fatties who can’t run… Those are the ones who will just overload our social services. We don’t need their kind…
And if Pedro wants a wife, well, there are millions of available American women, since the millions of American men they would be sleeping with are part of the largest prison population on the planet…
We could even get a new reality show out of this: Those fancy cameras some want for watching the border can watch the cats hunt…
And don’t forget the new government program possibilities: As part of a physical fitness initiative, we can create a program whereby anyone who manages to outrun kitty is automatically granted citizenship – we can call it the paper chase.
Oh, and deportees? When we do decide to deport somebody, we’ll just lead them to the five-mile line, jab them in the ass with a cattleprod and let some white militiaman chase him on in with near-misses from an M-16…
“Read My Lips: No New Jaguars!”
http://www.slate.com/id/2151609/?nav=fix
On the 18th, Mickey leads off the discussion, acerbically suggesting “Bush Picks Secret Signing Over Winning Midterm Election,” citing a bit of analysis from The Washington Times, which is looking high and low for the bill…
“Border-fence bill awaits signing”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20061018-123040-8481r.htm
According to the Times:
“The White House is pleading with Congress to send over the bill authorizing 700 miles of fence on the U.S.-Mexico border so the president can sign it immediately, but Republican leaders on Capitol Hill want to wait until closer to the election and to have a public signing ceremony…”
Apparently the Congressional Leadership is holding onto the bill, hoping for a really big show really close to the election – but the administration would rather this be a low-key affair, because… Mickey Klaus picks up the refrain there, providing all kinds of speculation built around the Times assertion a White House “official” “rejected a signing ceremony, and said the White House doesn't want voters to expect too much out of the wall.”
A good read if you are a political junkie needing a fence fix…
A day earlier, Klausfiles takes on a naysayer’s piece from the Washington Post by staff writer John Pomfret detailing why the fence won’t work, will cost too much, will offend Mexico, and will stifle “Efforts to protect pronghorn sheep and encourage the jaguar to return to the United States”…
“Fence Meets Wall of Skepticism”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901006.html
Klaus notes, “Pomfret makes no attempt at balance--it's a straight "let's let fence critics piss all over the idea" piece.”… Klaus does a good job of pissing on the critics…
I don’t know… As an animal lover, I may have to change my mind on this issue… If it is, as Klaus suggests, a question of “Which will it be: No new jaguars or no new illegal immigrants?” well, we need to get our priorities straight here…
But the germ – rapidly fermenting – of an idea formed as I read that line “No new jaguars or no new illegal immigrants”… If we could just change one little couplet and moderate “no”… “No” is soo negative…
After all, if GWB can proclaim operation Enduring Bullshit to be a mere comma in history, I can change an “or” to an “and”…
So let’s consider a better, more ecologically sound initiative:
“New jaguars and fewer illegal immigrants!”
Consider it. We import a lot of nice, fat Jaguars. Just think of them as very big black kitty cats. We populate the border with them, and teach them to eat border crashers! Let’s scrap that fence and build a wildlife preserve instead. Make it maybe five miles deep along the whole border… We’ll collar the Jags and set up “invisible fence” on our side to keep them where they belong and let nature do the rest…
There are wins all around this scenario.
First off, Americans don’t really want to stop Pedro from sneaking in. There’s work to be done north of the border, and business will suffer if it has to pay a fair wage to an American. Pedro will pick those apples or clean the “biohazardous materials” off those hotel walls for half of what one of those lazy white dudes will, and he won’t ask for any safety gear, either!
No, Americans want to stop Pedro’s wife from sneaking in and dropping an anchor baby on our side of the Rio. And this is where the Jaguar system will be a real win-win: The cats will go after the easy marks – kids, 8 months’ pregnant women, fatties who can’t run… Those are the ones who will just overload our social services. We don’t need their kind…
And if Pedro wants a wife, well, there are millions of available American women, since the millions of American men they would be sleeping with are part of the largest prison population on the planet…
We could even get a new reality show out of this: Those fancy cameras some want for watching the border can watch the cats hunt…
And don’t forget the new government program possibilities: As part of a physical fitness initiative, we can create a program whereby anyone who manages to outrun kitty is automatically granted citizenship – we can call it the paper chase.
Oh, and deportees? When we do decide to deport somebody, we’ll just lead them to the five-mile line, jab them in the ass with a cattleprod and let some white militiaman chase him on in with near-misses from an M-16…
