BayouVixen's Blog

By nature, I avoid watching most TV news. Having been in the print media for so long myself, I'm aware at how much the broadcasters simply can't give the public. The flip side of that, of course, is the fact that most Americans these days won't read past the first three paragraphs of a real news story, so us guys in print can't claim we actually inform anyone any better. People just don't want the whole story.

But every now and then I see some TV news coverage that makes the steam rise out of my ears, my blood boil and enrages me to the point I want to take that idiot box and chunk it. The case in point would be the coverage of the recent immigration raid at Action Rags USA in Houston.

The wife happened to have the TV tuned to the station which runs her nonsense "swap" shows, so the report in question was not on Fox, but I have little doubt that some manager at the local Fox affiliate had his hands full trying to convince a reporter that no, we don't need another "families broken apart" story. Or maybe they did it and just haven't run it yet, in which case I'll get mad at Fox, too.

Now, here's the situation: the undocumented workers who were "rounded up," who are in this country illegally, are criminals. The people at Action Rags who hired them are criminals. People who make and sell meth are criminals, as are people who murder other people.

Yet of course the sappy reporter for this (other) station had to interview "family members" of those being carted off in the raid to learn how this was "breaking up their families," like maybe Immigration and Customs Enforcement was doing something other than its job -- and God knows, I've been howling at them to do THAT!

But I have to ask: where is this reporter when a bunch of gang members gets rounded up for selling crack? Why is there no story about how these arrests are tearing apart THOSE families? Where is the human interest piece about how our cruel drunk-driving laws tear apart the families of the mindless sots who insist on breaking the law?

What this TV reporter, and the station she works for, are doing is betraying their bias. By supporting those who have invaded our country and are trying to replace our American culture with their own, they are affirming that the very concept of the "United States of America" is completely meaningless to them -- they're fully supportive of the reconquista of the American Southwest by Mexico.

The time is coming, folks, when we're going to have to choose sides.

I went to the dentist today and got one of the bigger disappointments of my life. Which is unusual, since I've spent most of my half-century avoiding dentists like the plague because they are harbingers or excruciating pain.

But a few weeks back I finally decided that hey, it was time I finally broke down and did somthing about my teeth. My family has a history of bad teeth and I knew this was coming, but I figured what the heck, I have dental insurance now and I need a nice smile to show the public. So I went to the place that's advertised on TV, because I'm a coward.

My first three visits were extremely productive. We got rid of several teeth that were unsavable. We got things cleaned up and the gum disease endemic to my family tree under control. Today was the day we were to talk about final solutions to give me some bright smileys to share with the world.

I was fine until they got to the $10,000 price. And the fact that my dental insurance had a $2,000 limit. So now I'm stuck with five gaping holes in my mouth and my diet is limited to variations of mashed potatoes.

A thousand years from now some archaeologist will unearth my bones in the cemetery for veterans of the Second Mexican-American War and wonder what kind of a low-life slug I must have been, since I was missing so many teeth in an age when dental care was so readily available.

Some of the lefties out there will be quick to sing that well, this wouldn't be happening to me if we had national health insurance, everything would be taken care of. Maybe that's true. But what that would mean is that all you other idiots out there would be paying for my familial trait and lack of poor dental hygeine -- and that's simply not fair. I shouldn't have to pay for your abortion nor your lung cancer treatments, and I damned well don't expect you to pay for my dental work.

We need to wake up to the fact that health care costs in the U.S. are out of control, and the only way to get them under control is to put a cap on tort -- because that is what is driving everything. Universal insurance won't improve care, it won't improve access, all it will do is institutionalize the greed of trial lawyers at the expense of taxpayers.

I watched o'Reilly last night and was surprised to learn that nearly one-third of the citizens of Mexico consider the United States to be an "enemy," according to new research from the Pew Foundation.

Here's a little tip for y'all, Presidente Calderon and buddies: we consider you guys to be an enemy, too.

The Pew Global Attitudes Survey tapped opinion in 24 countries and revealed that only 47 percent of Mexicans hold a favorable opinion of the U.S., down from 61 percent a decade ago. Most of them also doubt that either Democratic nominee Barack Obama nor Republican candidate John McCain will make a big difference in relations between our two countries, even though both candidates favor amnesty for the 40 million criminals who are here illegally.

Apparently our having given up more than 100,000 American manufacturing jobs through NAFTA, and the billions of dollars in food stamps, free health care, free education and even free housing given to Mexican invaders that American citizens can't get isn't friendly enough for Mexican citizens.

Mexican citizens kill 24 Americans every day in this country -- that's more than die on the battlefields of the Middle East. There is evidence that the government of Mexico is complicit in the human trafficking which funnels thousands of people across the border in violation of our laws every day. There is mounting evidence that Mexican government officials serving in consular capacities in this country are helping their citizens continue to evade our laws by providing fake identification.

Yet Mexico continues to make pronouncements that the backlash of average Americans to the illegal immigration problem is mean-spirited and a cause for concern, and we need to fix that.

Our government's reaction to all this? Well, according to Dubya, they're just trying to make a better life for themselves. Let's see -- they have our jobs, they're sucking up our tax money, they're replacing our culture .... and they think WE'RE mean???

Barring a major announcement by either of the two major-party candidates about a radical toughening of immigration policy in a future administration, word is that the scattered bands of patriots and minutemen around this country are planning some radical action of their own at some point this summer: closing the border by force of arms. I would assume that would make even more Mexicans consider us an "enemy," since that's pretty much an act of war.

Perhaps Mexico should consider a couple of numbers significant in its own history: 1836 and 1848. When they're ready to try for best-of-five, I'm sure we can oblige.

Has Mexico’s plan for the reconquista (“reconquest”)  of lands lost to Texas and the U.S. in 1836 and 1848 been put on a fast track and changed from waging demographic warfare to an actual consideration of armed conflict?

The increasing frequency and size of incursions by Mexican military personnel into the U.S. would appear to verify that assessment, and it would appear the Mexicans have become emboldened because of the Bush Administration’s lack of response.

The El Paso Times reported on Jan. 29 of this year that records obtained by Judicial Watch showed 25 incursions by Mexican military and police into the US in 2007, and 278 incursions since 1996: The Border Patrol documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group in Washington, D.C., said that 21 of the 2007 incidents involved Mexican police officials and four incidents involved Mexican military personnel.

The most egregious of the incidents took place in January, 2006, when Mexican soldiers aided drug smugglers who had run into a group of 30 American law enforcement officials, including Texas policemen and the FBI. According to a report in The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif., Mexican troops established fighting positions several hundred yards across the Rio Grande at Neely’s Crossing, about 30 miles east of El Paso. 

Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Mike Doyal told the paper that Mexican Army Humvees were towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the border. 

"It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years. When you're up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us," Doyal told the paper.

FBI spokesperson Andrea Simmons confirmed the report, telling the Daily Bulletin: "Bad guys in three vehicles ended up on the border. People with Humvees, who appeared to be with the Mexican Army, were involved with the three vehicles in getting them back across."

Deputies captured one vehicle and found 1,477 pounds of marijuana inside, according to Doyal, who added Mexican soldiers set fire to one of the Humvees stuck in the river.

Only a week later, a news crew from El Paso television station KFOX-TV witnessed a second incursion. In the company of a Sheriff’s deputy, they had gone to the scene of the previous incident when several Mexican soldiers emerged. The deputy then spotted a number of other Mexican soldiers making a flanking movement against him and the news crew and chose to withdraw because he was heavily outnumbered and outgunned.

Video of that incident is available at the KFOX-TV website.

Mexican officials have said their military is forbidden from traveling within three miles of the border.

Officials within the Bush Administration, including Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, have downplayed the incidents in spite of the clear evidence for reasons which remain unfathomable.

“This is reconnaissance,” retired Col. Steve Duncan told this writer. “This is a pattern similar to what I’ve seen throughout a lot of modern conflicts – they want to see how fast we react, what we react with, and whether or not we take it seriously. What the Bush Administration is telling them is that we’re not going to react to a military incursion with military force, that the only thing they’ll have to deal with is law enforcement armed primarily with handguns.”

At the same time, Mexican officials have been vocal about the far fewer instances when U.S. law enforcement personnel have strayed into their country while attempting to apprehend drug smugglers. In one instance, U.S. law enforcement officials strayed all of 40 feet into Mexico near Fabens, N.M., while chasing smugglers.

“We’re seeing a network developing, using the smugglers of both drugs and other goods,” Duncan said. “Down in the Rio Grande Valley, for example, there are hundreds of rings of thieves who shoplift items from Wal-Mart, Target and other big stores, take it into Mexico, then smuggle it back across the border and sell it as wholesalers – sometimes they’re selling it back to the very people they stole it from.

“The reason we’re seeing so many Mexican military involved in the smuggling is pretty simple -- they’re scouting out easy crossings across the border so they can flank where you would expect the strongest resistance to be – in the larger border cities,” Duncan added. 

Last fall, Mexican president Felipe Calderon made it clear that he now considers the southwestern U.S. to be part of his country, not American soil. In a speech at the National Palace, he said: “Wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

Calderon was sharply critical of U.S. efforts to curtail illegal immigration, including stepped-up raids on factories and farms suspected of hiring illegals, as well as the “harsh treatment” endured by illegal immigrants who have run afoul of U.S. law by murdering, raping, robbing or otherwise harming U.S. citizens.

“In the name of the government of Mexico, I again issue an energetic protest against the unilateral measures taken by the Congress and the United States government that exacerbate the persecution and the vexing treatment against undocumented Mexican workers,” Calderon said.

The speech was roundly praised in Mexico and in the Hispanic community in the U.S. and timed to coincide with Mexican Independence Day, Sept. 16.

“What we see there is the start of the build-up of political will,” Duncan analyzed. “Watch closely as we continue through the election season and you’ll start to hear harsher and harsher rhetoric coming both from Mexico and the Mexican radical movement in the U.S. They’re building their case for more profound incursions.”

Duncan said that despite the bluster, the Mexican military is under no delusions about its ability to actually win a war with the U.S.

“We could take out everything they’ve got with one National Guard division,” he said. “They’re not stupid -- they would never actively engage our military forces, even our most inactive reserves. But they know they have a ready-made fifth column already entrenched in every major American city that could do a lot of damage if it got down to that. But I honestly think they will still stick to trying to take control politically first.

“If Mexico is serious about trying to take the border states back, then they’re going to get a fight one way or the other,” Duncan concluded.

In 1934, Smedley D. Butler – a two-time Medal of Honor winner who was arguably the most popular military figure of his time – stunned the nation by announcing that he had been approached by a group of businessmen to lead a fascist overthrow of the Roosevelt administration – an administration he opposed vociferously.

Butler, a Marine who earned his legendary status during the “Banana Wars” in Nicaragua and throughout the Caribbean, claimed he was asked to led a march on Washington by 500,000 veterans demanding payment of pensions promised them for their service during the first World War. The real purpose of the march, Butler told Congress, was to install a “secretary of general welfare” and take the burden of government off the shoulders of Roosevelt – to make the President a figurehead.

Congress briefly examined the charges during hearings which lasted several months, then petered out, and none of those named by Butler was ever charged. World War II came and the matter was quickly forgotten.

Guess who’s in charge of the United States now?

While certainly nowhere near as merciless, organized or efficient as the totalitarians of World War II, today’s American fascists control every sector of the economy, education and politics. They have taken control subtly and legally by winning elections and by winning over both key figures and by playing on the prejudices of everyday Americans.

“Fascism in America won’t come with jackboots, book burnings, mass rallies, and fevered harangues, nor will it come with black helicopters or tanks on the street,”political journalist Chris Floyd observed in 2001. “It won’t come like a storm—but as a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: Everything is the same, but everything has changed.”

“Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality will have taken its place. All the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns—plenty of bread and circuses. But ‘consent of the governed’ will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small and privileged group who rule for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.”

Indeed, the way today’s U.S. government operates is chillingly reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln’s concern, addressed in a letter to a friend in 1864. Lincoln warned of the growing power of corporations and expressed his fear that if that power were not curbed, eventually the moneyed class would use its influence to take charge of the government, and “….our Republic is no more.”

America’s liberals have been howling about our descent into corporate control for years -- and have been roundly scoffed at for their wild rhetoric and radical solutions, especially since their answer was to vote Democrat. Now, however, they’re beginning to be joined by constitutionalists and libertarians fleeing the Republican Party.

“These days, it's hard to read anything without thinking, ‘this can't be true.’ We're living in an age of secret bunker governments and stealth legislation, however, and unlikely scenarios are tempered with the realization our old reality is gone,” liberal commentator Maureen Farrell wrote on Buzzflash. “Yet here we are, scratching our heads, while guardians of the public trust shill for the state.”
Indeed, while the term “fascist” has often been hurled at the Republican Party, especially under its current leader, George Bush, both parties have their adherents. The previous occupant of the Oval Office, Bill Clinton, was also an adherent of Bush’s Third Way politics, and his wife, Hillary, is one of the key architects of the movement’s crowning glory – control over American public education.

This author put the pieces of the puzzle together back in 1996 and termed the movement the “New Utopians” in the Katy (Texas) Times newspaper by exposing the connection between the National Center on Education and the Economy, the Clintons, and Bush’s support of the rewrite of education standards in Texas.

In a letter to Hillary Clinton written in 1992, NCEE director Marc Tucker wrote that Bill Clinton’s election gave the movement an opportunity to finish making the changes to American public education which would cement the system into place: transforming the education system into one which would train “human resources for the state.” Bush’s Texas education commissioner, Mike Moses, used the NCEE blueprint to implement the same standards which had failed miserably under the Clintons in Arkansas – and when Bush was elected President, the system went national via the No Child Left Behind Act.

Many liberals are keen to point out that all the warning signs of fascism are evident in today’s America: powerful nationalism, a “common enemy” to focus the public’s attention on (terrorism), secret prisons and justice system, secrecy demanded, the military glorified, the news media complicit or controlled, corporations shielded from government intervention, corruption unchecked, militarized police, rampant sexism, bullying of intellectuals and stolen elections.

Some of those warning signs can, of course, be argued – while others are easy to identify. Certainly only the most radical elements of the political Left could believe there has been any increase in sexism (or racism) in today’s Politically Correct America. And non-religious members of the conservative movement have for years been howling that Democrats have been rigging elections themselves with tricks like having “volunteers” help the aged vote or helping illegal aliens to cast ballots – the latter having been found to have occurred on a massive scale during this year’s Texas primary elections.

At the same time, several of the warning signs point out the clear and present danger.

Across the country, for example, the right of Americans to defend themselves is constantly under attack – from the very same political leftists, who may unwittingly be playing into the hands of the fascists through their support of universal firearm confiscation. The legal system penalizes those who defend themselves – remember the $8 million award to the burglar who was shot by the Florida homeowner while trying to sneak into the window of a child’s bedroom?

The War on Terror has spawned a secret system of military tribunals and prisons to handle captured terrorists and, some believe, domestic opponents of the fascist programs deemed to be “supporters” of terrorism. The clear evidence of rampant corruption by powerful multinational corporations within the Bush Administration (and its predecessor) is unrivaled in modern American history.

Yet today’s brand of fascism has been successful in gaining at least partial control over the United States because unlike the Nazis it appeals to both ends of the political spectrum. Author Chris Chantrill offers that what we’re dealing with in the U.S. is liberal fascism, or “what I like to call ‘Mommy fascism.’”

“The fascism of the 1930s was a daddy fascism featuring a militarized command economy and smart CCC uniforms with everyone marching in step,” Chantrill writes. Quoting conservative writer Jonah Goldberg, he says: “Mommy fascism is different and Jonah takes the reader through Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village …’In chapter after chapter she argues for interventions on behalf of children from literally the moment they are born...Then there are the home inspectors, the advisers, the teachers, the social workers.  Clinton relies on her loyal army of experts to dispense advice about every jot of child rearing.”

The difference between the fascists of the 1930s and their snappy uniforms and marching in lockstep and today’s fascists is that today’s fascists have integrated with the true socialist element in politics. 

Chantrill notes: “Liberals would say that ‘liberal fascism’ is an oxymoron, and a hateful one at that.  How could liberals have anything to do with right-wing fascism?  But sixty years ago Hayek in The Road to Serfdom had already made the connection.  He quoted Peter Drucker:  ‘Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.’  Communists and fascists, Hayek continues, ‘compete for the same type of mind and reserve for each other the hatred of the heretic.’”

While the Republican Party is fracturing with the desertion of religious conservatives, constitutionalists and libertarians during this election cycle, some liberal commentators believe that Democrats are also just starting to realize their party has been co-opted as well.

“America is almost a de facto one party state where the Democrats pay Bush the highest compliment by trying to imitate him,” notes Yippie writer Stew Albert in “Are We There Yet? Fascism in America.”  “American fascism is flowering in a post socialist era in which global capitalists feels fully free to bury the welfare state. Because of this historical circumstance, American fascism has within itself the potential for an unearthly collective barbarism.”

Lincoln realized in 1864 that Big Money has power, and rightfully saw the European banking interests which sought to provide financing for the Northern war effort as a threat to national sovereignty. And it is the same interests which have taken control today via control of international corporations – business entities which owe allegiance to no state or flag, but to themselves only.

“I suspect that everything I have just recounted is entirely by design … of Big Money interests,” writes Gary Scott in The Rise of American Fascism. “The role of money ensures that only the wealthy and well-connected have any chance of influencing the political process or holding elected office at a significant level. 

“Thus, it was not by sheer coincidence that, in the 2000 presidential campaign, voters were given a choice between a Yale graduate, whose father had been President and whose grandfather was a Senator, and a Harvard graduate, whose father was a Senator. And in the 2004 presidential contest, the choice was even more narrow, between a multi-millionaire Yale “Skull and Bones” man and a billionaire Yale “Skull and Bones” man. Nepotism, like corruption, discourages most good Americans from participating in elections, to say nothing of running for office!”

With each election, no matter who wins it, we seem to take another step forward the ultimate goal of the fascist movement: world control.

“The fascism of today will not simply be a repression of political life in the imperialist countries to the level of the politically repressive states of many 'developing' nations,” notes an article in the Communist journal, Rally! Comrades. “It will mean the transformation of political rule everywhere, although the process of its implementation and its form will undoubtedly vary around the world. The common denominator cannot help but be a state, global in nature, which guarantees the unrestrained rule of private property on a global scale and the protection of the interests of a supranational ruling class.”

Constitutionalists and libertarians are connecting with the Radical Left on this score: “Since 1990, when George Bush brought the phrase ‘New World Order’ out of the closet (it was Adolf Hitler's pet phrase first) we have entered a new phase,” notes alternative press author Mark Evans. “The push for world government of, for, and by the transnational cartels is on in earnest. The globalists, being thoroughly multi-partisan, … continued to implement the agenda of their New World Order under Clinton, even while utilizing the right-wing in America to attack Clinton as a ‘socialist.’ This scenario has had the net effect of moving the whole dialectic further in the direction of universal fascism.”

Indeed, one of the Nazis’ favorite tactics – publicly denying that something was going on even as it happened in secret – is being employed today. Even while scoffing at the very notion, President Bush and his counterparts in Mexico and Canada moved forward with plans for the formation of the North American Union in New Orleans April 21-22… a treaty never debated by Congress nor even advertised to the American people.

The thought struck me a while ago while I was fending off the clouds of mosquitoes during the annual rite of mowing my yard.

We live in a country where an estimated half the black population believes fervently that the U.S. government created the HIV virus as a way to control population growth among black Americans, despite clear evidence the virus originated all on its own.

We live in a country where almost 15 percent of people -- that would be nearly half of those who openly call themselves "true liberals" -- are firmly and fully convinced that the collapse of the Twin Towers was engineered by the Bush Administration as a pretext for launching a war, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

We live in a country where a healthy segment of the partisan voting population believe without question that George W. Bush stole two elections through subterfuge, despite very clear evidence it was the other way around.

We live in a country where nearly two in three are fully convinced that "global warming" is a man-made phenomenon and the entire planet is going to burn up unless we do something immediately, despite a growing preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

We live in a country where the vast majority of the residents of poorer sections of New Orleans will tell you without question that the disaster that befell them was George Bush's fault, not that of Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who refused to call for federal help until the disaster was out of hand.

Yet many of the same believers of the above scenarios will look at you cross-eyed, bust up laughing and dismiss you as a lunatic when you try to tell them that the same George Bush they so revile is busy selling out our country to create a North American Union -- in spite of a plethora of evidence which (at least to conspiracy nuts like me) plainly indicates it to be the verified truth.

We all know, of course, that the Posse Comitatus Act prevents the federal government from using federalized troops to establish order and perform police actions on American soil. Did you also know that on Feb. 14, 2008, the commander of US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) signed an agreement with his Canadian counterpart which would enable the U.S. President to mobilize Canadian (and, presumably, Mexican as well) troops to charge into American cities in the event of a major "civil disturbance" to restore order?

It's the truth -- as is the fact that the President of the United States, through this agreement, entered into a treaty with a foreign nation that was not presented to Congress for ratification as required by the U.S. Constitution. Google it; interestingly enough, you can no longer access the NORTHCOM web site.

I'm sure you've all heard of the many meetings of the "Three Amigos" -- the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico -- at events called the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the most recent of which took place in New Orleans April 21-22. Do you know how many new agreements and treaties have been reached between the three leaders?

Don't worry -- no one else does either. Where our government is normally quite keen to publicize its every good deed, every one of the SPP summits has passed in a veil of complete secrecy. Even Congressmen and Senators who have requested information have been met with silence.

I'm sure you've all seen the new billboard advertisements popping up all over town about how we need to "be prepared" to leave town in a hurry, presumably in the event of a hurricane. Isn't it interesting and entirely coincidental that NORTHCOM and other federal agencies practiced coordinating their activities the first week in May in a series of drills around the nations which simulated how they would react to a terrorist nuclear attack?

More than a year ago, the FBI warmed that Al Quaeda may have already smuggled components for a nuclear weapon into the United States, thanks to help from Mexican drug smugglers. The Border Patrol and local law enforcement have made several seizures of weapons, including assault rifles and explosives, over the last year or so -- including several shipments headed for Houston.

Ten years ago, me and a few others tried to tell Texas that George Bush was selling you a load of poop with his new "high-stakes" education program. We got laughed off as "social conservatives." Texas now enjoys a 25 percent dropout rate and unprecedented levels of violence in our public schools.

But y'all believe what you want to believe; stay tucked inside your comfortable little soccer mommy coccoons. After all, I'm just a conspiracy theorist.

I can title a blog post "Today's Young People" because ... well, just look at the picture, I've become an old fart. I still feel young (and many folks tell me I'm still emotionally a teenager), but the fact is I'm well into middle age, nursing a birthday number which I long ago would have described as "ancient."

I saw a blog from a young'un a while ago that, once you managed to sift through the socialist rhetoric, basically said the same thing my fellow 50-ish crowd said when we were 18: "Get ready you old farts, because we're gonna change the world."

The neat thing about being an old fart is that I can look down on today's kids and cut through their logic faster than Bill Clinton can lie.

Take the war in the mideast, for example. Having been a Marine and a veteran of the Desert Storm era, I've chewed that sand and know what today's young soldiers and Marines and others are up against over there. I also know what they're up against over here, because my formative years came during the Vietnam era.

So I see some kid -- college or high school, they all look alike to me any more -- leave some rambling post on one of the discussion boards or blogs about "Why R We Still N Iraq?" We're just there to steal oil, our troops are murdering babies, the Iraqis will be nice if we just leave ... find any argument made by Sean Penn or Susan Sarandon and they'll spew it back to you the same way the hippies did voice-overs of Jane Fonda speeches back in my day.  Yet if you read their posts thoroughly enough, you come to realize that they're all saying one thing: we hate George Bush because we've been told that's the thing to do.

Well kids, we're agreed on that last part anyway. It's Bush's fault we're still stuck there. I supported the invasion of Iraq and the elimination of Saddam Hussein; I wish Bush's daddy had let us do the job back in '91.

But today's kids don't understand that there is a reason we've been stuck in both Iraq and Afghanistan for so long. They don't understand insurgency warfare and they don't understand the implications of what happens when you walk away from it. Guerilla wars take a long, long time to win -- unless you want to take care of things the Roman way, which is to simply crucify entire villages until there aren't enough people left to rebel.

We saw what happened when we gave up on Vietnam: wholesale slaughter on an unprecedented scale in both Vietnam and Cambodia, followed by slavery to a totalitarian state. But they don't teach history to American kids any more.

I've been lectured by some young 'uns about how my generation is wrong for being nationalistic, that "globalization" is here to stay and if we don't like it we just need to move -- off-planet, I'm guessing? Aside from the fact that making statements like that probably has Dubya and his global corporate buddies grinning from ear to fascist ear, it's interesting to see how little experience here in the real world so many of these kids have.

At the age of 14, for example, I started working full-time at a job which, according to President Bush, Americans just won't do any more -- hard, manual, physical labor. I managed to work 40 hours a week to help my mom feed my brothers and still managed to carry a 90-point-something average throughout school (in a day when 100 was the maximum you could get).

Yet today's kids won't work -- in fact, they're not allowed to work. By law. The law prohibits kids from working more than X number of hours a week and limits the hours they can work during school terms, and prevents them from doing some jobs (including the one I performed at the age of 14).

And yet many of them still can't spell words like "are" and "in" and "your" because they're too lazy to add the extra letters, or they insist on changing words ending in "-ers" to "-az" in some worrisome attempt to sound like criminals.

Therein lies another huge difference between the generations. As a teenager growing up dirt poor, I certainly endured temptations. It was tempting to try and snatch food from the store, for example, during the darkest hour in my family's history when Mom didn't always make enough to keep enough food in the house for five hungry boys. But I'd been raised with this absurd notion that stealing is WRONG.

That's no longer a barrier to many of today's young people, it seems. As a retail manager, I can't begin to tell you how many young shoplifters I caught who tried to weasel out of it by saying, "Well, I didn't hurt anybody, your store makes millions of dollars, you won't miss it."

Yet at the heart of all my revulsion at the attitudes so many of today's young folks display is one chilling realization: my generation has to point the finger of blame at itself. We are the complacent fools who didn't question when the great paradigm shift took place in public education that changed schools from places of learning to "human resource development centers." We are the idiots who didn't turn off the TV when we saw gratuitous sex and violence become commonplace and begin influencing children to emulate. We are the stubbornly lazy meat-heads who continued to vote blindly for one or the other of two political parties long after those parties began proving they cared little for our country, only for power.

So to today's younger generation who are striding boldly onto the stage saying they're going to change the world, I say: "Go for it, kid. Do your best."

The Gulf of Mexico decided to dump all its humidity on us the other day and it got sticky in a hurry. I noticed this because I woke up from my afternoon nap drenched in sweat. After cutting my way through the steam to reach the little window air-conditioning unit, I turned the knob and awaited relief.  But it didn't come.

"I meant to tell you," the wife drawled, "I think that little window unit finally gave out on us."  Perturbed but not yet plussed, I pulled on my jeans and a shirt and headed to the store to rectify the problem.

Now, since, I'm no genius when it comes to fixing things, my proposed solution was a new A/C unit. I had two criteria -- at least 6,000 BTUs to get it nice and icy in our bedroom even when the wife's not there, and I wanted it made in America so that if something went wrong I could talk with a live person who could remedy the situation. I headed for Home Depot, figuring that they of all the big-box operations could fulfill my needs.

I found what I wanted for the price I wanted -- a small little Zenith unit rated at 6,000 BTUs. I chose the Zenith because all the other brands of air conditioners they carried were non-name brands stamped "MADE IN CHINA," and the last thing I wanted to do was contribute to our trade deficit.

But as I picked up the box to set it into the cart, I noticed the manufacturer's details on the side. Sure enough, there on the box, were the same words: "MADE IN CHINA."

You've GOT to be kidding me, I mentally groaned. Even brands which have signified "AMERICAN MADE" for almost a century are now "Made in China?"

Welcome to the Third World, America.

It shouldn't come as a giant surprise, I guess -- after all, we've been sliding down this slope since the 1960s, when the federal government intentionally dumbed-down public education and greedy unions began putting our heavy industry out of business. But still ...

I wandered around the store and checked a few other recognizable "American" brands ... made in China, made in Mexico, Product of India, Assembled in Taiwan. Ticked off, I shot next door to Target: same deal. On to Wal-Mart -- hell, they had "MADE IN CHINA" stamped all over an entire pallet of boxes I saw being brought to the sales floor. Sam Walton is spinning in his grave, no doubt.

I won't embarass the retailer where I found them, but I even found American flags with "MADE IN CHINA" stamped on them. My God, we can't even produce our own FLAGS any more?

We have become a lazy, complacent, cheap, weak people. Our spirit of enterprise and vision is gone. We still fight wars better than anybody, but how much longer is that going to last, since the government won't even execute spies it catches?

We produce less and less every year, and we work less and less every year. Jobs I would have been proud to take as a teenager are now going to foreign invaders because we've taught our teenagers that manual labor is beneath them. I see landscaping crews doing lawn chores in yards where teenagers live (I know they live there because I can hear them from blocks away) and wonder, why aren't those kids working? Then I see the 2008 car the kids are driving, bought by Mommy and Daddy.

It's not just the traditional work-up-a-sweat jobs we won't do any more.  We don't believe in the work ethic, Puritan or otherwise.

I had a conversation with a young man I work with the other day who is attending school and looking to get into one of those high-tech fields. I asked him why he wasn't already working in the field, getting an entry-level job in the mailroom or wherever to establish credentials within the company. He rolled his eyes and sneered at me.

"Those people bust their butts trying to work their way up," he replied. "When I go in, I want to go in on top right off the bat."

Our growing dearth of industry and our lack of a work ethic means that more and more, we're becoming a consumer society -- one which buys a lot but doesn't produce much. I got a lecture on this particular subject a while back from my banker, explaining why it was my account kept getting overdrawn.

"You see, Mr. Mundy, you have to deposit at least as much money than you write in checks, otherwise your account is going to be overdrawn," he said. "Sure, you're depositing larger amounts than you used to, but you;re also spending a lot mor ethan you used to. Once you're overdrawn enough, you can't buy anything any more."

America is overdrawn, and if we don;t want to see our bank account closed, we need to get on the ball and find some way to make a few more deposits.

When a handful of wild-eyed religious fanatics flew jetliners into three of our buildings and killed several thousand people, America rose in righteous anger and went to war. True, there are some weenies who now claim they never did support the idea, but let's face it, in those first few months after 9/11 it was hard to find anyone who thought that taking military action against the global network of terrorism was the wrong thing to do.

So why is it that a country which is killing 25 Americans every single day -- more than 45,000 American citizens since 2001 -- remains unpunished?

When a bunch of rubber boats approached too close to US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, we opened fire.

Yet members of the armed forces of a certain foreign nation have ventured onto U.S. soil more than 200 times in the last few years in support of our enemies -- smuggling drugs and weapons, perhaps even components for the nuclear bomb which will obliterate Houston -- and I haven't seen a single airstrike directed against them.

I was among those wearing the uniform back in 1991 when we rode to the defense of a tiny ally which had been brutally invaded by its neighbor.

Yet my neighborhood is undergoing "ethnic cleansing" by street gangs whose members are not American citizens, and I can't even get the Galveston County Sheriff's Department to react to them.

Could someone please explain to me why we have not turned Mexico into a giant smoking hole in the ground?

I got an email alert today about yet another young girl who had been kidnapped and brutalized by a Mexican street gang. Apparently it's not just happening in Houston -- it's the new "in" thing for the thug crowd, using forcible rapes to impregnate as many "gringo" girls as possible to hasten the demise of the non-Hispanic gene pool. Maybe the Nation of Aztlan extremists got tired of waiting on us to die out on our own.

The U.S. Constitution, in Article IV, Section 4, says the federal government is responsible for protecting the States from a foreign invasion. I realize that I'm a little more eccentric than most folks, so I'll throw the floor open: what DO you call what Mexico is doing to us?

Me, I call things what they are. Mexico is waging war on us.

There are now an estimated 30 MILLION illegal immigrants in the United States -- more than 90 percent of them from one country: Mexico. Mexico's population ministry, CONAPO, published a study in the early 1970s which specifically called for the "reconquest" (reconquista) of the territories lost in battle to Texas in 1836 and to the U.S. in 1848, by waging "demographic warfare" against the U.S. -- flooding this nation with illegal immigrants.

The government of Mexico has handed out pamphlets telling its people how to avoid the Border Patrol. There is now even an "amusement park" in El Alberto where those planning to make the crossing can actually train for it.

The military forces of Mexico have crossed into the United States more than 200 times in recent years, including more than 25 so far this year, protecting smugglers of drugs and weapons -- and who knows what else? They have in fact fired upon U.S. law enforcement members. Google it.

Our "news media" (if you can call today's entertainers disguised as journalists "news people") are quick to lead their broadcasts and run banner headlines every time Americans die in battle in the Middle East. On average, three Americans are killed a day in the war on terror.

Yet more than 45,000 Americans have been murdered by illegal immigrants since 9/11. Criminals murder 12 Americans every day, and 13 more are murdered by illegal immigrant drivers -- I say "murdered" because the illegal immigrants involved in those automobile accidents have been found to be driving either without a license or with falsified identification.

I got an e-mail alert from a member of one of the many discussion groups in which I participate in this morning. The email included a "declaration of war" petition which cited many of the above facts and said that, well, if the federal government won't do anything about it, it's time the militia turned out on its own and took the battle to the enemy. I certainly hope whoever launched this idea has some clue about organization, because from what I've seen of the militia movement they're about as likely to shoot each other as any enemy. 

But the "declaration" makes one important point: people are fed up enough with the government's refusal to act that they're just about ready to do something on their own -- and for all that I generally denigrate the government's ability to accomplish anything in an organized fashion, I'm willing to bet the U.S. government would be far more efficient and humane at getting rid of the illegal aliens than a bunch of wild-eyed minutemen would.

Those of us with passionate beliefs – I think one book reviewer called mine “eccentric” one time – tend to have one thing in common whether we’re conservative, liberal or any of the flavors surrounding those two ambiguous labels: we all propose that something is wrong with this country that needs to be fixed, and it’s critical that we do so before everything falls apart.

 Yet while listening to Jerry Doyle’s radio talk show in the wee hours this morning, the former Babylon 5 star made a point which struck me right between the eyes. Jerry played a few clips of foreign dignitaries visiting the U.S., including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, answering the question: “What do you think is special about the United States?”

 What is interesting is the fact that, almost word-for-word, every one of them had the same answer: “The United States is the land of opportunity. You can achieve your dream here.”

The more I thought about it as I went about my workday, the more the point continued to strike home. Our news media tells us we are miserable. Our politicians tell us we are miserable. We have been taught that we should look down our noses at what makes America special – primarily, our success. The nay-sayers tell us that if only we weren’t so successful, the rest of the world wouldn’t “hate” us so. The globalists tell us that if we were just more like the rest of the world, we’d be – if not less miserable – at least as equally miserable as they are, and that’s only fair.

Yet for all the rhetoric we hear from the people who fly planes into our skyscrapers about what a terrible society we are, when you talk to people elsewhere around the world, they see our country as the place where you can achieve your dreams.  And you know what? They’re right.

I can pour some real venom into a column, story or post on a message board, but sometimes  I have to stop and think: could I do that anywhere else?  I mean, I can rant about the Patriot Act all I want to here and wonder openly if the FBI is reading my e-mail, but if I lived in certain other locations on the globe I could be absolutely certain that the secret police were in fact reading every line I type almost as fast as I type it.

My family is certainly not the most functional and our get-togethers these days are limited to the holidays when we can remember what each other’s phone numbers are – but had I grown up in, say, China, I wouldn’t have four brothers and a rapidly-expanding database of nieces and nephews to keep up with.

We complain about the backward folk in our land who still can’t accept racial equality, but there are a lot of societies elsewhere around this globe where the relationship I had at one time with a woman whose skin was considerably darker than mine would have been grounds for stoning.

Have you ever seen any Americans – well, besides Hollywood actors and child molesters – defect to other countries because they feel they can’t accomplish their dreams in the USA? When people make the monumental decision to renounce the land of their birth, they don’t defect to Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Japan or Iceland … they defect to America. Isn’t it amazing that while we who were born here and grew up here have been taught for years what a terrible people we are and what an unjust land we live in, almost anyone else in the world would give up everything to come here just for the chance to succeed?

I’m certainly not someone who can talk about having achieved the American dream. I struggle from paycheck to paycheck – which reminds me, I have a car note that’s overdue – and it sometimes seems like the harder I work the harder life gets. But in the back of my mind remains the glimmer of hope that if I stick to my guns (that’s a figure of speech, Senator) and keep working hard, I’ll one day be able to relax and enjoy life. I’m 50 years old and realize that I’m starting to run out of years in which that can happen – but the dream is still there.

We who take part in these debates about society’s ills sometimes need that little reminder, I think. Our American culture is imperfect, and certainly there are ways we can improve it. But compared to anyone else, the United States is still the best country on the planet – and we should be proud to call ourselves “Americans.”

Any time you have a protest march, there’s always someone loping along with a portable loudspeaker trying to get all the marchers to make the same chant in an effort to demonstrate their unity. The May Day march in Houston in favor of amnesty for illegal immigrants was no exception, with two particularly grating individuals trying to get the crowd riled up.

 One individual, a female, seemed to be more at home with Spanish chants, “Si Se Puede” (Yes we can) in particular. She attempted English a few times, but I’m afraid her extremely thick accent defeated the purpose, since very few of those of us who heard her felt compelled to take up the rant.

 The other chant-leader, a young man apparently affiliated with an organization with an affinity for the color red, had one theme he seemed pretty good at and he stuck to it: “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”

Give the boy credit, he tried to do good for his cause. But I don’t think I’m alone in wondering what the hell he was talking about.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” noted one downtown office worker whose path accidentally crossed that of the marchers. “They want justice? Why? They have everything else!”

Therein lies the rub that I think the politicians and the mainstream news media just don’t understand. The overwhelming majority of the American public is tired of the giveaways and all the special treatment afforded to people who – by law – are criminals.

The federal government and the states spend up to $90 billion a year of our tax dollars for welfare, food stamps and Medicaid for illegal immigrants, all in the name of “compassion.” Another $14 billion is spent to educate the children of those same criminals – “anchor babies,” although there is a growing sentiment to challenge the prevailing interpretation of the 14th Amendment which automatically makes them citizens.

The presence of illegal immigrants has resulted in $200 billion in lost wages for American workers – just in case you were wondering why the economy has slowed down. We spend another $3 million a day to incarcerate the illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in the U.S. (when we can catch them).

All told, it’s estimated that we’re spending $338 billion dollars a year to support illegal immigrants -- more than we're spending on the war.  And these clowns want “justice?”

If anything, Americans should be staging their own marches demanding justice and demanding accountability of our elected representatives who are so taken with feeding forever at the public trough that they’re willing to sell our culture and our way of life for that of a people whose country has for more than 200 years led the world in poverty, despair, misery and corruption.

Where is the justice for the family of Rodney Thompson, the Houston police officer shot in the back by an illegal immigrant he’d arrested for not having a valid driver’s license?  (His killer is now trying to plead insanity) Where is the justice for the family of Tina Davila, the Houston mother of five who was stabbed five times by an illegal immigrant trying to steal her car? (Timoteo Rios is believed to have fled back to Mexico and faces capital murder charges in Texas.)  Even convictions and rightful executions of the offenders will not restore to the Johnson and Davila families their loved ones.

More Americans are killed every day by illegal immigrants – 13 by either drunk or notoriously-bad drivers, 12 by outright murder – than are killed on the battlefields in the Middle East.  And this knucklehead with a megaphone wants “justice” so even more criminals can invade our land?

Want to hear a funny one? The Mexican state of Sonora now plans to sue the American state of Arizona after the latter passed legislation which prompted many employers to terminate the illegal aliens they had hired.  Seems Sonora is upset about having to provide for its own people – were there any doubt that the Mexican government is complicit in the immigration problem, there’s your proof.

One of the other marchers during the May Day rally carried a body-length sign proclaiming, “They can’t deport us all!”  I’m sure the screeching young lady with the megaphone won’t mind if I borrow her pet phrase to respond to him: Si, se puede – yes, we can!

About a decade ago, during the rewrite of the state's education standards by then-Gov. George W. Bush's administration, Bush turned his personal hatchet-man, Karl Rove, loose on several conservative Republican State Board of Education members who opposed his agenda -- an agenda which, it had been proven in print, was lifted almost verbatim from the touchy-feely "New Standards" implemented in Arkansas by Hillary Clinton. Rove used the New York Times to paint the conservatives' objections  as religious extremism, telling the Times: "... in the carnival of life, they are in a far, far booth."

Interesting, isn't it, how time has proven that while State Board fo Education members like Bob Offutt, David Bradley, Donna Ballard and others might have been in a "far, far booth," theirs was the only booth that wasn't fleecing Texas taxpayers for billions of dollars for a few cheap prizes?

After using his popularity as Texas' "education governor" to win the Oval Office, aided by wide support among conservatives who had no idea what he'd done to the conservatives in his own party in Texas, Bush pushed his education agenda through Congress and we wound up with the No Child Left Behind Act. Only a few short years later, the clods who bought that bundle of cheap carnival tricks are realizing just how badly they got burned.  In 17 of the nation's 50 largest cities, graduation rates are now below 50 percent -- hardly the long-hoped-for reversal of fortunes for our struggling urban students. In Texas, the largest school districts are now averaging nearly a 30-percent dropout rate, and some "honor garaduates" still can't make change at a cash register (I know, I fired them!).

It would be temping to dip into my cliche box and point out that we told you so, but I've been part of this debate long enough to realize that the soccer mommies and insurance agents who run Texas still aren't going to listen.

As a newspaperman, I tried to tell folks 10 years ago where the standards being proposed by the Texas Education Agency were coming from, and what the problems with them were -- a complete lack of academic rigor and a focus on "job training" and affective (values and feelings)  skills. Others in the movement imported academic experts from Harvard, from Mathematically Correct and elsewhere to attempt to convey the message. The school administrators called us "enemies of education" and used the Delphi Technique in statewide and local forums to convince the general public that all of this "reform" was stuff thought up by Texans and demanded by the selfsame soccer mommies and insurance agents.

Once the new standards were implemented, we pointed out that something was immediately wrong: high schools which had 600-plus freshmen one year had only 347 graduating seniors four years later but were reporting a dropout rate of "less than one percent." There seemed to be a sudden push to label students as "learning disabled" immediately preceding the high-stakes state tests, and there also appeared to be a high absentee rate on test day. Only in the last couple of years have the state's mainstream media outlets finally realized what was going on and actually started to challenge the education establishment's PR view of the situation: administrators have been caught cheating in district after district.

Now I hear the buzz that once again, we're going to have to "fix" public education -- no doubt at huge taxpayer expense -- one more time. How many waves of "education reform" has Texas and the U.S. exprienced since the federalization of education in 1968?

I wonder: will the public once again leave the issue of "education reform" in the hands of the same educational bureaucrats who screwed it up in the first place? 

Sadly, those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. Again and again.

Well, I see Target's new return policy is getting some flack. Small wonder -- for years, retailers have been going out of their way to one-up each other in liberalizing return policies to ensure that customers walk away with a smile.

Yet what we see at work here is one of the big-box chains finally saying, "Enough!" to the organized thieves who are raping retail for billions of dollars a year.

For years, Target -- and other major chains like Wal-Mart and K-Mart -- made it progressively easier for customers to return items. During my time as an assistant manager for Wal-Mart, for example, I actually accepted merchandise for return which actually had a TARGET price tag on it because I was strongly encouraged to "make the customers happy."

But what has happened in the business is that organized crime has moved in. A 2006 story in the Wall Street Journal estimated retail losses to external theft at $37 billion -- but later that same year, Wal-Mart removed its in-store loss prevention associates and re-trained them to concentrate on internal, not external losses. Within weeks, many stores -- including the store I was working at -- were watching thousands of dollars an hour run out the doors in the hands of organized bands of thieves, who were aware that no one would stop them.

As a salaried manager, I was authorized to stop shoplifters -- and one night, I did so when we observed three ladies who had taken a Shop Vac out of its box and had cleaned our shelves of Prilosec, Nicorette and Fusion razor blades, hiding the smaller packages in the shop-vac box. I was only able to grab one of the three, and when we counted up the merchandise the total was more than $4,000. The police who picked up my catch later stopped by the store to tell me that it turned out she and her two friends were wanted in seven states and were part of a black-market ring running merchandise to Mexico -- selling it back to American retailers via flea markets in the Rio Grande Valley.

Wal-Mart senior managamenet told me if I physically confronted a shoplifter again I risked termination -- because I "might have hurt her and she could have sued us."  They were more worried about lawyers than with doing what is right.

But we may be seeing that idiotic view turning around, because retailers react when the bottom line is threatened.

Electronics have been a hot theft item for shoplifters for years, especially drug addicts in need of quick cash. And as retailers liberalized their returns policies -- first extending the time allowed for a return, then finally not even requiring a receipt at all -- theft of small items rose exponentially ... and "returns" of electronics items rose exponentially. Even the addition of the RFID theft-deterrent system did little to curb the practice since customer-service associates and managers have neither the equipment nor the expertise needed to research an RFID tag quickly enough to satisfy customers at a returns desk.

Clothing was another high-theft item I encountered, again since it's relatively easy to remove the theft-deterrent tags with magnets. Again, the retailers' own make-the-customer-happy policies worked in favor of the thieves: when Wal-Mart implemented a policy of putting all returns without a receipt on gift cards, most thieves knew all they had to do was get angry and demand cash and most managers would bow to their wishes out of fear the "customers" would complain to higher management.

The sad part is, legitimate customers are the ones who are being short-changed here, and it's because society does not view STEALING as "wrong" -- after all, it's only a few dollars, and Target has millions of them, right?  I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been threatened by well-to-do daddies after catching their kids stealing cosmetics, Yu-Gi-Oh cards or music CDs.

If customers want to see a return to the days of "the customer is always right" and "we trust our customers," they need to stand up and demand that our legislators enact statutes which provide some measure of protection for retailers from liability over theft-prevention measures, and they need to stand up and say, "THEFT IS WRONG."