Borderline Personality Disorder

Bush has been speaking in public more often lately, causing his approval ratings to drop like lead farts. He's going to give himself another kick in the shorts tonight by going on national teevee, opening his mouth, and attempting to explain his new approach to immigration, mostly of the Mexican persuasion.

The wire service previews make it sound like his goal is to tickle Vicente Fox with one hand and smack him with the other. At the same time he proposes that Congress pass an expanded guest worker program (not much chance of that), the president will executive order several thousand national guard troops to the Rio Grande to augment the Border Patrol, lovingly known by migrants legal and otherwise as the Migra.

This is assuming, of course, that there are several thousand national guard troops not presently deployed in Iraq. But let's suppose for the sake of argument that there are. Closing my eyes and going to sleep, I hear the following conversation taking place a few miles north of Mexicali, between a couple of nineteen-year-old California Guardspersons, Lance Cpl. Sean from Redondo Beach, and Lance Cpl. Arturo from Santa Ana, as they disourse on the favorite topics of young men everywhere:

ARTURO: Hey, Sean, where was the weirdest place you ever did it, man?

SEAN: I dunno...when I was like, still in high school, my girlfriend and me did it one time under those, like bleacher things they have at the football game. We were, you know, drunk and all, but I don't think nobody like, saw us or nothin'. Their feet were in the way and there was a lot of, like, noise from the game and stuff.

So where was the weirdest place you ever did it?

ARTURO: One time I was hitting it with this mamasita in the front of this little tiny Nissan truck -- it belongs to my cousin Manuelito. He gots one of them big sound systems in it, so there wasn't hardly room to move, ay.

Then my other cousin Juanito comes along and looks in the window, man. It was embar...Hey! What's that?

SEAN: What? I don't hear...Hey! I think it's a coupla wetbacks. What're we gonna do?

ARTURO: What you mean "we," menso? Anyway who you calling mojados, hijo de la gran puta? That's my cousin Rudy from Jalisco. Hey, Rudy, over here man. Don't pay no attention to this puta chingana cabron. Donde va tu?

RUDY: Beverly Hills, por el dinero grande, primo. Hey, Arturo, que paso? Quien es el gavacho?

SEAN: I don't know what you guys are sayin' but it doesn't sound, like, very nice.

OK, you get the picture. If the right National Guard personnel are selected for this border assignment, Bush will be able to combine beefing up the Border Patrol and establishing an ersatz guest worker program all at the same time. It's not a bad idea; it might work out to be a twofer.