Calderón’s Calumny

If I were an invited guest in your home, there is a tacit expectation about how I should comport myself while enjoying your hospitality. While I might think your home décor is frumpy, your dog is the product of a confused gene pool, and the dinner was on par with the Golden Corral, unless I want a quick escort to the door, I’d best keep those views to myself.

Not so with Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa, the President of Mexico, who apparently feels that anyone with five names, one of which is Jesús, has the right to critique the domestic affairs of another country.

Scorning the box that had been provided behind the podium so that, standing side by side, Calderón and Obama wouldn’t look like Mutt and Jeff, the Mexican president concluded his official visit to the Obama White House last week with this inchoate polemic against Arizona’s efforts to defend itself against the invading hoards from Mexico:

“In Mexico, we are and will continue being respectful of the internal policies of the United States and its legitimate right to establish in accordance to its Constitution whatever laws it approves. (How comforting.)

“But we will retain our firm rejection to criminalize migration so that people that work and provide things to this nation will be treated as criminals." (Let me see if I’ve got this right, Filipe. You believe that your people, who break into this country illegally but “work and provide things to this nation,” should get a free pass and shouldn’t be considered criminals? This wouldn’t have anything to do with the $25 billion your illegal worker bees send back to the mother country, would it?)

Then Calderón’s tag team partner stepped to the podium:

“I think the Arizona law has the potential of being applied in a discriminatory fashion. Now, after it was initially passed, the Arizona Legislature amended it and said that this should not be carried out in a discriminatory way. But I think a fair reading of the language of the statute indicates that it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants from being harassed or arrested. And the judgments that are going to be made in applying this law are troublesome.”

Translated: “I agree with the little guy.”

One would expect that the president of the United States, who has sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, a provision of which compels the president to protect the country against invasion, would not side with a representative of the country that is invading it.

This Obama-Calderón rope-a-dope of American popular sovereignty – a term which means the will of the people in a constitutional democracy is the only foundation for government – was carefully scripted before the White House press conference. It would have to have had Obama’s approval or else Calderón would never have engaged in so naked an act of domestic interference.

Curiously, then, the same Obama who spends a good deal of time genuflecting to world leaders and apologizing for our past interference in the internal affairs of other countries had no problem allowing Americans to be lectured by the leader of this third world country whose administration’s major accomplishment has been stabilizing the prices of corn tortillas.

Flushed with the White House smack-down he had delivered against a constitutionally elected Arizona legislature enacting its own sovereign laws, Calderón was limo-ed down to the Capitol building so he could lecture Americans once again via their elected representatives:

“There is an issue where Mexico needs your cooperation. That is, stop the flow of high-powered weapons and other lethal weapons across the border. I fully respect and admire the U.S. Constitution. And I understand that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure that all good American citizens the ability to defend themselves and their nation.

“In Mexico, over the past three years, we have seized 75,000 guns and high-powered weapons and more than 80 percent of which have been able to track, from the United States. I would ask Congress to help us … and ask [you Senators and Representatives] to consider the return of the Assault Weapons Ban.”

Of course that brought the Democrat side of the adoring assemblage to their feet, applauding and back-slapping each other in an orgasmic frenzy.

But whoa! Hold on there, Filipe. As we say down here in the land of pickup trucks, guns, and bibles, that dog won’t hunt.

Let’s just put the real issue right out front so everyone can see this drivel for what it is. The ban on assault weapons expired in the U.S. because Congress didn’t extend it – the very folks hypocritically applauding Mighty Mouse’s request. It’s Obama and his gun-hating crowd who want to reinstate it. Second Amendment gun rights advocates oppose it. Once again, Calderón meddled in a domestic political issue while acting as a shill for Obama – obviously with OB’s approval.

The term "assault weapon" is a government-engineered, emotionally charged, propaganda label intended to conjure up in the minds of the uniformed an image of a military killing tool. Pop open one of these “assault weapons” and you’ll see internal workings no more fearsome than those of a deer rifle that fires one round of ammunition for each trigger pull. In order to turn an “assault weapon” into something like an AK-47 the entire internal firing mechanism would have to be removed and replaced. Why would drug gangs go to such trouble when they can buy the real McCoy almost anywhere in the world – which is where they buy them, not in the U.S.?

Since the Calderón Administration took office, 23,000 people have been murdered in mostly drug and gun violence. Calderón is following Obama’s “Blame America First” strategy and looking for a scapegoat. Unfortunately, his argument won’t hold water because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, says that of the 100,000 weapons which the Mexican authorities recovered in shootouts with drug cartel bad guys, only 18,000 had serial numbers that could be traced to U.S. manufacturers and of those, only 7,900 were purchased from licensed gun dealers – probably by people who could pass the background check and who, for a fee, resold the weapon to a goon. The other 10,100 came from criminals who don’t bother to abide by the Assault Weapons Ban that the disingenuous Calderón appealed for Congress to reinstate.

Continuing his anti-American diatribe:

“I completely disagree with the recent adoption of the law in Arizona. It is a law that not only ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree, but also introduces a terrible idea: using racial features as a basis for applying the law. And so I agree, I agree with the President when he says that this new law carries a high risk when they violate the basic values we all matter. (sic)”

Once again the adoring Democrats leapt to their feet in tauromachian ecstasy, including Attorney General Holder and Homeland Security chief (and former Arizona governor) Napolitano whose job performances give new meaning to the word “indolent”.

Meanwhile, the feckless Republicans sat there allowing their country and their constituents to be excoriated by President Frijoles. While it would have been the supreme insult to walk out during the insults from a head of state (or to have never shown up in the first place) it would at least have demonstrated that congressional Republicans weren’t invertebrates.

Calderón explained the meaning of the “reality that cannot be erased by decree” in a speech criticizing Arizona last month in Mexico during which he said, "Criminalizing immigration, which is a social and economic phenomena, this way opens the door to intolerance, hate, and discrimination." In other words, Calderón believes immigration, even illegal immigration, is a “social and economic” phenomenon – “a reality that cannot be erased by degree.” Gee; maybe we should replace the U.S. Border Patrol with Welcome Wagon Ladies.

El Presidente’s comment on “… using racial features as a basis for applying the law,” is comical. I don’t think too many blue-eyed blonds are going to be asked for their ID in America, and to my knowledge, illegal Mexicans don’t wear signs on their back.

But there’s a darker side to illegal crossings from Mexico that neither Calderón nor Obama wants to talk about. An increasing number of detained dark-skinned illegals are OTMs (other than Mexican) from “countries of interest” – like Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, and other terrorist havens. We’ve known for years since 9/11 that this was happening because the House Committee on Homeland Security was presented a report in 2006, "A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border”, with proof of it. Our government publishes a "Captured OTM" list (shown partially at this link) and the threat was picked up as a news story by a television station owned by Ann Cox Chambers, no friend of conservative causes, and reported in Part One and Part Two segments. Both segments are worth watching.

But, back to the story at hand. After a long day of anti-American rhetoric, a fella’ needs some rest and repast. So Obama feted his best bud from south of the border with a soiree that the most grandiose party-giver would turn green-eyed with envy. Confected by the best of the best, celebrity chef Rick Bayless, a master of Mexican cuisine, was flown in from – where else – Chicagoland to make the magic happen.

While unemployment flitted around 10%, the stock market was in a free-fall, oil burbled from an explosion in the Gulf, North Korea snarled at its southern neighbor, and soldiers were dying in Afghanistan, the beautiful people, about 200 of them, attired in tuxedos and gowns, attended the White House state dinner and dined on an herb green ceviche of Hawaiian opah appetizer followed by Oregon Wagyu beef in Oaxacan black molé (a Mexican concoction, which we proletariats would call salsa) with side dishes of black bean tamalon and grilled green beans, washed down by two wines crafted by Mexican vintners and a sparking wine with the eponymous name Carlos Santana après the legendary rock star.

After a triple dessert of chocolate-cajeta tart, toasted homemade marshmallows, and Graham cracker crumble and goat cheese ice cream, the beautiful people sauntered out to a “luxury marquee on the South Lawn of the presidential mansion,” which southern bubbas would call a big tent, about the size of the first 65 yards of a football field, replete with stage and dance floor. There they were treated to the entertainment of R&B diva, Beyonce, while lights coruscated like the half-time laser show at the Super Bowl. The evening was topped off by dancing as Barack and Michelle boogied the night away.

One thing you can say about the Obamas: they sure know how to party – at taxpayer expense.