Time for a fifty-foot concrete wall, America

WASHINGTON (AP)--President Bush, in an attempt to boost his numbers with an ever-shrinking core constituency of peckerwood xenophobes, is considering plans to militarize the Mexican border with non-existent National Guard troops paid for by the bankrupt federal government, according to senior administration officials too embarrassed to give their names.

One defense official said military leaders believe the number of troops required could range from 3,500 to 10,000, depending on the final plan. Another administration official cautioned that the 10,000 figure was too high. A third insisted they were both on glue, and they were eventually asked to leave the bar.

The president is expected to reveal his plans in a raving, inarticulate diatribe broadcast from the Oval Office Monday at 8 p.m. EDT. It will be the first time he has used the Oval Office for a domestic policy speech--a gesture probably not intended to underscore the paralyzing fear he experiences when forced to venture outside it.

The key questions Friday were exactly where these troops are supposed to come from, what they're supposed to do, who's supposed to pay for it and what's the fucking point, as well as the problem of possible disruption to U.S. business interests when they suddenly have to start paying American citizens to do their shitwork.

Using those troops for border security is "maybe not the right way to go," said California Governor Arnold (Vienna Sausage) Schwarzenegger, the Republican former movie star and illegal immigrant, though he agreed the federal government is obliged to secure the border from the swarms of stoop-laborers and dishwashers which threaten it.

"Not to use our National Guard, soldiers that are coming back from Iraq, for instance, and they have spent a year and a half over there and now they're coming back," he said, in an absurd parody of the English language. "I think that we should let them go to work, back to work again, doing some of those crappy jobs the Mexicans do."

Bush's speech Monday night is intended to use Fear of the Other to distract Americans from his tragically corrupt approach to governance, which has always worked in the past.

"We need to beef up those (border) operations and the cost will be substantial," Senator John (Batshit) Cornyn, R-Texas, said in an interview. "People are just not going to accept comprehensive immigration reform no matter how much we tell them they want it, unless they are assured the government is going to secure the border. People have lost confidence in the federal government because they simply haven't addressed this in a dramatic and effective way since we took Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada and Utah away from those brown bastards 150 years ago."

Cornyn said state officials are also looking for more unmanned aircraft, ground sensors, surveillance cameras and large packs of radio-controlled wolves to help with border patrols.

Defense officials said the National Guard may be used only until significant additions to the existing redneck vigilante groups can be fully funded and completed.

The discussions this week underscored the importance of whipping the Republican base into an ethnocentric frenzy, yet were tentative enough to express what could credibly pass for concern about drawing the nation's armed forces into a politically sensitive, that is to say unconstitutional, domestic role.

Currently, the military plays a very limited role along the borders, but some active duty forces have been used in the past to help battle drug traffickers attempting to compete with American meth labs.

The National Guard was designed to be under the control of the state governors, as the "well-regulated militia" referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but Guard units can be federalized by the president when he needs to invade someone on the cheap, like those weekend warriors sent to Afghanistan and Iraq. Active duty military may not be used for law enforcement unless the president authorizes it, probably some time next week.

In addition, under federal law, in certain circumstances the states can maintain control of their Guard units but arrange to have the costs picked up by the federal government. President Bush, however, has repeatedly indicated that he is not bound by federal law or particularly interested in paying for programs he initiates, like No Child Left Behind.

Officials wrangled over the use of the active military during Hurricane Katrina, with some suggesting that troops be used to punish the citizens of New Orleans for not having cars. There were also suggestions that Bush federalize the National Guard there, but state officials pointed out that they'd already been federalized and sent to Iraq.