Rematch: Hanretty vs. Powers II

A million thanks to the bete noire of Fox haters, the high priest of Olby critics, Johnny Dollar, for hooking us up with the clip. I dropped an A-bomb on KP yesterday so I don’t want to risk overkill, but I find it a tad ironic that she’s suddenly concerned about illegals who are posing “a violent danger against us.” She didn’t seem so concerned about the immigration status of violently dangerous illegals like Jose Carranza last week when she hosted H&C. But then, what do I know? I’m just a “nativist” racist.

Update (Bryan): Kirsten dropped a howler toward the end of that segment that just begs for a bashing. She said, and I quote:

“I don’t think the fact that Mexico has problems has anything to do with this.”

Oh really? The conservative estimate (which is really a low-end best guess) is that we have 12 million illegal aliens in the US, the vast majority of which are from Mexico. So, say, there are 9 million Mexican citizens living in the US illegally. Mexico’s total population is a little over 100 million. So the current low-end best guess we have is that about 8 or 9% of Mexico is actually living in the US illegally. That’s roughly twice the population of Maryland, which has 10 electoral votes.

That’s a lot of people. Why are they here?

Well, Kirsten would do well to read up on places like Nuevo Laredo. Google it, please. It’s home to a former Ford motors plant. It’s also the scene of a drug-driven civil war. That war has abated a bit lately, thanks in part to a cease-fire between a coupe of the cartels (and I’m sure the fact that the cartels could bring about a sort of peace that the government couldn’t must make the citizens there feel peachy), but it’s still dangerous. Here’s a taste of the way it was:

Detectives here suspected the cartels from the beginning, but it would be months before all the pieces came together.

On June 8, 2005, this is what they had: Two apparent executions in broad daylight, hours apart and across town from each other.

The day’s second victim, Cesario Antonio Carrera, 28, was lured out of a car dealership where his Mercedes was being worked on and shot several times at close range, police said.

It was done by Sinaloa Cartel thugs, sources familiar with the investigation said. Though unrelated to the first slaying, the accidental timing had officers speculating from Day 1 that something bigger was afoot.

More interesting circumstances marked the first killing, on the city’s northwest side. Police found Bruno Alberto Orozco Juarez, 24, a former Nuevo Laredo cop, shot dead — his shirt stained with blood, a gold chain with a Virgin of Guadalupe pendant around his neck and handcuffs locked on his right wrist.

Oh, wait. This all sounds like it happened somewhere in Baghdad, but it happened in Laredo, not Nuevo Laredo. The latter is in Mexico, the former is in Texas. The two cities are across the Rio Grande from one another. The drug cartel hitmen crossed into Texas to do their work, thanks in no small part to the undefended border. Their handiwork in Nuevo Laredo included street battles, assassinations, the works. If memory serves, the city had a police chief last less than a week from appointment to being gunned down on the streets.

After reading up on this drug war, which isn’t limited to the sister cities by the way, perhaps Kirsten could ask herself “If I was working at the Ford plant in Nuevo Laredo, would the violence there make me think about heading across the river, past Laredo, and somewhere where there are a few less AK-47s on the street?” Any sensible person would answer “Yes.” And because the border is undefended, nearly any sensible person from one side can find a path to the other. And because sensible people can do that, so can all sorts of other people, and not just from Mexico.

The fact that Mexico has problems, up and down its politics and economics, has EVERYTHING to do with the illegal immigration problem. Everything. It’s foolish to claim otherwise.

• Burglars lock homeowner in gun closet with predictably hilarious results
• Is Scandalmania making amnesty more likely?
• Pew: GOP now tied with or ahead of Obama on economy, immigration — and gun control

Blowback