Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

In order to shore up his dismal ratings, Dubya will give a speech tonite apparently calling up the Nat'l Guard to protect our southern borders from illegals crossing freely.

However, the SF Chronicle reported on Feb. 9, 2005 -

<center>Bush budget scraps 9,790 border patrol agents.
President uses law's escape clause to drop funding for new homeland security force.</center>

"Washington -- The law signed by President Bush less than two months ago to add thousands of border patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border has crashed into the reality of Bush's austere federal budget proposal, officials said Tuesday.

Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year.

But Bush's proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents.

The shrunken increase reflects the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them..."

(complete article) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... B837T1.DTL

Let's see what the 'W'-easel comes up with...

Pictures in the Express News of empty guard towers, tower after tower supposed to be filled with watchers. Did somebody say National Guard Troops? Does that mean they are going to pull out of Iraq?

Only 34% of the Guard's equipment is available for use in the USA, the letter said. The worst shortages are in trucks, night-vision goggles, engineering equipment and communications gear, the letter said. The Guard has historically used hand-me-down equipment from the active-duty military. For example, the Army Guard is using radios from the Vietnam War era and needs 37,000 newer radios, according to a recent Guard budget briefing paper posted on its website.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washi ... s_efforts/

I think instead of giving speeches he ought to have Pixar do animations for him instead. Since we are in the realm of fantasy lets do it right.

I know you live in a border town and things must be very dangerous but I worry more about those OTM’s sneaking in more than I do the wet backs. Del Rio got a good program working, they arrest everyone, normally they just give the OTM’s a ticket or something and tell them to show up for a hearing. Catch and release the program was called.




http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200509/092905b.html