US Police Export Guns to Mexican Drug Cartels

The former mayor of Columbus, New Mexico has pleaded guilty to smuggling 200 guns across the U.S. border into Mexico to buyers in the La Línea drug cartel.  At least 12 of the weapons were used in murders. The 11 people charged with gun trafficking also include the Columbus police chief and a town trustee. The weapons, purchased from Arizona and New Mexico gun shops by “straw buyers,” were smuggled into Mexico using unmarked Columbus police vehicles.

The entire Columbus police force has been fired. Unfortunately, the firearms have been too, and people died.

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Big Border Bologna Bust!

In a stunning security coup, agents of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service seized 385 pounds of bologna sausage at the New Mexico border last week. Officials bagged the bologna bandit as he sought to smuggle illicit lunchmeat into sleepy Santa Teresa, NM (population 2607).  The contraband cold cuts, with a street value of $2,700, were seized and destroyed before they reached the lunchboxes of innocent American schoolchildren.

Yet, for each bologna bagged at the border, surely six salamis slither across. Mr. President: where is our Border Wall?

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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Danger, Bill Richardson!

Stardate 27 January 2009.An anomaly has appeared on the dashboard of Starship NotionsCapital. Hundreds of unknown entities are accessing an older blog post about New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, not the new, updated one, violating conventional laws of the Blogosphere. Holy Einstein! Have we drifted near some Black Hole or Space Warp?

 No!  Space Commander Bill Richardson just gave his “State of Outer Space Address,” boasting :

We even went boldly where no state has gone before—launching Spaceport America, signing Virgin Galactic as an anchor tenant, and starting a new commercial space industry in Southern New Mexico ….

Danger Will Robinson Danger, Bill Richardson! Do not enter into compacts with space aliens! The say they come to serve your citizens, but they will serve them on a bun, with slaw!

Bill “Blago” Richardson?

Bill Richardson’s career in President Obama’s cabinet was mighty short. It never happened.

The New Mexico Governor withdrew from consideration as Commerce Secretary after media noise about a Federal grand jury probe into at least one state contract. Since Mr. Richardson was on tap to handle Commerce in a crashing economy, questions about financial ethics would not do. While Team Obama’s vetting of Richardson left something to be desired, it is true that the ethical bar was raised recently thanks to the inimitable Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Commerce will Blast Off With Richardson

UPDATE: Richardson launch aborted!

Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico will be named Secretary of Commerce by President-elect Barack Obama today. The Governor will probably not bring his pinto pony here to Washington, despite nonstop whining by Malia and Sasha Obama.

The current economic crisis calls for bold initiatives, and Governor Richardson has plans to Go Where No Commerce Secretary Has Gone Before: Space, the Final Economic Frontier. The Governor has invested millions in the Spaceport America project in southern New Mexico. This effort may spur a new economic boom by initiating Space Commerce; it may also out-source your job to Alpha Centauri and bring new meaning to the term “illlegal alien.” Chances are it will just be another extravagant thrill ride for the very rich. The best the rest of us can hope for is getting our pictures taken while we sit on Bill’s pony.

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

Real American Landslide for Obama

95 percent of voters at New Mexico’s historic Santo Domingo Pueblo voted for Barack Obama last Tuesday, reports David Alire Garcia of the New Mexico Independent.

The ancestors of the voters in this traditional Native American settlement moved to the Rio Grande valley, 25 miles south of Santa Fe, in the 1200s. Make no mistake: these folks are the realest, most American of “real Americans.”

Here are the returns from Sandoval County’s Precinct 20, Santo Domingo Pueblo:

Barack Obama: 578 votes
John McCain:      30 votes
Ralph Nader:          1 vote

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

Space Alien Update!

Image: Interior of something. I forget. Either Virgin Galactic 2 or prototype Metrorail subway car (credit: Virgin Galactic).

Space entrepreneur and alien (British) Sir Richard Branson is a pioneer, using bleeding edge technology to harness the unfathomable, enormous power of consumer retail market forces to explore the very envelope flaps of the Theme Park Experience.

Scientists are dumbstruck. Here they are sitting in cubicles doing boring research stuff with puny beeping machines, tinfoil satellites, invisible waves, faint flickering lights and such, crunching and re-crunching data to figure out what it means, when they could have been giving joyrides to rich guys. The sound of headsmacks at NASA in Greenbelt is audible here on Capitol Hill.

Aliens Emerge from Giant UFO!

Cruising at 3,000 mph, the gargantuan spaceship zoomed out of the Texas sky, landed, and disgorged occupants who are clearly Not of This Earth.

Wait. That’s not Texas, that’s the Big Apple, Noo friggin’ Yawk. The creature on the left is definitely an alien, though: he’s British, that Branson guy. The humanoid with him is Burt Rutan, who designed the spaceship pictured behind them. Wasn’t there a movie, “Rutan Meets Godzilla”?

A Modest Proposal for Border Security

The mayors of six Texas border towns don’t want the federal government to build that giant fence along the Mexican border. They want the Rio Grande dredged deeper and channeled wider instead. They think this will form a natural deterrent and that people won’t try to cross it anyway and drown.

But where will the water come from to fill that bigger ditch? I am no engineer, but I have traveled enough in Texas and New Mexico to know that Rio Grande water has been diverted for agricultural irrigation for centuries, and growing industrialization and urbanization of the Rio Grande valley add to demands on that water supply. Do the mayors really believe that Albuquerque will stop watering golf courses in order to keep future caddies from crossing the border?

If a big river is as impractical as a big wall, what can be done? I propose Bio-Deterrence.

Mike’s Big Money Politics: Blast-Off!

 In today’s installment, Mike helps Bill Richardson.

The pursuit of higher office in America demands dedication, sacrifice, vision, endurance, and belief in Democracy and oneself. It also requires pollsters, spinmeisters, hucksters, advance men, and enough simoleans to send every kid in the country through Harvard. And medical school.

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