Hi, I'm Vincente Fox,

I am pleased to take this opportunity to address you gringos one last time before I turn over power to my good friend and tennis partner Felipe Calderón in December.

I understand that many of you are upset about the migration of so many of our people into your country. Especially you people who live in territories on the southwestern border than once belonged to Mexico.

I hope I can clear up a few things for you and that once that you understand our problems, you will be more sympathetic.

You see, we've got a huge problem here in Mexico. It started a long, long time ago when Mexico gained its independence. For political purposes, our forefathers proclaimed a democratic republic. But that was just window dressing. We were and actually still are, an oligarchy. In Mexico, we have a group of "old money" families who are obscenely rich and getting richer (including my family), and we have a hell of a lot of people who are dirt poor campesinos and there are more of them all the time too.

So the dilemma I face is that my family and all of our rich friends don't really like the drag on our economy brought on by having to provide at least some bare minimal social services to these growing hoards of poor people. We'd rather invest that money in the oil fields of Veracruz, or in multi-national schemes like buying up lots of stock in companies doing business in China for instance. These poor people are not only a drag on our economy and our ruling family's wealth, but they are muy peligroso, my friends.

History shows us that when the peasant's belly is empty, he gets angry. A hungry man is an angry man.

Here in Mexico City, we don't need a bunch of peasants coming to town and overthrowing our government. We've got it good here.

So I am so very thankful to my North American brother, George W. Bush and all of his rich friends, who are helping us solve our little problem down here in Mexico.

Thank you, George! You leave your back door open and millions of my unhappy, discontented poor people will stream into the United States and we both PROFIT from it.

What a concept! We export our poor people to your country and immediately they begin sending a good portion of their paychecks home to Mexico to bolster our economy. You gringos really don't know just how much I and my rich friends appreciate your simple-minded generous nature. Your virtue, ironically, is making us rich. Keep at it!

Our oligarchy in Mexico remains secure and we don't have to provide services for our poor, and you American Corporatists can use our poor people to break the backs of the American labor activists and unions.

Frankly, I can't see a down-side to this arrangement.

Muchas Gracias, Amigos

If you don't get a star for that post, let me put you in for one. Tim, give that man a star!

We've got just about four weeks to cut these fuckers off at the knees. Mao said all power flows through the barrel of a gun. But in this day and age, all power flows through the television set.

I wonder how many Democrats actually get on the telephone and demand that MSNBC and CNN, and the three broadcast networks start giving proper attention to real reporting.

I wonder how many Democrats actually get on the websites of these cable TV and broadcast networks and write instant feedback messages every time they see and hear some idiot blonde with helmet hair say something incredibly stupid, or ripped right off the White House playbook.

CALL THEM. WRITE THEM. Stay on their ass 24 hours a day. Never let a broadcaster spout crap that you know is wrong.

Why do that? Because THEY do that. Every evangelical preacher tells his sheep to call and write and harrass every network, every day, to make sure that the firehose of bullshit keeps spraying.

If you Democrats really want change, you better take rkoppelmann's post to heart and start fighting back as hard as you can.

Come on you people, sound off like you got a pair!

The Foley story is certainly secondary to the bigger and more potentially ship-sinking revelations in Bob Woodward's book "Denial: It's not just a river in Egypt"

Case in point, Salon Editors, is Bush's upstairs maid, Condolezza Rice, who apparently is getting some of that amnesia that's going around the Republicans in Congress right now.

If you REALLY want a story of "Who knew what and when" you'd do better to focus on Condo's meeting with George Tenet and four other ranking U.S. intel folks including Richard Clarke.

Condo wisely decided that she would be in Egypt on the day Woodward's book was hitting the papers. So from far, far away, we got some classic Condo here:

"I do not remember a so called emergency meeting."

That's right, folks! The Secretary of State of the United States of America doesn't have a secretary of her own to log meetings and phone calls.

Preposterous!

Condo, Bush's little cutie, went on to say:

"What I am quite certain of, however, is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says that there was about to be an attack in the U.S. And the idea that I would somehow have ignored that, I find incomprehensible."

"But there was nothing that related to an attack in the US," she said.

Oh well, that little distinction settles it then! If the briefing didn't SPECIFICALLY say the attack would be "IN" the U.S. then it's understandable she wouldn't be paying much attention. After all, she might have been thinking about some new Ferrigamo shoes, or maybe musing about the last time Georgie Boy brushed his hand over her ass while pressed in close for a photo op.