Live Blogging the President at 5 p.m. (pdt)

Well here it is boys and girls...

The first ever team live blog as Mojo, s9 and Sean bring you the blow by blow of the President's desperate cry for help from his base.

Standby for pregame...

(p.s. this will all work much better if you are listening to John Williams "Imperial March" in the background...

mojo sends

van.mojo: Welcome this afternoon to the live blogging of the President's hideous screed on Immigration. We will be your guides this afternoon. The others will introduce themselves as they may. We now have just under 25 minutes until the address, but as you might be aware, wingnut blogistan has been in a whinge about this for most of the day...

Their basic take is that they don't want to see National Guards troops on the border unless they are there in Division strength with orders to shoot anyone they think is a little too brown walking north...

s9: Wait. Is the President planning to talk about immigration? Or border security?

van.mojo: I don't think he believes there's a difference. His base certainly doesn't. Here is a bit from Free Salt Lick this morning: "The President isn't building any "fences" with this approach. We need a minimum of 50,000 troops assigned to duty on both the Mex and Canada borders.

An actual wall should immediately be approved along the southern border by those dunderheads in D.C. with construction started in a few days following. We might even arrest the wetbacks already here, form chain gangs and let them erect the wall, working on the Mexican side of it."

The President's speech is what 12 steppers call a cry for help...

van.mojo: Will someone tell me why Harry Reid is expending this much gas in a special order speech no one but a handful of cranks and junkies are watching? What is his position on undocumented immigration and/or border security... temporally congnated brains want to know... because right now, a brother has got this kind of James Joyce "Ulysses" narrative thing going on here...

s9: He's obviously not speaking to us. He's speaking at his fellow Senators, I think. The message that GOP colleagues will here, I fear, is "Annhiliate rational thought!"

van.mojo: Ladies and Gentlemen, supreme ruler of the Universe George W. Bush

s9: Ah, apparently, he thinks we're talking about immigration reform.

s9: I can hear the wingers gargling tequila. The 'work hard' phrase just went down.

van.mojo: But it sure didn't take long to raise the spectre of evil creeping north... also, who here has been "rallying in favor of those here illegally." That's some pretty hideous spin!

Here we go... 6000 guard... but no direct law enforcement. But "initial" commitment for one year? What new agents and technologies. This is the guy who cut Border Patrol funding last year.

"We are not going to militarize our southern border" The wingnuts are even now heading to their nearest bridges and overpasses...

Oh boy..here we go...new prisons!!

van.mojo: So the choices will be indefinite detention centers or slave labor as a "guest worker." Boy, he's just pissing off everyone tonight...

Sean: OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD..MORE NEW TECHNOLOGY

van.mojo: Oh yes, Sean... all the new tech you can eat.

s9: Of course, he isn't saying squat about discouraging employers from hiring illegal labor.

s9: Ah yes, let's hear it for the "English Only" movement. I can't wait for us to have our own version of L'Academe Francais, which will tell us exactly what is English and what is merely Pidgin Spanglish. Yee-HAW.

Gots to get back to wingutistan to see if they are glitching on the call to tolerance...

van.mojo: The wingnuts are ready to commit suicide over their perceived betrayal this evening...

And now for Sen. Durbin:

s9: Some of my updates got stepped on. Anyway, between the expanded detention facilities, the "English Only" initiative and the "improved" state and local authorization to assist in cracking down on the terrorists illegal aliens, I think we can safely say the devil is clearly going to be lurking in the details.

van.mojo: It's interesting that Durbin is making really oblique references to the American-Indian war when he talks about the Guard being forced to some hideous duty of dubious importance to them while their own homes might be in danger. This was an early point of contention in the American colonies...

Moreover, Durbin's choice for this response is politically interesting... I will have more later... but for now, this is vanmojo signing off...

s9: I'm trying very hard to locate what might be enough "red meat" to satisfy the Unhinged GOP Base, and I'm having to stretch to get it. I suspect, after East Blogistan gets done ripping a new one for the White House, we might see a concerted pushback from BushLoyalists that will harp mercilessly on the "Ending Catch And Release As We Know It" theme. If state and local authorities are empowered to do random sweeps demanding to see the new and improved GuestWorkerID™, and they start filling camps by the boxcarload with people detained for not having sufficient paperwork, it's possible that Wingnut Nation will start feeling mollified. But only if they see television footage of the results of such handiwork will they believe it's happening.

Anyway, that's all for us tonight. We are retiring to our respective basements, watering holes and data centers to cogitate about what we heard tonight. More to come after we've had a chance to integrate.