I was watching, for the nth time, "You Only Live Twice." I tell you, I can watch those James Bond movies over and over and over and never get sick of them. While I was watching Ol' Sean sneak into SPECTRE headquarters, I thought the same thing I always think when I watch one of these movies.

Man, Blofeld's got one hell of a place here.

I mean, it's huge. Really huge. It has it's own indoor monorail, that's how huge. I've never lived in a place that had its' own monorail.

It had gigantic laboratories.It presumably had living quarters and kitchen facilities for the hundreds of people milling around, assisting in the evil plot du jour.It had office space, bathroom facilities, recreation areas, and a sizable room from which one may malevolently launch and control an orbiting satellite. You can't do that from MY living room. Lord, have I tried.

It isn't just Blofeld, either. Scaramonga had some digs. Yanus, too. Doctor No had a decent setup, but it would require a MAJOR overhaul, decor-wise. That place was SO 1962. The comic book baddies as well-- Magneto, Modok, HYDRA, Red Skull, just to name a few-- all had these incredible fortresses that no one knew about.

That always bothered me, being the overly analytical sort. How could anyone build a five-mile-radius base of operations with all the latest in espionage equipment inside a mountain or on an island or under Hoboken without ANYONE NOTICING???? Especially in modern times, when we have satellites that can check you for colon polyps. And who does the building, anyway? How are the raw materials, such as the nuclear pile that lights the lights and heats the pirahna tank, procured? JUST WHO IS THE ARCH-FIEND'S CONTRACTOR?

And those hundreds of people milling about. Where do they come from? How does the global extortionist man his operation? They must know that something is going on, since they probably don't have much contact with their families, and may notice that those that try to leave are generally shot. I'm sure they've noticed that there's no withholding of  taxes on the pay stub. Some seem educated, especially the ones operating the nuclear pile and the orbiting rockets. Did Blofeld hold a job fair? Hire headhunters? I  imagine an underworld equivalent to the Stanton test, with questions like this-

 If I knew that my employer were trying to inflame tensions between The USA and Russia, thus beginning an age of nuclear terror, I would:

1. Do nothing, it's none of my business.
2. Share my suspicions with my supervisor.
3. Go immediately to the police, after my shift.

Well, I can't answer the question about the contractor, except to say that of all the people mentioned, he must be the most dangerous. After all, he never gets caught. How many times have Blofeld and Magneto been nailed? And every time they are, what happens? That's right-- another high-tech fortress up in smoke. Another future job for Mr. Contractor.

I can, however, guess who the scores of workers are, and so can you, if you've been watching the news.

Illegal immigrants. It has to be.

Unscrupulous people sneaking over our borders and taking jobs away from our disgruntled nuclear scientists, evil astronauts, and sinister janitors. Magneto's probably holding his job fair in Brownsville, where they're just glad to have SOMEONE leasing space at the Convention Center.

Who else could be operating these bases in such great numbers without detection? Who else would get an education and then work without benefits? Who else would give their lives just to take a stab at global extortion? No true-born American would. One might try the extortion thing, but dying for it would be far too inconvenient. He'd miss next week's "CSI."

Meanwhile, our OWN evil scientists are forced by this illicit competition to demean themselves working for organizations so evil they make SPECTRE look like the Campfire Girls. Organizations like Exxon or Merck. It's sad to see something like that happen to a MIT graduate. Meanwhile, the government's worried about the guy flipping burgers at Jack in the Box.

This is why I support tighter borders. We need to keep these folks out entirely. Let's face it, the hordes of SPECTRE aren't going to sign up for a guest worker program.

And I sincerely doubt we'll get the Red Skull to start paying into Social Security.