Tag Archives: border wall

Federalism Works

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On Thursday, Just the News posted an article about Arizona’s efforts to secure its border.

The article reports:

Arizona GOP Gov. Doug Ducey reportedly will not comply with a Biden administration request to remove rail containers put along its southern border to fill gaps in the U.S.-Mexico wall and stop the flow of illegal migration.

The Interior Department in a letter last week asked that the double-stacked containers be removed and that no new ones be added. It also stated some are on the edge of an American Indian reservation and that the federal government either has a contract to fill the gaps or plans to do so, and that the containers are in the way of those projects.

“The unauthorized placement of those containers constitutes a violation of federal law and is a trespass against the United States,” reads the letter from the agency’s Bureau of Reclamation. “That trespass is harming federal lands and resources and impeding Reclamation’s ability to perform its mission.”

In response, Ducey spokesman C.J. Karamargin said Wednesday: “They want us to take down shipping containers and leave gaps open for who knows how long so they can put up what sounds like a chain link fence.”

The article concludes:

“Arizona has had enough,” Ducey said at the time, amid calls for the administration to stop the flow of illegal border crossings. “We can’t wait any longer.

“For the last two years, Arizona has made every attempt to work with Washington to address the crisis on our border,” the statement continued. “Time and time again we’ve stepped in to clean up their mess. Arizonans can’t wait any longer for the federal government to deliver on their delayed promises.”

It is quite possible that considering the people presently in control in Washington, states may have to take action individually to avoid the crisis of illegal immigration that has come to our southern border. The federal government is supposed to secure our borders, but when they fail, the states have no choice but to take action.

The Plan

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Florida Senator Rick Scott has created an 11-Point Plan to Rescue America. Not everyone in Washington loves his plan–he is facing opposition from members of both political parties–but it is a plan that most everyday Americans can get behind. Senator Scott has listed issues that those of us who love America can support.

Here are the issues:

  1.  Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them.
  2.  Government will never again ask American citizens to disclose their race, ethnicity, or skin color on any government form.
  3. The soft-on-crime days of coddling criminal behavior will end. We will re-fund and respect the police because, they, not the criminals, are the good guys.
  4.  We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.
  5.  We will grow America’s economy, starve Washington’s economy, and stop Socialism.
  6.  We will eliminate all federal programs that can be done locally, and enact term limits for federal bureaucrats and Congress.
  7.  We will protect the integrity of American Democracy and stop left-wing efforts to rig elections.
  8.  We will protect, defend, and promote the American Family at all costs.
  9.  Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies. We believe in science: Men and women are biologically different, “male and female He created them.” Modern technology has confirmed that abortion takes a human life.
  10.  Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of our lives, and we will stop all government efforts to deny our religious freedom and freedom of speech.
  11.  We are Americans, not globalists.

For further information on this platform, please visit the link above.

 

 

When States Do What Needs To Be Done

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Our southern border is a mess. People are coming through in droves with no coronavirus tests or vaccines, drugs are flowing through, the Mexican cartels are making a fortune, terrorists are coming through, and human traffickers are entering America without being stopped. That’s really not good for our country, and the people living along the southern border are paying a high price for the lawlessness there.

Yesterday The Patriot Daily Wire reported the following:

Texas is expected to award a contract this week to begin construction of a barrier along its southern border with Mexico.

In an early-September statement on its website, the Texas Facilities Commission announced that a design firm and an engineering firm had been selected to oversee the project’s construction, The Texas Tribune reported last week.

That statement noted that the contract is expected to be awarded by mid-September — or sometime this week.

“The Texas Facilities Commission, which oversees state contracts, said in a statement it anticipates awarding the border wall project with more than $1 billion in available funding by mid-September,” the Washington Examiner reported.

“The commissioners must vote on the decision before the contract for a program manager can be awarded, and the final monetary amount has not yet been determined. The program manager will handle the budget and determine where to build.”

Donations to fund a border wall being built by the state of Texas have already surpassed $54 million, according to the Texas Governor’s office. In August, the state legislature passed a $1.8 billion bill for efforts to fight illegal immigration, with almost half that amount going toward wall construction, the Examiner reported.

The article concludes:

The project follows a disaster declaration Abbott issued June 1 covering 34 counties, later revised to 28 counties, to deal with the immigration crisis.

“President Biden’s open-border policies have paved the way for dangerous gangs and cartels, human traffickers, and deadly drugs like fentanyl to pour into our communities,” Abbott said in the June 1 declaration.

“Meanwhile, landowners along the border are seeing their property damaged and vandalized on a daily basis while the Biden Administration does nothing to protect them. Texas continues to step up to confront the border crisis in the federal government’s absence, but more must be done,” he added.

…“Texans agree with me over Biden on border response,” Abbott wrote.

“They want action, not empty words.

“While Biden does nothing to secure the border, Texas will get the job done.”

It is the job of the federal government to secure our borders. However, it is good to see Texas step up to the plate when the federal government fails to do its job.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that the Biden administration’s pause on the construction of the wall at America’s southern border is costing taxpayers about six million dollars per day. That does not include the cost of dealing with the refugees that are overrunning the border.

The article reports:

According to the source, the expenditures are required for materials orders placed before the pause and expenses for the cost of equipment sitting idle. When the issuance of a stop work order causes a contractor to idle equipment, they are entitled to be compensated for rental expenses or costs of ownership.

Shortly after taking office, President Biden signed an executive order temporarily halting any further progress on the border wall so individual contracts could be evaluated. With the exception of “make-safe” activities at the worksites, construction projects immediately came to a standstill, Breitbart Texas reported. The end of the 60-day pause does not, however, signal an automatic restart of construction.

Early in the pause, a spokesperson for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) informed Breitbart Texas that contractors would be informed of a final decision sometime after the 60-day pause concludes. The time was to be used for evaluating each contract to reach a decision to terminate-for-cause or continue.

The Biden administration has not indicated which direction they will take regarding the end of the pause. Little information concerning the immigration crisis on the border has come from the leadership team within DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Senior officials within DHS reported being instructed not to speak to national media on the issues facing DHS at the border.  Information from other agencies within the new administration is equally elusive. USACE did not respond to a request for information concerning the end of the pause and the border wall contracts currently being evaluated.

The right thing to do would be to finish the wall. Under any circumstances, a secure border is an integral part of national security.  In a time of a national pandemic, a secure border is a public health issue. A country cannot remain a country without a secure border. I realize there are problems with our immigration laws, but let’s secure the border before we worry about the less urgent issues.

Creating American Unemployment One Job At A Time

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The Epoch Times reported yesterday that construction on the border wall between Mexico and America will stop by the end of Tuesday.

The article reports:

All Customs and Border Protection (CPB) construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall will stop by the end of Tuesday, according to a Democratic congressman whose district is located along the border.

“I received notification that in accordance with President [Joe] Biden’s executive order, all CPB contractors have now been formally notified by CBP Procurement to pause construction activities on CBP self-executed projects,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said in a statement. “While CBP cannot speak on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), it is expected that DOD and USACE are undertaking parallel action on CBP-funded border wall projects that they are overseeing.”

…The wall stoppage on Tuesday complies with Biden’s executive orders that were issued last week. The order halted projects where money was shifted from military projects to the border.

“This is a promising step in our work to halt construction of the ineffective and wasteful border wall and undo the damage that borderlands have experienced these past four years,” Cueller continued in his statement. “However, our work continues. I remain steadfast in my commitment to working with the new administration until every border wall contract is terminated and all construction crews leave our border communities.”

This is strictly for show. If walls don’t work, why do many of the political elite live in gated communities?

The article concludes:

After Biden’s executive orders were issued, former Trump administration officials said that the border wall is necessary to reduce immigration numbers.

That includes former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan, who said the Biden administration has made the United States less safe with the president’s executive blitz last week after taking office.

“With the stroke of a pen, President Biden made this country less safe,” Morgan told Breitbart News on Jan. 23. “It’s pure politics over public safety.”

“Look, I know what our team said to the transition team,” Morgan said. “I know the facts and data and analysis that was provided. I know what they told them and gave them that showed that the wall works.”

Morgan added that he believes the current administration did not speak to experts with the Border Patrol about the policies that should remain, including the wall. He also cited executive orders ending the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” program.

Losing American jobs and making America less safe. That will be the legacy of the Biden administration.

Why Not To Elect Joe Biden

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Dan Bongino shared an article on his website yesterday that lists 15 reasons not to vote for Joe Biden. Here is the list:

1) Joe Biden is 77 years old, seems to have difficulty working a full day, and has rather famously and significantly deteriorated mentally.

2) Joe Biden has been in politics since 1972. Do you think someone who has been in office that long without accomplishing much is going to sweep in and change everything for the better?

3) Biden has promised to halt all construction on a border wall, cancel the bilateral agreement with Mexico that stops many illegals from making it here, end deportations for anyone other than felons, and push through a massive amnesty for illegal aliens.

4) Joe Biden plans to ban the sale of new AR-15s and then demand that owners of AR-15s sell them to the government or sign up on a gun registry.

5) Biden has publicly said he no longer supports the Hyde Rule, which prevents federal money from being used for abortion.

6) Biden has noted that he is open to locking the country down again over Coronavirus.

7) Biden has said numerous times that he intends to ban fracking.

8) Biden is extremely liberal.

9) Joe Biden, who has a reputation for putting his hands all over women, was credibly accused of sexual assault by his former aide, Tara Reade.

10) Biden publicly admitted that he had advised Obama not to go through with the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

11) Electing Joe Biden after months of rioting by liberals in liberal cities will send a message that Americans are okay with that kind of behavior.

12) Both Biden and his VP, Kamala Harris, refuse to say whether they will attempt to add more justices to the Supreme Court.

13) Joe Biden has signaled that he’s open to getting rid of the legislative filibuster in the Senate, which is extremely dangerous and has the potential to destabilize our Republic.

14) Kamala Harris was arguably the single most liberal member of the Senate and Joe Biden, who seems too feeble to finish his term, made her his vice-presidential running mate.

15) Barack Obama and Joe Biden presided over the slowest post-war economic recovery in American history. Is that the guy you want shepherding the economy after the economic damage caused by Corona and the lockdowns?

Obviously there are more reasons not to elect Joe Biden, but that is one person’s list.

News From CHAZ

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The Gateway Pundit posted an update on events in CHAZ today.

The article reports:

The situation in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle is about what you would expect about now.
They built a border wall and established segregated gardens.

Today the CHAZ Community leader told all white people to give $10 to a black person.
Considering most of the people in CHAZ haven’t held a job in a while this could be quite a sacrifice.

There is a video in the article of the people in CHAZ being asked to give their $10. The person speaking seems to put the request forward to test the seriousness of those following him. The manipulation going on is amazing. Having one group of people give money to another group of people for no reason is not a way to create unity.

What is happening in CHAZ is probably not going to end well. My hope is that when in falls apart no one is seriously injured.

 

This Kind Of Logic Makes My Head Hurt

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On Friday, CNS News posted an article about a recent statement by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The article reports:

Using money earmarked for construction projects to build a wall to secure the border “is bad for security of our border” and is “undermining our national security,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday.

President Donald Trump’s decision to reallocate $3.6 billion to fund border wall construction is an “assault on Congress’s power of the purse,” Pelosi said in opening remarks at her weekly press conference:

“The President’s decision to cancel $3.6 billion for military construction initiatives makes us less safe by undermining our national security and the quality and life and the morale of our troops. And it dishonors the Constitution of the United States as the President negates the Constitution’s most fundamental principle, the principle of checks and balances, the separation of powers and his assault on the Congress’s power of the purse.

“The decision is bad for security of our border, for the security of our nation and the well‑being of our children.

How is securing our border bad for the security of our border?

It’s always about the children. What about the children who are in overcrowded classrooms due to the influx of illegal immigrants? What about the children who have contracted diseases because illegal immigrants rarely have the vaccines that American children have? What about the children whose parents are working for lower wages because illegal aliens will work for less?

The Democrat party has lost its way on national security. They are simply ignoring the negative impact of illegal immigration in order to promote a political agenda.

It’s Not Just About Immigrants

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On Saturday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the “We Build the Wall” organization led by founder and organizer Brian Kolfage. They are building their first major border wall section on the West Texas-New Mexico border.

The article reports:

In the first video “Foreman Mike” discussed the latest progress on the Sunland Park project. “We Build the Wall” is closing up on their first half mile of wall. They project is approximately 2,300 feet and they have 350 more feet to go to finish the project.

The construction team has used over 600 concrete trucks so far. They are also pouring concrete for a 25 foot speedway behind the all for Border Patrol agents.

Border Patrol officials say the current project when complete will cut off 19 different foot trails on Mount Cristo Rey on the border. The cartels are bringing $100,000 to $200,000 in drugs each day through the open border in this area.

Mike added this on the effectiveness of the current project, “When I got here 17 days ago there were 450 people a night crossing.  When equipment started arriving it went to 300.   When manpower started working we went down to 200.  When we started placing the bollards it went from 70 to 30 to 0.  We’ve had no crossings in the last 8 days.”

Then Mike added this on the very security  situation,  “We have military clad specialists from the cartels probing our line.  The only thing stopping them is our specialists in the hills counteracting with them.  We expect to be completed late, late, late this evening or early tomorrow with the first segment of the wall. “

When asked about the security needed to deal with the drug cartels, Mike replied, “It’s extremely dangerous.  They got within 15 feet of the escavators last night.  They’re coming down and trying to probe against the new wall… We have approximately 15 guards on post, armed security individuals.”

This is a video of exactly what is happening with the “We Build The Wall” Project:

If nothing else, this is proof that when the government fails to act, Americans can and will get things done.

Games The Media Is Playing

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The media’s job is to report events, investigate questionable actions by those in power, and inform Americans about what their government is doing. It is not to follow Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals number 13. That rule states, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That rule is currently controlling the American media, and their target is Donald Trump. If you want to know what is actually causing the division in this country, look no further than the media. They have the power to bring us together. They have chosen not to do that.

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about how The Washington Post has put its finger on the scale in the way it fact checks the President.

The article names five ways The Washington Post skews the results of its fact checking:

1. Bias by target selection. Did the Post have a database of President Obama’s false or misleading claims? No. Would the Post have a database of President Hillary’s false or misleading claims if she had won? Don’t be ridiculous. These people parse every sentence in Trump speeches, interviews, and tweets. They’re not doing that for anyone else, especially the Democratic candidates now running for president.

2. Nitpicking. Are they checking facts, or spin? Kessler & Co. fuss that Trump can’t say they’re building a wall at the border. Trump tweeted a picture of a wall being built. It’s clearly a border wall under construction. But Kessler says the money (and the plans) came before Trump, so it’s not “his” wall.  Kessler also cried False when Trump said he had “nothing to hide” from the Russia probe “but refused to testify under oath.” Kessler is spinning, not fact-checking.

3. Bias by multiplying nitpicking times 100. Once the Post throws a Pinocchio rating like the border-wall squabble, every time Trump says “we’re building the wall,” it’s counted as a false statement (160 times). Kessler repeatedly threw the False flag when Trump said there was “no collusion” with Russia. Which side was False on that one?

4. Lack of transparency. The Posties have dramatically increased the rate of the “false claims” they are finding. In announcing their 10,000 number, they claimed the president “racked up 171 false or misleading claims in just three days,” April 25 to 27.  They admit that’s a bigger number than they used to find in a month.

They claimed it was literally a falsehood a minute. They counted 45 in a 45-minute Sean Hannity interview, 17 falsehoods in a 19-minute Mark Levin interview, and 61 false claims in the president’s Saturday night rally in Green Bay.  But they don’t list them individually, so you can check their work.

5. Pinocchio forgiveness. Kessler also has a weird habit of skipping Pinocchios for Democrats when they call him on the phone and admit they fudged it. They just found Kamala Harris wrongly stated in a CNN town hall that a majority of women earn the minimum wage. Kessler concluded “Regular readers know that we generally do not award Pinocchios when politicians admit error, and we certainly give an allowance for a slip of the tongue during a live event. We don’t play gotcha at The Fact Checker.”

Unless you’re Trump. Then you get 10,000 Gotchas.

Where were these people when President Obama told us that if we liked our doctor we could keep him and that the cost of health insurance would go down under ObamaCare?

A Border Will Will Save Taxpayers Billions

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Betsy McCaughey posted an article at Townhall today about the cost of not having a border wall.

The article reports:

Look what it costs us when a Central American teen crosses the border illegally without an adult. Uncle Sam spends a staggering $775 per day for each child housed at a shelter near Florida’s Homestead Air Reserve Base. There they have access to medical care, school and recreation. They stay, on average, 67 days at the Homestead shelter before being released to a sponsor. Do the math. That’s almost $52,000 per child. American parents would appreciate the government spending that money on their kids. Imagine the government handing you a check for $52,000 for your teenager.

However, there are bigger costs ahead. The number of illegal border crossers just hit an 11-year high with a total of more than 76,000 during the month of February alone. U.S. and Mexican officials predict hundreds of thousands more in the coming months.

The migrants use the word “asylum” as their get-in-free card. When they say it to a border agent, they gain entry to the U.S. 80 percent of the time according to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. They are temporarily housed and eventually released with an immigration court date. But half never go on to file an asylum claim, disappearing into the U.S., said former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Asylum is supposed to be reserved for people facing persecution and danger in their home country whose safety depends upon their leaving that country. People who simply want better lives are asked to go through the legal process. Unfortunately our southern border is so porous that it is very easy for people to come here illegally and then simply disappear. We need a wall. It is sad that Congress is playing political games in order to avoid building one. Congress has never wanted a secure southern border–the Democrats see future voters and the Republicans see cheap labor for the corporate sponsors. No one is looking at the security of America right now except the President and very few members of Congress.

It’s Hard To Figure Out Who To Believe

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The mainstream media lies. We could debate whether they lie or are simply misinformed, but the fact remains that they do not do a good job of informing the public on current events. Today Fox News posted an article that illustrates the problem with discerning the truth.

The article reports:

The Washington Post was among many news organizations to denounce President Trump’s claim of tape being used to silence women during illegal border crossings — but a subsequent New York Times article revealed the president wasn’t making things up after all.

Back on Jan. 25, the Post published an update to a piece headlined, “Trump again mentioned taped-up women at the border. Experts don’t know what he is talking about.” It claimed the president’s “new favorite anecdote” was about tape covering the mouths of migrant women.

Post reporter Katie Mettler wrote that Trump, in pushing for a border wall, was claiming “without evidence that traffickers tie up and silence women with tape” before illegally crossing the border. The Post called Trump’s claims “salacious and graphic,” even providing a timeline of Trump’s taped-women rhetoric.

“Yet human-trafficking experts and advocates for immigrant women have said they are perplexed by this increasingly repeated story in Trump’s repertoire — and are at a loss for where he got his information. It was not from them, they say; in fact, they have no idea what he is talking about,” Mettler wrote.

Not so fast. Last week, The New York Times published a piece headlined, “Yes, there was duct tape: The harrowing journeys of migrants across the border.” The piece – part of a limited-run series on border crossing – reveals that tape is used during border crossings.

The Times report said that women are “tied up” and “bound,” featuring first-hand accounts from several women who experienced the brutality themselves.

“For weeks, President Trump has been criticized for exaggerating the brutality experienced by migrant women on the border as he makes his case for a wall,” the Times wrote. “But there is some truth to the president’s descriptions of the threat of sexual assault and of women who have been duct-taped and bound.”

Building a border wall will not put an end to all of the evil that is happening at the border. However, we do need to acknowledge that there is a lot of evil happening at the border. The situation at our border is a national emergency with caravans of people breaking into our country. It is time Congress stopped ignoring the safety of Americans and of those in the caravans and got behind President Trump to build the wall.

Will Someone Please Tell Nancy Pelosi That She Is Not The President

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The Daily Caller posted an article today about Speaker Pelosi’s reaction to the possibility that President Trump may declare a national emergency to build a border wall.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned President Donald Trump on Thursday that a future Democratic president could declare a national emergency to achieve an agenda, such as gun control policy.

Responding to the president’s announcement that he will declare a national emergency related to the U.S. southern border, Pelosi maintained that “Democratic presidents can declare emergencies as well. So the precedent that the president is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans.”

The Constitution charges the President with the responsibility of defending our borders. The Constitution also enshrines the rights of American citizens to bear arms. What the President is doing is constitutional. What Speaker Pelosi is threatening is not constitutional. It’s that simple.

The article quotes Speaker Pelosi:

Speaker Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference, “You want to talk about a national emergency? Let’s talk about today, the one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America. That’s a national emergency. Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President?”

Is the prospect of caravans of thousands of immigrants crossing our border illegally a national emergency? What else would you call it? I wonder if the Democrats are happy with their choice of Speaker of the House.

What The Media Didn’t Want To Tell You

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Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about a recent shooting death in the New York City subway. The murder was gang related, but the NYPD wasn’t interested in having that information available to the public.

The article reports:

He’s an MS-13 gangster and illegal immigrant accused of murdering a rival on a subway platform — but you wouldn’t even recognize him on the street if the NYPD had its way.

Cops bent over backward Tuesday to shield alleged killer Ramiro Gutierrez from public scrutiny after his arrest for Sunday’s broad-daylight slaying in Queens — going so far as to feed reporters bogus information about his whereabouts and claim ignorance on his illegal status hours before President Trump’s State of the Union Address renewing his request for a border wall.

Gutierrez, 26, has been in custody since Monday for the execution-style killing of Abel Mosso, 20, in front of horrified straphangers.

But cops waited until 4 a.m. Tuesday to announce that he had been formally charged.

Then they called reporters Tuesday afternoon to say that he would be walked out of the 115th Precinct station house at 4 p.m. — only to sneak him out a back door by 2 p.m. en route to a courthouse in Queens.

The article continues:

Gutierrez’s NYPD rap sheet goes back to at least 2010, when he received a summons for disorderly conduct, according to sources.

He’s been collared on at least nine misdemeanors and four felonies, including for drug possession, sources said, noting that five of his arrests are sealed.

Gutierrez was out on $2,500 bail for felony conspiracy charges when he allegedly killed Mosso.

He was arrested last Dec. 11, and by Dec. 13 he had pleaded “not guilty” and posted bail, records show.

The arrest put him on ICE’s radar, but the agency was not aware he was in the US illegally until Tuesday, agency officials said.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders seized on Mosso’s killing to make the case for tighter border security.

“These things should not be happening,’’ she said Tuesday on CNN.

“We know that the crime and the drugs and those things drastically stop if you have real border security, and that includes a wall.’’

Coming to a city near you unless we get the southern border under control.

A Wall For Thee But Not For Me

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Hot Air posted an article yesterday about some recent comments by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. It seems that walls work in other places, but they don’t work in America when President Trump wants them.

The article reports:

Baier (Bret Baier of Fox News)pressed on this point, asking Hoyer about border barriers that have already been built: “Would you remove those existing barriers because you say they don’t work?”

“No, no,” Hoyer replied.

“So they work there?” Baier asked. Hoyer rambled for a bit about people living along the Rio Grande and eventually, Baier asked him again, “So they work some places.”

“Obviously they work some places,” Hoyer said as if it hadn’t taken three minutes of concerted effort to get him to admit the obvious.

Not only do they work in some places, America has helped finance them in some places.

Some places in the world where border walls are used for security:

India and Pakistan

Morocco and Algeria

Israel and the West Bank

Cyprus

Northern Ireland

Saudi Arabia and Yemen

Saudi Arabia and Iraq

Turkey and Syria

Kenya and Somalia

The list is courtesy of The Washington Examiner.

So even some Democrats know that walls work, and the amount of money requested to build a wall is a totally insignificant part of the budget, so what is this about? Do not be fooled. The establishment Republicans do not want the wall any more than the Democrats do. To the Democrats, open borders represent future voters. To the Republicans, open borders represent cheap labor for their corporate sponsors who belong to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There is also the added aspect of the Washington establishment finally getting a victory over President Trump. The only way Americans are going to ever have a voice in Washington is if they clear out ALL of the establishment politicians in both parties. Term limits might be a really good place to start.

Because I Have To Write Something About The Wall

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The Washington Examiner posted an article today about the wall that seems to be responsible for the government shutdown.

The article reports:

According to the results of an ABC News and Washington Post poll released Sunday morning, 42 percent of Americans support a wall. That is up from 34 percent one year ago and a previous high of 37 percent in 2017.

With 54 percent, the majority of Americans polled still oppose building a border wall. However, that opposition is shrinking, as 63 percent opposed the wall a year ago and the previous low was 60 percent two years ago.

The article also reports:

According to the poll, only about a quarter of Americans — 24 percent — believe there is a crisis-level situation in regards to immigration at the border.

That is a very sad statistic. We have drugs coming across the border, human trafficking is happening at the border, and American citizens are being killed by illegal aliens that should not even be in the country. There is a crisis. A wall will not end that crisis, but it will provide a partial solution that will greatly help the border patrol. Either Americans are not well-informed or they don’t see a crisis because it hasn’t directly impacted them. I am not sure which is the case. At any rate, the wall (and the increased border security requested with it) represents such a small part of the federal budget that there shouldn’t even be a question about whether or not to build it.

In Fiscal Year 2019, the federal budget will be $4.407 trillion. Compare the cost of the wall and the increased security at our border with the annual cost of illegal immigration. The wall is a bargain.

When Facts Get In The Way Of A Good Narrative

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial about the situation on our southern border. I guess you might even call the editorial a fact-check on some of the things we have been told recently by the mainstream media.

The editorial reports:

NPR’s “fact check” — like countless others — dismissed Trump’s claim as false because “illegal border crossings in the most recent fiscal year (ending in September 2018) were actually lower than in either 2016 or 2014.”

What they aren’t telling you is border patrol agents apprehended more than 100,000 people trying to enter the country illegally in just October and November of last year. Or that that number is way up from the same two months the year before.

Nor do they mention that last year, the border patrol apprehended more than half a million people trying to get into the country illegally. And that number, too, is up from the year before.

NPR may call that a fact-check, but it seems to me that it is more like political spin.

The editorial continues:

Trump’s critics certainly don’t bother to mention that those figures only count illegals the border patrol caught. It does not count the ones who eluded border patrol agents and got into the country.

The Department of Homeland Security claims that about 20% of illegal border crossers make it into the country. Other studies, however, say border agents fail to apprehend as much as 50% of illegal crossers.

Even at the lower percentage, that means that 104,000 illegals made it into the country in 2018 alone.

Is that not a crisis at the border?

I strongly suggest that you follow the above link to read the entire editorial. It contains a lot of important information that is not necessarily being reported.

The editorial notes that previous Presidents noted the crisis and promised to fix it:

Here’s another problem with claims that we don’t have a crisis at the border.

Past presidents all treated it like one.

In 1982, for example, President Ronald Reagan said that “The ongoing migration of persons to the United States in violation of our laws is a serious national problem detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

President Bill Clinton said in his 1995 State of the Union address that “All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country.” That’s why, he said, “our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders.”

President George Bush, in a prime-time Oval Office speech in 2006, declared that securing the U.S. border is a basic responsibility of a sovereign nation. It is also an urgent requirement of our national security.”

Bush also promised to end the practice of catch-and-release “once and for all.” He said that “people will know that they’ll be caught and sent home if they enter our country illegally.” 

President Barack Obama in 2005 declared that “we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked.” And in 2014 even he admitted there was a crisis on the border — one that he did virtually nothing to fix. (Apprehensions at the border last year were almost the same as in 2014.)

The editorial concludes:

Yet despite repeated promises by presidents and Congress for the past three decades, the border remains nearly as porous as ever. And catch-and-release is still alive and well. Is it any wonder so many try to cross the border illegally every month.

Isn’t the failure of leaders to do what they all say is necessary to protect national security interests the very definition of a crisis at the border?

Democrats, it seems, want to label everything a crisis. We have a health care crisis. A clean water crisis. A “food desert” crisis. An infrastructure crisis. A homelessness crisis.

Democrats label just about everything a crisis. Why? Because they want to whip up public support for bigger, more expensive, more intrusive government programs.

Everything, that is, except for the very real, long-standing crisis posed by a porous border that each year lets in tens of thousands of illegals.

The current government shutdown is about border security. Any other discussion is irrelevant spin. The Democrats simply do not want President Trump to have a border wall, and the Republicans do not want to see an end to cheap labor. That is the impasse.

Something To Consider

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Decisions that impact national security should be made on the basis of what is best for America. Unfortunately that has not been the case as of late.

On January 10th, The Washington Times reported:

President Trump has proposed spending $18 billion over the next decade to construct a new and improved border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. While some lawmakers have criticized the both the cost and the plan, a new analysis reveals the expenditure is relatively small compared to other federal spending.

“That $18 billion would equal just 0.0338 percent of the $53.128 trillion the Congressional Budget Office currently estimates the federal government will spend over that same 10-year period,” wrote Terence P. Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of CNSNews.com.

It also equals only 2.7 percent of the money the federal government will spend on the food stamp program, Mr. Jeffrey wrote. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will eat up $679 billion in the 10 fiscal years from 2018 through 2027, according to budget office’s estimate.

He figured that this is 37.7 times as much as the $18 billion which would go to Mr.Trump’s proposed border wall.

The cost of the wall is also 0.34 percent of the $5.232 trillion which the federal government will spend on Medicaid over the next 10 years, and 0.26 percent of the $6.838 trillion allotted to national defense in the next decade.

So this battle is obviously not about money. We also have to realize that if either the Democrats or the Republicans were serious about border security, the wall would have been built by now. So why don’t we have a wall?

Carroll Quigley one wrote:

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.” ~ Carroll Quigley

The Democrats and the establishment Republicans have a shared policy on open borders–they support them. The Democrats want voters and the Republicans want cheap labor. Until someone wants the safety of the American public, we have a problem.

The Numbers–Do They Actually Matter?

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On January 6th, The Conservative Tribune posted an article about illegal immigration.

The article reported:

According to an Economist/YouGov survey, a jaw-dropping 93 percent of Americans believe that illegal immigration is a problem.

“A wide-ranging Economist/YouGov survey gauged the level of concern Americans have on the issue to find that only 7 percent of the overall public say illegal immigration is ‘not a problem’; 2 percent of Republicans, 7 percent of independents and even 12 percent of Democrats agree with the statement,” The Washington Times reported.

There are differences in how serious people believe the immigration problem is, but those who shrug off illegal immigration are few and far between.

“40 percent of Americans overall say illegal immigration in the U.S. is a ‘very serious problem’; 73 percent of Republicans, 38 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats agree,” The Times explained.

“22 percent overall say illegal immigration is a ‘somewhat serious problem’; 19 percent of Republicans, 21 percent of independents and 26 percent of Democrats agree,” the paper summarized. Another 24 percent of Americans said that it was a “minor problem.”

At the same time, the Economist/YouGov survey revealed some inconvenient results for liberals.

When respondents were asked if they trusted Republicans or Democrats to deal with border security, a higher percentage — 31 percent — said “Republicans.” Meanwhile, 62 percent thought Congress should compromise with the president to end the government shutdown.

It seems as if most Americans are aware of the problems associated with illegal immigration regardless of what the media is trying to tell us. A border wall is a good idea. However, we also need to do something about America’s very broken immigration system. Our current immigration laws have been exploited by major corporations to replace American workers with cheaper workers. This has been done not only on the low end of the pay scale, but also on the higher end.

On June 3, 2015, The New York Times reported:

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

Of course that was legal immigration, but it was a typical case of a corporation using a bad law to its advantage.

I don’t know if the wall will actually be built. It should be. The wall is opposed by Democrats (present and future voters–many illegals are currently voting in our elections) and Republicans (U.S. Chamber of Commerce members who support illegal immigration because it depresses wages in the lower sectors of the economy and increases their profits). We have reached a point where our representatives not only do not represent us–they have forgotten to represent the best interests of America.

This Is What Desperation Looks Like

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Democrats and anti-Trump people will do almost anything to stop people from watching President Trump tonight when he explains why we need a border wall, but one person seems to have gone over the edge.

The Washington Examiner reported the following today:

Porn star Stormy Daniels will livestream herself folding her laundry in her underwear while President Trump addresses the nation regarding the southern border.

“If you’re looking for anything even remotely worth watching tonight at 9pm EST, I will be folding laundry in my underwear for 8 minutes on Instagram live,” Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, posted to Twitter.

We have reached a new low. Just for the record, I can tell you what the Democratic response to the President’s speech will be–“wall bad” “orange-haired man bad.”

Securing the border is part of the responsibility of the President. Congress needs to let him do his job.

An Update On The GoFundMe Page For The Wall

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Today Breitbart posted an article updating the information on the GoFundMe Account to build the border wall.

The article reports:

We are witnessing something truly extraordinary. In merely 19 days, a GoFundMe campaign to raise private contributions to build sections of the wall along the Mexico border has raised an astonishing $19.0 million. It will soon be the most successful GoFundMe campaign ever—the current record holder is the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund for victims of sexual assault, which raised $22 million in 2018 over a much longer period of time. The campaign to build the wall should blow past that number in a few days.

The article  mentions that the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Tax Check-Off, which does not actually add to the tax burden for the people who check it off, raises less than a million dollars in a typical month.

The article continues:

The astonishing number of contributions that this project has received from ordinary Americans demonstrates just how important the wall is to the American people. Citizens see the crime, wage depression, and other negative consequences of illegal immigration, and they want something done about it.

More than that, building the wall makes clear that the United States is a sovereign nation that is willing to do what is necessary to control its own border. Indeed, securing a nation’s borders is one of the most fundamental obligations that a government owes to its people. For decades, the federal government has failed miserably in fulfilling that obligation. Now, Americans are making a grassroots effort to solve the problem themselves, while sending a message to Washington. As Kolfage put it, “This is giving them an avenue to be heard.”

I  have to wonder what the focus groups are telling the Democrats about the wall. There have been a number of polls showing that Americans overwhelmingly support the wall, so to continue a government shutdown to stop the wall is not a wise political move. The only rationale might be that the Democrats are depending on the media to make the case to the American people that the wall is expensive and not in line with modern technology. I have already seen these talking points used, but I am not sure they are useful. The latest talking point I heard was that the wall was immoral, but that doesn’t even make sense. Does that mean locking your doors at night is immoral?

The next week is going to be very interesting.

What Changed?

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On December 26th, Byron York posted an article at The Washington Examiner about building a border wall (or border fence).

The article reports:

In 2006 Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, which mandated the construction of multilayer pedestrian fencing along about 600 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. It passed with big, bipartisan majorities: 283 votes in the House and 80 in the Senate. Some top Democrats who are still in the Senate today supported the fence: Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod Brown.

Just the next year, Congress made clear it didn’t really mean what it said. The new law was amended to make fence building optional.

In 2013, Congress got back into the fence game. The Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill included something called the “Southern Border Fencing Strategy.” It called for 700 miles of at least single-layer pedestrian fencing along the border. It wasn’t a standalone measure; the fence was to be part of a broader package of border security measures alongside provisions that would create a process by which the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants would ultimately gain a path to citizenship.

I wonder if the Democrats would be so anxious to provide a path to citizenship for illegals if the illegals who were granted citizenship were not allowed to vote for ten years or so.

The article lists the Senators who voted for the Southern Border Fencing Strategy:

With citizenship in the deal — even citizenship that would take a decade to achieve in some cases — Democrats were fully on board for a border barrier. The Gang of Eight bill passed in the Senate with 68 votes, including unanimous Democratic support. Name any Democrat who is in the Senate today who was there for that 2013 vote — Schumer, Durbin, Murray, Baldwin, Bennet, Blumenthal, Brown, Cantwell, Cardin, Casey, Coons, Feinstein, Gillibrand, Hirono, Kaine, Klobuchar, Leahy, Manchin, Menendez, Merkley, Murphy, Reed, Sanders, Shaheen, Stabenow, Tester, Warner, Warren, Whitehouse, Wyden — name any, and they voted for the bill that included the Southern Border Fencing Strategy.

Now the government is 1/4 shut down (not necessarily a bad thing) because those same Senators oppose building a border wall (which they can call a fence if they like). What changed?