December 21 is my favorite day of the year.
It is the day we in the northern hemisphere begin to reconquer the daylight stolen from us by the Aussies and their Evil Down Under Allies. "Soon the light will be ours and the darkness yours!" Wonder if I can get that line into the next Lord of Rings or Game of Thrones rubbish? Sir Peter Jackson will work against me, I know . . . he's part of that Down Under conspiracy . . .
Anyhow, not too much of great interest happening except that the GOP is still running from the Wall. OK, the lame duck House has passed a modest budget for the wall, but, according to the press, the bill will die in the Senate despite the GOP majority.
If Mitchell doesn't invoke the Nuclear Option on this item, the GOP is a hopeless bag of blow hards! They screwed up getting rid of Obamacare and have wasted two years on the Wall. Makes me sick. Anybody who votes against the Wall should have to live in a doorless house and welcome anybody and everybody who wanders in and claims squatter rights.
And, folks, I don't want to hear about comprehensive immigration reform as the excuse for not getting us the Wall. You don't need comprehensive criminal justice reform to know to lock your doors. First things, first.
OK, going down to my cave in the basement.
I couldn't agree more. The different factions in power do not have our best interest at heart. Merry Christmas and Hope for a New Year. I have my doubts.
ReplyDeleteDip you gotta go a long way further south than Oz or NZ before the darkness overwhelms most of the day.
ReplyDelete106 degrees Fahrenheit in Perth, Western Australia, today.
ReplyDeleteBeer for Christmas dinner.
I loved Perth. It looked to me like San Diego with the Swan River playing the part of San Diego Bay. Merry Christmas, or should I say Happy Christmas?
DeleteThanks Michael. Both are good, and appreciated.
DeleteMerry Christmas to you, too.
Cheers
The GOP sold its soul long ago when Richard Nixon declared, "We're all Keynesians now". They are, after all, only human. They need the "immigrants" to keep the credit-fueled expansion going a bit longer.
ReplyDelete"What a tangled web we weave..." Now there is nothing to do but see it through and fight it out.
Exactly.. with low birth rates, there's a reasonable case that without both legal and illegal immigration, the housing market would collapse worse than the Obama-candidacy-inspired failure.
DeleteBut in really, that's just something that's going to have to happen if the USA is going to continue being a country that means anything.
Ejecting the current population and replacing with a imported group will result in a nation of no comparison with historical USA.
- reader#1482
The problem as I see it is how many low earning people can we afford? In california we have a water problem and they keep adding more people. We have a traffic problem so some want to put everyone on a bike or an electric scooter. We have a housing problem so some want to house the homeless in school sites. We already feed the homeless kids, now they want to house and feed the homeless families. Getting a little weird. I think may be time to go somewhere else.
DeleteOne of the greatest problems with mixed populations is dealing with the criminal element or those who just don't really adhere to norms. All populations vary along bell curves with a proportion not really well disciplined and some outright criminal. The various groups have more sympathy with their "misfits" and do not like for another group to try to enforce laws and/or cultural norms on them.
DeleteSociety breaks down.
"Anybody who votes against the Wall should have to live in a doorless house and welcome anybody and everybody who wanders in and claims squatter rights [and feed them, and clothe them and give them a big monthly check]."
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ReplyDeleteOne Democrat argument against Trump's Mexican wall is that, if you build a 20 foot wall, immigrants will bring a 21 foot ladder. Perhaps so ... but then the number of illegals entering will be at least an order of magnitude smaller than without the wall ... when they can just walk across the border. Sounds reasonable to me.
Trump: "I want to keep illegal immigrants out. We should build a wall at the border."
DeleteMedia: "That won't work, they'll just get around it."
Trump: "Then you shouldn't care if we try, right?"
Media: "I don't care, I hate you, so I'm opposed to it."
Unfortunately the wall is going to cost at least tens of billions of dollars. 99% will be on legal fees and project management costs.
The US government can no longer build pretty much anything, afaict. We've been producing half-built naval ships and leaving them in maintenance-deferred mode for decades. The F-35 is case in point. 10x the time, 1/10th the production, 10x the cost, and even if it *did* work reliably, it'll be blown out of the sky by drones in the next existential conflict.
Yes, I don't even think the US government *could* build this wall with $100b to spend on it. It would probably consume $100b just to prepare and RFP for it.
Trump's pretty much going to have to build it himself.
What the heck could be wrong with building a stupid wall? Why would people get up in arms against it? What's the point? It's just a wall... it's not "gender-confused bathrooms" or "facebook-owns-my-elections" crap.. it's just a stupid wall. Put it up. Be done with it. It *should* be only that hard. A future President can work himself into a furore and make his most narcissistic virtue-signal by tearing it down. The progs will love it. Who could possibly be against this project?
- reader #1482
oh ohh oh oh... and THE BEST of all... the James Webb Space Telescope!
Delete40 years, and *AT LEAST* 15 years behind schedule and *AT LEAST* 20x the original estimate!
And of course... the contractors only continue to get more money if they continue screwing it up and continue slipping the schedule. There are *no* downsides to making the JWST a permanent jobs program.... but *only* if it never launches! If they *complete* the scope, they all shut down and lose their jobs and everybody knows it!
... and *this* is the government that's going to build a wall on the border? I think not. Trump's grandkids will be long dead by the time permission has been completed to issue a request-for-proposals.
- reader #1482
Immigrants will build a 21 foot ladder? No, squatters will.
DeleteThe immigrants will be lined up at the official ports of entry with their duly-issued packets under their arms, waiting to have their passports stamped by ICE.
While I'm all for controlling illegal immigration, I resent the too-common practice of making "immigrant" and "illegal" synonymous.
BTW, I have busted people trying to lie their way into the USA and stopped totalitarian party members from entry.
That's precisely the problem.... it's a 'problem of democracy'. The 'learned elite few' *know* that anybody should be allowed into the country without question. But the constituency of the US will not vote to so dramatically change the law (or elect congressmen who will do so). So what's the recourse? The elite has grown exasperated with the citizenry and resorts to despotism.
DeleteThe problem with deciding whether you'll follow the law based on the content of the law, is that everybody will use their own yardstick and choose differently. So the difference is predominately not "will you willfully violate the law", but "at what level of disapproval will you choose to violate the law?" Because the law can certainly be bad to the point where I will personally, willfully, violate it. But it's a very high bar for me, and a low bar for progressives who are 'fed up with democracy'.
- reader #1482
Merry Christmas to everyone here!
ReplyDeleteSame to you Scott!
ReplyDeleteOn Watch~~~
Merry Christmas from the Common Cents family to yours! ( The Christmas Story included )
ReplyDeletehttps://commoncts.blogspot.com/2018/12/merry-christmas-from-common-cents.html
While I am sympathetic to the idea behind the wall--that we need to protect our borders and enforce our immigration laws--I still dissent on the wall itself. What we need is more resources for the Border Patrol, immigration judges, and anti-fraud work. As for comprehensive immigration reform, I'm more for starting to enforce the laws we have on the books.
ReplyDeleteI have walked on the Great Wall of China. The damn thing is impressive only in photographs. In real life, it was breached by the Tuoba Wei, Khitai, Jurched, Mongols, Manchu, Japanese, and Communists, among others. I was young and vigorous at the time, and had I been imprudent, scofflaw, or both, I could've had my then nine-year-old son clamber up my back and shoulders to climb over it.
The fate of the proposed wall, if not accompanied by patrols and the like, will be to be dug under or have holes cut in it. Period.
I think it's more about stating that there is value to things inside the wall that is worth protecting.
DeleteWhen politicians do nothing about raiders rampaging through the country, it's clear that they have their attention focused somewhere other than the best interests of their people.
Well said.
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