Let's at least be honest. We would not be having this conversation, if any other President wanted a wall or any other effective "impediment" (which is what we're talking about here).
I keep hearing about the use of technology, drones, detection equipment, etc. All good but what do you do when you have several hundred people marching towards the border (as we all recently saw on TV)? They are detected. Now what? Do we really want a repeat of Border Agents having to use tear gas? The barricades that are present today are easily defeated and those who scale these fences do so for the TV news. I'm in favor of immigration reform and we need to do something reasonable about the people who are here illegally BUT when your basement is flooded with water, don't you first look to turn off the source of the water? Isn't that the common sense solution? Even with reform, won't we still want to have a say as to how many people can enter and stay in our country? I would think so. I never thought the country would become so polarized even to the detriment of our collective good. No impediment is perfect but you try and do the best you can as part of a multi-layered strategy.
Now, if you're for open borders then you're not in favor of any border impediment or real border security. In which case, just say so.
When the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was lured into a foreign embassy, brutally murdered and dismembered on orders of an American ally, the Saudi Crown Prince lied about it and President Trump gave him a shrug and a pass.
Yesterday President Trump described a heinous murder on American soil, "In Georgia, an illegal alien was recently charged with murder for killing, beheading, and dismembering his neighbor." Upshot? The government is shut down and now we're all held hostage to this lunatic double standard.
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Much of this carefully written text could be re-used - and given more force - if the references to illegal immigrants were changed to >assault weapons<. As in
Day after day, precious lives are cut short by those who >hold assault weapons<.
. . .
Over the last several years I have met with dozens of families whose loved ones were stolen by >firearms<.
I will never forget the pain in their eyes, the tremble in their voices, and the sadness gripping their souls. How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?
To those who refuse to compromise in the name of border security, I would ask, imagine if it was your child, your husband, or your wife whose life was so cruelly shattered and totally broken.
An opportunity for the President to challenge Congress?
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I wish that in addition to fact-checking what the president said, more attention was paid to a key word he repeated multiple times. In less than ten minutes, he used the word "alien" or "aliens" 4 times. This one word is part of an entire mind-set about 'those others' who may not even be human (since so many just want to commit crime)....
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He lies, he cheats and he steals.. Is this surprising now? No. Apparently he has the worst case of ED imaginable because he keeps focusing on the phallic Wall as his redemption. That won't happen either way. Women just are no longer in a mood to accept his splaining about who he did or not try to mount and which ones are liars paid to bring him down. You would not want him to be your boss, your landlord, live on your block or be in your family - so why the hell do you want to let him ruin our country and lives?
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What I find troubling about this speech, which no doubt will be lauded by Trump's supporters, is the degree of irrationality, the ease with which he stereotypes, the quick jumping to unfounded conclusions, and the unfair appeal to emotions. Trump will take one instance or two and generalize about the whole ethnic group. All Mexicans are bad. Murder by a few illegals took place; therefore all undocumented immigrants are murderers. Only idiots base decisions on anecdotes. Rational thinkers base conclusions on probabilities. (See D. Kahneman, the 2002 Nobel Prize winner, "Thinking Fast and Slow" about the prevalence of irrational thinking where probabilities are ignored.) Murder is as ancient as the Bible and the Sixth Commandment will be necessary as long as humans exist, but the probability of the Mexican immigrant be the murderer is much less than that of the native-born American. And Trump's appeal --almost as if he were crying holding the hands of bereaved relatives and sniffling unable to hold back his compassion--is so totally false and out of character that it made me cringe. Trump ---compassion, empathy--even when an event is not broadcast and magnified on Fox News ?? Come on. The man who engineered the tearing away of children from parents and incarcerating them in cells? The man who was quick to forget about Kurdish allies who faced annihilation (until corrected by Bolton). The man who blithely ignores the plight of the unpaid Federal workers ??? Come on.
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What Trump said:
"Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now."
What Trump should have said:
"Every month thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by gun violence and millions more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now."
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We don't necessarily need a wall. We absolutely do need a national form of identification (to be provided without charge to all who are entitled to it). In addition, we need a version of this identification card for those who enter our country legally for a specific period of time.
All citizens who receive this card should automatically be registered to vote.
All citizens who are entitled to welfare benefits of any kind should have the delivery of these benefits facilitated by the system underlying this card. A group of advocates for the poor should develop processes that will in fact make this system a significant benefit to those served by it. India's national identity card has delivered significant benefits to the poor, though the problems of welfare system corruption faced there do not exist here. However, it is quite likely that other ways of making this system helpful to welfare recipients could be engineered into the system.
In addition, we must re-introduce a practical, well-rounded guest worker program, such as we used to have for seasonal agricultural workers.
With all this in place, we then need a system for identifying and promptly removing illegals who are unable to produce ID cards. For those whom citizens (not pressure groups of illegals) deem worthy of consideration, a temporary worker status can be compassionately offered.
Under no circumstance should a path to citizenship be offered to those who are here illegally.
Illegal entries will then plummet.
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@red sox 9
I don't agree that illegal entry would plummet, because the migrant who seeks work and some income might still feel he's better off hiding and working here than facing violence and gangs back home. But a more difficult situation would be: what would you do when you find an undocumented immigrant who managed to elude deportation for many years , married, and is now a parent to children in a loving family. No crimes, obeyed the law, lived in the shadows, never murdered or assaulted anyone, and is now the supportive mother or father of a whole family of American citizens?? Would you still favor deportation and break up the family?
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I never heard Trump claim any sympathy for the following victims of violence or "crisis of heart" - and this is to name only a few:
Has he expressed sympathy for Heather Heyer?*
Clemnta C. Pinkney?**
Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd?**
Suzie Jackson?**
Ethel Lee Lance?**
Depayne Middleton-Doctor?**
Tywanza Sanders?**
Daniel L. Simmons?**
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton?**
Myra Thompson?**
*A young woman murdered by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, WV nationalist rally for having the audacity to be against racial prejudice.
**Murdered by a white supremacist named Dylann Roof.
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The President's talk to the nation was real and heatfelt and simply laid out the facts. The issue of our security and the massive crime not having a proper border barrier has deeply harmed the nation for many years. Finally here is a president who has the guts to bring up the very serious problems no other (compromised) politician dared to do. President Trump is a national treasure. He is looking out for us, he has our back, he fights for real and hard for America.
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@Len - Ever thought of doing stand up?
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@Len
except that he is so fact-challenged that he lies like a
rug
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@Len
The issue of border security can be resolved by bipartisan agreement on improved policy and procedures, which has been proposed several times, including funding for some border barriers.
If you look for the reporting on this, you will see that it was Trump and the Republican controlled Confess that would not pass the laws that would have helped fix the problem of DACA, etc.
Some of us have a problem getting past Trump's ruthless measures separating parents from their children. Look that up, too, and see how many are still apart. Talk about criminal behavior! It starts in the White House, hatched by Miller and the Fox crazies and spewed out by Trump, who still doesn't bother to study how the government should work or the history of the issues he mouths off about.
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Trump doesn't want a wall, he wants an emergency.
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@BC - He's got an emergency - himself.
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Yesterday was a milestone day for me. After many months of planning, I'm finally ready to open a business bank account for my new venture. While sitting with the bank representative yesterday afternoon, all that was left for me to do was to provide my IRS assigned EIN, a process that usually takes less than five minutes. After two failed attempts at submitting my EIN application, I called the IRS help line and learned that no EINs will be issued until the government reopens.
Without an EIN, I'm unable to open a business banking account, apply for a business permit, file a tax return, hire employees or apply for a credit card or loan.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s support of the government shutdown over funding for a wall on our southern border has created a wall of obstacles that stalls the launch of a promising small business. How many other small businesses is his stance blocking? I don't know whose interests he’s representing, but they aren't those of small business owners.
I implore senators to vote for a reasonable budget that doesn't allocate money for a wall we don't need so that small business owners like me can get back to doing our part to build our economy.
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Why isn’t there more coverage about the Senate not doing their job? Pass a good bill that opens the government, and if Trump vetoes it, override his veto. The Senate is as big a problem as Trump.
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@Peter S Ince Because the Senate is led by Republicans, who won't do the right thing because they're only interested in supporting the party, not the American people.
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Trump says that his border security plan includes use of technology, more border agents, more immigration lawyers, "the wall", and other elements. Sounds like the Democrats are OK with some of the elements Trump has proposed, but not the wall. Compromise by passing border security legislation measures, with exception of the wall, reopen the government, and continue to negotiate "the wall." Trump started this fiasco, he needs to finish it.
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@MDT Democrats are smart. Pass everything except the wall then obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. Democrats win, Trump loses. No wall and the House of Representatives becomes the supreme branch of government. The wall is not a policy issue but a power issue. Since when has 5.7 billion dollars become a major issue for the federal government?
@Warren It's not just $5.7 billion though. That's a down payment on a very expensive wall with estimates ranging from $50 to $75 billion dollars just to construct it. That's also not taking into account how much money would be needed to maintain it in the future, which some estimates put in the trillions of dollars over the next ten years. All for a wall that wouldn't actually solve any of the problems with illegal immigration.
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Major news networks played mouthpiece for Trump’s propaganda, essentially giving him a free campaign rally over prime time TV. Too many people saw this without the benefit of fact-checks. Just giving Democrats a rebuttal is not enough, because it creates a false equivalence without actual reference to facts. Reality is not a tug of war where you can settle for somewhere in the middle.
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You make a very fine and real point about a rebuttal creating a false equivalence. Trump is not entitled to making up his own "alternate facts." We like to use reality as the standard for assessing a situation.
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