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You are here: Home / Now I’ve got a reason to be waiting

Now I’ve got a reason to be waiting

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I find this strange. We learned recently that Trump begged the president of Mexico not to say that Mexico wouldn’t pay for the wall, yet Trump and his brownshirts are ready to force a shutdown over US government funding for said wall:

The wall is no metaphor to Trump. He will accept no substitutes to a huge, long, physical wall, which he believes his voters viscerally want. He told GOP Hill leaders in June he wants it to be 40 to 50 feet high and covered with solar panels. Hill Republicans privately mocked that idea, but some of those same people now recognize that Trump’s big, beautiful — and in their minds, ridiculous — wall could be the thing that brings the U.S. government to its knees.

Reader Interactions

128Comments

  1. 1.

    Chris

    His voters do viscerally want it. They aren’t getting their dead Obamacare this year, so they REALLY want this.

  3. 3.

    Doug!

    @p.a.:

    Even though I think the Soviet Union was awful and that Johnny Rotten’s politics are mostly crazy, I love that song.

  5. 5.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    Fuck Trump. Fuck him. He prioritizes his bullshit braindead, dead end base over the rest of us. I don’t give a flying fuck about “oh what about the poor small states?”. Tyranny of the minority over the majority is a thing too. They’ve proven themselves incapable of functioning in a free society.

  6. 6.

    smintheus

    @Chris: We need to keep Trump obsessed with Obamacare. Republicans for a generation have managed to cling to power, whenever they could manage, by flipping repeatedly from one emotive subject they weren’t serious about resolving to another distraction to another. Authoritarians like Trump can only keep their base whipped up to a frenzy by changing the subject constantly, always looking for the next conflict they can move on to, rarely if ever lingering long enough to resolve any of them.

    Trump is losing supporters and showing himself as mean, out of touch, and a loser while fighting this Obamacare crusade that he has virtually no hope of making headway with. We should try to keep Trump focused on his white whale for as long as possible to prevent him from switching topics and somehow finding traction again.

  7. 7.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Doug!:
    He’s forgotten punk rock’s roots of being against big business interests and corruption, as well as for equality. He’s an idiot.

  8. 8.

    hellslittlestangel

    This is exactly the same bullshit The Orange Better One pulled with investors in his casinos. If they asked for their money back, he threatened to pull out his own (non-existent) funds and tank the whole project. He made his living off of the sunk cost fallacy.

  9. 9.

    Peale

    @smintheus: The problem with the wall is that it is one of those “common sense” solutions for angry people who haven’t thought about things. For the wall to actually fail, it needs to become ridiculous. I think we could do that, and of all the things that could be done to screw over immigrants, the wall will be so innefectve that we might be better off getting started with it in the hopes that it will bog him down.

  11. 11.

    efgoldman

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:

    He prioritizes his bullshit braindead, dead end base over the rest of us.

    He got elected on the flukiest of flukes. The thing about flukes, is that they’re one-time exceptions.
    [And yes, I’m well aware that most of us, by far, assumed he had no chance the first time]

    Even now, in the first year of his potential term, he has the least support of any modern president, even W at his worst, and he hasn’t reached bottom. And while he’s cunning and instinctive, he is not self-aware enough or politician enough to understand that playing exclusively to a rabid base is not the way to success.

  12. 12.

    Patricia Kayden

    Looks like the DOJ is backing down from its threats against journalists in regard to leaks.

    As to the wall, if Democrats vote en bloc and enough Republicans come to their senses, there will be no funding for the phantom wall. By the way, who actually believes that a wall could stop determined migrants from coming into this country? I’d really like to see a wall which could do that along the lengthy Mexican/American border. Funding the wall would bankrupt this country.

  13. 13.

    Chyron HR

    A huge, long, physical wall
    40 to 50 feet high
    And covered with solar panels
    Well by twenty-twenty we’ll be A-OK

    What a beautiful world this will be
    What a glorious time to be free…

  14. 14.

    efgoldman

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Looks like the DOJ is backing down from its threats against journalists in regard to leaks.

    Looks like there is at least one real lawyer still in the department. S/he will be out on his/her ear as soon as Evil Leprechaun finds out who it is.

  15. 15.

    germy

    How noisy will the private property owners be when their land is taken for the wall?

    Doesn’t the rabid base worship private property above all else?

  16. 16.

    Peale

    @Major Major Major Major: 50 feet high. Steel enforced concrete. Foundations dug 6 feet below the bedrock. Steel can only be made in coke fired mills from West Virginia coal mines. Let’s see how many of those OxyContin junkies really want those coal mining jobs back after 30 years. If they won’t dig it, it can’t be built.

  18. 18.

    Sentient AI from the Future

    The wall will definitely take care of the cross-border tunnel systems.

  19. 19.

    Peale

    @germy: the broader the types of people angry about the wall, the better. If it’s seen as just something “illegals” and their liberal enablers are against, it will be a successful wall. I want a politically unsuccessful wall. The more ranchers dispossed of property the better.

  22. 22.

    James Powell

    Here’s how bad things are right now:

    Trump and his entourage of liars could just say that the wall is done, it’s been built, and Mexico is making payments. His followers will take his word for it. Only a few of them live near the border anyway, so how will they know one way or the other? It’s not like FOX or Rush or their other propaganda sources are going to tell them any different. CNN will give the “some say” and “both sides” treatment. And anyone who does say there is no wall will just be another fake news libtard.

  23. 23.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @efgoldman:
    I largely agree. But I’m still worried about next year and Russian meddling. Not to mention the “Voter Integrity Commission”.

  26. 26.

    Morzer

    The more Trump focuses on his Not Great Wall (which is never going to happen) the more he and his cronies look like the parcel of worthless, bigoted, bumbling fools that they are. Give it some time and watch how his base react to the slow realization that they wasted their time, votes and money on a lying, lazy fraud.

  27. 27.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Peale:
    It will be a failure no matter what. There’s no conceivable way There’s going to be a 40 to 50 foot tall concrete wall like Trump wants along the entire border. Simple geography prevents this. Not to mention costs. And Mexico will never pay for it. How the hell could he force them to?

    Lawsuits will definitely happen and I hope the building gets hamstrung because of it. Maybe some conservative ranchers will occupy one of Trump’s properties?

    @Morzer: And once they do realize, they’ll drop out of the political process, hopefully for good.

  28. 28.

    John Revolta

    who actually believes that a wall could stop determined migrants from coming into this country?

    Well, it’ll work fine as long as nobody tells them about about boats………………………

  29. 29.

    grillo

    @Chyron HR: A world become one of salads and sun, only a fool would say that. A boy with at plan, a natural man, wearing a white Stetson hat.

  30. 30.

    Yarrow

    @James Powell: I really don’t understand why they don’t do this. They could just do a “Wag the Dog” scenario. Go somewhere desert-y, maybe even along the border, put up maybe 50 feet of wall. Fly Trump down there to do a photo op. Hire some “rancher” with boots and a cowboy hat to talk about how much safer they feel. Declare it done, way sooner than expected and under budget. The people that care about it will cheer. It doesn’t matter if “lie-brul media” shows pictures and satellite shots and drone shots of how it’s not finished and in fact isn’t even started. The people that want the wall won’t care. It’s a win, win, win for Trump.

  31. 31.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @John Revolta:
    Or tunnels. Or planes.

    The Wall is just meant to be a symbol for Trump to point at to say, “See? I told you folks I’m doing something about those evil illegal immigrants.”, without really doing anything to stop actually dangerous illegal immigrants.

  32. 32.

    Frank Wilhoit

    “The wall” is a metaphor (as a Republican Congressman said the other day, in the context of a discourse that gave no other predictors that he might have known any words of three or more syllables). As such, its talismanic power is infraudible; there is no way to invalidate a metaphor, any more than you can brush away fog. But it is very important to understand what “the wall” is a metaphor for. It is a metaphor for snipers every 100 feet, with orders to shoot to kill on sight. But all the best metaphors have layers and this one is no exception. Its second layer is impunity for Real Americans who commit mayhem against persons heard speaking languages other than English.

  33. 33.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Yarrow:
    Easy answer: Trump really wants the Wall built for real. He’s built his reputation, falsely, on being a builder. He probably feels he has to deliver for real or else he’ll be a complete failure. And he can’t have that.

  34. 34.

    Another Scott

    @John Revolta: Or airplanes or …

    Quartz:

    By the end of fiscal year 2016, some 630,000 visitors had failed to leave the US, far exceeding the 415,000 people who were intercepted crossing the US-Mexico boundary during the same time period. According to Homeland Security, Canadians, not northbound Latin Americans, were the biggest group of violators. About 120,000 Canadians with expired visas were still believed to be living in the US at the end of the period covered by the report, versus roughly 47,000 Mexicans.

    As this is only the second time the government has released overstay data, it’s hard to identify any trends. A similar report released in January of 2016 showed there were about 480,000 total overstays at the end of fiscal year 2015, though that report looked at a narrower group of travelers. (It doesn’t include students, or workers, for example.)

    The data also comes with many caveats. For one thing, it’s essentially a snapshot of everyone who has stayed past the exact expiration date of their visa—even by one day—and therefore bound to change. That figure can be misleading because some of those people eventually go back home. For example, of the more than 50 million foreigners who were required to leave the US in fiscal year 2016, about 740,000 stayed after their visa expired. But of those, around 110,000 left by the end of the year. Another 84,000 had followed by Jan. 2017, reducing the number of overstays to less than 550,000, according to the report.

    At the same time, the statistics released today likely underestimate overstays because they only include travelers who entered and left the country by plane or boat. That means many Mexicans and Canadians probably didn’t even make it into the count because they travelled by land.

    The Wall is a totem – it’s not designed to solve any real problem in a sensible way.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  35. 35.

    lollipopguild

    @John Revolta: My understanding is that a lot of people come in legally on tourist visas and then stay on after the visa expires. No wall will fix that problem.

  36. 36.

    Mike in NC

    Don’t forget that lately Trump has said that the wall has to be transparent. OK, then!

  37. 37.

    Patricia Kayden

    @efgoldman: I would nominate Rosenstein but who knows. Someone needs to reign in the Evil Keebler Elf so kudos to whoever it is.

    @Mike in NC: LOL!! Transparent as in nonexistent. Perhaps he can convince his supporters that a wall exists which isn’t actually there just like he’s convinced them that he’s presidential.

  38. 38.

    lollipopguild

    @Yarrow: This works for me. Back in Vietnam War times a Senator, cannot think of which one said “Declare victory and come home.”

  40. 40.

    Villago Delenda Est

    His fanbase should be rounded up and shipped off to Russia or Saudi Arabia, whichever tyranny they prefer: Kleptocracy or Theocracy.

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @lollipopguild: Sounds like something Everett Dirksen would say; this is back, of course, when not all Republicans were batshit insane.

    I looked it up; it was George Aiken.

  42. 42.

    Shana

    @Morzer: I think I saw somewhere today online that a 70 year old Virginia resident (formerly of New Hampshire) is suing the GOP for his donations back, around $875 ASIR, because they haven’t repealed Obamacare as they promised. I may have some of the details wrong, but I think he’s alleging fraud. Good times.

  43. 43.

    germy

    @Another Scott:

    According to Homeland Security, Canadians, not northbound Latin Americans, were the biggest group of violators. About 120,000 Canadians with expired visas were still believed to be living in the US at the end of the period covered by the report, versus roughly 47,000 Mexicans.

    Good Lord, what Canadian in his right mind would want to migrate here?
    It can’t be our superior social safety net.

  47. 47.

    Barney

    Hill Republicans privately mocked that idea, but some of those same people now recognize that Trump’s big, beautiful — and in their minds, ridiculous — wall could be the thing that brings the U.S. government to its knees.
    Depending on the Republicans, they may see that as A Good Thing.

  48. 48.

    sukabi

    @germy: they only worship private property if it’s theirs… The folks that actually OWN the property along the border don’t want “the fucking wall”, and several of them have found out that they’d be walled out of the US and into Mexico.

    Guarantee that as soon as Drumpf starts eminent domain proceedings against these property owners the media won’t be able to ignore them in favor of the hand full of land locked drumpf voters.

  50. 50.

    Kryptik

    @Chris:

    His voters do viscerally want it. They aren’t getting their dead Obamacare this year, so they REALLY want this.

    I’m pretty sure his voters wanted this even moreso than the healthcare debacle. Because a big imaginary anti-immigration wall says “Fuck you, brown people!” moreso than fucking up everyone’s healthcare does.

  51. 51.

    schrodingers_cat

    @germy: At the citizenship ceremony on the 4th that I was a part of, Indians and Canadians seemed to be the two biggest groups. There is a lot of diversity among immigrants despite the demagoguery to the contrary.
    47 countries were represented in the ceremony I attended, every continent in the world was represented.

  54. 54.

    germy

    @schrodingers_cat: I saw this recently:

    In mid-June, a remote area called the Dolam plateau in the Himalayas where the boundaries of China, India and Bhutan meet made headlines when Indian and Chinese troops began a standoff over a road construction project. China conducted a live-fire exercise in the area, and there have been false reports of deaths. Diplomatic efforts are underway to de-escalate the situation, but still the risk of war has been on everyone’s mind.

  55. 55.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Did you ever send pictures of the ceremony or the social event that followed to Alain for his weekday morning feature? I think there are many of us who would love to see the entire group, or you taking the Oath of Citizenship.

  56. 56.

    opiejeanne

    @ThresherK:

    Didn’t Trump also say trebuchets could defeat the wall?

    I’d be impressed if Trump knew that word. Maybe catapult.

  57. 57.

    Frankensteinbeck

    If congress passes a wall-less budget, Trump will fold and sign it. I suspect strongly every major player in Washington knows it. So far, no one in congress has shown any interest in actually funding a wall. They don’t give a rat’s ass what Trump wants.

  58. 58.

    bago

    Perhaps one day Baby Boomers will listen to the wisdom of the ancients, and realize that Nazis are losers.

  61. 61.

    NonyNony

    @opiejeanne:

    Feh. Trump doesn’t even realize there’s equipment involved. Here’s the quote:

    As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall.

    washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/14/trump-admits-his-border-wall-could-be-defeated-by-medieva…

    Apparently drug traffickers really do use trebuchets to launch drugs to partners on the other side of the fence. Of course, it needs to happen in an area that isn’t heavily patrolled SO THE GUYS ON THIS SIDE DON’T GET ARRESTED WHEN THEY PICK UP THE GODDAMN DRUGS. So the idea that drug runners are randomly going to hit someone with a 60 lb. bag of drugs hurled over a wall when the pickup guy might not be on the other side is just insane as a business model (and is suggestive of Trump’s own business models).

    But Trump probably thinks they hurl 60 lb. bags of drugs over the fence by hand. Like they’re doing the Olympic hammer toss or something.

  65. 65.

    opiejeanne

    @bago: What are you fucking talking about? Boomers’ fathers fought the Nazis, you think we don’t know that they’re the bad guys???

  66. 66.

    Yarrow

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I disagree. Trump doesn’t care about the stupid wall. He’d be fine with whatever. He does, however, want to funnel money to his companies and his crony’s companies, so he needs a real wall paid for by federal money to do that. That’s what driving the “build the wall” crap.

  68. 68.

    chris

    Has the great bawbag ever looked at the Mexican border?

    I thought not.

    It’s about 1300 miles from the Texas shore to San Diego as the eagle flies, but the border was laid out by a relay team of drunken armadillos so it’s closer to 2000 miles. The lawsuits and injunctions will make a lot of lawyers rich.

  69. 69.

    opiejeanne

    @NonyNony: Yeah, I remember that now about actual trebuchets, but he didn’t use that word. what I remember most was the stupidity of thinking the big bags o’ drugs would hit some random person out for a stroll, minding their own business.

  71. 71.

    smintheus

    @Peale: Agree with your first statement, but I think it would take years to build the wall and perhaps years more before it became so obvious it was a failure before Trump’s ninnies accepted the reality.

  73. 73.

    J R in WV

    Who the hell is Axios ??

    As a news source, I have no idea who they are, whether to trust them, are they a subsidiary of RT? Who knows?

  75. 75.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Yarrow: I don’t know. He strikes me as the egotistical type, too. He cares about how his fans view him. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to be seen as a cuck, which is why I want to see a Wall-less budget and he be forced to sign it.

  77. 77.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @J R in WV: started by Jim Van deHei and Mike Allen when they left Politico, but I’ve heard that they’re actually not that bad. Still, I take everything I see sourced to them with an extra grain of salt. Allen was a courtier/gossip columnist, but maybe he saw his reflection in Chris Cillizza and got scared. I saw Jim VDH on TV a while back, Alex Wagner used to have him on her panel show from time to time, and he was thoroughly obnoxious and wrong about just about everything.

  79. 79.

    OldDave

    @J R in WV:

    Who the hell is Axios ??

    Axios was founded by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, who previously had founded Politico. So they may be factual, but I wouldn’t blindly trust them. To me Politico has become better since those two left. Your mileage may vary.

    ETA: I see I’ve been beaten to the punch by my betters.

  86. 86.

    Yarrow

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: But that’s the whole point of the Wag the Dog scenario. Put up a fake wall in some place that looks like a border. Do a photo op. Tell everyone it’s going great. And move on. Winning! He only looks like a cuck if his fans believe the lying liberal media. They don’t so they’ll never know the truth.

  87. 87.

    BBA

    Well, uh, he could always throw Hillary in prison for something or other. Only a month until the statute of limitations expires on BENGHAZI!!!1! so he’d better get crackin’.

  88. 88.

    smintheus

    @pat: Which is why we should find a way to keep Trump from cranking the volume up on building his wall. Better to keep him focused on a topic where he’s already obsessively losing.

  92. 92.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Yarrow: Ego. But without a REAL wall, he won’t get those sweet federal dollars

  97. 97.

    Baud

    @BBA:

    Only a month until the statute of limitations expires on BENGHAZI!!!1! so he’d better get crackin’.

    In all seriousness, I expect Sessions will issue a report about all of Hillary’s felonious email activities as soon as all statute of limitations expires. That way, they can say what they want and no court can laugh at them.

  100. 100.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Penguins, right?

    You could use a photo of the crowd at the swearing in, if you have one with a bunch of folks. That’s kind of anonymous. You could call yourself something like Natasha Fatale, or Siobhan Donnei, or something like that…. in the story of the citizenship ceremony.

    ;-)

  102. 102.

    Davebo

    @Baud:

    There’s no statute of limitations on murder and we all know Hillary has killed dozens.

    And I’m not talking beers….

  107. 107.

    Roger Moore

    @Yarrow:

    But that’s the whole point of the Wag the Dog scenario.

    I think the correct term for that is a Potemkin Village. “Wag the dog” would mean to start a war somewhere to distract attention from how badly things are going at home.

  109. 109.

    Davebo

    I have an old friend from the Navy that I keep in touch with on Facebook. He’s retired, once from the Navy and then from the Post Office.

    It seems he’s spending his retirement constantly bitching about the government which is a bit odd as he’s never held a private sector job in his life.

  111. 111.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Davebo: A lot of the RWNJ’s in my circle of fiends are like that. So I say “STFU, I’m paying your pension.”

  112. 112.

    Bill Arnold

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    So far, no one in congress has shown any interest in actually funding a wall.

    If funding came to pass somehow, they might be surprised when some of the construction majors do not submit bids. (Between Trump potentially getting involved in the process (e.g. lawsuits or analogues), and the politicization, the risk of not being paid in full would be high, and large project construction profit margins are quite modest.)

  114. 114.

    Another Scott

    Will Bunch – How can Kelly save Trump when the was a human rights disaster at DHS?

    […]

    But that’s where we are in August 2017. Last month alone, some 1,674 people wandered across America’s northern border, mainly in Quebec, and into the arms of Canadian immigration officers, where they pleaded their case that the threat of deportation by Donald Trump’s U.S. government would risk them or their family to the political turmoil and violence of their native lands. And the pace of the exodus is accelerating dramatically. Many are from Haiti, the fraught Caribbean island nation where a recent policy reversal by the Department of Homeland Security has sharply elevated the likelihood of forced departure.

    But that is just one twist in an immigration policy under Homeland Security since January 20, 2017, that has been nothing less a human-rights catastrophe, an American nightmare. Other twists include the nonsensical travel ban that targets nations for their Muslim religion and has ripped families apart for no other reason than keeping a campaign promise to Trump’s most xenophobic supporters. And deportation policies by Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) that claim to only target criminals but instead sweep up promising soccer stars and popular small town restaurateurs. And raids inside or near churches, schools, or courtrooms where immigrants are seeking justice — the latter situation leading New York State to look at banning ICE from its courthouses. This, as a high-ranking White House aide tries to argue that the America celebrated by Lazarus’ poem never existed — just words that were “added later.”

    This didn’t happen in a vacuum. The rapid moral deterioration of Homeland Security took place during the six months that John Kelly, the retired Marine general that Trump appointed to run the vast department, was at the helm. He was not a passive conduit just following orders from the White House. He’d teamed up with Attorney General Jeff Sessions in recasting immigrants as criminals — the journey that began with Trump’s famous “Mexican rapists” comment — and joked with the president about using “a saber” on the media, hardly a laughing matter as the administration steps up its war against press freedom. Some Democratic senators quickly came to regret their vote to confirm Kelly at Homeland Security; Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey told the Huffington Post that his “hope that Secretary Kelly would be more evenhanded on enforcement … hasn’t been borne out.”

    All of this makes it beyond laughable that some in the media are now casting Kelly — brought in late last month as Trump’s chief of staff after a shake-up intended to jump-start a deeply troubled presidency — as the man who can save the White House. Newspapers such as the New York Times have already fawned over the military man’s efforts to restore order to the dysfunctional West Wing — his missions to baby-sit who gets Oval Office access to Trump and to control the president’s itchy Twitter fingers. These puff pieces ignore Kelly’s track record as an enabler for the worst that the 45th presidency has to offer. The reality of change under the ex-Marine as chief of staff is that the push to destroy democratic norms — witness Friday’s threat by Sessions to jail journalists — is simply getting more efficient.

    […]

    As s_c reminds us, he’s a monster. One of many monsters who willingly joined up with Trump and his minions when offered political appointments.

    Retired generals appointed to political positions by Trump aren’t going to “save” us – they’re fighting against us.

    (via LOLGOP on Twitter)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  115. 115.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bill Arnold:

    large project construction profit margins are quite modest

    It’s always fun to entertain yourself, when driving over a highway bridge, with the thought: “this project was built by the lowest bidder.”

  116. 116.

    germy

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Color me shocked.

    The website’s yearly revenue was roughly US$3 million in 2013.

    According to Cenk Uygur, “about a third of the revenue comes from subscriptions, and the rest comes from YouTube ads.”

    In 2014, the company received a US$4 million investment from Roemer, Robinson, Melville & Co., LLC, a private equity firm led by former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer.

  118. 118.

    JanieM

    @schrodingers_cat: I live half an empty mile (in rural Maine) from our local middle school. A couple of years ago there was a middle school class that wanted to attend a citizenship ceremony, but neither of the normal venues in Maine (Bangor and Portland) was big enough to accommodate that many in the audience.

    So they brought the ceremony to the school.

    I didn’t know about it until afterwards or I might have attended myself, but the article in the paper indicated what any of us might have guessed from the pictures: the new citizens were from all over the world. The folks who think this is a bad thing are not going to win in the end.

  120. 120.

    Bill Arnold

    @Gin & Tonic:

    It’s always fun to entertain yourself, when driving over a highway bridge, with the thought: “this project was built by the lowest bidder.”

    Yeah, that’s a bit weird and often results in pathologies. However, this
    Bidding on Federal Construction Projects suggests that lowest bid would not apply to a large project.

    Major Construction Contracts are selected using the FAR’s “Source Selection” Method (FAR 15.1). There are many variations of this method. The basic method requests both Technical or Management Proposals and a Price Proposal. Once the proposals are received they are evaluated technically, and then evaluated in terms of prices. Tradeoffs may be made, and the selection of the “Best Value” is made. …

    Anyway, probably shouldn’t worry about the construction at this time.

  121. 121.

    sharl

    @opiejeanne:

    …Boomers’ fathers fought the Nazis, you think we don’t know that they’re the bad guys???

    I hear what you are saying, but as a fellow Boomer I can tell you that there are many among us who think “Nazi” refers specifically to people who dressed in the uniform of the Wehrmacht or German SS, not a way of thinking that poses a threat to this day (everywhere), and a fair number of those Boomers have bought into the lie that the “Socialist” in the translation from German means that the Nazis were therefore left-wing. A great many Boomers – both the idiots I just described, and those who are smarter but also prosperous* – served as a core component of Trump’s support. [*And a great many are racist as hell, but I’m pretty sure you and nearly everyone else here knows that as well.]

    It makes me really, really sad that the period of relative general prosperity we** grew up in was not used to strengthen our educational and governmental institutions, and who knows when such a rare opportunity will present itself again. [**Generally applicable to white folks, anyway, with people-of-color and women of all races left behind in large numbers.]

  128. 128.

    Tony J

    Given the power of Trump’s Razor.

    1) Recruit a ‘social gathering’ of gun-humping camo-cosplayers using Faux News and social media. Call them ‘The Wall’.
    2) Declare certain areas of the border Emergency Zones, ship ‘The Wall’ there in a fleet of Koch funded buses.
    3) Go on TV and announce that ‘The Wall’ is on the border and protecting the White Free State from Those People.
    4) Ship them back before they die of dehydration. Repeat every third weekend in the month. Lunch supplied.
    5) Option the reality TV rights to Fox.
    6) Profit!!!

    What could possibly go wrong?

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