Posted on 08/20/2005 10:52:05 PM PDT by joanie-f
You assume Dubya is not doing this ON PURPOSE with malice afore thought.. Ochhams Razor DEMANDS that he "IS"...
I see. So the Normandy invasion shouldn't have occurred until we had the plans in place for all that happened afterwards until the very end of the war? You're being ludicrous!
When dealing with a problem as huge as this you take first things first. Most illegal aliens are flooding across our southern border (several million a year), so we deal with that first.
As for your contention that her estimates are all low-ball, I haven't seen any research or reasonable estimates of your own to prove that. And even if you did provide them, they probably wouldn't amount to the $25 billion total that she was working with. And I know THAT to be a pretty accurate estimate, if not too conservative.
Your closed-mindedness is obvious in so much of what you say, and your inability to think "outside the box" is obvious in your ridiculous comment that we couldn't build a wall in the shore areas because people like to go to the beach.
No one here (especially Joanie) would suggest walls being built to monitor our seacoast. Talk about ludicrous! That monitoring would obviously require a different strategy. But, as I said before, blocking the land routes from south to north has to come first.
bookmk ping
So, should FReepers take this to mean that you are admitting to being pro-illegal immigration and that you condone lawbreaking by illegal aliens?
Hi, did you miss this gem that FDB found? the post is long but i've included the "important" pharases
To: tertiary01
"Since you have so much compassion for Illegal Mexican immigrants "
Not me. As I've posted before, I have no affinity for Mexicans or Americans of Hispanic descent.
To recognize that foreign laborers are essential right now to sustaining our economy does not mean that I am particularly fond of Hispanics.
If I had my personal preference, instead of Mexican laborers, we would have Western European laborers with blond hair and blue eyes pouring across our borders bringing their beautiful daughters. But that isn't reality. Neither is "sealing the border".
However all my relations with Hispanics have been good. Can't say that about Nigerians and half a dozen other types.
72 posted on 07/24/2005 3:47:25 PM CDT by bayourod
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1449544/posts?page=72#72
Understood, and may be true. And while I don't think "W" is necessarily a doofus, there's another jewel that may be just as accurate, "Never attribute to malice that which can best be explained by stupidity".
Anyhow, I think it is fast becoming a political hot potatoe will have to be dealt with regardless. This issue is going "hot" and I don't think our politicians can even afford to ignore it forever.
FGS
Great idea. But the president would never allow such a policy to be put into effect.
Hey, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I've got a file of classic posts by that despicable bayourod and I'm going to add this one to my file.
Well, there is a direct connection between your comments and Ronald Reagan announcing back in the 80s that "...this country has lost control of its borders".
When you strip of nation of its moral authority a loss of control at the borders will be one obvious result. The line of questioning you posted is a caculated effort to achieve this stripping of moral authority. No, I'm not accusing you of that exact motivation [unless you admit to being an Ivy League professor].
When I heard that professor in Colorado express pride in his [phony] Native tribal heritage this past spring all I could think of was how as a happy member of that tribe...you couldn't safely travel anywhere outside the confines of your territory; you didn't have the wheel; you didn't have books; and on an on. What you did have was an extremely brutal life; slavery of neighboring tribe members; women as chattel; chieftain dictatorship; and on an on.
The point is American moral authority is legit and deserved. People flock from all over the world to experience it here as citizens. The Cherokee, Apache nations etc never could be magnets for the rest of the world. It would be seriously delusional to think otherwise.
Native Americans need to roll with punches just like the aforementioned Celts did vis a vis the Romans. Adopt the best qualities of your conquerors and charge on down the road to bigger and better things.
1. The FY runs from 1 October to 30 September.
2. The number of deaths has remained steady as a percentage of estimated crossings. Do not believe everything you hear from MeCHA.
"I see. So the Normandy invasion shouldn't have occurred until we had the plans in place for all that happened afterwards until the very end of the war? You're being ludicrous!"
We DID have a plan for handling what came next in Normandy to the end of the war. We didn't in Vietnam--that's part of why we lost.
"When dealing with a problem as huge as this you take first things first. Most illegal aliens are flooding across our southern border (several million a year), so we deal with that first."
First, I've pointed out the deficiencies in joanie-f's proposal when it comes to accomplishing even that limited mission. Second, joanie-f's proposal does absolutely nothing about people who overstay their visas. Third, joanie-f's proposal does not address probable countermeasures by the illegal aliens. Finally, the only way that such a plan would be put in place on the southern border is if it's sold as an antiterrorist measure; the uncovered 17,000 miles then becomes a rather glaring hole in the proposed concept.
"As for your contention that her estimates are all low-ball, I haven't seen any research or reasonable estimates of your own to prove that."
You also haven't seen any proof that her estimates are NOT low-balled.
First, her personnel assignments make no allowance whatsoever for guards who get sick or want to take vacation. In other words, if a guard gets sick or (subtle hint of what the smugglers might do to adapt to the situation) injured/wounded, there's nobody on that post until the next shift.
Second, there are many places on the border where one can't see fifty yards, let alone a quarter mile. An unattended wall encourages people to climb over it. So the number of guards per watch will only go up. The East Germans put machine gun posts every 100 yards or so, and they also had a lot of people assigned to reaction forces so that the machine-gunners would not have to leave their posts. They also used minefields--something that we're not willing to do (or will not do after CNN runs the first pictures of Paco and Jose thrashing around with their legs blown off).
Third, that $150K a year is the average cost of one federal employee minus equipment. (That figure, incidentally, is about 10 years old, so it probably understates the actual cost. But in the absence of an updated figure, I'll use it.) $75K means you're paying one border guard about half of what the average federal employee makes. Low pay for doing a s**tty, thankless job encourages extremely high turnover and/or corruption.
"And even if you did provide them, they probably wouldn't amount to the $25 billion total that she was working with."
My estimate: at least 40 guards per mile per watch, more likely 60 once you include reaction forces and supervisors. That works out to 200-300 guards and other personnel per mile (you need five people per watch to man one post 24/7). That's 400,000-600,000 new federal employees, at $150,000 per head...$60-90 billion dollars per year...just to close the Mexican border. And once the smugglers go around and under the wall, you're back to the extra $25 billion a year in social services PLUS the cost of the wall.
"Your closed-mindedness is obvious in so much of what you say, and your inability to think "outside the box" is obvious in your ridiculous comment that we couldn't build a wall in the shore areas because people like to go to the beach."
People DO like to go to the beach, and they are unlikely to appreciate the benefits of a big concrete wall with armed guards closing off their beach.
"No one here (especially Joanie) would suggest walls being built to monitor our seacoast."
In other words, you'd leave about 12,000 miles of border completely uncovered.
"Talk about ludicrous!"
Leaving 12,000 miles of border uncovered and calling it "border security" is ludicrous, yes.
"That monitoring would obviously require a different strategy."
Which would be much more expensive per mile.
"But, as I said before, blocking the land routes from south to north has to come first."
And then the smugglers simply use the coastline that you so thoughtfully left unguarded.
Great post, Joanie... I've passed your thoughts to many of my friends... someone suggested that if everyone who was against illegal immigration donated a brick or two, we'd have a wall up in no time and it wouldn't cost the gubmint nuthin'...lol Sounds like a good campaign to me... The "Donate a Brick for a Safe America" campaign....lol
Heh heh. Good one. I have a spotty college past which was more or less useless, graduated from a technical school, and studied extensively my family history, and learned a lot of things not taught in schools, even when I was in school by a lot of reading I have done on my own. There are gaps in my knowledge, and new theories are surfacing all the time.
There may have been a Norse or other presence here for a short or lengthier time, I don't know at this point, but my simplistic view of history is that Columbus discovered America, the earlier Jamestown settlement was wiped out (by Indians and/or disease), and the William Brewster bunch gained the foothold from which all else unfolded regarding immigration, settlement and expansion.
Then I like to climb outside of my usual box, the sky is falling, they're coming in here in hordes, yes, I've been angry that they break our laws with impunity, no effort is made to stem the tide on our side except to make more laws that aren't going to work, then the distressing criminal and drug element freely enter right along with the ones who are coming here to work at jobs some American would do but demand better pay than minimum wage for the harder work. Cement finishing in the summer on highways is grueling, hard work, and people aren't going to do it for $6.50/hr and I don't blame them. Roofing is very hard work, too, as is working on the kill floor and cutting areas in meat processing plants.
Not too long I had a thought. If I were in one of those countries, and my children were starving, I would *like to think* that I would try to leave them with a trusted relative and go el norte and send money home to feed them. I'm not going to lay down and starve to death if there is any other way, including stealing a loaf of bread like Les Miserables main character did, although Victor Hugo was what I would have considered a humanist and interesting writer who didn't have any particularly strong religious beliefs; he may have been an atheist. One of his daughters had a sorry experience in Canada, ended up insane in Barbados, was rescued and went back to Europe to live an isolated and protected life to the end of her lengthy days.
Also, I do have a humanitarian side, and while I do not excuse everything, they are human beings who yearn for a better life, just as our ancestors did. No, I don't have any solutions other than some of the ones being kicked around now.
And to really add fuel to the fire, I often like to imagine what this country looked like (minus the savages and wandering into their territory where as a woman I know my fate would have been death, slavery or whatever else they chose to do to me). So much for peaceful nature walks in the forest or virgin prarie - which I can't really safely do by myself now anyway for various and sundry reasons.
The leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had trouble believing that arrows shot from bows could really kill until they were finally convinced differently and sent troops to help fight the Pequots in southern CT where the colony was very small and isolated, and facing extinction by starvation and hostile Indians.
I wouldn't be here being such a nuisance if one great+ grandparent hadn't made it to the fort on horseback with her newborn, if another great+ grandparent hadn't reproduced before he was brutally murdered by the Indians, and the CT one may have already reproduced (I don't think so but no proof at this late date) where he was injured in the thigh, aimed differently he would be dead or the wounds infected which would have killed him. And I have no clue what my Virginia ancestors went through vis à vis the Indians there.
One interesting aside is that the Indians were fascinated with glass windows and my patrilineal ancestor was a blacksmith who put some nails in planks, and when the Indians came up too close in the night, presumably to attack the sleeping settlers, there were bloody footprints beating a hasty retreat.
So, yes, terrorist threats aside, we need to somehow protect our borders, I suppose we have a moral and legal imperative to do so and let the past sort itself out, and adapt or die or become completely marginalized from mainstream society.
That will have to serve as an answer to all the posters who came back at me, some with some with relatively cordial, interesting perspectives, the flamers are counterproductive to a rational discussion so I ignore them, and I'm going to try not let a beautiful day be ruined and not let guilt over past rights and wrongs tear me down which is beating a dead horse at this point in our history.
A few months back, I cooperated with a phone survey, and at the conclusion, when asked my race, I said I was a Native American; I was born here. That didn't go over too well, but I didn't budge. They probably threw my input in the trash after that one.
Whether he admits it or not is a moot point since it is plain as the ass on a goat that he is. He can't run from the posting record he has created on FR. From that, one can only conclude that he is an enthusiastic pro-illegal alien quisling and a member in good standing of the GOP Hispandering Big Tent of RINOs, liberals and moderates.
Think of it this way. He is the total opposite of a loyal American conservative.
Think of it this way. He is the total opposite of a loyal American conservative.
Oh, I have absolutely no doubt that the despicable, race-baiting coward otherwise known as bayourod is pro-illegal immigration. I'd just like for bayourod to make it official by stating that he is indeed pro-illegal immigration. As you said, anyone who reads his posting history on Free Republic can only come to one conclusion, and that is that bayourod is staunchly and undeniably pro-illegal immigration.
Like it.
The point being that just because there is an economic "contribution" involved does not make an activity moral, right, acceptable to society (most of us), or even legal by way of our laws in the country.
Excellent points.
That's funny...last week you posted an article with this quote:
800 billion contributed by illegal aliens? Rod's having a wet dream again...
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