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How about securing your border, sir?

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott speaks during the Texas State Rifle Association convention on Saturday, February 23, 2013 in Mesquite, Texas. (Cooper Neill/The Dallas Morning News) / mug - mugshot - headshot - portrait / 05012013xALDIA

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is visiting with Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto to talk about a whole range of bilateral issues.

I’ve got a topic for them to talk about.

Border security on the Mexican side comes to mind.

I’m glad Gov. Abbott is venturing to Mexico City to talk about international relations with our neighbors. But you know, with all this talk about immigration and the “flood” of undocumented immigrants pouring into the country, I think Abbott ought to take this opportunity to ask his friends in Mexico what they’re doing to prevent the immigration situation from getting even worse.

Do you remember all those children who were coming to Texas and other border states from Central America? They were traveling through Mexico to get to the United States.

I don’t recall hearing a credible explanation from Mexico as to how and why those children were being allowed to travel all the way through that country into ours.

Perhaps the governor can ask President Nieto about that? Hey, dignitaries often have “frank” discussions when leaders meet. OK, Abbott isn’t a head of a nation-state, but he is the head of a leading U.S. state that borders Mexico.

He ought to quiz his pal in Mexico City about the bilateral responsibility that’s involved with securing our shared border. President Obama gets pounded by his critics for failing to secure our side of the border.

Perhaps, though, it would be good to ask the Mexican president what he’s doing to secure his country’s side of the border.

 

State news

Kinky had it right about a wall

Kinbky Friedman - 1

I found a blog post I’d written in July 2010.

I said then that “I miss Kinky Friedman.” Why? Because despite his seemingly unserious bid to become Texas governor in 2006, the Texas humorist, musician and gadfly actually made sense.

Here’s the blog post: Kinky’s rant

He opposed the idea of building a wall along our southern border. He said that with the trouble brewing five years ago in the United States, Americans might want out — and a wall would make it more difficult for us to escape.

I mention Kinky today because the current crop of Republican presidential primary candidates is sounding quite ridiculous, particularly as they seek to outflank the GOP front runner, Donald Trump, on this immigration matter.

Trump says he’ll build a “beautiful wall.” Not to be outdone, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he’d consider building a wall between the United States and Canada.

Let’s get serious here. Or else, let’s draft Kinky Friedman to run for president.

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About those walls …

falls

As long as we’re talking about building walls to keep illegal immigrants from streaming into our country, let us ponder some things.

My wife wondered recently about the proposed Trump Wall along our southern border. “What does Donald Trump propose to do about those who would tunnel under the wall?” she asked.

Good question, Girl of My Dreams.

What does Trump propose for the wall and how deeply does he want to sink it into the dirt along our 1,900-mile-long border with Mexico? Ten feet, 20 feet, 30 feet … 100 feet!

Has he heard about how the infamous drug kingpin El Chapo dug his way out of that maximum-security prison in Mexico?

OK, so Trump has been joined in the Build-a-Wall chorus by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who said over the weekend it’s worth considering a wall between the United States and Canada.

That one would be roughly double the length of the Trump Wall.

Remember that we have a significant border with the Canadians along our Alaska state line.

So, not only would a U.S.-Canada wall stretch 3,000-plus miles along our countries’ east-west border, it would go another 1,200 or so miles north and south from the southern tip of the finger of Alaska that deeps south to, um, the Arctic Ocean — wa-a-a-ay up yonder.

And while we’re on the subject of the northern border, Gov. Walker, what are you going to do about some shared attractions?

Niagara Falls — which my wife and I visited in 2011 — comes to mind immediately.

This wall-building rhetoric is easy to throw out there. It gets applause and cheers from the Republican Party faithful.

However, this nonsense requires some serious thought … which we have not yet heard from any of the people who want to be president of the United States.

 

 

national news, political news

‘Boxcars’ no more acceptable than ‘ovens’

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hillary

Admission time.

I’ve been goaded into saying something about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s remark concerning Donald Trump’s “immigration reform” idea, which is to round up 11 million or so undocumented immigrants and ship back to where they came from.

She said recently that Trump and other Republican candidates intend to ship immigrants back to their homeland in “boxcars.” The remark drew understandable rebuke from those on the right who said the Democratic presidential front runner is invoking images of the Holocaust with that kind of analogy.

Clinton’s campaign has denied any connection.

You decide.

The campaign flacks are mistaken if they do not believe many Americans understood the juxtaposition of “boxcars” and “Holocaust.”

These presidential candidates need to understand that gravity of making such highly offensive comparisons.

Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, you’ll recall, criticized the Iran nuclear deal by declaring President Obama would march Israel to the “oven door” if the deal is approved by the Congress. That remark also drew expected — and deserved — criticism from those on the left.

A critic of this blog reminded me that I had been silent about Clinton’s nasty reference to boxcars. I took the criticism as a challenge to be as vigilant on both sides of the political divide about comments that deserve rebuke.

Clinton, Huckabee and the whole crowd of presidential candidates should declare a moratorium on comparing anything that occurs presently to what happened between 1939 and 1945.

World War II — and all its ghastly consequences — stands alone.

 

 

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Isn’t America still ‘great’?

ballcap trump

Tod Robberson, writing a blog for the Dallas Morning News, poses a question that’s been nagging at me since I first heard Donald Trump make a certain proclamation.

Trump has promised to “make America great again.” He’s been wearing a gimme cap at campaign rally with the words written across the front of it.

My thought always has been that the United States is a great nation. It’s a superpower with unprecedented military capability. It’s economy remains — for now, at least — No. 1 in the world.

And people from other nations are flocking here — yes, even legally — to start new lives. As Robberson pointed out: “In fact, the very immigration issue that Trump has made the focal point of his campaign belies the assertion that America isn’t great. Why would millions of people risk their lives to come to this country, legally or illegally, if there weren’t something of overwhelming value drawing them specifically here? It’s actually a lot easier to migrate to Canada, Europe, Costa Rica or Brazil. But for some reason, people want to come to America. That’s because we are still the greatest nation on earth.”

Trump, though, is suggesting that the United States no longer is “exceptional,” to borrow a popular Republican mantra of past campaigns against the current Democratic president.

Robberson also shoots down the notion that during the Ronald Reagan years in the White House that the United States stood as the model for greatness that today’s GOP seeks to emulate.

It’s worth a look: http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2015/08/make-america-great-again-trump-needs-to-rethink-his-rhetoric.html/

I’m just wondering how Trump gets away with asserting the United States of America isn’t still the greatest nation on the planet.

 

 

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Birthright debate set to rage

deport mom

Let’s get some conversation started on this birthright citizenship business.

A number of Republican Party presidential candidates want to do away with the constitutional provision that grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States of America.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wants it to remain a right of “natural-born” Americans. He writes this:

“Ending ‘birthright citizenship’ used to be an idea embraced by far-right whackos. But since Trump trumpeted it, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, Scott Walker, Rand Paul and others have joined him. Even Chris Christie now says the current policy needs to be ‘re-examined.’ And Jeb said today he doesn’t find the term ‘anchor babies’ offensive in the slightest.

“Can we get a grip? The right of anyone born in the United States to be an American citizen lies at the core of the post-Civil War concept of citizenship. It underlies the entire framework of rights and governance built around citizenship — including the 14th Amendment. It undergirds our entire history of immigration. And it prevents America from having permanent underclass of non-citizens spanning generations, as some other countries do.

“For Trump and other Republicans to make this proposal a centerpiece of their campaigns is not just to scapegoat immigrants for the economic anxieties of the middle class but to scapegoat innocent children as well. It is shameful.

“Your view?”

I think it’s the “innocent children” aspect of this effort that offends me the most.

So, talk to me.

 

national news, political news

Most entertaining campaign in history is on tap

So help me, I didn’t think it was possible for any campaign to be more entertaining than the 2012 campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Thank you, Donald Trump, for smashing my expectations for the 2016 campaign.

The Donald has managed to do what I thought was impossible: He’s managed to make the likes of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain look and sound almost reasonable, rational and mainstream.

He’s shot off his mouth about Mexican immigrants who come here illegally, stereotyping them as murderers, rapists, drug dealers — along with “some good people.” He’s called Mitt Romney a “loser” because he got beat in a campaign that he should have won; he’s challenged whether Ted Cruz of Texas is a legitimate candidate for the presidency, given that he was born in Canada.

And now he’s said John McCain isn’t really a war hero, even though he was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, while saying in the next breath that he likes “those who weren’t captured.”

Other Republicans have condemned Trump’s buffoonery. So have Democratic candidates.

It’s been an amazing campaign to date and we’re still months away from those Iowa caucuses and the lead-off New Hampshire primary.

Trump has managed to suck all the air out of every room he enters. The other candidates? They can’t be heard above all the ruckus created by Trump’s amazing ability to call attention to himself.

Four years ago, Bachmann and Cain — along with Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and even Rick Santorum — tried to raise a stink about this and/or that. They all were “frontrunners” for a time. Then came Romney, with all of his money and political connections, to win the GOP nomination.

Now we have Trump, who reportedly has much more wealth than Romney — and who brags about his portfolio incessantly — making a lot of racket.

But here’s the deal. He won’t be nominated. He’s going out with his guns blazing (figuratively, of course). Someone else will be nominated. If I had to bet on the next GOP nominee, I’d put my money today on either former Florida Gov. John Ellis (Jeb) Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. But they’re so boring.

Trump has turned this campaign into a circus.

Way to go, Donald. You’ve made the preceding cast of GOP contenders/pretenders look like statespersons.

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Better take a hard look at border security, eh?

Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez is accused of killing Kate Steinle in a horrific act of random violence.

It happened in San Francisco, a “sanctuary city.”

Lopez-Sanchez was in this country illegally. What’s worse — and a lot worse, at that — is that he’d been deported four times, sent back to Mexico. His fifth illegal re-entry resulted in Steinle’s shooting death.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/07/15/immigration-sanctuary-shooting-steinle-lopez-sanchez-editorials-debates/30100967/

This case has resonated on several levels, each of which is worthy of comment.

First, there must be some head-knocking occurring at Immigration and Naturalization Service, Border Patrol and Homeland Security offices. How in the world does someone keep getting into this country after getting caught and deported multiple times?

Second, it is time to re-examine this whole concept of “sanctuary city,” which is aimed at giving immigrants a way to avoid being captured by federal immigration authorities. As USA Today said in an editorial: “San Francisco is one of nearly 300 cities and counties across the country with sanctuary laws or policies aimed at separating federal immigration enforcement from local policing, in order to build trust between immigrant communities and local police. The reasoning goes like this: If immigrants, including millions of undocumented ones, see local police officers as a tool for deportation, they will not report crimes or come forward as witnesses, even when they are victims, and public safely will suffer.”

That reasoning did not work in this tragic case.

Third, President Barack Obama has been oddly silent about Steinle’s death. Why is that, Mr. President? Your critics make a valid point that you should be leading the nation in mourning the death of a young woman whose life was taken by someone who shouldn’t have been here in the first place.

Am I going to join the Donald Trump amen chorus in implying that most illegal immigrants are here to commit the kind of act that Lopez-Sanchez is accused of committing? Not on your life.

But the system failed us badly. A young woman’s family is grieving. A nation needs answers.

political news

NBC to Trump: You’re fired

Quite obviously, Donald Trump’s announcement that he’s running for president contained some remarks that stunned a lot of folks when they heard it.

I was one of them. So were the executives at NBC Universal, which today severed its relationship with The Donald. Why? The man’s comments about immigrants were, shall we say, inflammatory in the extreme.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nbc-fires-trump-over-insults-to-mexicans/ar-AAcirjp

This was my “favorite” part of Trump’s tirade as he declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination: “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some I assume are good people, but I speak to border guards and they tell us what we are getting.”

“And some I assume are good people.”

There you have it. An afterthought. A token reference to those who are coming here to improve their lives.

He kept saying that Mexico is “sending” criminals to the United States. Who in Mexico is “sending” these folks?

NBC Universal said it cannot sanction Trump’s xenophobic rants.

Univision, the Spanish-language TV network, also has ended its business relationship with Trump.

The Donald’s reaction? He’s not backing down, which surprises no one.

The more he speaks, the less serious he becomes.

Keep talking, Donald.

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Not your house, Mr. President; it belongs to us

I’ve needled President Obama over the years about his overuse of the first-person singular pronoun.

He did it again today during a ceremony at the White House and I have to call him on it.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/246061-obama-to-hecker-youre-in-my-house

He was speaking at an event honoring LGBT citizens when a woman stood up and heckled him about his administration’s deportation policies.

The president scolded the heckler, telling her, “You’re in my house.”

To which I would respond: What do you mean your house? It’s my house; it belongs to the citizens; you and your family are tenants until Jan. 20, 2017. Then you move out. You look for a place to live. You’re on your own, Mr. President.

This illustrates one of the major beefs I have with the president, his willingness to take personal possession of things that don’t belong to him.

I cite the White House as an example.

According to The Hill: “As a general rule, I am just fine with a few hecklers,” Obama said. “But not when I am up in the house. My attitude is if you’re eating the hors d’oeuvres, you know what I’m saying? And drinking the booze? I know that’s right.”

The heckler was out of line to interrupt a public event. The people came there to hear the president of the United States, not some disgruntled individual who dislikes a policy.

Let’s refrain, though, from declaring the White House someone’s personal property.

It isn’t. It’s the “people’s house,” correct?