Tag Archives: southern border

State news

It’s not just Biden’s ‘crisis’

President Biden clearly needs to face what is a crisis on our southern border, with illegal immigrants continuing to seek asylum into the Land of Opportunity, Freedom and Liberty.

However … to suggest that this is a crisis that Biden created is to ignore what I believe is quite obvious.

Which is that the crisis predates this president by several administrations. Whether they were led by Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan — presidents of both parties — this nation’s administrations have dealt with issues along the southern border.

Joe Biden came today to South Texas to get a look at what is happening there. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott greeted him, shook hands, exchanged some conservation and then handed Biden a letter. The letter says this crisis is of President Biden’s making.

No! It is not! It is a situation that has been festering for as long as I can remember. Here again, Abbott referred to Biden’s alleged desire to support “open borders.” Someone has to show me where the president has declared any desire for an open border. If he said something to that effect, I am willing to consider taking back everything I have said in support of the president.

The demagogues are out in force.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

POTUS calls it a ‘crisis’

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden calls the immigrant situation on our nation’s southern border a “crisis.”

Which it is. It has been one for several weeks. The Biden administration has been reluctant to call it such.

But … it is a crisis. Too many children have migrated to our border unaccompanied by their parents. They are filling up temporary shelters all along the border.

Look, I am not going to beat the hell out of President Biden because of his prior reluctance to label this matter a “crisis.” He’s done so. That’s good enough for me.

Now he needs to get busy with finding a solution.

If nothing else the president might be able to get his right-wing critics to muzzle their bloviating about it and start offering some suggestions for how to fix the problem.

Donald Trump, International news

Please, Mr. POTUS, no shutdown . . . again!

OK, Mr. President, you once said you would be “proud” to take responsibility for shutting down part of the federal government in pursuit of The Wall along our southern border.

Then you made good on that prideful pledge. The government shuttered for more than a month, the longest ever such demonstration of political idiocy in U.S. history.

So here we are again. Some of us thought, Mr. President, there might be a deal in the works. The New York Times reported over the weekend that you and congressional Democrats were close to a deal in principle. Then it ended. The talks wilted.

Do you really intend to take pride in another one of these idiotic demonstrations? Do you really intend to deny more federal workers of their paychecks? Do you really mean to create this kind of chaos in their households, the kind that matches at times what is happening inside the White House?

You can knock off the “national emergency” bullsh** as well, Mr. President. There is no such emergency occurring on the border. Those crime-ridden cities you keep mentioning? They’re among the safest in the country.

While we’re at it, have you mentioned the crime in northern border cities such as, say, Detroit? The Motor City sits on the Canadian border. Is there a connection between its proximity to an international border and the crime that plagues it? Hey, I am just asking, Mr. President.

If you hadn’t looked Sen. Charles Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the eye in that goofy Oval Office meeting and said you would be proud to shut down the government, I wouldn’t lay this at your feet.

You, though, say you’re The Man. You keep insisting you’re the best deal maker in human history. You keep telling us about the “fine-tuned machine” you are running inside the White House.

Make the deal, Mr. President. The Wall already is under construction in places. Democrats don’t favor “open border,” nor do they want criminals pouring into the country. For you to say such a thing is just another shameful example of fear-mongering.

Stop the demagoguery. Do not allow the government to shut down again. This ain’t how you lead, Mr. President.

International news

Welcome to America . . . just bring your gas mask

You’re a refugee fleeing repression in a Latin American country. You trek to the southern border of the Land of Opportunity. You and your kids, maybe with your elderly parents, are greeted by U.S. Army soldiers and Marines.

Then you get gassed. Those troops deployed by the commander in chief are under orders to prevent everyone from entering the United States. One way to keep you out is to gas you.

This is no way, none at all, to manage the border. It is no way to prevent illegal immigration. The refugees who are seeking safe harbor from the tyrants who run their countries back “home” deserve something far better, more kind than what they’re receiving.

I have tasted tear gas. It got my snootful twice while training at Fort Lewis, Wash., in the summer and fall of 1968 in the U.S. Army. It really and truly sucks, man. The second douse came while I was low-crawling under barbed wire. Our sergeants popped a nausea agent. Yep . . . I puked!

This is how we intend to “greet” those who seek protection from those who would do them harm. Wow! I never would have thought I would see this happening in our country.

Appalling!

International news

Non-politician POTUS earns his political chops rapidly

I have to hand it to Donald J. Trump. He campaigned for president as a non-politician, a self-made zillionaire who would surround himself with the “best people.”

Where do we stand? He’s been shown to be far from self-made and his “best people” have let the country down repeatedly during his time as president.

As for the non-politician thing, Trump is showing he’s a far better politician than he let on. Take this nonsensical notion of sending 5,200 active-duty military personnel to the southern border to block the horde of “invaders” traveling north from Latin America.

The “caravan” is dwindling by the hour. It’s still a long way from the southern border. Its numbers might not even be half the size of the force Trump is ordering to the new “front.”

However, the president is managing to whip up a frenzy among his base of supporters, he is energizing Republicans in advance of next Tuesday’s midterm election and he’s scaring the bejabbers out of Americans who actually believe the crap he spews about “Middle Eastern” terrorists infiltrating the massive crowd of invaders.

Trump is acting totally within his legal authority as commander in chief. He isn’t the first president to do such a thing. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama dispatched National Guard troops to help secure the border during their administrations. Trump’s order is a bit different. He is ordering active-duty ground troops to the border. The issue, though, is simply: Why? To do what, precisely?

These individuals are fleeing some of the most repressive regimes imaginable. El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala are known to be cesspools of corruption and violence.

Yet the president refers to many of them, as he did on Fox News the other day, as young and sturdy men who are coming here to do … what? To rape our women? To commit various and sundry acts of violence against unsuspecting Americans?

This troop deployment is all a political stunt.

national news

Nothing ‘phony’ about these tales of woe, Mr. POTUS

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I am slapping myself silly out of frustration, outrage and anger at the president’s utter ignorance.

He fired off this little ditty this morning via Twitter:

We must maintain a Strong Southern Border. We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections. Obama and others had the same pictures, and did nothing about it!

Where do I begin? Or end, for that matter?

Democrats aren’t telling “phony stories of sadness and grief,” Mr. President. Yet that’s the message that Donald J. Trump sought to deliver.

No, sir. Nothing “phony” is going on at the nation’s southern border. The children are in distress. So are their parents. Yes, they should enter the United States legally. On that point, I am with the president. However, their reasons for seeking entry are as complex as the problem that has erupted.

Many of them are fleeing brutality, gang violence, poverty. They want a better life for their families. Why is that so difficult for the president to understand? He implies through his tweets and other public statements that every illegal immigrant is “infesting” this country intent on doing something evil. He suggests they are bringing “crime” into the United States.

This is nothing short of a disgraceful display of bald-faced prejudice and bigotry.

Phony stories of sadness? Hardly, Mr. President. These tragedies are real and they need answers — not recrimination.

International news

‘Uh, no,’ majority leader says to wall-payment idea

“Uh, no.”

Two words, four letters altogether. That’s all it seemed to take for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to put the kibosh on Donald Trump’s notion of getting another nation to pay for his “great, great wall” across our southern border.

Is that the end of it? Probably not.

McConnell’s terse response was to a question about whether Mexico would pay for the wall Trump wants to build. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has insisted vocally, categorically and with maximum emphasis that Mexico wouldn’t spend a peso to build the wall.

Here’s how NBCNews.com reported the senator’s response: “‘Do you believe that Mexico will pay for it [the border wall]?,’ Politico Playbook’s Jake Sherman asked. McConnell, R-Ky., flatly responded, ‘Uh, no.’

“McConnell said he believes that there are certain areas along the border that don’t need a border wall to secure the area.

“The border wall, which is estimated will cost $21.6 billion dollars to build, has spurred a lot of controversy in the United States and Mexico.”

A lot of controversy? Do you think?

The president of the United States might think he can get another sovereign country to do his bidding. Except that the term “sovereign” explains precisely why he cannot.

Imagine for just a moment the Canadians demanding the same thing of this country should a tide of “illegal immigrants” decide to flee the United States for points north.

Is that a preposterous notion? Hmmm. Not … entirely.

Uncategorized

Pentagon sucked into partisan battle

Of all the federal agencies charged with looking after our national interests, one would think the Pentagon — the military arm of our massive federal bureaucracy — would be immune from partisan political bickering.

Guess again.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, no doubt seeking to change the subject from his indictment back home over abuse of power and coercion, says Islamic terrorists might have slipped into the United States across our southern border.

How did that play in the Pentagon? Not well.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/215761-pentagon-no-evidence-of-isis-at-southern-border

“I’ve seen no indication that they are coming across the border with Mexico. We have no information that leads us to believe that,” Admiral John Kirby, press secretary for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN’s “New Day.”

Kirby said the governor has no basis for making that suggestion, which he did in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Perry is considering a run for president in 2016. He’ll have to dispose of the indictment handed down the other day in Travis County. Good luck with that, governor.

He’s going to be making more of these statements in the weeks and months to come, especially after he leaves the governor’s office in January.

It is troubling that politicians are able to make assertions without providing a scintilla of evidence.

ISIL — or ISIS, as it is also known — is a despicable terrorist organization that has taken credit for the beheading of American journalist James Foley in Syria. Have the monsters infiltrated our southern border? Kirby says the Pentagon has no evidence of that happening.

That won’t stop the Texas governor from making potentially reckless statements. He’s got a proven record of it already.