{"id":20944,"date":"2017-04-11T15:47:44","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T15:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20944"},"modified":"2017-04-11T16:34:31","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T16:34:31","slug":"building-the-wall-faces-mountain-of-obstacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20944","title":{"rendered":"Building ‘The Wall’ faces mountain of obstacles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Donald J. Trump’s mouth provides an endless supply of nonsense.<\/p>\n

The wall he intends to build to keep an imagined horde of criminals and terrorists from entering the United States of America provides a stark example of his “ready, fire, aim” approach to public policy.<\/p>\n

The New York Times, in an editorial published Sunday, took note of the enormously complicated task associated with building a wall across our nation’s southern border.<\/p>\n

Did the Republican candidate for president consider any of them before riding down the escalator to announce his candidacy in the summer of 2015? Umm. Nope. No way, man.<\/p>\n

The Times asks:<\/p>\n

“How do you build a wall along the 1,200 miles of the Rio Grande, the Texas stretch of border? Do you put it on our side and abandon the river to Mexico, or seize Mexican territory for it, or put it in the middle of the river, or do some zigzag compromise? What do you do then about a treaty requiring that both countries have open access to the river?<\/em><\/p>\n

“How do you make a concrete wall see-through, so smugglers aren\u2019t invisible to the Border Patrol?<\/em><\/p>\n

“How do you get private landowners to go along? What about the Tohono O\u2019odham Indians, whose reservation<\/span><\/u><\/a> straddles the border in Arizona and who want no part of any wall on their sacred land?<\/em><\/p>\n

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“What happens when parts of the great wall become a great dam, trapping floodwaters and debris, and collapse?<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

How do you wall out deep tunnels, drones and catapults? What about the tons of drugs that pass through existing ports? Did you know that drug cartels have ships and submarines? What happens when drug bales start coming ashore in San Diego, or over from Saskatchewan?<\/em><\/p>\n

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“Not that you care, but how do you build a wall that doesn\u2019t scar fragile wilderness and destroy wildlife?<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“How do you avoid causing more human deaths when a partly walled border sends migrants to more remote and deadly stretches of desert?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Do you realize that a wall would trap millions of unauthorized immigrants in the United States? Or that a large percentage of them come here legally, through ports of entry, with valid visas, and never go near the border?”<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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These things do not seem to matter to the president who keeps referencing these matters in the first-person singular, suggesting that he’s going to make it happen just because, well, he can<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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Actually, he cannot. That’s not how it works.<\/div>\n
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The president cannot just say things, as the NY Times notes, without understanding the consequences of his utterances. It worked for him as a candidate for the office. Now that he’s occupying it, the time has come for the president to start thinking rationally — and strategically.<\/div>\n
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Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald J. Trump’s mouth provides an endless supply of nonsense. The wall he intends to build to keep an imagined horde of criminals and terrorists from entering the United States of America provides a stark example of his “ready, fire, aim” approach to public policy. The New York Times, in an editorial published Sunday, took … Continue reading Building ‘The Wall’ faces mountain of obstacles<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,14],"tags":[1424,2245,4784],"class_list":["post-20944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-immigration","tag-the-wall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20944"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20947,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20944\/revisions\/20947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}