Results tagged “Politics” from Bill's Words
The original article cites these reasons, summarized for your reading pleasure by Blonde Sagacity:
The Obama presidency is out of touch with the American people
Most Americans don’t have confidence in the president’s leadership
Obama fails to inspire
The United States is drowning in debt
Obama’s Big Government message is falling flat
Obama’s support for socialised health care is a huge political mistake
Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill has been weak-kneed and indecisive
US foreign policy is an embarrassing mess under the Obama administration
President Obama is muddled and confused on national security
Obama doesn’t believe in American greatness
The guy who wrote this article is the same Ruben Navarrette Jr. who prompted my reaction to another one of his illogical diatribes. This piece of so-called “reporting” is merely the liberal mainstream media at work, celebrating itself for standing up for something which makes little to no sense to those who don’t have their liberal blinders on.
Let’s take his article apart, shall we? This should be fun.
Phoenix, Arizona (CNN) — It was an ethnic twist on an American classic, the kind of thing that some people consider appealing and others frightening. Pinto beans, diced tomatoes, salsa and jalapenos top a hot dog that’s grilled to perfection.
It’s 10 o’clock on a Saturday night at ground zero in the immigration debate. The hot dog vendor, a woman from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, would normally be doing a brisk business. Her cart is across the street from a popular Latino dance club that used to be frequented by Mexican-Americans but is now normally crammed with Mexican immigrants.
No mas.
Was that Spanish you were trying to use? I’m sure it was, but stick to English, which you haven’t gotten right. You see, I can’t make head or tails out that last paragraph. Is the place normally crammed with Mexican immigrants? Or was it frequented by Mexican-Americans? I can’t tell what the heck is happening across the street from the vendor’s cart. I get the idea, though: she has no customers at 10pm across the street from a dance club. What kind of town is this?!
“The city feels abandoned,” the woman tells me in Spanish. “Everyone has left.”
It sure looks that way during a drive though the city’s predominantly Latino west side, with its abandoned buildings, deserted homes and empty parks.
OK, let’s see, Ruben: How many doors did you knock on to assess how many of those homes were abandoned? How many buildings did you survey? How many were abandoned before April? And at 10pm, I’d expect most lights to be out, and the parks darned-well better be abandoned. Oh, you drove through during the day? Hmm. I’d expect the homeowners to be out working and the parks to be filled with… nobody! They should be working.
Since April, when Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 to punish illegal immigrants for the sins of the employers who hire them, estimates are that tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have left Arizona for a warmer climate in Utah, Colorado, Texas or New Mexico.
Score 1 for Arizona, then, in spite of the gutted law. I’m going to guess that this trend won’t stop until the wave reaches Canada.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton struck down four of the most grotesque and illogical parts of the law, including the requirement that local police attempt to determine the immigration status of individuals they suspect of being in the country illegally and language making it a crime to solicit work.
I’m glad you’re not trying to pass this off as objective reporting. “Grotesque” and “illogical” are hardly objective terms.
I have been watching this drama play out from California. But as someone who lived in Arizona about 10 years ago, I needed a closer look to see what life is like in this desert metropolis now that the law has taken effect — or rather, what’s left of it.
So you visit a Latino section of town and decide that there’s not much left of Phoenix. I’m guessing that the rest of Phoenix is disappointed to hear that pronouncement.
I’m a U.S. citizen; my parents and three of my four grandparents were born in the United States.
Relevance, Ruben, relevance.
When I lived here a decade ago, I was struck by how comfortable Latinos and whites seemed with one another. There was the occasional conflict, but more often there was compromise and cooperation, even on the issue of immigration.
A decade ago, the Obama administration was not in office. Much has changed since then. Obama and his acolyte Nancy Pelosi are hell-bent on spending as much of your tax money—and mine—on feeding, housing, clothing, educating, and treating illegal immigrants as they possibly can. Their solution to avoiding class warfare is to make the illegal immigrants into legal immigrants—merge the classes—at tremendous cost. Arizona’s solution to avoiding class warfare is to enforce the laws as they stand at significantly less cost.
Your world of ten years ago doesn’t exist anymore. It evaporated last November.
Today a heated debate has produced hard feelings. The everyday interactions between Latinos and whites are much more frayed than when I was covering Phoenix as a reporter for The Arizona Republic.
No observations? No data? Oh… wait, here comes some data:
Seventy percent of whites, according to polls, support SB 1070 but 70 percent of Latinos oppose it. Until the judge’s decision, there were many whites who were happy the state was taking action against illegal immigration; now they’re unhappy with the judge’s ruling, meaning almost every group in the state is up in arms for one reason or another.
Weak, at best.
Point one: cite the polls—I hate reporters who don’t cite statistics, but since this is an op-ed piece masquerading as reporting, I’ll give you a pass. Anyway, do these polls include illegal immigrants? I’d be surprised if they didn’t.
Point two: who cares if the people who support the bill are up in arms? Who cares if the people who don’t support the bill are up in arms? Is there anything wrong with that? That’s what a democracy is all about, Ruben: expressing your opinion and voting in support of that opinion. Get used to it. Or, rather, don’t, because the Obama/Pelosi machine will ensure that the only branch of government that counts is the judiciary, and your opinion, and vote, will not be heard.
Point three: you make some very sweeping generalizations. Are they based on observations? Or just your gut feeling?
I ask the hot dog vendor how “los Americanos”—her landlord, the people at the supermarket, etc.—are treating her. “Everyone is different,” she says. “Some are friendly. Others look at you funny, like you’re not welcomed.” I think about my question. Unwittingly, I had invited her to engage in the same kind of racial profiling that most opponents of SB 1070 deplore. She prefers instead to judge people as individuals and not generalize based on stereotypes.
Whew. At least there’s one sensible person involved in this article.
Good for her. I wonder if this woman is available to give seminars to Arizona law enforcement officers who might soon find themselves in need of that skill set.
Woah… wait a minute. You have automatically placed all Arizona law enforcement officers into the role of bigot. Where do you get off doing that? Did you interview any law enforcement officers and report on equally open-minded officers? No, you sure didn’t. It wouldn’t support your story well, would it?
Later, I interviewed a married couple who came to the United States legally but lapsed into illegal status when their visa expired. They should have gone back to Mexico, but they’d already put down roots in Phoenix, where the husband could earn at least 10 times what he could make in Mexico. We talked about how some conservatives insist that illegal immigrants take jobs from U.S. workers.
There’s so much wrong here, it’s not even funny: First, the couple “should have gone back to Mexico.” They are illegally here, and yet somehow, “putting down roots” and “earn[ing] at least 10 times what he could make in Mexico” buys them a pass. Next time I’m pulled over for a traffic violation, I’ll be sure to use that defense. “I’m sorry, officer, but it’s OK because I’ve sped before and my car is fine at these high speeds.”
Second, “some conservatives” should be “some people,” because otherwise you are typecasting and stereotyping just as much as the next guy. I guarantee you can find a liberal who thinks the same thing, but it wouldn’t help your story, would it?
“That’s not true,” says the husband, who’s worked his way up from manual labor to an office job for a jeweler. “Americans are lazy. They don’t want to work.”
But then, he catches himself — and corrects himself.
“I shouldn’t say that,” he says. “They’re not all like that, but some are. They’re spoiled. They think it’s easy to come to the United States legally, and they speak from ignorance.” It’s interesting that even in a state that recently made it legal for police officers to make assumptions and jump to conclusions about who is or isn’t an illegal immigrant, there are illegal immigrants who are fair-minded enough not to make assumptions and jump to conclusions about the rest of us.
Wow. Yet another open-minded person who supports your cause! Wow! Two for two! You’re batting 1.000, Ruben! Next time, interview the guy on the corner with the sign that says, “Will work for food.” See if he doesn’t say, “Los estadounidenses son perezosos.”
The rest of that paragraph is just crap: you characterize the entire state of Arizona as bigots, except some illegal immigrants. Good job.
No matter what Bolton decided, the hot dog vendor is still worried. She thinks a lot of Phoenix police officers and county sheriff deputies, under the command of cartoonish Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have been champing at the bit for a law like this to give them an excuse to hassle people with brown skin. People like that, she says, won’t let the judge’s ruling get in the way of enforcing a law which they support.
Ah, so she’s not quite as open-minded as you portray her to be. Apparently, your assertion that officers of the law are bigots is shared by her. Well, fair enough, she’s entitled to that opinion. But until the law can actually be tried, and until we can see how it works, there’s really not much point in worrying about it, is there? If you’re not an illegal immigrant, that is.
Since the law took effect, Arpaio’s deputies have raided residences thought to be “drop houses,” where illegal immigrant smugglers harbor their human cargo.
And good for them! After all, immigrant smugglers are often enslaving unwitting illegals. Should they not prosecute this crime because you’re paying attention to their actions? Put another way, do you raise hell because they raid crack houses? And should people ever be in a position to be referred to as “human cargo?” Isn’t that worthy of prosecution?
And stop using the error of omission to distort the truth: deputies also raided residences thought to be “drop houses” before the law took effect, too.
No wonder immigrants are afraid. Those who haven’t left the state are living as shut-ins. They go outside when they have to go to work. Otherwise, they stay behind closed doors.
Since that’s by their choice, tough. Do they really think that if they look/act/do as normal legal citizens do (such as drive to work, do yard work, perhaps take a walk with the kids, fix their cars in their driveways, go to the store) that they will be accosted by police for acting suspiciously? Don’t they think that it’s the people who stand around on street corners for hours a day, doing nothing, who are most likely to be challenged by police? Apparently not, I guess.
Anyway, eventually, when the illegal immigrants are few and far between, the suspicion that someone is here in the US illegally will naturally die down, won’t it? In the meantime, the legal immigrants should be out and about and should enjoy showing up Officer Bob and his ilk when they are hassled for their documentation. Oh, and of course, they should avoid activities which would get Officer Bob’s interest in the first place, just like you and I should.
By the way, I think Officer Bob should ask every suspect of some offense, including me, lilly-white Bill Eccles, for my proof of citizenship (whatever that is), and should not be asked to make a determination which might be misconstrued as “racial profiling.”
There is another kind of racism at play here. You’ve heard how Arizona tried to empower local police to arrest gardeners and housekeepers to crack down on Mexican drug dealers. Baloney. That’s just how the state’s anti-immigrant efforts are packaged for public consumption. The Mexican drug dealer is the Willie Horton of the immigration debate. I get it.
Huh? The state somehow has an anti-immigrant effort? No, there’s no anti-immigrant effort. There’s an anti-illegal-immigrant effort, however, which is what SB1070 is all about. You are confusing your issues, Ruben.
What are nativists supposed to do? Convince Arizonans that the nannies they give their babies to every day are dangerous, that the gardeners to whom they volunteer their security code are a threat. You need drug dealers in this dialogue. Who else are people going to be afraid of?
I’ll just leave this paragraph with a, “Huh?” because I can’t make any sense out of it whatsoever. I’m not sure how nannies and gardeners and drug dealers are relevant to illegal vs. legal status.
Not a hot dog vendor. Think about where that woman was from — Sinaloa. That state is the capital of the Mexican drug trafficking industry. It’s quite simple.
This ought to be good…
If you’re from Sinaloa and you sell drugs, you can live a luxurious life in Mexico. If you sell hot dogs, you work long, hot nights in the desert. Arizonans are ginning up fear of one to rid their state of the other.
So, let me translate Rubenese to English: Sinaloans who come to America are drug dealers. Since that fact hasn’t been brought into the debate by either side—until now—I have to assume that Ruben is ginning up fear of one to get rid of the other.
Or maybe I’m missing something here, so I’ll try again: Illegal immigrants who are from Sinaloa should get a pass just like illegal immigrants who are hot dog vendors or drug dealers. There. I think I got it.
I finish my second hot dog—the best I’ve tasted this side of Coney Island—and pay the bill. Oh, by the way, I ask the woman: “What’s your name?”
Who pays after they eat their hot dogs? This story smells fishy to me. You get your dogs, you pay the vendor. Then you eat them. Strange…
She smiles, looks away and shakes her head. She won’t tell me. She must figure, why take chances? For immigrants, there’s enough of that going on already in this city, where just getting in a car or walking down the street can be a high-stakes gamble.
“She must figure…?” Ruben reads minds. Enough said.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Thank goodness for that. More like him and… well, too late. They’ve already been elected.
The full text of the article, found here, essentially says that Representative Maxine Waters* is going to be investigated for ethics violations. That’s the gist of the story. But in the story, I found this sentence:
Both Waters and [Representative Charles] Rangel are prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
I ask you, What does this declaration have to do with anything? It is the only mention of race in the story, and, other than the fact that it’s true, it’s totally irrelevant. Is the AP trying to imply that only members of the CBC are being investigated? Well, let’s see some evidence. Is the AP implying that only members of the CBC are unethical? Again, let’s see some evidence. If, for some reason, the story had to do something with race or racism, then this otherwise-superfluous sentence might have a place in the story.
But it doesn’t belong here, and it is representative of the type of misuse of media which promotes racism instead of bridging the racial divide.
* Interestingly (to me, anyway), when I initially wrote this entry, I had written “Democratic Representative Maxine Waters” and “New York Democratic Representative Charles Rangel” when referring to the two representatives under (or potentially) under investigation. I went back and edited out the unnecessarily-divisive reference to their parties, as it has no bearing on my point. It is, of course, relevant to the AP story because the article is making a point that the Democrats are going to have a harder time keeping the majority in the Congress with problems like these.
Interesting tactic. While they are saying—on the surface, anyway—that it’s a bad suit because it will make getting Democrats into office in the West more difficult, I wonder if they wouldn’t rather say, “It sure would have been a lot better if you’d actually done something about immigration as you promised instead of getting mixed up in state politics.”
G.O.P. Senate Candidate Acknowledges Misstatement - NYTimes.com
To quote me from another entry, with slight modifications:
I don’t get it. “I misspoke.” “I made a mistake.” But no “I lied.” Or “I would have crushed a witness who perjured himself like I did if I had been on the stand.”
C’mon, Mark: Try it. I lied. Betcha’ can’t do it. And I bet the media won’t let you get away with it, too.
and this:
A friend of mine from high school had this to say:
“Yep, I say lies too. We never would have stood for this kind of crap when I served in Grenada. ‘During’ Grenada, I mean. ‘Burgers during’ Grenada, I mean.
“What a maroon. Partisanship doesn’t trump dishonesty; if we Dems feel like we need to count on the vote of a liar to win, we deserve to lose.”
I have to agree completely, and not from the partisan perspective: if anybody feels like they have to count on the vote of a liar to win, they certainly deserve to lose.
Well said.
Again.
My dad corresponds often with a friend from his high school days who is now a border rancher in Arizona. Bud, as he is known, has this to say about things in his part of the country, and forwarded on an article from the Tucson Weekly. It’s worth the read. Take your time, digest it all.
(Another good article can be found here.)
Dear Folks,
It was a few years ago that Leo Banks, Wall Street Journal, wrote a very accurate piece about his interview with me regarding the border situation on the ranch. I have forgiven him, in that he referred to me as a former Marine General. [He’s a retired Army General. /B] The article was accurate and without the fluff that is rampant in some of the pieces that have been written about our situation. The persons named in the below article are or were in Rob Krentz case all friends and neighbors of mine. Dr Gary Thrasher is my veterinarian, John Ladd and I are both on the U S Border Patrol advisory committee, and Larry Dever is a close friend and our Sheriff. This piece HITS THE MARK!!!! The BP is held back from making an aggressive positioning close to the border. All the ranchers who have livestock along the border are carrying weapons of some sort just to guard our investment. Until our leaders realize the severity of this condition and get off their rear ends and make constructive movement to defuse this situation…….it is just a matter of time before another incident raises its head. I am sending this to those who have expressed an interest other than the fluff you are seeing in the press.
Bud
The Krentz Bonfire
by Leo Banks, Tucson Weekly, April 29, 2010, article source here
A little more than a month has passed since the death of Cochise County rancher Rob Krentz, and the emotion generated by his murder, the pure shock of it, has ignited a bonfire that still burns across Arizona’s borderlands—and all the way to Washington, D.C.
Now everyone is demanding troops. Now, with Gov. Jan Brewer’s signature on a tough new illegal-immigration law, the nation is embroiled in a loud debate about racial profiling. Now everyone has a multi-point plan for bringing some control to a border so porous that anyone who wants to get into the country can eventually do so, as Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever last week told the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Will anything change now?
When the bonfire cools, will we be able to look back and say, as the heartbroken Krentz family hopes, that Rob’s death wasn’t in vain?
Last week, Rob’s brother, Phil, described how surprised and heartened the family has been at the outpouring of support they’ve received from around the country.
“It has really woken people up to what’s going on,” he says. “But I don’t know if anything will be done about it. It’s too early to tell. Meantime, we’re coping any way we can.”
Rob’s sister, Susan Pope, says, “This has really taken legs, and I think some things will change for the better. But I don’t think it’ll ever get to where we feel secure.”
The Popes’ home in the Chiricahua Mountains has been broken into three times. Susan works as a bus driver and teacher at the one-room Apache Elementary School, which has been hit so often that nothing of value remains inside.
“When was the last time you felt secure?” I asked.
Susan let out a joyless laugh and said, “I can’t remember, honestly.”
What has to be noted first is the inevitability of what happened. Something like the Krentz murder was coming, and everyone knew it.
Life in the Chiricahua Corridor north and east of Douglas, as the Tucson Weekly has been reporting for two years, has become a nightmare of break-ins, threats, intimidation and home invasions.
The stories residents told this newspaper, the frustration they feel trying to keep property and family safe in smuggler-occupied territory, were like a freight train in the night. Down the tracks, you see a faint light, coming closer and closer.
On March 27, in Cochise County’s big country a mile west of Paramore Crater, the train arrived.
The aftershock has been so powerful, because the killing exploded the lie about a secure border that Washington, D.C., has been working hard to promote.
In the days and weeks before Krentz’s murder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, on TV and in speeches, had been telling the American people that conditions on the border had improved enough to proceed with amnesty.
“The security of the Southwest border has been transformed from where we were in 2007,” she said. It was a sales job meant to push a political goal.
This is the same homeland security secretary who, in April 2009, told CNN it’s not a crime, per se, to cross the border.
How committed can our government be to securing the border when the person charged with doing so—a former governor of Arizona, no less—doesn’t know it’s a federal misdemeanor to enter without inspection?
Now, back up a moment.
Yes, arrests are down across the Border Patrol’s 262-mile-wide Tucson sector—from 378,239 in 2007, to 241,673 last year.
Welcome news. But understand that the people who got away outnumber arrests by about 3 to 1.
Yes, the feds have built fencing along the Southwest border, boasting that 628 miles are now in place.
But as Glenn Spencer of American Border Patrol notes, only 310 miles of that is people fence, and some of that is next to useless. The remainder—318 miles—consists of vehicle barriers that don’t deter anybody on foot.
I’ve written before of the Tortilla Curtain, an invisible barrier that filters the facts about the border through various lenses—race, culture, civil rights, politics—so that by the time the information gets to the power centers in Washington and New York, it looks nothing like the truth.
The Tortilla Curtain’s stoutest pillar is our own government, and no, it wasn’t much different under George W. Bush.
But now, even big-media conservatives like Michael Barone and Charles Krauthammer, lost behind the Curtain, are trotting out arrest numbers and fence numbers, dutifully falling in line behind Napolitano.
These guys need to come to Arizona and get their suits dirty on the trails.
Around Nogales, where arrests are down 20 percent, Susie Morales—who lives 2 1/2 miles from the line in the national forest west of Interstate 19—has seen no letup in crossings.
As she cooks dinner in her kitchen, she can look out and see mules backpacking drugs on a trail 75 yards from her front door. Another trail runs 50 yards behind her house.
These trails are so close that when Susie spots incursions, she runs into her bathroom with her cell phone and shuts the door. She has to keep her voice down so the crossers can’t hear her calling for help.
“There are more Border Patrol agents around, but the tide hasn’t abated,” says Morales. “It’s amazing. They’re still coming. We need active-duty military here, because we’re just outnumbered.”
She carries a .357 magnum everywhere she goes.
Foot traffic still pours over the Huachuca Mountains, south of Sierra Vista, to the tune of 1,500 a week, according to a citizen who places game cameras on trails there and counts crossings.
East of the Huachucas, John Ladd tells me that in the 18 days prior to April 10, he counted some 350 illegals on his San Jose Ranch. Every one had climbed the fence.
Ladd’s property near Naco has been fenced since 2007, with the barriers ranging from 10 to 13 feet. But fencing just west of Ladd’s, across the San Pedro River, stands 18 feet tall, so why would anyone bother with an 18-footer when you can walk east and climb a 10-footer?
“I’m on the phone to Border Patrol on average three times a day, seven days a week, to report groups,” Ladd says. “I don’t know what normal is anymore. I’ve become cynical, untrusting and pissed off.”
East of Ladd’s at Douglas, drug-laden ultra-light aircraft fly up from Mexico—right over Border Patrol headquarters, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, every night of the week.
Arrests in Douglas are up 25 percent this year, and the danger has never been greater.
As one resident told me, “We’re under the gun all the time. There are people watching us all the time. The smugglers have scouts on hills, watching us, watching customs, watching Border Patrol. They’re terrorists, very militaristic, and they get a high out of it. As long as they can get away with it, it’s OK. That’s their mentality.”
Do you think DHS changed its song after Krentz’s death?
On April 4, The New York Times quoted DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler saying the agency “will continue to ensure that we are doing everything necessary to keep communities along the Southwest border safe.”
Continue to ensure? If our border communities were safe, Krentz would be alive. Continue to ensure. Imagine having the cojones to say that after Krentz’s murder?
They spun before Krentz’s murder, and they’re spinning now. And word out of Washington is that President Obama plans to push ahead soon with comprehensive immigration reform.
The sense of abandonment in the Corridor is palpable, and no one expressed it better than Roland Snure, a doctor who grew up in the area and knew Krentz well.
“I cannot understand how a government that takes, and takes, and takes, could not provide the only thing it has to do—protect its citizens,” he said.
If you want to talk transformation, life in Southeast Arizona has been transformed over the past month. But not in the way Napolitano claims.
Now, when men go out to work at their corrals, sometimes miles from the house, wives follow along, afraid to be home alone.
Up in Rodeo, N.M., Tess Shultis no longer allows her two boys to play outside the house.
“Not unless me or their dad is with them,” says Shultis, a clerk at the market in Rodeo. “It’s too dangerous.”
Transformed.
The most dangerous thing you can do on the border now? Reach for your cell phone. Forget you even own one. Keep your hands visible. No sudden moves.
If you encounter the wrong guy, and he thinks you’re calling Border Patrol, he might start shooting. That’s likely what happened to Krentz.
It’s supposition, but his killer probably has a criminal record, and rather than get arrested for it, he opened fire. For good measure, he shot Rob’s cow dog, too, breaking its back. The animal had to be put down later.
The killer’s tracks led to Mexico along Black Draw, a heavily used smuggler trail through the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. The shooter is still at large.
The Cochise County sheriff has released a photo of a person wanted for questioning in robberies around Portal, in the Chiricahua Mountains. Some suspect a connection to the Krentz murder.
The man, Alejandro Chavez-Vasquez, was arrested in Southern Arizona’s Santa Cruz County in early May 2004; the following month, he was charged with felony re-entry after deportation, according to federal court records. To earn that charge, he’d likely been caught crossing the border multiple times. In a plea agreement, he got 36 months of supervised release and a fine of $100.
Cochise County sheriff’s spokesperson Carol Capas says Chavez-Vasquez also has convictions in this country for theft, sexual assault, motor-vehicle theft and narcotics possession, and has used multiple birthdates in dealing with police. Capas said some of his crimes occurred in Nevada, but she could not name other states in which he might’ve been active.
Krentz’s killer, whoever it is, might’ve been jacked up on something. Many smugglers take meth or some form of speed to keep moving.
Anna Magoffin, who lives along Geronimo Trail, finds needles and discarded steroid vials on her horseback rides across the borderlands. “These guys aren’t just walking,” she says. “They’re bumped up on something.”
Not surprisingly, sympathy for illegal crossers has cratered.
“I’ve detected a hardening of hearts,” says Lynn Kartchner, who co-owns a gun shop in Douglas. “People who used to give them water and a sandwich and let them sleep in the shade, now they’re going to run them off at gunpoint.”
In the days since the murder, Kartchner’s business has boomed. Some of his new customers are bird-watching lefties from Portal who’ve suddenly become sudden Second Amendment converts, now that grim reality has hit them, too.
And what of our government’s talk of comprehensive immigration reform? Of amnesty? It has made the crisis worse.
The words have been all over Mexican TV and radio, and the result is a rush to the border, same as it ever was, says Magoffin.
During the Bush years, she could look south from her house to a highway in Mexico and see big white buses unloading people. They’d line up single file and march into the country.
“It was like a long snake of people walking through the desert,” Magoffin says. “The amnesty talk today has the big loads going through again.”
Transformed.
But the polite border-crossing worker—some are still out there—has given way to the bad hombre. In the Tucson sector, 17 percent of those arrested by the Border Patrol have criminal records in the United States.
The most alarming reality is the takeover of people-smuggling operations by the drug cartels. Now, a group of 15 from, say, Chiapas, Mexico, with jobs lined up in Chicago, can’t get into the country without dealing with the drug operations that own the trails.
To cross around Douglas, the going rate is up to $2,500 per person. When the Chiapas guys say they don’t have it, the coyote hands them his drugs and says, “Carry this, and you can come in for free, and we’ll guide you”—and up they come.
The coyote is accompanied by another fellow, also armed, who serves as muscle to make sure the workers turned mules don’t drop the product and bolt.
If Border Patrol happens to jump the group, a few of the workers might get rounded up while the coyote and his muscle disappear into the mountains, armed and dangerous—and good luck finding them.
They know the trails like their own faces in the mirror, because they make those runs over and over again.
When I visited Ladd recently, he uttered a chilling remark that Dever echoed in his testimony in Washington last week: “I guarantee that every group coming across that border today has a gun behind it.”
We can have a discussion about open labor markets, about legalizing drugs, about our insatiable demand for drugs, about the skill of the cartels at getting their junk into the country and how that creates more demand than there otherwise would be.
But that’s for another time. The immediate issue: How do we protect American citizens from this imminent danger?
The worst thought of all is that maybe the federal government is incapable of doing it. Maybe the bureaucracy is too big to do much of … anything.
The communications issue inspires zero confidence.
Susan Pope’s husband, Louie, has worked closely with the Border Patrol, even volunteering to show young agents how to work the terrain and the trails. He likes some of what he sees.
“They’re good kids, and they damn sure want to work,” says Pope.
But he has also watched the agency regularly put two men on a trail to track a group of 20, without maps, night-vision equipment or radios.
Veterinarian Gary Thrasher tells of being flagged down on an isolated ranch road at night by an agent left there to track a group alone—again, with no radio.
If he needed backup, the agent was told to use his personal cell phone. But the battery had gone dead, and he asked to borrow Thrasher’s cell.
For years, at every meeting with the Border Patrol, residents of the Chiricahua Corridor have pleaded with Border Patrol to fix its communication problems.
The corridor runs along a seam between the agency’s Douglas and Lordsburg sectors, and the two sectors have been unable to communicate with each other.
Border Patrol agents stationed at forward operating bases out on Geronimo Trail, east of Douglas, can’t radio back to headquarters in town.
Residents along Geronimo Trail can’t call the forward operating base. Rancher Bill McDonald says if trouble brews at his place, he has to drive to the base, 5 miles away on dirt roads.
After Krentz was shot, Border Patrol agents and sheriff’s deputies worked the area looking for clues, but they couldn’t communicate with each other.
Close observers say Krentz’s killer was likely back in Mexico well before Rob’s body was located, so bad communications probably didn’t play a role in his escape.
Within days of the murder, after Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords contacted DHS about the sorry state of communications in the corridor, satellite GPS radios arrived.
But it took a death, and a congresswoman raising hell, to get the bureaucracy to finally move.
Another loud plea, widely heard, is that the Border Patrol needs to be on the border itself, not tracking people five miles north of the line, or 30 miles north.
Thrasher, who travels the borderlands daily in his work, has made this his signature issue, and his view reflects the cynicism some feel toward the Border Patrol. He says the fall-back strategy cedes American land to the gangs and puts citizens at risk.
“There is no interest among the higher-up in stopping this at the border,” says Thrasher. “Instead of being preventative, they’re reactionary, because then they can show all the wonderful things they’re doing. Look at how many arrests we made. Look at all the pot we caught.
“The border should be our line in the sand. That’s where we need to stop them before they get to any citizens.”
In fairness, Border Patrol has always said they don’t have enough manpower to form a blockade at the border, and backing up allows more time to make arrests. They make a similar argument with fencing, saying it pushes illegals out into remote areas and gives agents days rather than hours to make arrests.
But that bothers Thrasher, too. Stop them at the line, and nobody dies in the backcountry.
“We push them way out and give them a two-day head start, then run them down,” says Thrasher, who played football for Woody Hayes at Ohio State. “Rob’s murder was terrible, and the danger everybody faces is terrible. But all of us out here are sick of seeing the bodies (of illegals), too.”
The one that haunts him the most, oddly, was one he never saw. But a rancher in the Chiricahuas told Thrasher the story.
A woman had died up in the mesquite and had been there long enough for the coyotes to get to her. When searchers went out to bag the body parts, they found her head here, some guts over there, a scatter of limbs.
When the rancher picked up an arm, he noticed the Timex watch on the woman’s wrist still ticking.
The idea of ceding American ground to the cartels is the pulse point of this crisis, because fundamentally, this is a fight for land. It’s going on in this country and on ranches in northern Mexico, where a lot of good folks there have it even worse than we do.
Every trail on our border is either bought or won through blood. The profits are great, and no gang that controls valuable land is going to give it up willingly.
As John Ladd says, “Nobody has tried to stop them yet. But if we do, it’s going to be a battle.”
Do we have the political will to take it on now, after Krentz?
A telling sign will be the rules of engagement under which troops, should the president decide to send them, will operate. Giffords and Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl have called for the immediate deployment National Guard troops.
Will they be allowed to stand their ground if challenged? Will they have bullets in their guns?
Remember back in January 2007, when unidentified armed men approached a National Guard outpost on the border near Sasabe, southwest of Tucson, and the soldiers followed orders and fled?
All across that section of the border, you could hear residents wailing, “No! Protect us! Why are you here if not to protect us?!”
If that was a probe by the cartels to see if the gringos were finally serious, they got their answer.
We can’t do that again.
As Susan Pope says, “If we don’t stop it now, God help us, because He’s the only one who’ll be able to. It’ll send a message to the cartels, ‘Hey, it’s a free for all. Come on up.’”
I don’t get it. “I misspoke.” “I made a mistake.” But no “I lied.” Or “I would have crushed a witness who perjured himself like I did if I had been on the stand.”
C’mon, Dick: Try it. I lied. Betcha’ can’t do it. And bet the media lets you get away with it, too.
Article here.
I don’t know how I missed this one. Apparently, Obama thinks that he’s more experienced with nuclear policy than Sarah Palin. Her response is classic:
Palin shot back later at a speech to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, further mocking Obama’s earlier career and “all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
This poll shows that Americans are warming to the health care plan. But they’re still not overwhelmingly in favor of it. Heck, we’re not even regular ol’ in favor of it yet.
(Insert cartoon sound of double-take here.)
I don’t get it. Congress voted to pass legislation that American’s didn’t want in the first place? Yeah, I knew that all along, too, but Pelosi and Obama want to go down in history for… for what? Working against their electorate?
Who put them in charge?
Oh, right. You. Some of you, anyway. But I’m pretty sure that you didn’t vote Obama in because of his stated position on healthcare as much as you voted a Republican out.
You fools.
Let’s hope you can change your ways in November, shall we?
What’s good for the Goose, isn’t good enough for the Gander. Or, to put it another way, you should be very, very angry.
And you should let Congress know of your displeasure. Click here. And here. You will get an answer. It will be canned. But someone will have read your opinion and tallied it.
Do it.
Now.
Stop being so damned conservative!
(Thanks, Steve!)
So he asks, “If not now, when?”
To which I say, “When you understand the problem, which you clearly don’t.”
I feel vindicated. The Wall Street Journal gets it.
Some notable quotes:
…the Senate bill does everything the experts recommend to “get at the underlying drivers of health-care costs.” — Peter Orszag, Obama’s budget director
…there is “no master plan for dealing with the problem of soaring medical costs.”— Atul Gawande in a 5,000 word essay published in The New Yorker arguing in favor of ObamaCare
What they’re finally admitting is that all the grandiose talk about “bending the curve” used for months to sell ObamaCare really comes down to their hope that bureaucratic improvisation will make a difference over the long term.
And, as I’ve said before, hope is impossible to legislate.
Way to stick to your principles, Representative Kucinich.
And not because he’s a Democrat who’s leaving the Senate, either. No, it’s because this guy actually makes sense.
Unfortunately, he won’t be sticking around to see the changes made that he’d like to have made. Maybe you should ask your Senator why he or she isn’t taking up Senator Bayh’s torch?
(Thanks, Dad!)
“Obama Rejects Race as Lead Cause of Criticism”, and in doing so, he proves that he’s not above playing the race card.
I can’t figure out who the idiots are who Obama thinks mistake his ruination of the country’s healthcare system for an issue of his race. Talk about narcissism.
Click here to see more Political Pictures, though the site still vilifies George Bush and he’s not even in office anymore…
A friend of mine wrote this on FaceBook:
“Here’s to 80% tax for income over $200k!”
I responded, “Why?” Here’s his response:
“Greed has no place in my America that I’ve stuck my neck out for. Why would anyone need that much? It’s un-American, anti-Christian, and anti-any reasonable measure of righteousness.”
[He has served in the USAF in Iraq and other foreign places, something for which I give him much credit and admiration in spite of his views.]
Hmmm. “Greed?” “Need?” Here was my response:
Do you have a car? Why a car? Don’t your feet work just as well as the next guy’s? Couldn’t you ride your bike? Take a bus? You don’t need a car—give it up.
Do you have a house? Bet it has one bedroom for you and the wife, maybe one for each kid. What do you need a house for? The pioneers made do with tents. Hell, America’s first inhabitants made do with teepees. You don’t need a house. Well, unless you wanted to rent out a room for an immigrant worker, but they shouldn’t need to pay you rent, because you don’t need that income, either.
I’ll bet you heat your house in the winter. And I’ll bet it’s warmer than, say, 50° in there, too. Why? Why not turn the heat off and wear coats all the time? That’s all you really need, isn’t it? Polar bears don’t even have houses, much less heat.
Do you make a decent salary? Is it more than poverty level, $15,000-$38,000, depending on which source you read? Better just turn all the rest of that money in, too. Oh, hell, just burn it in the fireplace. You won’t get much heat from it, but it doesn’t matter, because you don’t need the money or the heat—you’ve got coats!
Bet they’re warm coats… but do you really need to be all that warm? Why not just a sweater? A little shivering does a body good, I always say! You don’t need that warm coat after all!
I see you have an Elmo. [There’s a picture of Elmo with a Guinness at a bar in his profile.] Did you need that Elmo, M.? Didn’t think so. How about that Guinness in the picture with the Elmo? Did you need that beer… really?
Let Elmo drink 80% of that beer that you earned and wanted. See how you enjoy that last 20% and then rethink your concept of “need.”
You may laugh at the absurdity of what I suggest above because you said, after all, that nobody needs more than $200,000 per year in income, and that is indeed a lot of money and it seems, at first blush, to be reasonable.
But why $200,000? Why not $100,000? That’s still a lot of money, isn’t it? How about $80,000? Still a lot—heck, double the highest poverty line for a family of four! $50,000? Hmmm… might be a bit tight, but still more than you need. $30,000? Still tighter… but we can make do, right?
Aw, screw it: just hand over 80% of what you earn, because nobody needs to keep anything more than 20% of what they earn.
Bottom line: The number $200,000 really is an arbitrary number, and isn’t what I object to. What I object to, strenuously and vehemently, is the use of the word “need.” If, at any point, the government decides what I need and what I don’t need, then that is the moment this becomes a socialist state. It is not in any way, shape or form in keeping with the ideals of the founders of this country. I won’t stand for that, nor fight to defend that ideal, and neither should you.
Now there’s an understatement. The article is here.
Best quote from the article:
“The taxing aspect of this is worse than Robin Hood,” said economist Peter Morici, a University of Maryland professor. “[Obama]’s resurrecting class warfare for political gain.”
“We have learned from hard experience that big government only begets big government and high unemployment,” he said. “We have 1970s’ solutions for new-age problems, and it’s just not going to work. People are going to be happy to get some free healthcare for a while, then it’s all going to end in tears.”
I’m not surprised. While other, more mature candidates for President were learning from history, our current president was in high school. Or in law school, where they teach you all kinds of good stuff about economics, right? Or maybe he was organizing in his community… You can really learn about economic history by doing that.
It seem that 52.9% of Americans decided to ignore Obama’s economic ignorance even as they were voting for the leader who will take us through the economic morass that we knew was coming.
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