immigration

Open Thread

M. Noonan60 Comments

Our liberals are going nuts over Trump sending troops to the border…apparently working under the weird assumption that our army isn’t supposed to protect our borders. I guess that concept has gotten lost after 70 years of sending our troops into foreign shooting galleries under strict orders not to win.

President Trump is asking for $341,559.50 in legal fees from Team Stormy. No, I don’t know why they didn’t just round it up.

Its a small and very, very weird world:

In a really strange turn of events, it has been discovered that bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc worked at Ultra Gentleman’s Club in West Palm Beach, FL, the same strip club that Stormy Daniels performed at back in April, WPTV reported.

Jair Bolsonaro won the Presidency of Brazil with 56% of the vote and this is being described as a major blow against Democracy…because the people voted the wrong way, you see? The global elite is deathly afraid of that. Now, plenty of people on the right in the USA did laud the victory…but I’d hold off. Let’s see if he’s really the Tropical Trump he’s called, or if he’s a nut before we embrace him.

Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent article on the paradoxes of the immigrants – specifically, the caravan. Mostly centering around the oddity that they want to come here, but they don’t seem to particularly want to be American. I liken it to the barbarians outside Rome in the 5th century…they very much wanted to enjoy the good things of Rome, but they weren’t at all interested in preserving the social structures which produced the good things of Rome. The collapse of Western civilization (which was quite epic) from the 5th to the 10th centuries was simply because of this – and had the barbarians come in and humbly asked to be taught, it would have been a lot different. I’ve come around to the view that all immigration to the United States must cease for a period of at least 20 years. We need to kick out those who won’t assimilate and assimilate those who are willing. And only after that is accomplished can we afford to open the door again.

I didn’t know this – Don Surber notes that in order to get a poll response pool of 737 people, a total of 38,000 calls had to be made. That is a 1.94% response rate. Now, the pollsters tell you this doesn’t matter because those who hang up likely have the same overall opinions as those who don’t. Really? Seriously? I just can’t hold that to be credible – you might be missing some major trends out there. You know, like PA, MI and WI all breaking for Trump…

UPDATE: Trump secures Amazona’s vote for 2020:

President Donald Trump said in an interview that he plans to sign an executive order ending “birthright citizenship” for the children of non-American citizens who are born on U.S. soil, a move that would likely be challenged immediately in the courts over its constitutionality.

The first thing you think is that Democrats will challenge this in court…but, if they do, they have no assurance that the Supreme Court will back them. All they may end up doing is cementing Trump Administration policy. Also: my bet is that most Americans didn’t realize until just now that you can get citizenship merely by being born in the United States, even if of illegal immigrant parents. Democrats should be wary of fighting on this hill.

They won’t be, of course. Because they’re stupid.

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Open Thread

M. Noonan18 Comments

Solution to the Caravan: close the border. Just tell Mexico that nothing crosses the border if that Caravan gets within 100 miles of it. Until the Mexicans turn it around and send it home, nothing gets across in either direction. It’ll cause an economic disruption, but far more in Mexico than here…and even the drug cartels would exert pressure to get the Caravan turned around.

That Trump rally in Texas was astonishing. Just a gigantic, happy crowd. Once again – all the Experts tell us the GOP is doomed on the 6th, but where’s the evidence? Where are the throngs showing up for Democrat events? Heck, where are the early votes? So far, only Nevada has given the Dems a slight edge in early voting, and my bet is that is only because the rural areas of Nevada haven’t checked in as of this moment. As for all the money the Democrats suddenly got – I’m figuring it is laundered money-bags money. Someone pushed the panic button and some big money people shoved money around and made it appear that Act Blue is getting huge small donor money. Of course, we’ll all find out for sure in two weeks.

President Trump remains the ultimate troll:

Trump says that he might nominate Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court, just so the media will investigate her deleted emails

PETA says that milk is a symbol of White Supremacy. It is really getting hard to parody the Left these days.

The actual hero of Telemark has died at the age of 99. A genuine tough guy.

There’s an oddity about the Black Sea – apparently, when sea levels changed ages ago, the “original” Black Sea (much smaller than the current one) was submerged…and became a nearly oxygen-free layer of water. The upshot is that deep down in the Black Sea, anything that winds up there gets amazingly preserved, including this 2,400 year old shipwreck. The ship is remarkably intact. And it, while the oldest so far, is merely one of what may be scores or hundreds of such ships. The science guys are pretty committed, from what I can tell, to leaving everything in place…but, I’m not sure. What good does it do down there? My view: find some way to raise as much as possible and preserve it.

Open Thread

M. Noonan19 Comments

An old friend – we first met in 1971 – walked back into my life today. Haven’t seen him since 1987. He first popped up a few weeks ago at another friend’s house…just knocked on his door and said “hello”. Now, he’s called me – using the number the other friend gave him. It is very strange to hear a voice from such a long time ago come back. But, it is also quite splendid. There aren’t, I think, too many people that really get into your heart. This friend is one of them. We only talked briefly – going over the largest aspects of each others lives since we parted. I’m hoping to get together soon so we can really talk over what each of us has done. This shows that true friendship never ends – we were talking as if we’d seen each other last week rather than decades ago. So, a good day for me.

Senator McCain is gone. I’ve obviously had some strenuous political disagreements with him. I’ll leave those aside for a bit. I prefer, right now, just to remember him as a hero of my youth. But I will say I oppose appointing his widow to his seat – there is something, in my view, just terribly un-American in doing that.

Mark Krikorian has something interesting about the Tibbetts murder:

…Tibbetts’s killer is reported to have lived in the United States for seven years, from age 17, and worked at an Iowa dairy farm for four of those years. He worked on the books, having used a stolen identity to get past the Social Security–number check (not E-Verify) used by his employer. His lawyer said that the killer “diligently filed tax returns legally with the IRS.” He had a car registered in someone else’s name and managed to drive for years without a license. He had a child with a high-school classmate of Tibbetts’s, meaning he was presumably listed as the father on the birth certificate.

That’s a lot of interaction with our institutions. That an illegal alien can do all that — for years — without raising a red flag represents a profound failure of policy…

It is that, but John Hinderaker notes that it is something more:

So the Social Security Administration and the IRS are not cooperating in the enforcement of federal law, which is the prime duty of the executive branch, according to Article II of the Constitution. President Trump runs both of those agencies. Why can’t he make them shape up? That question is the key to understanding American politics in the 21st Century.

The government is increasingly just doing whatever it wants. But that isn’t how it is supposed to work. We gave Donald Trump this power – not some unelected bureaucrats. It is very much time that we, the people, start to take charge of our government. One thing we haven’t really considered is that the bureaucrats should be term limited. No one should make a career out of being a bureaucrat. Other than military, perhaps no one should be permitted to work for the federal government for more than ten years?

Some Prog SJW type was just booted by ESPN…likely because ESPN is figuring out that when people tune into sports, they are trying to escape politics for a while.

DNC sets the rule that there has to be an equal number of men and women on their party committees…but, if gender is a social construct, how can they know?

Open Thread

M. Noonan46 Comments

Today is Supreme Court Justice-mageddon! President Trump has said he’ll announce his nominee at 9pm, Eastern. As for me, I’m hoping for Amy Barrett for the exact reason many Conservatives want Trump to shy away: I want the Culture War battle that would ensue. I want, that is, Democrats to out themselves as anti-Catholic bigots. Even if we lose the nominee, it would still work to our long-term electoral advantage.

Mitch McConnell was harassed outside a restaurant by some leftwing nitwits. I wonder if these guys realize that one day, they’re going to do this to someone who will kick their ass? You wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. But I know people who just don’t take this from anyone. It’ll be interesting to see how that will play out.

Appears the betting line on Trump getting a Nobel Peace Prize is 4 to 1. Only people with better odds are the leaders of the two Koreas.

The MSM is trying to gin up a story about how Trump is kicking foreigners out of the military – all it really amounted to was a small number of foreign recruits failed to meet the necessary requirements. This sort of thing is starting to be an in-kind donation to Trump’s 2020 re-election effort. Guys, if you want to stop being called Fake News, maybe stop pushing Fake News? Just spitballin’ here…

I’ve seen the #WalkAway hashtag on Twitter now for about 10 days – the posts are all the story of how a Democrat walked away from that party. Very often, it is Afican-American or other core constituencies of the Democrat party making these statements. Democrats are downplaying it – but the fear has got to be there. Obama got 93% of the black vote in 2012; Hillary got 88% of it: and it was 88% of a significantly smaller number of voters as many African-Americans just stayed home. At 88% of the vote, Hillary still lost, but still could have won…imagine what would happen if it was 85%? Or even 80%? Keep in mind, that is still a crushing victory among that demographic…but at 85%, Democrats likely have no path to 270 electoral votes. And if that vote holds down-ballot, then Democrats would be crushed in the House, as well. We’ll see how it comes out – our first clue will be the votes this November. If there is a significant uptick in GOP support among African-Americans, then the game is up for the Democrats: they’ll be out of power for a generation.

Open Thread

M. Noonan18 Comments

Been getting a lot of Progressives Christiansplaining to me about how God’s command to welcome the stranger means I’m wrong about immigration. I’m not buying it – I will welcome the stranger to my front door…I’ll be less welcoming to a guy I find in my backyard uninvited. Any stranger who wishes to knock on my door in the daytime will find me all full of welcome…just as I believe that we, as a people, should graciously welcome any stranger who presents him or herself at a US Consulate, Embassy or Port of Entry. Meanwhile, strangers trying to sneak in should be greeted differently.

Schumer wants Trump to nominate Garland to heal the national divide – Instapundit noted that all such calls to unify involve the GOP giving the Democrats whatever it is they want. Outside the idiocy of Schumer’s suggestion, it illustrates just how whacked out the left is these days. You might not know it if you are wise enough to stay off Social Media, but the left is obsessive about Garland. Of course, 99 out of 100 of them probably couldn’t pick him out of a lineup – but that doesn’t stop them from feeling psychic pain over the fact that they didn’t get to replace Scalia with a liberal. They had been waiting for the happy situation to arise where one of the Court’s real Conservatives retired or died while a Democrat was President. McConnell took that away from them and they are incensed!

Meanwhile, in keeping with the Left’s sole purpose of getting everyone non-left to wear a MAGA hat by 2020, the left seems to want a fight over Barrett’s Catholicism. If Trump nominates her, he’ll have to report the Democrat reaction as an in-kind donation to his 2020 re-election effort. According to exit polls, 52% of Catholics went Trump in 2016: a fight like this would get Trump to 65% of the Catholic vote in 2020.

Pruitt is out at EPA – he was doing a bang up job reigning in that out of control agency, but his personal actions as Director ensured that as Progressives smelled blood in the water, there was no one around to defend him. It is unfair and yet inescapably true that a GOPer trying to reform anything in DC must not make stupid mistakes…Pruitt should be an object lesson for the future.

Laws (Even Immigration Laws) are Laws

M. Noonan75 Comments

The DNC ordered the MSM to make the detention of people at the border an issue, and now the MSM is full of stories of the heartless, cruel Trump separating families. First, for Amazona (our, “it’s the law, dammit” person…who is correct in all respects on this), we’ll bring this up:

Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. – 8 USC 1325

So, you can see, entering our country illegally is, well, illegal. And there’s no carve out for people fleeing persecution. If you want in, you have to come in legally…and, of course, you can just present yourself at the border and claim refugee status and your case will be judged according to law (and we have a host of carefully crafted laws and regulations just for that). There is no carve-out for someone caught illegally here – or attempting to illegally enter – who says, upon arrest, that he or she is a refugee (though, even here, after detention such a person can still claim refugee status and that case will be judged on its merits, no prejudice attached for the illegal entry). And the bottom line is that neither Mexico nor Canada is a dystopian hellscape…once in either country, it is no problem to go to the closest US consulate and claim refugee status. But, that isn’t what is wanted here. What is wanted is easy entry – and then the chance to disappear into the illegal alien underground, where there are plenty of people willing to help you skirt US law in the matter of your residency.

The use of kids, I think, results from the fact that until just recently, we went very easy on people who showed up with kids. Which astonishes me – we should have been even more strict about that given the amount of trafficking going on across the border. Without a blood test, how in heck would we know if any particular kid presented at the border is the child of the adult with them? New orders from the government have us enforcing the law listed above – if you enter illegally, you’ve broken the law and are held over for trial. Just as if you had broken any other law. Naturally, we won’t imprison kids with adults awaiting trial (for obvious reasons), and thus comes the “ripping families apart” drivel.

There are plenty of countries in the world where, if a person from there showed up here claiming asylum, I’d pretty much automatically give it to them. North Korea; Syria; Somalia; Myanmar; Cuba; Afghanistan; Venezuela; South Sudan; Libya. There are others where I’d be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. But south of the Rio Grande, there’s only one – Venezuela. How much you want to bet not one in a thousand of those crossing are from a place you have to flee from? What we’re getting is people who simply want to move, and who don’t want to wait in line. As for me, I see no good coming out of rewarding people for ruthlessly exploiting children to get a jump on the entry line. Such people seem to me to be the people we’d least like in our country. I mean, think about it: it’s a very long journey through an underground system controlled by some of the most vicious gangsters the world has ever seen. Who would put their child through that?

President Trump is doing the right thing – by enforcing the law, he’s discouraging this cruel practice of exploiting children. Those who are opposing him are de-facto encouraging criminality – in effect, they are lobbying for the criminal gangs who exploit these people trying to come here illegally. I’ve spent the last few days on Social Media with Progressives and Never Trump trying to shame me over this…and nothing has more convinced me of the moral collapse of the Progressives and Never Trump than their bizarre desire to have criminality rewarded in the name of having a talking point against Trump.

Another Open Thread Because I’m Working on a Prequel to the Novel

M. Noonan33 Comments

Everyone has to die. I think all of us go through periods where we wonder why we bother living, at all. Most of us get over it – some don’t, and we have seen the results today. We also saw in Charles Krauthammer the other side of the picture: if there’s anyone who was justified in wallowing in self pity and perhaps eventually deciding to end it all, it was him…but, he never did: and now that he’s facing a known end in just a few weeks, he’s carrying on with grace and courage. I also recall a lady I worked with – dead about ten years now – who was also wheelchair-bound and in really bad shape…but, she kept working, even though she didn’t have to, and was always bright and cheerful. I’ve never known anyone personally who committed suicide, so I don’t really know what that whole situation is like…but it just strikes me as so odd. I can see it, but I don’t really understand it…after all, even the worst day has air to breath, people to see, things to think about and read.

As were were very correctly doing tributes to the heroes of Normandy, it once again occurred to me what a bad general Eisenhower was. The bottom line was that the allied material superiority was so great by the start of 1944 that there was no practical chance of the Germans stopping us – at best, they could slow us down; but the end was inevitable. Choosing Normandy over Calais was a mistake – sure, Calais was better defended, but not that much better…and Normandy only lead to Paris, while Calais lead straight into the heart of Germany…a sort of reverse of what the Germans did in 1940. Add in things like getting caught with his pants down in the Battle of the Bulge, and I get a picture of man who lucked out in being supreme commander of an army which couldn’t lose, and so gained glory he never really earned.

Soros backed a bunch of District Attorney candidates in California and they didn’t fare too well. The larger picture I see is Democrats simply not getting the votes or the money they need to win big in November. Lots of time between now and then, but absent something horribly bad going wrong for Trump or the nation, I’m expecting November to be at worst a draw in the House and a win in the Senate for the GOP…with a slight chance of a mini-red wave showing up.

More to that: California Democrats are pushing a tax break for illegal immigrants. We know how liberal California is…but there has to be a breaking point. Some point where even Californians go, “this is nuts: I’ll vote Republican”. That point may be closer than we suspect.

Trump says he’s willing to back a law which will make the Feds obey state marijuana laws. I’ve long figured the War on Drugs was lost…don’t like it, but the ultimate source of the drug problem isn’t that drugs exist, but that people lack the moral strength to refuse the temptation. Even with that, though, I’d agree to keep them illegal if the attempts to catch drug dealers hadn’t created a surveillance State where we, the people, are watched in all our doings on the theory that one of us may one day decide to become a drug lord. End it – spend the money on treatment.

Iran appears to admit they facilitated the travel of some of the 9/11 conspirators.

There are more job-openings than job-seekers in America. TruCon Muh Principles solution: import more foreigners! Actual Conservative solution: hey, maybe pay the workers a little more.