Immigration

Ten Predictions for Trump 45

I believed that Trump would lose. So strongly did I believe this (because I honestly couldn’t hold out hope for the elusive “hidden Trump voters”) that I decided I would not watch or listen to any media Tuesday night, believing I would be greeted today with ebullient headlines “Historic Hillary Win!”

About 11:30 PM PST Tuesday night I succumbed to my Albert Powell moment from Dirty Harry – “I gots to know.” I was stunned that Trump was ahead at 260 electoral votes to Clinton’s 214. I then watched for a couple of hours, ending with Trump’s surprisingly gracious acceptance speech.  This might just work.

Like virtually everyone else (except the basket of deplorables who crowded every Trump appearance) I had expected his defeat at every point along the campaign. While his recently-exposed locker room braggadocio hadn’t shocked or changed my opinion of the man (I have been in a few locker rooms; men are all pigs) I figured it was one last nail in his coffin in our faint-hearted identity politics society.

Reading the array of commentary today (I even read Maureen Dowd, a shocker) I keep going back to the one insight I had that I feel explains Trump’s win – it was more than attacking the PC world we have come to expect and loathe from politicians.

Trump lanced the festering boil on the regular American’s psyche. Trump relieved the majority of Americans’ cognitive dissonance we’ve been forced to endure for decades, being told by our betters that outrageous things were proper when common sense and decency told us they were not.

He made it OK to recognize that our understanding of the world was not perverted, racist, Islamophobic, sexist or whatever. Real people, those who work hard and try to raise their kids decently and worry about bills and the future, have been forced to accept conflicting beliefs by news media and Hollywood and politicians and educators.

Trump, in his hyperbolic speeches, said things that people had always believed but were afraid to voice because of the guilt culture had imposed. You cannot speak openly against illegal immigration because you are racist, all the while knowing it to be wrong and harmful to the culture and country. You cannot acknowledge that there are real reasons other than racism for certain minorities having higher incarceration rates. It’s wrong to believe that transgender bathrooms make no sense and place children at risk of physical and psychological harm.

When Trump started speaking, in his self-important, coarse and contradictory manner, people were freed from the guilt they had been feeling for so long because they were constantly being told that their actual observations and understanding were abhorrent.

The elites on both sides still get it wrong. We will hear much about how white males with no college carried Trump across the finish line. That ignores the fact that many others had to have voted for him. It betrays the continuing conceit that informed and sophisticated voters could not possibly have believed him a better choice that Hillary. She went to Wellesley and Yale, doncha know?

So I was wrong again and again this cycle. What to do? Make predictions for Trump 45, of course. Here they are:

  1. Republicans in Congress will bring back the checks and balances to the legislative and administrative branches, rediscovering their courage in stopping President Trump’s excesses in the way they were too weak to stop President Obama.
  2. Justice Clarence Thomas will retire after seeing who President Trump nominates to replace the sorely-missed Antonin Scalia. I don’t expect infallibility in nominating justices of the caliber of Thomas and Scalia (remember Ronald Reagan gave us Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy) but I am certain Trump will give us a much better Supreme Court than Clinton would have. While Trump may be in the position to nominate 3-4 Supreme Court Justices, the Court will not move perceptibly conservative but will ward off the leftward swing of recent years.  The First and Second Amendments will remain intact.
  3. Trump’s victory will mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Just kidding. Obama has done that already.
  4. Like all presidents before him, Trump will be exposed to a harsh dose of reality about foreign policy that will moderate many of his positions.       He will be especially shocked by the Stargate program. He will then invest heavily in gold.
  5. James Comey will stay on as FBI director, but his marching orders will change. There will be indictments of players around the Clintons but not of Hillary.  Much as I’d love to see her frog-marched in cuffs I don’t think it will happen.
  6. Melania Trump will be the most beautiful, classy and stylish first lady since Jacqueline Kennedy (no one will ever replace Jackie in the mythos, deserved or not). The press will ignore Melania. She will take on projects that actually help Americans.
  7. President Trump will not receive a Nobel Peace Prize, nor will he be nominated for one two weeks after his inauguration.
  8. Knowing they will not be vetoed, major legislation on healthcare, border security and immigration, and free speech will be passed by Congress.
  9. Some kind of a wall will be built along the US-Mexico border, and security will be enhanced. Mexico will not pay for it.  Millions of illegals will not be deported.
  10. Deficit spending will continue and increase, but at a slower rate than the last 8 years.

I do expect that there will be many cringe-worthy moments during the Trump administration, but there should be some real gains. While Trump was not in my top 5 candidates, he may well be the only one with the ego and brashness to actually change the ingrown culture of corruption and favor-trading that sucks even the brightest and most ideal in Washington into Re-election, Inc.

Advertisement

Geraldo Sophist: Illegal Aliens Not Illegal Because They Have Not Been Convicted

I am a sometimes viewer of Outnumbered on Fox News Channel (noon East Coast, 9 AM here in AZ where we bitterly cling).  Not nearly as good as The Five, but occasionally entertaining.

Geraldo Rivera, who hit his peak during the OJ Simpson trial and has declined since, is a staunch defender of open borders and amnesty.  Yesterday on the show (which features four lovely ladies and one outnumbered man, hence the title), he was blathering about the current border brouhaha.   In one of his usual nonsensical immigration rants he claimed, pulling on his “lawyer” hat (I do not believe he ever practiced, although I believe he did pass some state’s bar exam, too lazy to look up), “Don’t call them illegal, that requires a judicial determination.  (I’m quoting from memory here.)

Sorry, Geraldo.  That’s about as accurate a statement as “There’s amazing loot in Al Capone’s vault!”

A person violates a statute when they violate the statute.  They have committed the violation; they have done something illegal (think “You made an illegal right turn”).  Commission of the crime is different than being convicted of the crime, which happens before a judge or magistrate.  A bank robber is still a bank robber even if they are never caught, tried and convicted.  A person is not illegally in the country just because they have not been caught, appeared before a judge, and been convicted of, for example, 8 U.S.C. § 1325.  They are illegally in the country because they have avoided examination or inspection and entered the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers.  They are illegal aliens, illegal immigrants.  They are not undocumented immigrants, concerned parents from depressed countries, wretched refuse yearning to breathe free, or whatever.  Emma Lazarus was writing about legal immigrants, who passed inspection, waited in line, filled out paperwork, and many of whom were actually sent back to where they came from and never set foot on U.S. soil past Ellis Island.

So wrong. Geraldo.  Yet again.  But said with such conviction!

A Modest Proposal for Dealing with the Crisis on the Southern Border

I’m a simple man, uneducated in the complexities of international diplomacy. Sorta like John Kerry. I admit that. I know solving knotty problems is never as easy as it was when we used to sit around in the hallways of the college dorms playing pinochle all night. We solved every world problem in those days. Adults were so stupid.

But some problems do seem to have simple solutions if you take a step back and accept hard truths.

America cannot solve the world’s problems. The folks who say that we have a moral duty to care for these children no matter what it costs forget that Jesus admonished his disciples that the poor would be with us always. (Matthew 26:11.) They also ignore the demographics of the “children”; the media likes to show pictures of youngsters who have crossed the borders, but the majority are older teens. Since we cannot save all the children, we have to set limits. Thus it’s not a matter of setting limits, it’s a matter of where we set limits. We are talking a matter of degree here. When you say, “So, we should have open borders?” and they say, without thinking, “Yes,” you answer back, “and where will we house them and school their children and give them jobs…” Obviously they have not thought it through. As they sat on the floor playing pinochle all night.

  1.  We forget that we are not the only nation who has a stake here. We act as if we are. What about the countries these children originate from? President Obama is going to speak with the leaders of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. But what is he going to say? “Come get your kids.” Doubtful. “Fix your countries.” Probably not. “We need to get to the facts as to why this is happening and form a committee to make recommendations for action the international community can get behind.” Ah, that’s our president talking now!
  2. It is costing between $250 and $1000 a day to house and care for each illegal (the higher figure if outside services are used, the lower figure if government services like military bases and resources are used).
  3. The government is bussing and flying the illegals around the country to locate sufficient housing to maintain them pending processing before they are released with a paper giving them a court date for them to reappear for a hearing. Make of that what you may.
  4. As many as 90,000 illegals under the age of 17 are expected to be apprehended (read “turn themselves in”; most want to be captured) at the border this year. If the trend continues, 120,000 are expected to turn themselves in next year.
  5. A May 2014 survey conducted by the Border Patrol of apprehended illegals showed that 95% believed that once they were in the U.S. they would receive “permisos” to stay, amnesty under a “new U.S. law”. You know, the one where President Obama announced in 2012 in his executive order that he would not be enforcing part of the immigration law. Oh, I know, how can you remember one out of so many? But they heard down in Honduras. And Guatemala. And El Salvador.

OK. So, here I was, rocking on the front porch and scratchin’ Ol’ Yallar behind the ear and I had a thought. It hurt some, so I wrote it down to get it out’n my head.

Here’s my little plan.

  1.  Interview these folks. The interview consists of one question: “Where are you from?”
  2. House them on a military compound staffed and guarded by our wonderful National Guard folks.  This frees the Border Patrol to actually, you know, patrol the Border.
  3. Clean them up. Feed them. Treat them medically. Give them new clothes, a backpack full of a couple days change of clothes, treats, toys for the young’ns.  I suggest Homer Simpson backpacks with a big “D’Oh!” on the back.
  4. Put them on a military transport back to their country of origin. Shouldn’t take more than 2 days to arrange transport. We own a lot of transports. Maybe their countries could pay for the gas for the return trip? Maybe? Could Kerry negotiate that one? I say yes. He’s that good.
  5. Turn them over to their government.
  6. Let them worry about feeding them, housing them, and getting them back to their families, because it isn’t our problem. They are their citizens.
  7. Total Cost: less than $1000 per person. $90,000,000 for the year. Savings over President Obama’s plan: over $3.6 billion. Say it costs twice as much (this is the government in operation): Savings of $3.5 billion.
  8. Added bonus: It would create such a furor in each of these countries that everyone there would know that it was a waste of time to try to enter the US illegally.

But, you say, “Lester,” I hear you say, “What if their parents are here illegally in the U.S., and want their kids with them?”  I’m all for family reunification.  They were able to come up with $10,000 to get a coyote to smuggle the kid to the U.S., they can afford transportation back to their country of origin to be with their family.  Bueno!  Reunificación!  I am a man of family values.

Senator Cruz, as soon as I get around to setting up a tip jar (do blogs still have those?) you can put a few million in it as a thank you.