4,000 terrorists crossing the border

[_Kevin Graham]

3. The irony of you supporting illegal immigration but wanting private land ownership is laughable.

Kevin Graham points out that large parts of the land on which Trump's imagined wall would have to be built IS private land, and draws attention to the problems (long, protracted problems) that will inevitably flow from that.

How is that "wanting private land ownership"? It's simply recognising that private land ownership is in place, and that it has certain ineluctable consequences.

Indeed. Subs is just acting like he's dealing with the evidence that's been presented but he hasn't. He doesn't even click on these things. Roughly a third of all eminent domain cases since the Bush administration are still in the courts. Trump claiming these things "can be done quickly" is 100% BS. And all it takes is just one eminent domain case to fail in the courts, which is certain to happen, and suddenly the entirety of the wall is useless by their own logic.

In the tiny brain of that huge brown bald head of his, none of this qualifies as an argument.

[_canpakes]

I did not say i was in favor or not in favor, the point of mentioning that was a deep hope that you would become aware of how easily you presume things as being fact when you have no knowledge of that thing. This is indicative of many positions you take on this board, especially with regards to posters whom you knee-jerk into being different from you.

Again, with the self-awareness issue. You wrote what you did above after asserting just a few days ago that an entire ecosystem dependent upon and interacting with the Rio Grande simply doesn’t exist, when you “have no knowledge of that thing”. And you’re arguing for a wall on the basis of how much of a percentage of the overall US budget that it represents, instead of comparing it to the cost of other relevant methodologies and approaches that are actually related to border security.

You are the single best example of the behavior that you’re complaining about.

The truth is, it is irrelevant if i want the wall or not - the issue is whether the wall is a good idea or a bad idea. If you believe it is a bad idea, then ok - justify it by more than saying "Trump bad man because DNC keeps saying he is bad man".

The case has been laid out for you. And if you’re going to rebut what has presented, you might try to do better than what the President has presented so far, which amounts to “brown people bad terrorists”.

Someone (wink) wrote, in another thread, this sentence:

“Because most American adults understand that politicians talk and talk is cheap and mostly ignored because it seldom, if at all, has real meaning to American life.”

The same applies to Trump’s BS on why we need a wall, what it will cost, and how effective it will be.

[_DarkHelmet]

Maddow's latest politcal queef

Nice. I see Trump's classiness is rubbing off on his followers.

[_Kevin Graham]

Probably the best argument against the wall hasn't even been mentioned yet.

Because it would be illegal.

The 1970 U.S.-Mexico treaty prohibits it.

Much of the government has been shut down for more than 16 days because President Donald Trump insists that Congress fund a border wall that is both a terrible idea and illegal.

The shutdown is because Trump demands extending the existing border walls and barriers to vast areas that make no sense largely because they are in the Rio Grande floodplain. Building barriers in that floodplain was such a problematic idea that a 1970 treaty between United States and Mexico explicitly bans them.

“The president really doesn’t understand the issue,” House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “But we have actually already built a wall across much of the border, and all border security experts that I talk to say, where a wall makes sense, it’s already been built.”

As the map shows, the overwhelming majority of the border, where there isn’t some form of barrier, runs straight down the middle of 1,254 snaking miles of the enormous Rio Grande River.

But the Rio Grande routinely floods. In fact, as ThinkProgress previously reported, flooding has gotten more frequent and more severe in recent years thanks to climate change.

The Trump administration’s own National Climate Assessment concluded in November that “record-breaking flooding events increased over the past 30 years” in the Southern Great Plains (Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas) — and that extreme flooding events are only going to get worse.

But putting barriers in the Rio Grande floodplain was actually banned long before countries started worrying about climate change.

The 1970 “Treaty to Resolve Pending Boundary Differences and Maintain the Rio Grande and Colorado River as the International Boundary” states that the joint U.S.-Mexico International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) “must approve construction of works proposed in either country” along those rivers. It explicitly prohibits the construction of projects “which, in the judgment of the commission, may cause deflection or obstruction of the normal flow of the river or of its flood flows.”

If Trump flagrantly violates the treaty to build his wall, not only will it lead to court challenges, but it will worsen relations with the very country we need to work with if the United States is to improve the border situation.

If it’s not a solid wall, the president has recently suggested the wall could be a “steel slat barrier.” But even steel fencing and barriers are problematic because in a flood they turn into dams that can greatly worsen local flooding.

Indeed, as the Arizona Daily Star reported in 2008, a 5-mile border fence constructed along Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument’s southern border “became a dam” during a flash flood that year.

A 17-page U.S. Interior Department report at the time concluded that because of the fencing, water that normally flowed north to south ended up flowing laterally. As the Daily Star summed it up: “A wash directly west of Lukeville flowed more than 200 feet along the fence and through the port of entry at the international border, causing flood damage to private property, government offices and businesses.”

And that was just a tiny fence during a relatively small flash flood. What happens when a barrier is built that has to withstand floods along the Rio Grande that are so vast they can be seen from outer space — like those from September 2008, captured by NASA’s Terra satellite?

As these events make clear, it’s impractical to build the wall or barrier right next to a huge river like the Rio Grande that increasingly floods. This means it would need to be placed far from the river, potentially miles away.

But as a viral video from former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) recently pointed out, that means the border would “Block access to the Rio Grande” and require seizing vast amounts of land from Texans through eminent domain, which in turn would “Exile hundreds of thousands of acres of the U.S. to a no mans land between the river and the wall.”

The bottom line is that building a concrete or steel wall or barrier along the Rio Grande River is a terrible and illegal idea. And yet, the president is shutting down much of the federal government simply because Congress won’t fund it.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I’ll never understand the GOP hating Mexicans. If they actually understood who they are as a people they could get them as a voting block. Humongous conservative Catholic base.

Idiots.

- Doc

[_Kevin Graham]

I’ll never understand the GOP hating Mexicans. If they actually understood who they are as a people they could get them as a voting block. Humongous conservative Catholic base.

Idiots.

- Doc

People would be surprised how many Cubans/Puerto Ricans vote Republican in South Florida. Cubans because they fear communism and Republicans successfully fear monger on that point. When I lived in Florida, the Puerto Ricans absolutely HATED the Mexicans and they hated it when people confused them with Mexicans. But I think Trump's goofs in Puerto Rico after the hurricane will ultimately hurt him on election day.

[_moksha]

How much would it cost to build something like the Korean demilitarized zone? Or even a minefield-moat-laser turrets-wall combination?

[_subgenius]

How much would it cost to build something like the Korean demilitarized zone? Or even a minefield-moat-laser turrets-wall combination?

The moat is the big ticket item because of the regulatory obstacles involved when excavating - wildlife displacement, environmental impact study, and importing the alligators. Perhaps just a colonial-style locust hedge row? (especially with the added bonus of erosion control).

[_Maksutov]

I’ll never understand the GOP hating Mexicans. If they actually understood who they are as a people they could get them as a voting block. Humongous conservative Catholic base.

Idiots.

- Doc

Not all Republicans are racists but since the southern strategy I would say the majority of American racists are now likely to be Republican. The Wall is a symbol of segregation, not solutions.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I’ll never understand the GOP hating Mexicans. If they actually understood who they are as a people they could get them as a voting block. Humongous conservative Catholic base.

Idiots.

- Doc

Not all Republicans are racists but since the southern strategy I would say the majority of American racists are now likely to be Republican. The Wall is a symbol of segregation, not solutions.

100% true. I think EA made this point on a different thread if I recall correctly, but it bears repeating. If the GOP actually cracked down on undocumented immigrants the economy would collapse. I think, and I haven't googled this, but something like 70% of farm laborers are undocumented immigrants.

If we lost 70% of farm laborers over the course of 1-2 years the country wouldn't come to a grinding halt. It would be a catastrophic event. We don't have enough menial laborers, or rather we have people but they won't do those jobs, to fill that void. And to go to EA's point I believe he made, economic studies have found that for every farm labor job another 1.5 jobs above it are created through factory and processing work, truck drivers, and supermarket employees.

What do we have? Something like 6-8 million farm laborers? If we immediately unemployed them an an additional 11'ish million permanent residents would go without jobs. Believe you me they wouldn't simply hop into crop picking. The pay cut would be unbearable, and then you have things like, say, the grocery worker at your local Walmart is A) too far away from the field, B) not physically fit enough for the work, and C) not skilled enough to tell what is ripe and when. Being a farmhand is actually a skill position. The same is true for packaging plant workers and truck drivers, too. There's a world of difference between canning tomatoes in a plant and picking them in a field. They require hard, hard labor and skill.

On top of that, rural America would cease to exist. Farmers can't harvest their own crops. Those crops would rot in the field. Cows would remain un-milked, and when that happens, if you aren't aware, they stop producing. A field can be replanted, but there aren't enough dairy cows around to replace the entire stock that a dairy farm would lose. Those people would literally never recover. Chicken farms are another one that comes to mind. Fast food restaurants are another. That's just off the top of my head. I can't imagine the catastrophe we'd experience if we shut down the flow of cheap labor.

Now that I'm typing this out, I'm actually having to re-think my whole 'everyone gets a tax ID number' so they can pay into the system. I think the system is designed to function the way it does so we can enjoy cheap food. I don't know. I don't know what the ethical solution is for everyone. Our system works, but it seems to be unethical on a lot of fronts.

The Wall is just a way to galvanize the GOP base through xenophobia. I believe the GOP actually understands that it'll be ineffective to the degree its base wants it to be. It's an impossibility, really.

- Doc