That Wall On the Mexico Border?

On that wall President Trump wants to build.

And why it's not likely.


If not actually, totally downright, out and out stupid.

And impossible.

More:

Head Of Border Patrol Union Weighs In On Trump's Wall Plans

Border Wall Would Cut Across Land Sacred To Native Tribe

Landowners Likely To Bring More Lawsuits As Trump Moves 

On Border Wall

Southern Border Wall: Campaign Slogan Meets Reality

The Environmental Consequences Of A Wall On The U.S.-Mexico Border

More "Big Government" from the "Small Government" Republicans

Republicans and so many in the Right Wing swear they're for "small government", almost at any cost yet here is an example from only this week from a declared and very "Red state", full of Republicans, right next door:

Law Proposed To Force Employees To Friend Their Boss On Facebook

You'd think it was coming from some satirical website online like "The Onion" or something but no, it's real:

An Arkansas Senate committee met this week to consider a bill that said employees should be essentially forced to “friend” their bosses on Facebook or other social media websites.

The bill targeted online privacy protections for workers that passed as part of a social media rights law two years ago.

The bill passed in a 91-1 Arkansas House vote in February. It holds that employers could require workers to “friend” them on social media, and that firing for a refusal to add them would be seen as just grounds for termination.

Some employers could be granted even more access to their employees’ accounts, by requiring them to turn over their passwords so that employers could read their private emails.

What's amazing about this is that it's being considered formally and that it's, again, coming from the political party that insists it's all about "small", unobtrusive government.

Keep in mind, however, that it was these same "small government" Republicans who brought us the huge cash boondoggle that is the Homeland Security Department and the Patriot Acts, I and II.

They are also the people that say it's the other political party that is the "big government" group.

One of the Best Things Democrats Have Going for Them Between Now and November 2016

And all they have to do is let it sit there.

On That Stopgap, One Week Measure Congress Passed Late Last Night

For a while there last night, it looked as though the Republicans were going to shut down the government again--a part of it, anyway. Anyone who's been watching this knows they want to do something, anything, about President Obama's attempt to finally, finally, after all these long years, do something about our immigration laws. So, brilliant, generous people they are, these same Congressional Republicans have been trying to come up with a way to not fund the Department of Homeland Security so they can punish the President.

Forget that just a few short days ago some ISIS idiots threatened to blow up the Mall of America and/or some malls in this country. Sure, forget that. All that's important is their political goals for their political party. But we've known that for along time. We've seen and known that since 2008 when our current president got elected. They are committed to putting their political party and their goals for it first, nation be damned. They want to make sure America is no way thriving while they're not in the White House.

Which brings us to today, and last evening's actions in Congress. Economist Robert Reich so rightly penned this today:

Congress passed a one-week extension of funding for the Department of Homeland Security just hours before the deadline on Friday night, but the right-wing Republicans in the House (some of whom were swept in after the 2014 midterms) are determined the next extension will include a ban on the President’s immigration enforcement priorities. And if Boehner doesn’t play along, they’re threatening to oust him as Speaker.

America has a long tradition of white mostly-southern radicals who’d stop at nothing to get their way – seceding from the Union in 1861, repudiating federal laws during Reconstruction, enacting Jim Crow laws, resisting desegregation orders in the 1950s, refusing to obey civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Fast forward to Newt Gingrich's takeover of the House in 1995, and the Gingrich-led government shutdown at the end of 1995. And then the 2011 showdown over raising the debt ceiling. On top of this, Republican-controlled states gerrymandered their districts and repressed the votes of minorities -- giving electoral advantage to the most radical right-wingers they could recruit. And now we're suffering the logical culmination of all this: the largest group of government-hating, racist, homophobic, misogynistic know-nothing, climate-change denying, evolution-denying, science-denying, anti-immigrant House Republicans in history, bent on taking America back to the 19th century.

What's more than a bit bizarre but wonderful and ironic and even hypocritical about all this is the fact, of course, that this very department,  of "Homeland Security" is a whole creation of these same "small government" Republicans through their own "conservative", Right Wing George W "I'm a rocket scientist" Bush. We had the CIA, we had the FBI, of course. Could not a small expansion of one of those handle the issues of "homeland security"? The agency is a well-known, big cash boondoggle. And here they are now, trying to shut it down. If that's not out-sized, delicious , fantastic irony and hypocrisy of the first order, I don't know what is.

And meantime, more of the same, just more of the same from these people.

They won't learn, it seems clear.

God help us. Heaven help us, America. These are our leaders.

On this Republican DHS Shutdown Threat

From Senator Barbara Boxer on the Senate floor, yesterday:

We all know Republicans won in huge numbers in the 2014 election, and they took over the United States Senate and they run it. They run it. Or at least they're trying to run it. And let's be clear, less than eight weeks after they took over the Senate, we are facing a shutdown; a shutdown of the very agency that protects the health, the safety, the lives, of the American people - the Department of Homeland Security.

They're shutting down the program that funds our police officers back home, our firefighters, our first responders. Any way you look at it, this is a national disgrace. And think about what our friends abroad, and those who are not our friends, are thinking about this.

Republicans say, 'Oh, we're in danger, we have to go to go to war, put combat troops on the ground!' But they're wiling to shut down the department that protects Americans here in the homeland, from a terrorist attack.

How does it make sense, at a time when we're facing serious threats to our national security, to furlough 30,000, thirty thousand, department of homeland security workers, and to force more than 100,000 frontline homeland security personnel to work without pay?'

Great questions.

Republicans want SMALL GOVERNMENT, dammit!!!!

They want small government.

Well, unless it's about abortion.

And unless it's about women's reproductive rights.

And unless it's about 2 people of the same sex loving one another.

And unless it's about a new, upcoming car company, challenging the status quo.

And unless it's about tax cuts for "Big Oil."

And unless it's about creating a wholly unnecessary, new agency called "Homeland Security" that happens to make lots of money for the sitting Vice President's multi-million (billion?) dollar company.

And unless it's about gerrymandering district borders for votes for themselves.

And unless it's about tax cuts to offshore manufacturing.

And unless it's about tax breaks for fossil fuels.

Other than that, yeah, they want "small government."

I'm glad we could clear this up.

The NSA?

If you think the NSA tracking us is a big deal, think about it.

We are so easily and simply traceable, it's not funny.

Between our cell phones, our computers and credit and/or debit cards, if virtually anyone wants to know anything about you, there's no difficulty to it at all.

At all.


Now, get out there and have a great weekend anyway.

And don't be paranoid.

The Oh-So Hypocritical Political Party

The political party that says it wants to "shrink government" wants to DOUBLE the number of border patrol agents to our South from 21,000 to 42,000--after it was already doubled once, earlier.

Right.

Got it.

It was that same political party that created the bloated, totally unnecessary and extremely wasteful Department of "Homeland Security."

Yeah.

Small government.

Uh-huh.

On 9/11

I will forever be tired of September 11.

First because it never should have happened. If we merely had in place just a few of the most basic rules of safety and security that Europe and, honestly, the rest of the world has had in place for at least decades, it would never, never have happened.

Second, because it's been so politicized and used as a political football by the very Repubican party who was in charge of our same safety and security at the time, it makes me nauseous.

Third, simply because so many people died and for no reason and that it's just so disgusting and sad.

Pocket knives and box cutters were allowed on airplanes. And George W. Bush "kept us safe for 8 years"?

Good questions for the nuclear industry and their overseers

Great questions I'd like to see asked of our nuclear industry, here in the US and sooner rather than later:

•  Why haven’t operators of nuclear plants been required to rearrange the fuel in reactors and provide sprayers, as the National Academy of Sciences  recommended?
• Why was the Fukushima site required to have only eight hours of battery supply in case it lost power? Why are some U.S. reactors allowed to have only four?
• Why were the backup diesel generators down low at Fukushima, where they might be swamped by a tsunami, rather than up high?
• Are there any sites here in the states with their backup generators in a low position and so, possibly capable of being flooded and incapacitated?
• Why aren’t reactors and sites with potential nuclear bomb material in all countries required to be protected against the kinds of attacks and theft attempts that terrorists and criminals have shown they have the capability to carry out?
• Shouldn’t all such facilities be required to have on-site armed guards, capable of holding off an attack until off-site forces arrive?

From Matthew Bunn, an associate professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former adviser in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is the author of “Securing the Bomb 2010: Securing All Nuclear Materials in Four Years.”

Inquiring minds really do want to know.

Link to original post:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-we-can-reduce-the-risk-of-another-fukushima/2011/03/23/ABpyI3KB_story.html

If Republicans only meant what they said...

I've thought about this for a long time and that is, if Republicans only truly meant what they said, heck, even I might be a Republican.

If Republicans really were for "smaller government" instead of creating the needless, superfluous Homeland Security Agency and burning through millions and billions of dollars, even I might be a Republican.

If Republicans actually lived that they didn't want government in the private lives of Americans, instead of intruding into the literal, physical bodies of women, as well as their private lives, as on the subject of abortion, especially considering that abortion rights have been the law of the land for lo these 38 years, even I might be a Republican.

If Republicans actually lived that they didn't want government in the private lives of Americans, instead of having it, again, intrude on the private lives of consenting adults, into their bedrooms, as with their stances on gay rights and same-sex marriage, even I might be a Republican.

If Republicans really were for the "little guy", the working man and woman of the United States, if they were for the average guy on the street, instead of always pushing for the big corporations--Big Oil, the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, the "military-industrial complex" and every other large company in the country that happens to throw money their way--even I might be a Republican.

If Republicans put the country first, instead of putting their own self interests first and thinking of how it could benefit themselves, even I might be a Republican.  (But I'll admit here, we have far too many government representatives in ALL political parties--not just the major 2--that do this, admittedly, to the detriment of the country).

If Republicans and their political party really were a "big tent" and inclusive and didn't do things like try to kill the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, thus alienating nearly all African-Americans and anyone and everyone else who, like me, happen to think that voting rights are something to be supported and even fought for, instead of denied, then even I might be a Republican.

If Republicans were for clean air and clean water and clean soil for everyone---and not just the wealthy who can get away to their pristine, expensive retreats, wherever those may be--and didn't vote against the Clean Air Act and work against the work that the Environmental Protection Agency does, etc., etc.--heck, even I might be a Republican.

But Republicans don't do these things, they don't act these ways and they've shown themselves to be proponents of BIG government, BIG spending, intruding and intrusive government that gets into the personal lives of Americans and they seem to do virtually everything that is supposed to be the exact opposite of what the party stands for and is supposed to be about.

And time and time again, they show they just don't "get it."

Any of it.

And that is why, today, there is a "Tea Party", folks.  And Libertarians and the Libertarian Party, for that matter.

Even those people had had enough.

A missiile? Over Los Angeles?

How is it a missile gets fired over Los Angeles?

How is that?

How does that happen?

And then, how is it no one knows whose it was?  Or where it came from?  Or what its purpose was?

I find it more than a bit difficult to believe that the government doesn't know something about this.  FBI?  CIA?  "Homeland Security"?  Nothing?  No one?

How safe does that make anyone feel?  An unidentified, unexpected missile gets shot over one of the largest cities in the nation and we don't know why or by whom?  What the heck is that?

Answers anyone?

Bueller?

Link to original post:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101109/od_yblog_upshot/no-one-seems-to-know-where-mysterious-missile-launched-near-la-came-from

Another committee?

After the debacle that was the Bush administration, it seems clear we need government.

We need roads and streets and bridges.

We need the people who respond to fight fires and help people after floods and hurricanes (think Katrina) and all that, sure.

Hey, I'm a left-wing, bleeding heart liberal, as you know if you've read here in the past.

But there is--there has to be--some point at which there really is just too much government.

The Department of Homeland Security is surely one of those.

We've had the FBI and the CIA for years and they're supposed to protect us internally and from outside the country, from threats.

Why did we need to create another large, tax-gobbling bureaucracy to keep us safe?

If the FAA had done its job at our airports and kept people from having pocket knives on-board commercial airlines, chances are the attacks on 9/11 wouldn't have occured. (For that matter, if President George W. Bush, at the time, had read and responded to his Daily Presidential Briefing, which warned him of a possible attack at our airports by Muslim extremists, the attacks on 9/11 wouldn't have happened, but that gets forgotten).

With the current financial/fiscal mess the country is experiencing, the last thing we need is to keep creating positions in the White House and country.

A "Car Czar" comes to mind.

Do we really need a "Car Czar"?

What is the Commerce Department doing?

Can't some person or persons in the Commerce Department keep an eye on the automobile industry and report back to the President on what's happening and what we need to do?

What brings this to mind is President Obama's creation this week of a White House Council on Women and Girls.

As the father of a girl, for starters, and as someone who knows and recognizes that women need support, particularly in this male-dominated world, I know we all need this.

My first reaction to this news was to be against this new council.

Not anymore.

As long as this White House Council is kept small and on target, I think this is nothing but a good development.

Let's just not grow it to take up an entire building.