Nah not really a bunch of his post recently have been like this. It’s very interesting to look at to say the least.
President Trump’s State of the Union Address
At what cost, financially and non-financially? Plenty has been written about the pros and cons of any wall, concrete or not. The geographic problems for construction and legal battles that would be faced would probably take years to resolve. But for me, it’s the case of effectiveness. A wall can be beat by rope, ladders, tunnels, boats where there’s water, planes, trucks at entry points, trebuchets (video!). So there’s that.
I imagine this to be similar in many ways to when Obamacare was passed.
Republicans invoked Thomas Jefferson’s observation that “great innovations should not be forced on a slender majority – or enacted without broad support.”
I wouldn’t consider the wall an innovation, but there just isn’t any support for it.
The wall as proposed would cost about 12 hours’ worth of US government spending (The Economist). So its not too expensive to build and the strengthened border would then require less maintenance, patrolling and policing. It would also have a deterrent effect lasting far into the future to cover circumstances not applicable right now.
But surely there’s an issue of national pride too? The US is proud of itself and should be. But what sort of country can be justifiably proud with a border marked by a shallow muddy river which can be waded?
Whatever the cost, it won’t even be a fraction of what it costs to have illegal aliens burdening our social safety nets. You know, the ones that our country already can’t afford for its own citizens.
And yet, almost every major politician and millionaire hides their houses behind them. Heck, even Beto in his anti-wall speech yesterday, gave the speech behind a wall to hold back his supporters. 
I don’t know any wall-supporter that thinks the wall is impossible to overcome, but they do know it’s a heck of a lot harder than just waltzing across open air. The time it takes illegal border crosser’s to figure out how to get over/under the wall, is just the amount of time our border patrol needs to see and stop it.
Agreed. $5 Bn is not a lot of money. Defense spending per year is like $500-600 Bn I think. And you could look at it as an infrastructure spend… good long term for jobs.
I don’t know about this one. Wouldn’t steel or practically anything other than a concrete or poured wall be easier to build and maintain? Think about some of these places that need a wall, where you most likely have to fly in construction material. As for patrolling and policing, isn’t there a call for more of that from both sides? The issue is people. If US Border Patrol is understaffed, they’re either aren’t enough people to fill the jobs or money to pay them.
Not sure where you’re going with this. Our borders shouldn’t be water? Like the Atlantic and Pacific ocean? Or borders with another country should be constructed?
Agree. Money is being spent there that could be spent elsewhere. But it’s just one expense of many that we could all debate the merits of.
Yea I’ve heard that sound bite, but comparing a wall around someone’s house is nowhere near the same as a wall protecting a border. C’mon now. There’s no wall around the Trump hotel in DC. Does that mean Trump thinks walls are unnecessary? Silly point to be used to justify anything.
I can’t imagine every mile of the border is covered by an agent. If it were, I don’t think we’d be talking about building walls/fences/whatever. If an agent could get to any part of the wall in say 30 min, we wouldn’t be talking about this. But how would the agent even know to go to a specific place? Cameras and sensors. Technology.
US budget is over 4 trillion dollars. We could find tens of billions in just about every line item in the US budget. But this is really a non-issue considering we could build 3,000 miles of border walls every year for how much the US taxpayer pays for illegal alien welfare.
Silly @forexforexforex, doesn’t every building have a wall? What do you think is holding up the roof? I am guessing if you visited a Trump hotel you would walk through the door, not the wall, right? And then every individual apartment is then blocked by what? Ahh, a wall with a locked door. So it’s a building with walls and a door, and inside of it many smaller apartments that are also guarded by walls and locked doors. Sounds like a double-walled structure.
How is a wall around someone’s house not comparable to a wall around a country? It is only different in scale but identical in just about every other way. In the most general sense, walls are there to control the flow of who is/is not allowed to come through the entrances, protect the people inside the walls, keep bad things outside the walls, and to keep the goods inside the walls from being plundered. That applies anywhere from a tiny apartment all the way up to an entire country.
It’s so simple and common sense it hurts.
More great suggestions. We should use cameras, sensor, technology. Even better, it should be cloud based and also incorporate AI. I am serious here, let’s work smarter and not harder.
But if all that technology is doing is telling us someone has already waltzed across the border and disappeared into the interior, it is worthless. Now if we have technology that is telling us someone is “in the act of” going under/over our barrier, now we can perhaps turn them back before they get through.
I don’t know about anyone else but when human traffickers or drug traffickers are waltzing across the border, I would like to be able to stop them well before they disappear into the US interior. It turns out it is harder to bring trafficked children, drugs, and other crime across a border when there is a big 30 foot wall in the way.
On a final note, why do we care about our politicians opinions on the wall? Let’s find out what the border agents need to better do their job. Oh, that’s right, they just went to the capital and overwhelmingly said they need more border barriers. Of course it was all a show for the politicians and they all reverted back to their political talking points.
They sure did. They also had this on their website in January before all the recent DC visits.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190104055705/https://bpunion.org/media-faq/media-faq/
#4 – BORDER FENCES AND WALLS
The NBPC disagrees with wasting taxpayer money on building fences and walls along the border as a means of curtailing illegal entries into the United States. However, as long as we continue to operate under the current NBPS and ignore the problem that is causing illegal immigration, we realize fences and walls are essential.
Walls and fences are temporary solutions that focus on the symptom (illegal immigration) rather than the problem (employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens).
Walls and fences are only a speed bump. People who want to come to the United States to obtain employment will continue to go over, under, and around the walls and fences that are constructed.
Walls and fences will undoubtedly result in an increase in fraudulent documents and smuggling through the Ports of Entry.
Walls and fences do not solve the issue of people entering the country legally and staying beyond the date they are required to leave the country, a problem which will undoubtedly increase as more walls and fences are constructed.
The NBPC position regarding walls and fences is not due to a concern of losing our jobs if fences and walls are built. On the contrary, the NBPC realizes that walls and fences require just as much manpower to protect them. Border Patrol Agents witness what happens to walls and fences when there are not enough Border Patrol agents to protect them.
Everybody has an opinion. That’s the problem. 
Thank you for pointing out the fact that we also need to harshly punish corporations profiting from our porous borders. These are the same companies who line the politicians pockets to ensure the borders will stay porous and that they will never be punished for profiting from it.
Yes, so let’s listen to the opinion of the men and woman on the front lines, not political shills.
Ahh, what do you know, I stumbled upon a survey of 600 NBPC field agents and their opinion of a border wall.
“The NBPC’s survey, of more than 600 agents in two of the Border Patrol’s busiest sectors, found … 89 percent of line agents say a “wall system in strategic locations is necessary to securing the border.” Just 7 percent disagreed.”
That is darn near a consensus I would say.
Let’s see what a California border patrol agent had to say late last year.
“One thing that we saw that we absolutely could [have] used yesterday is infrastructure. As the subjects from the caravan quickly ran through the forces in Mexico, they went to the infrastructure on the east side of our port of entry in San Ysidro,” Hastings said. “In that particular area, we have old landing mat fence, which was from the '90s era and was quickly torn apart if you will by several of the subjects there, who were also throwing rocks and projectiles at our agents. Without a doubt, we could use a wall in an area like that,”
Wow, it turns out when there are hundreds of illegal immigrants storming the border, it becomes a lot easier to stop when there is a large physical barrier in the way. Who woud’uv thunk. I mean… I thought walking through a wall was harder then walking through air, but wasn’t sure until this fine border patrol agent confirmed as much.
Politicians and media have done a great job eliminating common sense from the minds of large portions of our population.
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The Democrat “logic” regarding walls, applied to your house —
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So all in all, there’s no overwhelming reason why a fixed and difficult to cross border barrier would be a really bad idea now, but some argument it could do some minor good now and a great deal of good in the future. Again, I can’t see why any anti-Trump party would want this to be the issue they choose to argue about. He’s much weaker in other areas of policy. And Democrat presidents likewise don’t advocate open borders: if you don’t want an open border policy, you need a physical border barrier.
You are not from around these parts, are you tommor? 
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stan, that made me chuckle. 
I live in Devon in the UK. Apart from the rain, I don’t find a convincing reason to move on from here.
Nutty liberal politics makes the Forex more lucrative.
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We have this thing here where you HAVE to hate ANY idea that Trump has, regardless of how fair and reasonable it may seem to be because Trump is evil.
I’m sure there is nothing like that in UK?
Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic?
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I like it stan.
There’s no saying whether Corbyn is anti-semitic. Until he became Labour party leader he was regarded as a lonely committed Marxist who had somehow become an MP and nobody too the blindest bit of notice of what he said. In fact he rarely appeared in the media for 40 years until now. So nobody knows what he thinks.
But he is anti-Israel and not at all anti towards anti-semitics. Draw your own conclusions.
Dang! You guys always beat us to it, like having Marxist’s before we did!
And thank you for solidifying my conclusion.
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You’re right, Stan.
But, with dingbats like Bernie Sanders and AOC,
the Dummocrats are trying hard to catch up.
Ultimately, it will end up like this: The Ash Heap of History
(as Ronald Reagan famously described it).
But, the question is: How can we stop these fools,
before they turn this country into North Venezuela.
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I think you’ll find that is more down to the political correctness of the snowflake generation and their propensity to “Groupthink” , as promulgated by “Social media algorythms” - but hey who cares ?
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One might wish to mention things like “GAZA Strip” - but some people seem to be above criticism