I've said forever that the repigs don't want a border solution because they need an issue to bludgeon the Dems with. It's just like howling about the debt. They spend like drunken sailors when in power, then the Dems come in to clean up their mess and they howl about the debt! Phony hypocrites, all.
Yep. They lost their favorite wedge issue when Roe was overturned. Now they NEED the border crisis to keep their base fired up. Is this need for nurturing “crisis wedge issues’ a modern political feature? It really seems so to me.
I’m gonna look at that tweet as a glimmer of hope that they are saying the quiet part out loud again and again. Hopefully a delay and capturing it in writing as politically motivated will cause folks who can hold two thoughts in their head to smell the BS they’re trying to sell.
Yes. Because the GOP has no policy ideas or platform or intention to legislate and govern, they can only keep crying "fire" and taking hostages. They have truly become terrorists.
I’m trying to think if there was a moment when the terrorist model became routine. I do recall when it was crime, used to fire up voters; the infamous Willie Horton ads. I think it’s fair to say, the GOP does it deceptively more than Dems do.
Yeah. I don't know of any one standout moment, but more of several moments slowing ramping up the fear-mongering and hatred. I'm not sure if it was about the time of GWB or his dad, but I remember thinking that the GOP was really heavy on fear (rather light considering today's GOP) in their ads and I just could not vote for that.
It feels like there’s been a switcheroo in the fundamentals of political campaigns; the conventional wisdom was that Reagan’s magic with voters was presenting a sunny outlook. “Morning in America”. “Shining City on the Hill”. Not anymore!
Or it might be a trait of their voters, more than the skill of the puppet masters . . . The voters terrify me; I’m shocked at my fellows, I can tell you that!
After Johnson's lame admission re no border security deal, I DO NOT want to hear any more whining from Republicans or their mouthpiece, Sean Hannity, about terrorists sneaking in from Mexico.
Ditto how lawless illegals are stealing our money and all of our jobs.
What we DO want to hear, Jeff, is pointed questions directed to these phonies.
For instance:
QUESTION: You have called the situation at the border a crisis. Please explain your stated position that the United States must not address this "crisis" for a full year.
.
Members of the press can pose such questions. Gary Peters, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, can hold hearings and call Speaker Johnson to testify.
Just a quick compliment. I really appreciate this column. It provides "behind the scenes" insights and reporting that helps understand how things work in the political world (or how they don't). I appreciate the "explainer" aspects. It's also direct and concise. Thanks Joe! (and please keep explaining)
Watching the moron Trump fail to realize he's not the juggernaut he thinks he is will be amusing when he trips over his shoelaces come November and falls on his political fat ass.
"While some pundits will try to convince you that Trump’s behavior shows he is deliberately trying to lose, consider the possibility that 2016 was an anomaly, and he is simply not very good at this."
He isn't very good at it. He is a person that found himself in the right spot at the right time in 2016. That's it.
Most of his Presidency was spent routinely shooting himself in the foot, as is most of his post-Presidency... and his legal issues. The people that love him (for whatever reason) are all in. That is about a third of Republicans. The rest keep getting rochambeaud by him in various ways or they find him disgusting/stupid/crazy. But the extreme partisanship saves him there.
If Donald Trump was actually capable of keeping his mouth shut and behaving with a modicum of decorum, he would have been re-elected in 2020. But he was too busy grandstanding for the people who were already going to vote for him come hell or high water anyway--and giving marginal voters plenty of excuses to NOT vote for him.
He will do the same thing going into the 2024 general election and barring various contingencies, it is likely to cost him the election.
The more the general electorate sees of Donald, the less they like him.
Does anyone have a take on Trump’s conciliatory tone in his post-primary speech? Seems so odd, after wishing his rivals would “rot in hell” as part of his Christmas good tidings. After hearing speech snippets, I wanted to take a shower, it felt so slimy and inauthentic, and somehow calculating.
I think that conciliatory tone vanished today in NY when he unleashed a torrent of "mean tweets " directed at E. Jean Carroll during court proceedings on his broke ass Twitter. Don't know how as electronic devices are not permitted in the court.
Oh thank you - I’ve been too busy to follow the news today. Whew. Now I know all is right with the world if Trump is back to being a vulgar, ignorant bully. That other Trump kinda scared me, for reasons that elude me.
Well that makes the most sense. It would make a good campaign ad for Dems; show the contrast because it highlights the crazy. In general people don’t like unpredictability. Maybe that’s why I felt unsettled at “Nice Trump. Normal Trump.”
I did not hear the speech nor, frankly, do I want to. If he is being conciliatory I would surmise it is because none of these people are now seen as being remotely a threat and so are not worth the time or effort to be mean to... he has too many other things on his plate or eating away at him.
And yes, it is inauthentic as hell. It is another variation on the expression of power dynamics as Trump understands them.
I just heard a couple phrases. It was very ‘kumba-ya’. “Let’s all join together, forget our differences and work as one to solve problems”. (More or less.) The dramatic change made me think his mental illness is worse than I thought. And he also seemed even more orange, if that’s possible.
Haha, yes, that’s very plausible. I had the weird sensation that “normal, gentle, collaborative Trump” was scarier than mean, angry, vulgar Trump. One expects Cruella DeVille to stay cruel!
I am not sure that it is scarier, but it is certainly creepier.
In those situations, it comes across as him doing something he has been told to do or vaguely understands that he should do--only doing it with his weird narcissistic spin, which makes it creepy.
According to dictionaries, "holding an indicated position, role, office, etc., currently". The Orange Snake isn't the incumbent - he is a former, an ex, a loser. :-) Joe Biden is the only incumbent running.
Yes, the whole Iowa breathless frenzy is growing old. I think it’s a creation of the media. Someone raked in the multiple millions spent on this idiotic race. As always, follow the money.
Iowa has done all it could to support the quasi-institution of its position in the electoral calendar, because sure, it's good for Iowa. No matter who you are, getting to center your political concerns for the whole country is a big deal, and yes, the cash injection to the local economy is nice.
The only problem with it is that it's always Iowa. Iowans are Americans themselves, they don't need to represent anyone else - but so are the people of every other state.
The 110,000 Republicans caucusing (don't get me started on this archaic form of "home-town democracy) represented only 16% of the active registered Republicans (those who voted in 2020). That means Trump was able to bamboozle only about 8% of that electorate.
It's amazing how Iowans do such a con job on American presidential politicians and the nation. They are the least representative population in the nation at 88% White population.
And so many in that state will be complaining how old the candidates are, especially Uncle Joe yet the idiots re-elected Grassley, a discombobulated asshole, who was eighty-eight when re-elected to a six-year term in 2022!!!
I’d like to see the data on how much was spent, per voter, on this ludicrous contest. Maybe we should just hand out money to citizens, and skip this embarrassing horse race. Okay, I decided to do it myself: $123 million spent, divided by 110,000 voters, equals $1,118 per voter. I’d rather have the money, even if it was less than half that! Campaigns are torture for everyone involved.
I believe the $123M represents only the total of *ad buys* by the campaigns and the PACs. It does not include spending "on the ground" for events and staff.
Big hypocrites! Speaker Johnson and his religion suck. Jesus never said watch them drown in the river or let them get tangled in barbwire. Shameful behavior!
"During a call this weekend with members of the House Republican Conference, Johnson said Congress will not be able to address the border issue until his party retakes the White House. That means this “crisis”—the preferred framing of Republicans in campaign mode and conservative media looking to lend them a helping hand—will have to wait at least another year. (Johnson’s position also implicitly requires Republicans to achieve a trifecta by gaining control of both chambers of Congress in addition to the White House, further narrowing the conditions of action that are acceptable to him.)"
-----
Another example of a "crisis" that the members of the New GOP are using to whip up their base without offering *anything* of substance to fix the problem. To them, this isn't an immigration problem (even though both sides of the aisle agree that the southern border is broken), it's strictly a political expediency that they think they can ride to uniparty control of the federal government. To the Psychiatric Facility Escapee Caucus, immigration is a cudgel to be wielded against the Dems, not a problem to be solved.
The Tangerine Troglodyte and his sycophants, minions, toadies and turd polishers will continue to scare the crap out of the MAGAverse with unmitigated promotion of the Great Replacement Theory. The Dems, and some secret cabal of pedophile elitists, will give every immigrant, documented or undocumented, the right to vote so the New GOP agenda gets aborted before birth (an intentional metaphor).
It's just too easy to sway any MAGA knuckle dragger who drank too much from the Kool-Aid punchbowl with a yuge orange turd floating in it. The more fear that is stoked by the MAGA leadership the more likely that the base will do whatever it takes -- including another, possibly successful, insurrection -- to put the Marigold Malignancy back in the Oval Office [turns head and spits three times between index and middle fingers]. Only then will the invading hordes be stopped in their tracks, and America made safe from all of the terrorists, gangbangers and other drug smugglers crossing our porous southern border.
(If I were a terrorist, or anyone else with criminal intent, I'd cross through the northern border with Canada. This border is much longer and much less protected, but this doesn't matter to the MAGAdroids, POC are entering America along the southern border, not the northern.)
It also has mountains, forests, wild predators, winter and polar vortexes. Crossing the Canadian border outside of actual crossings is more challenging. Plus, you have to have money to get to Canada so why not just stay there?
(I assume you are referring to my closing parenthetical)
Everything you say is true, with one exception written below, but in some ways that reinforces my point. If I were a terrorist (lone wolves -- no predator pun intended -- aren't included here) I'd have likely received some training, including on how to move through difficult terrain to avoid detection. And even if I hadn't I'd still likely give this way to cross the border some serious consideration in my planning. It's these features that make being discovered all the harder.
There are predators to contend with along the northern border, but there are along the southern border too. The first that sprang into my head were coyotes: both the four legged and the two. The four legged are out looking for dinner; the two are out there to make a buck. They have no ideological skin in the game so they'll throw you under the bus if it means saving themselves. There is other wildlife out there that are much harder to see and aren't predators but are still deadly, rattlesnakes and scorpions for example.
It's true that the winters, that starts in mid Fall and ends mid Spring, is anything but conducive for infiltration, especially given the climate change that has allowed those polar vortices to dip farther and farther south. OTOH, I used to live near the Canadian border and late Spring through early Fall the weather could be glorious.
The exception I take is your ending question; it begs two key points. It takes money to get to either of our borders. A team coming from overseas can fly to Canada, Mexico or have the group split between the two. Even without counting the money needed for the logistics and training of even a small team of five, the amount needed for travel would be high just in tickets and the cost of fake passports. The second part is "why not just stay there?" The beginning of the parenthetical stipulates that we're talking about terrorists and people with a criminal intent, not immigrants or asylum seekers. They wouldn't be able to achieve their objective by staying in Canada if they're supposed to be in the US, and I don't think their handlers (terrorist) would be ok with that decision.
(Wow, I really do suffer from chronic diarrhea of the fingers and an inability to self-edit. Sorry.)
As to your last two sentences, I know the feeling. I wasn't actually thinking terrorists so much as asylum seekers, but as to your points about terrorists, I think our home grown ones are the much bigger threat. Islamic terrorists would see the terrain as not in their bailiwick (Afghanistan terrorists would be different) which is why the only time we know of that they tried it, they went through an actual vehicle crossing at the Washington border. For me the Southern border is the bigger issue and not just because of asylum seekers, but because the cartels are now making seriously big money in human trafficking. I don't think building a wall is going to change that, nor do I think increasing the Border Patrol is the answer. We need to form a dedicated alliance with Mexico and Central American countries to end the human trafficking component. Need to hit them at the beginning and the end instead of pretending just hitting them at the end is sufficient.
Let me restate Mike Johnson's comment in a different scenario and see if I understand it. My house is on fire and I am frantic to get the fire put out, but only by my fav fire department who are 6 hours away.
What the GoP is doing is why I keep asking the question... what border crisis? Because the reality is that there isn't one unless you happen to be one of the poor victims caught in the machinery of the humanitarian issue that it is.
Otherwise, the reality is that it isn't actually a crisis.
The people hightailing it out of East Germany and the Societ Bloc at the end of the Cold War was an actual border crisis. That crisis helped bring down the eastern bloc. The current "border crisis" will only destroy the country if people vote like there is an actual crisis--it is the perception that will kill, not the reality.
So will the media stop referring to the "crisis at the border" since obviously it isn't really a crisis? Another example of how the media simply allows the Republicans to control the narrative.
Recent numbers are way, way up. It is hard to tell from the news coverage though, because the numbers are always "high" and how long is a piece of string? I found one article recently that did give comparative numbers (sorry, I can't get into my computer right now to dig out the link) and they were pretty impressive. It seems like immigration news coverage always has gaps in it you could drive a truck through. It's frustrating.
"In fiscal year 2023 alone (from October 2022 to September 2023), the United States had two and a half million “encounters” along its 2,000-mile border with Mexico, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That is over two and a half times the number just four years ago."
It's actually a precisely defined term (https://www.dhs.gov/ohss/about-data/glossary#4), and it does mean that people /tried/ to enter the country. (It does not mean that that many individuals made the attempt, since each attempt to cross is logged as a separate encounter and some people try multiple times.) A 2.5-fold increase is nothing to sneeze at, even if it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
More meaningful figures might be, for example, the numbers released from ICE detention into the US, the numbers stuck in Mexican border cities, the numbers seen in nonprofit shelters, the number who make it across /without/ an encounter (however the "experts" guesstimate that) ... it'd be nice to see more of those comparative #s in addition to round-up-the-usual-suspects I-haven't-got-my-byline-out-of-this-yet human-interest stories (sorry for the cynicism), but there's definitely something going on.
A place I volunteered briefly a year ago, when I see pictures now I barely recognize it it's so jam packed with people. Texas's performative little feud with the Border Patrol is literally killing people. New York is drowning and other major cities are heading there. The numbers crossing the Darien Gap are way up too. People blog their way through there now (at least, they say they do; the one I watched looked credible to me). The cartels are much more involved than they used to be. This is not sustainable, and the people it's hurting worst are the migrants themselves. The Rs are misrepresenting the situation in many ways, but a phony crisis it is not.
I absolutely agree the cartels are a major issue and illegals are a major issue. I've been angrified by the fact the red states hit hardest are the States whose representatives refuse to find a bipartisan solution to try and alleviate any of this. Their only solution seems to be to ship immigrants to blue cities and force Dems to suffer the consequences. It can't be to force Dems to find a solution because the border states representatives won't work to find one. It seems it's just the cruelty involved in sending illegals north to an ugly winter and force them into a winter of misery. I truly am beginning to intensely dislike this rendition of the GOP. The cruelty really is their only point.
If you'd like to change the subject of this sub-thread from "whether there's a crisis" to "what should be done about it," we can do that.
It's cold on the border, too. Border communities are broke, too. There's no reason the border communities should be expected to shoulder this challenge by themselves. If the numbers are overwhelming in Denver or New York, they're overwhelming in Eagle Pass and Brownsville too. Blamestorming won't fix this. No human being is illegal; you might want to stick to more neutral terms like "undocumented" or "unauthorized" (and when in doubt it's usually safer to refer to human beings with nouns, such as "people," rather than adjectives). It is not the people who are the problem, it is the failure to manage them. It is not the states that are at fault, it is their representatives in Congress. It is not Dems suffering the consequences, it's migrants.
I wonder if there really is a solution. Immigration pressures are global. There are over 30 million war/conflict/political refugees world wide and then add to this the economically driven immigrants.
Libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute think that making entry for work easier and changes in America's drug policies would help reduce human trafficking and undercut the drugs market upon which the cartels thrive.
The imbalance between the "haves" and "have nots" is so overwhelming (and the way us "haves" got our "have" is so tainted, at least regarding the economic drivers of this) that for sure there's no easy solution -- all the more reason that turning this into a political football, and delaying /attempts/ to solve it, is obscene. I am no Christian, but I do remember that when "Lazarus ate the crumbs from the rich man's table," it did not end well for the rich man.
Thanks for the great link, but it doesn't go to the Cato Institute piece. Any chance you could post that too?
Sure Mike Johnson kick it down the road! You cannot satisfy your little group of severe right MAGAs.
You all have made them so live with them! No leadership in sight! Including you, Mr. Speaker! Why would MAGA want to help solve the on-going border problem because you would have nothing to fight about. And for heaven sakes, you would not want to give President Biden a bit of credit or a win!
If we are talking scary numbers for Orange Tub O' Goo, then lets really get scary. There are 718,901 registered Republicans in the state of Iowa. On 15 January, 110,298 of them showed up to caucus. For the math nerds out there, that is 15.34% of all Republicans in Iowa. His vote tally was 51% of that number. OTOG got...let me see...ah yes--7.8% of registered Republicans in Iowa to vote for him Monday.
Oh yes--MAJOR blowout landslide like has never happened before [Insert eye roll]
I've said forever that the repigs don't want a border solution because they need an issue to bludgeon the Dems with. It's just like howling about the debt. They spend like drunken sailors when in power, then the Dems come in to clean up their mess and they howl about the debt! Phony hypocrites, all.
They made a mistake with the overturning of Roe. They won't make that mistake again.
Yep. They lost their favorite wedge issue when Roe was overturned. Now they NEED the border crisis to keep their base fired up. Is this need for nurturing “crisis wedge issues’ a modern political feature? It really seems so to me.
I’m gonna look at that tweet as a glimmer of hope that they are saying the quiet part out loud again and again. Hopefully a delay and capturing it in writing as politically motivated will cause folks who can hold two thoughts in their head to smell the BS they’re trying to sell.
Yes. Because the GOP has no policy ideas or platform or intention to legislate and govern, they can only keep crying "fire" and taking hostages. They have truly become terrorists.
I’m trying to think if there was a moment when the terrorist model became routine. I do recall when it was crime, used to fire up voters; the infamous Willie Horton ads. I think it’s fair to say, the GOP does it deceptively more than Dems do.
Yeah. I don't know of any one standout moment, but more of several moments slowing ramping up the fear-mongering and hatred. I'm not sure if it was about the time of GWB or his dad, but I remember thinking that the GOP was really heavy on fear (rather light considering today's GOP) in their ads and I just could not vote for that.
It feels like there’s been a switcheroo in the fundamentals of political campaigns; the conventional wisdom was that Reagan’s magic with voters was presenting a sunny outlook. “Morning in America”. “Shining City on the Hill”. Not anymore!
Pretty sad that they are damn good at it!
Or it might be a trait of their voters, more than the skill of the puppet masters . . . The voters terrify me; I’m shocked at my fellows, I can tell you that!
After Johnson's lame admission re no border security deal, I DO NOT want to hear any more whining from Republicans or their mouthpiece, Sean Hannity, about terrorists sneaking in from Mexico.
Ditto how lawless illegals are stealing our money and all of our jobs.
Either put up..or shut up.
What we DO want to hear, Jeff, is pointed questions directed to these phonies.
For instance:
QUESTION: You have called the situation at the border a crisis. Please explain your stated position that the United States must not address this "crisis" for a full year.
.
Members of the press can pose such questions. Gary Peters, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, can hold hearings and call Speaker Johnson to testify.
Good luck with that.
Just a quick compliment. I really appreciate this column. It provides "behind the scenes" insights and reporting that helps understand how things work in the political world (or how they don't). I appreciate the "explainer" aspects. It's also direct and concise. Thanks Joe! (and please keep explaining)
Definitely! Thanks, Joe 🌟 👏
Watching the moron Trump fail to realize he's not the juggernaut he thinks he is will be amusing when he trips over his shoelaces come November and falls on his political fat ass.
Your lips to God's ears sir.
"While some pundits will try to convince you that Trump’s behavior shows he is deliberately trying to lose, consider the possibility that 2016 was an anomaly, and he is simply not very good at this."
He isn't very good at it. He is a person that found himself in the right spot at the right time in 2016. That's it.
Most of his Presidency was spent routinely shooting himself in the foot, as is most of his post-Presidency... and his legal issues. The people that love him (for whatever reason) are all in. That is about a third of Republicans. The rest keep getting rochambeaud by him in various ways or they find him disgusting/stupid/crazy. But the extreme partisanship saves him there.
If Donald Trump was actually capable of keeping his mouth shut and behaving with a modicum of decorum, he would have been re-elected in 2020. But he was too busy grandstanding for the people who were already going to vote for him come hell or high water anyway--and giving marginal voters plenty of excuses to NOT vote for him.
He will do the same thing going into the 2024 general election and barring various contingencies, it is likely to cost him the election.
The more the general electorate sees of Donald, the less they like him.
Yeah, I think there’s a ceiling on the percentage of people you can convince to join a cult.
And the rest of us will crawl through glass to vote against him and Ted Cruz!
Does anyone have a take on Trump’s conciliatory tone in his post-primary speech? Seems so odd, after wishing his rivals would “rot in hell” as part of his Christmas good tidings. After hearing speech snippets, I wanted to take a shower, it felt so slimy and inauthentic, and somehow calculating.
I think that conciliatory tone vanished today in NY when he unleashed a torrent of "mean tweets " directed at E. Jean Carroll during court proceedings on his broke ass Twitter. Don't know how as electronic devices are not permitted in the court.
Oh thank you - I’ve been too busy to follow the news today. Whew. Now I know all is right with the world if Trump is back to being a vulgar, ignorant bully. That other Trump kinda scared me, for reasons that elude me.
Because it makes you wonder if he's actually sane or really, really crazy?
He's really crazy. Don't doubt that.
Prepared remarks. As soon as he went off script he reverted right back to full blown wack job.
Well that makes the most sense. It would make a good campaign ad for Dems; show the contrast because it highlights the crazy. In general people don’t like unpredictability. Maybe that’s why I felt unsettled at “Nice Trump. Normal Trump.”
I did not hear the speech nor, frankly, do I want to. If he is being conciliatory I would surmise it is because none of these people are now seen as being remotely a threat and so are not worth the time or effort to be mean to... he has too many other things on his plate or eating away at him.
And yes, it is inauthentic as hell. It is another variation on the expression of power dynamics as Trump understands them.
He also said that Jimmy Carter is happy that Rosalynn is dead, so there's that.
I just heard a couple phrases. It was very ‘kumba-ya’. “Let’s all join together, forget our differences and work as one to solve problems”. (More or less.) The dramatic change made me think his mental illness is worse than I thought. And he also seemed even more orange, if that’s possible.
Looking at this blind, so to speak, it sounds more like.. okay now everybody needs to get off the stick, shut up and get behind me so I can win.
Haha, yes, that’s very plausible. I had the weird sensation that “normal, gentle, collaborative Trump” was scarier than mean, angry, vulgar Trump. One expects Cruella DeVille to stay cruel!
I am not sure that it is scarier, but it is certainly creepier.
In those situations, it comes across as him doing something he has been told to do or vaguely understands that he should do--only doing it with his weird narcissistic spin, which makes it creepy.
His handlers are having him coopt Biden's positive campaign traits in order to attempt to deflect. It won't work and it won't last.
I truly think his handlers had him sedated so he would just read the teleprompter.
You are not the first person to suggest that he was sedated before the speech. I've read that many times.
Has anyone told Trump that winning 51% of the Republican vote in Iowa is a pathetic underperformance? You're calling this a show of force?
110k GoP showed up to vote out of around 680K GoP in Iowa. Trump got 51% of that 16% that showed up... or around 9%.
Also missing is the interesting fact that most winners in Iowa in recent years disappear. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/13/iowa-caucus-winner-history-presidential-nominee
However, incumbents who have won Iowa (eg, DJT in 2020 - not much of a contest, but Bill Weld was running) have be re-nominated.
According to dictionaries, "holding an indicated position, role, office, etc., currently". The Orange Snake isn't the incumbent - he is a former, an ex, a loser. :-) Joe Biden is the only incumbent running.
Trump winning? 97% are White voters in Iowa! Check the box, huh?
Yes, the whole Iowa breathless frenzy is growing old. I think it’s a creation of the media. Someone raked in the multiple millions spent on this idiotic race. As always, follow the money.
Iowa has done all it could to support the quasi-institution of its position in the electoral calendar, because sure, it's good for Iowa. No matter who you are, getting to center your political concerns for the whole country is a big deal, and yes, the cash injection to the local economy is nice.
The only problem with it is that it's always Iowa. Iowans are Americans themselves, they don't need to represent anyone else - but so are the people of every other state.
RE: Trump's magnificent victory.
Joe,
To add some statistical-cred to your point.
The 110,000 Republicans caucusing (don't get me started on this archaic form of "home-town democracy) represented only 16% of the active registered Republicans (those who voted in 2020). That means Trump was able to bamboozle only about 8% of that electorate.
It's amazing how Iowans do such a con job on American presidential politicians and the nation. They are the least representative population in the nation at 88% White population.
And so many in that state will be complaining how old the candidates are, especially Uncle Joe yet the idiots re-elected Grassley, a discombobulated asshole, who was eighty-eight when re-elected to a six-year term in 2022!!!
I’d like to see the data on how much was spent, per voter, on this ludicrous contest. Maybe we should just hand out money to citizens, and skip this embarrassing horse race. Okay, I decided to do it myself: $123 million spent, divided by 110,000 voters, equals $1,118 per voter. I’d rather have the money, even if it was less than half that! Campaigns are torture for everyone involved.
We have it that Smarmy spent $8 mil and I thought The Caudillo de DeSantistan was close to or over $100 mil.
Chunk in the other eight or so, probably close to $175.
I believe the $123M represents only the total of *ad buys* by the campaigns and the PACs. It does not include spending "on the ground" for events and staff.
Republicans want power over saving lives (in this case Ukrainian lives). Okay, the pro life party, got it.
Big hypocrites! Speaker Johnson and his religion suck. Jesus never said watch them drown in the river or let them get tangled in barbwire. Shameful behavior!
(Psst! They aren’t really followers of Jesus. Jesus was a Democrat.)
Wasn’t he also one of dem “brown people “.
Maybe Jesus never said anything negative about asylum seekers or refugees because he and his parents were themselves. King Herod was out to kill him.
"During a call this weekend with members of the House Republican Conference, Johnson said Congress will not be able to address the border issue until his party retakes the White House. That means this “crisis”—the preferred framing of Republicans in campaign mode and conservative media looking to lend them a helping hand—will have to wait at least another year. (Johnson’s position also implicitly requires Republicans to achieve a trifecta by gaining control of both chambers of Congress in addition to the White House, further narrowing the conditions of action that are acceptable to him.)"
-----
Another example of a "crisis" that the members of the New GOP are using to whip up their base without offering *anything* of substance to fix the problem. To them, this isn't an immigration problem (even though both sides of the aisle agree that the southern border is broken), it's strictly a political expediency that they think they can ride to uniparty control of the federal government. To the Psychiatric Facility Escapee Caucus, immigration is a cudgel to be wielded against the Dems, not a problem to be solved.
The Tangerine Troglodyte and his sycophants, minions, toadies and turd polishers will continue to scare the crap out of the MAGAverse with unmitigated promotion of the Great Replacement Theory. The Dems, and some secret cabal of pedophile elitists, will give every immigrant, documented or undocumented, the right to vote so the New GOP agenda gets aborted before birth (an intentional metaphor).
It's just too easy to sway any MAGA knuckle dragger who drank too much from the Kool-Aid punchbowl with a yuge orange turd floating in it. The more fear that is stoked by the MAGA leadership the more likely that the base will do whatever it takes -- including another, possibly successful, insurrection -- to put the Marigold Malignancy back in the Oval Office [turns head and spits three times between index and middle fingers]. Only then will the invading hordes be stopped in their tracks, and America made safe from all of the terrorists, gangbangers and other drug smugglers crossing our porous southern border.
(If I were a terrorist, or anyone else with criminal intent, I'd cross through the northern border with Canada. This border is much longer and much less protected, but this doesn't matter to the MAGAdroids, POC are entering America along the southern border, not the northern.)
fnord
Do you have your own Substack yet? You should!
fnord
It also has mountains, forests, wild predators, winter and polar vortexes. Crossing the Canadian border outside of actual crossings is more challenging. Plus, you have to have money to get to Canada so why not just stay there?
Ms Kochivar-Baker,
(I assume you are referring to my closing parenthetical)
Everything you say is true, with one exception written below, but in some ways that reinforces my point. If I were a terrorist (lone wolves -- no predator pun intended -- aren't included here) I'd have likely received some training, including on how to move through difficult terrain to avoid detection. And even if I hadn't I'd still likely give this way to cross the border some serious consideration in my planning. It's these features that make being discovered all the harder.
There are predators to contend with along the northern border, but there are along the southern border too. The first that sprang into my head were coyotes: both the four legged and the two. The four legged are out looking for dinner; the two are out there to make a buck. They have no ideological skin in the game so they'll throw you under the bus if it means saving themselves. There is other wildlife out there that are much harder to see and aren't predators but are still deadly, rattlesnakes and scorpions for example.
It's true that the winters, that starts in mid Fall and ends mid Spring, is anything but conducive for infiltration, especially given the climate change that has allowed those polar vortices to dip farther and farther south. OTOH, I used to live near the Canadian border and late Spring through early Fall the weather could be glorious.
The exception I take is your ending question; it begs two key points. It takes money to get to either of our borders. A team coming from overseas can fly to Canada, Mexico or have the group split between the two. Even without counting the money needed for the logistics and training of even a small team of five, the amount needed for travel would be high just in tickets and the cost of fake passports. The second part is "why not just stay there?" The beginning of the parenthetical stipulates that we're talking about terrorists and people with a criminal intent, not immigrants or asylum seekers. They wouldn't be able to achieve their objective by staying in Canada if they're supposed to be in the US, and I don't think their handlers (terrorist) would be ok with that decision.
(Wow, I really do suffer from chronic diarrhea of the fingers and an inability to self-edit. Sorry.)
fnord
As to your last two sentences, I know the feeling. I wasn't actually thinking terrorists so much as asylum seekers, but as to your points about terrorists, I think our home grown ones are the much bigger threat. Islamic terrorists would see the terrain as not in their bailiwick (Afghanistan terrorists would be different) which is why the only time we know of that they tried it, they went through an actual vehicle crossing at the Washington border. For me the Southern border is the bigger issue and not just because of asylum seekers, but because the cartels are now making seriously big money in human trafficking. I don't think building a wall is going to change that, nor do I think increasing the Border Patrol is the answer. We need to form a dedicated alliance with Mexico and Central American countries to end the human trafficking component. Need to hit them at the beginning and the end instead of pretending just hitting them at the end is sufficient.
Let me restate Mike Johnson's comment in a different scenario and see if I understand it. My house is on fire and I am frantic to get the fire put out, but only by my fav fire department who are 6 hours away.
What the GoP is doing is why I keep asking the question... what border crisis? Because the reality is that there isn't one unless you happen to be one of the poor victims caught in the machinery of the humanitarian issue that it is.
Otherwise, the reality is that it isn't actually a crisis.
The people hightailing it out of East Germany and the Societ Bloc at the end of the Cold War was an actual border crisis. That crisis helped bring down the eastern bloc. The current "border crisis" will only destroy the country if people vote like there is an actual crisis--it is the perception that will kill, not the reality.
So will the media stop referring to the "crisis at the border" since obviously it isn't really a crisis? Another example of how the media simply allows the Republicans to control the narrative.
Recent numbers are way, way up. It is hard to tell from the news coverage though, because the numbers are always "high" and how long is a piece of string? I found one article recently that did give comparative numbers (sorry, I can't get into my computer right now to dig out the link) and they were pretty impressive. It seems like immigration news coverage always has gaps in it you could drive a truck through. It's frustrating.
PS: found it: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/09/opinion/immigration-in-one-chart.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Mk0.wVdr.9YKBwoD7Fg6F&smid=url-share
"In fiscal year 2023 alone (from October 2022 to September 2023), the United States had two and a half million “encounters” along its 2,000-mile border with Mexico, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That is over two and a half times the number just four years ago."
"Encounters" is pretty nebulous. Doesn't mean they stepped foot in the US.
It's actually a precisely defined term (https://www.dhs.gov/ohss/about-data/glossary#4), and it does mean that people /tried/ to enter the country. (It does not mean that that many individuals made the attempt, since each attempt to cross is logged as a separate encounter and some people try multiple times.) A 2.5-fold increase is nothing to sneeze at, even if it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
More meaningful figures might be, for example, the numbers released from ICE detention into the US, the numbers stuck in Mexican border cities, the numbers seen in nonprofit shelters, the number who make it across /without/ an encounter (however the "experts" guesstimate that) ... it'd be nice to see more of those comparative #s in addition to round-up-the-usual-suspects I-haven't-got-my-byline-out-of-this-yet human-interest stories (sorry for the cynicism), but there's definitely something going on.
A place I volunteered briefly a year ago, when I see pictures now I barely recognize it it's so jam packed with people. Texas's performative little feud with the Border Patrol is literally killing people. New York is drowning and other major cities are heading there. The numbers crossing the Darien Gap are way up too. People blog their way through there now (at least, they say they do; the one I watched looked credible to me). The cartels are much more involved than they used to be. This is not sustainable, and the people it's hurting worst are the migrants themselves. The Rs are misrepresenting the situation in many ways, but a phony crisis it is not.
Your cynicism is shared. In your posts here you have summarized the situation better than most journalists.
I absolutely agree the cartels are a major issue and illegals are a major issue. I've been angrified by the fact the red states hit hardest are the States whose representatives refuse to find a bipartisan solution to try and alleviate any of this. Their only solution seems to be to ship immigrants to blue cities and force Dems to suffer the consequences. It can't be to force Dems to find a solution because the border states representatives won't work to find one. It seems it's just the cruelty involved in sending illegals north to an ugly winter and force them into a winter of misery. I truly am beginning to intensely dislike this rendition of the GOP. The cruelty really is their only point.
If you'd like to change the subject of this sub-thread from "whether there's a crisis" to "what should be done about it," we can do that.
It's cold on the border, too. Border communities are broke, too. There's no reason the border communities should be expected to shoulder this challenge by themselves. If the numbers are overwhelming in Denver or New York, they're overwhelming in Eagle Pass and Brownsville too. Blamestorming won't fix this. No human being is illegal; you might want to stick to more neutral terms like "undocumented" or "unauthorized" (and when in doubt it's usually safer to refer to human beings with nouns, such as "people," rather than adjectives). It is not the people who are the problem, it is the failure to manage them. It is not the states that are at fault, it is their representatives in Congress. It is not Dems suffering the consequences, it's migrants.
I wonder if there really is a solution. Immigration pressures are global. There are over 30 million war/conflict/political refugees world wide and then add to this the economically driven immigrants.
Libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute think that making entry for work easier and changes in America's drug policies would help reduce human trafficking and undercut the drugs market upon which the cartels thrive.
https://www.carnegie.org/our-work/article/15-myths-about-immigration-debunked/
The imbalance between the "haves" and "have nots" is so overwhelming (and the way us "haves" got our "have" is so tainted, at least regarding the economic drivers of this) that for sure there's no easy solution -- all the more reason that turning this into a political football, and delaying /attempts/ to solve it, is obscene. I am no Christian, but I do remember that when "Lazarus ate the crumbs from the rich man's table," it did not end well for the rich man.
Thanks for the great link, but it doesn't go to the Cato Institute piece. Any chance you could post that too?
Thanks for the links.
Sure Mike Johnson kick it down the road! You cannot satisfy your little group of severe right MAGAs.
You all have made them so live with them! No leadership in sight! Including you, Mr. Speaker! Why would MAGA want to help solve the on-going border problem because you would have nothing to fight about. And for heaven sakes, you would not want to give President Biden a bit of credit or a win!
Happy New Year, Cuteness...
If we are talking scary numbers for Orange Tub O' Goo, then lets really get scary. There are 718,901 registered Republicans in the state of Iowa. On 15 January, 110,298 of them showed up to caucus. For the math nerds out there, that is 15.34% of all Republicans in Iowa. His vote tally was 51% of that number. OTOG got...let me see...ah yes--7.8% of registered Republicans in Iowa to vote for him Monday.
Oh yes--MAJOR blowout landslide like has never happened before [Insert eye roll]
Exactly what I’ve been thinking! 49% want someone else!