For Democrats, and all the People who detest Trump / The Babe

For Democrats, and all the People who detest Trump, one word of advice: ease up on your giddiness that President Trump is heading for a colossal beat-down in November. Don’t bet the house on it. In fact, Mr. Gripes still thinks Mr. Trump has at least a 50-50 chance to be re-elected.

I understand that possibility will engender a huge depression among those Americans who look at the polls everyday – as I do religiously – and find Mr. Trump consistently four, five, six, occasionally even double-digit points behind Joe Biden in the states that will decide the election – Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, et al – and that has been the consistent theme for a couple of months. 

Yes, the pundits [‘pundit’ is an ugly-sounding word, isn’t it?] assert almost to a man that Donald Trump doesn’t have much time to overcome his numerous electoral-state deficits, and November is fast approaching. Haven’t these ‘experts’ [I use that word cautiously] learned anything at all about Donald Trump? He rises from the scrap heap over and over again, and wins in the end.
 
Mika Brzezinski every morning cites a couple of polls in which the President continues to lose, and insinuates to the TV audience that these polls really are significant; they aren’t actually, they’re simply a ‘snapshot’ at a particular moment, without a shred of any sustaining wisdom. They’re put on the screen simply to pump up viewers’ fervent wishes that President Trump will be finished on November 3. Five minutes after being posted on MSNBC, they’re forgotten by all.

I think the Trump haters have to understand that as President of the United States, Mr. Trump has inexhaustible resources to overcome Mr. Biden. He can manufacture news showing him in a glorious light, he can absolutely lie with impunity, with no consequences, he can even create an international crisis, allowing him to paint his opponents as anti-American, pro-violence adherents.

[An aside: It’s the pathological lying every day, about everything, that is so dispiriting. No one ever dissuades him from this behavior – no one. It just goes on and on. And, for Mr. Gripes, it’s the little lies that drive me nuts: for example, Trump’s out on a golf course a couple of weekends ago, right after Nancy Pelosi accuses him of too much golf amidst the virus, and not enough work. So, what does Mr. Trump proclaim the following Monday?: one, that he plays less golf than Barack Obama did [a blatant lie]; two, he ‘plays fast’, which allows for work time on the course; no, he doesn’t play quickly; it took him 4 hours and 10 minutes to play 18 holes on that Sunday, a very long time considering he’s the only golfer on the course; or, three, ‘I  worked, too, during the round’: pure horse manure: I’ll bet the only ‘work’ he did was order a couple of diet Cokes to be brought to him mid-round; keep in mind he’s a lazy SOB, too. It’s always, always outrageous lies, piled high to the sky .]

Donald Trump, and his much more adept political advisors, may indeed figure out a way to outfox Joe Biden and his Democratic Party. That’s my fear. Trump, with his irrational outbursts, and inability to concentrate on urgent matters at hand, may not be capable of pulling the rabbit out of the hat by himself. But guys like Attorney General Bill Barr are not only smart, shrewd and incredibly ambitious, but also have no moral compass; they, among various stratagems, will certainly try to foment riots all over the country, engendering a lot of white fear among voters. That’s the game plan, and it may work. Law and order and Spiro Agnew, here we go again.



The Babe….During this interminable, exasperating endemic, Mr. Gripes, as has been a habit of his since his teens, read books. A lot of them. Some history, some fiction, and, mostly, biographies. And, strangely, his focus was on old-time baseball – 1920’s, ‘30’s, ‘40’s, ‘50’s  – especially on the stars of those eras, i.e., Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, et al.

And, of course, the absolutely peerless Babe Ruth. Mr. Ruth was GIGANTIC, in every way.

I was drawn to Babe Ruth’s story – a grand American rags-to-riches tale – like a moth to a night light. In terms of star power, Ruth was an exploding nova star, compared to everyone else’s dim headlight, then or now.

Ruth was a ‘natural’ in the truest sense of the word.  One of his biographers, Tom Meany, a 1940’s-50’s sportswriter for the New York Daily News, explained his innate gifts this way:

‘Ruth was an instinctive ball player. He required no more tutoring in the game than a seal pup would in swimming. Babe didn’t need any powers of concentration and study to work on improvements. Babe came full-blown. When he was pitching [and he was one of the best pitchers in the majors when he first came up] he neither knew nor cared whether the batter who faced him stood at the right or left side of home plate, and when he was hitting he never took the time to distinguish between southpaws [lefties] and right handers. They all looked the same to the Babe….Tom Meany, from ‘Babe Ruth’, published in 1947.

It’s been almost completely forgotten these days that Babe Ruth arrived in the major leagues as a 19-year-old left-handed pitcher, and immediately became one of the best. Statistically that era produced the finest pitching in baseball history, and Babe Ruth dominated: in 1916, at 21, he won 23 games, struck out 170, had a 2.28 ERA, and threw 9 complete-game shutouts to boot. But Babe loved hitting, so he soon became an every-day outfielder, and never pitched seriously again. No one now remembers that Babe Ruth pitched, and was an All-Star. Amazing, isn’t it?

Because he was fully formed as a superb and powerful hitter early on, he never developed bad habits foisted on him by incompetent batting coaches. No ‘tweaking’ with that swing. Hitting from the left side, he’d hold the bat – a very heavy 38-ounce model – with the right pinkie finger off the end of the bat, and swing for the fences every time. No ‘Punch-and-Judy’ dribbler down the third base for the Babe. His swing was ferocious, uncoiling from his heels. [No wonder the kids and fans absolutely adored him. I once asked my father about Babe Ruth, and he simply said, ‘Every home run I saw him hit was a thing of beauty.’]

Before I get into some of his career statistics, one historical note should be mentioned: Mr. Babe Ruth, among his achievements, was the savior of baseball as the national game. In 1918, the ‘Black Sox’ scandal occurred, with a half-dozen or so of players on the Chicago White Sox taking money from professional gamblers to ‘throw’ games in that year’s World Series. The plot was discovered afterwards, and several players were banned for life from playing again in the major leagues. Those crimes obviously put professional baseball in a horrible position, and the end of professional baseball became a very definitive possibility.

Baseball got lucky, though: on the heels of the 1918 scandal, 1919 turned out to be Babe Ruth’s ‘coming-out’ year for his incredible talents as a hitter, and specifically, a home run slugger. He hit 37 in 1919, by far the most in the majors, and he was off and running: 54 HRs, 135 runs batted in, and a .376 batting average in 1920: his 54 HR total exceeded every other team’s total in the big leagues that year; then, in 1921, even better: 59 home runs, 168 RBIs, and a .378 batting average. Fans came out to games in the millions to see the Babe smash those majestic home runs, and the game was saved.

The grand exploits of Ruth were not limited to his feats on the baseball field. Supercharged alongside those feats was an incredible ‘extracurricular’ lifestyle off the diamond.  Seemingly a man of inexhaustible energy and drive, the Babe never slowed down for an instance.

Here’s a typical ‘slice of life’ episode from the life of the great Babe Ruth gleaned from an account I read recently:

All of the games when Ruth played were, of course, day games.  Before road games, as he left the hotel to go the ballpark, he’d fill up his room’s bathtub with bottles of beer and ice. After the game, a party would naturally commence in his suite into the early AM hours.

On one such occasion, we find Babe Ruth, buck-naked, sitting in a big chair, swigging from a beer bottle, showgirls all over him, a huge cigar extruding from his mouth. He looks up at Lou Gehrig, his roommate at the time, [as abstemious in behavior as Babe was hedonistic] and, wearing a huge grin, Babe declares, ‘Baseball’s not such a bad life, is it, Lou?’

Babe Ruth roared through life, at full tilt, relishing every moment of an extraordinary life.

‘Mr. Gripes’
By Jim Israel
July 31, 2020

Trump's Still Around / Venezuela's Plight / Our Disastrous Mayor

Not So Fast, Democrats -- On several occasions, with the all-too-obvious backing of much of the ‘independent’ press, the Democrats were going to ‘stick it’ to Donald Trump, and ‘swipe’ a Congressional seat away from the Republicans, paving the way for a Democratic sweep in the 2018 House of Representatives general election.

Four times this year, the Democratic candidate, gleefully riding a palpable anti-Trump sentiment among American voters, was presumed to be a favorite to win the race.

Guess what? Never happened. Republicans: 4 for 4 – Democrats:0 -4- a big fat zero.

The Democrats act shocked that this could have occurred. How is it possible a villain of the proportions of Donald Trump can possibly win and win and win? Don’t voters see through the act?

No, they don’t. And Democrats – that means you Nancy Pelosi and the never-reticent Chuck Schumer – better find superior candidates and offer real substance to voters. Forget all the noise about which bathrooms to use, women’s pay, or immigrant reform; these issues don’t mean anything to people who are surviving from paycheck to paycheck and have been beaten up by the business and political classes for decades – of which, incidentally, both parties are guilty . Nancy, you need to come up with solutions, not more impossible-dream scenarios.

At least, Trump supporters will say, he’s yelling and screaming, and shaking things up. Obama didn’t do any of that: he solicitously took possession of a 425 page policy book, and retired to peruse it quietly in his study until midnight. Too damn quiet for a lot of people.

Mr. Gripes is absolutely not a fan of Donald Trump, not one bit. He’s everything that I abhor in a President: he’s got no intellectual curiosity, he’s a mean, dishonest son-of-a-bitch, he doesn’t care about his American constituency one whit, except as to how it feeds his excessive ego, and, let’s be honest about this, his pocket book and net worth. We’ll never know to what extent while he’s in office, but just imagine how much his family is amassing in terms of his fortune. We all know if we looked under the rock, the picture would be horrific.

Despite all the baggage, the lying, the duplicity, and the blatant incompetency, Donald Trump, unless he resigns, will be with us a long time.

Mr. Gripes has a couple of theories as to why Donald Trump remains in a strong position, despite the predictions of his doom:

Barack Obama : the ex-President appeared for a couple of months to be on permanent vacation, jumping off yachts, snorkeling among the Midway Islands, golfing at St. Andrews in Scotland. I hope you enjoyed yourself, Mr. Obama, because on your return home, you must have realized just getting off the plane you have zero power and influence. Your sycophantic fans think you still have clout, but in the real world, you don’t have any. It was a great run, but it’s really over.
 
To the Trump backers, Barack Obama has been the devil incarnate for a long time, a detested and reviled individual. A Trump supporter might say, ‘Donald Trump beat Hillary, and accomplishing that huge feat, managed to eviscerate and obliterate the Obama-Hillary conspiracy.’ And readers, have you noticed the ‘scorched earth’, anti-Obama policies since January 20? President Trump, like his voters, simply wants all traces of Obama and his eight years of liberal thinking and legislation eliminated.

For that one overriding achievement, the Trump supporters are willing to give the President a huge hug, no matter his outsized faults. ‘We will be eternally grateful,’ is the screed of the Trump crowd. Whatever President Trump does or does not do from now on, he’s done that.

There’s another less obvious possibility why Mr. Trump will probably not face his moment of truth any time soon: the ‘Trump bump’ on Wall Street. Since Mr. Trump’s triumph in November, the stock market has rocketed up. The affluent class in this country – Let’s put it at 25% of the population – has been significantly enriched since November. The upper classes, who were not Trump voters and certainly are still worried about his steadiness, feel less anguish and fear now that their IRAs are fattening up. People feel pretty good right now: as heavyweight Joe Lewis said regarding the check handed to him after one of his successful title fights, “One thing about money: it sure settles the nerves.”

It’s never mentioned by the big-mouths on network television, but Mr. Gripes senses this feeling of enhanced financial well-being among certain Americans mitigates against persistent Trump protests. The one demographic sector -- the upper middle class --that could effectuate regime change remains quiet. That sector was the driving force of Richard Nixon’s ignominious exit; Watergate was the excuse. When that class finally moved against Mr. Nixon en masse, he was finished. We’re a long, long way from that happening this time.



Venezuela --In my mid-teens, for one week during a summer, I accompanied my father to a medical conference in Caracas, Venezuela. My dad enjoyed the company, and both my parents must have figured a short trip to a foreign country might be a ‘learning experience’ for me, instead of wasting my time at home obsessing about Mickey Mantle and his home runs.
 
Well, I did sit in on a cardiology lecture for 45 minutes, observing one enlarged, blood-engorged heart after another. I decided on the spot that my activity for the next three days would be exploring Caracas on my own.

Despite the opulence of the hotel swimming pool, I chose to obtain some ‘carry-around’ money from my dad, and with the admonition not to ‘go too far’ from the hotel, I began to ‘tour’ the city. Caracas, from what I recall, was not a picturesque city, in the tradition of, say, Barcelona or Paris. In fact, it was a drab place, dominated by oil derricks in those days, and resembling New York City somewhat in its grittiness. Sightseeing was not one of its strengths.

But, I discovered, in my sojourns, that the Venezuelans themselves were helpful, kind, generous and very pleasant to a 15-year-old, sheltered boy. [On multiple occasions, shopkeepers would step out into the street, and present to me -- I offered to pay, but was refused – some kind of meat pie that must have been a national dish. I ate a ton of them.]

I always remember with fondness how friendly the people of Caracas were to me, with no ostensible animosity at all. I felt at ease with them immediately.

Maduro

So, when I read these days of the apparent complete breakdown of the Venezuelan state, the political arrests and shootings, the dissolution of its institutions [judicial, economic], the ‘stolen’ elections, I react with two emotions: a profound sadness for those kind people and utter rage at – once again as has been the case since 1917 – the goddamn Communists who run the country.

It’s always been the same story, beginning with Nikolai Lenin taking a train to St Petersburg and starting the Bolshevik Revolution, the monster Josef Stalin, the murderous Mao killing tens of millions of his own citizens, or the psychopathic Fidel Castro, within two months of his ascension to power, executing hundreds of his own citizens and expropriating private property: these criminals  will cruelly treat anyone who may challenge the one-man dictatorship, and then dispose of them quickly via a noose or firing squad or imprisonment.

What’s absolutely stunning about Communists is that the story has been and always is the same: they usurp control with ‘power-to-the-people’ promises, and obliterate the one class that could do wonders for the country: the intelligentsia and the small business owners. Within a short time, without the assistance of the people who actually have the ability to run a country successfully, the Communists manage to destroy the economy, impoverish the citizens, and rule without mercy. They become homicidal psychopaths; holding on to power using any means available becomes the ultimate goal. And, of course, the United States becomes the universal scapegoat for these bastards.

The baboon Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, elected in a free election in 1998, and his successor Maduro are no different: they devastate the national economy [inflation the last time I looked was running at 720% annually!], to the point now citizens can’t get enough food, and Maduro and his henchmen hold on to power through only one means: the gun.

Final portrait of Mussolini

I just hope that Maduro, when he is finally overthrown, is treated just like Benito Mussolini was at the end of World War II: the former dictator of Italy was executed, then hung up, naked, by his ankles, at a public gas station, so his fellow Italians could confirm that he was dead, and then enjoy spitting on him. That would be entirely fitting for Mr. Maduro.



Our Incompetent Mayor – Mr. Gripes, once a card-carrying liberal, has been disenchanted with them for a long time: Conservatives, i.e., Republicans, invariably govern utilizing ill-conceived, cruel and economy-destroying policies alongside hollow promises, but Liberal ones, i.e., Democrats, go one better: they promise the world – balanced budgets, an ‘even playing field’ for all, ‘progressive’ actions without moneyed influence – but they lie, connive and cheat exactly like their Republican colleagues.
 
EVERY politician alive is interested in three things: raising tons of money, destroying his opponents, and getting re-elected. Nothing else, especially sound and responsible policy, matters.

Let’s look at the case of the present mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. A pleasant enough man whom I know from our local YMCA, he’s sadly turned out to be nothing more than another grubby, low-life city pol who’s looking for money virtually every waking moment. Oh, sure, he invariably talks up his ‘progressive’ stances, but it’s a bunch of baloney.

An example: early in his term, a couple of years ago, he advocated, very strongly I might add, replacing the work horses which lead tourist carriages around Central Park, with automobiles [!!]. These electric-run autos would be built along the designs of vintage antique cars, i.e., the Ford Model T. Why the hell, Mr. Gripes wondered at the time, would our mayor look to replace one of the signature city tourist attractions with a car? [Or, as a friend of mine asserted, ‘Like New York needs more cars?’]

My father, long before Watergate, taught his children that ‘if things don’t really make a lot of sense, follow the money streams….’

It turns out that the chief backer of the plan to eliminate the horses and replace with automobiles had donated $300,000 to Mr. de Blasio’s Democratic primary campaign.  The donor was and is a very wealthy real estate developer in the city. That money was subsequently used to buy TV advertising spots which attacked the mayor’s chief primary rival, Christine Quinn. Later, Ms. Quinn was beaten badly in the primary. It turns out that these horses are housed in stables located midtown on the West Side [52nd Street], a property that has long been coveted by real estate developers. Mr. de Blasio’s contributor, whose group ultimately donated $1 million to the full campaign, it seems, wanted very badly to eliminate the Central Park horse-carriage business and empty out the stables. Then builders would bid on the now-unoccupied space, with the winner putting up a high-rise apartment building on the site, netting presumably hundreds of millions in the current red-hot New York real estate market. The way New York City bidding works, guess who’s most likely to ‘win’? 

I don’t think for a moment the developer cared about the welfare of those animals, which was his justification for pushing to eliminate horses in Central Park. Real estate moguls – look at Trump’s sordid history – don’t fret over a matter of a horse’s work load for a second. These guys would run over the horses with their limousines if it meant getting their hands on that valuable piece of property.

Another facet of this plan actually made Mr. Gripes even angrier: the Mayor proposed building a $25 million stable to house the retired horses in Central Park -- public land by the way. $25 million to be paid out of the city budget [NYC taxpayers] for a building that’s to hold maybe 80 horses! This is not a Frank Lloyd Wright design we’re talking about. It’s a horse stable, for God’s sake, a simple, inexpensive construction of some wooden walls and roof; an oil by Cezanne is not required. The entire deal reeks of pure larceny and corruption, and yet the legislation almost passed.

Through divine intervention, perhaps, on the eve of the vote to approve in the City Council – usually a lap-dog organization for de Blasio, akin to Khrushchev’s Politburo --the project was killed. It was even too toxic for our typically brain-dead municipal representatives. Alas, our fine Mayor promises to revisit the entire issue after he’s re-elected. In New York City, big donors ultimately get paid.

Jim Israel, aka Mr. Gripes
July 12, 2017

Media's Crocodile Tears / The Middle East: Enough For Now / The Wall Debacle

Really It’s Not That Bad, Is It, Mr. Tapper? -- It’s been tough sledding for Mr. Gripes since Donald Trump’s election. How on earth is anything he chooses to write about going to compete – on an entertainment level -- with whatever that febrile, infantile brain of the President chooses to  bray about on any given day, or hour, for that matter.

After a long hiatus, I finally realize that the Trump Bizarro-World is a cornucopia of riches for snapping-turtle types like Mr. Gripes.

So, let’s get started:

At the outset, let’s acknowledge one certifiable fact about the circus we are so ravenously feasting on: the media, seemingly horrified and disgusted at the spectacle they’re experiencing up-close, will never acknowledge to stunned viewers that Donald Trump is an absolute godsend to all media: TV and radio ratings have jumped, newspaper subscriptions are going up; [Ironically, the ‘failing’ NY Times, gushing red ink, may prosper again due to Trump], and even stodgy, august publications like the New Yorker are seeing substantially larger subscription numbers.

What this means, predictably, are higher advertising rates, which will engender, naturally enough, larger profits for the entertainment/news corporations. The more outrageous Mr. Trump acts, whisper the TV stations and newspapers, the more the rapt, fascinated ‘viewing audience’ tunes in to see the Big Show -- and the cash rolls in. The media – the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, all of the giants – weep through crocodile tears.

And let’s not forget that not-happening, run-of-the-mill broadcasters -- Jake Tapper and Don Lemon come to mind -- by confronting Trump on occasion and acting so, so aggrieved, are raising their own profiles, which very likely will engender more lavish opportunities down the road. Mr. Tapper, for one, should send a ‘Thank You, Mr. President’ to the White House. 

Now to President Trump: we all are aware of his multiple shortcomings that will not serve him well as President – impatience, megalomania, rashness, greed, cruelty, ignorance, an inability to focus, mythomania [lying], lack of compassion, indolence, a bias toward authoritarianism, and a Manichean world view – but the one trait that stands out to Mr. Gripes is his, and I’m creating a word here, total in-educability. Mr. Gripes senses the President, in his term, probably will never bone up on essential policy issues, whether it’s North Korea, the Chinese military build-up, trade agreements, the burgeoning civil war in the Ukraine, or a thousand other issues. That task would involve solitary work and concentration, verboten to the Trump persona.  He’ll watch news on television, probably Fox, read a magazine or two [‘People’ and ‘Maxim’, most likely, certainly not ‘The Atlantic’], speak to his advisors, but never will he have enough information of his own to make intelligent decisions.

Mr. Trump prides himself on ‘winging it’, just as Mr. Gripes attempted to do when he had not studied for an exam. That particular methodology never worked for Mr. Gripes, and will not work any better for Mr. Trump. In fact, his rampant ignorance will most likely lead to emotional and irrational decisions. His final decisions may simply be based on the opinion of the last person he spoke to. Barack Obama, whatever his faults, did not make rash decisions; Mr. Trump, I’m afraid, will.  I dread the consequences.

The Middle East: Bye-Bye for Now -- Now, after all that, I bring up an issue in which Mr. Gripes finds himself in fundamental agreement with Mr. Trump: the Israel-Palestine quagmire.

First, some telling optics: the President met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a couple of months ago, and afterwards they held a press conference. Mr. Netanyahu sits to Mr. Trump’s right as Trump takes press questions on the Middle East. While Mr. Trump was babbling on, the look on Mr. Netanyahu’s countenance was priceless: he was the ‘cat that ate the canary.’ Smug, seemingly supremely content, almost gloating, the Prime Minister, after the hand-to-hand combat with Barack Obama for eight years, knew he finally had his yes-man in charge. ‘Man, after dealing with that bastard Obama for an eternity, this guy is going to be a piece of cake.’

As for the topic at hand, Mr. Trump announces --- very likely thinking, ‘I don’t know sh_t or even care  about this boring stuff’ -- that  he won’t take sides on the question of one state or two states, and then says, [I paraphrase] ‘in whatever form Israel and Palestine agree on a solution, that’s fine with me. Until then, the United States is hands-off.’ You know, when I heard that, I thought, ‘Trump’s absolutely right – why the hell should this country continue working our collective asses off to get these intransigent enemies to sit down and work out a peaceful solution, when nothing’s worked for 20 years?’

Hell, John Kerry, the feckless former Secretary of State, must have flown in circles around the Middle East 50 times trying to get a deal done, all for nothing. Enough already.  It’s not worth our time or attention until the parties themselves over there make an attempt to sit down and get serious about peace.

There are so many other dangerous, time-sensitive issues that have to be dealt with right now. Our energies should be focused elsewhere.

The ‘Wall’— A little bit of history: France built, between World War I and II, a fortification along the Switzerland-Luxembourg border to prevent another invasion from Germany.  Called the ‘Maginot Line,’ the French reasoned the wall was impregnable -- no longer would goose-stepping German troops come pouring over the open border. One problem, though: no fortification was built up north along the Belgian border.

Needless to say, the wall didn’t work – the Maginot Line is, infamously, one of the great follies of military lore. Germany, in 1940, invaded France by simply going around the wall to the south, through Belgium. Paris fell two weeks later, and all of France capitulated soon after. The well-deserved reputation of the French as military morons has stood to this day.

Well, Mr. Gripes is convinced history is about to repeat itself: the wall along the Mexican border that President Trump is planning to erect promises to be a multi-billion – many, many billions -- calamity, an unnecessary boondoggle that will surely line the pockets of some of Trump’s fat cat supporters, but serve no other purpose whatsoever. By the time it’s completed, the wall will be as useless as an appendix.

Let’s, first, break down some of the initial fanciful cost projections: in the White House budget,  the figure for the construction has been set at $5 billion. No one in the White House or Congress believes that figure for a moment. More reputable analysts who don’t have an ax to grind put the figure at $11 billion. And there’s not one word about the inevitable overruns: Mr. Gripes lives in New York City, just like Mr. Trump, and both of us know no major construction project is completed here without huge overruns of expenditures. Overruns are ‘baked’ into contracts here and elsewhere, as Mr. Trump surely knows. So, let’s double the figure to $22 billion. And that’s just for the construction.

I move on…..This is one huge project, covering about 2,100 miles of border. Some of that terrain is exceptionally rugged, and will be exceedingly difficult to ‘pacify’ even prior to any wall construction. That means an additional huge cost element to the project.

And what about the real estate along the border on which the wall will be built? The government has to negotiate prices for that land with the individual landowners. Indeed, through eminent domain, the federal government can take over privately owned real estate, but that doesn’t mean the whole process is going to be easy. And, once again, that means big delays, more lawyers, more litigation, more court dates, and another huge financial outlay. 

And, adding to the financial slaughter, President Trump has requested in his budget 15,000[!] additional border police, new judges and other personnel, which will lead to a brand-new federal bureaucracy, with all the attendant employee benefits and wages that promise to stretch out for decades.  And, of course, that means additional costs attached to the wall, and a few more billion added to the federal debt each year. 

Finally, perhaps the most salient point: by the time this monstrosity is finished, it’ll be outdated and essentially useless. Let’s suppose this takes 9, 10 years to build: no one has mentioned that technology advances, through much better functioning drones and space satellite surveillance, guarantee blanket electronic coverage along the entire length of the wall. Drones will take over the job of the wall in keeping out immigrants. No one will be unobserved coming over the border, purely via electronic means. Illegals crossing over will not stand a chance amidst all the cameras honing in on them, and capture will be virtually instantaneous. The wall will be obsolete on the day it’s completed – and stand for a very long time as another display of American idiocy and arrogance.

By Jim Israel, aka Mr. Gripes                         
April 18, 2017