Tag: Canada

His Walls Don’t Go All The Way To The Top

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Contractors Build Wall “Samples” For Trump To View

“Build The Wall!”

“Build the Wall!” became a poplar chant of the 2016 campaign, along with, ‘Lock Her Up’. While both have all the real world meaning of ‘Gabba Gabba Hey!’, only the former has actually been carried over as presidential policy, having some very interesting effects on cross-border relations both to the south and the north. Even so, the rhetoric about a border wall has a special form of crazy and stupid related to it, greater than nearly anything else Trump has ever said, except perhaps describing “Falling in love” with North Korean dictator, Kim Jung Un.

Berliners Celebrate the End To The Berlin Wall

Very much aside from the assertion that the Mexican government is going to be footing the bill for a wall meant to keep its citizens from cross-border travel, the other challenges are cost and topography, while daunting, are far from insurmountable. Trump’s wall if it extended the entire southern border would crawl across the deserts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas for a total of 1,957 miles. To put that in perspective, the Berlin Wall is 87 miles long, 11 feet high and three feet thick.

Berlin Wall

Building a similar wall between the U.S. and Mexico, while extremely expensive, and needing to be built up mountains and over rivers, is technically possible. Homeland Security estimates the cost at $17 million dollars per mile. Gulp. Do we really have the national will or financial wear-with-all to build such an absurdity, when we are facing a pending infrastructure collapse, a faltering health care system where care is denied to millions of citizens, as well as a staggering and ballooning foreign debt? Just doing a reality check, folks.

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Rough Trade

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Dark Jester

T. K. McNeil

The Trump trunk of disgusting pronouncements is so full that it is damn near impossible to pull out any  one thing President Trump has said in the first 630 plus days of his term that could lead to his undoing. There is just so much to choose from! Although politics is famously unpredictable, his chestnut about how “trade wars are good and easy to win” just might be the spark that incinerates his presidency. Trade wars and tariffs have brought down other administrations.

Puffing And Blustering To Make MAGA

In addition to being laughably incorrect by any logical standard-countries who hate each other (France and Germany for instance) regularly enter into flawed but necessary trade agreements, precisely because trade wars are universally recognized as the greater of the two evils.  On the face of it Trump’s election campaign was about the re-invigoration of the American economy, but truly it was a campaign to convince US voters the world image of the United States was in tatters.  MAGA is all about the Trump voter self-image.The MAGA hat was like Popeye’s can of spinach, it puffed up the wearer’s ego just like spinach puffed up Popeye’s muscles.

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EPA Cuts Cause Potential For Real Harm

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EPA Cuts Cause Potential For Real Harm

D. S. Mitchell

Calamity Politics is a progressive political blog that’s main intention is to improve people’s lives. I’m here again, uncensored and irreverent, raising hell and screaming for attention. I know I’m about 3200 miles from Washington, D.C. but I pray people are aware of the perilous and irresponsible attack on the EPA that is taking place at the hands of the Trump Administration.  The Environmental Defense Fund states flatly, “No federal agency has been singled out for such a large and pernicious budget cut as the EPA”.

Approximately 90% of the American people support strong environmental protections.  It is an all hands on deck emergency if we will be able to stop President Trump’s efforts to gut the EPA budget, thus eliminating many core environmental safeguards. The government has been transferred into the hands of anti-environment extremists whose goal is profit through fossil fuel extraction over the lives of wildlife and our historic national park system.

Trump and the Congress seem to be on a mission to kill our national parks and destroy our environmental protections.  Many lobbyists are sent to Washington paid to convince legislators that relaxing restrictions on the millions of acres of National Parks land would be an economic boom for the country.  The goal seems to be directed toward shifting control from the federal government to the individual states, where those treasured resources can be sold, or licensed to the highest bidder for the systematic extraction of gold, silver, oil, gas, coal, and timber.

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Thinking Aloud

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Thinking Aloud

D. S. Mitchell

Thinking Aloud

I’ve been going to the pool most of the Winter, for my hour of morning exercise. During the good weather, as much as we get here on the Oregon coast, I try to walk 3-4 miles each day. But, once November rolls in, the thought of walking four miles in a down pour is a real turn off. As it is now, some days are nice, and I walk, while others are nasty, and I go to the community pool in Seaside. None of this matters except that I do very little on Sunday, except play on the internet and write for Calamity Politics.

Sunday Afternoon Thoughts

Mom Said

My Mom used to say, “People will dismiss facts, ignore science, and argue the unarguable;  if it’s in the interest of their pocketbook.” I thought for years that she had come up with that on her own, but then one day I saw the quote attributed to New York Yankee catcher, Yogi Berra. Whoever the source I think it is particularly astute.

Start Writing

If you haven’t written a letter to your Mayor, your local newspaper Editor,  your State Legislators, or one of your Federal Legislators, you should do it immediately.  It is a great way to get what’s bothering you off your chest.   The Letter to the Editor is especially rewarding because you can present your beef to the community and garner a few minutes in the spotlight.

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