From The Caucus in the New York Times:
“It’s going to be 20 feet high. It’s going to have barbed wire on the top. It’s going to be electrified. And there’s going to be a sign on the other side saying, ‘It will kill you — Warning.’” At an earlier rally, on the campus of Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tenn., he added that the sign would be written “in English and in Spanish.”According to Edward Wyatt, the listeners at two rallies in Tennessee cheered and applauded Cain's remarks.
Cain added:
“If we have to put troops with real guns and real bullets for part of it, we can do that too."What about the deficit? 2,000 mile fences don't come cheap. But wait! Although I haven't done the math, doing away with Social Security and Medicare might more than cover the cost.
Cain said that some folks had told him his suggestion is insensitive. Has anyone told him to his face that his suggestion is just plain stupid?
Picture from Wikipedia
UPDATE ON IMMIGRATION LAWS: Ormonde at Through the Dust said:
The last [Louisiana] Legislature passed two bills, both requiring employers to use the incompetent but poisonous E-Verify, and we are in danger of even stricter legislation based on the Alabama model. The speaker, Susan Weishar of the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University, shared with us a letter issued by several bishops in Mississippi last February, including Duncan Gray.The entire text of the letter from the bishops in Mississippi is here. It's a fine thing to see the religious leaders stand together against the punitive legislation. The letter is excellent. I hope to see similar action by the religious leaders in Louisiana.
Has he not been paying attention? The fence is already thousands of miles long..... and it ain't working!
ReplyDeleteThe fence is already thousands of miles long....
ReplyDeleteHundreds maybe? And no. What fencing is there is not working. Tunnels?
Which of the GOP candidates proposed digging a huge moat all along the Mexican-USA border and filling it with alligators? Bizarre!
ReplyDeleteOrmonde, Obama made the suggestion as a joke, but Cain thought the moat filled with alligators was a fine idea, just so the moat was covered with electrified barbed wire, too.
ReplyDeleteyeah --640 miles of the approx. 1,900 miles... but there's always been barbed wire and other prevention tactics... I like the alligator idea and a mote in the desert --makes perfect sense!
ReplyDeleteGuess no-one's told these bone-heads about tunnels. They've told the Mexicans, though.
ReplyDeleteYou been following the Guardian's pieces on some of the consequences of Alabama's new immigration law? Check here and here.
margaret, yeah, in the desert. We have a real problem in the country with folks spouting off before they think things through. Whatever happened to looking ahead for the most certain and obvious consequences of your proposals?
ReplyDeleteLapin, more inhumanity and stupidity in Alabama. The courts have temporarily blocked enforcement of parts of the Alabama law. Still, what can be enforced is harsh, and there's no assurance that that the injunctions will stand.
Border protection of any kind, no matter how rigorous, does not work against people with wits and determination.
ReplyDeleteCahty, exactly. How many are caught and sent back, and they keep coming.
ReplyDeleteA thought from David on Facebook: Are we fenced in or out?
Where is President Reagan when you need him? Even he knew that walls don't work.
ReplyDeleteLindy, alongside the present line-up of Republican presidential candidates, Reagan looks better and better. I laughed when I read your comment, but it's not funny.
ReplyDeleteThe hot air blowing down into Mexico can be used to fill balloons to ride back over the border-- just hang on (way above 20´)!
ReplyDeleteThis no-go already makes costly, to our National well being, mistakes! What a guy, unsafe and unsound but swaggering around the GOP (Grandstanding Old Pri*ks).
Excellent, Len...the hot-air balloon idea, I mean. I'd think Cain doesn't have a chance, but you never know. Imagine a campaign between him and Obama.
ReplyDeleteI started to write a long blog post (no! then I stopped) about this, pointing out that "No Country For Old Men" was filmed in the countryside through which Cain would run this "fence."
ReplyDeleteI like to point out to people that a long stretch of the Texas-Mexico border is the rugged Trans-Pecos region, where fences are literally impossible, and where maintaining them well enough to keep people out is a fool's errand. Not to mention the fact Texas is culturally Mexican south of a line roughly from El Paso to Houston. Why would we want to keep our friends and family out of half of the state?
This kind of stupidity simply enrages me, apart from the absolute inhumanity of it.
...the rugged Trans-Pecos region, where fences are literally impossible....
ReplyDeleteRmj, details, details. Cain is running for president of the US. Do you expect him to spend time on the petty details of the terrain of the Trans-Pecos regions? Come now.
Why would we want to keep our friends and family out of half of the state?
Don't ask me, ask your fellow Texans? ;-) Maybe your fellow Texans don't want to keep friends and family out. They should get word to Cain.
Maybe your fellow Texans don't want to keep friends and family out. They should get word to Cain.
ReplyDeleteThere's a reason Perry backed the idea of giving the children of "illegal immigrants" state tuition in Texas public colleges.
And it ain't because he's all compassionate for the "little brown ones."
Bashing the majority of your electorate (i.e., those with Mexican heritage/family) is no way to win elections.
:-)
Ah yes. Perry knows where his bread is buttered. Cain obviously doesn't know where his Texas bread is buttered.
ReplyDeleteA thought occurs to me: Running against Cain could be a real challenge for Obama. What would be the plan?
Rmj, I had not heard that
ReplyDeleteCain now says he was only joking. The it-was-a-joke defense is becoming all too common as people call the idiots(?) on their stupid comments.
Mimi--
ReplyDeleteAs someone noted, that's the default defense of talk-radio babbleheads everywhere (Limbaugh used to insist he was a) joking, or b), a "harmless fuzz-ball").
Apparently, Cain once hosted a talk-radio show. He'll be doing that again before he gets close to living in the White House.
Cain once hosted a talk-radio show.
ReplyDeleteAh, that explains a lot.
Strangely, when I heard comments like that from a blow-hard Republican hear in Albany, he didn't like my counter-suggestion of digging a trench and filling it, not with alligators, which require maintenance and feeding, but with the a fire made of and replenished with right-wing Republicans - they have enough fat, I reminded him, to burn high and bright for quite a while.
ReplyDeleteHis wife thought it funny, but, apparently, he found it offensive, for some reason.
I'm just bein' a patriot, man.
to clarify:
ReplyDelete". . from a blow-hard Republican hear in Albany. . . "
should be:
". . from a blow-hard Republican I frequently hear in Albany. . . "
Mark, very good. You corrected your own mistake. Points for that.
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth did the Republican take offense?