<>Southern Border Drama, and Migrant Issue.

EDITED, prolonged from a stream from my response to discussions/posts in Friends’ Facebook page.

LET us start with the numbers. On the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency, the U.S. encountered unauthorized migrants at the southern border 1.66 million times. From that point to April this year, the surge of illegal migrants, thousands in a day, stayed largely unchecked. And when Title 42 expired on May 11, migrant exodus heightened. 

       Title 42 is a Covid-19 public health restriction that easily affected migrants streaming through the U.S.-Mexico border, signed on Donald Trump’s time. Reason to shut the gates down. Yet weren’t the walls supposedly secured as a border partition? Application to enter requires paperwork? 

       Meanwhile, as migrants practically stepped in and out of the U.S./Mexico demarcation line from 2001 onwards, President Biden got busier with nonstop military aid to Ukraine in its war vs Russia on one hand and on the other, with military intrigue trajectoried at China in South China Sea, hinged on Taiwan.  

       And so as Trump’s indictment hugs headlines on alleged mishandling of top secret documents, which was also leveled at Biden this year, the border crisis stays as is. 

       Google how many migrants are still crossing as we speak… And so they overflowed in Texas, Arizona, and California; crushed fiscal management in New York; and prodded Republican Florida to fly them back to Democrat states. “You want them, there you go! Have them!” Insane, isn’t it?

       And as the neverending Washington partisanship drama continues in/around Donald, Republican firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert, backed by allies, calls for impeachment of Biden over his handling of the U.S. border with Mexico. 🗽🏃‍♀️🏃

MEANTIME, Biden son Hunter’s lingering issues with the law posed distraction or intermission albeit these feed the obvious Biden vs Trump caterwaul. Although the younger Biden’s case doesn’t deal with what I believe should be dealt with, which is his role in Ukraine’s natural gas ruckus, which figured in the eventual impeachment of Trump in 2019. Brings me to the question, what is the worst presidential wrongdoing?    

       What warrant/s impeachment, the ordinary personage may ask: The current handling of support for Kyiv on a losing war, with a $113 billion Congress-approved aid or taxpayer money, and the easy policing of border breaches or the “unconstitutional” storage of sensitive Washington documents by a Potus or his refusal to hand military aid to a corrupt leadership in Ukraine (during his term or in 2019)? Complex, isn’t it? But that isn’t the focal point of this blog entry. I leave the resolution of that case to the “experts.” Anyhow, your response would surely bank on partisanship angst, right? 

       Let’s instead talk of the southern border. 🗽🏃‍♀️🏃

MIGRANTS off the southern border.

       If the border issue is dealt with pragmatically as an immigration and crime issue, it could be solved, I think. Visa/passport etc is a no brainer country to country policy. Meanwhile, asylum isn't a picnic, it is a long process. 

       The U.S. border walls somehow weakened as drug cartel power rose from the 1960s’ street peddlers to more organized traffickers in the 1980s. In no time, narcopolitics juice wobbled leadership in Mexico or Central America. Add the complexities of U.S. trade relations with Mexico. The gate was "opened" wide, in fact a lot wider as partisan politics used the issue as election leverage or Left vs Right joust fuel. Ergo: To say people, especially children, are ferried into the border and across  without cartel facilitation is close to cluelessness. 

       From Félix Gallardo’s cartel reign in Mexico, emerged the Arellano Felix brothers, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, Amado Carrillo etcetera onto Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the most notorious drug lord of all time, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). From Colombia and elsewhere, illicit drugs flowed into the U.S. via the southern border to complement maritime shipments and airborne routes. Yet the land transport, as aided by political laxity, proved to be a most convenient passage.

       Hence, in 2008, the Mérida Initiative, a security cooperation agreement among the United States and the government of Mexico and Central America came into effect. The U.S. Congress authorized $1.6 billion for the three-year initiative (2007–2010) program, and so on and so forth.

       Yet did Merida really work? Mexican cartels generate annual revenues of $35 billion to $45 billion; some assert a profit high of $500 billion a year? Anyhow, cartels make roughly $500 million a year smuggling migrants into the U.S. Other sources claim this source of income has ballooned into a $13 billion industry. 🗽🏃‍♀️🏃

YET the migrant issue is tackled and quite loudly as Democrat vs Republican catfight. I concur with fortifying the border wall and tougher screening of border guards, budget of which is "spare change" ($8 billion, according to Trump’s estimation) compared with the Defense budget ($811 billion? from President Biden’s 2023 request of $886.3 billion) and at least what has been tossed to Ukraine ($75+ billion of the $113 billion approved last year). 

       In other words, the U.S. can effortlessly physically fortify the border and improve enforcement of border security even if Trump’s $8 billion is multiplied 10x or 20x. America has the resources. But then partisanship politics says nope. No way! 🗽🏃‍♀️🏃

Ukraine, Russia, America and this war business. / Talk TV.

A FEW of my responses to discussions/posts in Friends’ Facebook page, slightly edited. 

<>Ukraine, Russia, America and this war business. 

COUNTRIES go to war not because majority of their people want a war. Leadership decides on a war. Political leaders prefer to "settle" differences, ideological animosities and trade competition, via armed hostilities. If all peoples decide to hate each other and refuse to explore ways to find common, shared coolness, then humanity is doomed. Yet it all boils down to domination of the commercial market. 

      Imagine if the rest of the universe hates all Germans, Japanese and Italians (and they hate back as well) on account of World War 2? Ignorance. Yet I don't get it why many hate the Chinese. All they do is sell stuff that we continually buy. Those who say they don't buy anything Chinese, swallow drugs that are made from Chinese API or use a cellphone or laptop that was made in China. 

      Many Ukrainians, mostly celebrities, hate Russians more than the other way around it seems. Before the war started in Feb 2022, there were almost 6 million Ukrainians living in Russia, excluding those who work there. Yet when fighting ensued, 2.77 million Ukrainians fled to Russia. Meanwhile, pre-hostilities, there were between 11 and 12 million Russians living in Ukraine. So why are they killing each other? They are married to each other, kin and friends and neighbors. 

       I mean, my neighbor is a couple from Ukraine and Russia with 4 kids. They have a sticker on their mailbox that says "End the war!"

<>Talk TV.

I DON”T watch "talk TV" or talk shows anymore since I quit journalism and opted to stay in mostly. But from time to time, I listen/watch some blahblah on Fox, MSNBC or CNN via YouTube, just to check what’s this that people are chatting about? News anchors say this, the opposite side say that, stiff that we agree or disagree with. 

       Media people are provocateurs. That provocation to speak our mind is a hallmark of democracy. But abusing it is a different matter. Meanwhile, I try my best to veer away from name calling people on social media, just because they espouse thoughts that are contrary to mine. I chose to read/listen or I just don't whenever I notice retorts that tend to straddle disguised idiocy and crass mojo. 

Yet that is my understanding of America. Accept or reject then hush. I practiced half of my life's journalism within a dictatorship that mowed down or wasted many of my colleagues because they talked too much. Tucker Carlson talks took much, Rachel Maddow talks too much, Piers Morgan talks too much, Joy Behar talks too much. 

       Yet we need voices to balance the heat, contradict each other. Whether we like it or not. Just that I got older and impatient to listen to stuff that “heard those done that” already. I’d rather watch NBA, a TV series with Arrow The Good Doog, Ching The Zing, and Fizz The Wiz.

Trump Spectacle, Christianity Bashing.

A FEW of my responses to discussions/posts in Friends’ Facebook page, slightly edited. 

<>Trump Spectacle, and Stuff.

WHETHER Donald Trump gets jailed or not, it doesn't really matter to me. Honestly, sincerely. But I'd like that the Trump Theater is over soon. Per global perspective, the world (especially U.S. allies) has grown weary and exasperated with Washington infighting and partisanship drama.

Top traditional allies Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Israel have either cozied up to the superpower rival or simply hushed or feigned neutral grounds. Japan and South Korea are just "being nice," politically. But of course the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has massive long overdue quid pro quo to deliver to Washington. So whatever he does for the U.S. is a no brainer, such as thumbs-up to two additional military bases to 7 already existing for years in the islands. 
       What good does an endless Trump demonization do to America? Brag to the world that the United States can prosecute its "rogues," uh huh? Then I will go back in time to enumerate foreign affairs rogueness that crushed many countries, such as the coddling of dictators. And that’d easily include Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. 
There are many issues that are swept under the rug of this endless Trump spectacle. Internal/external. So jail him or whatever. Worse, this primetime TV thriller inflames the other side of the political extreme. We are seeing more violence in the streets, I fear.
       Yet tell me how many Potuses hid/kept documents? President Biden even did. How many Potuses had sexual shenanigans? I am more into prosecuting heads of state for blatant corruption. Other countries jail/ed their leaders, as in straight to the slammer. Most current on the hot seat of leadership murk is Scotland’s ex Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon. I mean, Volodymyr Zelensky keeps massive wealth in offshore banks in British Virgin Islands, Belize and Cyprus. Yet the U.S. continually hands him billions$ in aid or taxpayer money. Purportedly to a war that is bound to be a repeat of the Afghanistan fiasco? A gargantuan wastage of resources and human lives. Why don't Americans talk about that instead? But then the anti war activists are already silenced by the Trump distraction, and that is very sad.  

<>Christianity Bashing, Anti Religion Hate. 

BEST way to deal with religious personages is–ignore them. Let them be. That’d be the most sane course. Religious/irreligious or faithful/secular, we anchor our (unpleasant or pleasant) behavior on personal prejudice or primal angst. Religion/irreligion is simply a cover. 

But then, there seems to be no stopping Christianity-shaming these days. 
       And since people these days get bored fast (despite so many other more sensible stuff to do) and we have this accessible social media media medium to throw whatever comes out of our “restless inertia” a.k.a. funky brain vessel, many aim to pour dark clouds on religion as scapegoat for social ills in our midst. We gotta blame stuff somehow. 
       Yet even before politics got messy and technology got frivolous, humanity has been killing each other because their faiths and beliefs clash. Religion has always been an expression of a people's culture; cultural traditions built villages based on common beliefs (per agriculture, clime and environmental facts, food sense, marriage, family, rituals etc) and alongside, political governance grew as well as business models and trade strategies. 
       Then animosities based on religious fervor and cultural self-righteousness rationale'd territorial grab, racism, commercial zeal, military dominance etc. But if we at least try to see the common positive or universal good in religiosity, like selfless aid in calamity areas and communal rescue initiatives or group-enhanced calm, we might be able to lessen hate. 
       But then trudat, it's boring not to diss Christianity (though it's dangerous to shame Islam so many veer away from that gig). Boredom can be fatal, too. So I thank God/dess there are streaming TV, sports TV, cats and dogs, gardening, cooking etc. Those who don't do these? Expect them to create an anti God meme for attention.