Which is the better long term national investment? $12 billion in aid for Houston and hurricane repairs? Or $12 billion to build a wall separating the US from Mexico?

Aren’t you going to need the Mexicans to do the actual rebuilding? No point building a wall yet.

Great point LS. The truth is that either project will require Mexican workers to drive down wages.

12 billion to build a wall separating the colonies from future hurricanes!

Possibly Mexico and Canada should build a wall to keep the Americans out.

Seeing how nuts the states have become lately that is a pretty good idea there @Lightlyseared .

I see a wall on the southern border as a very negative undesirable and damaging thing (not to mention idiotic), so that makes the comparison easy for me.

Well, if they come here to help rebuild the city, they’ll have more money to pay for the wall. It’s a win-win. ~

Why put 12B into repairing Texas if we’re not going to build the wall first to protect it from filling up with brown-skinned illegals? Where is the economic sense in that? If we’re not going to build the wall first, we might as well just sell it back to Mexico like we do with all our old junk. #WallFirst
—Donald J. Trump

Wut?
—George W. Bush

Re-Tweeted by Barack Obama

It’s rather obvious these days that the walls that require building are those between the oceans and our coastal cities.

^^Or between the Donald and the rest of the world.

Are you kidding? Toss out money to help Americans thru a disaster, as opposed to boondoggle bucks for our political cronies? What kind of conservative are you, anyway?

When Trump.was still a candidate, I watched a video of the land where he wants the wall. It was taken from a helicopter. It was just miles of barren wasteland. Extremely hilly, and uneven. Far from most roads that would even supply the materials. It’s a logistical nightmare. Most who seem to know the area say it is already a barrier. It would take days of miserable hiking, with no sources of water,or food. Miles of hills to traverse. Scorpions, rattle snakes, and not much else. Death from exposure is likely, to those trying to undertake the venture. Keeping in mind, that most of those attempting get the journey would have already been through hell trying to get through Central America. By the time they get to Mexico, they are almost out of whatever resources they had.

Oh. And it’s a fucking wall… A wall in the middle of nowhere.

The money needed for the wall would be better spent on almost anything…

I, as a patriot and an American would honestly think that using the $12 billion in aid for Houston and hurricane repairs are the American thing to do. We all need to help our nation.
However, you are asking, Which is the better long term national investment????
I would have to say,“Build the Wall.” The reason I say this is because we can all pitch in to help our fellow states. But we must protect our United States from illegal immigration and drugs.

McGrimm: When Trump was still a candidate, I saw him helping and giving aid in the Baton Rouge floods while President Obama played golf on the Vinyard!

No dems seem to be helping in Houston— only condemning Melania Trump.

CNN reporting that President Trump is “completely apathetic”

But he is there, on the scene as always.

@Yellowdog How do you know what party the helpers in Houston are? That’s a ridiculous statement.

Long term? The wall. It won’t get blown down or washed away in a flood.

Espiritus Corvus: Obama tweeted THAT? I don’t believe he would be that stupid.

Trump is extremely involved in helping Texas. Obama? The Clintons? Uh, no.

@Yellowdog I’m so glad Trump is doing so much to help those afflicted Texans. But how much is he putting up to help, personally? And how much has he arranged to pay out through government agencies so far that has been actually delivered? He IS “extremely involved” in talking about it…

Where is Hillary? I know Texas is a Red state, but Houston voted overwhelmingly for Hillary.

I’d like to think everyone is working together through this—but look at some of these posts. hat’s why I wrote mine.

Trump is the President; this is his job at this point.

It wasn’t his job in 2015 in Louisiana while Obama visited the Vinyard—yet people on this thread are mocking Trump and quoting Obama’s smearing Trump in this ordeal.

Watch the news. The White House is involved, and Trump is connecting with people.

It was Obama’s “job” as President in 2015 but only Trump was involved.

I only responded at all because of the venomous and snarky comments while Trump, Franklin Graham, The Cajun Army and other groups are actually DOING something.

@Yellowdog .I didn’t criticize Trump’s involvement in Texas. Not once. And I never brought up Obama, or Hillary, or anything about Republicans.

I was strictly referring to the feasibility, and/or need for Trump’s wall.

If you want to make this about Trump, ok.

Let’s see. Trump promised a wall, and that Mexico would pay for it. Like most if Trump’s campaign agendas, the wall was NEVER realistic. And suggesting that Mexico would be forced to pay for it, was ridiculous.

Mexico has again made it crystal clear, that THEY WILL NEVER PAY FOR THAT WALL. NEVER.

Trump has now threatened to shut down the government, unless funding for his wall is allocated.

Now.

Back in reality.

The country’s 4th largest city is underwater. It will take billions of dollars to help those people. Billions more to finish the job. Oh yeah, hurricane season isn’t over yet. So, more money may yet have to be distributed.

While Trump kicks his feet, like a toddler, real life is happening around him. This thread was perfectly relevant to Trump’s detachment from reality. And a perfect illustration of his foolishness.

If anyone really thinks that stupid wall has priority over ANYTHING, they are beyond help…

I recommend you Google Earth the area of the proposed wall. Then get back to me. Make sure you see where the border is directly on the biggest river in the area, for miles. How are they going to build on such inhospitable terrain? How will the materials get there? How many hills, valleys, and obstacles must be leveled just to begin construction? Do you honestly believe that it can even be completed within a realistic time frame,or stay within budget?

That stupid wall is for stupid people, who don’t have the slightest bit of understanding of the reality behind the logistics of the project.

It’s just one example of the thoughtless agenda Trump pushed. And his idiotic supporters, who never bothered to consider the reality of Trump’s claims even being possible.

Sorry to break it to you. The wall is yet another one of Trump’s claims, that will go unfulfilled. The good news is, there is ZERO need for that wall…

Interestingly, Mexico has offered assistance for the flooding, but Trump has not responded. Maybe Trump will divert their assistance toward building the wall, and claim that Mexico really is funding its construction.

@LostInParadise I thought the official line is that Mexico has nothing to offer the US.

Latest estimates are that over $150 billion in federal aid for Harvey hit areas will be required. It was $120 billion for Katrina…

a squadron of f-22s.

It isn’t an “either or” situation. The US government has plenty of money to spend. They just choose to spend a large percentage of it on their military. That being said—- the wall is a completely idiotic idea. Helping one of your major cities recover from a disaster would be a better idea.

The short answer is that illegal immigration is a complex issue, and overly simplistic solutions—like a border wall—demonstrably don’t work and are needlessly expensive (in more ways than one).

Take this analysis on Forbes that explains both the ineffectiveness and the various costs of a border wall.

Or this one from the Christian Science Monitor which again discusses a wall’s ineffectiveness, and looks at several costs distinct from those mentioned in the Forbes article.

Or just take, as an example of a border wall’s ineffectiveness, this video.

Ineffective, costly ideas are bad ideas. Period. I don’t even need the comparison to say the money shouldn’t be spent on a border wall.

So… now that we’ve got $12 billion cleared for Houston recovery, what’s first on the agenda?

What mostly happens along the border is NON-HUMAN ACTIVITY.

Building a retarded wall as if that’s going to “keep out them illegal aliens” not only isn’t going to work, and would be a ridiculous mis-use of resources, but it would also be AN ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER.

Given how flawed the wall idea is on so many levels, and how it’s clearly a political gesture and a nasty xenophobic one at that, one should also add to the list of reasons against the wall: “our reputation and relations with the rest of the world will also be hugely damaged if we let our preposterous president build a horrible border wall.”

As well intended as “patriotic” sentiments in favor of a border wall are, I think the actual patriotic thing is to acknowledge the foolishness and damage done.

The whole idea is anathema to me. I have met and worked with a lot of these “horrible illegals” on my job, and they are good, hardworking, solid people. Only trying to build a better life for themselves. If I was in their boat, I would do the same thing. And they are friendly, I cant count the number of times these guys have given me water or offered to go buy me a Coke, because they were afraid the heat was getting to me. I got no bone to pick with these people at all. A pox on conservatives and that hateful wall. ‘Nuff said. I’m tired of going off on political rants, but I had to get that off my chest.

What stirs my patriotic pride is the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty – “New Colossus”, by Emma Lazarus:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

So to me, the idea of building a giant environmental disaster of a wall all along the border in a pathetic attempt to keep out poor people from South and Central America is the opposite of my idea of American patriotism, with ecological abuse thrown on top.

@Zaku Amen to that one, pardner!

^^Yes.

I watched some kind of senate committee on C-SPAN about a month ago. I could only watch it for a few minutes. Some guy, probably a Democrat, was being grilled about his opinion of the Wall. He quoted the Lazarus poem and pointed out that long before the 1880’s, when the Statue of Liberty was built, this had been the spirit of the American immigration policy and began reading parts of other literary and government documents to support his statement.

But he was cut off. The Senators on the panel started to parse that part of the poem and claim that Lazarus meant something other than what the Senator claimed. Another Senator made statements pertaining to Lazarus’ unrealistic idealism, and on and on. I changed the channel. These guys aren’t patriots. These guys have no good aspirations for America. These guys are disgusting.

I live 1200 miles south of Miami on an independent island republic. We get C-SPAN via satellite. Latin America gets C-SPAN. The world is watching as these leaders destroy America and her ideals.

He should have turned the tables on these self serving, money worshipping maggots. Lazarus meant something other, yadda yadda yadda? Well, how ‘bout this, ass lick – the Second Amendment means something other than that every shit for brains yahoo in 27 counties who has money enough to buy a gun, can run around armed to the teeth? Then watch the bastard foam at the mouth and have a freakin’ heart attack. Dammit I’m sick of these totalitarian ass wads.

@Espiritus_Corvus And here I said I wouldn’t go off on any more political tirades… it’s all the fault of your last post. lol ; )

One more self-erected monument. Sad.