O'Really wants the Berlin Wall, but people went over that wall by zip line, tightrope and hot air balloons just for a start. …
Where
the so-called “border crisis” is concerned – that is, the sudden influx
of refugee children – the repugican cabal, its tea party leaders,
conservative pundits, and various ethnic nationalist militias, are
collectively acting like they’re in a bath tub suddenly filling with
cockroaches. The “eww” factor is apparent on their faces as they cringe
back in fear, all the while calling for the exterminator.
This is not the repugican cabal’s finest moment and it is difficult to
see how they think their reaction, which includes demonizing innocent
refugee children, is going to garner them votes either from the Latino
community or from sympathetic independents.
Nor, on a practical level, are their ideas – and I
use that term loosely – to remedy the crisis worthy of serious
consideration. You surely remember Herman Cain’s infamous alligator-filled moat and his plan to fry Mexicans on his electrified fence as they cross the border. We’ve been entertained – and horrified – by plans to invade Mexico.
Back in June Swill O’Really
advocated militarizing our border
with Mexico. Getting together with Britt Hume, he chewed on the idea
that “elected Democrats” 1) don’t want to militarize the border, and 2)
“don’t support tough measures to keep illegal aliens out.”
Hume responded that Democrats’ “convictions fitting
nicely with their politics.” He agreed with O’Really that this is
because it is politically advantageous for Democrats. After all, as he
pointed out, the Latino vote is “growing all the time.”
O’Really opined that “there is a strain of thought
in this country that the Democratic Party actively wants chaos on the
border, actively wants millions of people to come here.” Britt Hume
tried to point to the legalities involved, particularly with the
immigrant children bigots are making such a fuss about, but O’Really
insisted on seeing this as just another layer of a Democratic
conspiracy.
O’Really: You could militarize that border and you could secure that border –
Hume: Bill, suppose you militarize the border and a bunch of kids are coming across. What are you going to do? Shoot them?
O’Really: They wouldn’t get in because there’s be a wall and a barrier there.
Hume: In other words, you’d have a giant wall across our entire southern border to stop the children from coming.
O’Really: To stop everybody from coming.
Hume: I understand that. So that’s the “O’Reilly Plan.”
O’Really: I’d secure that border so
you couldn’t get a jet ski and drive up and get off and walk in. Yes I
would. Am I a mean guy for doing it?
On July 2, Charles Krauthammer appeared on The O’Really non-Factor and advocated a fence:
O’Really: How do you secure the border, Charles?
Krauthammer: Alright, here’s what
I’ve been on for years. You start with a fence. It’s very simple. People
say, ‘Oh, fences don’t work. You make a ladder.’ Well, then you build
two fences, triple strand fences. San Diego did that in the mid 90′s and
within a decade, the illegal immigration rate at that point was reduced
by 90% and people ended up going through other places like Arizona.
If fences don’t work, why is there one around the
White House? If they don’t work, why is it that the Israeli fence which
separate Israel from the West Bank has cut down terror attacks within
Israel by 99%. Fences work. Yes, there are parts of the border where you
can’t have a fence, fine. So you don’t have it in those areas and you
do heavy patrols. But there is no reason why a rich country like us
cannot put a fence across — a double fence, a triple fence and patrol it
all the time. That would have a tremendous impact.
I think Krauthammer is
right, we need a wall and/or a fence in the places along the border that
that is practical. We have to absolutely have that in place.
She also had her own plan:
Ingraham:
OK, first thing you do is start deporting people — not by the hundreds,
not by the dozens. By the thousands. And that means entire families.
Not just a father, a mother. But we keep families unified by deporting
all people who are are here illegally, that’s number one.
[...]
Ingraham: Number two, we have to
stop visas and stop foreign aid to countries who will not repatriate the
citizens of those countries that left and came to our country
illegally. We’re seeing this with Guatemala, [El] Salvador, Costa Rica,
Honduras, some of the South American countries. If they don’t agree to
repatriate their citizens back home and stop sending signals,
implicitly, explicitly, that people should come here, then they get no
foreign aid, we stop all visas from those countries coming in. This is a
crisis, and we have to deal with it in a serious way.
Number three, I think there has to be an end to this
thing called birthright citizenship. Some people call it anchor babies.
But this is not required by our Constitution, it doesn’t require a
constitutional amendment. Harry Reid was for this about 15, 16 years
ago. He went on the Senate floor and proclaimed that we should end
birthright citizenship. So, that should go.
On the
July 16 edition of The O’Really Factor , Swill-O entertained Karl Rove with what he styled Charles Krauthammer’s
concept of the “East German border fence,” aka the Berlin Wall. O’Really
said, “nobody could get through that fence. Nobody. It was a formidable
obstacle.”
Let’s face it: Fences don’t even keep dogs in or out, let alone neighbor kids and intruders.
The repugican idea of a fortified border, a sort of Festung Amerika, certainly sounds imposing, but history has shown big walls don’t work.
Hadrian’s Wall didn’t keep the Picts out of Roman Britain; the Great
Wall of China did not protect China from either the Huns or the Mongols;
the Maginot Line did not keep the Germans out of France, and neither
the Atlantic Wall nor the Siegfried Line kept the Allies out of Germany.
Heavily fortified cities throughout history have fallen with
astonishing regularity.
As General George S. Patton is supposed to have
said, “fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” And
to the stupidity of the repugican cabal, apparently.
Another problem is that the East German fence was not built to keep people out (East Germany not exactly being a destination of choice) but to keep people in.
Yet O’Really insisted, “The Israeli’s have done the
same thing,” making him wrong again, since the Israeli’s are not trying
to keep people in, but out. O’Really seems to have a problem with
ingress and egress, which is not surprising given his hostility toward
reality in general.
O’Really concluded that “We haven’t done that on the southern border. That’s mistake number one.”
What haven’t we done? Build a fence to keep people in? Or to keep people out? Or both?
O’Really then advocated deploying the National Guard
“to stop the madness just as you stopped the madness in the Rodney
King riots and Hurricane Katrina and all those other things.” Since the
Obama administration hasn’t done these things, O’Really concluded that
there is a “dereliction of leadership here.”
To say nothing of a dereliction of clear thought on the set of The O’Really Factor.
O’Really seems to entirely miss the point that walls
have to be manned and patrolled – on both sides. Does he imagine the
National Guard will remain on duty forever? How does he think this wall
will be funded? Or like shrub’s wars, will it not be funded at all?
I’ve seen it suggested that if we are going to
deport anyone that we deport the repugican cabal. By the same token, if we are going
to build a wall, we should build it around the repugican cabal. A purely symbolic
wall, of course, because we know it wouldn’t keep repugicans out.
They’d just start digging tunnels under it.
But there is a bright side: At least then we could point to
their cantaloupe-sized calves, and laugh.
