Immigration Inflation

Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election because she wouldn’t say Biden was wrong about the border. When she was asked how she would have handle the border as president she said, “I can’t think of a thing I would do differently.”

This last round of immigration issues started because Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020 and immediately overturned Trump’s border mandates. They said he was separating kids from families. 

    To be fair, Trump did say that he didn’t care if kids were separated from their families. He said if they wanted to be together they shouldn’t have come to America.

The issue of immigration festered for a long time until democrats had to admit it was an issue. When your own party can no longer cover for your mistakes you’ve waited too long to do something about it. Biden could have chosen to fix it with a mandate, but he didn’t want to take the blame if things went south.

What Biden did do was bizarre: he asked for a bipartisan bill to fix the border. 

    Surprise surprise! He got one. Both sides were happy with it. Everyone was willing to sign, until Trump decided he wanted to run on immigration being the country’s biggest problem. He called up Mike Johnson the current speaker of the house and told him tear up that bill and flush it down the toilet.

    Biden could still fix the border RIGHT NOW with a mandate but he wanted to claim Trump screwed it all up. And for precious weeks during the run up to the election that’s exactly what happened. MSNBC raked him over the coals . . . which only pumped up his poll numbers.

Trump says that when Mexicans are not sponging off our health care system, they’re birthing babies that are automatically Americans, thus sneaking around the legal immigration process. Crafty babies. That when Mexican men aren’t raping our daughters they’re voting for democrats. That when Mexicans aren’t voting for democrats they’re stealing our jobs.

What’s baffling is why I can’t see the immigration problem that they see. Maybe there is a problem but is it big enough to be called an invasion? All the media are screaming that immigrants are over running our country. Trump says he’s going to use the Army to round them up and send them south of the border. Sounds expensive to me.

Vivek Malek was elected to the office of Missouri state treasurer. His name is sus           . . . kinda sounds foreign. Prolly wasn’t born in the United States. I’d never heard the name Vivek before Vivek Ramiswami ran for the republican nomination. Now there’s two of them! 

I avoid political ads when I can, from all parties. They’re filled with bullshit. Both sides are guilty of inflation. They magnify the flaws of the other side. I get it, I just don’t participate.

But the bastards at YouTube figured out how to smack down my adblocker and I was forced to watch an ad for Vivek Malek.

Vivek Malek went to the big iron fence at the southern border and like an evangelical preacher calling down the wrath of God, Vivek screamed, “This is where all our problems start!”

The irony is that Malek was standing at a location where Mexicans can’t cross without a catapult. Or a cannon. 

Vivek Malek won the office of Missouri state treasurer. But what does that office have to do with immigration? In Missouri. 

Laredo Texas is the closest border town to Missouri that I could find on Google Maps and that’s 944 miles away. A 14 hour trip in your jalopy. And Vivek Malek thinks this is where all our problems start? There’s a whole lot Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas between here and there.

The problems that immigration bring, both legal and illegal, are inflated by conservatives in the media. Democrats are accused of lusting after open borders so Mexicans can cross over and vote for them.  While they’re here they can get free health care and food stamps. While they’re getting that free health care and food stamps they can walk up and steal a job from a tax paying citizen of the good ol’ YOUnited States.

None of it is true but it doesn’t matter. There is a tidal wave of BS coming from conservative media. No one wants an open border. Mexicans cannot get free health care. If an illegal immigrant goes to an emergency room Ronald Reagan’s EMTALA act says they must be treated and stabilized, but that does NOT mean it’s free.

But illegals don’t go to emergency rooms, not voluntarily, because if they did they would have to show ID, which would show that they were in fact illegal and they would be deported.

And how do you steal a job? I seriously wanna know, because there are some awesome, high paying positions I’d like to take a stab at.

Conservative media concentrate on issues like illegal immigration so that tax paying citizens won’t bitch about the state of their health care. That Americans are getting dumber. That our quality of life is not what it was 40 years ago. That very few of our kids can afford to buy a house.

Something striking about Vivek Malek’s accusation that all our problems start at the Mexican border is that he doesn’t mention actual issues in the state of Missouri. Like Chinese corporations being allowed to buy up farmland. Like corporations buying single family homes and leasing them for outrageous sums of money. Or that thousands of small farms shut down after Trump pissed off the Chinese with his tariffs so they quit buying our soybeans. I personally know of one person who quit farming directly because of that . . . but he doesn’t blame Trump. He blames the Chinese, because of course he does.

Mexicans come to the United States because they think it’s the greatest country in the world. They think that millions of Mexicans have already walked across the border, stole a job from an American citizen and got health care provided for free because conservative media told them it’s been happening for decades. So they’d better hurry while there’s still an open border!

If you really don’t want Mexicans pouring across the border by the millions then quit believing the lies. Because if you quit believing the lies, maybe they’ll quit telling them.

If you wanna hear me read this blog post out loud click the link below.

Immigration Inflation

You Get What You Settle For

 

“You get whatever you settle for.”

That’s a line that defines my life. It was in an email an old friend sent to me. Wise words.

I’m building My daughter a PC today. I went and bought parts for it yesterday. I ordered everything online from a store called MicroCenter. I call that place Nerdvana.

I didn’t want to go in and shop. I hate shopping, but at a place like that I get distracted staring at all the gadgets and gizmos. I wanted to walk in, get my bundle of stuff and vamoosh.

I rode the motorcycle. It seems a little weird, but I’m a little weird. It’s a 40 minute drive one way. Most of the traveling I do is within 10 minutes of the house. My work is 9 minutes from here. I wanted to get Natsumi on the highway and stretch her legs a bit.

I brought a ratchet strap with me. My bike has hard cases and a luggage rack. I put the small stuff in one of the cases and the PC case: the box all the electronic guts goes into and the monitor I ratchet strapped to the sissy bar. I should have taken a picture.

On my way home I noticed that the forks were death wobbling again. The death wobble is when you take your hands off the forks and it jerks back and forth. When I picked it up from the shop that was the first thing I’d tested for. It was as stable as the day it was built.

On that long ride home I discovered oil pooling around the top of the left fork nut. That meant fork oil was escaping on that one side and the forks were no longer balanced, hence death wobble.

The fork nut is what screws into the top of the fork tube. You have to push really hard to get it started because you want pressure on the springs so the front end stands up a little. There is a bolt and collar that you tighten around the nut so it won’t pop out from the constant pressure of the spring.

When I picked up the bike from the shop the mechanic told me I should buy new fork bolts because the air connections were a little reamed out and he couldn’t get an air seal. I knew that already. I wasn’t going to worry about the added feature of ‘air-ride’. I’d given up on the dream of the old girl floating on air like a GoldWing.

I had bought the PC parts on my credit card, which I haven’t done for a long time. When I do I’m nervous until it gets paid off. I’ve been fucked over twice by partners who didn’t take credit cards seriously. So I decided to buy new fork nuts along with the PC parts for Sara’s computer.

With an ancient bike you never know what you’ll be able to find. Especially in America. For some reason Germany is where you go to find old motorcycle parts. The guy who ordered my new fork springs got them from Germany. There’s a little electrical device that I attached to the front wheel gear that goes to my new computerized speedometer that I found on a German website. The guys at the shop had never seen one before. So I ordered the new fork bolts from another German website.

I know how to fix the leaking fork nut. In fact I did it right after I got home, but the only way you can add fork oil is to remove the nut and it’s a pain in the ass to put back in.

In order to eliminate the death wobble I’m going to have to disassemble the forks again. I’ll have to drain the oil on both sides and add the same amount for both sides so they’ll be balanced. Since I have to go through all that I figured I might as well have new fork nuts. It was a little over $100.

What struck me was how much money I’ve spent trying to get this bike to ride like a GoldWing. GoldWings are famous for their floating on a cloud suspension. My motorcycle is a CB900 Custom, which was the little sister of the Gold Wing. Everything about this bike is basically a Gold Wing except for the air-cooled engine.

That’s when your words struck home: you get whatever you settle for.

Why didn’t I buy a GoldWing, when that was what I’d always wanted? I’ve been settling all my life. It’s what I’m engineered to do.

One If By Land, Two If By Sea

That was the signal for Paul Revere to ride through town, alerting people that the British were coming. One lamp in the church steeple meant they were coming over land and two meant they were coming by ships on the sea.

The reason Paul Revere raced through town screaming that the british were coming was so the local militias could gather their weapons and prepare for war.

Before the revolution America was called the New World. It was a colonial outpost for England, but it was getting a little too big for it’s britches as far as the monarchy was concerned. Whatever the king or queen said was now their law. If the monarch said the colonists couldn’t have guns then that was the law.

It’s the reason the second amendment to the constitution was created, so this newly born democratic republic could defend itself against tyranny from foreign governments. Because there was no American army the newly formed government depended on civilian gun owners for protection.

There was no standing army. It’s the reason the first couple of words of the 2nd amendment were, “A well-regulated militia”. It’s how wars used to be fought will well-regulated militias. No one wanted everyone to just have whatever gun they wanted. Common sense gun laws were baked into the bill of rights.

I didn’t want to write this blog post, but a friend on Facebook was heart-broken by the fact that no one seems to be doing anything to reduce the number of children massacred by commercially available weapons of war.

The latest mass murder was done by a fourteen year old boy. He killed two fourteen year old kids and two adults in a school using an AR15 that was a Christmas present from his father.

The gun was given to the fourteen year old boy after the FBI investigated him and his family because he made dangerous threats on social media.

The FBI couldn’t do anything more because dangerous threats are protected by the first amendment.

Seriously.

The fourteen year old boy’s threats were so serious that his mother warned the school the day it happened, yet his father gave him his Christmas present. 

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

The Bill of Rights: the first ten amendments to the constitution, are a direct reaction to this newly minted country’s experience with a monarchy. They exist to limit the power of the democratically elected government, from the president down to the local constable.

Those freedoms are not unlimited. The first amendment doesn’t allow you to create a situation in which someone might get hurt by the common example of shouting !!!FIRE!!! inside a crowded theater. You are NOT free to do that!

But that’s exactly what’s happening every hour on cable news. Pundits are screaming !!!FIRE!!! to anyone who will listen. They tell you that libtards are coming for your slingshots and deer rifles if you vote them into office. That the school nurse will perform sex change surgery on your kid without your permission. That little girls will be forced to poop in litter boxes inside the boy’s bathroom. That babies will be murdered after they’re born.

If the second amendment were exercised exactly as our brilliant, though problematic, founding fathers had intended, there would be no weapons of war available at the local Walmart. That shit would be well-regulated.

What makes our collective misunderstanding of the second amendment so damn dangerous is the abuses of the first amendment by the oligarcs who enjoy seeing us fight each other, because if we’re fighting each other we aren’t asking them for better pay, or free healthcare or affordable housing.

Put two bugs in a jar. Let’s say a praying mantis and a June bug. They’ll ignore each other. Their goals in life are the same: survival, but they go about it in different ways, which don’t involve fighting each other.

If you want to see a praying mantis and a June bug fight each other, you’ve gotta shake the jar. And keep shaking it or they’ll quit fighting.

Who would win the fight? The person shaking the jar.

What’s the solution to gun violence? Will it ever go away in America? 

We are too easily divided by the thing that, initially, made this country great: diversity. 

You will never convince me that America is a Christian nation because I see too many blood thirsty Christians clinging to their unfettered right to own an AR15 as if God gave it to them in a celebration of his only begotten son’s birthday.

What baffles me is why churches aren’t preaching against gun violence. Jesus was the prince of peace, who said things like, if someone strikes your left cheek offer them your right. He said, if someone steals your coat give them your shirt.

As a person who has unshackled himself from the modern American Christian church, I will say with no irony, if everyone had the balls to act like Jesus, there would be very little gun violence in this country.