Yeah, Yeah, We Get It
The Mayor of Murietta, California, says his city is not responsible for the folks who showed up to turn around the busses.
Yeah, yeah, they all came from Ohio.
Mayor Alan Long explains thusly …
“I guarantee you, if a bus were to arrive at the Murietta border patrol and those aliens were here, you would see that we would treat them with compassion. And the unfortunate part is that never occurred. This is a democracy, for whatever reason, the bus was turned around,” Long said. “I can’t speak for the rest of the world that showed up on our doorsteps.”
Okay, first of all, they are not “those aliens.” They didn’t come from Mars. They are people. Force yourself, Mayor Long, to use the people when discussing … oh, I dunno, people.
Second off, in a democracy, the busses would not have been turned around. This was not democracy. This was mob rule.
Third off, where was your behind when this happened, Mr. Mayor? And why were you on teevee calling the transfer, “a failure of federal law” and arguing against it days before the arrival of the busses? And why was national news interviewing your citizens saying how much they didn’t want the busses?
Whoa, whoa, Skippy, you lit the fuze. You’re responsible for the bomb.
You can’t back this one up, Mr. Mayor, and blame the people of Ohio or Nebraska.
Seriously! He looks like the kid who delivers my paper! His name is also Skippy. But I would bet he is way smarter than this jackwagon! I swear! This is just another version of the pol in Best Little *****House who insists that he had been drugged by Communists and dumped into that woman’s bed where he was then photographed etc. etc.
Mr. Mayor, your mouth just put you into a deeper hole!
1Ah, Murrieta–the nexus of big-box store and housing-tract development in southern Riverside County. At one point, in an attempt to become the Branson of the West, wanted to build a Roy Rogers-Dale Evans theme park complete with speculative, risky public-backed financing.
Not a lot of political awareness or intellectual sophistication out there. And, unsurprisingly, led by a well-coiffed but morally bankrupt politician.
2Does he forget what he said about these people at the town meeting? Is he so stupid that he doesn’t know it was filmed and broadcast or is he a bold-faced liar with his sudden welcoming tone. That rabid middle-aged crowd was local, and he was the Rabble- Rouser -in-Chief.
3It’s buses. One S.
Busses with two S’s means kissess.
That is all.
4Actually, either is correct although today’s preferred spelling is buses. Google ‘splains this 🙂
5Uh, in Texas, kisses is, “Gimme some sugar, Honey.”
6I’m curious. I appreciate his good comments and yes, he looks like a Skippy and yes, I think he’s cute. (I’m 74; I get to think that.) Anyway, before I got diverted, or turned around as the case may be, when he says that they are a compassionate community, I’m curious. What all would they have done to be compassionate to the folks on those buses? I mean, we gotta give him SOME credit for good intentions, don’t we?
7Note that even California has its inland rural areas. And boy, we have some doozies.
8The only reason Long is being more conciliatory now is because he made an *ss of himself. He meant to do/say the things he said, but he didn’t think the backlash would be so brutal, sustained, wide-reaching, and overwhelming. Serves him right for opening his darn mouth and inciting the knuckle-draggers to show up and show their butts for all to see. He now wants to say his words were “misiniterpreted,” but they weren’t. Long knew his target audience. He hit the target with a bullseye and received some unintended consequences. Now he’s all “if another busload of immigrants shows up, we’ll give them the key to the city.”
Not for one minute am I believing his latest words are anything except an attempt to mitigate the damage he’s done to his own city, all by his lonesome.
9It seems there’s always someone in these rabble rousing groups who’s holding up a sign with the word “illegal” on it. Isn’t blocking traffic on a public thoroughfare illegal? Isn’t interfering with the actions of Homeland Security illegal? That whole mob should have been arrested for resisting rational thought.
DHS plans on busing in about 300 refugees a week. Expect more opposition from activists out of Escondido (nowhere near Ohio).
I’m a native of SoCal and remember when the largest business in Murrietta was a horse saddle factory. Now they have a golf course, a few wineries and a freeway that allows you to zip pass town in a couple of minutes.
10OHHHHHH. I’m gonna share something from a friend who has lived where the refugees come from.
I doubt very seriously that many of you—or perhaps any of you–have lived in one of the countries from which these children come. I have, and up until a half-dozen years ago, I visited El Salvador regularly to stay in touch with friends I had made there. At that juncture I decided I could never go back–the violence was too random, the murders committed right in front of me exceeding the horrific nature of the war years.
Yes, children in other nations live in poverty and anguish. But Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize are murder capitals of the world. The gangs run rampant, the police look the other way, the government leaders are either complicit or too intimidated to do anything. Drugs–drugs which are trafficked to our country, to meet our illicit demands–fuel much of the gang activity. We started those gangs when we deported the teenaged and young adult children of the refugees from the wars of the Reagan years.
This is the disaster that decades of illegal involvement in Central American affairs has wrought. It is our moral responsibility to do something about it.
I heard a woman say she would rather send her child into the uncertainty of a journey to the US–one that might end in death–rather than see her child die on her doorstep, ostensibly killed by the gangs. That is a portrait of desperation few of us will ever be able to fathom. I can’t either, but after four years in El Salvador, I’ve got a pretty good idea what it looks like.
Alyssa Burgin
11Well, since the U.S.appetite for drugs supports the drug gangs and cartels south of the border and since the U.S. refuses to legalize drugs, tax the goodies out of them to build rehab centers and create anti-drug educational campaigns, we are fairly well responsible for the murder and mayhem that prevails in those countries.We and the corrupt, unjust, inhumane and thoroughly irresponsible politicians who purport to govern those benighted countries.
12I seem to recall the lines from Emma Lazarus’s poem at the Statue of Liberty that read: “. . . 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 !”
My father, who fought in WWI at Verdun and Chateau Thierry and then stayed for the Watch on the Rhine, told many times of the moment when his ship sailed into New York Harbor and the fog lifted to reveal the Statue of Liberty holding that torch aloft. He said men fell to their knees or danced and sang . . . . or wept, as he did. He said that kind of hope and joy should be granted anyone who came to our shores seeking freedom and peace. I knew Lazarus’s poem by heart by the time I was four years old. I am appalled by the mean-spirited, inhumane attitudes of many like the people in Murrietta and some we are hearing here in Dallas, Texas. These are children, many of them still babies. I stand in awe of our Border Patrol agents and the people in McAllen who have shouldered this burden, reached out for these little ones without a word of complaint. I seem to recall something being said in the Bible about being careful not to turn the stranger away from one’s door because by entertaining strangers, one may have entertained angels unawares.
I wonder how many of these snotty,rejecting, tight-fisted loudmouths show up in church every Sunday?
Ellen, I’ve been told that the folks you mention do go to church on Sunday but for the wrong reason. Its their form of absolution for what they already did and still plan on doing. You bet that sounds terrible, but until the jabberwockies really pitch in on the true meaning of Matthew 25, I ain’t changing my mind.
13I started out in life in abject poverty and loads of violence in Az.
14When I was young, I held more R views, because I was working 3 jobs while others were getting free rides and I “should” understand their needs because of white privilege. It was not fun. I got out of it for one reason–I was pretty. Married up. Way up.
As I mellowed out because most of my needs $ were met, (my children are well educated, safe warm and dry) I became more liberal, took in a formal foster child, and was a safe house for many others. Because it’s what there is to do.
We are engaged in a war both physical and idealistic for our very soul as a country. If we lose the center of ourselves and stay small and tribal–skin tone being the harbinger of belonging, as opposed to belief and morality–“some animals are more equal than others”–we will dissolve into crazy feudal gun ridden city states and go quickly back to brutality as the form of leadership. The Neanderthals must not win. We are the result of highly educated enlightened minds. They Were deists, and knew that the “slavery” issue would eventually rip us apart. This is a variation on that. Are these children human or not? Are they simply earmarked to be Pax Americana slaves (we destroyed their countries) and left to rot? Or are they the next generation of hardworking service minded Americians–simply put, it’s our souls on the line. I would love to wash my hands of it, but that’s the lukewarm position that gets you spit out of God’s mouth. Without borders we are not a country. Without compassion and mercy we are lost as a people. Tricky spaces that few of our “leaders” have the smarts to deal with. It’s disheartening and impossible, with only half correct answers in play. Sigh.