After Newt, Two Walls
Today Newt Gingrich, who at last week's Republican presidential debate said "I'm prepared to take the heat" for declining to endorse the mass deportation of all 12 million unauthorized U.S. residents, sought to fend off charges that he is soft on immigration by joining Michele Bachmann in pledging to build not one but two fences spanning the entire border with Mexico. Two is better than one, obviously, but surely good old American know-how can improve on this plan. Some suggestions via Twitter:
"Two fences. The first covered in razor blades. The second with stationery prone to cause paper cuts. Then, a moat of orange juice." (Radley Balko)
"As a warning to illegal immigrants, we make the fence *out of* illegal immigrants." (Ditto)
"Put a 1,000 ft tall, ultra-realistic painting of an ocean all along the border facing south. They'll think we're gone & go home." (Modeled Behavior)
"Hire Wiley Coyote to draw pictures of tunnel entrances on outside of stone wall." (Curiouser George)
"Why ANNOUNCE the number of fences? do we want to just SEND our enemies our plans?" (John Perich)
"Alligators and electricity! Wait. I think that's taken." (Michael Demmons)
Other ideas?
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Open borders.
What, I have 127 more characters?
What Newt (short for Newcular Titties) fails to understand is that, while building extra walls between us and Mexico, he's leaving 5,500 miles (including the border with Alaska) unwalled to the north!
We must stop the snowbacks from coming in and stealing our acting jobs!
And the Mounties from mounting our women!
Canadians....sex. Never happen.
That's why they seek our women!
Oh noes! The White Walkers!
Not to speak of 11,300 miles of coastline.
Illegals. Not "unauthorized." We have a congress, it passes laws. Some good, many bad. But illegal is illegal. Your disagreement doesn't change that.
Teh LAW is teh LAWWW!!!!!!1!!!!!!
Let he who hath not broken a law throw the first stone.
*selects nice size rock - chucks it at Mr. Mark*
Jesus's mom is disqualified for sex out of wedlock.
she was a virgin. No sex. Even though she was married. Sure, that could happen.
^This.
DERP... elleeeeegalll!
Thus, fences!
Impound all the old Chevys in the US.
And make a wall out of them!
We need a moat that has sharks with freakin' laser beams attached to their foreheads!
Watching these idiots talk about border security is like listeing to ten year old boys talking about the tree house they plan on building.
Except ten-year-olds actually succeed in building them.
Or what? Are you gonna release the Hounds, or the Bees, or the hounds with bees in their mouths so every time they bark at you they shoot bees at you? Go ahead, do your worst.
We have to fill every square or hexagon in the US with wall. I know it's a lot of clicks, but do you want the immigrants to win?
I think walling a city only takes 2 or 3 turns.
"Godamnit! How come everytime us Chinee put up a wall, stupid Mongorians come and knock it down?!?"
Fucking Mongorians!
How do they work!?
With great effort and on horseback.
That ought to keep that danged dog out.....
I think they didn't actually knock down the wall. They just bribed a few of the gatekeepers.
Still busting down walls in 2009, apparently.
After we build these walls can we get cspan to provide live coverage of the walls doing their job?
That would be AWESOME.
If I had a TON of pot...and time.
You ain't gonna have any pot once Newcular puts up his walls!
Freakin' loserdopians.
HAH! CANADIAN POT for the win, bitches!
THE LAW IS THE LAW, MR. CANADA LOVER.
NO POT FOR YOU!
Speaking of weed and crazy channels, did you ever get the NASA channel, Almanian?
It was mostly just the Earth from space, hanging there like a big blue blob, shot from a camera on the dashboard of the space station. Put that shit on with some Pink Floyd and just relax, man.
I absolutely LOVED that show.
PS3 has a great screen saver when you play music that is mimics what you described.(views of earth from space)
Remember the first playstation had the screen saver that danced with the music and you could change with the controller?
That shit was fun when you were high as well.
Are you my brother-in-law?
Isn't that what's on their flag?
So it would have the same requirements for awesome that it currently does. Actually I can watch me some bookTV, but idiots making speeches requires drugs.
Big signs that say, Your money is worth more than ours.
Diodes and flux capacitors.
Walls are silly, anyway. What we need are giant zeppelins that can launch hunter-killer drones lining the U.S. border. Not just with Mexico--the whole border. Maybe one zeppelin every ten miles, on average?
why limit such a great idea to the borders?
Filling the sky with drone-laden zeppelins would provide security in and of themselves and prevent any more of that pesky commercial aviation! Brilliant!
I advocate a system by which we promise unlimited foreign aid in perpetuity to Mexico in exchange for rounding up all their citizens and installing an explosive collar which detonates when they cross the border.
They must also perform this function on any other brown people who come up from down south and pass through Mexico.
In the alternative, we nuke the site from orbit.
But they have to be paired with random strangers - that way if you cross the border not only do you blow up. If you find your random partner, you can cross the border without exploding. Just don't tell Mexican Rutger Hauer and Mexican Mimi Rogers.
We could always tank our economy with a giant meddling nanny of a government thereby reducing the incentive to move norte.
It's already working.
WOOHOO! Vote for me!
Since such a proposal would basically destroy the border cities of the US, I propose dismantling Brownsville, McAllen, and Del Rio brick-by-brick and building the walls with them.
Otherwise those buildings will just sit vacant.
That'd be a shame, I had some good times in Del Rio. There used to be a nice little bar down from the border called something like Tombstone Inn, or Doc Holliday's that was really cool.
I suggest that all the people whose ancestors came here as immigrants hypocritically slam the door on later waves of immigration.
Oh wait, that's what we're already doing.
What if they weren't quite immigrants?
You mean they were Irish?
I think he meant they were black...
Is it our fault that they had a bad travel agent?
Or First Nation.
Like that internet meme meant anything.
It what "American Indians" are officially called in Canuckistan. I actually don't mind it, despite the PC, because it's obvious who you're talking about, and factually accurate.
A la Balko's suggestion, we make it out of anchor babies.
They should start a bidding war. Mitt Romney: "Two fences? You guys love terrorists or something? Put me down for three."
Why stop at two walls? Why not turn the US into one giant matryoshka?
I googled that for the rest of you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll
not russian aware ehh Robo?
If Gingrich wins the Republican nomination, I hope Reason will ask Jonathan Rauch to revisit his article on political "sell by dates," because Gingrich looks close to being the ultimate test of it: http://reason.com/archives/200.....in-in-2004
An infinite number of fences, each half as tall as the one before it.
The best thing is, this uses exactly as much material as two fences, yet uses an infinite quantity of labor. Jobs forever!
Utter. Genius.
We have a winner!
Be careful...turned the wrong way I think you've just described stairs.
Of course with an infinite number it would be a long climb.
Sounds like you're just making it easier and easier for them after the cross the first few walls!
Might as well shut down the comment system, this one is never going to be topped.
I picture Newt as Dr. Evil..."why make one wall when we can make...(close-up, pinky to lip) two walls?" Muha....muhaha....muahahahahahaa!
Also, once the Fed and Congress is done with devaluing the dollar, we can build as many walls as we want out of *ACTUAL* U.S. dollars. And it won't cost a thing!
Here's a google search showing that you CAN make a wall out of value-less currency, courtesy of our friends in Weimar Germany.
Scott - come here and give your father a hug. Come on...
A debt clock on a sign saying: Welcome new immigrants you now owe...
Have Krugman patrol the border. For those would-be immigrants who surmount the visual onslaught, provide interpreters.
1st wall (closest to Mexico) - made of Taco Bell tacos
2nd wall - made of Chuihuahua puppies previously owned by cunts like Paris Hilton
3rd wall - brick, plastered with posters of Anne Coulter.
That oughtta learn 'em!
Yep, that'd keep 'em out, but who are you going to find willing to build such an abomination?
Never mind, we could hire Mexicans.
GODDAMMIT!
What? No Twinkies?
I've already mentioned this before. My bipartisan solution that will satisfy both Left and Right is to build a nature reserve for carnivorous animals along the whole expanse of the border. No irlegulls takin' urr jerbs, no need for border patrol, healthy well-fed endangered species.
What like owls and shit?
Sure, birds of prey, big cats, bears, gators. Whatever floats your boat.
It's gotta have anacondas
How about instead of actual walls, we use masking tape, ? la WKRP? Then we all operate on the honor system?
We should ask the Russians if they still have the specs for the Berlin Wall.
How about instead of actual walls, we use masking tape, ? la WKRP? Then we all operate on the honor system?
I wondered why every time I "see" you here, Pro'L Dib, you have something bandaged. Now I know.
Hey Groov, how's it feel to be an official DRUG WARRIOR?
Hope you got yer badge in the mail.
I'm more the Andy of this blog. You're the Jennifer. Or maybe the Big Guy.
What about all that open coastline on the east and west sides?
Archimedes Death Ray.
Tesla's was better
Whale watching tours in San Diego will likely get a lot more popular. And come back with fewer people than they left with.
Do we still have any sections left over from Hands Across America?
How about some of those nifty metaphorical Wall cards from Magic: The Gathering? Like 'Wall of Tears' or 'Wall of Omens'?
Even better
Duct tape and plastic sheet
Make sure the duct tape is kept on our side of the border. We don't want that kind of technology in our enemies' hands.
Duct tape is like the Force. It binds and holds the universe together.
I was thinking we could use all the leftover supplies from those orange alerts in the 00's
What do you think strings and membranes are made of?
I'm a proponent of duct theory.
Hey Groov, how's it feel to be an official DRUG WARRIOR?
Hope you got yer badge in the mail.
Yanno, whatever sympathy I had for dunphy being in the unenviable position of both a police officer and a self-professed libertarian, has pretty much evaporated.
I never got a badge from the DEA, or any of the other Alphabet Soup WOD jackboots and I certainly don't want one.
The DEA on both the state and federal level is starting to make our lives very, very miserable; the only patient I ever turned in was the patient (amazingly, there has only been one so far) that was forging 'scripts on my DEA/Schedule number, an invasion of both my property and livelihood, not to mention fraud and a legit crime.
I'll thank dunphy not to lump me in with his ilk.
As he would say:
"hth"
It's funny how the drug warriors bully medical professionals into submission then point at them and say, "SEE! They're as bad as us!!!".
Fucking dicks.
Save your sympathy for the people victimized by dunphy and his ilk.
One can not be a police officer and a libertarian. To argue otherwise is folly.
We should build a moat along the border. Then, fill it with piranhas infected with AIDS. Also, killer drones. They're not just for "terrorists" anymore!
"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!"
You had to bring that up. I used to sing it with my college men's chorus, back in the 70s.
See also Celtic Woman, Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears
On the first day on January, eighteen ninety-two,
they opened Ellis Island and they let the people through.
And the first to cross the threshold of that isle of hope and tears,
was Annie Moore from Ireland who was all of fifteen years.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/the.....woman.html.
It's gotta have anacondas
Cue Sir Mix-a-Lot...
I'm more the Andy of this blog. You're the Jennifer. Or maybe the Big Guy.
There's already a Jennifer, going by the Nom du Blog of Banjos. I picture The Big Guy as Saccharin Man. Epi is obviously Herb Tarlek.
Some many here could qualify for the role of Venus Flytrap.
I'm just some random guest star.
Personally, I thought Bailey, AKA Jan Smithers was super attractive.
I'll take Herb, though he's too short.
ProL isn't Les Nessman. Maybe Tulpa?
Yup. Jan was the Maryanne of WKRP.
Excellent way to put it.
Epi, what does it tell you about a guy if he prefers both Maryanne and Jan over their more voluptuous co-stars?
Who said prefer? Can't I like both?
Ginger was not more voluptuous than Maryann. She just showed more cleavage.
What do you think strings and membranes are made of?
Catgut, of course. Doesn't everyone know that?
If we moved all the country's prisoners into a single, massive, continent-spanning border penitentiary (two walls!), in a way the border would be guarded by the very people whose jerbs the Mexicans tuk.
(And it's also a cookbook.)
Maybe Tulpa?
Clearly, Tulpa is Mrs. Carlson.
But not Mrs. Carlon's daughter, the fabulous Julie Carlson McAlpine.
OT: Did anyone see this on Lew Rockwell's Blog?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blo.....99413.html
DiLorenzo thinks reason'ers are baggy pants wearing gangsters! GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
DiLorenzo is usually on the mark; here, except for the first couple of sentences, he's not.
He is THE go to guy on Lincoln.
Jesus Christ that was bad:
Somebody get this lady a sand removal kit, pronto.
Mohammed should just add an extra "R" to his tattoo. Gang Starr is a great hip hop duo.
http://youtu.be/Ugtke61OFeM
Aw, who am I kidding? You nerds don't like rap music. I don't know where this idea of hip-hop culture being endemic to libertarians came from.
Some of us here appreciate hip-hop. BTW, can you imagine how mind-bogglingly awesome H&R would be if LRC's caricature of us were accurate?
It's shit like this that made me stop going there. How's that for a free market bitches?
Pull your damn PANTS UP, COSMO!!! You look as though you're preparing to smoke a "blunt" and listen to the "Beastie Boys".
Two walls: One built of Newt's ego, the second of his hypocrisy.
Those would probably affect the weather, so maybe not.
I really hope a this doesn't happen so I don't have to pay attention to my kids.
what does it tell you about a guy if he prefers both Maryanne and Jan over their more voluptuous co-stars?
They (we) have refined and discriminating taste in the fairer sex? Duh! In the big red truck!
Forget the second fence. With Newt, he would have a wall and then just an enormous billboard with his smiling picture and the words "WELCOME TO AMERICA, LOVE PRESIDENT GINGRICH".
That'd be enough to deter all but the hardiest of brown people, and those he'd quickly put to work in the great Fancy Feast mines of northern Wyoming.
We can build normal concrete walls, but as we build them we must add the ground-up remains of the Liberty Bell, Lady Liberty, the original Declaration of Independence, the original Constitution and Bill of Rights, and any other precious bits of our history we can spare.
Two walls? This shit is going to be like razor blades for Republican candidates, isn't it? "Well, Newt Gingrich might think this country is safe from cheap unskilled labor with just a measly three walls, but I, Mitt Romney, promise you the whitest country yet, with four walls, and a moat!"
Gingrich is a pro-bailout neocon war-monger. I'm a military veteran and Gingrich is the worst possible commander in chief; all about war but never about putting on the uniform. Our country and our youth deserve much better. Ron Paul can be trusted.
There's already a Jennifer, going by the Nom du Blog of Banjos.
My-my Groovie Pie! I have never been compared to Loni Anderson before. I will graciously accept the comparison without question.
I think they need two blade fences...the first blade stands them up, the second one sheers them off.
Magnificent
Just staff the border with fleet-footed Negros and light-loafered queers. Problem solved.
You see, most mouth-breathing, war-mongering, immigrant-bashing statist thugs only go up to ten walls. What I do is, if I need that extra push over the cliff, I put it up to eleven. One more.
[Smiles proudly.]
Other ideas?
Walls? WTF, this is the 21st century. We don't need no stinking walls mon.
What we need is robots. Shit loads of machine gun carrying robots. Or robot carrying machine guns. Or which ever the f*** way that works I don't care.
But the answer is hungry IR seeing angry pissed off unemployed bailed out politically correct seeing-eye, for your own damned good robots, mon.
Gee, with a rip like that right off the top of the head, I might ought to think about running for president myself. What do you think?
The obvious best answer.
It is the height of Newt's arrogance to believe that people will want to sneak into a nation where the President is Newt Gingrich.
By John E. Yang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 22 1997; Page A01
The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the first time in the House's 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing.
The ethics case and its resolution leave Gingrich with little leeway for future personal controversies, House Republicans said. Exactly one month before yesterday's vote, Gingrich admitted that he brought discredit to the House and broke its rules by failing to ensure that financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving the House ethics committee false information. Enough Said!!
thanks