I heard on CNN last year that there were about 1400 vacancies for border patrol agents, even before Trump said he’d employ a lot more. No one wants to do it. The conditions aren’t great and it’s not well paid. Perhaps the focus should be on making them into a more professional, better trained, and well paid group. There was an incident a few months ago that’s been hidden away where border patrol agents were killing each other. A lot are corrupt, which is inevitable if staff are poorly paid, trained, and not well valued. Apparently morale is low too, and that is something that comes from management.

Trump always looks for the easy answer, but the problem is usually a combination of factors which means the answer has to be as well imo.

I don’t know either. Different lawyers say different things and they seem unsure too. As far as I can work out it’s up to Congress to impeach him. However, if they’re looking into his finances, I bet they can find illegal stuff from before he was president, and that will be waiting for when he’s out of office.

I just look at people like the Bundys. They had a lot of supporters. There are all those on the far right who already think any government is tyrannical and it wouldn’t take much to tip some of them over the edge. I’ve heard people say there would be civil war if Trump was impeached.

Whatever happens, people will die, and that will be a sad day for the country and a stain on its history.

It’s unclear if a sitting POTUS can be indicted. If crimes are proven the evidence goes to Congress and it’s up to them to impeach…if they choose (at least I think that’s how it’s supposed to work). Nixon resigned before impeachment hearings proceeded. I doubt Trump would resign because he’d relish a Constitutional crisis and the chaos that would ensue.

If/when his time comes up, I’m sure many in the cult will run rampant setting their hair on fire; law enforcement personnel are going to be busy, that’s a given. I’m glad I don’t live in a Trump-saturated area of the states…very glad indeed.

The thing that worries me the most is what’s going to happen if Trump is charged in the Mueller investigation.

Trump has gone out of his way to sow distrust for the FBI, justice department, and leading news organisations. The country has also been growing increasingly partisan since the Bush/Gore election.

There are a whole heap of people like Alex Jones spinning conspiracy theories that too many are swallowing wholesale. Then there are all those who also believe God had a hand in putting Trump in office and it’s the Devil who’s trying to tear him down.

What will all those people do if/when Trump is indicted?

You’re right of course – reality usually ends very differently and it takes a lot more than one event to change years of ingrained attitudes.

Sit coms back then were the way a lot of controversial issues were introduced into public awareness. I don’t remember most of those shows very clearly – in the 70s I went from 6-16 – I was just vaguely aware of them. My father was a lot like Archie Bunker. He wouldn’t let us watch US sitcoms, so it only happened when he wasn’t around. He thought they were a corrupting influence! I managed to get corrupted anyway! 🙂

One way to look at Trump’s tweets is that the truth is almost always the exact opposite of what he tweets. Too bad millions of his followers are so blinded by the cult that they believe all his horseshit. The dumming-down of America has come home to roost.

I saw a very well done episode of “The Jeffersons” in which George Jefferson saves the life of the hateful bigot who is trying to get the Jefferson family evicted from the building. But it did not end with the bigot changing his attitude.

No, the bigot was shamed and humiliated and disgusted that the target of the bigotry was the one who had saved his life. And George Jefferson was not happy. He had done the right thing. He’d taken the High Road. But it didn’t undo the reality of the situation and the active hatred and threat that had been directed at him.

I found the episode believable. If the episode had ended with the bigot changing his mind and the Jeffersons feeling safe and comfortable in their home it wouldn’t have been quite right.

Every once in a while Norman Lear would present a show that was dead serious and not funny in what was otherwise a comedy series. I remember an episode of Archie Bunker All In The Family in which Archie and Edith were horrified to discover that Gloria and Meathead did not intend to baptize their baby. That one was sickeningly real to me because my then-husband and I had gone through hell with his Christian parents over atheism and not baptizing our daughter.

I’m glad that Norman Lear did not sweeten and soften the endings of these dead serious and realistic stories.