Abbott asserts Texas's right to self-defense amid border surge

RocksInMyHead said:

Eh, I wouldn't be surprised if the move was, at least in part, motivated by Abbott's actions. But, all things considered, it's one of the least-confrontational ways for Biden to address the situation.

He can't really ignore the fact that a governor is blatantly defying a Supreme Court ruling - with the support of other Republican governors and congressmen as well. But at the same time, addressing the issue directly by doing something like federalizing the National Guard units or explicitly calling Abbot out pushes things closer to violence. What happens if he federalizes the Guard and Abbott says no?

Instead, he's applying moderate economic pressure to convince Texas to follow the law. That's a time-honored negotiation tactic. Consider Republican threats to defund sanctuary cities. Similar concept.

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BPPLEE said:

He says the pause is to assess the impact on climate change and that Republicans who (according to him) said Russia was no big deal are now going to do a 180 and say this helps Putin because they are owned by the oil companies (do the oil companies control LNG too?)

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Hazelelponi said:

It's actually kinda funny, but my husband and I came to the mountains because it was a highly defensible location if Islamic extremists came after me for becoming Christian... Like my husband says, we are surrounded by 75 miles of armed hillbillies to keep me safe...

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Green Sun said:

Federalizing the national guard isn't something Abbott can say "no" to - For the National Guard members, it's a lawful order, and they would face court martial if they refused to follow orders and stop blocking Border Patrol's access to the park.

Eisenhower and Kennedy both federalized to deal with cases where states were threatening to stop school integration after laws required it. At least back then, blowback was effectively nonexistant.

I know blowback would be bigger here, but it's an explicitly allowed mechanism when states refuse to comply with Federal law, and attempt to use their national guards to break the law.

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RocksInMyHead said:

They do. Most petroleum companies in the US do both oil and gas - especially the giants (Shell, Chevron, Exxon, etc). Shipping and the LNG terminals are contracted out, but the gas itself is still coming from the oil companies.

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RocksInMyHead said:

Can you summarize your video? I'm not particularly interested in what "Beau of the Fifth Column" has to say.

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Green Sun said:

Federalizing the national guard isn't something Abbott can say "no" to - For the National Guard members, it's a lawful order, and they would face court martial if they refused to follow orders and stop blocking Border Patrol's access to the park.

Eisenhower and Kennedy both federalized to deal with cases where states were threatening to stop school integration after laws required it. At least back then, blowback was effectively nonexistant.

I know blowback would be bigger here, but it's an explicitly allowed mechanism when states refuse to comply with Federal law, and attempt to use their national guards to break the law.

For the temporary pause on LNG exports, I welcome it - Climate Change is the biggest issue of the modern world, and the more focus we give to it, the better.


Oil companies are very much intertwined with LNG. Fracking for oil also pulls up a ton of Natural Gas. That's the big reason why the price of Natural Gas has plummeted, and US exports of natural gas have spiked in the last decade. LNG basically owes it's boom to oil company fracking.

Three of the largest producers of LNG in the world are ExxonMobile, Shell, and Chevron.

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JustOneWay said:

If you are not interested, don't watch.

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RocksInMyHead said:

I understand that, but you assume that the Guard wouldn't follow Abbott's lead on this. I would hope not, but at the same time, it has to be part of the calculation.

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Hazelelponi said:

We need to start doing all we can to get local and state governments together here.

This is an issue that affects all of us in every conceivable way, whether our families were themselves immigrants or not.

When the actions of the government are declarations of war against the American people it's time to circle the wagons.

It's actually kinda funny, but my husband and I came to the mountains because it was a highly defensible location if Islamic extremists came after me for becoming Christian... Like my husband says, we are surrounded by 75 miles of armed hillbillies to keep me safe...

Now it's a safety feature against our own government...

Crazy isn't it?

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BPPLEE said:

If you didn’t see the other posts it’s not officially a sanction although I think that was the motivation for it.

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Hazelelponi said:

I saw, and I looked it up, and it was.. no worries brother.


I stand by what I said.

Heavenly Father, please Lord raise up YOUR 75 miles of armed hillbillies to keep all YOUR Children in America safe. I don't purport to know what it will look like, but I pray now for YOUR Children and their safety in Christ. In Jesus' most Holy and precious Name I pray. Amen.

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Laodicean60 said:

Civil war now?

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Green Sun said:

It's genuinely misery-inducing that this is something we'd have to consider. I'd hope that that level of conservative hatred against the very foundations of the country itself isn't that high, but with the number of governors openly supporting ignoring the constitution and the judicial branch...

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Hazelelponi said:

You can't. But you can't stop Texas from putting it back up either.

Like my husband said to me after the ruling. The only thing that SCOTUS ruled on was whether the Biden Administration could go in and cut it down.

It didn't rule that Texas couldn't put it back up.

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Vambram said:

For now, the only thing Texas can do is to keep on putting up more and more concertina wires. Also, I wonder for long the Border Patrol is willing to go through the Texas Army National Guard to cut down the concertina wires?
I truly doubt that the Border Patrol agents there agree with Joe's policy allowing the invasion of illegal immigration.

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Tropical Wilds said:

This is playground logic. Obviously by ruling to remove the wire, they mean for there to be no wire there. The issue isn’t with that particular spool of wire, but the act of putting wire there in the first place.

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Tropical Wilds said:

By all accounts the Border Patrol agents are sick and tired of putting themselves in harms way and injuring themselves while going through the wire to save the people trapped, hurt, and maimed.

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Vambram said:

Video: Texas 'prepared' for standoff with Biden; 10 states send troops, law enforcement to border

Greg Abbott told Tucker Carlson 10 states have already sent National Guard troops or other law enforcement members to the southern border.

americanmilitarynews.com

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BPPLEE said:

I don’t think so. The Feds can cut holes in it but I don’t think there’s anything restricting Texas from putting it back up.

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