The whopper that could have impacted Oklahoma: He heard a rumor the Biden Admin was working on contracts to build an immigration facility in Hinton, Oklahoma to bus all illegal immigrants to, in order to "process" them. He said once he heard the rumor within about 48 hours they verified it was true, began the appropriate dialogue and reminded them Hinton does not have an airport or bus facility so once these individuals where released where would they go to? He said he was able to stop this process and he believes the Biden Admin has put the entire project for the country on hold.
Said what makes this country go is families, NPO’s and the government, pretty much in that order. Government cannot efficiently do everything that is needed. Government is not the answer to all of our problems. If families and NPO’s fail, I country will fail. NPO’s role so important. Families and NPO’s can more quickly address local issues.
He started with Afghanistan: Said 3 major mistakes Biden made among many that is really hurting us now (time to go thru in detail is for another time, need to get people out now):
1. For about 2 years 2,500 US soldiers held back 100,000 Taliban fighters. Agreement was if they took one inch of land, that US forces would push them back to where they where. Said this was working. Biden then made the decision to no longer do this. So as they slowly advanced and they saw US not react, they took more land, saw no US response, and then took more, etc...until they knew no one was going to stop them and so they stormed the provinces. He said this was entirely predictable.
2. The US Embassy was a highly secured facility. The personnel needed to process the papers to get everyone out worked in the embassy. When we abandoned the Embassy we had no secure area for this personnel to process the needed papers to get people out. Should have defended and never evacuated the Embassy.
3. The US military airfield in Afghanistan was also highly secured. He said imagine Oklahoma being under attack and our leadership decided to evacuate from Will Rogers using a civilian airport versus using highly secured Tinker Air Force base. He said it would have been much easier to keep the military airfield secure.
He has taken calls from Oklahomans not wanting Afghanistan refugees, and saying they are hearing refugees will be flown from Kabul directly to Oklahoma. He said although Will Rogers has expanded flights, there will be no direct flights from Kabul to Will Rogers or any other airport in Oklahoma. He said the one common denominator from retired military personnel that fought in Afghanistan is the stories they give of the translators that rode with them in to combat, most without a weapon. They are calling and giving these translators exact names and wanting to know if they are getting out. He said when they took a city or province the translators saved lives by talking down the civilians. They saved civilian and military lives. He said these translators and others that fought next to our soldiers believe in democracy, they risked their lives for it, and they wanted to fight also for the women of Afghanistan to have a good and productive life. They believe in the values Americans hold and they were promised we would take care of them if we lost the war. He said he these individuals were already vetted once before they fought with us, we know them by name, they will be vetted again, and he wants them transferred to the US. If you disagree with that, write me a letter because I am not going to talk to you about it. He said some Oklahoma companies have contacted him saying how can we hire them, he said companies having a hard time hiring right now. Said contact me if your company wants to hire these individuals. Said he is proud of Oklahomans for stepping up. We have to get all Americans and those Afghanistan's that fought with US soldiers out of the country. 3 Oklahoman civilians have been brought home.
Border: We had contracted $2B under the Trump administration for the wall to be built along the SW Boarder. Said we are 100% contractually liable and the US had paid those contractors. When Biden cancelled the wall, we essentially paid $2B to not build the wall. One of the biggest waste of US taxpayer money in history. Said the wall had a road on the US side, lighting, and trip element to it, to detect someone crossing over. Illegal immigration out of control, each month it grows larger. 6,000 ICE agents only made 3,000 arrests and they are told only to go after known criminals. The problem to do an arrest? The ICE agent has to go back to his office, write up the request, know the exact name of the person, has to explain why he wants to make the arrest, and then a supervisor has to sign off on it. He said as you can guess, by the time the ICE agent goes back to do the arrest the individual is usually gone. Biden admin knows this is happening. ICE agents feel helpless and they are doing everything they can to make their jobs almost impossible to carry out. He said those coming in from Mexico are coming in for economic reasons, not real asylum. Said the economic / work issue is a VISA issue and needs to be fixed and it is a mess. He said that is why the Supreme Court ruled as it did last night, he said the Supreme Court basically said clean up your act and do your home work, asylum is really for people under threat and they have to stay in Mexico and do what they need to do to be processed for asylum. Going to be interesting to see if Biden adheres to SCOTUS ruling.
3.5T spending package: It is Bernie Sanders presidential platform as he is on the Senate Budget Committee. 2 Dems are against it, and some Dems in private have told him they are against it and will not vote it for it, will not go public, but know they will not get re-elected if they do. To quantify the spending: a Million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is 31 years, and trillion seconds is 31,688 years. Even if the package is reduced to only "2T" it is HUGE. Last spending package economists will tell you is causing the current inflation. This bill is a huge spend and tax bill and if passed will devastate the economy and cause inflation to even get worse. This budget passed the house and will now go thru the Senate and the reconciliation process. Much of the details have not been disclosed but will. This process will take up the fall. He is against it obviously.
Race/CRT: How many of you have invited someone of an opposite race over to dinner? We have to start reaching out to each other and having a dialogue. Challenge you to reach out and talk to people over dinner and invite them over. Question from crowd on CRT: He said the problem with CRT is that it puts race before character. It makes assumptions about individuals based on their race. He wants his kids to be judged based on their character, not what their great, great, great, grandparents might have done. Question on education and racism, Tulsa race riots. Said law was passed in 2017 that in Oklahoma students had to be taught about the Tulsa race riots. His office and staff found out no curriculum existed so his office put it together, they went to the Oklahoma historical society, they reached out writers and everyone they could to put materials together. Now have a website for class room study, that can be as long as an hour or a week. Anyone across the country can use it. He is all for teaching accurate history, about slavery, Jim Crow laws, civil rights, etc.. We should not hide from our past and we need to be accurate in what happened. He told Tulsa in in 2016 the anniversary of the Riot was coming up in 2021 and that the entire country would focus on Tulsa and what have we learned from it, and he said that is exactly what happened.
COVID: He believes in getting the vaccine, his whole family has. Said certain percentage of population does not believe in vaccines and that includes for the flu and that was before COVID. He said the vaccine rate in this country for COVID is a little higher than the participation in flu shots. These are people that are dug in on their position on vaccines and were before COVID. He said those who have had COVID and are doing well, they believe they do not need the vaccine and they believe natural immunity better than the vaccine. Said be careful forcing employees to get vaccinated, hard to get good help right now and they can find another job. Showing vaccination card to get services: China and other countries would force vaccinations and showing papers, we love our freedoms and not who we are. Requiring vax papers another economic killer and you can go to Kinko's and falsify one very easily. Going to have to learn how to live with COVID and new variants most likely for a long time, we have to figure out how to make this work for all Americans and not ruin the ability for people to work.
Anger in country very high and everyone tuning out, not watching the news, etc.. He said now is not the time to lean out, but to lean in. Do so without anger, we need a good dialogue in this country on how to fix our problems. He understands anger is at an all time high and it will be hard to set aside but that is what we have to do to address all of the issues we have now currently.
Just passing on.....
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