What if we secured our borders as well as the NFL secured the footballs for the Super Bowl?
In the lead-up to the game, so-called “DeflateGate” got more attention from national media than they give to crucial topics like the national debt or the possible collapse of Social Security (even though Social Security’s solvency is deflating faster than a football on a frigid day in Foxboro).
Network newscasts made it a big story. NBC’s Brian Williams even made it his lead story. After one week of the hype, CNN at least raised questions about whether media had gone overboard. Yet blanket coverage of the faux crisis continued into a second week, filling the two-week gap between AFC-NFC championship games and Super Bowl XLIX. (Thankfully it’s the last game to use Roman numerals, which I’ve had to decipher for some friends.)
Searching Google for “DeflateGate” produces over 18-million hits. That’s for a brand-new artificial word, a neologism that didn’t even exist until two weeks ago.
The NFL responded with Super Security for the pigskins used by the Patriots and the Seahawks. The only better defense at the stadium was the two goal-line interceptions.
The media aren’t the only ones with mixed-up priorities.
Why doesn’t securing America’s porous border get this kind of priority? After all, it deflates the population of countries to our south. We learned more details about handling game balls than the handling (actually mis-handling) of illegal border-crossers.
Normally, NFL rules require the home team to provide 12 footballs for indoor games, 18 for outdoors, which officials inspect a couple of hours before game time. For Super Bowl XLIX, each team turned over 54 footballs to officials super-early, on Friday. Between then and game time, the NFL promised “added security” for these balls, reported USA Today. Then the 108 were winnowed down to 50 intended for game use (and later auctioned for charity).
Fortunately, the issue didn’t recur at the Super Bowl. The only lingering controversy is why the Seahawks tried a pass from the one-yard line. Their fans should be grateful that Obamacare includes mental health coverage.
But America’s border security is a bigger unsolved problem. President Barack Obama creates his own priorities rather than following the law. He’s jammed the system so badly that hearings on current deportation cases have been pushed back into 2019—over halfway through the term of whoever is elected President in 2016. Meantime, the affected persons get to stay in America and consume expensive services.
Congress hasn’t even moved the ball to midfield to do something about it. A GOP proposal was pulled from the House agenda after complaints that was too soft. Border Patrol agents complained the bill was little more than “window dressing.”
So how does Obama use our 20,000 Border Patrol agents? He sent a phalanx of them to the Super Bowl in Arizona—not to look for people who should be deported, but to show off all their expensive security equipment. Agents complain that Obama won’t let them do their jobs but assigns them less-important work. You don’t suppose he asked them to help guard those footballs, do you?
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