Examining the Migrant Horde- Pt 1—Planes, Trains or Automobiles? by Bill Reader


*Normally I don’t like to do more than one guest post in a row — as you know — but I’m running this series for several reasons.  Some of them are mundane.  I’m on the final push at refinishing the library system, and frankly ready to be done with it.  Also so tired, I fall asleep when I sit down.  My house hasn’t been cleaned in a month and looks like a construction zone (I’m cleaning today) and we have practice grandchildren visiting tonight.  But more importantly, now Bill is done with the editorial part of his articles, and does a deep dive into what I call “the data of the horde.”  I think someone should do that and it should be out in the public, before the inevitable confrontation at the border and the hasty attempts at out-pallywooding Pallywood by our media.  And so, I’m running this and another tomorrow.  After that I’ll be back. – SAH*


There’s a lot of discussion going on about the logistics of the migrant horde on its way up from Latin America. There are tons of unanswered questions about this group, and hopefully by the end of this series of articles I can at least begin to provide some answers. This is not intended as a be-all, end-all set of articles. This is intended as a good starting point. It is my fervent hope that this inspires continuing efforts by diligent journalists on the ground.

There are several things that are worth discussing with this group. First, how are they traveling? Is it really all by foot?

Second, what kind of logistical support do they have? How are they organized, and who by? Are they funded externally, and if so, by what organizations? Recall that feeding this many people is a non-trivial task.

Third, how big is the group, and who is it composed of? We’re hearing a lot of competing stories on this subject. For the people purporting to know, one way or another, how do they know? What is their intent—are they trying to immigrate, are they refugees, or what?

In this series of articles, I hope to examine all these questions.

Let’s start with how they’re traveling. While it’s undeniable that the group is spending some period of time walking, an examination of their travel itinerary reveals that almost by definition, they haven’t been walking all the time. And now that some major news sources are actually reporting the speed the caravan is supposed to be going, incidentally, things are only getting more implausible.

Some people in the NYT are dumb enough to write the following in the Article “Debunking 5 Viral Images of the Migrant Caravan”—”Claim: Caravan members are boarding buses and trains instead of walking” which they follow with “Verdict: Mislabeled/unproven”. Technically speaking, that is true for the specific images they chose. These images are mislabeled. Note that they rather specifically dodge around the question of whether these people are taking vehicles of any kind. But their definition of the claim is not only not unproven, it is acknowledged in multiple MSM news sources, and further demonstrated in photographs on MSM sources. And lest we forget, buses aren’t the only vehicle people can ride on, as I will also highlight.

I will quote the following articles. Emphasis is mine:

-“Many hitched rides from hundreds of cars, trucks and public transportation.” –Reuters

-“The caravan, fairly compact in recent days, has dispersed a bit, with different bands of people seen walking together in a line, some boarding buses or trying to hitch rides” – CBS

-“A caravan estimated at more than 7,000 Central Americans, on foot and in vehicles, has been making its way north, intending to travel through Mexico to the U.S. border.” – Murcury News

-“Motorists in pickups and other vehicles have been offering the migrants rides, often in overloaded truck beds”— USNews

-“Thousands of Central American migrants are walking, taking buses and wading through rivers”—PBS

Moreover, here is a photoessay published on NBC. I draw your attention to the following images and their associated captions:

-Image 2/36- Shows a woman sleeping on a bus. Caption: “A woman sleeps with her baby as they travel on a bus toward the United States. The migrant caravan moves in groups either on foot or by vehicle.”

-Image 7/36- People on the back of a truck. Caption “Locals drove Hondurans part of the way.”

-Image 8/36- People getting off a truck. Caption: “A Honduran child cries as he gets off a truck during a new leg of the journey.”

-Image 9/36- Hands sticking through a truck’s side. Caption: “Migrants sit in a truck”

-Image 14/36- People getting on a truck. Caption: “Honduran migrants get on a truck to Guatemala City.”

I draw your attention further to this Daily Mail article showing 7 more images of migrants sitting on trucks. And this video from an independent journalist of people getting into the back of a truck.

This isn’t “unverified”, NYT. This is demonstrable fact. Some of the migrants have been riding on busses, and in addition to that, they’re also hitching rides on passing vehicles as noted in multiple articles and photos.

But there’s more to this. “Okay”, you may say, “So they’re spending some time on vehicles. But that doesn’t make that big a difference to the overall speed of the group.” Well, that can’t actually be the case. See, I decided to examine how fast this group has been moving. Now, while I appreciate that this caravan is sizeable, and people are playing fast and loose with when they actually technically arrive and leave at various cities, per the following news sources, enough people were in each given place at each given time to say that the caravan had arrived there. We can even get an estimate of how far ahead the fastest groups were.

Sources for the bona-fides of the dates of arrival are provided, though at this point it’s more or less a matter of record. First things first. The caravan started in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Sources vary slightly on the exact day they set off, with Fox and USA Today saying the 12th, and Daily Mail saying the 13th. By October 23rd, according to USA Today, they were interviewing people passing through Huixtla, Mexico. We also know that the caravan didn’t take the very shortest route per GoogleMaps, because some of the places noted in the NBC photo-essay—Quezaltepeque, Guatamala, and Chiquimula, Guatemala—are on a slightly more southern route. All told the distance traveled in 12 days—and that’s being generous, counting from the 12th, counting the full day of both the 12th and the 23rd as travel days, and ignoring that the caravan seems to have stalled out for almost a full day when it hit the border starting on the 18th— was 471 miles. That’s a pace of nearly 40 miles a day.

For comparison, I decided to research about how fast a trained infantry unit—notable for not carrying 5 year olds—can go in a day. This discussion on Quora puts a foot march at a 12-20 miles a day on the low end for infantry, with some elite units being able to move about 50 miles a day in full combat gear on good roads. This correlates well with a separate discussion here, which states: “The average soldier should be able to walk at a speed of 6.5kph for 20km carrying 32kg (LBE, pack & rifle)…”. 20 km is about 12 miles, and the same source states that “Humans can easily walk over 20 miles per day without tiring, even when carrying moderate loads and without much conditioning.” Remember, that’s half the speed this group is going by even the most conservative estimates. This simple estimate is consistent with the average speed worked out by the Daily Mail. That essentially random, lower-class Latin Americans, including women and children, would march about the double the distance that humans can easily accommodate, and indeed faster than the average trained infantry unit day-over-day, is suspicious as is, and points to the influence of vehicles being significant. However, it’s not absolute proof.

Still, I can point out one leg of the journey in particular which would have been, in all probability, impossible without assistance from vehicles. For this, let’s consider a few of the well documented stops on that road—specifically, the point where the caravan traveled through the closely-approximated cities of Quezaltepeque, Guatemala, and Chiquimula, Guatemala, through Guatemala city, and on to border town of Tecun Uman. There’s good documentation of migrants being in Quezaltepeque on the 16th. It can be found here: “Honduran migrants, part of a caravan trying to reach the U.S., are pictured inside a pick up in Quezaltepeque, Guatemala October 16, 2018.” Also here: “Honduran immigrants travel north near Quezaltepeque, Guatemala, on 16 October.” These appeared to be some of the people at the front. Photos of the most substantial part of the group going through nearby Chiquimula appear on the 17th, per CBS (image 3/56), and here is a different picture of it from NBC (image 13/36). And also at both links, note separate pictures of people departing Guatemala city on the 18th, both on foot, and by vehicle. Meanwhile, on the 18th, the first people had arrived at the Suchiate River in Tecun Uman, according to PBS: ” On Thursday, hundreds had walked to the river’s edge where they sang the national anthems of Honduras and Guatemala,”. Remember that, readers. I’ll come back to that. But spoiler alert, these aren’t exactly poor Ellis Island arrivals looking to become good Americans. And of course, on the 19th, enough had made it to Tecun Uman as noted by the WSJ, as noted by Time, and so on— to push down the fence by force.

From this we can infer a couple of things—the leading edge of the caravan was maybe a day ahead—that is, both between the 16th and the 17th in the nearby towns of Quezaltepeque and Chiquimula (the two are about 19 miles apart), we can find early photos of small groups about a day before the main group came through. The pattern is repeated again with small groups arriving at Tecun Uman on the border on the 18th, and a critical mass capable of knocking down the border fence being present on the 19th.

Second, we have separate photos and independent sources confirming the presence of the meat of the migrant horde in Chiquimala on the 17th, Guatamala City on the 18th, and Tecun Uman on the 19th. The distance from Chiquimala to Tecun Uman, passing through Guatamala, is 255-272 miles (depending on whether you ask GoogleMaps for walking or driving directions), meaning the main part of the group went an astonishing distance of almost 90 miles a day over these 3 days, and again, that’s by the most conservative estimates. That’s much faster than an elite military unit, much faster than any group could conceivably walk for such a sustained period. If they did not eat, sleep, or stop for any reason, and traveled midnight to midnight, that puts their average speed at 3.75 miles per hour. That is traveling at just shy of what our source above refers to as “forced march speed”, 4 mph. And again, that’s assuming they did it for 3 days, continuously, midnight to midnight, which we know for a fact they did not. For one thing, that NBC photoessay above shows them bedding down in a gymnasium on the 17th.

So either A) not only are they spending time traveling by vehicle, but vehicles of one form or another have played a substantial role, not for one or two small groups, but for the meat of party. This would explain how they are cover distances that quickly during this period, because the alternative is that B) this group of people, which is always pictured as walking in videos, is breaking into a run when the camera is off and somehow maintaining that pace for distances and times that would challenge army rangers. It is almost double the speed of an elite military unit. And you are supposed to believe, I reiterate, that they did this repeatedly, day in, and day out.

Here’s the bottom line—these people aren’t walking this whole way. It’s not just tenuous, or unlikely, it’s impossible. Among those parts of the MSM that are honest enough to admit they are using some kind of vehicle, the story is that they’re covering these distances by hitching rides between walking. I can’t prove that or disprove it. There are certainly a lot of images of people on the backs of trucks if you go looking for them. But in no image did I see more than maybe one or two hundred people on the back of vehicles. Did most of the portion of the group that used public transit use it during these time periods? Perhaps. Were buses provided for by other means? I can’t demonstrate that, either. But I can tell you that anyone selling you that these are people simply walking up from Latin America is staking claim that doesn’t conform at all to the evidence.


When I initially sat down to write this, the story was still in its infancy. Since then, well, things have come on a bit. On the 29th of October AP reported that the organizers of the horde, then passing through Tapanatepec, were demanding ” safe and dignified” transport to Mexico city, which demonstrates remarkable chutzpa considering these people are largely in the country of Mexico illegally.  It was broken by Fox (video at the link, reposted on another site), but widely attributed to Daily Caller for picking up, and is now reported by a plurality of sites, that the “migrant” “caravan” was boarding charter buses in Oaxaca state. Two interesting sidebars there, though. First, I used another, essentially randomly selected site, because my search engine couldn’t show me the footage on Fox’s site. Second, geographic searches in Latin America have, over the course of following this story, proven to be a nightmare. When following this, you have to be clear that the group is Oaxaca state, not Oaxaca city. All that was as of the 30th of October.

On the 1st of November Fox reported they were in Juchitan, which based on the map they provide would be the town GoogleMaps refers to as Juchitan de Zaragoza. November 1st was also a day of up and down news for Americans. On the one hand, it seems to mark the date the organizers unexpectedly shifted for a Northern route towards McAllen, TX, though truthfully this seems to be the route many American commentators have expected for some time, as it’s the shortest. On the other hand, from the discussion you can tell that at least some in the crowd seem to have been planning to go to Tijuana. As we’ll discuss tomorrow, one of the prominent leaders of the caravan is based there. Also, given that California is a lot more likely to put up with this BS than Texas, it’s hard to avoid speculating, once again, that the point of this caravan is not to actually get in, but to use the group as pawns in the interest of influencing the midterms. The trip is about 800 miles if they take that route. The good news is that the caravan coordinators are also saying its attempts to appeal to Mexico for Buses “failed“, as of October 31st. It’s worth remembering—and I’ll talk about this in more detail—that the best information I can find suggests these coordinators may include members of Pueblo de Fronteras, which given the group has its headquarters in Chicago and is funded by multiple left-wing funding agencies according to InfluenceWatch, is absolutely under fair suspicion for attempts to influence the timing. Even the other major group that may have control of the caravan has reasons it might want to. The article at the link notes the following two paragraphs, which I cannot improve on:

” In the first week after the leading caravan got into Mexico, federal police sometimes enforced obscure safety rules, forcing them off paid mini-buses, citing insurance regulations, added the Associated Press. They also stopped some overloaded pickup trucks carrying migrants and forced them to get off.

But in recent days, officials from Mexico’s immigrant protection agency have organized rides for straggling women and children as a humanitarian effort. And police have routinely stood by as migrants piled aboard freight trucks.”

To which I will add only two other comments—while the story given here sounds plausible, isn’t it convenient that the women and children, depending on how far they get rides, could also be the first to arrive at the border, to be confronted by several Army divisions? I’m not alone in thinking this is the long game of this caravan. Sarah and I have talked at some length about this, and if it follows the history of communist organized protests everywhere (stay tuned!), we can expect a pregnant woman to be shot. We’re calling her Maria De La Cruz, at present, as a convenient placeholder name until she presents herself. Note also that this entire demand—ridiculous on the face of it—seems calculated to get rejected (lest we forget, people who just waltzed in after attacking Mexican cops are demanding things of Mexico), in order to obscure three things.

1- As demonstrated above, this group has been getting vehicular assistance or their prior rate of speed would be impossible, and this rejection doesn’t change that,

2- Given that we saw groups boarding buses, and we know that the appeal to Mexico is not what rendered them, that strongly implies that there is funding coming from somewhere, because bus drivers don’t get to just do whatever they like with their buses (And just to foreshadow, for all that Mexico and the coordinators play up rejection? It could still be Mexico.) and

3- unless those buses have also been stopped, this statement deliberately misleads about how the group is currently traveling. If they’re on buses, they could be at the border very easily before the elections. The 800 miles from their present position to McAllen is a relative breeze by bus. But this may also be a play to spread US resources, by sending the women and children North to McAllen to be a political setpiece while the military aged men continue onward.

It’s hard to tell because the way the caravan chooses its next location isn’t straightforward. Tune in tomorrow to find out why I say that. And in case you wonder why I would think such a thing at all, Protocol Magazine noted that when the April caravan halted in Mexico city rather than continuing to the American border, “Leaders cited the reason for this as concerns for the high numbers of children within the group, as the next stage would involve dangerous travel by freight train”. Which, indeed, pictures at the links in the update show some groups are already doing. Which begs the question, how do they intend to proceed this time?



99 thoughts on “Examining the Migrant Horde- Pt 1—Planes, Trains or Automobiles? by Bill Reader

  1. OT topic: I feel like I am being run over by a rhino… virus. Thus hot tea, zinc, C, and bed. Ah, bed. Layers, yes. So if there’s some place it would be obvious that I would comment and do not… dealing with annoying bits of misguided RNA. Or trying to.

  2. Had not thought of the Communist “pregnant woman gets shot,” angle, but I have been thinking about the organizers trying for “the 21st century version of Kent State.” The hope would be to blacken the military’s reputation. Either possibility means these people are being used, which is despicable.

    1. The pregnant woman getting shot (and an analysis of the sound of recordings now released) leads one to believe that Kent State was instigated by leftist agitators. It appears she wasn’t shot by the National Guard. We’ll say that.

      1. There have also been some reports in recent years that an FBI asset (informant, maybe? – can’t remember the details, but not an agent) on the ground fired several shots from handgun shortly before the National Guard opened fire. I’m not saying he was responsible, per se, but that could have been taken by the instigators as a sign that all hell was about to break loose, and so one of the instigators shot the woman.

        1. Woman holding an infant is possible-though I think Vicki Weaver’s murder backfired on the FBI pretty spectacularly.

          (Sorry, Fed the Fred: the disdain for feds got engraved pretty early.)

          1. Her murderer is still walking around loose, so not badly enough. For that matter, the Hostage Murder Team still exists so not nearly badly enough.

          2. I dunno. Whoriuchi got his pension iirc, the feds got to crack down on ‘right wing militias’ and the warning was given.

            About the only positive was that the ‘militias’ decided it was go big or go home if it started. Reason I say the whole ranch thing was a damn miracle.

            1. The whole ranch thing was being covered with video. From literally dozens of sources. That’s why it didn’t turn out like Ruby Ridge or Waco.

              Ubiquitous video has changed policing and society. Whether for better or worse is an experiment still in progress.

              1. Not just covered by video cameras.

                It was interesting how polite the Feds got once they realized the ranchers had snipers in overwatch positions.

                1. Don’t forget the various agents that offered to shoot the guy giving them an illegal order to shoot, just as soon as he put it in writing, because they were not going to shoot on a verbal order.

      2. There are ex-KGB guys who claimed they set the whole thing up. Given how deeply they were embedded in the college riot thing, it’s believable.

  3. All this does beg the question, a large group of foreign nationals has illegally entered the country of Mexico. Why pray tell are the Federales not arresting the entire group. prosecuting them, shipping them back where they came from, and charging the cost to Honduras?
    And the only explanation I can come up with is that it somehow serves the interests of Mexico to aid and abet this attack on their good friend and neighbor to the North.
    Might be time to seriously consider a modest tax on U.S. dollars being privately transferred from here to foreign accounts. Last figure I heard was some $40 billion being sent directly to Mexico. A 20% tax would go a long way towards building that wall as well as putting a crimp in the yearly influx of hard currency Mexico counts on to boost their economy.

      1. Time to send in the Apaches. No, I’m not sure if I man the deadly tribal warriors or the deadly attack helicopters. Which would be more effective? Oh, and Build the Wall. Definitely time, and past time, to Build the Wall.

            1. Better still, just wait until we get AIs with a sense of humor flying those suckers. The jokes about identifying as an attack helicopter will go to a whole new level.

              1. Now I remember the Tachikoma from the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Who can have problems with AI-equipped attack helicopters.

    1. Yep. I don’t quip that the biggest exports of many of the countries south of us is their citizens just because they come. It is a not insignificant part of their economy and ours getting siphoned off and leaving.

      A 1% tax on overall remittances would pay for the wall.

      As for your first question, they don’t want them there so they act like they are trying to stop to avoid a hard stop on border by the US while still moving them along.

      Our Feds should just be able to arrest, hold and deport just as easily but we won’t.

      1. I’m all for a tax on remittances. To build the wall, and perhaps recompense all the various social services that the illegal immigrants leach off of.

        1. Oh, I just used 1% as a way of denoting the size. The tax bracket for $0 is 10%. Perfectly fair. Possibly some sort of credit for income taxes for the ones actually playing by rules. OK has something similar iirc.

        2. I have friends in education and medicine. Don’t go there. 99% of their work is illegals who don’t even pay (in medicine) and who leach off all the help-services in education.


      Because the sheer number of them makes that very difficult. If nothing else, Mexico would prefer that these people don’t go to the US because (assuming that they get in) they’ll take jobs that might otherwise go to Mexicans who would send money home to Mexico. And it makes the US grumpy when this sort of thing happens. So yes, Mexico would probably prefer that these people go away. But it would take a lot of work and expense to pick up all of these people (particularly as the ones you didn’t get in the initial detainments started to scatter), would require pulling men off of other important assignments, would require having a place to put them until you could send them home, etc… It would be a logistical nightmare in the best of cases. And the ones that you didn’t get initially might end up joining the cartels or some other less than legal organization, or turn to banditry to support themselves.

      The caravan is already planning on leaving Mexico anyway. It’s easier to just let the US deal with it. The US is relatively at peace (which means that manpower can be pulled from various parts of the country without risking destabilizing some operation elsewhere), and has the manpower to pull in the needed number of troops to get the caravan members properly detained and confined until they can be sent back home.

      1. Mexico has a tradition that frees them from having to house and transport the invading aliens.
        (It’s been what, two years since that busful of protesting college students was found in a mass grave? And by the standards of Mexican history, this was completely unremarkable. )

        1. It provoked a bit of bad PR north of the border, though, when word leaked out. And these were a group of trouble-making students that a good chunk of the continent hadn’t been watching.

          The caravan is composed of thousands of individuals. Some counts are as high as 14,000 members. If you were to slaughter them en masse, you’d still need thousands (or at least high hundreds) of people to clean up all of the bodies and throw them into the massive pits or bonfires that would need to be constructed to deal with them before they started to decay and become a gigantic health hazard.

          And that’s before you even look at the moral and ethical issues. Admittedly, there are many people in power in Mexico that don’t particularly care about that. But it’s there.

          1. 14k is the count of just Hondurans from the Catholic parishes they passed through, who likely provided a place to sleep and food. (Which is less about helping the caravan than keeping thousands of healthy young men from “foraging” among your disarmed civilian population. Hell, we’re armed and I’m starting to worry about a couple of THOUSAND coming up to El Paso.)

            1. I worked with a kid who’s parents moved here from Honduras(forget if he was born there or here but he had nearly no accent). He had been there often to visit family “Up in the hills”. He was shocked to find that Honduras had heavy gun control because everyone he knew there was well armed. Honduran girl I was considering courting at the time, also from up in yonder hills, said that yeah, back home, her father was almost always armed as well, because one cannot rely on the gov’t to protect you, so many folks “break the law” to keep and protect what’s theirs.

              1. Mexico is a little better organized, if only because the cartels often own the local cops, from what I hear– someone who is determined can GET a gun, but if they USE it it’s going to be taken, possibly along with any other weapons in the house. (Except for the local defense forces that sometimes form– some even keep clear of the cartels, and don’t become one themselves! It’s a natural progression, Mexico has been doing this stuff for…when did Texas leave, again?)

  4. So the columns are too spread out for a single night of bombing to get them without taking out a sizeable number of Mexicans.

  5. Just detain them – indefinitely – through the seasons. In tents. One hearing a day. But they are free to go back anytime. Once.

    1. Nah. They get their hearings only after April 1st. The tents are situated in red counties, of red or blue states, where the population boost will shift redistricting or even representative counts.

      Then we suggest a possible amendment the representation goes on citizen count.

  6. This is a straight up invasion. Most of these people are military aged men (the few women and children get thrown in for photo ops), carrying their home countries flags, and singing their national anthems. All they are missing is a uniform and rifle and they’d be called and invading army.

    Sadly, our media is so invested with leftists that they only report on this stuff through accidental reporting. The sad fact of the matter is that if the leftist progressives and their media sychophants don’t stop pushing, THIS WILL END IN BLOOD. And they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

    1. Oh they will throw plenty of blame around. A good chunk will probably still stick for a while. The question is how long, and will they get their wish of a socialist power in the US before it’s obvious.

      These mob actions are currently their most effective tool. Can’t stop thousands of people without methods that will make the squeamish cry and capitulate, the few that do get arrested, even if in process of committing crime get off, and it harms every other person that it touches.

    2. But they won’t blame themselves, as we well know. 40 Years plus since Kent State and the Narrative still conveniently omits anything that might show the National Guard to be justified. No mention of the arson of the ROTC building, or the interferance with firefighters. No mention of the damage done to private property in the town (a million dollars in 1970’s money).

      Can you imagine the ruckus the Left would raise if the authorities started to insist that the right to protest was limited by the words “peaceably to assemble”? And started to arrest Antifa when they started to block streets? Or smash windows?

        1. The thing I consider most important is the arson of the ROTC building. Regardless of the state of mind of the authorities up to that point, once an act of arson of that magnitude had taken place, the ‘protest’ HAD to be shut down. The ‘protesters’ had shown that they either A) were not averse to the use of lethal force or B) were too stupid to recognize the possibility that their actions could result in deaths. A building sized fire is not really under anyone’s control, and lessmso if firefighters are prevented from acting effectively. If the fire had spread, the results could have been very bad indeed.

          The idea that a ‘protest’ that has seen significant property damage, and the promiscuous and irresponsible use of fire is protected under the First Amendment is ridiculous. The notion that the Guard were simultaneously conspiring to shoot the protesters AND such poor shots that only four were killed in ludicrous.

          In point of plain fact, ‘protesters’ (actually rioters, usually) throughout that era were coddled beyond what was reasonable. They still are. Every idiot who takes part in an Antifa rally where streets are blocked, objects thrown, or property damaged should see jail time. And any fool who sets fire to an object the size of a flag should be fined for setting a fire in a,public place without a permit…unless hemobtains a permit in advance.

          The First Amendment protects the right ‘peaceably to assemble’, not to endanger the public by behaving like a pack of baboons.

            1. I refer you to the British program BABOONS, with Bill Bailey. It shows the animals to be vicious, thieving, destructive pests. Makes one really glad the worst nuisance animal we have to deal with where I live is the raccoon.

              Baboons are also tiresome, posess a limited vocabulary, have sketchy ideas about hygiene, bad hair, and like to wander about in the middle of roads.

              It’s a perfect comparison, really.

            2. Actually, from video I’ve seen from where wild baboons are protected and have discovered the joys of looting human civilization…. the only real difference is that one sets fires, and the other doesn’t.


            That is already a popular tactic among law-abiding areas.

            IIRC, there was even an ornery Libertarian who ACTUALLY GOT A PERMIT and followed it to the letter, and filmed himself doing so.

            No idea if it was a flag that needed to be destroyed anyways.

        1. That one, I can explain– some of the aid groups go through donated clothes, pack them neatly, and actually deliver them to needy populations.

          So you’ll be looking at REAL aid centers, and see a kid in old reboks and a Batman shirt.

          1. A priest was giving a homily and told the story about the time he was bothered all through Mass in Africa because he knew he recognized what dress a woman was wearing but could not place it.

            Later, another priest pointed that it was a Howard Johnson waitress uniform, minus insignia. (As her fancy Sunday dress.)

              1. How else are “championship” gear of the non-winner disposed of? Both teams anticipate winning, both have gear ready to distribute immediately to the team & to fans. The losing gear doesn’t (hasn’t?) always get destroyed. It gets packaged & shipped in aid packages.

                1. That was my first guess as well. And it could be from ’16 when NDSU had an off year and failed to win it’s sixth consecutive national championship. But it didn’t seem to have any ’16 connection.

    3. To be fair, “military aged men” by US Army definition is 17 to 62, which basically means “males not children or senior citizens.”

      1. 16-49, actually.

        Has to do with identifying enemy combatants; the upper end is most likely to be misleading to Americans who grew up with 50 year old relatives that look like my 30 year old outdoor working relatives.

          1. I rather figured, but there is an actual definition for “military age” even if they don’t boot everyone out when they leave it.

            A much more defensible number would’ve been the maximum enlistment age.

  7. I’m scratching my head, here. Mexico is in North America. I could see arguing perhaps that the caravan started in Central America, though there are geographers who claim land north of the Panama Canal is all North America. This is the second time in a week I’ve read someone state “..the migrant horde on its way up from South America…” yet proceed to name North American cities.

    1. Mexico is nominally in North America. Honduras and Guatemala are in Central America. But please be aware to Americans this is all South America. And they’re not wrong. Brazil is SLIGHTLY different (I should know, I have more cousins there than in Portugal) but the rest of it? It’s all a boiling mass to the south of us, therefore “south.”
      Yeah, I know, you’re going to tell me there are differences in the details of this dysfunctionality, but really, they’re all Latin and dysfunctional.
      Also, your biggest problem is with the designation of the continent I see? What about the actual article? Or do you work for the NYT?

  8. I lived in South America off and on for the last 42 years. “Second, geographic searches in South America have, over the course of following this story, proven to be a nightmare.” No doubt a nightmarish prospect, but it would be less frustrating if the correct continent had been searched. LOL

    1. Read Latin America. I MIGHT have changed that as I did the edits early morning and half asleep.
      People not of Latin-language origin have issues with names in any portion of Latin America.

      1. *grumbles* The habit of using nicknames in all news stories doesn’t help, even if a decent chunk of the areas involved DO have stuff that rivals LA’s original name for being elaborate.

  9. As I recall the National Guard at Kent State were green troops tasked with crowd control. Biggest mistake was them having loaded and chambered weapons when fixed bayonets would have done the trick far better.
    The Guard being sent to the border is a whole nother kettle of fish. They have far better personal armor, and I suspect most have done at least one tour in the sandbox. And just as important, they have a commander in chief who will have their backs and not cave when the media jiggers the optics of a confrontation.
    Not to mention that as soldiers their primary responsibility is not to do crowd control, that’s police work. Their duty is to protect and defend our country from foreign attack.
    The fatal flaw inherent in the tactics of the left is that they always resort to what worked in the past. And causing a violent escalation of force has until recently caused our authorities to cave. I do not think that will happen this time.

  10. If is Yoga thing is also an October surprise, there is something seriously wrong with the Democratic Party of the state of Florida.

      1. Shooter in Tallahassee, per Red State. Killed himself at the end of the shooting.

      1. Shooting, two dead, five others shot, shooter suicided after killing the college teacher and student, he had a history of groping type assault. (literal ass-grabbing)

        One of the dudes in the hot yoga class fought back with a broom after the gun jammed, got the gun away, shooter got the gun back and pistol-whipped him, but some of the gals were able to run while he had the shooter distracted.

        I’d guess the shooter heard sirens while he was trying to beat the dude to death and shot himself.

        Some of the feed stuff claims he was a “brooding veteran,” no details, usually means he was discharged early– either a non-honorable or the failure to acclimate one.

    1. Twin Falls, Idaho has received a significant portion of refugees per capita. And has a huge influx of illegal aliens, besides.
      The local governments and local media try very hard to put a happy face on the situation. (Which convinces almost nobody. On the bright side, the Santeria-practicing cartel members have done the work Americans won’t do by intimidating the incoming Muslims and are almost certainly responsible for the “disappearance” of the occasional outspoken Wahhabi.)
      The local paper chose some photogenic refugees and did puff pieces on them to try to tamp down public unrest. And then spun like crazy when they did a “one year later” retrospective, and not a single one of their handpicked subjects was gainfully employed.

      1. When I was in New Orleans the refugees they had were the Vietnamese, and they were somewhat disliked by the Leftoids because they tended to the business friendly quasi-conservative Dems, or worse Republicans. When one hears about how rotten things were/still can be in NOLA after Katrina, they never show N.O. East where much of that population resides. After Kat they just got back to doing what they always do and were just happy when FEMA came along afterwards and said “Oh, BTW, here is a check for some of your damages.” instead of sitting around demanding someone come fix everything for them.
        Up here the greif is with a rather large portion of Hmong that showed up to the Green Bay area. Seems they were not picky about what they killed to eat while hunting, and were accused of a lot of trespassing while doing the hunter gatherer thing early on. The work complaints were just the taking of jobs from locals, though if they move here, then work here and stay, they are now something of a local too, no? (The diehard dumbass dem at work didn’t like that observation, but he is a diehard hunter, gun owner, who thinks Hillary would be better for his 401(k) than Trump has turned out. I keep hoping he’ll retire early.)

        1. Arkansas got way more than its share of Vietnamese refugees when the Fed shut down the relocation program and turned them loose in Blytheville. They absorbed more or less seamlessly into the populace.

          I worked with quite a few of them back in the ’80s. They not only weren’t socialists, they thought Uncle Ronnie was slightly pink and needed to grow some more backbone. They’d all gone through the naturalization process – which wasn’t a gimme for them – and took their new country and its politics seriously. And having come from a country with a corrupt government and rapacious overclass, had no desire to see such a thing here.

          1. The only more anti-socialists I have known are Cambodian. Of course they were a Farming family in Cambodia so yeah, it was fresh even in the youngest son’s mind. They are lucky enough to have family there that survived Pol Pot. But 3/4 or more of Cambodia’s population is too young to remember Pot’s rule. and the number came some years ago

        2. Tbh depending on when retired probably relatively the same. The increase in economic activity has been met with the increase in interest which keeps shuddering the market. Hilzebub would still have 1% growth which would hold back rates. All the market movement from 12-16 was mostly into spyware and similar because only thing with any return rather than organic growth. Eventually would have to pay piper but we already have to. Trump’s focus on manufacturing over tech/finance will help soften it but there is no help for him trying to support it. When the Oruborus economy runs out of expansion a huge chunk of economy, especially the low end, goes away. You need to be adding value not just saving time.

      2. On that note, an interesting comment from Leslie Fish on Arizona vs illegals:
        It’s also a state under siege because of its long border with Mexico — lands which are mostly held by the local Navaho tribes. The Navahos, and other Pueblo-nation tribes, have been fighting off invasions from Mexico for the last 800 years, and they actively hate the Illegals. Even the big bad drug cartels don’t try crossing the border at the Native lands anymore because those Natives don’t just catch the crossers and hold them for the ICE; they shoot them. Nobody complains much about this, because the Natives own outright one-sixth of the state (including some of the best silver mines), and are a major voting-bloc.


  11. Having performed many forced matches in a Marine infantry unit over the course of 6 years, I would say around 30 miles per day is a good number on flat dirt roads (20 in rough terrain).

    However, a problem the math may not reveal is degraded abilities day after day.. Blisters, sign splints, dehydration, caloric intake, heat stroke. These all take their toll. By day 3 you are in living hell and not likely to cover half of your normal distsnce.

    1. My husband is also marine infantry, out now. But I’ve discussed infantry marches (of various sorts) with him, and his comment was that 20 miles was what you could do day in, day out, with decent terrain or (better yet!) roads. He did 40 once or twice and was rather… derisive… about being able to sustain it over long periods of time (he didn’t want to do it twice in a row much less more than that). Thirty for a few days.

      So there is a bolstering data point.

    1. Autocorrupt and spell-checkitis strikes again (~_^)
      My sister used to suffer from Splints when she was in Track in school. for being all of 4 feet and now 11.5 inches tall, she was pretty fast, but beat the ground into submission while running and it took a toll. My running style wasn’t much better truth to tell, but I was “bouncy” enough that the year I suffered track, I didn’t get them. If I hadn’t had the football coach who sucked, I despised, and who didn’t treat it as Track, but instead, Preseason Football prep (he had told all the football team that if they took Track as well, they didn’t have to do some of their hated summer training come the next school year . . . then we all ended up having to do it for track practice), I might have done enough to get them, or if the regular track coach was there, been trained better to not get them, who knows. Got so turned off the next year when the regular coach came back (had torn an Achilles’ in the Teachers VS Students charity Basketball game) I decided I had thing I’d rather do instead of any team sports with a group I rather didn’t like as a whole.

  12. If some do march to Tijuana they’ll find that San Diego built a border wall some time ago That might prove to everyone that a wall will or won’t work, perhaps that’s part of the goal.

  13. Supply the tents to Mexico so that they can be “housed” there while working their way through the asylum process at a single desk set at the midpoint of the bridge over the Rio Grande.

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