Know Compromise!

For the 22 miles of Texas that will have levees raised instead of the border wall, the "compromise" sounds like a good thing. Right?

Yeah, right. And Michael Chertoff is a secretly a wonderful person.

Levees are man-made embankments to prevent flooding. The ones in the area will be reinforced with 18-foot-high (six-metre) concrete barriers with sheer faces.

Stefanie Herweck of the No Border Wall Coalition said the government's "assertion that these are not walls is just spin. They are making the deal sound sweeter than it is."

Hmmm....18-foot high concrete barriers with sheer faces. Where have we seen those before?

This op-ed from a little paper in Texas really calls the "compromise" out on the carpet.

We, as taxpayers, will be paying for at least part of the cost of a border barrier that most of us didn’t want in the first place, with some vague hope that we will be reimbursed somewhere down the line by the federal government, which was supposed to be responsible for seeing to it that the levees were in good repair in the first place....

On balance, although the Hidalgo County levee/wall “compromise” announced Friday still stinks, it is probably better than the alternative, which was no alternative at all.

It's really classic, isn't it? The people of Texas aren't stupid enough to miss the trick. They are just trying to find some small glint of good in the whole mess, and in this case, it's protection from flooding. Can't blame 'em, really.

- Lozen