The wall and who is going to pay for it - this was great theater during the run up to the election. It got great press and had a really cool ring to it. But that's in the past, now is time for some reality.

Mr. President, would you give me the $1.8 billion to work on the problem?

First, the boarder is 1,954 miles long.  That would mean that you gave me $921,187 per mile to secure the boarder.  This kind of jibes with what someone told me that the cost of a highway starts at about a million dollars per mile.  And of course I am ignoring an important matter, and that would terrain.  And that's why the estimates for a full wall are much more than the budget you gave me Mr. President.

The definition of a wall is that no one can get over.  A wall stops people and their belongings. So then before we talk about solutions, we should start at the problem.  Then the budget to solve.

The Border Patrol has more than 19,000 sworn agents but not all are assigned to the southern boarder.  Let's just say 10,000 are. So that's 10,000 divided by 2,000 (1,954 rounded up) or 5 men for every mile. These men are already paid for.

Envision a drone with the power to simple lift a couple of cameras, one normal, one perhaps heat sensitive or night vision capable.  These cameras are capable of sending motion pictures to a control site. At the control site we have software that is analyzing the camera data for movement or any other indication that something nefarious might be happening.

Drones would have the software capability to fly a mission, perhaps a few miles, and then go to a charging station and connect automatically.  All common software/hardware capabilities. The drones would typically fly at an altitude that would allow for a nice range of view and sufficiently high to be silent from the ground.

If we had 1,000 drones active at a given time, there would be a drone for every two miles.  There patterns of flight and timing would make it difficult to anticipate when a drown would be watching any given point, but that point could expect to be in sight every minute or two.

Drones would be able to leave their patrol pattern and follow border crossers until human patrols could get to a point for arresting border crossers.  The drone software that would balance patrols and tracking operations for 1,000 units would be an achievable task for American coders.

At these quantities, the drone described would cost about $1,000.  1,000 would be active at any time; 2,000 would be purchased for the fleet for 2,000,000.

Charging units could be built for (make it easy) $1,000 each.  One every two miles.  1,000 units plus 500 for maintenance rotation, 1,500 charging units purchased for $1,500,000.

These purchases would be open market purchases based on RFP's.  If SpaceX and the like are examples of American ingenuity, this is the obvious answer.  So let's consider some overruns and budget the $3.5 million job a $10 million.

This is a rounding error in even the current allotment for the wall.  Let's do it!

Status report, April, 2018:

• Good health
• Enjoying a relatively easy retirement
• Have family matters in good shape
• Ready to celebrate 50 year marriage anniversary
• Hoping for my Taekwondo black belt yet this year
• Hoping the 67 MGB will be back on the road this summer
• Pretty calm life

And that's the problem. My life is apparently full.  But is that all there is?
I've been thinking, "What's next?".  What shall I do with myself from here.
For some reason, this morning listening to yet another political commentator describing the state of the union, I realized that what-is-next should be a big deal. Let's think big. Going on 74 and full of energy it's time for expanded thinking.

Stay tuned.

There has been considerable effort put into trying to really understand our founding fathers when the condense amendment was written.

​"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

I believe that there are only two interpretations.

First, that the founding fathers were interested in a well regulated militia. They had just gone through the revolutionary war, and the founding fathers did not want there to a chance that the government could forbid guns and take over the population by force. I do understand their fears because the King of England could have done such a thing.

I think this aspect of the amendment is out of date.  To test the extreme, I believe that if every person capable of carrying a gun did carry a gun, the government could still take over if said government really wanted to do that.

The second possible interpretation of the amendment would be that a "well regulated militia" is a historical concept no longer possible. If that is the interpretation, the amendment is out of date and silent.  

This one should be a simple matter for the supreme court.