Texas live oak trees as you’ve probably never seen them

 

A year ago today we drove over to Johnson City, about an hour west of Austin, to check out the holiday lights that adorn the town each year from December through the first week in January. One center of illumination is the county courthouse. The other main one is the Pedernales Electric Cooperative, which bedecks its Texas live oaks, Quercus fusiformis, with a gazillion small lights. (That raises the profound question of whether a gazillion and a gajillion and a bazillion are larger than a mere zillion, and of how a gajillion and a gazillion and a bazillion compare to one other.)

 

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The U.S. southern border saw its highest rate of illegal migrant encounters last month, blowing away previous statistics.

Sources with Customs and Border Patrol told Fox News Digital that migrant encounters hit a staggering 300,000 incidents in the last month of 2023, reaching a level thought unimaginable just years ago.

Between Dec. 1 and December 31, more than 302,000 migrants were documented attempting to cross the U.S. southern border. 

It is the highest total for a single month ever recorded. It is also the first time migrant encounters have exceeded 300,000.

 

To give you a sense of how big that one-month number is, it’s about the same as the entire population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s larger than the entire population of St. Louis, Missouri; or of Durham, North Carolina; or of Lincoln, Nebraska; or of Reno, Nevada; or of Chula Vista California; or of Buffalo, New York; or of Norfolk, Virginia. And our government allowed those 302 thousand people to cross our border illegally in just one month.

 

You can read the full story about the unchecked flood of illegal immigration.

 

 

 © 2024 Steven Schwartzman