Tag Archives: build the wall

national news

Democracy at its messiest best

The great British statesman Winston Churchill had it right when he described representative democracy as an inefficient, clumsy and messy form government, but better than any other form that had devised.

We’re witnessing it in its messiest form right now.

Congress and the president are locking horns over spending for a wall along our southern border. Donald Trump wants money to pay for the wall, although he initially promised he would make Mexico pay for it. That won’t happen.

Failure to pay for the wall would result in a partial shutdown of the government at midnight Friday. Merry Christmas, to thousands of federal employees who will not be paid for the time they are being forced to take away from work.

I am just one of those Americans who doesn’t quite understand why we reach this precipice every few months. Why in the world must we subject ourselves to this kind of melodrama? Why do Congress and the White House fail continually to provide long-term budgets that allow them to avoid this kind of brinksmanship?

The president has his constituency. Each member of Congress — 435 House members and 100 senators — answers to his or her own constituencies. They fight. They wrangle. They haggle. They argue. They threaten each other. They toss insults. And all the while the government that is supposed to serve all Americans is being kicked around like some kind of cow chip.

We don’t need to build a wall to secure our southern border. The president doesn’t seem to get that. He wants the wall because he made some idiotic campaign promise. Congressional Democrats want to secure the border through other means.

At last report, the White House indicates that Trump is backing away from the wall. The impasse remains.

Churchill was right about representative democracy. So help me, though, it doesn’t need to be this messy.

International news

Trump on the wall, who’ll pay for it and that shutdown . . .

Donald Trump is sending a dizzying array of mixed messages — on a single issue all by itself.

  • The president wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” along our southern border.
  • He insisted again today that Mexico is going to pay for the wall; Mexico’s government has said it won’t do as the president insists.
  • Democrats in Congress say that Trump’s insistence that Mexico pay for the wall takes Congress off the hook; there’s no need for Congress to worry about the money.
  • Thus, we need not worry about a government shutdown, which Trump insists will happen if Congress doesn’t cough up $5 billion to pay for the wall that he insists Mexico will finance.

Are you as confused as I am? If so, then I don’t feel so badly.

I cannot keep up with Donald Trump’s messy mix of messages.

national news

You go, Mme. Speaker . . . to-be

Nancy Pelosi has delivered a message to Donald Trump.

It is that the president of the United States is going to face a formidable adversary when the next Congress convenes in January 2019. The presumptive speaker of the House delivered that message in a face-to-face smackdown with the president in an Oval Office meeting the two of them had with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Oh, Vice President Mike Pence was in the room, too, but he had a “non-speaking” role in this idiotic and awkward exchange.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, informed Trump he doesn’t have the votes in the House to finance the “big beautiful wall” along our southern border. Trump sought to tell her that he does; she responded — immediately — no, Mr. President . . . you do not!

Pelosi is an expert at vote-counting, which was one of the hallmarks of her first stint as speaker from 2009 to 2011.

Trump, meanwhile, doesn’t know how the legislative process works. He has no background in congressional relationships. He doesn’t understand the importance of seeking to cooperate with the legislative branch of government.

The president’s modus operandi is to dictate his desires and then expect everyone to follow him over the cliff.

The new speaker isn’t wired that way. She’s tough and she is asserting herself as she should.

Let us remember something else: The U.S. Constitution stipulates that the speaker of the House is No. 3 in succession to the presidency. It’s good to remember that as we enter the new year — and a new era — in Washington, D.C.

International news

Idiocy takes new turn: pay for wall with military money

Donald J. Trump’s penchant for idiotic policy pronouncements is utterly boundless.

It’s bad enough that the president wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” along our southern border. The notion of building a wall is as un-American an idea as any Trump has pitched.

Now comes this apparent trial balloon. He is talking openly about paying for the wall using funds dedicated for the Department of Defense. Sure thing, Mr. President. Let’s take money away from equipping our troops to pay for a wall that won’t do a damn thing to stem what Trump says is a “flood” of illegal immigrants bringing drugs, murder and mayhem into the United States.

Oh, and there’s that other thing hanging over the discussion: the president’s pledge to “make Mexico pay” for the wall. That, um, hasn’t gone according to plan. The Mexican government has dug in deeply. It won’t pay for the wall, says Mexico’s president, Enrique Pena Nieto. He and Trump remain miles apart on that particular issue.

The idea that the wall somehow is a matter of “national security,” which in Trump’s mind would justify taking funneling money from the Pentagon to building that wall only confirms what many of us have thought all along.

The commander in chief has so little regard for the military that he would rob it of resources to shore up a promise he made for purely political gain.

And to think the president keeps yammering about his “love” of the men and women who defend our nation.

Idiotic.

legal news

Stand tall, Judge Curiel

This is awesome news!

A U.S. district judge who Donald J. Trump dissed as “a Mexican” has been given the authority to preside over a case involving the wall that the president wants to build across our nation’s southern border.

I cannot think of anything cooler than this — politically speaking, that is.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel will decide the merits of a case that questions whether the federal government can circumvent environmental laws to build the wall.

The Trump administration says it can; plaintiffs have filed suit saying that the administration would violate the law.

The irony of this just drips with richness. Trump disparaged the Indiana-born Judge Curiel during the 2016 presidential campaign, calling him “a Mexican,” alleging that he couldn’t judge another case involving Trump University fairly and impartially. Curiel is of Mexican heritage. However, he is as American as Trump, or me, or you, or anyone whose ancestors came to this country from somewhere else. I believe that constitutes the vast majority of U.S. citizens.

According to The Huffington Post: 

The case consolidates three lawsuits filed last year by the state of California, environmental groups and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.). The suits challenge the waivers granted by Congress in 1996 and 2005 allowing the federal government to bypass certain federal and state laws, including environmental regulations, for border security reasons.

The suits claim the waivers are outdated and should not apply to Trump’s border wall plan. California said the construction of the wall could do “irreparable harm” to the state’s wildlife. Legal experts say the groups that have brought the lawsuits will bear a significant legal burden to prove their case.

Curiel gets to decide who’s right. Isn’t that just outstanding?

I cannot to hear the blowback if Curiel rules against the administration. Nor can I await the reaction if the judge rules in the president’s favor.

As one who believes that judicial matters should be decided according to what the law allows — and if they follow the U.S. Constitution — I will have faith that Judge Curiel will interpret the law fairly.

Also, as one who doesn’t favor construction of the wall, I will accept whatever decision the judge delivers, even if it disagrees with personal political beliefs.

I would hope the president could do the same thing if the ruling goes against him.

He won’t.

International news, national news

‘Compromise’ isn’t a four-letter word

What do you know about this?

The president of the United States has tossed a compromise proposal on the table that has angered folks on the left and the right.

It involves a path to citizenship for so-called “Dreamers,” while also seeking $25 billion to fund increased border security, including construction of a wall along our southern border.

The lefties dislike the wall money; the righties dislike the citizenship idea.

I’ll accept this pitch as a legitimate starting point.

Donald Trump threw it out there as a way to seek a resolution to the nagging immigration problem that shut the federal government down for three days this past weekend.

Politico reports: The framework also eliminates the visa lottery and curbs U.S. migration by extended families, a fundamental change to existing immigration policy. New citizens would be able to sponsor their immediate families — spouses and children — to legally enter the country, but other relatives would be excluded. The administration would continue to allow people who have already applied for entry to be processed under the old system.

The key issue, as I see it, is the disposition of those illegal immigrants who were brought here as children. Barack Obama issued an executive order that set up the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program. It granted a reprieve from the threat of deportation for those who came here because their parents brought them here illegally. DACA recipients know life only in the United States. They are U.S. residents and have become de facto Americans.

Trump reversed that order and then gave Congress a deadline to come up with a legislative solution.

There’s plenty in this latest proposal to anger those on both sides. I wish we could dispense with this wall-funding notion. While I approve of the president’s desire to boost border security, a wall is the wrong solution.

DACA recipients deserve to be treated with a healthy measure of compassion. They do not deserve to be rounded up and shipped back to their country of origin, which they do not know.

I agree with what Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said: “I welcome when he says the right thing. But I know the next day he might be 180 degrees different.”

At least we have a starting point.

International news

Hey, what about Mexico paying for it?

Donald Trump keeps yapping about that wall.

The government shut down for three days over immigration and budget disputes. Then it reopened, with the threat of another shutdown looming in just a couple of weeks.

We’re still trying to hammer out a deal on immigration. But the president wants $20 billion of U.S. taxpayer money to start building the wall along our southern border. Is it an actual wall or a figurative wall?

My question — as always — is simply this: What about that campaign boast that Trump was going to make Mexico pay for the wall?

He blamed Mexico for “sending rapists, drug dealers, criminals” across the border. “I’m sure some are good people, too,” he added, as if to soften the harshness of his tone.

Mexico’s government, of course, said it won’t pay a nickel for the wall. I don’t blame them for digging in on that one. No head of state should dictate to another government how to spend its money.

The wall is a nutty, un-American and patently ridiculous notion. I don’t object to increased border security and better enforcement of existing immigration laws.

The president expended a lot of bluster and bellicosity while campaigning for the office he won by declaring Mexico would foot the bill for a “big, beautiful wall.” It wasn’t supposed to cost Americans anything.

What gives, Mr. President?

national news, political news

Turn off the TV, Mr. President

Donald J. Trump told us he wouldn’t tweet once became president of the United States.

“I’ll be too busy” making America great again, building a wall, defeating ISIS and bringing back jobs that had been shipped to “China and Mexico,” the president said.

The president has gone Twitter crazy. He can’t stop tweeting policy decisions, criticism of foes, friends and the media.

He also told us he wouldn’t have time to play golf, that he doesn’t even think he’ll take vacations once he took the presidential oath. How’s he done there?

Trump is set to play more golf in his first year than his predecessor, Barack H. Obama, did during his eight years as president.

He’s now zero for two.

OK, now he says he doesn’t watch much television. No time for that, either. The president says he reads “a lot of documents.” Is he telling the truth on this one? The New York Times reports that Trump watches more than four hours of TV daily; it might be as much as eight hours.

He watches CNN, Fox, a little MSNBC, perhaps a broadcast network news show or two, according to the Times. Then he tweets almost immediately after hearing the news, whether it’s “fake” or whether it comes from Fox — his favorite news network.

So, by my score, the president is zero for three on these promises and declarations.

Oh, but what the heck. He “tells it like it is.”

International news, national news

DACA pact? Deal … or no deal?

Donald J. Trump had a couple of dinner guests at the White House tonight.

They were Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the Senate and House Democratic leaders, respectively. “Chuck and Nancy” emerged from the dinner meeting and announced a “deal” they struck with the president that would produce a permanent agreement to keep “Dreamers” in the United States.

I refer to the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals act that Trump supposedly rescinded the other day. He gave Congress six months to work out a legislative fix to DACA, which seeks to protect those who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

It seems that the DACA matter has been put on a fast track. Oh, and get this: They report that Trump has agreed to forgo building the wall.

Not so fast, says White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who tweeted out something about minutes after Chuck and Nancy announced the deal that the president didn’t agree to scrap the wall idea.

Who do you believe? Two seasoned politicians who know their way around the Capitol Hill pea patch or a president who is not wired to tell the truth?

Trump, by the way, hasn’t yet weighed in with his own tweet about what he agreed on with Chuck and Nancy.

I believe the two leading congressional Democrats have just scored another win over the “best deal maker” the world has ever seen.

International news, national news

Promises made often are promises broken

“I’ll build a big, beautiful wall … and Mexico is going to pay for it!”

I’m sure you remember when Donald John Trump Sr. made that proclamation. If you missed it the first, or even the second or third times, well, he kept saying all along the trail he followed right into the White House.

Mexico will foot the bill for a wall that the president of the United States wants to build. Check. Got it. Done deal.

Except that Mexico will do no such thing. Just ask them. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has made as clear as he possibly can make it: In no way, in no fashion, is Mexico going to spend a single peso to pay for the wall.

What does Trump do now? Why, he turns to us — to you and me. We’re going to pay for it, he declares with a bravado equal to what he displayed while making that foolish campaign-trail pledge.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders keeps muttering that tiresome — and mostly false — contention that Trump “got elected” on the promise to build the wall. Wrong, young lady! He got elected by declaring that Mexico was going to pay for it.

The wall now is being used as a piece of political bait. The president is threatening to shut down the government if Congress refuses his demand for money — coming from our pockets, remember — to erect that 2,000-mile wall. Congressional leaders, though, have been burned before by attempts to shut down the government. They’ve done so in the past and have paid a price politically for it.

Trump has no direct knowledge of the political pain that comes with making stupid promises that he cannot keep.

I am all for increased border security. If we’re going to do more to deter illegal immigrants, then invest in better surveillance monitoring techniques; hire more Border Patrol officers and put them on duty along our southern frontier. I get that those who enter the country illegally are, by definition, lawbreakers.

Here’s another notion: How about enacting some comprehensive immigration reform legislation that makes it easier for those who want to come here in search of opportunity to do so legally?

But to build a wall? And then force a neighboring sovereign state to pony up the cash to pay for it? That was never in play. To now force U.S. taxpayers to carry that burden has become just another broken campaign promise.