Tag Archives: The Wall

International news

Declaring rhetorical ‘war’ on border-security demagogues

I am on the verge — or perhaps I’ve already taken the step — of declaring rhetorical “war” on those who insist that that those who oppose The Trump Wall are in favor of “open borders,” or are soft on crime, or who don’t want to protect the nation.

I am one of those who opposes the barrier that Donald Trump keeps insisting we build along our southern border.

Do I favor open borders? No. Am I soft on crime? No. Do I want to protect the nation against those who would do us harm? Yes.

Why is this so troublesome? It bothers me in the extreme to hear otherwise normally reasonable people say the things they do out loud, in public, about those of us who believe the president is wrong to declare a national emergency just to build The Trump Wall.

The president promised to make Mexico pay for its construction. It didn’t happen; it won’t happen. Now he is trying to foist The Wall on taxpayers. Congressional Democrats are digging in against that idea, too. So, to circumvent Congress, the president has declared a national emergency where none exists. Democrats are fighting back and, lo and behold, they’re getting some Republican support against the emergency declaration idea.

The day after making the declaration, he flew to Florida to play a few rounds of golf. National emergency? Hmm?

Trump has led the demagogic drumbeat against those who oppose The Wall. He yaps and yammers about open borders, national security and contends that his foes favor the former and oppose the latter.

I simply cannot take any more of that blind demagoguery coming from the president and his political base of supporters.

No one will get hurt in this “war” I intend to declare. Unless, of course, I inflict damage on some feelings along the way.

If so . . . that is just too bad.

Donald Trump, International news

Immigration reform? Remember that matter?

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The nation is getting all tangled up in this discussion over whether to build Trump’s Wall along our southern border.

Democrats and a growing number of Republicans don’t want it; Donald Trump’s followers — led by the cadre of talk-radio blowhards — are all for it.

What I am not hearing — maybe I’m not paying enough attention — is any serious discussion about how we might actually apply a permanent repair to the problem of illegal immigration.

How about turning our attention to serious immigration reform legislation?

We keep making feeble attempts at it. We get sidetracked and discouraged because too many members of Congress are resisting those calls for reform.

Then we hear about data that tell us that a huge percentage of those who are in the United States illegally are those whose work visas have expired. So, they arrive here legally but become illegal residents because those visas have run out. These one-time legal residence then are called “criminals” and “lawbreakers.” The become fodder for the president and his supporters to erect that wall along our southern border.

Can’t there be a concerted push to hire more administrative personnel for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to process these visas or to speed up citizenship requests from those who want to become Americans?

The president did offer a form of compromise during that partial government shutdown by suggesting a three-year reprieve from deportation for so-called Dreamers, those who were brought here as children when their parents sneaked in illegally. That’s a start. However, Donald Trump connected that idea with more money to build his wall, which made it a non-starter for those who oppose The Trump Wall.

So now the president has declared a “national emergency.” There is no such thing on our border with Mexico. The only “emergency,” it seems to me, rests with the interminable delays that occur when foreign-born residents’ work visas run out or when they seek citizenship to the Land of Opportunity.

How about getting busy applying a permanent repair to the problem?

national news

‘Emergency’ plays second fiddle to golf at Mar-a-Lago

I admit readily that I am a bit slow on the uptake at times.

Such as when the president of the United States declares a “national emergency” and then jets off to Florida for a weekend of fun in the sun and a round or three of golf at his posh Mar-a-Lago resort.

What am I missing? I cannot grasp what he’s doing here.

When a president declares a “national emergency,” doesn’t he remain on his watch, pouring all his energy into solving the problem that causes the emergency? Yeah, I know I’ve declared my lack of angst over all the golf that Donald Trump plays; he’s always on the clock. It’s just that he said he wouldn’t “have time” for golf once he took office as president.

So he says our southern border has become a “point of entry” for hordes of drug dealers, human traffickers, killers, rapists and assorted international terrorists. His response was to declare the “national emergency” that in fact doesn’t exist.

The president betrayed the urgency of the declaration, I am going to presume, when he boarded Air Force One and headed to South Florida for the weekend.

I always have considered “national emergencies” to be, by definition, events that require the president’s undivided attention. President Carter declared such an emergency when the Iranian terrorists took our embassy personnel in 1979. If memory serves, the president acted the way one in his position must act.

Donald John Trump Sr.? He has fabricated a “national emergency” where no such thing exists.

International news

‘I didn’t need’ to declare emergency?

Did the president of the United States just shoot himself in the gut with that idiotic declaration of a “national emergency”?

I believe that’s the case. Donald Trump has declared an emergency because of what he alleges is a flood of human traffickers, killers, drug dealers, rapists and terrorists coming into the country through our supposedly “porous” southern border.

Then the Idiot in Chief stood on the White House lawn and said he “didn’t need to do this,” meaning that he seems to believe that he didn’t need to declare an emergency.

What kind of buffoon makes a declaration and then says he acted out of political concern? Donald Trump doesn’t know what in the name of governance he is doing with the office he occupies.

He wants to build The Trump Wall no matter what. So he declares an emergency where none exists, tries to foist the cost of the wall off on Americans after pledging that Mexico would pay for it.

Pathetic.

Then he trots out Stephen Miller, the right-wing fanatic who serves as a White House adviser to explain it all.

Get a load of the sequence on “Fox News Sunday.” I’ll just give host Chris Wallace props for trying to get Miller to justify what the president has done.

Nice try, Stephen Miller

national news, national security

National emergency? What national emergency?

Robert Reich is a vocal critic of the president of the United States. I mean, he served as labor secretary in the Clinton administration. His progressive credentials are established.

He wrote this on Facebook today in response to Donald Trump’s declaration of a phony “national emergency”:

Just hours after Trump declared a national emergency to secure funding for his nonsensical border wall without congressional approval, he jetted off to Mar-a-Lago for a weekend of golf and relaxation. Excuse me, but shouldn’t the president be in the White House during a national emergency?

The truth is there is no emergency. Border crossings are at historic lows, immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans, and a wall would do little to curb the flow of illegal drugs. This entire crisis is designed solely to score points with Trump’s political base and consolidate his own power.

What Reich neglected to mention in this message — although I am certain it wasn’t lost on him — was that Trump himself actually dismissed the “national emergency” in a rambling, incoherent “press availability” on the White House lawn.

Trump knows there’s no “emergency” on the border. He made the declaration, it seems to me, because he wanted to create a pretext to erect something to which he can attach his name.

OK, then. Let’s call it The Trump Wall.

It’s all his. He can have it.

military news

Trump raid on military projects produces bipartisan ire

So, the president of the United States has done it.

Donald Trump declared a national emergency where none actually exists. He wants to build The Wall. He is intent on erecting that structure along our southern border to, as he said, stem the flow of human traffickers, drug dealers, murderers, terrorists and assorted riff raff he insists are “pouring” across the border.

That isn’t happening, no matter what the says.

There’s more, though. He wants to pilfer money already appropriated for defense projects to pay for construction of The Wall. That move has produced criticism from unlikely sources, such as from Republican U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Texas Panhandle congressman who once chaired the House Armed Services Committee. Thornberry, now the ranking member of Armed Services, says wall construction is not part of the military mission. Thornberry, who isn’t prone to criticize the president, opposes this initiative.

Congressional Democrats are going to contest the emergency declaration. Of course they oppose Trump’s decision.

The president, though, appears to be miffed that members of Congress who should have stepped up didn’t do as he wished. So he’s conducted this end-around.

The current chairman of the House Armed Services panel, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said this: “It is utterly disrespectful of U.S. national security and the needs of our men and women in uniform, and it further undermines his credibility in requesting the upcoming defense budget.”

That’s the president’s modus operandi. He says he “loves” the military and the men and women who defend the country. However, he is quite willing to undercut their work so he can build The Wall.

national news

How long will this border budget deal last?

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I am trying to ascertain an element of the budget deal that “solves” the border security matter that has gone largely unreported by any media, print or broadcast.

How long will this deal last? Will we be taken to the precipice yet again when the money runs out? Will there be more threats of more government shutdowns in the near future?

House and Senate negotiators cobbled together a border security deal that provides $1.375 billion for The Wall on our southern border. It kicks in more money for other matters related to border security.

The House and Senate have approved it. Donald Trump will sign it. He’ll likely plan to announce a “national emergency” to provide even more money for The Wall.

But . . . how long does this deal last?

This isn’t “good government” as I have understood the meaning of the concept.

International news

POTUS to declare a made-up ’emergency’?

I am just going to stand with those who believe that there is no “national emergency” occurring on our southern border.

Does that mean that we have no problem with illegal immigration? Of course not! It means that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, is seriously overstating the situation to suit some political agenda he wants to fulfill.

Trump has pledged to build The Wall along our southern border. He cannot persuade Congress to give him all the money he wants to build it. So he now intends to sign a border security agreement while declaring the existence of a phony “national emergency.”

How many times must it be said: There is no national emergency on our nation’s southern border!

But the president will not be dissuaded. He won’t be deterred. He won’t let facts get in the way of his bogus boastfulness about building The Wall.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not favor “open borders.” I want our borders secured as much as Donald Trump does. Hell, maybe more so! I simply do not believe the president’s ridiculous assertion about the presence of an “emergency” existing on the border.

Trump wants to usurp Congress’s role in appropriating money for government projects. He seems intent on diverting money to build The Wall from other actual emergencies.

The most galling example of that is a report that the president intends to take money earmarked for disaster relief in California and Puerto Rico for construction of The Wall. Hmm. How in the world can this be seen as anything other than political payback for the intense criticism the president has received for his policies in general and for his response to disasters in those two disparate regions?

The “national emergency” on our border with Mexico is a figment of Donald Trump’s fixation with pleasing his political base.

This fixation makes me sick.

national news

Trump ignores advice of his party wise men and women

Hey, I believe I am beginning now — finally! — to grasp why Donald Trump’s political “base” is so devoted to him.

The 38 percent or so of Americans who stand by the president have his back because he chooses to ignore the wise political advice of those who know how it works in Washington, D.C. Trump doesn’t have a clue. Neither do the 38 percent of those who support him. So . . . he speaks their language. He gets it. They get him! They’re made for each other.

See? Even those of us who are slow on the uptake are capable of understanding certain things that defy rational understanding.

Where is the emergency?

The president’s decision to declare a national emergency — where none exists — goes against the advice of congressional Republican leaders. They counseled him against it. They fear that it sets a precedent that Democratic presidents in the future could follow. If Trump declares a national emergency because of a phony crisis on the border, Democrats in the White House might be moved to declare an emergency over, oh let’s see, gun violence in our schools, or climate change, or threats from Russia.

The Wall on the border, though, becomes the crux of the national emergency.

Get it? Trump ignored that advice. He’s going to listen instead to the right-wing blowhards/gasbags/talking heads instead of the men and women who know what the hell they’re doing.

He speaks the angry language of the political base. They have each other’s back!

national news

Trump refusing to think strategically on this emergency matter

Donald John “RINO in Chief” Trump is likely to invite a serious bit of political revenge that could occur not long after he leaves office.

An actual Republican president would understand it, but Trump isn’t anything close to being a doctrinaire GOP politician. He is the nation’s premier Republican In Name Only.

You see, if the president declares a national emergency — where no such thing exists — to institute a money grab to pay for The Wall along on the southern border, he opens the door wide open to a Democratic president down the road.

Trump seeks the money to build The Wall from other appropriated funds. Congress is planning a legal challenge if the president follows through with his reported threat.

But . . . what if the national emergency declaration withstands a court challenge? That could mean a future Democratic president could issue a similarly nonsensical national emergency to push progressive programs forward.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at this, given Trump’s ignorance about government, politics, public policy or national history.

He wants The Wall. He seems to want something that he can claim as a “tribute” to his presidency.

However, there might be a political cost to pay.

It’s a potentially big cost at that!